A Popular History of France from the Earliest Times Volume V Part 22

In spite of all the mistakes due to his past arrogance, the king had a right to make use of such language. In their short-sighted resentment the allies had overstepped reason. The young King of Spain felt this when he wrote to his grandfather, "I am transfixed at the chimerical and insolent pretensions of the English and Dutch regarding the preliminaries of peace; never were seen the like. I am beside myself at the idea that anybody could have so much as supposed that I should be forced to leave Spain as long as I have a drop of blood in my veins. I will use all my efforts to maintain myself upon a throne on which G.o.d has placed me, and on which you, after Him, have set me, and nothing but death shall wrench me from it or make me yield it." War re-commenced on all sides. The king had just consented at last to give Chamillard his discharge. "Sir, I shall die over the job," had for a long time been the complaint of the minister worn out with fatigue. "Ah! well, we will die together," had been the king's rejoinder.

France was dying, and Chamillard was by no means a stranger to the cause.

Louis XIV. put in his place Voysin, former superintendent of Hainault, entirely devoted to Madame de Maintenon. He loaded with benefits the minister from whom he was parting, the only one whom he had really loved.

The troops were dest.i.tute of everything. On a.s.suming the command of the army of the Low Countries, Villars wrote in despair, "Imagine the horror of seeing an army without bread! There was none delivered to-day until the evening, and very late. Yesterday, to have bread to serve out to the brigades I had ordered to march, I made those fast that remained behind.

On these occasions I pa.s.s along the ranks, I coax the soldier, I speak to him in such a way as to make him have patience, and I have had the consolation of hearing several of them say, 'The marshal is quite right; we must suffer sometimes.' '_Panem nostrum quotidianum da n.o.bis hodie_'

(give us this day our daily bread), the men say to me as I go through the ranks; it is a miracle how we subsist, and it is a marvel to see the steadiness and fort.i.tude of the soldier in enduring hunger; habit is everything; I fancy, however, that the habit of not eating is not easy to acquire."

In spite of such privations and sufferings, Villars found the army in excellent spirits, and urged the king to permit him to give battle.

"M. de Turenne used to say that he who means to altogether avoid battle gives up his country to him who appears to seek it," the marshal a.s.sured him; the king was afraid of losing his last army; the Dukes of Harcourt and Berwick were covering the Rhine and the Alps; Marlborough and Prince Eugene, who had just made themselves masters of Tournay, marched against Villars, whom they encountered on the 11th of September, 1709, near the hamlet of Malplaquet. Marshal Boufflers had just reached the army to serve as a volunteer. Villars had intrenched himself in front of the woods; his men were so anxious to get under fire, that they threw away the rations of bread just served out; the allies looked sulkily at the works. "We are going to fight moles again," they said.

There was a thick fog, as at Lutzen; the fighting went on from seven in the morning till midday. Villars had yielded the right wing, by way of respect, to Bouffiers as his senior, says the allies' account, but the general command nevertheless devolved entirely upon him. "At the hottest of the engagement, the marshal galloped furiously to the centre attacked by Prince Eugene. It was a sort of jaws of h.e.l.l, a pit of fire, sulphur, and saltpetre, which it seemed impossible to approach and live. One shot and my horse fell," says Villars. "I jumped up, and a second broke my knee; I had it bandaged on the spot, and myself placed in a chair to continue giving my orders, but the pain caused a fainting-fit which lasted long enough for me to be carried off without consciousness to Quesnoy." The Prince of Hesse, with the imperial cavalry, had just turned the intrenchments, which the Dutch infantry had attacked to no purpose; Marshal Boufflers was obliged to order a retreat, which was executed as on parade. "The allies had lost more than twenty thousand men," according to their official account. "It was too much for this victory, which did not entail the advantage of entirely defeating the enemy, and the whole fruits of which were to end with the taking of Mons." Always a braggart, in spite of his real courage and indisputable military talent, Villars wrote from his bed to the king, on sending him the flags taken from the enemy, "If G.o.d give us grace to lose such another battle, your Majesty may reckon that your enemies are annihilated." Boufflers was more proud, and at the same time more modest, when he said, "The series of disasters that have for some years past befallen your Majesty's arms, had so humiliated the French nation that one scarcer dared avow one's self a Frenchman. I dare a.s.sure you, sir, that the French name was never in so great esteem, and was never perhaps more feared, than it is at present in the army of the allies."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Bivouac of Louis XIV.----503]

