by Will Durant
Colbert completely nationalized the Gobelin factory in Paris, and made it a model of method and arrangement. He encouraged new enterprises by tax exemptions, state loans, and lowering the interest rate to five per cent. He allowed new industries a monopoly until they were well established. Inducements were offered to foreign artisans to bring their skills into France; Venetian glassworkers were settled at St.-Gobain; ironworkers were brought in from Sweden; and a Dutch Protestant, assured freedom of worship, and capital advanced by the state, established at Abbeville the manufacture of fine cloth. By 1669 there were 44,000 looms in France; Tours alone had 20,000 weavers. France planted its own mulberry trees, and was already famous for its silks. As the armies of Louis XIV grew, textile factories multiplied to clothe them. Under these stimuli French industries rapidly expanded. Many of them produced for a national or an international market, and some reached a capitalistic stage of investment, equipment, and management. The King fell in with Colbert’s industrializing mission; he visited workshops, allowed fine products to be stamped with the royal arms, raised the social status of the businessman, and ennobled great entrepreneurs.
The state encouraged or provided scientific and technical education. Workshops in the Louvre, the Tuileries, Les Gobelins, and the naval shipyards became schools for apprentices. Anticipating Diderot’s Encyclopédie, Colbert sponsored an encyclopedia of arts and crafts, and an illustrated description of all known machinery. 62 The Academy of Sciences published treatises on machines and mechanical arts; the Journal des savants recorded new industrial techniques. Perrault, building the eastern front of the Louvre, marveled at a machine that raised a stone block weighing 100,000 kilos (1,100 tons). 63 Colbert, however, opposed the introduction of machinery that would throw employees out of work. 64
Burning with a passion for order and efficiency, he nationalized, and expanded almost to suffocation, the regulation of industry by communes or guilds. Hundreds of ordinances prescribed methods of manufacture, the size, color, and quality of products, the hours and conditions of labor. Boards were established in all town halls to check defects in the output of local crafts and factories. Specimens of faulty workmanship were publicly exposed, with the name of the worker or manager attached. If the offender repeated the offense, he was censured at a meeting of the guild; if he offended a third time he was tied to a post for public exhibition and disgrace. 65 Every ablebodied male was put to work; orphans were drafted from asylums into industry; beggars were taken from the streets and placed in factories; and Colbert remarked happily to the King that now even children could earn something in the shops.
Workers were subjected to an almost military discipline. Laziness, incompetence, cursing, indecent conversation, disobedience, drunkenness, frequentation of taverns, concubinage, irreverence in church—all these were to be punished by the employer, sometimes by flogging. Working hours were long—twelve or more, with interruptions of thirty or forty minutes for meals. Wages were low, and were partly paid in goods priced by the employer. Vauban calculated the average daily wage of artisans in the large towns at twelve sous (thirty cents) a day; however, a sou could buy a pound of bread. 66 The government cut down the number of religious feast days that exempted men from work; thirty-eight such holydays remained, so that the people had ninety days of rest in the year. 67 Strikes were outlawed, meetings of workers to improve their conditions were forbidden; at Rochefort some workers were jailed for complaining that their wages were too low. The wealth of the business class grew, the revenues of the state rose; the condition of the workers was probably lower under Louis XIV than in the Middle Ages. 68 France was disciplined in industry as well as in war.
And in commerce. Colbert, like nearly all statesmen of his time, believed that the economy of a nation should produce the maximum of wealth and self-sufficiency within the nation; and that, since gold and silver were so valuable as mediums of exchange, commerce should be so regulated as to secure for the nation a “favorable balance of trade”—i.e., an excess of exports over imports, and therefore an influx of silver or gold. Only in this way could France, England, and the United Provinces, which had no gold in their soil, procure their needs, and supply their troops, in time of war. This was “mercantilism”; and though some economists ridiculed it, there was, and will be, much to be said for it in an age of frequent wars. It applied to the nation the system of protective tariffs and regulations which in the Middle Ages had been applied to the commune; the unit of protection grew when the state replaced the commune as the unit of production and government. Hence, in Colbert’s theory, the wages of workers had to be low to enable their products to compete in foreign markets and thereby bring in gold; the rewards of employers had to be high to stimulate them to industrial enterprises in manufacturing goods, especially luxuries, that would be of no use in war, but could be exported at little cost for a high return; and interest rates had to be low to tempt entrepreneurs to borrow capital. The competitive nature of man, in the lawless jungle of states, geared their nationalistic economies to the chances and needs of war. Peace is war by other means.
Therefore the function of commerce, in the view of Colbert (and, indeed, of Sully, Richelieu, and Cromwell) was to export manufactured articles in exchange for precious metal or raw materials. In 1664, and again in 1667, he raised the duties on imports that threatened to outsell in France the products of domestic industries considered necessary in war; and when such imports persisted, he forbade them completely. He laid heavy export dues upon vital materials, but reduced the tax on the export of luxuries.
