The Bourbon Kings of France

by Seward, Desmond

  As early as 1680 Colbert had warned the King of terrible poverty in the provinces. War was exhausting the country, and when the Controller-General died a broken man in 1683, the budget was in deficit to the tune of sixteen million livres (over £ 1,500,000 in contemporary English money). By 1689 Louis was in even worse difficulties and had to sell the silver furniture at Versailles. By the end of the Nine Years War the deficit was 138 million livres. Yet direct taxation and internal customs had already been increased, while a new tax, the capitation (a graduated poll tax) had been introduced in 1695; it was the first French taxation to be based on personal wealth. Titles and offices were being sold at an unheard-of extent; 500 bourgeois bought titles in 1696 alone (the price was 2,000 crowns). Apart from further loans from abroad at crippling interest, more cash could only be found by issuing paper money and then devaluing it, by a carefully contrived state bankruptcy, by forced loans and by lotteries. The need for money to pay for the war had coincided with a depression; corn prices were low, wine producers were cut off from their foreign markets and the shortage of raw materials from abroad caused unemployment. In 1694 Fénelon, addressing the King, wrote, ‘Your people are dying of hunger … France is nothing but a vast hospital.’

  La Bruyère’s famous description of French peasants at this time still appalls. ‘Sullen beasts, male and female, who, black with dirt and white with hunger, live on black bread, grapes and water in lairs.’ But modern research shows that their misery was due to a phenomenal succession of bad harvests rather than to conscription or to money squandered on the King’s wars. The savagely inequitable tax system harried them in bad years as in good, so that even prosperous roturiers dressed in rags to conceal any appearance of wealth.

  Louis no longer possessed ministers of the same calibre as Colbert and Louvois. Instead he had men like Chamillart (a protégé of Mme de Maintenon), who was excellent at billiards, but no good as an administrator, and who allowed himself to be bribed by contractors and even sold military decorations. Saint-Simon believed that Chamillart only kept his post because the King felt sorry for him and enjoyed correcting his mistakes.

  However, Louis was still his own First Minister. Contrary to what has been alleged, he showed both realism and flexibility during the latter part of his reign. Recent research has considerably altered the old picture of his last years as a period of stagnation and decline. At home Louis was so active in encouraging French commerce that the period after 1697 has even been described as a second era of economic reform comparable with that under Colbert. In fact he was far more imaginative than Colbert had ever been. Monopolies were attacked, with other obstacles to trade; there was an attempt to simplify internal customs barriers; a scheme for a uniform system of weights and measures. The King tried to raise the social status of French merchants, encouraging noblemen to take part not only in overseas but also—and vainly—in domestic trade. No one, not even nobles, was exempt from the capitation; later the nobility also had to pay another tax, the dixième. Not until 1789 would there be such an onslaught on privilege. Louis’s innovations were blocked by vested interests at almost every level. None the less, he deserves full credit for his imagination. He saw the Canadians as more than mere producers of fur—there was a glut of beaver pelts—and encouraged new settlements, notably Louisiana in 1699; he had a vision of a New France which would stretch up the valley of the St Lawrence and down the Mississippi, from Hudson Bay to the Gulf of Mexico; he even created American titles of nobility. Further afield, he set up a new company to trade with China, in 1698, very much in Colbert’s manner.

  Louis was equally realistic in his foreign policy. He knew that war was inevitable over the Spanish Succession. France had to fight. It was a unique opportunity of ending the Habsburg encirclement. In addition, as he pointed out after the conflict had begun, ‘The present war is a struggle for the commerce of the Spanish Indies and the wealth which they produce.’ Crippled and half insane, so afflicted that his subjects called him ‘The Bewitched’, the childless Charles II of Spain was near death for several years. Who would inherit his vast domains—his Austrian cousins or the Bourbons? In 1700, after earlier negotiations, France unwillingly agreed to a treaty which would give Spain and Milan to the Archduke Charles (the Emperor’s younger son) and Naples, Sicily, Tuscany and Guipuzcoa to the Dauphin. Then Louis was unexpectedly helped by Charles II who, angry that his Empire’s fate had been decided without consulting him, suddenly made a will leaving everything to the Dauphin’s second son, Philippe, Duc d’Anjou. Four weeks later Charles died. Louis hesitated before accepting the inheritance for his grandson. He told some great ladies, ‘Whichever side I take I am well aware that I shall be blamed for it.’ On 6 November he presented the Duc d’Anjou to the court, saying, ‘Messieurs, the King of Spain!’ As Saint-Simon comments, ‘The eighteenth century opened for the House of France with a blaze of glory.’

