The Age of Louis XIV

by Will Durant

  His mother went to England in 1660 to rejoice in her brother’s coronation; she died there of smallpox on Christmas Eve. In 1666 the government of Holland province declared the sixteen-year-old Prince a ward of the state; Jan de Witt replaced his beloved guardians and tutors with persons more responsive to the policy of the provincial Estates. 50 William’s hatred of de Witt grew with every year. At the height of Jan’s power the Prince, eluding his new guardians, rode from The Hague to Bergen-op-Zoom (1668), and took a boat to Zeeland, the province that had been most loyal to his ancestors. The people of its capital, Middelburg, greeted him with mass demonstrations of fidelity and affection. He assumed without hesitation or opposition the presidency of the Zeeland provincial assembly. Returning to The Hague, he announced that his minority was now ending on his eighteenth birthday (November 4, 1668), and that he would henceforth dispense with the guardians that the Estates of Holland had given him. The Estates refused to remove them; he dismissed them; they remained. He bided his time.

  It came when the French and German armies overran the Dutch provinces, Dutch armies surrendered town after town, and The Hague itself seemed defenseless. Yielding to the demands of the military, and hoping that the restoration of the house of Orange to leadership would restore the unity and morale of the nation, the States-General appointed William captain general of the Union (February 25, 1672). On July 2 the Estates of Zeeland, flouting the “Perpetual Edict,” elected William their provincial stadholder; on July 4 the Estates of Holland followed suit; on July 8 he was made supreme commander of the Union’s armed forces on land and sea. He showed his spirit when the French King offered peace in return for an indemnity of sixteen million florins and the cession of large areas to France, Mïnster, and Cologne; a secret offer was made to recognize William as king of the remainder. The Estates of Holland asked his advice; he replied, “Rather let us be hacked to pieces than accept such conditions.” 51 When the second Duke of Buckingham, coming from England to urge William to make peace, said to him, “Do you not see that your country is lost?” he replied, “My country is in great danger, but there is a sure way never to see it lost, and that is to die in the last ditch.” 52 Nevertheless, with wisdom remarkable in a youth of twenty-two, he counseled patient and courteous negotiations with the English; already he may have seen in a co-operation of the English and the Dutch the only hope of checking the aggressions of France. He took measures to strengthen the ties between the United Provinces, the Empire, and Brandenburg. The outlines of the Grand Alliance were taking form in his mind.

  He proceeded to the headquarters of the army, and so was absent from The Hague when the de Witts were murdered. He had apparently no share in planning that act, which perhaps no one had planned; but when he heard of it he did not hide his satisfaction; and he protected and pensioned the men who had led the mob. 53 He tried now to be a good general; he never succeeded, but the experienced soldiers who came enthusiastically to his standard reorganized the army and the navy, and victories began to outweigh defeats. De Ruyter and Cornelis Tromp (son of Maarten) outfought the English and French fleets at Schooneveldt and Kykduin (1673); the German invaders were stopped in Groningen; William captured Naarden; the provinces of Gelderland, Utrecht, and Overijssel were cleared of the enemy; nearly everywhere the French were in retreat. For the time being, at least, the United Provinces were saved, and they hailed William as their savior.

  To these successes he added diplomatic victories. On February 19, 1674, he persuaded England to a separate peace by agreeing to pay a war indemnity of two million florins; on April 22 and May 11 he signed treaties with Miinster and Cologne; he confirmed the alliance of the United Provinces, Spain, Brandenburg, Denmark, and the Empire against a now isolated France. As a final stroke he won the hand of Mary, eldest daughter of James, Duke of York, brother of the English King. The two leading Protestant powers were now drawn together; the net was being closed around France; and it was no minor matter that Mary stood only after her father in line of succession to the English throne. Seldom in history has so young a statesman laid such farseeing plans, and with such success.

