Thus, at the beginning of Louis xiv.’s reign, France was the first country in Europe, the richest, most splendid, and the best governed. For if Louis was absolute he was just, and no nobleman went unpunished if he broke the laws, any more than if he were a commoner. At the same time the King appointed great ministers like Colbert for the well-being of the land. The people were very proud of their King and their country; the government was immensely popular. France was now a new splendour, a State such as had not been seen before.
Yet the long reign of Louis xiv. ended in disaster and unpopularity. Any proud monarch must make war, and extend his dominion; otherwise he feels he has not asserted himself. So first Louis claimed the Netherlands from Spain. After a hundred and fifty years of power and richness, Spain was already crumbling to go to pieces. She could not resist the superb armies of the Grand Monarch.
But then, fearing the aggressions of Louis, England, Holland, and Sweden joined in with Spain, and Louis gave way. Then came war with Holland. William of Orange, who became William III. of England, was called in by the Dutch to take charge. He cut the dykes, made alliance with Spain, Brandenburg, and then England. Charles II. of England had pledged himself to help Louis, but the English people forced him to change sides. Yet France added to her territories. In 1684 Louis forced the Diet of Ratisbon to allow him to annex large portions of Alsace and Lorraine, though Germany was very angry. But Europe was war-weary, and France was master.
In 1688 came the English Revolution, when James II. fled and was received by Louis at the palace of St. Germain, near Paris. So great was the fear of France in Europe, that William of Orange succeeded in allying all the great powers against her; first England joined with Holland and the Emperor, then Brandenburg and Spain came in, then even Sweden and Denmark. Yet the war was dull, like a great siege, the allies trying to break the frontiers of France, so splendidly fortified by Vauban. France won practically every battle she engaged in, and took every place she besieged, and yet, at the end of nine years she had spent such vast sums of money and was so hard pressed financially, that Louis had to sign the Peace of Ryswick in 1697, yielding some of his advantages, and allowing William III. to remain on the throne of England. This last was much against the will of Louis, who hated Protestants and was cousin of James II.
The last great war was the War of the Spanish Succession.
The crown of Spain was left to Louis’ grandson, Philip. Louis now considered Spain and France as one great realm. England, Holland, the Empire, and the Electorate of Brandenburg, which last took in 1700 the title of Kingdom of Prussia, at once formed an alliance in opposition. France seemed very strong, with her fine armies and organisation. But Spain had sunk into such a low, confused condition, that she was like a dead body bound to the living body of France.
The war raged in the Netherlands, in Italy, in Milan, and in Spain. Then for a while the French Protestants of the Cevennes rose in fierce insurrection against their Catholic oppressors. In 170t Marlborough and Prince Eugene inflicted one of the most crushing defeats, at Blenheim, that France has ever suffered. The tide of war flowed wholly against Louis. Gibraltar fell into the hands of the English. When at last peace was made at Utrecht in 1713 France was terribly exhausted, financially almost ruined, and quite cast down from her pre-eminence in Europe. The French people now began to turn against the Crown. Fenelon declared that Louis in his absolutist policy ‘ had impoverished France, and that he had built his throne on the ruin of all classes in the State.’
Louis was now a very old man. He had come to the throne in 1643, when he was only five years of age. His reign had seen Charles I. executed in England, had seen the end of the Commonwealth, the death of Charles II., the flight of James II., the reign and death of William III., and the death of Queen Anne. And now, disaster overtook him at home. His son died, then his grandson, and then even his great-grandson, who was in direct line of succession. The only heir was now a child of two years. If he were to die, there would be dreadful confusion. Striving to settle the regency for the succession, the old king died, in 1715.
And so we see the old order of mediaeval Europe is at last changed. Supreme emperors and popes have fallen, nations have arisen. But the life of a nation no longer consists in war and power. Its real purpose is in its productive work. War becomes a recognised evil instead of a highly esteemed way to glory. The pride and danger of peace takes the place of the pride of war. Money begins to arrogate the privileges of birth.
