A Popular History of France from the Earliest Times Volume V Part 17

France was the gainer of Artois and Roussillon, and of several places in Flanders, Hainault, and Luxembourg; and the peace of Westphalia was recognized by Spain, to whom France restored all that she held in Catalonia and in Franche-Comte. Philip IV. had refused to include Portugal in the treaty. The Infanta received as dowry five hundred thousand gold crowns, and renounced all her rights to the throne of Spain; the Prince of Conde was taken back to favor by the king, and declared that he would fain redeem with his blood all the hostilities he had committed in and out of France. The king restored him to all his honors and dignities, gave him the government of Burgundy, and bestowed on his son, the Duke of Enghien, the office of Grand Master of France.

The honor of the King of Spain was saved, he did not abandon his allies, and he made a great match for his daughter. But the eyes of Europe were not blinded; it was France that triumphed; the policy of Cardinal Richelieu and of Cardinal Mazarin was everywhere successful. The work of Henry IV. was completed, the house of Austria was humiliated and vanquished in both its branches; the man who had concluded the peace of Westphalia and the peace of the Pyrenees had a right to say, "I am more French in heart than in speech."

The Prince of Conde returned to court, "as if he had never gone away,"

says Mdlle. de Montpensier. [_Memoires,_ t. iii. p. 451.] "The king talked familiarly with him of all that he had done both in France and in Flanders, and that with as much gusto as if all those things had taken place for his service." "The prince discovered him to be so great in every point that, from the first moment at which he could approach him, he comprehended, as it appeared, that the time had come to humble himself. That genius for sovereignty and command which G.o.d had implanted in the king, and which was beginning to show itself, persuaded the Prince of Conde that all which remained of the previous reign was about to be annihilated." [_Memoires de Madame de Motteville,_ t. v. p. 39.] From that day King Louis XIV. had no more submissive subject than the great Conde.

The court was in the South, travelling from town to town, pending the arrival of the dispensations from Rome. On the 3d of June, 1660, Don Louis de Haro, in the name of the King of France, espoused the Infanta in the church of Fontfrabia. Mdlle. de Montpensier made up her mind to be present, unknown to anybody, at the ceremony. When it was over, the new queen, knowing that the king's cousin was there, went up to her, saying, "I should like to embrace this fair unknown," and led her away to her room, chatting about everything, but pretending not to know her. The queen-mother and King Philip IV. met next day, on the Island of Pheasants, after forty-five years' separation. The king had come privately to have a view of the Infanta, and he watched her, through a door ajar, towering a whole head above the courtiers. "May I, ask my niece what she thinks of this unknown?" said Anne of Austria to her brother. "It will be time when she has pa.s.sed that door," replied the king. Young Monsieur, the king's brother, leaned forward towards his sister-in-law, and, "What does your Majesty think of this door?" he whispered. "I think it very nice and handsome," answered the young queen. The king had thought her handsome, "despite the ugliness of her head-dress and of her clothes, which had at first taken him by surprise."

King Philip IV. kept looking at M. de Turenne, who had accompanied the king. "That man has given me dreadful times," he repeated twice or thrice. "You can judge whether M. de Turenne felt himself offended,"

says Mdlle. de Montpensier. The definitive marriage took place at Saint-Jean-de-Luz on the 9th of June, and the court took the road leisurely back to Vincennes. Scarcely had the arrival taken place, when all the sovereign bodies sent a solemn deputation to pay their respects to Cardinal Mazarin and thank him for the peace he had just concluded.

It was an unprecedented honor, paid to a minister upon whose head the Parliament had but lately set a price. The cardinal's triumph was as complete at home as abroad; all foes had been reduced to submission or silence, Paris and France rejoicing over the peace and the king's marriage; but, like Cardinal Richelieu, Mazarin succ.u.mbed at the very pinnacle of his glory and power; the gout, to which he was subject, flew to his stomach, and he suffered excruciating agonies. One day, when the king came to get his advice upon a certain matter, "Sir," said the cardinal, "you are asking counsel of a man who no longer has his reason and who raves." He saw the approach of death calmly, but not unregretfully. Concealed, one day, behind a curtain in the new apartments of the Mazarin Palace (now the National Library), young Brienne heard the cardinal coming. "He dragged his slippers along like a man very languid and just recovering from some serious illness. He paused at every step, for he was very feeble; he fixed his gaze first on one side and then on the other, and letting his eyes wander over the magnificent objects of art he had been all his life collecting, he said, 'All that must be left behind!' And, turning round, he added, 'And that too! What trouble I have had to obtain all these things! I shall never see them more where I am going.'" He had himself removed to Vincennes, of which he was governor. There he continued to regulate all the affairs of state, striving to initiate the young king in the government.

