Louis XIV
Page 40
As if this episode were not bad enough, there was the story of the insulting toast. Upon arriving in Madrid, Orléans had found neither the supplies, nor the money, he had been led to expect; since Mme des Ursins was visibly in control, he blamed her for these shortages. In fact, Spain was in such a dreadful state that her lateness did not necessarily imply a dereliction of duty. Still, the duc was infuriated, and at the end of a dinner with his officers, in the course of which the wine had not been spared, he raised his glass. “Messieurs,” he said, “here is to the health of Captain Cunt and Lieutenant Cunt.”287 No one there doubted that he meant Mmes de Maintenon and des Ursins, nor did the two ladies when, in very short order, they heard about the toast, and any possibility that Louis XIV might forgive the duc disappeared.
At the same time, a court intrigue very nearly succeeded in ruining the duc de Bourgogne. Monseigneur disliked his eldest son; he was on terms of the closest friendship with Madame la Duchesse who, being illegitimate, hated the real princes and was close to the duc de Vendôme. When the campaigns of 1708 and 1709 went badly, therefore, this cabal saw its chance and openly blamed the duc de Bourgogne for not listening to Vendôme and thus being the cause of the current disasters. The story was plausible, and only partly wrong: It was widely believed, and even the king, it was noticed, spoke little and coldly about his grandson. It was not until the end of the second campaign that, having returned to Versailles, and with his wife’s help, the duc was able to convince his grandfather that he had, in fact, done his best. As a result, and to Monseigneur’s rage, the cabal failed. Vendôme was greeted more than coldly; the duc de Bourgogne was taken back into the fold, and with that, the split in the Court became deep and permanent.
Dreadful as the situation was in the fall of 1708, the king soon realized that it was rapidly getting worse. One reason for that was the weather: In 1708-9, the cold came early, grew deeper than in living memory and stayed, it seemed endlessly, ruining much of France’s agriculture. On January 19, 1709, Madame wrote her cousin: “Nobody can remember its being so cold. For the last two weeks, there have been reports every morning of people who have died of the cold; partridges are found frozen in the fields. All the theaters have closed, trials are postponed, neither the présidents nor the conseillers can remain in their courts because it is too cold,”288 On February 2, she went on, to her aunt, Electress Sophia of Hanover: “The cold is so horrible here that nothing like this, they say, has happened since 1606. In Paris only, 24,000 people have died between January 5 and today.”289
And still the cold got worse. At Versailles, the ink froze in the king’s inkpot; in Paris, and the rest of France, people died of the cold and of starvation. As always in a crisis, the stocks of grain proved insufficient, and it was obvious that the next crop would be substantially smaller than usual. Already on June 8, Madame was writing her cousin: “The famine is so violent now that children have eaten one another. The King is so thoroughly decided to continue fighting the war that this morning he sent his entire gold service to the Mint, plates, platters, salt cellars, in a word all the gold he had, to be coined into louis.”290
In a preindustrial age, when a country’s prosperity depended to a large extent on agriculture, this kind of winter was a severe blow, and while Madame complained of the discomfort at Versailles, people not only starved but were ruined. Of course, the immediate consequence of this situation was to aggravate the financial crisis: With commerce virtually stopped - for months on end it was too cold to move goods - and with money scarce, taxes yielded much less than usual. Given the already critical situation of the Treasury, this reduction seemed like the last blow, and so his ministers told the king. As for Mme de Maintenon, her lamentations reached a new degree of intensity. Here was another proof that God intended to punish France, she said: better yield now before something even worse happened.
In fact, although the marquise was a true representative of that odd strain in the French character which has, on occasion, caused some of its citizens to wallow in defeat, the situation did seem nearly hopeless. Not only could the war not be won, but also there seemed to be no reason why the defeats of earlier years would not be repeated, and so, in an act of real courage and utter selflessness, Louis XIV decided to sacrifice his pride, his gloire, and the union with Spain.
First, there was a Council in which the duc de Beauvillier gave so dire an account of the state of the country that the duc de Bourgogne burst into tears, as did several of the ministers. Chamillart and Desmarets both painted the bleakest of pictures; Torcy concluded that peace at any price must now be France’s new policy. It was then decided that secret approaches would be made to the Coalition; when these were ignored, Torcy, the Foreign Minister, volunteered to go to the Hague in person to beg for peace. He arrived there, incognito, on May 22, 1709. It was an unheard-of humiliation, but the king had agreed to this embarrassment as well.
Given this situation, it should have been easy to make peace. In fact, the Allies, drunk with their victories, decided to ask for more than anyone might have thought possible. First, they demanded Strasbourg and Brisach, both still firmly held by France. Then Holland was to be given ten fortified cities in Flanders. That might have been accepted, but next came a demand that Philip V give up the Spanish throne within two months. And, the Allies added, should he refuse to do so, France must then eject him militarily: It was the famous Article IV of these Preliminaries. Finally, in exchange for all of it, the Allies would only give France an armistice (as opposed to a peace treaty): There was no guarantee that they would not start the war again.