Chapter XVI. The French Revolution
When the Grand Monarch died in 1715 France was already very badly impoverished, far more by wars than by any extravagance of the court of Versailles. Louis spent great sums on his splendid palaces and magnificent way of life. But this would not have ruined France. Reckless war destroyed the prosperity of the country, and after that, careless management.
A strong monarchy has two purposes: first, to increase the prosperity of the nation, to make manufacturers and cultivators richer, so that there is plenty of work and sufficient wages for the poor; and secondly, to satisfy the pride and stiffen the sinews of the nation by active war. The king is the war-lord, it is he who leads on in pride and glory; whilst in Louis’ time the minister Colbert attended to the productive prosperity of the nation.
It is a difficult matter to balance a kingdom between material prosperity and strenuous war and glory. The pursuit of glory is an expensive business; but if a people seeks nothing but commercial or material success, then the nation becomes spiritless and fat. Louis xiv. and Louis xv. became too conceited, they forgot that they were enthroned upon the nation’s prosperity. This is the secret of the Grand Monarch’s failure in his old age. All the glory centred in the King. Louis xv. was so vain that he felt himself to be the very Sun of France. No matter what happened, so long as kingly glory shone out the court and government were satisfied. But to keep this glory shining the country had to sweat out its very blood. The blazing sun of France blazed too brightly. The monarchy was a sunflower which exhausted its own leaves and stem and root, and so fell.
During the reign of Louis xv. the debt of France increased enormously. In 1723 the old Cardinal Fleury became minister, and managed well, keeping good financial understanding with Walpole in England. War broke out, and France gained Lorraine. But it was the last real gain of the monarchy.
The War of the Austrian Succession set Europe in arms. The reign of commerce was at hand. The nations of Europe were like business houses, all in competition. All nations were determined that no one nation should become strong enough to command more than its due share of trade and production. This led to a very shaky balance of power. France and Prussia went against England and Austria.
Prussia was the new state in Europe, and Frederick the Great was Europe’s finest war-leader. Both Prussia and France did well in the war. France defeated the English heavily at Fontenoy, in 1745. And yet her government was so weak, that when the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelie came in 1748, France had to let go all she had conquered. The nerve was gone out of the government.
The colonial jealousy of France and England brought on the Seven Years War. This time Prussia went with England, against France and Austria. The mismanagement in France was terrible. Armies were not properly equipped, never ready at the right time; they did not know what to do when they were ready. Unhappy France under her sun-king seemed as if she could find not one good statesman, not one capable general. All was mediocre and muddled, whereas Prussia had the brilliant Frederick in command, and England had her great minister Pitt. Canada was utterly lost to France, and India as good as lost. In Europe the French Army was hopelessly beaten by Frederick at Rossbach, in 1757. When the Peace of Paris was signed in 1763 France was stripped and ashamed.
All this time the gaudy King Louis xv. went on in his foolish splendours and dissipation. He knew what was happening, but he flicked his jewelled fingers, and said with a smile, ‘ After me, the Deluge.’ He knew the flood of ruin was at hand. But he gaily did not care, so lo
ng as it did not rise until he was departed.
The French Parlement, or corporation of hereditary lawyers, now began to raise its head. It forced Louis to suppress the intriguing Jesuits in France, in 1764. Then it quarrelled with him about his edicts of taxation. He was vexed. One day the famous Madame du Barry, who was the King’s mistress for the time being, determined to move her foolish royal lover. She was sitting with him in one of the gorgeous rooms in Versailles. On the wall hung a fine portrait of Charles I. of England, related to the French through his Queen, Henrietta Maria. ‘ Do you see him? ‘ said Du Barry, pointing to the sad, handsome face of Charles. ‘ Your Parlement will have your head off too.’ So the woman made the King very angry against his interfering lawyers. He arrested the most important members of the court, exiled them, and banished the Parlement for ever.
