Louis XIV

by Olivier Bernier

  That the king should have refused was due not just to religious scruples, although the notion of that kept man, the chevalier de Lorraine, owning two abbeys, was, indeed, a little shocking. Just as important, it was part of Louis XIV’s policy toward his brother to keep him aware that his position depended entirely on the royal goodwill; thus, this occasion was ideal for refusing a request. That the usually docile Monsieur should have left the Court, however, was wholly unexpected, and no doubt awakened memories of the late Gaston d’Orléans, who, under similar circumstances, would have started a civil war.

  That catastrophe was unthinkable in 1670, a true measure of Louis XIV’s achievement. And Monsieur, although capable of rages and sulks, was, at bottom, absolutely loyal, but the king was not inclined to take chances. As it was, he had the perfect hostage and immediately took advantage of that fact. “The King, who was told this, and thought that it was M. le chevalier de Lorraine who had encouraged Monsieur, had him arrested. The guards were doubled around Monsieur’s apartment, where the chevalier de Lorraine then was. M. Le Tellier went to inform Monsieur of the King’s decision and M. le chevalier de Lorraine, after being embraced by Monsieur and treated by him as the dearest of friends, went out and … was arrested by the Captain of the Guard, and sent … to Montpellier. Monsieur left St. Germain at midnight with Madame, stopped for a day in Paris … and went on to Villers-Cotterêts.*”140 All this disturbance happened on January 30.

  Three days later, the distraught Monsieur, anxious to find a way out of the crisis, appealed to Colbert: The choice was obvious, and his letter gives a clear picture of the minister’s situation and the relationship between the royal brothers.

  “Monsieur Colbert,” the duc d’Orléans wrote, “since for some time now I have thought you one of my friends, and since you are the only one among those who have the honor of being close to the King who also showed concern for me in my present dreadful circumstances, I think you will not be sorry that I ask you to tell the King: that I have come here feeling the greatest pain at having either to go away from him or to be covered with shame if I remained at his Court. That I beg him to think of what the world would say if I were observed cheerful and at peace in the pleasures of St. Germain during Carnival while an innocent prince [the chevalier de Lorraine], my best friend on this earth, and one truly attached to me, languishes for the love of me in a wretched prison; further, the manner in which he was seized was an insult to me, uncertain as I was whether it was not myself who was to be arrested, as my room was, for quite some time, surrounded by guards, both at the doors and at the windows, and my servants terrified because they did not know whether this was being done against my own person.” It is worth noting here the very fact that His Rroyal Highness the duc d’Orléans, a Son of France, is addressing Colbert, the bourgeois minister as a friend, something which, even ten years earlier, would have been unthinkable, and that he thought it possible the king would, for no reason, order his arrest. Then, too, the tone of the letter, in its breathless garrulity, is typical of its sender: The voice we are hearing is really Monsieur’s.

  “Further,” the letter continues, “the King sent to ask my wife what she wanted to do; this shows he was inclined to allow her to fail in her duty to me by deserting me. In spite of all this, I would not have left the King if I had thought myself useful to the good of his service; but the way in which he has always treated me has convinced me of the reverse. I know that my mood is such that I could only be an unpleasant sight to him, and that he might even be distressed if he had constantly before him a brother he has reduced to the deepest despair. This would be painful for him and shameful for me, and my only purpose is to hide my sorrow until he allows me to be cheerful again. If I dared, I would ask the King to put himself in my place, … to give me the best possible advice so that the world can see he has given it to a brother who, throughout his life, has only tried to please him, as my behavior has always shown. I would rather open my heart to you because … you have no interest other than the King’s … If M. le chevalier de Lorraine were guilty, I would be the first to send him away, but he never thought of anything but deserving [the King’s] good graces and esteem; I can answer for this, knowing the bottom of his heart better than anyone; and I will show, to the shame of my enemies, that I love the King better than myself if only he will give me the means of reconciling my love for him and my honor, and in this I beg him to remember I am his brother.”141

  It is difficult to imagine a more perfect contrast with the behavior of earlier princes; no doubt, the prospect of the utter dullness of life at Villers-Cotterêts, made worse still by Madame’s acrimonious presence, was reason enough to wish for a reconciliation, but there can also be no doubt that Monsieur was genuinely distressed at going away from the king.