Louis XIV. was no longer in a position to delude himself, and to celebrate a defeat, even a glorious one, as a victory. Negotiations recommenced. Heinsius had held to his last proposals. It was on this sorry basis that Marshal d'Huxelles and Abbe de Polignac began the parleys, at Gertruydenberg, a small fortress of Mardyk. They lasted from March 9 to July 25, 1710; the king consented to give some fortresses as guarantee, and promised to recommend his grandson to abdicate; in case of refusal, he engaged not only to support him no longer, but to furnish the allies, into the bargain, with a monthly subsidy of a million, whilst granting a pa.s.sage through French territory; he accepted the cession of Elsa.s.s to Lothringen, the return of the three bishoprics to the empire; the, Hollanders, commissioned to negotiate in the name of the coalition, were not yet satisfied. "The desire of the allies," they said, "is, that the king should undertake, himself alone and by his own forces, either to persuade or to oblige the King of Spain to give up all his monarchy.

Neither money nor the co-operation of the French troops suit their purpose; if the preliminary articles be not complied with in the s.p.a.ce of two months, the truce is broken off, war will recommence, even though on the part of the king the other conditions should have been wholly fulfilled. The sole means of obtaining peace is to receive from the king's hands Spain and the Indies."

The French plenipotentiaries had been recommended to have patience.

Marshal d'Huxelles was a courtier as smooth as he was clever; Abbe de Polignac was shrewd and supple, yet he could not contain his indignation.

"It is evident that you have not been accustomed to conquer!" said he haughtily to the Dutch delegates. When the allies' ultimatum reached the king, the pride of the sovereign and the affection of the father rose up at last in revolt. "Since war there must be," said he, "I would rather wage it against my enemies than against my grandson;" and he withdrew all the concessions which had reduced Philip V. to despair. The allies had already invaded Artois; at the end of the campaign they were masters of Douai, St. Venant, Bethune, and Aire; France was threatened everywhere, the king could no longer protect the King of Spain; he confined himself to sending him Vendome. Philip V., sustained by the indomitable courage of his young wife, refused absolutely to abdicate. "Whatever misfortunes may await me," he wrote to the king, "I still prefer the course of submission to whatever it may please G.o.d to decide for me by fighting to that of deciding for myself by consenting to an arrangement which would force me to abandon the people on whom my reverses have hitherto produced no other effect than to increase their zeal and affection for me."

It was, therefore, with none but the forces of Spain that Philip V., at the outset of the campaign of 1710, found himself confronting the English and Portuguese armies. The Emperor Joseph, brother of Archduke Charles, had sent him a body of troops commanded by a distinguished general, Count von Stahrenberg. Going from defeat to defeat, the young king found himself forced, as in 1706, to abandon his capital; he removed the seat of government to Valladolid, and departed, accompanied by more than thirty thousand persons of every rank, resolved to share his fortunes.

The archduke entered Madrid. "I have orders from Queen Anne and the allies to escort King Charles to Madrid," said the English general, Lord Stanhope; when he is once there, G.o.d or the devil keep him in or turn him out; it matters little to me; that is no affair of mine."

Stanhope was in the right not to pledge himself; the hostility of the population of Madrid did not permit the archduke to reside there long; after running the risk of being carried off in his palace on the Prado, he removed to Toledo; Vendome blocked the road against the Portuguese; the archduke left the town, and withdrew into Catalonia; Stahrenberg followed him on the 22d of November, hara.s.sed on his march by the Spanish guerrillas rising everywhere upon his route; every straggler, every wounded man, was infallibly murdered by the peasants; Stanhope, who commanded the rearguard, found himself invested by Vendome in the town of Brihuega; the Spaniards scarcely gave the artillery time to open a breach, the town was taken by a.s.sault, and the English made prisoners.

Stahrenberg retraced his steps; on the 10th of December fighting began near Villaviciosa; the advantage was for a long time undecided and disputed; night came; the Austrian general spiked his guns and retreated by forced marches; the Spaniards bivouacked on the battle-field, the king slept on a bed made of the enemy's flags; the allies had taken refuge in Catalonia; Spain had won back her independence and her king. There was great joy at Versailles, greater than in the kingdom; the sole aspiration was for peace.