Louis xv. died at last in 1774, after a long reign during which the court had glittered, chiefly with women, and the nation had sunk into shame and poverty. Louis xvi. was different. Kind, good-natured, moral, and filled with the best intentions, he would have liked to govern the nation for prosperity. But it was too late. The good king must suffer for the extravagant. Moreover, Louis xvi. was a little stupid, and his wife, the Austrian Marie Antoinette, was both clever and proud. If Louis xv. had been managed by his mistresses, Louis xvi. was a good deal under the influence of his wife. And the indirect rule of women was bad for France. The King of France was the most absolute monarch in Europe, to be compared only with the Sultan of Turkey. And in France as in Turkey, women or woman ruled the King more often than not, and the nation went to pieces.
Although the nobles were not much more than brilliant butterllies at court, on their own estates they had a good deal of power. They and the clergy paid no taxes — or very little — and yet they were the rich, great landowners. Towns also, because of merchants, were lightly taxed. It was the peasants, those vast numbers of peasants of Gaul, who, because they could not resist, were forced to pay for everything.
The nobles and great landowners divided their land into small lots, little separate farms. Thus little holdings descended from father to son, in the same family of peasants. The peasant paid a half or a third of his produce, corn, wine, cattle, to the lord of the manor, and did certain forced work, as of old. There were no big farms, except, perhaps, the manor farm itself, attached to the chateau. The Englishman, Arthur Young, who travelled in France just before the Revolution, said that this dividing the land into so many little farms, little fields, was wasteful, and led to bad farming.
Many little farmers owned their own farms. But even these were not free. They had to do certain service for the overlord; they must give him a certain number of chickens or sheep, or have their corn ground at his mill, or their grapes crushed in his wine-press, and pay his charges. Then the clouds of pigeons and other game could feed on the crops; rabbits, hares, deer might eat the young corn; and the poor peasant was not allowed to shoot one pigeon nor one rabbit, and he could claim no compensation from the nobleman. All this was very irritating.
The chief tax was the Taille, a tax on houses and land- property of the unprivileged. As soon as a house was repaired and smartened up, or as soon as the land was in good condition, the commissioner came round and raised the tax. But the grand chateaux and parks belonging to the lord paid no taxes, they were in splendid repair, whilst the villages became squalid, the land was left poverty- stricken on purpose, in order to warrant a low taxation. The people hated the Taille. The next was the Gabelle, the salt tax. The State sold all salt, the price was fixed, and every individual, man, woman, and child was forced to buy a certain amount of salt each year. The third tax was the Corvec. Men were summoned to perform a certain amount of forced labour on government roads, or government buildings, for which they were not paid. It is estimated that in some districts the French peasant paid fifty- five per cent, of all he earned to the government: that is, if he managed to earn thirty shillings a week for himself and his family, he had to pay fifteen and sixpence to the tax collector. Meanwhile the nobles were squandering their thousands at Versailles, and paying nothing.
Therefore the peasants were very angry. The parish priests sympathised with them, though the bishops were with the Crown, just as in the old days. And yet the French peasants were perhaps better off than those of Poland, or Spain, or South Germany, and they had far more liberty. But France was alive and angry, these other States were passive, sluggish. It was not so much the suffering that roused France to her Revolution, though there was much suffering, inevitably. It was rather the angry spirit of men who have had a splendid past, which has collapsed, and who now want a future of their own. It was the anger of men who feel that their lives have been used to support folly and extravagance.
The old ways were coming to an end. In every country men were thinking new thoughts, demanding more freedom. In Germany, England, France, and America great writers began to speak out, giving their new ideas. There was a great reaction against glorious kings, a great dislike of the powers that be. Greatness was out of fashion. The educated men looked back to Greece and Rome, the republics of the past. They detested empire and personal authority, and despised the Middle Ages, the Age of Faith. They began to question religion altogether: they would have no authority, neither divine nor human, imposed on them. They wanted to act just according to their own reason; they wanted two and two to make four exactly.