Meanwhile he tried to free domestic commerce from internal tolls. He found French trade clogged by provincial, municipal, and manorial barriers and tariffs. Goods moving from Paris to the Channel, or from Switzerland to Paris, paid tolls at sixteen points; from Orléans to Nantes, at twenty-eight points. These dues may have had sense when, because of difficulties of transport, and possibilities of feudal or intercommunal strife, each locality aspired to self-sufficiency, and strove to protect its own industries. Now that France was politically unified, these internal tolls were an irritating impediment to a national economy. By an edict of 1664 Colbert tried to suppress all internal tolls. The resistance was obdurate; in half of France the tolls continued, some of them till the Revolution, of which they were a minor cause. Colbert almost nullified his work for commercial expansion by issuing complex regulations that aimed to remedy abuses but hampered trade sometimes to frustration. “Liberty,” he (or one of his critics) said, “is the soul of commerce. We must let men choose the most convenient ways” (Il faut laissez faire les hommes); 69 here was a phrase destined to make history.
He labored to open new avenues of internal transport. He began a system of royal highways, military in their primary purpose, but also a boon to commerce in general. Land travel was still arduous and slow; Mme. de Sévigné took eight days to go by coach from Paris to her estate at Vitré in Brittany. At the suggestion of Pierre Paul de Riquet, Colbert put twelve thousand men to work digging the great Languedoc Canal, 162 miles long, and rising at times to 830 feet above sea level; by 1681 the Mediterranean was connected by the Rhone, the canal, and the Garonne with the Bay of Biscay, and the commerce of France could bypass Portugal and Spain.
Colbert envied the Dutch, who had fifteen thousand of the twenty thousand commercial vessels on the seas, while France had only six hundred. He built up the French navy from its twenty ships to 270; he repaired harbors and docks; he impressed men ruthlessly into naval service; he organized or reformed trading companies for the West Indies, the East Indies, the Levant, and the northern seas. He gave these companies protective privileges, but again the regulations that he laid upon them hindered them fatally. Nevertheless foreign commerce grew; French goods competed with Dutch or English products in the Caribbean and the Near, Middle, and Far East. Marseilles, which had declined through lack of French shipping, became the biggest port on the Mediterranean. After ten years of experience, consultation and labor, Colbert issued
(1681) a maritime code for French shipping and commerce; soon other nations adopted it. He organized insurance for commercial ventures overseas. He sanctioned French participation in the slave trade, but strove to mitigate it with humane regulations. 70
He encouraged exploration and the establishment of colonies, hoping to sell them manufactured articles for raw materials, and to use them as feeders to a merchant marine that would prove useful in war. French colonists were already spreading in Canada, West Africa, and the West Indies, and were entering Madagascar, India, and Ceylon. Courcelle and Frontenac explored the Great Lakes (1671–73). Cadillac founded a large French colony at what is now Detroit. La Salle (having been granted a monopoly in the slave trade in any regions that he should open up) discovered the Mississippi (1672), and descended it in a frail bark, reaching the Gulf of Mexico after two months of adventurous navigation. He took possession of the delta, and named it after the King. France now controlled the valleys of the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi through the heart of North America.
All in all—and we have noted as yet but a part of Colbert’s activity, having said nothing of his work for science, literature, and art—this was one of the most devoted and overspreading lives in history. Not since Charlemagne had a single mind so remade in so many phases so great a state. Those regulations were a nuisance, and made Colbert unpopular, but they created the economic form of modern France; and Napoleon only continued and revised Colbert in government and code. For ten years France knew such prosperity as never before. Then the faults of the system and the King brought it down. Colbert protested against the extravagance of King and court, and the disease of war that was consuming France in his old age; yet it was his high tariffs, as well as Louis’ love of power and glory, that led to some of those wars; France’s commercial rivals denounced the closing of her ports to their goods. The peasants and the artisans bore the brunt of Colbert’s reforms, and even the businessmen whom they enriched charged that his regulations clogged development; said one of them to the minister, “You found the carriage overturned on one side, and you have upset it on the other.” 71 When, broken and defeated, he died (September 6, 1683), his body had to be buried by night lest it be insulted by the people in the streets. 72
V. MANNERS AND MORALS
It was an age of strict manners and loose morals. Dress was the sacrament of status. In the middle classes clothing was almost puritanically simple—a black coat modestly covering shirt and trousers and legs. But in the elite it was magnificent, and more so in men than in women. Hats were large and soft, with a broad brim trimmed with gold braid, tilted up on one or three sides, and sporting a plume of feathers caught in a metal clasp. When Louis came to the throne he—and soon the court—discarded the perukes that had come into style with his bald father, for the young King’s waves of chestnut hair were too splendid to be concealed; but when, after 1670, his hair began to thin, he took to wigs; and presently every head of any pretensions, in France, England, or Germany, was crowned with borrowed and powdered curls falling to the shoulders or lower, and making all men look alike except to their bedfellows. Beards were shaved, mustaches were cherished. Gloves were gauntleted and adorned, and both sexes carried muffs on cold days. The high ruff was now replaced by the silk cravat, loosely tied around the neck. The doublet was giving way to a long and ornamented vest; the thighs were graced with culottes—trousers ending at the knees, and buckled or ribboned there; and these garments were covered, except in front, by a swirling coat whose sleeves ended in large cuffs trimmed with lace. By law only nobles were permitted to deck their raiment with gold embroidery or precious stones, but moneyed men of any class overrode the law. Stockings were usually of silk. Male feet were shod in boots, even for a dance.