  Given all these circumstances, a solution was obviously not far away, especially since, here as always, Louis XIV did not hesitate to use other people’s feelings. As a result, a compromise was soon worked out: Monsieur would come back to Court unconditionally, so that a dangerous precedent might be avoided, but then the king would listen to his plea, and, indeed, by March 3, it was all done: Monsieur and Madame arrived at St. Germain and in short order, the chevalier de Lorraine was freed. It was a while, however, before he was allowed at Court, and when Louis XIV finally gave him permission to return, Monsieur was pathetically grateful.

  There could have been no better illustration of the new state of things: Not only was no one powerful enough to challenge the king, it never even occurred to them that they might attempt it. Still, that wholly satisfactory situation might not last: As the writing of his memoirs so clearly shows, Louis XIV knew he could die at any moment, leaving, yet again, a minor on the throne. Then, again, even if he lived to be fifty or sixty, the limit of extreme old age for most everyone in the seventeenth century, his successor might well lack his qualities. What was needed, therefore, was an institution strong enough to carry a weak monarch, and since the potential danger came from the aristocracy, the remedy was a court so expensive and so absorbing as to neutralize that once dangerous class. That this grandeur went together with a further exaltation of the monarch’s status cannot have displeased the king, and he now set about creating the proper framework for the new monarchy.

  * “Foreign princesses” were the wives, either of members of minor ruling families, like the House of Lorraine, or of former rulers of minuscule states, like the duc de Bouillon, whose erstwhile possessions were now part of France.

  * I.e., the dauphin. This promise was not carried out.

  * Once the direct representative of the central government, the governor, invariably a prince or a duke, was increasingly superseded by the intendants.

  † Son or Daughter of France was the title given the king’s children.

  * As opposed to a stool, that is. The queen sat in an armchair. A regular chair, even without arms, would have seemed too similar.

  * Although there was a bimonthly paper, it was essentially an account of the world’s main events and the Court’s festivities; it never meddled in politics.

  * In Cinna ou la clémence d’Auguste.

  * In 1665, Vauban was thirty-two.

  * The future Mlle de Blois (1666-1739).

  * Later titled comte de Vermandois (1667-83).

  † The duc de Chaulnes was a member of the House of d’Albert de Luynes and the son of Louis XIII’s early favorite. The Luyneses not only cumulated three dukedoms, they were also immensely rich.

  * There were three kinds of dukes in France. The first, the ducs et pairs had the right to sit in at the Parlement and were the grandest; the next, the ducs héréditaires or vérifiés could transmit their titles to their sons, but were not peers, and thus could not sit in the Parlement; the third, the ducs à brevet held the title for their life only. Precedence at Court reflected this division.

  * In fact, it was probably written by the Président Rose, the king’s secretary, who could imitate the royal script perfectly.


  * Their income, that is; they would then have been run by a,n underpaid ecclesiastic. This practice was common, but Louis XIV, in other instances as well, was beginning to amend it.

  * One of his castles, situated some twenty miles north of Paris.

  “Those of the arts which do not depend entirely on the mind, such as music, painting, sculpture, and architecture, had progressed little in France before that period we call the century of Louis XIV,”142 Voltaire wrote in 1751. That bold statement neatly - and wrongly - disposes of architects like du Cerceau and Salomon de Brosse, or the painters of the second School of Fontainebleau, although Voltaire goes on to praise Poussin, whom he credits for the beginnings of painting in France. What Voltaire, that incarnation of the Enlightenment, really means, though, is that the sort of integrated decor for which France became so famous, and so envied, was begun under the Sun King.