In Luther’s time, men were passionately interested in religious writings. But never perhaps have new books had such a great influence as they had in the middle and later eighteenth century. It has been called the Age of Reason, the very opposite of the Age of Faith. Voltaire (1694-1778) particularly hated the compulsory belief in religion. He said a man should believe what seemed to him sensible, he should not be forced to swallow extraordinary facts just because the Church bade him do so. Montesquieu (1689-1755), in his great book The Spirit of Laws, showed how he thought a government should be constituted. He had a great admiration for the English institutions, and when the Americans came to form a government for themselves, they learned muoh from his book. The man who had most influence, however, was Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778). He believed in a return to nature, and in an innocent enjoyment of everything in nature. He passionately preached the rights of man. His little book, The Social Contract, has been called the Bible of the Revolution. It begins: ‘ Man is born free, but we find him everywhere in chains.’ It then goes on to say that governments should be made by the people, for themselves, that there is no divine right of kings, and that contracts with monarchs are not binding. The people should have a right to overthrow any government they do not agree with; and then, when they have really set up a government of their own, it should be all- powerful. This book had a tremendous effect. Thousands of people could reel off from it passages which they had got by heart almost unawares.
Louis xvi., the last king of the Ancient Regime, as it is called, really sympathised to some extent with those new ideas. He wanted to make things better in France. So he appointed a good minister, Turgot. But the butterfly court intrigued against Turgot, and the King had to dismiss him.
In 1773 the colonists of North America, after the affair called the Boston Tea Party, declared a cessation of commercial intercourse with England. In 1775 the first blood was shed at Lexington; and in July 4, 1776, the American Declaration of Independence was signed, which was the beginning of a new world.
France watched all this closely. She herself had been driven from America by the English. So the French Crown readily gave help to the Americans. Benjamin Franklin was honourably received at court, and treated with great consideration and respect for years, whilst he resided in France negotiating large sums of money which were paid to him by Louis xvi.’s minister to help the new states in their young independence. Since this time America has always felt a great friendliness towards France, who helped her in her first days against England.
But the French people, though they gloried in their
triumph over the English in the war, were still more excited by the founding of the far-off new republic. It was an act which struck their imagination and kindled the desire of their hearts. They thought it marvellous to have no kings, for men to be their own rulers.
Although the war was successful, it was costly, and France could not afford it. The minister Necker decided as the minister Turgot had decided, that the privileged classes, nobles and clergy and wealthy burghers, must be taxed. The whole court turned against him, and in 1784 he retired before a storm of opposition.
The King had now to borrow money at a ruinous interest, to carry on the government. Then he tried to impose taxes on all classes, by issuing royal edicts. It was what the other kings had done. But the Parlement of Paris, which he had revived conscientiously when he came to the throne, immediately opposed him, and the masses of the people were with the Parlement. There was now a weak king and a strong, hostile nation. A general cry arose, that the Estates General, the genuine old French parliament, must be summoned, and all classes represented in that real parliament. But the Estates General had not met for a hundred and seventy years, and nobody was very clear as to how it should meet and what it should do if it did meet. Yet the French nation was bent on having a parliament which they themselves had chosen.
So Louis agreed to summon the Estates General, and he restored Necker. The King was now very popular, the crowds sang his praises. But there was immediate squabbling. The people claimed to have as many representatives in their Commons as the nobles and clergy had in both their upper chambers put together: for the Estates General had three chambers for the three classes. The “nobles opposed this. The King, on Necker’s advice, decided for the people. There was a further rage of controversy, as to how the votes should be counted. If the chambers voted separately, and every question was decided by a majority of chambers, then nobles with clergy could easily outvote the people all the time: whilst if individual votes were counted the people, sure of some support from the clergy, would inevitably carry the day.
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 914