An unexpected a.s.sistance was at hand. Queen Anne, wearied with the cupidity and haughtiness of the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess of Marlborough, had given them notice to quit; the friends of the duke had shared his fall, and the Tories succeeded the Whigs in power. The chancellor of the exchequer, Harley, soon afterwards Earl of Oxford, and the secretary of state, St. John, who became Lord Bolingbroke, were inclined to peace.

Advances were made to France. A French priest, Abbe Gautier, living in obscurity in England, arrived in Paris during January, 1711; he went to see M. de Torcy at Versailles. "Do you want peace?" said he. "I have come to bring you the means of treating for it, and concluding independently of the Hollanders, unworthy of the king's kindnesses and of the honor he has so often done them of applying to them to pacificate Europe." "To ask just then one of his Majesty's ministers if he desired peace," says Torcy, "was to ask a sick man suffering from a long and dangerous disease if he wants to be cured." Negotiations were secretly opened with the English cabinet. The Emperor Joseph had just died (April 17, 1711). He left none but daughters. From that moment Archduke Charles inherited the domains of the house of Austria, and aspired to the imperial crown; by giving him Spain, Europe re-established the monarchy of Charles V.; she saw the dangers into which she was being drawn by the resentments or short-sighted ambition of the triumvirate; she fell back upon the wise projects of William III. Holland had abandoned them; to England fell the honor of making them triumphant. She has often made war upon the Continent with indomitable obstinacy and perseverance; but at bottom and by the very force of circ.u.mstances England remains, as regards the affairs of Europe, an essentially pacific power. War brings her no advantage; she cannot pretend to any territorial aggrandizement in Europe; it is the equilibrium between the continental powers that makes her strength, and her first interest was always to maintain it.

The campaign of 1711 was everywhere insignificant. Negotiations were still going on with England, secretly and through subordinate agents: Manager, member of the Board of Trade, for France; and, for England, the poet Prior, strongly attached to Harley. On the 29th of January, 1712, the general conferences were opened at Utrecht. The French had been anxious to avoid the Hague, dreading the obstinacy of Heinsius in favor of his former proposals. Preliminary points were already settled with England; enormous advantages were secured in America to English commerce, to which was ceded Newfoundland and all that France still possessed in Acadia; the general proposals had been accepted by Queen Anne and her ministers. In vain had the Hollanders and Prince Eugene made great efforts to modify them; St. John had dryly remarked that England had borne the greatest part in the burden of the war, and it was but just that she should direct the negotiations for peace. For five years past the United Provinces, exhausted by the length of hostilities, had constantly been defaulters in their engagements; it was proved to Prince Eugene that the imperial army had not been increased by two regiments in consequence of the war the emperor's amba.s.sador, M. de Galas, displayed impertinence: he was forbidden to come to the court; in spite of the reserve imposed upon the English ministers by the strife of parties in a free country, their desire for peace was evident. The queen had just ordered the creation of new peers in order to secure a majority of the upper house in favor of a pacific policy.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Grand Dauphin----505]

The bolts of Heaven were falling one after another upon the royal family of France. On the 14th of April, 1711, Louis XIV. had lost by small-pox his son, the grand dauphin, a mediocre and submissive creature, ever the most humble subject of the king, at just fifty years of age. His eldest son, the Duke of Burgundy, devout, austere, and capable, the hope of good men and the terror of intriguers, had taken the rank of dauphin, and was seriously commencing his apprenticeship in government, when he was carried off on the 18th of February, 1712, by spotted fever (_rougeole pourpree_), six days after his wife, the charming Mary Adelaide of Savoy, the idol of the whole court, supremely beloved by the king, and by Madame de Maintenon, who had brought her up; their son, the Duke of Brittany, four years old, died on the 8th of March; a child in the cradle, weakly and ill, the little Duke of Anjou, remained the only shoot of the elder branch of the Bourbons. Dismay seized upon all France; poison was spoken of; the Duke of Orleans was accused; it was necessary to have a post mortem examination; only the hand of G.o.d had left its traces. Europe in its turn was excited. If the little Duke of Anjou were to die, the crown of France reverted to Philip V. The Hollanders and the amba.s.sadors of the Emperor Charles VI. recently crowned at Frankfurt, insisted on the necessity of a formal renunciation. In accord with the English ministers, Louis XIV. wrote to his grandson,--

