Louis XIV
Page 10
There was, indeed, much to be done. Every single major group must be notified of the new order of things, and a good many individuals besides. On March 10, for instance, aside from holding court, attending Mass, and approving the ceremonies for the cardinal’s funeral, the king sent for the permanent representatives of the clergy, who were to be told to attend his lever the next day. He asked for a full account of the garrisons in all fortified cities, both under the late king and since the beginning of his reign, and he ordered a message taken to the Spanish ambassador severely criticizing Philip IV’s action in a recent Italian dispute.
All this activity meant a direct break with tradition. Prime ministers, after all, had ruled France ever since Henri IV’s death in 1610; still, most people expected the young monarch soon to tire of business and slowly let one of his ministers take over. More startling and even more unprecedented was the membership of the Council. Virtually without exception, the kings, in France, had called on their close male relatives and the main grandees for advice and support. Now, for the first time, not a single prince of the blood royal, not a single duke, not a single aristocrat, in fact, was allowed to share power with the monarch. A few years earlier, the princes and the great nobles had lost the civil war; now they found themselves excluded from all share in policy-making as well, and there was nothing they could do about it. Monsieur, the king’s brother, was far too well trained ever to disobey; the prince de Condé was still licking his wounds in Chantilly; the prince de Conti, alone, could do nothing; the duc de Longueville was dead. The queen mother herself was out, an unpalatable change she accepted after a brief protest.
The new order was announced without delay. On March 10, “the King gathered in the Queen Mother’s bedroom, where the Councils had been held, all the people who usually attended them, the princes, the dukes, and the ministers of state; there, he told them that he had decided to rule his state alone without trusting to any cares but his own (these were his very words) and sent them away very politely telling them that he would call for them when he needed good advice.”78 That the former rebels should have been excluded from the new council is understandable, as is the king’s feelings that the grandees had already more than enough power without influencing the government’s decisions, but most remarkable, the one person responsible for the preservation of the state during Louis XIV’s youth, the queen mother, found herself excluded as well.
That, in turn, entailed a drastic change in the way the king allotted his time. As long as Mazarin lived, Louis XIV had spent at most an hour of every day on his conferences with the minister; now that he was really in charge, he found that he must curtail his entertainments. As a result, “He decided to rise between eight and nine even though he went to sleep very late. When he left the Queen’s bed, he went to his own; then he said his prayers and was dressed. His business then forced him to close the door of his bedroom [to the Court] … Around ten, the King went in to the Council and stayed there until noon. Then he attended Mass; and he gave the rest of the time before his dinner [i.e., 2:00 p.m.] to the public and especially to the Queens.
“After the meal, he usually stayed a rather long time with the royal family, then he went off to work with one of his ministers. He gave audiences to those who requested them, patiently listening to those who spoke to him. He took written requests from those who presented them to him and answered them on certain days which were reserved for this; in the same way a day was set apart for the Council of Conscience* which had been set up at the beginning of the regency and which he now revived …
“As he set himself to work he began to enjoy it and the desire he had to learn the things he needed to know soon made him very knowledgeable … He became politic in the affairs of state, a theologian as regarded the Church, precise when it came to the finances. He spoke well, always made the right decision in Council; he was sensitive to private people’s interests but hated intrigues and flattery; he was harsh to the great nobles because he suspected they wanted to rule him.
“In person he was kind, polite, and of easy access to all, but with a serious and majestic mien which made him feared and respected and prevented even those closest to him from taking liberties even in private, though he was friendly and cheerful with the ladies.”79 That description, due to Mme de Motteville, is as accurate as it is thorough: From the very first, Louis XIV displayed so strong a consciousness of his unique position as to reduce most people to terrified silence. This awesome presence was, of course, partly corrected by youth and undoubted charm, but it was clear to all that prompt and willing obedience was the only possible response to a royal command. To all, that is, except the one man at court who thought himself not only far cleverer than anyone else but also indispensable because he was the only one able to make his way through the tangle of the royal finances: the Superintendent, Nicolas Fouquet.
Already on March 11, two days after the cardinal’s death, the king had notified Europe of the new order. Brienne was ordered to write all French ambassadors and ministers, who, in turn, were to tell the princes to whom they were accredited that, henceforth, the king would rule alone. And when it came to the most important message of all, Louis XIV took up the pen himself. “It is because of my confidence in your friendship that I must communicate to you the greatest sorrow ever to afflict me, the fact that it has pleased God to call to Himself … Cardinal Mazarin, thus depriving me of the advice of so worthy and faithful a minister,” he wrote the newly restored Charles II of England. “I am sure that, as you love me, … you will feel some regret for his death especially when I tell you that what he most advised me to do, all through his last and most excruciating sufferings, was to be united to you with the closest friendship possible …”80 As it was, there was not much reason to worry: Monsieur and the princess Henrietta were to be married within three weeks, but this kind of thoroughness, of prudence, was typical of the king’s methods.