  When poor old James II died at Saint-Germain in September 1701, Louis recognized the Prince of Wales as King James III of England, Scotland and Ireland. It seemed an act of remarkable generosity, in the face of apocalyptic warnings from his ministers; in fact Louis knew that William III had already decided on war—the Grand Alliance against France by the Empire, the Dutch and the English had been signed at The Hague a week previously. France’s one ally was Bavaria. Spain was merely a corpse to be fought over. The enemy had two commanders of genius, Prince Eugène of Savoy and John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough. The first had a fanatical hatred of Louis (who had once refused him a commission in the French army). Churchill, although a greedy and ambitious time-server, was in war a master of organization and surprise. To oppose them the King had Catinat, Boufflers, Tallard, Vendôme and Villars. The last two were quite as colourful, if not so gifted, as Eugène and Churchill. The Duc de Vendôme was the grandson of Henri IV, whom he much resembled, being wildly brave, a great trencherman and adored by his men. Unfortunately he never rose before four in the afternoon—but once out of bed, he could be an extremely formidable commander. Despite his notorious homosexuality, his slovenliness, his drinking and his syphilis—which cost him his nose—he was a favourite with the King. (Once when Vendôme was leaving court for a cure, the King asked him to return ‘in a state in which one might kiss him with safety’. When the Duke came back without his nose, Louis told the court to pretend not to notice.) The Duc de Villars was described by Saint-Simon as ‘the most fortunate man in the world’; a plump, amiable, unpolished Gascon, he owed his career to Louis, who had noticed his bravery during one of the Dutch campaigns. Although undoubtedly the best general that Louis now possessed, Villars had his own faults—boastful optimism and an odd manner, half blunt, half theatrical.

  An unattractive side of Louis was his treatment of any promising Prince of the Blood. He refused military employment to Condé’s young nephew, the Prince de Conti, who was a gifted soldier, and ruined his career.

  Monsieur’s brilliant son, the Duc de Chartres, was put off with equal shabbiness. ‘Treading the galleries of Versailles,’ as Saint-Simon described it, was not good for a young man with such a father and whose tutor had been the unsavoury Abbé Dubois. Philippe de Chartres had many gifts—he painted, sang, composed music (his opera Panthée was performed before the King) and was sufficiently interested in science and mechanics to have his own laboratory. He was above the other Princes of the Blood by his rank as a ‘Grandson of France’—being a grandson of Louis XIII. He had married a daughter of Mme de Montespan, Mlle de Blois, Monsieur’s agreement to such a mésalliance having been bought by the bestowal of the Cordon Bleu of the Saint-Esprit on his beloved Chevalier de Lorraine. (Saint-Simon says that M de Chartres’s mother, Madame, looked ‘like Ceres after the rape of her daughter Proserpine’, so horrified was she by the disgrace.) M de Chartres took solace in the bottle and in women; he was reputed to have naked harlots served up on silver dishes at his dinner parties. A notorious free thinker, he held orgies on Good Friday, read Rabelais bound like a missal during Mass,
and tried to raise the Devil. Though these vices were not yet in full bloom in 1700, his life was already scandalous enough.

