The Bourbon Kings of France

by Seward, Desmond

  Military glory remained for Louis infinitely desirable. In the brutal Marquis de Louvois, the King had a wonderful Minister of War, whose reforms served France until the Revolution. Louvois introduced regimental uniforms, badges of rank, portable pontoon bridges and standardized artillery. For the first time the ordinary French soldier was regularly paid, well fed from field kitchens and had a chance of rising from the ranks. Louvois was responsible for the foundation of the Hôtel des Invalides—in its day the best old soldiers’ home in the world—and of three schools of artillery, together with cadet companies for training young officers. He introduced grenadiers and hussars, replaced the pike by the musket and plug bayonet, and made the troops march in step to airs on the fife and drums specially composed by Lully. Hitherto the French had considered cavalry as the only soldiering fit for gentlemen; now Louis forbade anyone to join the cavalry without having first served in the infantry. A Corps of Engineers was set up to assist the great Vauban, who in 1663 had deeply impressed the King by his fortifications at Dunkirk, Vauban’s principle being that the lower defences were, the less likely they were to be hit by enemy artillery.

  The King restrained himself until this army had begun to take shape—and until Colbert had amassed sufficient funds. By 1667 he was ready. Philip IV of Spain had died in 1665, succeeded by the child Charles II. In May Louis suddenly overran southern Flanders, claiming that the province belonged to his wife as the child of Philip IV’s first marriage, Charles being only the child of the second (the pretext gave the campaign its name, the ‘War of Devolution’). In February 1668 Louis also invaded Franche Comté. England, Sweden and the United Provinces, who had been watching with considerable apprehension, quickly formed a Triple Alliance. In May he was forced to withdraw from Franche Comté, though he kept the towns he had won in Flanders.

  The Triple Alliance infuriated Louis. The Dutch, who were its real architects, had already affronted him by responding to Colbert’s tariffs with surcharges on all French wines, spirits and manufactured goods, while the activities of the Bank of Amsterdam were seriously depleting French currency. By the spring of 1672 he had isolated them from their allies, paying Sweden a large annual subsidy and sending Charles II of England a secret pension; in the latter case Louis’s agent was Madame, who, just before her death in 1670, persuaded her brother to ally with France.

  The French army was now stronger than it had ever been, with nearly 120,000 highly trained soldiers. Voltaire describes Louis’s newly formed household troops: ‘There were four companies of life-guards, each comprising three hundred gentlemen, among whom were many young cadets, unpaid, but subject like everyone else to the strict rules of the service; there were also two hundred guardsmen, two hundred light horse, five hundred musketeers, all of gentle birth, young and of good appearance; twelve companies of men-at-arms, afterwards increased to sixteen; the hundred Swiss guards accompanied the King, and his regiments of French and Swiss guards mounted guard in front of his house and tent.’ These troops, the Maison du Roi, whose uniforms were covered with gold and silver, became the crack troops of the Ancien Régime.

  Besides Condé, the King had the services of another great captain, Turennes. Although the Dutch possessed the most formidable navy in the world, they had pitifully few troops. France declared war in April 1672, and in June the French cavalry swam the Rhine, Louis and the infantry following over their new pontoon bridge. The King, in jack-boots, a leather coat and a red-plumed hat, shared his men’s rations but insisted on full ceremonial and used his tent as an audience chamber. By the end of the month Turennes had turned the Dutch line of defence, and Amsterdam was only twenty miles away. The Dutch fell back on their last resource, breaking down the dykes and flooding all the country around Amsterdam. Then they begged for peace.

  Louis’s terms were too much—a crushing indemnity and a large slice of territory. On hearing them, the Dutch overthrew the government of de Witt—he and his brother were torn to pieces by a mob—and replaced them with the young Prince of Orange who was appointed Stadtholder. By now all Europe went in fear of Louis, and the Dutch found new allies—Brandenburg and the Empire at the end of 1672, Spain and Lorraine in 1673, Denmark and the Rhine Palatinate in 1674.