That was startling enough on the part of a young man who, just a few weeks earlier, had apparently cared for nothing but his amusements, but at least a major foreign policy issue was involved. What the ministers noticed with barely repressed incredulity was that Louis XIV made it a point to follow up even the smallest details of government: On March 21, for instance, he gave orders that a search be made of all titles of nobility. This act was typical of the new regime: Not only did the king want order - and, therefore, proof that all who claimed to be noble actually were - but also nonnobles were subject to specific taxes; if vast numbers of commoners claimed they were noble, the tax yield would shrink.
This order, and another on April 4, that a tax on drinks levied in Normandy was to be abolished, actually revealed another facet of the king’s disposition. Although at first glance Louis was acting only to relieve the overtaxed lower classes in the province, a traditional way of showing royal concern for the welfare of the subject, it was most unusual for the monarch to focus on an imposition so minor that it yielded a mere 150,000 livres a year. What this abolishment meant, of course, was that the king was aware of the smallest details of government, and that, in turn, boded ill for any official who counted on his lack of knowledge or application and planned to go on doing business as usual.
None of the ministers made that mistake - none, that is, except one: the surintendant. Naturally, he had his reasons: The first, undoubtedly, was his confident belief that the royal finances were so complicated, so opaque to nonprofessional scrutiny, that the king would never find out what he was up to, and he had a point. The irrational accretion of outdated practices, which had long made it virtually impossible for the king to know what he could afford, was rendered even more incomprehensible by the debts contracted during the Fronde. Governments do not scrutinize the conditions of desperately needed loans, so there was an undefined sum in outstanding paper, some of which had been bought at 5 or 10 percent of par, but was now presented to the Treasury for payment in full, not only costing the state large and unnecessary sums but also enriching a number of t
horoughly undeserving people. Then, too, the hodgepodge of taxes, national and local, was such that the state’s income remained largely a mystery, especially since some of the consumption levies were farmed out to groups of financiers.
As it was, Fouquet also felt confident that no untrained young man - let alone a newly emancipated monarch - could long be bothered with tedious details. Finally, because all that had been true of Mazarin, Fouquet had begun to consider himself both cleverer than anyone else at Court and virtually immune from attack since he alone knew what he was talking about. So when Louis XIV announced that he intended to rule, Fouquet smugly assumed that this idea was no more than presumption and that, just as soon as the young man realized governing was hard work, a new prime minister, in fact if not in name, would be appointed; the surintendant having no doubt at all that he himself would be the happy man.
As a result, he vowed obedience while absolutely disregarding the orders which inconvenienced him. Worse, he continued to help himself from the Treasury whenever he felt the need: He could always buy some of that depreciated paper, for instance, and redeem it to himself at full value. This practice was not only obviously theft, it also went directly against the king’s orders. Calling in Fouquet, Louis XIV told him that he was aware that the surintendant’s fortune owed much to his depredations, that the past would be forgotten, but that, in future, it must all stop. Without even a moment’s apprehension, Fouquet, who was then spending vast sums building a château at Vaux, ignored the king’s warning, safe in the knowledge that no one would ever be able to disentangle the mess. Unfortunately for him, he had forgotten Colbert, Mazarin’s factotum, a man of immense intelligence and activity. As for the king, he knew just what he was doing: “It may seem strange that I decided to keep Fouquet when, already then, his thefts were known to me; but I knew he was clever and had a thorough knowledge of the workings of the government, which made me think that, if he admitted his faults and promised amendment, he might still be of great service. Still, in order to be safe, I gave him Colbert as a controller under the title of intendant [a standard midlevel office]. This was a man whom I trusted completely because I knew him to be very hardworking, intelligent, and honest.”81
Here was an obvious challenge: If he failed to control his finances, Louis XIV would never reign in fact; still, merely dismissing the surintendant was likely to have unpleasant consequences. The king thought long and deep about it and consulted with Colbert. In this decision, the first major one that faced him, he demonstrated that he knew how to wait and how to keep a secret, but not without anguish. “The sight of the great positions [Fouquet] was preparing for himself, and the insolent purchases he had made* convinced me that his ambition was boundless†; and the general sufferings of all my [overtaxed] people were a constant call for justice,” the king wrote some ten years later. “But what made him still guiltier toward me was that, far from recognizing the kindness I had shown him by retaining him in my Council, he had thought that proof he could fool me; far from becoming wiser, he merely tried to be cleverer.
“No matter what stratagems he practiced, however, I soon noticed his bad faith. For he was unable to stop his excessive outlays, fortifying his own fortresses, building palaces, forming cabals, and putting under his friends’ names important offices which he bought at my own expense in the hope of making himself the supreme arbiter of the state.