  Meanwhile, however, the French renewed their attack, took Ypres and Ghent, and advanced to the Dutch border. De Ruyter was defeated by a French fleet off the Sicilian coast (April 22, 1676), and died a week later of his wounds. Louis offered peace to the States-General on tempting terms: he would restore all Dutch territory held by the French, provided the States would agree to his retention of Franche-Comté and Lorraine. The Emperor, Brandenburg, and Denmark protested against such a peace; William supported them; the States-General, dominated by commercial interests, overruled him, deserted its allies, and signed the separate Peace of Nijmegen with France (August 10, 1678).

  William viewed the peace as merely a truce, and strove through the next ten years to reconstruct the alliance. The Dutch merchants restrained his martial temper, arguing that the exhausted provinces needed a rest from turmoil, and that prosperity was returning. Two events of the year 1685 played into William’s hands. Louis revoked the Edict of Nantes; persecuted Huguenots crowded into the Netherlands, and led an active propaganda for a union of Protestant powers against France. In England James II, become King, revealed his hope to make that nation Catholic; English Protestants planned to depose him, leaving William’s wife, Mary, in line for the throne. William had carried on a liaison with Mary’s best friend, Elizabeth Villiers, 54 but Mary forgave him, and agreed that if she became queen of England she would obey her husband as king. In 1686 William succeeded in arranging an alliance with the Empire, Brandenburg, Spain, and Sweden for common defense. On June 30, 1688, the English Protestant leaders invited William and Mary to enter England with armed forces and help them dethrone their Catholic King. William hesitated, for Louis XIV had a vast army awaiting the royal decision to attack either the Netherlands or the Empire. Louis sent it word to advance into Germany; William’s hands were free. On November 1, 1688, he sailed with fourteen thousand men to win the throne of England.

  BOOK II

  ENGLAND

  1649–1714

  CHAPTER VII

  Cromwell

  1649–60

  I. THE SOCIALIST REVOLT

  HAVING beheaded Charles I (January 30, 1649), the victorious Puritans faced the problems of constructing a new government and restoring the security of life and property in an England disordered by seven years of civil war. The Rump Parliament—the fifty-six active members that remained of the Long Parliament after “Pride’s Purge” (1648)—proclaimed the supremacy and sufficiency of the Commons, abolished the House of Lords (February 6, 1649) and the monarchy, and nominated as its executive arm a Council of State composed of three generals, three peers, three judges, and thirty members of the House, all Independents—i.e., republican Puritans. On May 19 the Commons officially established the English republic: “England shall hereafter be governed as a Commonwealth, or Free State, by the supreme authority of this nation, the representatives of the people in Parliament, and by such as they shall appoint and constitute as ministers under them for the good of the people.” 1 The republic was not a democracy; the Parliament claimed a democratic base, but the expulsion of Royalist members during the war, and of Presbyterians in the Purge, had “winnowed and sifted it,” said Cromwell, “and brought it to a handful.” 2 In its origin the Parliament had been elected by property owners only; now whole counties were without delegates in the Rump. Its power rested not on the people but on the army. Only the army could protect it from the royalist rebels in England, the Catholic rebels in Ireland, the Presbyterian rebels in Scotland, and the radical rebels in the army itself.

  To meet the expenses of the government, and the arrears of pay due to the army, the Rump levied taxes as lavishly as the late King. It proposed to confiscate the property of all who had borne arms for Charles, but in most cases it compromised by taking a fine equal to a part—from one tenth to one half—of the capital value of the estate. Many young nobles, facing impove
rishment in England, migrated to America and founded aristocratic families like the Washingtons, the Randolphs, the Madisons, the Lees.* Some royalist leaders were executed, some were imprisoned. Even so, the royalist movement remained troublesome, for royalist sentiment predominated among the people. The execution of the King had turned him from a tax collector into a martyr. Ten days after that regicide a book appeared under the title of Eikon Basilike—i.e., a royal portrait. It had been written by John Gauden, a Presbyterian minister, but it purported to be the thoughts and feelings of Charles as set down by his own hand shortly before his death. Some of it may have been elaborated from notes left by the King. 3 In any case the picture presented by it was that of a tenderhearted ruler who had actually been defending England against the tyranny of a merciless oligarchy. Within a year the book sold thirty-six editions; it was translated into five languages, and not all the thunder of Milton’s Eikonoklastes (1649) could cancel its effect. It shared in promoting a public reaction against the new government, and encouraged the royalist agents who in every county of England began at once to agitate for the restoration of the Stuart dynasty. The Council of State met the movement with widespread and efficient espionage, and the prompt arrest of leaders who might have organized a revolt.

