Louis XIV

by Olivier Bernier

  That evening, back at Saint Cloud, and in the middle of supper, Monsieur was felled by a stroke. The king, upon being warned, came to see his brother, but Monsieur had already sunk into a coma. “Around eight in the morning, since there was no hope, Mme de Maintenon and Mme la duchesse de Bourgogne urged him to stay no longer … As he was about to leave, and was talking in a friendly way to M. de Chartres, both being awash in tears, that young prince made use of the moment. ‘Ah, Sire, what will become of me?’ he said, holding the King by the legs,* ‘I am losing Monsieur and I know you do not like me.’ The King, who was surprised and touched, embraced him and said many tender things to him …

  “The next day M. le duc de Chartres came to see the King, who was still in bed and the King spoke to him in a very friendly manner. He told him that he must henceforth consider him his father, that he would look after his greatness and his interests, that he had forgotten all the little reasons he had had to be annoyed with him, that he hoped that, on his side, he would also forget them, and that he trusted that the friendship he was showing him would attach him anew, and cause him to give his heart as he [the King] was giving his …

  “After so sad a spectacle, so many tears, so much tenderness, no one doubted that the three days remaining in this stay at Marly would be extremely sad, when, that very day after Monsieur’s death, ladies-in-waiting … heard … Mme la duchesse de Bourgogne singing opera prologues. A little later, the King, seeing [her] looking sad, asked Mme de Maintenon with surprise why she was so melancholy …

  “After dinner that night, Monseigneur the duc de Bourgogne asked the duc de Montfort whether he wanted to play cards. ‘Cards!’ said Montfort in extreme surprise, ‘You cannot be serious! Monsieur is still warm.’

  “‘Forgive me,’ the prince answered. ‘I am perfectly serious. The King, who does not want people to be bored at Marly, ordered me to have everyone play and, for fear no one would dare to start, to begin it myself.’“268 As for the new duc d’Orléans - Chartres succeeded to his father’s title - while he was given all the pensions paid to his late father, he remained without a command.

  With Monsieur’s death, the last of the generation who had known the king as a young man was gone. Louis XIV was now surrounded by his children, his grandchildren, and courtiers younger than himself. The ministers, too, belonged to the new age, and even if Mme de Maintenon was actually three years older than the king, she, too, was part of the new environment. No one, now, remembered the difficult days of the Fronde, except, of course, the monarch himself. Majestic and imperious, more than ever Louis XIV governed by himself, and in his sixty-fourth year, he prepared, once more, to face a European coalition.

  * Saint-Cyr, founded and run by Mme de Maintenon, was a school for girls from poor but noble families.It gave her a chance to indulge her passion for education while providing her with a retreat from the Court during her prosperity and an asylum should anything go wrong.

  * Instead of making debts.

  * By keeping the crowns of France and Spain separate.

  * He became seventeen on December 3.

  † A governing Council set up to oversee the transition period before the new king’s arrival.

  * The French Ambassador in Madrid.

  * Or perhaps not so oddly: He was descended from a great many Habsburgs.

  * The Camarera Mayor was the chief female Court official. It was her duty to be constantly at the queen’s side; she also ran her Household.

  * Chartres was on his knees before the king.

  Governing a great kingdom engaged in a difficult war, overseeing the ministers’ work, financing vast new expenditures, and, with it all, continuing to appear in public regularly and often should have been enough for any man, but without a moment’s hesitation, Louis XIV, in 1700, took on the government of Spain as well. On December 15, he wrote the duc d’Harcourt: “I think it necessary to warn you that the King of Spain’s intentions are good. He wants to do well and will if he knows how, but he lacks knowledge in many fields. He has learned little, even less than would be normal at his age. It will be easy to rule him if in the beginning you are careful to prevent any prejudice people may try to give him … He will trust you and follow your advice.”269

  In short order, the Princesse des Ursins took over, but the fact remained that Madrid was governed from Versailles. In any age, that would have been a crushing burden; at the dawn of the eighteenth century, it was made more onerous still by slow, often faulty, communications and by the advanced state of decadence of the Spanish monarchy: As if it were not enough to cope with the war, the government had to be thoroughly reorganized as well. Undaunted, the Sun King set about centralizing and rationalizing the virtually paralyzed administration left behind by the Habsburgs.

