In doing so, Louis “tempered by a natural law the rigor of the conventional laws, which deprive children born out of wedlock of all rights to the paternal succession.” Louis, therefore, did “for his own flesh and blood what he had done on behalf of several of his subjects.” He felt especially justified in the case of his own two legitimized sons.10
Louis, who was now “ageing visibly” so that people “began to fear that he would not live much longer,”11 sat down to write his will. In it, he recognized his nephew, the duc d’Orléans, as regent, but decreed that he should not exercise full powers. Instead, he would be chef du conseil, that is, he would sit at the head of a regency council, whose members included the duc du Maine, the comte de Toulouse, the maréchal de Villeroy, and Chancellor Voysin, who was close to Maine and also to Françoise.12 Orléans was required to conform to the decisions of the council, which would be reached by a majority of votes. Once the duc d’Anjou was old enough to leave the care of his governess, Mme de Ventadour, he would be placed into the charge of the maréchal de Villeroy. The regency council, therefore, would be dominated by the duc du Maine and those of his circle, while the young king would eventually be placed into the care of Villeroy, another of Maine’s favorites.
Louis, however, had felt pressed by Maine, Françoise, and the chancellor into writing the will in the way he had. He felt bitter about it, and one day he spoke harshly to Maine: “You would have it; but remember however great I make you in my lifetime, you are nothing after me; it is for you to make a good use of what I have done for you, if you can.”13
The following morning, Louis sent for the president of the parlement, Henri II de Mesmes, and the procureur-général, Henri François d’Aguesseau. As soon as they were alone, the king unlocked a drawer and took out a large package, sealed with seven seals, which he handed to them with these extraordinary words:
Messieurs, this is my will; no one knows its contents except myself. I place it in your hands for safe keeping by parliament [sic]; to which I could not give a greater proof of my esteem and confidence than by thus making it the depositary of this document. The example of the kings, my predecessors, and that of the will of the king, my father, do not allow me to be ignorant of what may become of this, my will; but they would have it; they tormented me; they left me no peace, no matter what I said. Oh, well! I have bought my peace at last.
There it is; take it away; it will become what it can; but at least I shall have rest and hear no more about it.14
When he finished speaking, he gave a short nod, turned his back, and went into the adjoining cabinet, leaving the astonished d’Aguesseau and Mesmes “almost changed into statues.” The two men “looked at each other, frightened at what they had heard, and still more at what they had seen in the eyes and countenance of the king.”15
Louis’s anger had not calmed, however, and the following day, he went to see Mary of Modena, who was visiting Françoise. As soon as he entered his wife’s apartments, he addressed the queen of England “in the tone of a man who was full of his wrath”:
Madame, I have made my will; they tormented me to make it [he then turned his eyes on Mme. de Maintenon]: I have bought my peace. I know its impotence and uselessness. We can do all we choose as long as we exist; after us we can do less than private individuals; one has only to see what became of the will of the king, my father, directly after his death, and that of many other kings. I know this very well; but they would have it; they gave me no peace or rest until I made it. Oh, well! it is done, madame; it will become what it can; but at least I shall not be tormented any longer.16
Mesmes and d’Aguesseau, meanwhile, carried the king’s will to the Palais de la Cité. They took some workmen to a tower behind the robing room and the president’s cabinet and ordered them to hollow out a space in the wall of the tower, into which the will was placed. The hole was then closed with an iron grille before being bricked up as before.
The parlement was sitting at the time that this work was going on, and Mesmes explained to the assembly the “honor and confidence shown by this deposit, and by the reliance the king placed on the parlement to maintain the provisions of the will it contained.”17
At the same time, the king’s officers presented an edict that had been received from the chancellor that morning. In it, Louis declared that the packet he had entrusted to the president and the procureur-général contained his will, “by which he had provided for the care and guardianship of the minor king, and for the choice of a council of regency; which arrangements, for sound reasons, he did not think proper to make public.” He asked that the document should be kept in the custody of parlement until the end of his life. He further ordered that, upon his death, the chambers of parlement should assemble, with all the princes of the royal family and all the peers who might be available, and in their presence the will should be opened, read, and the dispositions it contained made public and executed, without power of interference from anyone. Copies of the will were then to be sent to all the parlements of the kingdom to be registered.18
As he had already suggested, Louis well knew what became of the last will and testament of kings following their death. His own father, Louis XIII, had willed that France should be governed by a regency council. The first thing Anne of Austria had done was to persuade parlement to set aside this will and leave her with full regency powers, as was her right as the mother of a minor king. Parlement, therefore, effectively possessed the power to appoint the rulers of France. This power had endowed the parlement with an exaggerated sense of its own importance; this had been one of the factors behind the Fronde. Since it was extremely unlikely that Louis XIV would wish to inflict upon his heir the possibility of a repetition of the awful events that had blighted his own minority, it is highly probable, as Saint-Simon asserts, that he was influenced by François and the duc du Maine, acting upon their own interests, in drawing up his will.19
In February 1715, Louis received a visit from a most peculiar man.20 Apparently an ambassador sent from the king of Persia, this man had not been invited to France, and he produced no credentials or powers from his sovereign. He was, in reality, a provincial bailiff of some sort charged by the governor of his province to discuss trade with Chancellor Pontchartrain. Still, he was treated in a manner befitting his alleged rank, and he made his entry into Paris on horseback, escorted by the maréchal de Matignon and the baron de Breteuil. However, he “did so many vulgar things and made such foolish squabbles about the ceremonial that when the procession reached the hotel of the special ambassadors, they left him at the door without accompanying him inside,” as normal procedure would dictate. They then went straight to Versailles to complain to Louis, who approved of their actions and “thought the ambassador very uncouth.”