"n.o.body," Turenne used to say, "works so much as the cardinal, or discovers so many expedients with great clearness of mind for the terminating of much business of different sorts." The dying minister recommended to the king MM. Le Tellier and de Lionne, and he added, "Sir, to you I owe everything; but I consider that I to some extent acquit myself of my obligation to your Majesty by giving you M. Colbert." The cardinal, uneasy about the large possessions he left, had found a way of securing them to his heirs by making, during his lifetime, a gift of the whole of them to the king. Louis XIV. at once returned it. The minister had lately placed his two nieces, the Princess of Conti and the Countess of Soissons, at the head of the household of two queens; he had married his niece, Hortensia Mancini, to the Duke of La Meilleraye, who took the t.i.tle of Duke of Mazarin. The father of this duke was the relative and protege of Cardinal Richelieu, for whom Mazarin had always preserved a feeling of great grat.i.tude. It was to him and his wife that he left the remainder of his vast possessions, after having distributed amongst all his relatives liberal bequests to an enormous amount. The pictures and jewels went to the king, to Monsieur, and to the queens. A considerable sum was employed for the foundation and endowment of the _College des Quatre Nations (now the Palais de l'Inst.i.tut),_ intended for the education of sixty children of the four provinces re-united to France by the treaties of Westphalia and the Pyrenees, Alsace, Roussillon, Artois, and Pignerol. The cardinal's fortune was estimated at fifty millions.

Mazarin had scarcely finished making his final dispositions when his malady increased to a violent pitch. "On the 5th of March, forty hours'

public prayers were ordered in all the churches of Paris, which is not generally done except in the case of kings," says Madame de Motteville.

The cardinal had sent for M. Jolt, parish-priest of St. Nicholas des Champs, a man of great reputation for piety, and begged him not to leave him. "I have misgivings about not being sufficiently afraid of death,"

he said to his confessor. He felt his own pulse himself, muttering quite low, "I shall have a great deal more to suffer." The king had left him on the 7th of March, in the evening. He did not see him again and sent to summon the ministers. Already the living was taking the place of the dying, with a commencement of pomp and circ.u.mstance which excited wonder at the changes of the world. "On the 9th, between two and three in the morning, Mazarin raised himself slightly in his bed, praying to G.o.d and suffering greatly; then he said aloud, 'Ah holy Virgin, have pity upon me; receive my soul,' and so he expired, showing a fair front to death up to the last moment." The queen-mother had left her room for the last two, days, because it was too near that of the dying man. "She wept less than the king," says Madame de Motteville, "being more disgusted with the creatures of his making by reason of the knowledge she had of their imperfections, insomuch that it was soon easy to see that the defects of the dead man would before long appear to her greater than they had yet been in her eyes, for he did not content himself with exercising sovereign power over the whole realm, but he exercised it over the sovereigns themselves who had given it him, not leaving them liberty to dispose of anything of any consequence." [_Memoires de Madame de Motteville,_ t. v. p. 103.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Death of Mazarin.----399]

Louis XIV. was about to reign with a splendor and puissance without precedent; his subjects were submissive and Europe at peace; he was reaping the fruits of the labors of his grandfather Henry IV., of Cardinal Richelieu, and of Cardinal Mazarin. Whilst continuing the work of Henry IV. Richelieu had rendered possible the government of Mazarin; he had set the kingly authority on foundations so strong that the princes of the blood themselves could not shake it. Mazarin had destroyed party and secured to France a glorious peace. Great minister had succeeded great king, and able man great minister; Italian prudence, dexterity, and finesse had replaced the indomitable will, the incomparable judgment, and the grandeur of view of the French priest and n.o.bleman. Richelieu and Mazarin had accomplished their patriotic work: the king's turn had come.

CHAPTER XLIV.----LOUIS XIV., HIS WARS AND HIS CONQUESTS. 1661-1697.

Cardinal Mazarin on his death-bed had given the young king this advice: "Manage your affairs yourself, sir, and raise no more premier ministers to where your bounties have placed me; I have discovered, by what I might have done against your service, how dangerous it is for a king to put his servants in such a position." Mazarin knew thoroughly the king whose birth he had seen. "He has in him the making of four kings and one honest man," he used to say. Scarcely was the minister dead, when Louis XIV. sent to summon his council: Chancellor Seguier, Superintendent Fouquet, and Secretaries of State Le Tellier, de Lionne, Brienne, Duplessis-Gueneguaud, and La Vrilliere. Then, addressing the chancellor, "Sir," said he, "I have had you a.s.sembled together with my ministers and my secretaries of state to tell you that until now I have been well pleased to leave my affairs to be governed by the late cardinal; it is time that I should govern them myself; you will aid me with your counsels when I ask for them. Beyond the general business of the seal, in which I do not intend to make any alteration, I beg and command you, Mr. Chancellor, to put the seal of authority to nothing without my orders and without having spoken to me thereof, unless a secretary of state shall bring them to you on my behalf. . . . And for you, gentlemen,"

addressing the secretaries of state, "I warn you not to sign anything, even a safety-warrant or pa.s.sport, without my command, to report every day to me personally, and to favor n.o.body in your monthly rolls. Mr.