  He also followed Mme des Ursins’s maneuvers with extreme attention. The princesse was to be simply the means of transmitting orders from grandfather to grandson; instead, she quickly developed so strong a loyalty to Philip and Maria Luisa that, in certain cases, she encouraged them to have a policy of their own. Already, on July 13, 1701, Louis XIV wrote Philip V: “I am sending you Marsin who will stay with you … I trust him, you may too, and be quite sure that he will never suggest anything that will not be useful to our common interests. I cannot end without assuring Your Majesty of my love and telling you, with all the strength I have, that I wish to see Your Majesty become as great a king as you can be if that is your desire.”270

  This kind of exhortation was repeated again and again. On August 7, for instance, a long letter about the Spanish etiquette and some problems regarding Naples concluded: “How happy I will be when I see you in that high degree of gloire to which I hope your courage will raise you! I will love you more; and as my esteem for you grows, so will my tenderness.”271 At the same time, while Philip V was urged to exert himself, he was also given the most detailed guidance: Whether it was a reform of the Spanish etiquette or the way to deal with the Cortes of Catalonia, the letters kept coming from Versailles.

  Soon, however, a new problem surfaced. Mme des Ursins, who proved invaluable in many ways, was all too clearly in charge. She governed the queen absolutely, and the queen, in turn, governed the king. Indeed, any slight resistance on the part of the young man could be overcome by a simple expedient: He was so obsessed with sex that even a single night of chastity was more than he could bear. All the queen had to do, therefore, was repulse her husband; the next day - if he had held out that long - he caved in.

  Of course, everyone knew it, so on November 13, Louis XIV tackled the problem: “It is essential for your happiness and hers that [the Queen] be disabused of the notions she may have been given according to which she can govern you. Surely Your Majesty would never allow it. You would feel too strongly the dishonor such a weakness would bring you. It is not forgiven in private people. Kings, who are exposed to public observation, are even more contemptible when they are dominated by their wives … The Queen is your first subject; as such, and as your wife, she must obey you.”272 That was all very well, but what the king expected to find in his grandson was a younger - and slightly more pliable - version of himself, and in that, he was deceived. As it turned out, Philip V was not without qualities, but a strong will was not one of them.

  Annoying though this behavior was, Louis XIV was far too shrewd not to behave accordingly. When, the following year, after many tears, the queen reluctantly agreed to stay behind as her husband went off to war, Louis wrote her: “I could not doubt that your strong and tender love for the King of Spain would cause you to feel much pain at being parted from him, but I must admit I did not believe that this separation would cause me to love you still more, and to realize that your intelligence, your reason, and your spirit far exceed what I had seen of them until now. You truly love my grandson in preferring his gloire to everything else, and I must give you well-deserved praise rather than the advice for which you ask me …”273 To all his other talents, the Sun King had now added those of a psychologist.<
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  Still, he was not merely flattering: Maria Luisa quickly proved, except for those nightly sessions in the conjugal bed, to be rather more of a man than her husband. It was her indomitable courage that sustained him at the most difficult times; it was her intelligence, assisted by that of Mme des Ursins, that helped him to govern; it was her energy that brought the pair much needed popularity. Alone, Philip would probably have been a liability: Together with his wife, he proved an important asset. And when he did not, scolding letters promptly came from Versailles.

  It was all the more important for everything to go well in Madrid now that a European coalition was backing the archduke’s claim, and as, once again, he faced strong and well-organized enemies, Louis XIV relied on himself most of all. Arrayed against him were the two greatest generals of the time, John Churchill, soon to become duke of Marlborough, and Prince Eugene of Savoy, the son of the king’s erstwhile mistress the comtesse de Soissons, who now served the emperor. To these men of genius, the king could only oppose the duc de Vendôme, the illegitimate grandson of Henri IV and a talented leader, but not equal to either Marlborough or Prince Eugene; the maréchal de Villars, brave, clever, and, above all, lucky; and the duc de Berwick, James II’s illegitimate son by Arabella Churchill, Marlborough’s sister, and a highly competent leader, but without his uncle’s genius. Far worse, the other French generals lacked even the most elementary competence: Villeroy, the king’s friend, knew more about the organization of a ball than about that of an army, and Tallard, Marsin, and La Feuillade, all of whom were eventually created marshals, were courtiers rather than generals.