  That Louis XIV, always with the advice of Colbert, only picked up on a preexisting trend is certain: Already during the Fronde, a few rich Parlement men were feeling their way to a new kind of splendid environment that owed more to art than to the sole use of precious materials; then, at Vaux, it all came together, so effectively that the king and Colbert simply took over Fouquet’s team: Within weeks of the surintendant’s fall, Le Brun, Le Vau, and Le Nôtre were at work on the royal houses, but even then their achievements, with the single exception of the Palace of the Tuileries, remained fragmentary. A façade here, a few rooms there, a piece of garden elsewhere, did not yet amount to a revolution in taste: As so often, it took politics to give the arts the wide field they needed.

  The king himself fully realized that being a patron was part of his image; indeed, when it came to music, he had no trouble at all. Gifted himself and highly appreciative of composers and performers alike, Louis XIV promptly enlarged the royal orchestra and had it play not just at concerts but also during all his meals. Opera, under the overall direction of Lulli, was given new impetus, so that performances multiplied; by 1680, it elicited as much interest, and occasionally controversy, as the theater, and Louis himself was the most enlightened and appreciative of critics.

  Painting, however, clearly held less appeal for him; indeed, there is good reason to think that he reacted more strongly to beautiful objects - which he collected avidly - than to great art. Not that he was a Philistine, but while he could not live without music, and was therefore constantly commissioning new pieces, it seems very probable that he only bought paintings so as to have a collection worthy of a great king. Indeed, there is something almost impersonal in the orders sent to a variety of agents in Italy throughout the seventies. Buy a lot of the best, they were told, an exhortation not unlike those uttered by certain turn-of-the-century American millionaires. Clearly, rather than satisfying the king’s yearning for the work of a particular master, these purchases were meant simply to bolster his reputation. Even when he bought every Poussin that came on the market, as he did throughout the reign, it was less an expression of personal taste than an effort at gathering the work of the man who was widely acknowledged as the only painter of genius France had ever bred.

  In the end, however, whether or not the king was deeply moved by art did not matter: He knew very well that encouraging the best painters and sculptors of his time was a good way to make himself illustrious, and the connection between art and architecture, which he had discovered at Vaux, served as just the right kind of spur. Even better, one member of the Vaux triad, Le Brun, was the very man to underline that connection; already in 1663, therefore, the painter was granted a patent of nobility - his arms included a golden sun and a fleur-de-lis - and within a year, he had become Chancellor of the Académie de Peinture and Director of the Manufacture des Gobelins. Both posts were eminently suitable for this gifted man who, besides being a talented painter, was, first and foremost, a designer and organizer of genius.

  Here, the Gobelins played a particularly important role. Set up by Colbert, who had regrouped a number of small, independent tapestry makers, the Manufacture Royale soon branched out into all aspects of the decorative arts, producing furniture, mostly made of solid silver, and various objects - vases, ewers, boxes, etc. - as well as the tapestries for which it has remained famous. Now that Le Brun was, in effect, its chief designer, the Gobelins could achieve just the sort of integrated look which was that artist’s great contribution.

  Still, there can be no good decor without good architecture, and, here, Louis XIV was lucky: During the first forty years of his personal rule, from 1661 to 1700, he was able to work with two architects of genius, Le Vau and Mansart. For a king with a passion for building, this situation was ideal, especially since Mansart was able to function equally well whether the project was a huge palace or a tiny pavilion. Still, it would be a mistake to assimilate all the successive construction campaigns undertaken from the very beginning of the personal reign. Before 1668, piecemeal projects dominate: The Tuileries were completed, a new façade was added to the Louvre, some small expansions took place at Versailles and Fontainebleau; after 1668, and for almost twenty years, one massive concern, the creation of the most splendid palace in Europe, takes over; finally, starting in the eighties, the king’s pleasure pavilions - Trianon, Marly - introduce a new style altogether, even as work continued at Versailles, where the chapel, begun in 1701, was only completed in 1710.