It so happened that the man who usually interpreted oriental languages for the king died at about this time, so it was necessary to send for a curé who lived near Amboise who had lived for some years in Persia. The curé was well versed in the manner, customs, and government of Persia and was fluent in the language. He knew from the first that this man’s embassy was fictitious. This fact was not related to Louis, however, who continued to believe in the alleged ambassador’s integrity. He announced that he would receive this man at Versailles and ordered his courtiers to wear full court dress for the occasion.
The Galerie des glaces was selected as the setting for the reception, and a magnificent throne, “raised several steps,” was placed at one end. Tiered steps were arranged along each side of the galerie, which was superbly decorated, as were all the apartments. The steps nearest the throne were reserved for the ladies, while those farther down were reserved for the gentlemen of the court.
The courtyards, roofs, and avenues of Versailles were filled with people, “which amused the king much as he looked from the windows.” He watched for the arrival of the ambassador, who drove onto the avenue at eleven in the morning, accompanied by Matignon and Breteuil. They then mounted horses and rode into the
great courtyard, where they dismounted and entered the château through the door of the colonel of the guards. “The suite seemed very wretched in every way,” wrote Saint-Simon; “the so-called ambassador was greatly embarrassed, and very badly dressed; the presents were beneath notice.”
Louis now went into the galerie. He wore the sach of the Ordre du Saint-Esprit over his coat, which was black and gold and “decorated with the finest of the crown diamonds to the value of over twelve millions of francs.” The jewels made the coat so heavy that Louis “bent beneath the weight of them and seemed much broken, thinner, and looked very ill in the face.” He took his seat on the throne, at the foot of which waited the painter Antoine Coypel and Boze, secretary of the Academy of Inscriptions, one to paint the scene, the other to record it in writing.
The ambassador arrived by the grand staircase, crossed the great apartments, and entered the galerie through the salon at the end opposite to where the throne was situated. He was overwhelmed by the splendor of the spectacle, and on two or three occasions he lost his temper with the interpreter, which gave people to think that he knew more Fench than he would admit.
When the audience was over, the ambassador was entertained to dinner, which was held in the late queen’s apartments. He then visited Torcy and Pontchartrain before returning to Paris. The presents he left for Louis were “as little worthy of the King of Persia as of the King of France,” consisting as they did of “very ordinary pearls, two hundred worthless turquoises, and two gold boxes full of a rare balsam which issues from one rock enclosed in another rock, and congeals after a certain space of time.” Saint-Simon adds that this balsam was “said to be marvellous for wounds.”
Throughout this visit, Saint-Simon insists that Louis was duped and that he was the only person in his court who believed in the integrity of the false ambassador. It has to be wondered, though: Did Louis know that his visitor was not genuine and was merely taking advantage of the situation to do what he loved to do best: dress up and dazzle courtiers and his visitors alike with his magnificence?
Three months later, on May 3, Louis rose earlier than usual, and after attending mass, he went into the gardens. It was nine o’clock, and he was looking forward to seeing the eclipse, which was due to take place that morning. The ladies had been waiting for an hour by this time, and Cassini had arrived from the Paris Observatory with the special glasses necessary to view the event safely.21 Notwithstanding his carefree attitude that spring, however, one matter that had exercised Louis for many years was now about to come to a head.22
As long before as 1702, the curé of Clermont-en-Auvergne, the abbé Fréhel, had reopened the controversy surrounding the Five Propositions said to be found in the book Augustinus.23 Louis asked Pope Clement XI to settle the question once and for all, and Clement responded by issuing the bull Vineam Domini, which condemned Fréhel’s work. Cardinal de Noailles, the controversial archbishop of Paris, upheld the pope’s condemnation and excommunicated the nuns of Port Royal, who rejected the papal bull. Louis, who also accepted the bull, ordered the destruction of Port Royal. The nuns, all of whom were over sixty years old, were expelled and the buildings razed to the ground.