Superintendent, I have explained to you my intentions; I beg that you will employ the services of M. Colbert, whom the late cardinal recommended to me."

The king's councillors were men of experience; and they, all recognized the master's tone. From timidity or respect, Louis XIV. had tolerated the yoke of Mazarin, not, however, without impatience and in expectation of his own turn. [_Portraits de la Cour, Archives curieuses,_ t. viii.

p. 371.] "The cardinal," said he one day, "does just as he pleases, and I put up with it because of the good service he has rendered me, but I shall be master in my turn;" and he added, "the king my grandfather did great things, and left some to do; if G.o.d gives me grace to live twenty years longer, perhaps I may do as much or more." G.o.d was to grant Louis XIV. more time and power than he asked for, but it was Henry IV.'s good fortune to maintain his greatness at the sword's point, without ever having leisure to become intoxicated with it. Absolute power is in its nature so unwholesome and dangerous that the strongest mind cannot always withstand it. It was Louis XIV.'s misfortune to be king for seventy-two years, and to reign fifty-six as sovereign master.

"Many people made up their minds," says the king in his _Memoires_ [t. ii. p. 392], "that my a.s.siduity in work was but a heat which would soon cool; but time showed them what to think of it, for they saw me constantly going on in the same way, wishing to be informed of all that took place, listening to the prayers and complaints of my meanest subjects, knowing the number of my troops and the condition of my fortresses, treating directly with foreign ministers, receiving despatches, making in person part of the replies and giving my secretaries the substance of the others, regulating the receipts and expenditures of my kingdom, having reports made to myself in person by those who were in important offices, keeping my affairs secret, distributing graces according to my own choice, reserving to myself alone all my authority, and confining those who served me to a modest position very far from the elevation of premier ministers."

The young king, from the first, regulated his life and his time: "I laid it down as a law to myself," he says in his _Instructions au Dauphin,_ "to work regularly twice a day. I cannot tell you what fruit I reaped immediately after this resolution. I felt myself rising as it were both in mind and courage; I found myself quite another being; I discovered in myself what I had no idea of, and I joyfully reproached myself for having been so long ignorant of it. Then it dawned upon me that I was king, and was born to be."

A taste for order and regularity was natural to Louis XIV., and he soon made it apparent in his councils. "Under Cardinal Mazarin, there was literally nothing but disorder and confusion; he had the council held whilst he was being shaved and dressed, without ever giving anybody a seat, not even the chancellor or Marshal Villeroy, and he was often chattering with his linnet and his monkey all the time he was being talked to about business. After Mazarin's death the king's council a.s.sumed a more decent form. The king alone was seated, all the others remained standing, the chancellor leaned against the bedrail, and M. de Lionne upon the edge of the chimney-piece. He who was making a report placed himself opposite the king, and, if he had to write, sat down on a stool which was at the end of the table where there was a writing-desk and paper." [_Histoire de France,_ by Le P. Daniel, t. xvi. p. 89.] "

I will settle this matter with your Majesty's ministers," said the Portuguese amba.s.sador one day to the young king. "I have no ministers, Mr. Amba.s.sador," replied Louis XIV.; "you mean to say my men of business."

Long habituation to the office of king was not destined to wear out, to exhaust, the youthful ardor of King Louis XIV. He had been for a long while governing, when he wrote, "You must not imagine, my son, that affairs of state are like those obscure and th.o.r.n.y pa.s.sages in the sciences which you will perhaps have found fatiguing, at which the mind strives to raise itself, by an effort, beyond itself, and which repel us quite as much by their, at any rate apparent, uselessness as by their difficulty. The function of kings consists princ.i.p.ally in leaving good sense to act, which always acts naturally without any trouble. All that is most necessary in this kind of work is at the same time agreeable; for it is, in a word, my son, to keep an open eye over all the world, to be continually learning news from all the provinces and all nations, the secrets of all courts, the temper and the foible of all foreign princes and ministers, to be informed about an infinite number of things of which we are supposed to be ignorant, to see in our own circle that which is most carefully hidden from us, to discover the most distant views of our own courtiers and their most darkly cherished interests which come to us through contrary interests, and, in fact, I know not what other pleasure we would not give up for this, even if it were curiosity alone that caused us to feel it." [_Memoires de Louis XIV.,_ t. ii. p. 428.]