“If I have to make war,” Louis XIV said when these demands were read out to the Council, “then I would rather fight my enemies than my children.”291 That position, however logical, was not shared by many: A majority of the ministers continued to prefer peace at any price, and so did Mme de Maintenon, who not only craved an end of the war, but would also have enjoyed watching the discomfiture of her erstwhile friend, Mme des Ursins, for by now, the two ladies, having adopted opposed political positions, had become out and out enemies.
At this point, it would have been easier for the king to give in: His decision to go on fighting shows the extent of his courage, but he knew so well how unpopular the war was that, for the first time, he decided to justify himself to his subjects. A declaration was sent, on June 12, 1709, to the governors of the various provinces, to be printed and posted everywhere. Not only is it of interest as the first such communication ever made by a French government to its people, it also shows the king at his best.
“The hope of peace has been so widespread in the realm that I feel I owe to the fidelity shown me by my people in the course of my reign the consolation of informing them of the reasons why they do not yet enjoy the rest I had intended to give them. I had accepted, to that effect, conditions thoroughly opposed to the safety of my border provinces: but the easier I showed myself, the more I tried to dissipate the concerns my enemies claim they still feel about my power and my future plans, and the more they multiplied their demands; so that, adding, degree by degree, new demands to those they had made at the beginning … they showed that their purpose was to enlarge our neighboring states at our expense, and to open roads on which they could invade my kingdom whenever it suited them to fight a new war.” Then the king explained that he would have been forced to carry through all the provisions of the Preliminaries within two months without having a peace treaty in exchange, so that, France having become far more vulnerable, there would have been nothing to stop the Coalition from attacking it anew.
“I do not even mention,” the king went on, mentioning them, “the requests they made that I join my troops to theirs so as to force my grandson off his throne, if he refused to leave it voluntarily … Such an alliance would have been against all humanity. But even though my love for my people is no less than that I feel for my own children; even though I share all the suffering caused by the war to such faithful subjects and have shown Europe that I s
incerely desired peace, I am convinced that they [his subjects] would refuse to seek it under circumstances so contrary to justice and the honor of France.”292
That being said, there was nothing to do except continue the fighting, and after all those years, and all his attempts at resigning, the king finally decided to replace Chamillart. Daniel Voysin, a hardworking and competent administrator, succeeded him; like Desmarets, he remained in place until the end of the reign. The two ministers discharged their impossible tasks as successfully as possible, making many enemies in the process, and, henceforth, the Council included them both, along with Torcy, and the duc de Beauvillier, the duc de Bourgogne, and Monseigneur.
All through 1709, the defeats continued. First Marlborough took Tournai; then he set siege to Mons, and the maréchal de Villars, who had been transferred to the northern army as the last best hope of France, decided to seek a battle. He found it on September 11 near the little town of Malplaquet, and although the French only lost 8,000 to the enemy’s 21,000 dead, the victory remained with Marlborough, who had broken the French center. Once again, it seemed that the Coalition could not lose. And, of course, Mons was taken.
At least in August, the maréchal du Bourg defeated an Imperial army on the Rhine and preserved Alsace from invasion, but since it seemed all too clear that France could never win the war, Louis XIV went on trying to negotiate. It took both courage and endurance: Nothing is harder than to go on fighting when you are treating for peace. Early in 1710, the maréchal d’Huxelles and the abbé de Polignac were sent off to the little Dutch town of Gertruydenberg, where they were treated as virtual prisoners, but no matter how much Louis XIV was willing to concede - and at one point, it included paying the Coalition troops that would be fighting in Spain - neither Marlborough nor the imperial Ambassador, Count Zinzendorff would settle for anything less that the expulsion of Philip V by the French army itself. That the Austrians, who wanted Spain for the archduke, should have been so demanding is not surprising, but it is startling to find Marlborough, that astute negotiator, adopting the same position.
Of course, that, too, can be explained. Back in England, Marlborough’s wife, the redoubtable Sarah, once Queen Anne’s closest friend, had now lost the royal favor, and in the same way, the queen, who was tired of the war, was beginning to look with favor on the Tories. Should the war end quickly, therefore, the Marlboroughs had a good deal to lose, but if it went on, the duke remained the indispensable man. Under these circumstances, it made perfect sense for Marlborough to back the Austrian demands even if they were unreasonable.
As for the war itself, it continued unabated, and 1710 proved disastrous for France. In June, Douai and Béthune were taken while, in August, Prince Starhemberg, who commanded the Coalition troops, inflicted a major defeat on Philip V’s army. It began to look as if that situation might resolve itself by the collapse of the Franco-Spanish forces, but later that month, the king and Vendôme together triumphed at the battle of Villaviciosa, crushing Starhemberg and ensuring their continued superiority.
At Versailles, where the Treasury was empty, the king insisted on maintaining the splendor of the Court virtually unabated as a way of impressing the Coalition with his ability to fight on, but there were no New Year’s presents on January 1, and the guests at Marly were, henceforth, required to provide their own food. There was at least one happy event: On February 15, the duchesse de Bourgogne gave birth to another son, who was promptly titled duc d’Anjou. Since she already had a five-year-old son, the duc de Bretagne, the succession was doubly assured, and Louis XIV became the only king in the history of France to have two great-grandsons living and in the direct line of succession.