"You will be told what England proposes, that you should renounce your birthright, retaining the monarchy of Spain and the Indies, or renounce the monarchy of Spain, retaining your rights to the succession in France, and receiving in exchange for the crown of Spain the kingdoms of Sicily and Naples, the states of the Duke of Savoy, Montferrat, and the Mantuan, the said Duke of Savoy succeeding you in Spain; I confess to you that, notwithstanding the disproportion in the dominions, I have been sensibly affected by the thought that you would continue to reign, that I might still regard you as my successor, sure, if the dauphin lives, of a regent accustomed to command, capable of maintaining order in my kingdom and stifling its cabals. If this child were to die, as his weakly complexion gives too much reason to suppose, you would enjoy the succession to me following the order of your birth, and I should have the consolation of leaving to my people a virtuous king, capable of commanding them, and one who, on succeeding me, would unite to the crown states so considerable as Naples, Savoy, Piedmont, and Montferrat. If grat.i.tude and affection towards your subjects are to you pressing reasons for remaining with them, I may say that you owe me the same sentiments; you owe them to your own house, to your own country, before Spain. All that I can do for you is to leave you once more the choice, the necessity for concluding peace becoming every day more urgent."

The choice of Philip V. was made; he had already written to his grandfather to say that he would renounce all his rights of succession to the throne of France rather than give up the crown of Spain. This decision was solemnly enregistered by the Cortes. The English required that the Dukes of Berry and Orleans should, likewise make renunciation of their rights to the crown of Spain. Negotiations began again, but war began again at the same time as the negotiations.

The king had given Villars the command of the army of Flanders. The marshal went to Marly to receive his last orders. "You see my plight, marshal," said Louis XIV. "There are few examples of what is my fate--to lose in the same week a grandson, a grandson's wife and their son, all of very great promise and very tenderly beloved. G.o.d is punishing me; I have well deserved it. But suspend we my griefs at my own domestic woes, and look we to what may be done to prevent those of the kingdom. If anything were to happen to the army you command, what would be your idea of the course I should adopt as regards my person?" The marshal hesitated. The king resumed: "This is what I think; you shall tell me your opinion afterwards. I know the courtiers' line of argument; they nearly all wish me to retire to Blois, and not wait for the enemy's army to approach Paris, as it might do if mine were beaten. For my part, I am aware that armies so considerable are never defeated to such an extent as to prevent the greater part of mine from retiring upon the Somme. I know that river; it is very difficult to cross; there are forts, too, which could be made strong. I should count upon getting to Peronne or St.

Quentin, and there ma.s.sing all the troops I had, making a last effort with you, and falling together or saving the kingdom; I will never consent to let the enemy approach my capital. [_Memoires de Villars, t. ii. p. 362.]"

G.o.d was to spare Louis XIV. that crowning disaster reserved for other times; in spite of all his defaults and the culpable errors of his life and reign, Providence had given this old man, overwhelmed by so many reverses and sorrows, a truly royal soul, and that regard for his own greatness which set him higher as a king than he would have been as a man. "He had too proud a soul to descend lower than his misfortunes had brought him," says Montesquieu, "and he well knew that courage may right a crown and that infamy never does." On the 25th of May, the king secretly informed his plenipotentiaries as well as his generals that the English were proposing to him a suspension of hostilities; and he added, "It is no longer a time for flattering the pride of the Hollanders, but, whilst we treat with them in good faith, it must be with the dignity that becomes me." "A style different from that of the conferences at the Hague and Gertruydenberg," is the remark made by M. de Torcy. That which the king's pride refused to the ill will of the Hollanders he granted to the good will of England. The day of the commencement of the armistice Dunkerque was put as guarantee into the hands of the English, who recalled their native regiments from the army of Prince Eugene; the king complained that they left him the auxiliary troops; the English ministers proposed to prolong the truce, promising to treat separately with France if the allies refused a.s.sent to the peace. The news received by Louis XIV. gave him a.s.surance of better conditions than any one had dared to hope for.