  At the other extreme a minority of the populace and a large part of the army demanded a more thorough, some a socialist, democracy. The sky rained radical pamphlets; Colonel John Lilburne alone produced a hundred; Milton, at this stage, was not a poet but a pamphleteer. Lilburne attacked Cromwell as a tyrant, an apostate, a hypocrite. One writer complained that “you shall scarce speak to Cromwell about any thing but he will lay his hand on his breast, elevate his eyes, and call God to record. He will weep, howl, and repent, even while he doth smite you under the fifth rib.” 4 Another pamphleteer asked: “We were ruled before by King, Lords, and Commons, now by a General, Court Martial, and Commons; and we pray you, what is the difference?” 5 The new government felt compelled to censure press and pulpit sternly. In April, 1649, Lilburne and three others were arrested for issuing two pamphlets that described England as in “new chains.” The army clamored for their release, and their women threatened Cromwell’s life if any harm came to the prisoners. From prison Lilburne sent to his printer a defiant Impeachment of High Treason against Cromwell and Ireton. In October the four writers were tried in a cause célèbre that drew thousands of people about the court. Lilburne challenged the judges, and appealed to a jury. When all four were acquitted there went up from the crowd “such a loud and unanimous shout as is believed was never heard in Guildhall, which lasted for about half an hour without intermission, which made the judges for fear turn pale.” 6 For two years Lilburne was the hero of the army. In 1652 he was banished; he returned in 1653, was again arrested, was again acquitted (August, 1653); he was kept in prison nevertheless. In 1655 he was released; in 1657 he died, aged forty-three.

  Some “Levellers” went beyond Lilburne and democracy to call for a more equal distribution of goods. Why, they asked, should there be rich and poor? Why should some starve while the rich engrossed the land? In April, 1649, a “prophet” named William Everard led four men to St. George’s Hill in Surrey; they took possession of some unoccupied land, dug the earth, planted seed, and invited recruits; some thirty other “Diggers,” as they came to be called, joined them, and (said a report to the Council of State) “they threaten the neighbors that they will shortly make them all come up to the hills and work.” 7 Haled before Sir Thomas Fairfax, captain general of the army, Everard explained that his followers proposed to respect private property, “only to meddle with what is common and untilled, and make it fruitful,” but they hoped “that the time will suddenly be when all men shall willingly come in and give up their lands and estates, and submit to this Community of Goods.” 8 Fairfax released the men as harmless fanatics. One of them, Gerrard Winstanley, continued the movement with a manifesto (April 26, 1649) entitled The True Leveller’s Standard Advanced: “In the beginning the great Creator Reason made the earth a common treasury for beasts and men”; but then man, falling into blindness, became a greater slave to his own kind than the beasts of the field to him; the earth was bought and sold and hedged in by rulers, and was kept in the possession of a few. All landlords are thieves. Only when common ownership is restored will crime and hatred cease. 9 In The Law of Freedom (1652) Winstanley begged the Commonwealth to establish a society in which there would be no buying or selling, no lawyers, no rich or poor; all to be compelled to work till forty, then to be absolved from toil; the franchise to be open to all adult males; marriage to be a civil ceremony, and divorce to be free. 10 The Diggers abandoned their scheme, but their propaganda entered into the memory of the English poor, and perhaps crossed the Channel to France and the sea to America.

  Cromwell, himself a property owner and well versed in the nature of man, put no trust in these ideals of common ownership, or even of adult suffrage. In the confusion inevitable after the violent overthrow of a government, some centralized authority was needed, and Cromwell supplied it. Many who hated him as a regicide welcomed for a time a dictatorship that seemed the sole alternative to social and political dissolution. And even the army, when it heard that counterrevolution was brewing in Ireland and Scotland, was glad that his iron hand was ready to lead it against rebels who sought not a democratic utopia, but a restored and vengeful monarchy.