  Versailles itself, the huge palace with its sumptuous decor and majestic gardens, began to fascinate from the first day it was open. It still does today, but while it has been much admired, it has also been described as an act of monstrous self-indulgence, the expression of a grotesquely inflated ego. Its cost, countless critics have charged, bankrupted the nation; its very splendor ruined the monarchy because its gilded salons created so artificial an environment that Louis XIV lost touch with his people.

  None of these accusations, in fact, will stand up to examination. Far from being the caprice of a luxury-mad monarch, Versailles probably saved France not just treasure but blood as well, for it was in itself a major political venture, and one which proved to be wholly successful. Between 1540 and 1652, France had been ravaged by six civil wars; any pretext - religion, the minority of the king, or plain, unvarnished greed - had sufficed; even when the monarch won out at the end - not an unvariable occurrence - the cost was enormous. After Versailles, the civil wars were over.

  Nor was it so very expensive. Luckily, all the records have survived, so that we know, in great detail, just what was spent on even a doorknob or a lock, and adding it all up over the years, the grand total comes to exactly 25,725,836 livres (about $168 million) - a large sum to be sure, but one which France could well afford since it was spent over some thirty years. Clearly, however, comparative figures are in order. We do not know, obviously, what the French gross national product was in the seventeenth century; not only was the very notion some 250 years in the future, but it would also be well nigh impossible to establish for a preindustrial society where many transactions were still in kind. The yearly budget, though, can provide us with a standard, remembering always that taxes took in a far smaller proportion of the national wealth than is the case today.

  In the 1670s, a time when war had not yet radically inflated government expenditure, the yearly budget hovered between 85 million and 90 million livres, and during the two great construction campaigns, those of 1670-72, and 1677-1682, expenses ran as follows: 1670: 1,632,800 livres; 1671: 2,481,408 livres; 1672: 2,022,499 livres, with 1673 coming in at a mere 491,171 livres. This sum represents at most, in 1671, a little less than 3 percent of that year’s income of over 87 million livres. By 1680, receipts were up to 91 million livres, and the amount spent on Versailles, 5,640,804 livres, was higher than any other year, but even then, it came to only 5 percent of income, and there were many years when the outlay was minimal. Thus, whether it is analyzed year by year or taken as a whole - 25 million against well over 2,600 million budgeted - it is clear that Versailles was very far, indeed, from bankrupting the
state.

  That was due in great part to Colbert’s ceaseless endeavors. “You do marvels about the money and every day adds to the satisfactions you give me. I am pleased to tell you this,”143 the king wrote Colbert in 1678, and in truth, the minister saw to it that Versailles was built as inexpensively as if it had belonged to the most penny-pinching of private owners. Competing bids were almost invariably solicited; the army, instead of being left idle in peacetime, was used for some of the rough labor; estimates were strictly adhered to; fluctuations in prices were watched with care. As a result, what struck most observers as unrestrained lavishness was, in fact, the result of what might almost be called scrimping - with the consequence that, often, chimneys drew poorly, windows did not shut tight, and discomfort was the rule in winter.

  Colbert, of course, oversaw much of the work, but even he could not at the same time be at Versailles and in Paris, where he was running an assortment of ministries. So in the late seventies, he appointed one of his sons, the marquis d’Ormoy, as his representative on the site. The resulting correspondence is vivid and instructive: Its subjects run from delays (Versailles, too, was brought in late) to cost overruns to precise descriptions of a section of decor, and always the king looked, judged, and ordered changes. On October 20, 1679, for instance, Ormoy wrote his father: “I have just had the honor of following the King everywhere. He went into the grands and petits appartements* and into the Hall of the Ambassadors where His Majesty stopped for refreshments and ordered me to have the said hall gilded, along with the following small room, and to have gold initials put on the ceiling. Put wooden panels above the doors. Put marble mantelpieces above the fireplaces; that does not have to be done quickly. On the staircase,† fix the shell of the fountain because it is leaking on one side … Fix the broken windowpanes in the salon … have a door opened between the antichamber of the Queen’s grand appartement and her guardroom. Hurry the construction of the Queen’s small staircase …