  Withdrawing from Holland, Louis struck swiftly at the Spanish and conquered Franche Comté in six weeks, this time for good. Turennes laid waste to the Palatinate, burning two towns and twenty villages, and destroying vineyards, crops and livestock so that the enemy would be without supplies. When the Germans invaded Alsace at the end of 1674, Turennes drove them back in a terrible winter campaign, inflicting 40,000 casualties; while Condé repelled a Dutch and Spanish invasion. Next year the French were not so successful. A stray cannonball killed Turennes (Louis buried him in the royal sepulchre at Saint-Denis). Condé drove the Germans out of Alsace for a second time, but France was growing tired. Despite Colbert’s striving, taxes had risen to enormous heights—the war was costing France something like £ 30 million a year—and there were sporadic risings among the Breton peasants.

  The war dragged on for three more weary years, during which the French won some slight victories—Monsieur, painted and powdered as always, defeated the Prince of Orange at Mont Cassel by a courageous gamble, much to the King’s jealousy. Meanwhile Louis was waging a most skilful diplomatic campaign; setting the Dutch against the Spanish and attacking the latter in Italy; stirring up rebellion in Hungary; he even managed to foment quarrels between the Dutch republicans and the Stadtholder’s supporters. Louis’s enemies grew even wearier of the war than the French. A peace conference met at Nijmegen in the summer of 1678 and was brilliantly handled by Louis’s diplomats. A treaty signed in August gave him Franche Comté and twelve towns in Flanders—the latter constituting a valuable reinforcement to France’s weak northern frontier—and Nancy. A separate treaty with Holland reduced the French tariffs, though it did not abolish them entirely. Nijmegen was an undoubted triumph for Louis and his policy of aggression.

  The years which followed Nijmegen were the zenith of Louis’s glory. In 1680 the Parlement of Paris bestowed upon him the title of ‘The Great’. When the poor Queen died in 1683 Bossuet, in his funeral oration, spoke not only of her ‘piété incomparable’ but also of ‘les imortelles actions de Louis le Grand’. Versailles was a fitting shrine. The King moved in permanently in May 1682. The following year Mme de Sévigné, visiting it for the first time, wrote ecstatically, ‘Tout est grand, tout est magnifique.’ The King’s chief joy was the vast garden created by André le Nôtre. Louis loved to stroll through geometrically-arranged terraces, down countless avenues, over the lawns (or ‘green carpets’) shaded by carefully planted groves, along great canals and lakes. There were a thousand fountains and innumerable statues. He enjoyed chatting with the charming Le Nôtre or with M de la Quintinie, the amiable kitchen gardener, or visiting the orangery to see his beloved orange trees (he was so fond of these trees that he even had them in his rooms, in silver tubs). The King wrote a little guide to the gardens, so that sightseers would know the correct sequence in which to visit them. Louis spent nearly as much time in his gardens as he did hunting.

  His Versailles was a return to the Dijon of the medieval Dukes of Burgundy, to the Fontainebleau of François I. Far from being a Spanish importation, its ceremony was essentially French, with rules laid down by Henri III in 1585. Louis merely brought them up to date. There had to be more functionaries because the court now numbered thousands instead of hundreds. The ritual quality of life at Versailles was due not so much to the ceremonies as to Louis’s own awe-inspiring personality.

  To his subjects no King could have seemed less remote. Every day thousands of Parisians rode out in special public conveyances to see him eating or walking at his new palace. (It was rather as though Queen Elizabeth II lunched daily in public at Hampton Court.) Anyone dressed like a gentleman and wearing a sword was admitted to the gardens—swords could be hired at the gates for a small fee—while the royal apartments were frequ
ently open to the public. Louis greeted everyone politely. This gift of living gracefully in public was largely responsible for the extraordinary popularity which he enjoyed during the greater part of his reign.