Villars had not been able to prevent Prince Eugene from becoming master of Quesnoy on the 3d of July; the imperialists were already making preparations to invade France; in their army the causeway which connected Marchiennes with Landrecies was called the Paris road. The marshal resolved to relieve Landrecies, and, having had bridges thrown over the Scheldt, he, on the 23d of July, 1712, crossed the river between Bouchain and Denain; the latter little place was defended by the Duke of Albemarle, son of General Monk, with seventeen battalions of auxiliary troops in the pay of the allies; Lieutenant General Albergotti, an experienced soldier, considered the undertaking perilous. "Go and lie down for an hour or two, M. d'Albergotti," said Villars; "to-morrow by three in the morning you shall know whether the enemy's intrenchments are as strong as you suppose." Prince Eugene was coming up by forced marches to relieve Denain, by falling on the rearguard of the French army. It was proposed to Villars to make fascines to fill up the fosses of Denain.

"Do you suppose," said he, pointing to the enemy's army in the distance, "that those gentry will give us the time? Our fascines shall be the bodies of the first of our men who fall in the fosse."

"There was not an instant, not a minute to lose," says the marshal in his Memoires. "I made my infantry march on four lines in the most beautiful order; as I entered the intrenchment at the head of the troops, I had not gone twenty paces when the Duke of Albemarle and six or seven of the emperor's lieutenant generals were at my horse's feet. I begged them to excuse me if present matters did not permit me to show them all the politeness I ought, but that the first of all was to provide for the safety of their persons." The enemy thought of nothing but flight; the bridges over the Scheldt broke down under the mult.i.tude of vehicles and horses; nearly all the defenders of Denain were taken or killed. Prince Eugene could not cross the river, watched as it was by French troops; he did not succeed in saving Marchiennes, which the Count of Broglie, had been ordered to invest in the very middle of the action in front of Denain; the imperialists raised the siege of Landrecies, but without daring to attack Villars, re-enforced by a few garrisons; the marshal immediately invested Douai; on the 27th of August, the emperor's troops who were defending one of the forts demanded a capitulation; the officers who went out asked for a delay of four days, so as to receive orders from Prince Eugene; the marshal, who was in the trenches, called his grenadiers. "This is my council on such occasions," said he to the astonished imperialists. "My friends, these captains demand four days'

time to receive orders from their general; what do you think?" "Leave it to us, marshal," replied the grenadiers; "in a quarter of an hour we will slit their windpipes." "Gentlemen," said I to the officers, "they will do as they have said; so take your own course." The garrison surrendered at discretion. Douai capitulated on the 8th of September; Le Quesnoy was taken on the 4th of October, and Bouchain on the 18th; Prince Eugene had not been able to attempt anything; he fell back under the walls of Brussels. On the Rhine, on the Alps, in Spain, the French and Spanish armies had held the enemy in check. The French plenipotentiaries at Utrecht had recovered their courage. "We put on the face the Hollanders had at Gertruydenberg, and they put on ours," wrote Cardinal de Polignac from Utrecht: "it is a complete turning of the tables." "Gentlemen, peace will be treated for amongst you, for you and without you," was the remark made to the Hollanders. Hereditary adversary of the Van Witts and their party, Heinsius had pursued the policy of William III. without the foresight and lofty views of William Ill.; he had not seen his way in 1709 to shaking off the yoke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene in order to take the initiative in a peace necessary for Europe; in 1712 he submitted to the will of Harley and St. John, thus losing the advantages of the powerful mediatorial position which the United Provinces had owed to the eminent men successively intrusted with their government. Henceforth Holland remained a free and prosperous country, respected and worthy of her independence, but her political influence and importance in Europe were at an end. Under G.o.d's hand great men make great destinies and great positions for their country as well as for themselves.

The battle of Denain and its happy consequences hastened the conclusion of the negotiations; the German princes themselves began to split up; the King of Prussia, Frederic William I., who had recently succeeded his father, was the first to escape from the emperor's yoke. Lord Bolingbroke put the finishing stroke at Versailles to the conditions of a general peace; the month of April was the extreme limit fixed by England for her allies; on the 11th peace was signed between France, England, the United Provinces, Portugal, the King of Prussia, and the Duke of Savoy.