At twenty-two years of age, no more than during the rest of his life, was Louis XIV. disposed to sacrifice business to pleasure, but he did not sacrifice pleasure to business. It was on a taste so natural to a young prince, for the first time free to do as he pleased, that Superintendent Fouquet counted to increase his influence and probably his power with the king. "The attorney-general [Fouquet was attorney-general in the Parliament of Paris], though a great thief, will remain master of the others," the queen-mother had said to Madame de Motteville at the time of Mazarin's death. Fouquet's hopes led him to think of nothing less than to take the minister's place.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fouquet----404]

Fouquet, who was born in 1615, and had been superintendent of finance in conjunction with Servien since 1655, had been in sole possession of that office since the death of his colleague in 1659. He had faithfully served Cardinal Mazarin through the troubles of the Fronde. The latter had kept him in power in spite of numerous accusations of malversation and extravagance. Fouquet, however, was not certain of the cardinal's good faith; he bought Belle-Ile to secure for himself a retreat, and prepared, for his personal defence, a mad project which was destined subsequently to be his ruin. From the commencement of his reign, the counsels of Mazarin on his death-bed, the suggestions of Colbert, the first observations made by the king himself, irrevocably ruined Fouquet in the mind of the young monarch. Whilst the superintendent was dreaming of the ministry and his friends calling him _the Future,_ when he was preparing, in his castle of Vaux-le-Vicomte, an entertainment in the king's honor at a cost of forty thousand crowns, Louis XIV., in concert with Colbert, had resolved upon his ruin. The form of trial was decided upon. The king did not want to have any trouble with the Parliament; and Colbert suggested to Fouquet the idea of ridding himself of his office of attorney-general. Achille de Harlay bought it for fourteen hundred thousand livres; a million in ready money was remitted to the king for his Majesty's urgent necessities; the superintendent was buying up everybody, even the king.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Colbert----405]

On the 17th of August, 1661, the whole court thronged the gardens of Vaux, designed by Le Netre; the king, whilst admiring the pictures of Le Brun, the _Facheux_ of Moliere represented that day for the first time, and the gold and silver plate which enc.u.mbered the tables, felt his inward wrath redoubled. "Ah! Madame," he said to the queen his mother, "shall not we make all these fellows disgorge?" He would have had the superintendent arrested in the very midst of those festivities, the very splendor of which was an accusation against him. Anne of Austria, inclined in her heart to be indulgent towards Fouquet, restrained him.

"Such a deed would scarcely be to your honor, my son," she said; "everybody can see that this poor man is ruining himself to give you good cheer, and you would have him arrested in his own house!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: Vaux le Vicomte----405a]

"I put off the execution of my design," says Louis XIV. in his Memoires, "which caused me incredible pain, for I saw that during that time he was practising new devices to rob me. You can imagine that at the age I then was it required my reason to make a great effort against my feelings in order to act with so much self-control. All France commended especially the secrecy with which I had for three or four months kept a resolution of that sort, particularly as it concerned a man who had such special access to me, who had dealings with all that approached me, who received information from within and from without the kingdom, and who, of himself, must have been led by the voice of his own conscience to apprehend everything." Fouquet apprehended and became rea.s.sured by turns; the king, he said, had forgiven him all the disorder which the troubles of the times and the absolute will of Mazarin had possibly caused in the finances. However, he was anxious when he followed Louis XIV. to Nantes, the king being about to hold an a.s.sembly of the states of Brittany. "Nantes, Belle-Ile! Nantes, Belle-Ile!" he kept repeating.

On arriving, Fouquet was ill and trembled as if he had the ague; he did not present himself to the king.

On the 5th of September, in the evening, the king himself wrote to the queen-mother: "My dear mother, I wrote you word this morning about the execution of the orders I had given to have the superintendent arrested; you know that I have had this matter for a long while on my mind, but it was impossible to act sooner, because I wanted him first of all to have thirty thousand crowns paid in for the marine, and because, moreover, it was necessary to see to various matters which could not be done in a day; and you cannot imagine the difficulty I had in merely finding means of speaking in private to D'Artagnan. I felt the greatest impatience in the world to get it over, there being nothing else to detain me in this district.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Louis XIV. dismissing Fouquet----407]