  He was awakened at about eight in the morning. Having greeted the few courtiers privileged to have the grande entrée, he said the Office of the Holy Spirit. He then dressed, each garment being handed to him with ceremony after which he wiped his face and hands on a napkin soaked in spirits of wine; on alternate mornings he was shaved. (He seldom took baths but changed his clothes, including his linen, three times a day.) His breakfast consisted of white bread, and hot wine and water or sage tea. He then said more prayers and completed his dressing. The Lever was now over. After giving orders for the day, he heard Mass. There followed a meeting of the Council or audiences. The King dined at one o’clock, alone and in public at a square table. He ate a comparatively light meal with plenty of fruit and vegetables, which he washed down with the still, grey champagne of Bouzy. (The fizzy variety was not yet known at court, though Dom Perignon had just invented it.) In the afternoon Louis either slept with his current mistress or took some other exercise. Often he hunted or went shooting on foot, being an excellent shot. After breaking his arm in 1683, he took to following hounds in a fast wagonette which he drove himself, or spent more time walking in his beloved gardens. When he returned, he recommenced work in his study. Supper was often served as late as eleven-thirty pm. It was Louis’s main meal, and he ate enormously; in the old-fashioned way he never used a fork, eating with his fingers. Finally there was an entertainment—music, dancing, cards or billiards or some other gambling game. He usually went to bed at about one in the morning, with no less ceremony than at his rising.

  Versailles was the instrument by which Louis tamed the upper nobility. He drew them to court with an unending series of entertainments and also by the lure of titles and pensions; these were of vital importance to an aristocracy which was to a large extent impoverished. Versailles was the only road to preferment and promotion; there were posts to be had in the royal household and in the Dauphin’s household, commissions in the army, bishoprics, abbeys, canonries. Once at court, noblemen grew still poorer, from gambling or from having to buy splendid clothes. If they would not come, Louis ordered the Intendant in their province to make life difficult for them. Within a few years the dangerous war-lords, who only recently had terrorized France, were transformed into foppish courtiers, grateful for gifts to relieve their debt-ridden lives. There was only one plot against his government during the entire reign.

  Louis has frequently been accused of destroying the French ruling class, but it will have been seen in the preceding chapters that he had good reason for doing so. Nor did he only make fops of his nobles: the courtiers of Versailles were moulded into an officer corps—each one could be called to the colours at a moment’s notice. In addition they frequently acted as commission agents, who for a given fee would procure an audience of the King to interest him in some commercial or scientific project, rather like modern public relations men.

  If Louis was often responsible for financially ruining his nobles, he could show great kindness in individual cases. Mme de Sévigné tells us that when Marshal de Bellefonds came to the King in 1672 to resign his post at court, Louis took him aside and asked, ‘Monsieur le Maréchal, why do you want to leave me? Has it to do with religion? Or do you simply want to retire? Is it your heavy debts? If it is the latter, I will settle them and must know more about your affairs.’ The Marshal replied, ‘Sire, it is my debts. I am ruined. I cannot let my friends, who have helped me, suffer because I’m unable to pay them.’ ‘In that case,’ said the King, ‘their debts must be made good. I’m going to give you 100,000 francs for your house at Versailles and a guarantee of 400,000 francs which will serve as a surety should you die. You can pay off what you owe with the 100,000 francs—and then you can stay in my service.’

  To read the memoirs of Saint-Simon—who hated him—is to experience something of Louis XIV’s strange fascination. ‘Never did a man use his words, his smiles, even his mere glances, with more grace,’ wrote the Duke grudgingly; ‘no man was ever more polite by instinct or more correct, or knew better how to honour age, merit or rank … his smallest gesture, his walk, his bearing, were all most fitting and becoming, being noble, grand and majestic, and yet perfectly natural.’ Louis knew not only how to overawe, but also how to charm. When an old courtier asked him for permission to leave Versailles, the King answered, ‘We have known each other for too long to say good-bye at our age, when we cannot hope to find new friends—don’t desert me!’ The compliment he paid to the aged Condé, who was having difficulty in climbing the stairs at Versailles, is legendary: ‘One who carries such a weight of laurels can only move slowly.’ These compliments were paid in a voice which was at once dignified and charming. He was elegant even in his rages; having been grossly insulted by a certain nobleman, the King threw his cane out of the window, saying, ‘I should be sorry to strike a man of quality.’ Above all, says Saint-Simon, ‘he had no equal with women’. He had an ineffable way of half-raising himself at supper for each lady who arrived at table. He never passed the humblest petticoat without raising his hat, not even chambermaids. (The honnête homme, or French gentleman, of the period could be surprisingly polite to servants—the Duc de Beauvilliers apologized to his coachman if he kept him waiting.)