  II. THE IRISH REVOLT

  In Ireland the reaction against the Great Rebellion united transiently the Protestants of the Pale and the Catholics in it and beyond. Even before the execution of Charles I James Butler, Earl of Ormonde, as lord lieutenant in Ireland, signed a treaty with the Confederate Catholics at Kilkenny (January 17, 1649), by which, in return for religious freedom and an independent Irish Parliament, they agreed to furnish him with fifteen thousand infantry and five hundred horse. Ormonde sent a message to the Prince of Wales, whom he immediately recognized as Charles II, inviting him to come to Ireland and lead a combined army of Protestants and Catholics. Charles chose to go to Scotland, but Cromwell decided to meet the Irish threat first.

  When he landed at Dublin in August, Ormonde had already been defeated at Rathmines by troops adhering to the Commonwealth, and had retreated with his remaining 2,300 men into the fortified town of Drogheda on the Boyne. Cromwell besieged it with ten thousand soldiers, took it by storm (September 10, 1649), and ordered all the surviving garrison killed. 11 Some civilians were included in the massacre; every priest in the town was slain; 12 altogether some 2,300 died in this triumphant slaughter. Cromwell shared the credit with God: “I wish that all honest hearts may give the glory of this to God, to whom indeed the praise of this mercy belongs.” 13 He hoped that “this bitterness will save much effusion of blood, through the goodness of God”; 14 and we may allow his sincere belief that one such act of terror would quickly end the rebellion and save many lives on both sides.

  But the war continued for three years. From Drogheda Cromwell passed to the siege of Wexford; it was soon taken; fifteen hundred of its defenders and inhabitants were slain; “God, by an unexpected providence in His righteous justice,” reported Cromwell, “brought a just judgment upon them . . . with their bloods to answer the cruelties which they had exercised upon the lives of divers poor Protestants.” 15 The policy of massacre failed. The towns of Duncannon and Waterford defied Cromwell’s siege; Kilkenny surrendered only after receiving terms that elsewhere had been refused; Clonmel was taken, but after a loss of two thousand men. Hearing that Charles II had reached Scotland, Cromwell left the further prosecution of the Irish war to his son-in-law Henry Ireton, and sailed to England (May 24, 1650).

  Ireton was an able leader, but he died of plague on November 26, 1651. The policy of massacre was abandoned, pardon was offered to the rebels, and by the Articles of Kilkenny (May 12, 1652) nearly all of them surrendered on condition of being allowed to emigrate unhindered. An “Act for the Settling of Ireland” (August 12) confiscated part or all of th
e property of Irishmen—of whatever faith—who could not prove that they had been loyal to the Commonwealth; in this way 2,500,000 acres of Irish soil were transferred to English or Irish soldiers or civilians who had supported Cromwell in Ireland; two thirds of the soil of Ireland passed into the hands of Englishmen. 16 The counties of Kildare, Dublin, Carlow, Wicklow, and Wexford were formed into a new English Pale, and an attempt was made to exclude from them all Irish proprietors, then all Irishmen. Thousands of Irish families were dispossessed, and were given until March 1, 1655, to find other homes. Hundreds were shipped to Barbados or elsewhere on a charge of vagrancy.

  Sir William Petty calculated that out of a total population of 1,466,000 in Ireland in 1641, 616,000 had perished by 1652, by war, starvation or plague. In some counties, said an English officer, “a man might travel twenty or thirty miles and not see a living creature, either man or beast or bird.” “The sun,” said another, “never shined upon a nation so completely miserable.” 17 The Catholic religion was outlawed; all Catholic clergymen were ordered to leave Ireland within twenty days; to harbor a priest was made punishable by death; severe penalties were decreed for absence from Protestant services on Sunday; magistrates were authorized to take away the children of Catholics and send them to England for education in the Protestant faith. 18 All the inhumanity that was to be visited by Catholics upon the Protestants of France in 1680–90 was visited by Protestants upon the Catholics of Ireland in 1650–60. Catholicism became an inseparable part of Irish patriotism because the Church and the people were fused in a community of suffering. Those bitter years remained in Irish memory as an undying heritage of hate.