  Since childhood, Monsieur had been accustomed to defer to the King. However, Louis’s steady refusal to give a command to his son angered him beyond endurance. In June 1701 when Louis complained of M de Chartres’s debauched life, Monsieur, flushed, his eyes red with rage, reminded the King of his own mistresses—soon both brothers were shouting at each other at the top of their voices. Monsieur, gluttonous, purple-faced and short of breath, had already been warned of apoplexy by a plain-spoken confessor. That night he had a fit during dinner, and he died the following day. Louis wept a good deal. Despite his absurdity, everyone had liked Monsieur; Saint-Simon admits, ‘It was he who set all pleasure a-going and when he left us, life and merriment seemed to have departed.’ A certain sense of guilt was evident in the King’s sudden generosity to M de Chartres, who was given all his father’s pensions and honours together with the Duchy of Orleans.

  The war opened at the end of 1701, on three fronts. At first things did not go badly for the French. For two years Vendôme waged a surprisingly successful campaign against Eugène and the Imperial armies. In Germany, Villars won a glorious victory in the Black Forest near Friedlingen, and was rewarded with a Marshal’s baton. Next year he won more victories, while Tallard defeated the Imperialists near Spiers. Unfortunately the Bavarians refused to join in an advance on Vienna and Villars resigned in disgust. France had lost her one chance of winning the war.

  At home the Huguenot mountaineers of the Cévennes rose in revolt. They were known as Camisards, from the white shirts they wore over their clothes to distinguish each other in the dark. The government used the most savage measures, perpetrating a kind of French Massacre of Glencoe when they burnt out mountain villages in mid-winter. Villars brought the rising to an end in 1704 by the imaginative expedient of offering its leader, Jean Cavalier, a colonelcy and persuading him to form his followers into a regiment which would fight for France. Cavalier also insisted on being taken to Versailles to see the King, but the young peasant was so humiliated when Louis passed him without saying a word that he took service with the English. It is said that nearly 100,000 men, women and children died during this rising, either Camisards or victims of their reprisals.

  Abroad, a series of disasters began in 1704. At Blenheim, Marlborough killed 12,000 Frenchmen and captured even more, including the shortsighted Marshal Tallard, together with their entire artillery. The French were driven out of Germany, Bavaria was invaded and the Elector fled. In Spain, the English took Gibraltar while the Archduke Charles captured Barcelona—soon poor Philip V thought of taking refuge in America. In 1706 the elegant Villeroy, who was the son of Louis’s old tutor, was routed by Marlborough at Ramillies (near Waterloo); when he returned to Versailles, the King greeted him with the words, ‘M le Maréchal, at our age one can no longer expect to be lucky.’ The defeat cost France the Low Countries. Vendôme was recalled to hold off Marlborough, whereupon Prince Eugène drove the French out of Italy, killing the French commander in the process; next year Eugène invaded Provence, besieging Toulon, though he was driven out with heavy casualties. In 1708 even Vendôme was defeated, at Oudenarde by Marlborough, and the French army was almost destroyed in the ensuing retreat. Luckily the allies baulked at a full-scale invasion, though a small Dutch force actually penetrated as far as Versailles and captured one of the King’s equerries.

  It was the nadir of Louis’s fortunes. The winter of 1708–9 was a terrible one. The cold was such that at Versailles wine froze in the glasses and ink on the pens. An iron-hard frost lasted until the end of March; animals froze to death in their barns, game birds in the trees, rabbits in their burrows; the spring wheat and barley perished, whole vineyards died and in the south the entire olive crop was destroyed. Famine set in everywhere. Even at Versailles, royal servants were seen begging at the gates and Mme de Maintenon ate oatmeal bread ostentatiously; in Burgundy bracken was used to make flour, and throughout the countryside the peasants were reduced to nettles and boiled grass. Louis did what he could, imposing a special tax to feed the hungry, from which not even he himself was exempted; he forbade the baking of white bread, abolished transport dues and tariffs; he had his gold plate melted down, eating off silver gilt instead. All this did little to abate the famine. Even the troops starved, selling their muskets to buy bread.