  Nor were the ministers any more distinguished. Chamillart, the most important of them, was way over his head; Torcy, the Foreign Minister, found himself implementing a policy he had opposed. Of course, he obeyed the king, but with a singular lack of élan. The duc de Beauvillier, straightforward and immensely virtuous, deplored the whole situation, so it was all up to the king himself, who found it rather stimulating.

  In fact, for the next twelve years, Louis XIV, besides holding Court as usual, did the work of several ministers while telling his generals what to do, all at an age when most of his contemporaries were either dead or in retirement. Nor did he find reliable support in his most intimate circle. Mme de Maintenon, who remained absolutely obedient, made no secret of her loathing for the war; the légitimés quite failed to distinguish themselves; the rest of the royal family went on squabbling as ever.

  At the very outset, however, the king made a terrible mistake: He issued letters patent to his departing grandson assuring him that his right of succession to the French throne remained unimpaired by his assumption of the crown of Spain. This move was not unusual: There was a precedent in the case of Henri III, who became king of Poland, but succeeded as king of France on the death of his brother in 1574. Still, the notion that France and Spain could be united under a single monarch was bound to terrify - and anger - the rest of Europe; and its unlikelihood* changed nothing.

  A further irritant to the Coalition came with the death of James II on September 16, 1701. Despite his ministers’ advice, Louis promptly recognized James’s son as king of England. That, however, was not as ill-advised as has sometimes been supposed: The league against France had been signed a month earlier, and nothing short of war could be expected. By recognizing a Stuart as king of England, Louis XIV, besides giving pleasure to the widowed Mary of Modena, was also providing himself with yet another counter for the future peace negotiations.

  The war itself, begun by the emperor in Italy, started slowly. First, Catinat, a competent but uninspired leader, was beaten by Prince Eugene; then, on February 2, 1702, the prince surprised Villeroy in Cremona, and took both the town (briefly) and the maréchal (permanently), so Vendôme was sent off to replace him. All through 1702, a series of indecisive, but often bloody, battles opposed the two generals; the great change came in 1703 when, little by little, it became clear that the duke of Savoy, who had been promised money and territory by the emperor, was about to turn coat once again. Of course, Louis XIV reacted swiftly. In September, he wrote the duke: “Monsieur, since religion, honor, interest, our alliance, and your very signature mean nothing to you, I am sending my cousin the duc de Vendôme at the head of my armies to explain my intentions to you. He will only give you twenty four hours to make a decision.”274 In fact, the duke’s army was seized by the French while he himself went over to the Coalition.

  On the far more crucial northern front, things were not going any better: Neither the maréchal de Boufflers, who was brave but not clever, nor the duc de Bourgogne, were able to stop Marlborough, whose steady pressure accompanied by occasional minor victories, caused the French army to fall back quite significantly. The duc de Bourgogne himself was harshly criticized. Louis XIV showed what he thought of it all by bringing his grandson into the Council, and all prepared for the following campaign.

  At least, on the Alsatian front, Villars had won a battle at Fridlingen in October 1702. In the spring of 1703, he joined the elector of Bavaria, France’s sole remaining ally, and with Prince Eugene still busy in Italy, it looked as if France could expect major successes. The Imperial army was beaten at Hochstedt in September 1703; Villars took Augsburg while, on his side, Vauban, under the duc de Bourgogne’s nominal supervision, took Landau and Alt-Brisach.

  Unfortunately, Villars and the elector had grown to detest each other: Villars thought the elector hopelessly slow and timorous, the elector resented Villars’s boldness and his overall leadership of the two allied armies. So the maréchal asked to be brought home - he was sent to command the troops fighting a Protestant insurrection in the Cévennes; Marsin replaced him and the successes ended.