“Although this behavior was unquestionably criminal, I first meant only to dismiss him; but I considered that his ambition would not allow him to withstand this reverse without attempting something new; I therefore thought it safer to have him arrested.
“I delayed the execution of my plan, however, and that gave me great pain for I could see that, at this time, he was using new and subtler means to rob me, and what annoyed me even more was that, in order to seem more powerful, he was also asking for private audiences; I was forced to grant them so that he would not suspect my plans, and I suffered him to make useless speeches to me while I knew the depth of his treachery.
“You* can well imagine that at the age I was then, my reason had to make a great effort to overcome my resentment … But I saw, first that the dismissal of the Surintendant had necessary connections with the renewal of the tax contracts†; and also I knew that the summer, as it was then, was the time of year when these changes can least easily be made; besides which I wanted most of all to have 4 million livres at hand to meet any urgent needs. Thus I decided to await the fall.”82
As for the other ministers, however, they soon caught on. On April 1, for instance, two letters went out to the provinces. One was written by Brienne, the other by Le Tellier. Both express the same sense of wonder, “The King,” Brienne noted, “who since the death of M. le Cardinal has taken over the government, works at it with the most astonishing thoroughness. You would think, when you see him listening, deliberating, and deciding, that he had never done anything else, and the fact is that his subjects, even the cleverest and most critical, and the ambassadors equally admire his qualities of mind. His seriousness, his modesty, and his courtesy bring him a thousand blessings from all; he is straight and sparse in his speeches, deliberate and firm in his decisions and brings to all business a spirit of fairness and justice.”83 And, on his side, Le Tellier told the intendant* of Languedoc: “The King takes care of his business and works at it without intermission for three hours every morning and two more hours after dinner … It is impossible for those who have not seen it for themselves to believe that the King can have so great a disposition for and so deep an understanding of business … There is no doubt that he will be the greatest king we have had since the beginning of the monarchy.”84
There must, of course, be an element of flattery in this appraisal; the king, after all, had only been in charge for some three weeks, but the ministers rightly perceived that the new developments were likely to be permanent. And every day, Louis XIV extended the limits of his personal control while taking on that imperious tone which was to remain unaltered for the rest of his life. On March 18, for instance, he ordered Le Tellier to tell the widowed duchesse d’Orléans that her daughter (who was most reluctant) could either marry the grand duke of Tuscany’s heir, as planned, or become a nun. That the young woman, who was in love with someone else, had good reason to resist marriage with a most unpleasant groom was beside the point: It was her duty to France to do as she was told, and her personal feelings were therefore unimportant; a harsh maxim, but one the king himself knew well.
At the same time, Louis XIV asserted his personal control of foreign policy. Early on, he wrote the comte d’Estrades, his Ambassador in London: “I have decided to answer myself all the letters which I have asked my ambassadors to write me … when they need to convey information the importance of which requires deeper secrecy” and de Lionne, increasingly in charge of Foreign Affairs, added in a covering letter: “It is a thought he had of himself … I have the honor to read him the most secret dispatches which are addressed through me after they have been deciphered … He calls me in to tell me his feelings and intentions about the answer which I draft article by article according to his instructions and in his presence, and His Majesty corrects me when I misunderstand him.”85 One by one, the working methods of the rest of the reign were thus established.
Still, it was one thing to impress the ministers and quite another to rule effectively. Ever since Richelieu’s death in 1642, the French had grown accustomed to a weak central government, first under the regency, then during the Fronde, and finally under Mazarin, who believed in conciliation and suppleness. The Parlement de Paris, it is true, had been curbed, but in 1661, it was still possible to see that as a purely temporary position. As for the royal family, although it had learned that armed rebellion did not pay, it still considered itself above the law. One moment’s hesitation on the king’s part could therefore have disastrous consequences, and he knew it, so here, too, he struck fast and hard.
First, he tackled the Parlement of Aix. Per
ier, one of its conseillers, had led the resistance to the royal government, so he was ordered to come immediately to Paris, there no doubt to be browbeaten into submission. Immediately, in a move highly reminiscent of the Fronde, the Parlement’s several chambers met, sent remonstrances to the king, and ordered that Perier stay in place. The royal answer was prompt and striking.
First, the Parlement’s decision was annulled by the conseil d’en haut, a section of the Council which sat as the court of last resort. This action was undoubtedly legal, but it was also one of the royal prerogatives the queen regent had been forced to abandon during the Fronde. It was thus highly significant that, within a month of his taking over, Louis XIV should have chosen to use it. Nor was this deed all: A letter was sent to M. de Raguse, the president of the Aix Parlement, to express his majesty’s displeasure at his having thus assembled the several chambers, and to order him to Paris forthwith; should he delay he was to be arrested and imprisoned in the fortress of Montélimar - the very fate then overtaking Perier.