Louis XIV. recovered Lijle, Aire, Bethune, and St. Venant; he strengthened with a few places the barrier of the Hollanders; he likewise granted to the Duke of Savoy a barrier on the Italian slope of the Alps; he recognized Queen Anne, at the same time exiling from France the Pretender James III., whom he had but lately proclaimed with so much flourish of trumpets, and he razed the fortifications of Dunkerque.

England kept Gibraltar and Minorca; Sicily was a.s.signed to the Duke of Savoy. France recognized the King of Prussia. The peace was an honorable and an unexpected one, after so many disasters the King of Spain held out for some time; he wanted to set up an independent princ.i.p.ality for the Princess des Ursins, _camerera mayor_ to the queen his wife, an able, courageous, and clever intriguer, all-powerful at court, who had done good service to the interests of France; he could not obtain any dismemberment of the United Provinces; and at last Philip V.

in his turn signed. The emperor and the empire alone remained aloof from the general peace. War recommenced in Germany and on the Rhine. Villars carried Spires and Kaiserlautern. He laid siege to Landau. His lieutenants were uneasy. "Gentlemen," said Villars, "I have heard the Prince of Conde say that the enemy should be feared at a distance and despised at close quarters." Landau capitulated on the 20th of August; on the 30th of September Villars entered Friburg; the citadel surrendered on the 13th of November; the imperialists began to make pacific overtures; the two generals, Villars and Prince Eugene, were charged with the negotiations.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Marshal Villars and Prince Eugene----512]

"I arrived at Rastadt on the 26th of November in the afternoon," writes Villars in his Memoires, "and the Prince of Savoy half an hour after me.

The moment I knew he was in the court-yard, I went to the top of the steps to meet him, apologizing to him on the ground that a lame man could not go down; we embraced with the feelings of an old and true friendship which long wars and various engagements had not altered." The two plenipotentiaries were headstrong in their discussions. "If we begin war again," said Villars, "where will you find money?" "It is true that we haven't any," rejoined the prince; "but there is still some in the empire." "Poor states of the empire!" I exclaimed; "your advice is not asked about beginning the dance; yet you must of course follow the leaders." Peace was at last signed on the 6th of March, 1714: France kept Landau and Fort Louis; she restored Spires, Brisach, and Friburg.

The emperor refused to recognize Philip V., but he accepted the status quo; the crown of Spain remained definitively with the house of Bourbon; it had cost men and millions enough; for an instant the very foundations of order in Europe had seemed to be upset; the old French monarchy had been threatened; it had recovered of itself and by its own resources, sustaining single-handed the struggle which was pulling down all Europe in coalition against it; it had obtained conditions which restored its frontiers to the limits of the peace of Ryswick; but it was exhausted, gasping, at wits' end for men and money; absolute power had obtained from national pride the last possible efforts, but it had played itself out in the struggle; the confidence of the country was shaken; it had been seen what dangers the will of a single man had made the nation incur; the tempest was already gathering within men's souls. The habit of respect, the memory of past glories, the personal majesty of Louis XIV. still kept up about the aged king the deceitful appearances of uncontested power and sovereign authority; the long decadence of his great-grandson's reign was destined to complete its ruin.

"I loved war too much," was Louis XIV.'s confession on his death bed.

He had loved it madly and exclusively; but this fatal pa.s.sion, which had ruined and corrupted France, had not at any rate remained infructuous.

Louis XIV. had the good fortune to profit by the efforts of his predecessors as well as of his own servants: Richelieu and Mazarin, Conde and Turenne, Luxembourg, Catinat, Vauban, Villars, and Louvois, all toiled at the same work; under his reign France was intoxicated with excess of the pride of conquest, but she did not lose all its fruits; she witnessed the conclusion of five peaces, mostly glorious, the last sadly honorable; all tended to consolidate the unity and power of the kingdom; it is to the treaties of the Pyrenees, of Westphalia, of Nimeguen, of Ryswick, and of Utrecht, all signed with the name of Louis XIV., that France owed Roussillon, Artois, Alsace, Flanders, and Franche-Comte. Her glory has more than once cost her dear; it has never been worth so much and such solid increment to her territory.

CHAPTER XLVI.----LOUIS XIV. AND HOME ADMINISTRATION.