Abroad, too, changes were taking place which clearly favored France: On August 7, Queen Anne dismissed Godolphin, Marlborough’s close ally, and promoted two of the leading Tories, Harley and Saint John, with the enthusiastic approval of her new favorite, Abigail Masham. Then, at the end of September, Parliament was dissolved, and the elections brought in a solid Tory majority. Although the government promptly confirmed Marlborough’s appointments, it was clear that it would also try to end the war. After a long season of despair, the French had reason to hope again, for, without Great Britain, the Coalition was powerless.
These promising developments might be the subject of much comment at Versailles, but still the war went on. And for five years at least, it seemed as if Louis XIV had borne every one of its burdens. “Our King’s face is tremendously changed,” Madame noted, “but he still looks strong and awe-inspiring, and when he speaks he is still pleasant.”293 That he should have been was nothing short of miraculous. We know just how difficult his life had become, partly through Mme de Maintenon’s letters, partly through Torcy’s journal. Scenes like the one which took place on January 27, 1710, were frequent, and greatly added to the king’s already unbearable burden.
That evening, Torcy had suggested sending negotiators to The Hague without further delay. “The King said it was fantastic, and almost stupid, for me to think that one day more or less would make a difference in this kind of negotiation. He stormed against those who spoiled everything by this sort of hurry, and by the way in which they let the enemy know they were eager to conclude at any cost. These reproaches were directed principally to M. de Beauvillier, whom His Majesty named, but I was next, for when I pointed out that it was necessary to anticipate the arrival of Prince Eugene and of the Duke of Marlborough … the King did me the honor of saying that he was surprised to hear me urge this when I was the slowest of negotiators. I must admit I did not understand the reason for these reproaches or how I had deserved them, since, far from delaying the execution of my orders, I often acted even before receiving them; but as our masters never think they are wrong, I remained silent and tried to profit from this mortification, coming as it did after so many others.
“This happened in Mme de Maintenon’s room. From her bed, she urged the King to end so important a piece of business. He resisted, fought back, finally gave in, and told me to bring in the letters the next morning.”294 The next day, in fact, the king delayed sending the negotiators.
From the tone of this entry, Torcy’s resentment of the king is clear; he was a minister who carried out a policy he detested on the orders of a king he thought tyrannical and unfair. It is a far cry from the attitude of a Louvois or a Colbert, and cannot have made Louis XIV’s life easier; as for Mme de Maintenon’s nagging, it never stopped. Neither in his moments of relaxation, nor in his Council could the king ever count on any sort of support; his choice was between sullen obedience - Torcy - and bitter reproach from the marquise. The Council itself, in fact, steadfastly opposed the continuation of the war. Beauvillier, Torcy and Desmarets wanted peace at any price; the chancellor often joined them; the duc de Bourgogne usually agreed with Beauvillier, but did not say so since, after all, it was his brother whose throne was tottering. Only Monseigneur backed continued assistance to Spain; in fact, much to everyone’s surprise, he became positively outspoken, once even reminding the ministers that he would be king some day, and that if they had abandoned his son, they would suffer for it. In 1710, Louis XIV was seventy-two: Monseigneur’s threat was by no means idle.
Still, the laments continued. Here are Torcy’s notes on the Council of February 19. “The state of affairs is deplorable. Money is lacking altogether. There is no credit. The troops cannot be raised again. Officers and soldiers are dying of want: there are no supplies, no means of getting any. No one knows how the army will subsist through the next campaign. It is even doubtful it can fight at all. No generals to lead it. It is not sure whether the maréchal de Villars’s wound will allow him to serve, and even if he can, where to find the necessary resources? … He speaks only of forcing the enemy to fight at the beginning of the campaign, and when told that the State would perish if he is then beaten, he agrees.”295
Still, by mid-March, it had become clear that there was no choice but to fight: The Coalition was unwilling to treat ser
iously, in part, no doubt, because it expected future victories to make the French position more difficult still. So yet again, Torcy came up with a way to placate the enemy. At the Council of March 26, he suggested giving Naples and Sicily to Philip V in exchange for Spain, and fighting him if he refused; that, of course, supposed Austria would agree since it was in possession of Naples. “M. le duc de Beauvillier was firmly opposed to my proposal,” Torcy noted, “and spoke at length and eloquently on the injustice of making war on the King of Spain …
“Monseigneur le duc de Bourgogne supported him skillfully, speaking about injust wars as the pious and Catholic prince he is. It is not for me to say whether these maxims applied in this case.
“Monseigneur … said that there could never be any reason to fight the King of Spain.
“Everyone having spoken, the King, disturbed by all this, listening with chagrin to the sad discussion caused by this unhappy business, told me that he did not agree with me at all, that he would never promise or even consider fighting the King of Spain.”296 That was all very well, but both Torcy and, more important, Mme de Maintenon thought they knew better, and that, with time and effort, they would wear the king down; on May 9, for instance, the marquise told her ally that there was no solution other than declaring war on Philip V, that there was not a moment to be lost, and that she only hoped it was not too late.