Then, in 1710, Abbé Fénelon, who was now edging towards Jesuit-influenced orthodoxy, published a pastoral letter, in which he condemned heresies allegedly contained within the Réflexions Morales sur le Nouveau Testament by Pasquier Quesnel. Fénelon posted copies of his letter all over Paris for anyone to read. However, Cardinal de Noailles refused to allow the letter to be read in his diocese. Louis appealed once again to Clement XI, this time asking him to condemn Quesnel’s work. It took several months, but Clement eventually issued the bull Unigenitus, which condemned en bloc 101 propositions found in the book. The bull arrived at Versailles on September 25, 1713.
The Unigenitus instantly proved controversial and inspired months of argument and debate. The theologians of the Sorbonne, some of the Parisian clergy, and the monastic orders, with the exception of the Franciscans, found it contained certain articles that they could not accept. Louis was determined that the bull should be accepted, but his will was resisted by Noailles and fifteen other bishops, who declared it “a fatal and illegal act of interference in French Church affairs.”24 They demanded the convocation of a national council to settle the matter. Louis agreed that a national council was needed, but he wanted to use it to condemn Noailles. The pope, however, refused to support the king in this endeavor, so Louis decided to hold a council nonetheless. It would meet on September 1, 1715, and Louis would announce its convocation in parlement on August 19. He expected resistance from Noailles’s supporters, but in that event, Louis intended to hold a lit de justice to enforce his will. Alas, Louis’s plan was not to come to fruition.
The king was now in a visible state of decline. His once vigorous appetite was “considerably diminished.” Although this had not gone unnoticed by the court, Louis continued to follow the rites and rituals of his everyday life. Beyond France’s borders, the king’s failing health was also a matter of interest, and bets were being placed that Louis would not live beyond September 1.25
Louis was in the habit of asking Torcy to read him the gazettes from Holland. Torcy always took the time to look them over in case there was something printed that he did not want Louis to hear. On one occasion, however, he did not take this precaution, and while he was reading, he suddenly came across a mention of the bets made in London. He stopped, stammered, and skipped the passage, but Louis noticed and asked him what he had skipped and why. Torcy blushed and muttered that the passage was impertinent and not worthy of being read. Louis, however, insisted upon hearing it, and Torcy, “in the greatest embarrassment, read the bets from beginning to end.” Louis disguised his feelings, but he was deeply hurt by this, so much so that when he sat down to dinner, he brought up the subject of the gazette. He looked at Saint-Simon, as he did the other diners, but more as if he expected the duc to reply. The duc took care to say nothing; he merely dropped his eyes. Louis “seemed moved, like a man who did not wish to show it.” He tried to eat, but it was clear that the news had spoiled his appetite and hurt him more than he cared to reveal.
On Monday, August 12, Louis took medicines for painful sciatica in his leg and thigh.26 He still managed to work that afternoon with Pontchartrain, and he attended a musical evening with Françoise in her apartments.27 The following day he went to mass, but he had to be carried in an armchair. That afternoon he received the so-called ambassador from Persia, who was taking his leave before setting off for his own country. Louis held the audience in the throne room, but there was none of the ceremony that accompanied their first meeting. Moreover, the audience, which was rather long, tired the king very much, but he refused to rest and held a council of finances afterwards.
Louis’s health had been failing for more than a year. His personal valets had noticed it first, but they were afraid to say anything. Fagon, now laboring under the weight of his own old age, was the only person in Louis’s intimate circle who did not see how far the king was declining. His colleague, Maréchal, tried to speak to him several times, but each time Fagon repulsed him. Maréchal felt duty bound to speak to Françoise, assuring her that the king’s constitution was sound and that, with the proper remedies, there would be no danger; he added, ominously, that if things went on as they were, he did not hold out much hope. Françoise, however, angrily told him that only Fagon’s enemies said such things.
Fagon continued to treat Louis’s gout by swaddling him in a mass of feather pillows, which made him sweat so much at night that he had to be rubbed down every morning before the gentlemen of the bedchamber could enter. The physician also made Louis drink aged Burgundy wine with water rather than the champagne he preferred. Louis would joke that “foreign lords were often well taken in by wanting to taste his wine.”
On August 14, a group of surgeons arrived from Paris. Their collective wisdom decreed that Louis was suffering from fever, which should be treated with
ass’s milk. Before it could be administered, however, Fagon countermanded the prescription and gave Louis a cup of bouillon instead. The king held the council of state afterwards, but memories failed when it came to what else the king ate, if anything. Dangeau believes he took a little meat even though it was a feast day, while the Anthoine brothers thought he ate panade, or boiled bread with butter. The pains in his leg and thigh prevented him from walking, and he was carried everywhere in his chair. He spent the afternoon listening to music with Françoise and her ladies in her apartments, and took supper at nine that evening.
The following day was the Feast of the Assumption. Louis, however, was very unwell that morning, and for the first time in his life he did not hold his lever. He had slept very badly that night, and he spent the morning in bed drinking copious amount of water. He was well enough to be carried to the tribune of the chapel, where he attended vespers. On his way back to his apartments he passed through the Galerie des glaces, which was so crowded with courtiers that he had difficulty getting through. After another musical evening in Françoise’s rooms, he retired to bed at ten.
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