The dress of courtly women was free and flowing to accord with their morals. Their bodices were laced, but in front, as Panurge had urged in Rabelais, and swelling bosoms leaped to the roving eye. Farthingales and puffed sleeves went out with Richelieu. Robes were richly embroidered and gaily colored; entrancing high-heeled shoes covered tired feet; and hair was daintily beribboned, bejeweled, perfumed, and curled. The first fashion magazine appeared in 1672.
Manners were stately, though under the flourish of the saluting hat and trailing skirt many crudities remained. Men spat on floors, and urinated on the stairways of the Louvre. 73 Humor could be brutal or obscene. But conversation was elegant and polite, even when dealing with physiology and sex. Men were learning from women the graces of conduct and speech; they spoke clearly and correctly, avoided sententiousness and pedantry, and touched all topics, however profound, with a light gaiety of spirit and phrase. To dispute earnestly was bad form. Table manners were improving. The King ate with his fingers to the end of his life, but by that time forks were in general use. About 1660 napkins came into vogue, and guests were no longer expected to wipe their fingers on the tablecloth.
Social morality was not outstanding in this age of etiquette and protocol. Charity declined as the wealth of the upper classes grew. Morals were soundest in the lower middle class, where good behavior was made possible by security, and stimulated by the desire to rise. In all classes the ideal was l’honnête homme—not the honest man, but the honorable man, who added good breeding and manners to good conduct. Honesty was hardly expected. Despite Colbert’s regulations and royal espionage, venality in office was widespread, and it was encouraged by the sale of governmental appointments as a source of public revenue. Crime sprouted from the greed of the rich, the need of the poor, and the passionate outbreaks of all classes. So some highborn dames enjoyed the services of Catherine Monvoisin or the Marquise de Brinvilliers, both skilled in concocting poisons of lingering subtlety; poisoning was so popular that special courts were set up to deal with it. 74 Catherine Montvoisin practiced medicine, midwifery, and witchcraft; she assisted a renegade priest in celebrating the “Black Mass,” soliciting the aid of Satan; she procured abortion and sold poisons and love potions. Among her clients were Olympe Mancini, niece of Mazarin, the Comtesse de Gramont, and Mme. de Montespan, mistress of the King. In 1679 a commission investigated the activities of “La Voisin,” and found evidence involving so many members high at the court that Louis ordered suppression of the record. 75 La Voisin was burned alive (1680).
Private morals included the usual aberrations. In law homosexuality was punishable with death; a nation preparing for war and paying for babies could not let the sexual instincts be diverted from reproduction; but it was difficult to pursue such deviates when the King’s own brother was a noted invert, beneath contempt but above the law. Love between the sexes was accepted as a romantic relief from marriage, but not as a reason for marriage; the acquisition, protection, or transmission of property was judged more important in marriage than the attempt to fix for a lifetime the passions of a day. As most marriages in the aristocracy were arrangements of property, French society condoned concubinage; nearly every man who could afford it had a mistress; men plumed themselves on their liaisons almost as much as on their battles; a woman felt desolate if no man but her husband pursued her; and some faithless husbands winked at their wives’ infidelities. “Is there in all the world,” asks a character in Molière, “another town where the husbands are as patient as here?” 76 It was in this cynical atmosphere that La Rochefoucauld’s maxims grew. Prostitution was despised if it had no manners, but a woman like Ninon de Lenclos, who gilded it with literature and wit, could become almost as famous as the King.
Her father was a nobleman, freethinker and duelist. Her mother was a woman of strict morals but (if we may believe her daughter) “with no sensory feelings . . . She procreated three children, scarcely noticing it.” 77 Without formal education, Ninon picked up considerable knowledge; she learned to speak Italian and Spanish, perhaps as aids in international commerce; she read Montaigne, Charron, even Descartes, and followed her father into skepticism. Later her discussions of religion made Mme. de Sévigné shudder. 78 “If a man needs a religion to conduct h
imself properly in this world,” said Ninon, “it is a sign that he has either a limited mind or a corrupt heart.” 79 She might thence have concluded to the almost universal necessity of religion; instead she slipped into prostitution at the age of fifteen (1635). “Love,” she said recklessly, “is a passion involving no moral obligation.” 80 When Ninon allowed her promiscuity to be too prominent, Anne of Austria ordered her confinement in a convent; there, we are told, she charmed the nuns by her wit and vivacity, and enjoyed her imprisonment as a restful vacation. In 1657 she was released by order of the King.
There was so much more in her than the courtesan that she soon enlisted among her devotees many of the most distinguished men in France, including several members of the court, 81 ranging from the composer Lully to the Great Condé himself. She played the harpsichord well, and sang; Lully came to her to try out his new airs. Three generations of Sévignés were on her list—the husband, then the son, then the grandson, of the amiable letter writer. 82 Men came from foreign lands to court her. Her lovers, she said, “never quarreled over me; they had confidence in my inconsistency; each awaited his turn.” 83