At last, this morning, the superintendent having come to work with me as usual, I talked to him first of one matter and then of another, and made a show of searching for papers, until, out of the window of my closet, I saw D'Artagnan in the castle-yard; and then I dismissed the superintendent, who, after chatting a little while at the bottom of the staircase with La Feuillade, disappeared during the time he was paying his respects to M. Le Tellier, so that poor D'Artagnan thought he had missed him, and sent me word by Maupertuis that he suspected that somebody had given him warning to look to his safety; but he caught him again in the place where the great church stands, and arrested him for me about midday. They put the superintendent into one of my carriages, followed by my musketeers, to escort him to the castle of Angers, whilst his wife, by my orders, is off to Limoges. . . . I have told those gentlemen who are here with me that I would have no more superintendents, but myself take the work of finance in conjunction with faithful persons who will do nothing without me, knowing that this is the true way to place myself in affluence and relieve my people. During the little attention I have as yet given thereto, I observed some important matters which I did not at all understand. You will have no difficulty in believing that there have been many people placed in a great fix; but I am very glad for them to see that I am not such a dupe as they supposed, and that the best plan is to hold to me."

Three years were to roll by before the end of Fouquet's trial. In vain had one of the superintendent's valets, getting the start of all the king's couriers, shown sense enough to give timely warning to his distracted friends; Fouquet's papers were seized, and very compromising they were for him as well as for a great number of court-personages, of both s.e.xes. Colbert prosecuted the matter with a rigorous justice that looked very like hate; the king's self-esteem was personally involved in procuring the condemnation of a minister guilty of great extravagances and much irregularity rather than of intentional want of integrity.

Public feeling was at first so greatly against the superintendent that the peasants shouted to the musketeers told off to escort him from Angers to the Bastille, "No fear of his escaping; we would hang him with our own hands." But the length and the harshness of the proceedings, the efforts of Fouquet's family and friends, the wrath of the Parliament, out of whose hands the case had been taken in favor of carefully chosen commissioners, brought about a great change; of the two prosecuting counsel (_conseillers rapporteurs_), one, M. de Sainte-Helene, was inclined towards severity; the other, Oliver d'Ormesson, a man of integrity and courage, thought of nothing but justice, and treated with contempt the hints that reached him from the court. Colbert took the trouble one day to go and call upon old M. d'Ormesson, the counsel's father, to complain of the delays that the son, as he said, was causing in the trial: "It is very extraordinary," said the minister, "that a great king, feared throughout Europe, cannot finish a case against one of his own subjects." "I am sorry," answered the old gentleman, "that the king is not satisfied with my son's conduct; I know that he practises what I have always taught him,--to fear G.o.d, serve the king, and render justice without respect of persons. The delay in the matter does not depend upon him; he works at it night and day, without wasting a moment."

Oliver d'Ormesson lost the stewardship of Soissonness, to which he had the t.i.tular right, but he did not allow himself to be diverted from his scrupulous integrity. Nay, he grew wroth at the continual attacks of Chancellor Seguier, more of a courtier than ever in his old age, and anxious to finish the matter to the satisfaction of the court. "I told many of the Chamber," he writes, "that I did not like to have the whip applied to me every morning, and that the chancellor was a sort of chastiser I would not put up with." [_Journal d' Oliver d' Ormesson,_ t. ii. p. 88.]

Fouquet, who claimed the jurisdiction of the Parliament, had at first refused to answer the interrogatory; it was determined to conduct his case "as if he were dumb," but his friends had him advised not to persist in his silence. The courage and presence of mind of the accused more than once embarra.s.sed his judges. The ridiculous scheme which had been discovered behind a looking-gla.s.s in Fouquet's country-house was read; the instructions given to his friends in case of his arrest seemed to foreshadow a rebellion; Fouquet listened, with his eyes bent upon the crucifix. "You cannot be ignorant that this is a state-crime," said the chancellor. "I confess that it is outrageous, sir," replied the accused; "but it is not a state-crime. I entreat these gentlemen," turning to the judges, "to kindly allow me to explain what a state-crime is. It is when you hold a chief office, when you are in the secrets of your prince, and when, all at once, you range yourself on the side of his enemies, enlist all your family in the same interest, cause the pa.s.ses to be given up by your son-in-law, and the gates to be opened to a foreign army, so as to introduce it into the heart of the kingdom. That, gentlemen, is what is called a state-crime." The chancellor could not protest; n.o.body had forgotten his conduct during the Fronde. M. d'Ormesson summed up for banishment, and confiscation of all the property of the accused; it was all that the friends of Fouquet could hope for. M. de Sainte-Helene summed up for beheadal. "The only proper punishment for him would be rope and gallows," exclaimed M. Pussort, the most violent of the whole court against the accused; "but, in consideration of the offices he has held, and the distinguished relatives he has, I relent so far as to accept the opinion of M. de Sainte-Helene." "What say you to this moderation?" writes Madame de Sevigne to M. de Pomponne, like herself a faithful friend of Fouquet's: "it is because he is Colbert's uncle, and was objected to, that he was inclined for such handsome treatment. As for me, I am beside myself when I think of such infamy. . . . You must know that M. Colbert is in such a rage that there is apprehension of some atrocity and injustice which will drive us all to despair. If it were not for that, my poor dear sir, in the position in which we now are, we might hope to see our friend, although very unfortunate, at any rate with his life safe, which is a great matter."