  France, bankrupt, starving, her industries and trade in ruins, her armies beaten and demoralized, and faced by triumphant and revengeful enemies, was now in a position very like that of Germany at the beginning of 1945. At a council meeting, the Duc de Beauvilliers drew such a miserable picture of France’s condition that the Duc de Bourgogne burst into tears, followed by the entire council. This ruinous situation is often depicted by historians as the just reward of Louis’s folly. Whatever the cause, it showed him at his greatest. He was not a Hitler who would sacrifice his country; humbling himself, he sued abjectly for peace, sending the Marquis de Torcy to obtain it on any terms. But the allies insisted that Louis must himself drive his grandson, Philip V, out of Spain. The King would accept anything but this. ‘If I have to make war,’ he said, ‘I prefer to fight my enemies rather than my children.’

  It was Louis’s finest moment. He sent a circular letter to every provincial governor, to every bishop and to every municipality, explaining why France had to fight on; he admitted that all sources of revenue were virtually exhausted, and asked for advice and for help. Recruits flocked to the colours, while the rich handed in their plate and valuables; in 1710 the French even accepted the dixième, a ten per cent tax on all incomes. The tide began to turn. Marlborough defeated Villars at Malplaquet in late 1709, but only just; the French losing 8,000 men compared to the allies’ 21,000. Next year Vendôme, ‘happiest and haughtiest of men’, utterly destroyed the Austrian army of Spain, hitherto victorious, at Villaviciosa. The allies were astonished by the French will to resist. In England the Tories gained power and removed Marlborough from his command. But the situation still seemed desperate for France.

  Meanwhile in April 1711, the first of a series of terrible personal blows struck Louis. The Dauphin, ‘drowned in fat and sloth’ though he was, had always seemed healthy enough. Suddenly he fell ill and died of smallpox, within little more than a week. The Duc de Bourgogne was now Dauphin, and impressed everyone by his sense of responsibility, attending all Council meetings and listening carefully to what ministers and generals had to say. Even Marie Adelaide became more serious. Then early in February 1712, when she was pregnant, she developed a fever; a rash appeared and she was dead within a few days. Louis wrote to Philip of Spain, ‘There will never be a moment in my life when I shall not regret her.’ Less than a week after his wife’s death, the Duc de Bourgogne developed the mysterious rash. ‘He was extraordinarily fond of his wife, and sorrow for her death gave him his fever.’ He died three days later, perhaps the worst blow of all to Louis.

  His mind formed by Fénelon, Bourgogne, had he lived, might have saved the Ancien Régime. He recognized and lamented the gulf between monarch and subject. He intended to introduce changes in taxation—which would have ended the privileged position of the nobility—and generally to broaden the entire basis of government. Few men have been mourned so deeply.

  Early in March the Bourgognes’ two surviving children sickened, and the elder, the five-year-old Duc de Bretagne, soon died. The younger, the Duc d’Anjou, was saved by his governess, the Duchesse de Ventadour, who said that he was too small to be bled, and had him breast-fed in her own room until the rash went. So mysterious were these deaths—probably a rare form of measles—that it was rumoured that the Duc de Bourgogne and his family had been poisoned by the Duc d’Orléans whose interest in chemistry was well known; the Duke was hissed in the streets. The Duc du Maine seems to have been largely responsible for spreading the slander. But the King had too much sense to believe such rumours. He showed incredible fortitude; Saint-Simon said th
at he truly merited the title of ‘the Great’ by his behaviour.

  It was at this time that France was in most danger. Prince Eugène prepared to invade France from Flanders with 130,000 men. In April Louis entrusted Villars with his last army. In tears, his voice shaking, he told Villars, ‘You see the condition I am in, M le Maréchal. Few people have known, as I have, what it is to lose a grandson, a grand-daughter and their son, all of great promise and deeply loved, within a few weeks. God is punishing me and I deserve it: I shall suffer less in the world to come.’ The King went on to discuss what he should do if Villars failed. ‘Most of my courtiers want me to go to Blois without waiting for the enemy to advance on Paris, as they may well do if our army is defeated.’ But Louis thought that even if the worst happened, sufficient French troops would hold out on the north bank of the Somme. ‘I shall go to Péronne or Saint-Quentin, collect all the troops I can muster and make a last stand with you, in which we will either die together or save the kingdom.’