  Nor where the French armies any luckier in their next campaign on the Northern front: There, Villeroy, released from captivity, led them against Marlborough. The mismatch was grotesque, and catastrophes promptly followed. The Coalition retook the whole of the Lower Rhine and, on July 2, 1704, inflicted a bloody defeat on the French at Donauworth; then, as if that were not bad enough, the maréchal de Tallard, in a rare show of incompetence, partly, it must be said, directed from Versailles, decided to attack the Anglo-Germans. On August 13, just outside the village of Blenheim, Marlborough showed the world that he was a commander of genius; as for the French, they lost 12,000 men killed, 14,000 prisoners, 1,200 officers taken prisoner and all the matériel: It was a defeat such as France had not experienced in centuries.

  The news reached Versailles in the middle of the festivities celebrating the birth of a son* to the Bourgognes; it was Mme de Maintenon who told the king, and he promptly showed the world that no disaster could crush him. A new army was brought forth, Villars recalled from the Cévennes, and because the Coalition often failed to function smoothly, in 1705, the maréchal was at least able to prevent Marlborough from progressing farther. Even now, after a catastrophe and four years of war, the French borders remained unbreached: It showed how very far the kingdom had come under Louis XIV’s reign.

  Unfortunately, the war was also going badly in Spain. On August 4, 1704, the English took Gibraltar,* and an attempt by an army under the comte de Tessé and a fleet under the comte de Toulouse failed to retake it; then, in March 1705, an English fleet, while not actually beating the French, forced it to leave Spanish waters. Toulouse had fought bravely, yet prudently, but from then on, the British navy was mistress of the sea.

  Almost worse, that spring, the English under Lord Peterborough took Barcelona, then the largest city in Spain and the whole kingdom of Valencia. The archduke followed them and assumed the regnal name of Charles III: Spain now had two kings and no one could tell anymore which of the two would win.

  In Madrid, too, Louis XIV was encountering serious problems. Mme des Ursins, who was governing Spain almost singlehanded, had begun to develop her own policies. Worse, she embarked on a long and bitter quarrel with Louis XIV’s new envoy, the cardinal d’Estrées. At first, the princess thought to get
rid of him by begging Louis XIV for permission to come through Versailles on her way to retirement in Rome, but the king, while urging her to remain in place, did not recall his ambassador. At the same time, he tried very hard to strengthen his grandson. “I would be very pleased to hear that you are behaving like the master,” he wrote Philip on May 5, 1703, “and not to have any more reports that you have to be provided with an opinion on the least little things. It would almost be better for you to make small mistakes on occasion because you have followed your own impulses than to avoid them by taking other people’s advice.”275

  That was asking too much. Mme des Ursins wanted the cardinal d’Estrées recalled so, naturally, Philip V wrote his grandfather to that effect. On June 24, Louis XIV wrote back, agreeing to the recall - at some future date - and then the cardinal himself asked to go home, adding: “Were I to do otherwise, it would be thought that I had been fooled by his enemies; you would also be blamed for it … it would be said that Court intrigues are no less powerful now than under the late King’s reign.”276 Coming from a monarch who loathed intrigue, this evocation of the late Court was a sharp warning to the princess, and when the latter broke open a dispatch from Versailles addressed to the ambassador, Louis XIV struck: On April 11, 1704, on his order, Mme des Ursins was sent away from Madrid and told to reside in the South of France.

  Even that drastic measure failed to reestablish harmony. Philip and Maria Luisa had obeyed - they had no other choice - but, from then on, they begged tirelessly for the princess’s return while the lack of a firm guiding hand became more evident every day. On August 20, the king wrote wearily: “You ask me for advice; I wrote you what I think but nothing is any use if you wait until it is too late before you either ask me or act on my advice … You cannot succeed while your government is in such disorder.”277 It was not proving easy to govern Spain from Versailles; Philip’s incapacity was too great; his subordination to his wife too absolute; her need for Mme des Ursins too complete. So in an unprecedented reversal, and in order to avoid a complete collapse of the Spanish Government, on November 16, after yet another pleading letter from Maria Luisa, Louis XIV gave the princess permission to come to Versailles: It was obvious that she would be sent back to Madrid from there.