"Pray much to your G.o.d and entreat your judges," was the message sent to Mesdames Fouquet by the queen-Snother, "for, so far as the king is concerned, there is nothing to be expected." "If he is sentenced, I shall leave him to die," proclaimed Louis XIV. Fouquet was not sentenced; the court declared for the view of Oliver d'Ormesson. "Praise G.o.d, sir, and thank Him," wrote Madame de Sevigne, on the 20th of December, 1664, "our poor friend is saved; it was thirteen for M.

d'Ormesson's summing-up, and nine for Sainte-He1ene's. It will be a long while before I recover from my joy; it is really too overwhelming; I can hardly restrain it. The king changes exile into imprisonment, and refuses him permission to see his wife, which is against all usage; but take care not to abate one jot of your joy; mine is increased thereby, and makes me see more clearly the greatness of our victory." Fouquet was taken to Pignerol, and all his family were removed from Paris. He died piously in his prison, in 1680, a year before his venerable mother, Marie Maupeou, who was so deeply concerned about her son's soul at the very pinnacle of greatness, that she threw herself upon her knees on hearing of his arrest, and exclaimed, I thank thee, O G.o.d; I have always prayed for his salvation, and here is the way to it!" Fouquet was guilty; the bitterness of his enemies and the severities of the king have failed to procure his acquittal from history any more than from his judges.

Even those who, like Louis XIV. and Colbert, saw the canker in the state, deceived themselves as to the resources at their disposal for the cure of it; the punishment of the superintendent and the ruin of the farmers of taxes (traitants) might put a stop for a while to extravagances; the powerful hand of Colbert might re-establish order in the finances, found new manufactures, restore the marine, and protect commerce; but the order was but momentary, and the prosperity superficial, as long as the sovereign's will was the sole law of the state. Master as he was over the maintenance of peace in Europe, after so many and such long periods of hostility, young Louis XIV. was only waiting for an opportunity of recommencing war. " The resolutions I had in my mind seemed to me very worthy of execution," he says: "my natural activity, the ardor of my age, and the violent desire I felt to augment my reputation, made me very impatient to be up and doing; but I found at this moment that love of glory has the same niceties, and, if I may say so, the same timidities, as the most tender pa.s.sions; for, the more ardent I was to distinguish myself, the more apprehensive I was of failing, and, regarding as a great misfortune the shame which follows the slightest errors, I intended, in my conduct, to take the most extreme precautions."

The day of reverses was farther off from Louis XIV. than that of errors.

G.o.d had vouchsafed him incomparable instruments for the accomplishment of his designs. Whilst Colbert was replenishing the exchequer, all the while diminishing the imposts, a younger man than the king himself, the Marquis of Louvois, son of Michael Le Tellier, admitted to the council at twenty years of age, was eagerly preparing the way for those wars which were nearly always successful so long as he lived, however insufficient were the reasons for them, however unjust was their aim.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Louvois----411]

Foreign affairs were in no worse hands than the administration of finance and of war. M. de Lionne was an able diplomatist, broken in for a long, time past to important affairs, shrewd and sensible, more celebrated amongst his contemporaries than in history, always falling into the second rank, behind Mazarin or Louis XIV., "who have appropriated his fame," says M. Mignet. The negotiations conducted by M. de Lionne were of a delicate nature. Louis XIV. had never renounced the rights of the queen to the succession in Spain. King Philip IV. had not paid his daughter's dowry, he said; the French amba.s.sador at Madrid, the Archbishop of Embrun, was secretly negotiating to obtain a revocation of Maria Theresa's renunciation, or, at the very least, a recognition of the right of devolution over the Catholic Low Countries. This strange custom of Hainault secured to the children of the first marriage succession to the paternal property, to the exclusion of the offspring of the second marriage. Louis XIV. claimed the application of it to the advantage of the queen his wife, daughter of Elizabeth of France. "It is absolutely necessary that justice should sooner or later be done the queen, as regards the rights that may belong to her, or that I should try to exact it myself," wrote Louis XIV. to the Archbishop of Embrun. This justice and these rights were, sooth to say, the pivot of all the negotiations and all the wars of King Louis XIV. "I cannot, all in a moment, change from white to black all the ancient maxims of this crown,"

said the king. He obtained no encouragement from Spain, and he began to make preparations, in antic.i.p.ation, for war.