  Louis’s chief fault was his ferocious amour propre. The ambassador of the Elector of Brandenburg, Ezekiel Spannheim, noted in 1690 that the King was ‘jealous to the smallest detail of his authority, excessively touchy about everything which concerns it or could harm it’. All the same, says Herr Spannheim, ‘he is easily influenced by advisers and adopts their policies.’ Nothing could be further from the truth than the claim (which he never made) ‘l’état, c’est moi’. The ‘state’ of Louis XIV was the bureaucracy which he created—his Council of a few all-powerful ministers, and the Intendants, each of whom was supreme in his province, overriding the Governor, the Parlement and the municipalities. These chosen servants often acted without their master realizing fully what they were about. As the years went by, however, Louis paid more and more attention to business, working as much as ten hours a day.

  By the 1680s Louis was middle-aged and running to fat. His face was lined and sagging; because of the removal of several teeth from his upper jaw—the doctors broke it, smashing his palate—his mouth was shrunken, with pursed lips. He had shaved off his moustache and in place of his own long hair wore a full-bottomed periwig. Sometimes his eyes looked tired, even in official portraits. In 1686 his health was cruelly tested by a terrible operation for an anal fistula; on two occasions, fully conscious, he bore being cut many times, without a sound. Also he probably weakened himself by excessive purges (usually camomile or rhubarb). Yet he kept his huge appetite for food and women, and his love of exercise. At this period he dressed plainly, in a neat brown coat, with a waistcoat of red, green or blue, and the Cordon Bleu of the Saint-Esprit. Maturity made him more imposing than ever.

  He was not only adored by his subjects, but was the most admired man in Christendom; as Voltaire says, ‘Louis was looked on as the only King in Europe.’ Every European sovereign built his own Versailles, copied its etiquette and furniture and learnt to speak French. Schönbrunn in Austria, Het Loo in Holland, the garden façade of Hampton Court, still bear witness to their admiration. Foreigners flocked in crowds to see King Louis.

  There were now new personalities at court. ‘Monseigneur’, as the Dauphin was known, was very tall, fat and yellow-haired. Dull, lazy, but unusually good-natured, he bore little resemblance to his father, who overawed him. Having been beaten and crammed by his tutors, Monseigneur detested books, although he collected pictures and furniture in his exquisite flat at Versailles and enjoyed good music. He lacked any aptitude for soldiering, but loved wolf-hunting above all else, exterminating wolves in the Ile de France. A shy man, he preferred to live quietly at Meud
on with his ugly Bavarian wife, to whom he was devoted, until she succumbed to melancholia. They had three sons—the Dukes of Burgundy, Anjou and Berry. When his wife died in 1690, he married a certain Mlle de Choin, whose greatest charm, in the Dauphin’s eyes, was her enormous bosom. If he had little influence, Monseigneur was none the less often to be seen at court, for his father was fond of him.

  Louis liked all his children, including his bastards whom he legitimized, though they did not rank as Princes of the Blood. Of these the most important was his eldest son by Athénais—Louis-Auguste, whom the King made Duc du Maine. Sickly, limping and ineffectual, he failed miserably in his ambition to be a great soldier; he turned out both cowardly and boastful. (Even so, Saint-Simon’s portrait of him is a spiteful caricature.) Louis married him to one of Condé’s granddaughters. His brother, the Comte de Toulouse, was also a dull creature, but proved reasonably successful as a naval officer. He too was found a wealthy wife, one of the Noailles.

  There was a nasty little scandal in 1682, when a homosexual clique was discovered at Versailles. It included Louis’s son by La Vallière, the fifteen-year-old Duc de Vermandois, who had been corrupted by the Chevalier de Lorraine. Vermandois was treated with such contempt by the King that he left court of his own accord and joined the army. A sickly boy, he died the following year.