In this view and with these prospects, he needed the alliance of the Hollanders. Shattered as it had been by the behavior of the United Provinces at the Congress of Munster and by their separate peace with Spain, the friendship between the States General and France had been re-soldered by the far-sighted policy of John Van Witt, grand pensionary of Holland, and preponderant, with good right, in the policy of his country. Bold and prudent, courageous and wise, he had known better than anybody how to estimate the true interests of Holland, and how to maintain them everywhere, against Cromwell as well as Mazarin, with high-spirited moderation. His great and cool judgment had inclined him towards France, the most useful ally Holland could have. In spite of the difficulties put in the way of their friendly relations by Colbert's commercial measures, a new treaty was concluded between Louis XIV. and the United Provinces. "I am informed from a good quarter," says a letter to John van Witt from his amba.s.sador at Paris, Boreel, June 8, 1662, "that his Majesty makes quite a special case of the new alliance between him and their High Mightinesses, which he regards as his own particular work. He expects great advantages from it as regards the security of his kingdom and that of the United Provinces, which, he says, he knows to have been very affectionately looked upon by Henry the Great and he desires that, if their High Mightinesses looked upon his ancestor as a father, they should love him from this moment as a son, taking him for their best friend and princ.i.p.al ally." A secret negotiation was at the same time going on between John van Witt and Count d'Estrades, French amba.s.sador in Holland, for the formation and protection of a Catholic republic in the Low Countries, according to Richelieu's old plan, or for part.i.tion between France and the United Provinces. John van Witt was anxious to act; but Louis XIV. seemed to be keeping himself hedged, in view of the King of Spain's death, feeling it impossible, he said, with propriety and honor, to go contrary to the faith of the treaties which united him to his father-in-law. "That which can be kept secret for some time cannot be forever, nor be concealed from posterity," he said to Count d'Estrades, in a private letter: "any how, there are certain things which are good to do and bad to commit to writing." An understanding was come to without any writing. Louis XIV. well understood the n.o.ble heart and great mind with which he had to deal, when he wrote to Count d'Estrades, April 20, 1663, "It is clear that G.o.d caused M. de Witt to be born [in 1632] for great things, seeing that, at his age, he has already for many years deservedly been the most considerable person in his state; and I believe, too, that my having obtained so good a friend in him was not a simple result of chance, but of Divine Providence, who is thus early arranging the instruments of which He is pleased to make use for the glory of this crown, and for the advantage of the United Provinces.

The only complaint I make of him is, that, having so much esteem and affection as I have for his person, he will not be kind enough to let me have the means of giving him some substantial tokens of it, which I would do with very great joy." Louis XIV. was not accustomed to meet, at foreign courts, with the high-spirited disinterestedness of the burgess-patrician, who, since the age of five and twenty, had been governing the United Provinces.

Thus, then, it was a case of strict partnership between France and Holland, and Louis XIV. had remained faithful to the policy of Henry IV.

and Richelieu when Philip IV. died, on the 17th of September, 1665.

Almost at the same time the dissension between England and Holland, after a period of tacit hostility, broke out into action. The United Provinces claimed the aid of France.

Close ties at that time united France and England. Monsieur, the king's only brother, had married Henrietta of England, sister of Charles II.

The King of England, poor and debauched, had scarcely been restored to the throne when he sold Dunkerque to France for five millions of livres, to the great scandal of Cromwell's old friends, who had but lately helped Turenne to wrest it from the Spaniards. "I knew without doubt that the aggression was on the part of England," writes Louis XIV. in his Memoires, "and I resolved to act with good faith towards the Hollanders, according to the terms of my treaty: but as I purposed to terminate the war on the first opportunity, I resolved to act towards the English as handsomely as could be, and I begged the Queen of England, who happened to be at that time in Paris, to signify to her son that, with the singular regard I had for him, I could not without sorrow form the resolution which I considered myself bound by the obligation of my promise to take; for, at the origin of this war, I was persuaded that he had been carried away by the wishes of his subjects farther than he would have been by his own, insomuch that, between ourselves, I thought I had less reason to complain of him than for him. It is certain that this subordination which places the sovereign under the necessity of receiving the law from his people is the worst calamity that can happen to a man of our rank. I have pointed out to you elsewhere, my son, the miserable condition of princes who commit their people and their own dignity to the management of a premier minister; but it is little beside the misery of those who are left to the indiscretion of a popular a.s.sembly; the more you grant, the more they claim; the more you caress, the more they despise; and that which is once in their possession is held by so many arms that it cannot be wrenched away without an extreme amount of violence." In his compa.s.sion for the misery of the king of a free country, Louis XIV. contented himself with looking on at the desperate engagements between the English and the Dutch fleets. Twice the English destroyed the Dutch fleet under the orders of Admiral van Tromp. John van Witt placed himself at the head of the squadron. "Tromp has courage enough to fight," he said, "but not sufficient prudence to conduct a great action. The heat of battle is liable to carry officers away, confuse them, and not leave them enough independence of judgment to bring matters to a successful issue. That is why I consider myself bound by all the duties of manhood and conscience to be myself on the watch, in order to set bounds to the impetuosity of valor when it would fain go too far." The resolution of the grand pensionary and the skill of Admiral Ruyter, who was on his return from an expedition in Africa, restored the fortunes of the Hollanders; their vessels went and offered the English battle at the very mouth of the Thames. The French squadron did not leave the Channel. It was only against the Bishop of Munster, who had just invaded the Dutch territory, that Louis XIV. gave his allies effectual aid; M. de Turenne marched against the troops of the bishop, who was forced to retire, in the month of April, 1666. Peace was concluded at Breda, between England and Holland, in the month of July, 1667. Louis XIV. had not waited for that moment to enter Flanders.

Everything, in fact, was ready for this great enterprise: the regent of Spain, Mary Anne of Austria, a feeble creature, under the thumb of one Father Nithard, a Jesuit, had allowed herself to be sent to sleep by the skilful manoeuvres of the Archbishop of Embrun; she had refused to make a treaty of alliance with England and to recognize Portugal, to which Louis XIV. had just given a French queen, by marrying Mdlle. de Nemours to King Alphonso VI. The league of the Rhine secured to him the neutrality, at the least, of Germany; the emperor was not prepared for war; Europe, divided between fear and favor, saw with astonishment Louis XIV. take the field in the month of May, 1667. "It is not," said the manifesto sent by the king to the court of Spain, "either the ambition of possessing new states, or the desire of winning glory by arms, which inspires the Most Christian King with the design of maintaining the rights of the queen his wife; but would it not be shame for a king to allow all the privileges of blood and of law to be violated in the persons of himself, his wife, and his son? As king, he feels himself obliged to prevent this injustice; as master, to oppose this usurpation; and, as father, to secure the patrimony to his son. He has no desire to employ force to open the gates, but he wishes to enter, as a beneficent sun, by the rays of his love, and to scatter everywhere, in country, towns, and private houses, the gentle influences of abundance and peace, which follow in his train."

To secure the gentle influences of peace, Louis XIV. had collected an army of fifty thousand men, carefully armed and equipped under the supervision of Turenne, to whom Louvois as yet rendered docile obedience.

There was none too much of this fine army for recovering the queen's rights over the duchy of Brabant, the marquisate of Antwerp, Limburg, Hainault, the countship of Namur, and other territories. "Heaven not having ordained any tribunal on earth at which the Kings of France can demand justice, the Most Christian King has only his own arms to look to for it," said the manifesto. Louis XIV. set out with M. de Turenne.

Marshal Crequi had orders to observe Germany.

The Spaniards were taken unprepared: Armentieres, Charleroi, Douai, and Tournay had but insufficient garrisons, and they fell almost without striking a blow. Whilst the army was busy with the siege of Courtray, Louis XIV. returned to Compiegne to fetch the queen. The whole court followed him to the camp. "All that you have read about--the magnificence of Solomon and the grandeur of the King of Persia, is not to be compared with the pomp that attends the king in his expedition," says a letter to Bussy-Rabutin from the Count of Coligny. "You see pa.s.sing along the streets nothing but plumes, gold-laced uniforms, chariots, mules superbly harnessed, parade-horses, housings with embroidery of fine gold." "I took the queen to Flanders," says Louis XIV., "to show her to the peoples of that country, who received her, in point of fact, with all the delight imaginable, testifying their sorrow at not having had more time to make preparations for receiving her more befittingly." The queen's quarters were at Courtrai. Marshal Turenne had moved on Dendermonde, but the Flemings had opened their sluices; the country was inundated; it was necessary to fall back on Audenarde; the town was taken in two days; and the king, still attended by the court, laid siege to Lille. Vauban, already celebrated as an engineer, traced out the lines of circ.u.mvallation; the army of M. de Crequi formed a junction with that of Turenne; there was expectation of an attempt on the part of the governor of the Low Countries to relieve the place; the Spanish force sent for that purpose arrived too late, and was beaten on its retreat; the burgesses of Lille had forced the garrison to capitulate; and Louis XIV. entered it on the 27th of August, after ten days' open trenches. On the 2d of September, the king took the road back to St. Germain; but Turenne still found time to carry the town of Alost before taking up his winter-quarters.