It is King Louis XIV.'s distinction and heavy, burden in the eyes of history that it is, impossible to tell of anything in his reign without constantly recurring to himself. He had two ministers of the higher order, Colbert and Louvois; several of good capacity, such as Seignelay and Torcy; others incompetent, like Chamillard; he remained as much master of the administrators of the first rank as if they had been insignificant clerks; the home government of France, from 1661 to 1715, is summed up in the king's relations with his ministers.

"I resolved from the first not to have any premier minister," says Louis XIV. in his Memoires, "and not to leave to another the functions of king whilst I had nothing but the t.i.tle. But, on the contrary, I made up my mind to share the execution of my orders amongst several persons, in order to concentrate their authority in my own alone. I might have cast my eyes upon people of higher consideration than those I selected, but they seemed to me competent to execute, under me, the matters with which I purposed to intrust them. I did not think it was to my interest to look for men of higher standing, because, as I wanted above all things to establish my own reputation, it was important that the public should know, from the rank of those of whom I made use, that I had no intention of sharing my authority with them, and that they themselves, knowing what they were, should not conceive higher hopes than I wished to give them."

It has been said already that the court governed France in the reign of Louis XIV.; and what was, in fact, the court? The men who lived about the king, depending on, his favor, the source or arbiter of their fortunes. The great lords served in the army, with l.u.s.tre, when they bore the name of Conde, Turenne, or Luxembourg; but they never had any place amongst the king's confidential servants. "Luck, in spite of us, has as much to do as wisdom--and more--with the choice of our ministers,"

he says in his Memoires, "and, in respect of what wisdom may have to do therewith, genius is far more effectual than counsel." It was their genius which made the fortunes and the power of Louis XIV.'s two great ministers, Colbert and Louvois.

In advance, and on the faith of Cardinal Mazarin, the king knew the worth of Colbert. "I had all possible confidence in him," says he, "because I knew that he had a great deal of application, intelligence, and probity."

Rough, reserved, taciturn, indefatigable in work, pa.s.sionately devoted to the cause of order, public welfare, and the peaceable aggrandizement of France, Colbert, on becoming the comptroller of finance in 1661, brought to the service of the state superior views, consummate experience, and indomitable perseverance. The position of affairs required no fewer virtues. "Disorder reigned everywhere," says the king; "on casting over the various portions of my kingdom not eyes of indifference, but the eyes of a master, I was sensibly affected not to see a single one which did not deserve and did not press to be taken in hand. The dest.i.tution of the lower orders was extreme, and the finances, which give movement and activity to all this great framework of the monarchy, were entirely exhausted and in such plight that there was scarcely any resource to be seen; the affluent, to be seen only amongst official people, on the one hand cloaked all their malversations by divers kinds of artifices, and uncloaked them on the other by their insolent and audacious extravagance, as if they were afraid to leave me in ignorance of them."

The punishment of the tax-collectors (_traitants_), prosecuted at the same time as superintendent Fouquet, the arbitrary redemption of rentes (_annuities_) on the city of Paris or on certain branches of the taxes, did not suffice to alleviate the extreme suffering of the people. The talliages from which the n.o.bility and the clergy were nearly everywhere exempt pressed upon the people with the most cruel inequality. "The poor are reduced to eating gra.s.s and roots in our meadows like cattle," said a letter from Blaisois those who can find dead carca.s.ses devour them, and, unless G.o.d have pity upon them, they will soon be eating one another."

Normandy, generally so prosperous, was reduced to the uttermost distress.

"The great number of poor has exhausted charity and the power of those who were accustomed to relieve them," says a letter to Colbert from the superintendent of Caen. "In 1662 the town was obliged to throw open the doors of the great hospital, having no longer any means of furnishing subsistence to those who were in it. I can a.s.sure you that there are persons in this town who have gone for whole days without anything to eat. The country, which ought to supply bread for the towns, is crying for mercy's sake to be supplied therewith itself." The peasants, wasted with hunger, could no longer till their fields; their cattle had been seized for taxes. Colbert proposed to the king to remit the arrears of talliages, and devoted all his efforts to reducing them, whilst regulating their collection. His desire was to arrive at the establishment everywhere of real talliages, on landed property, &c., instead of personal talliages, variable imposts, depending upon the supposed means or social position of the inhabitants. He was only very partially successful, without, however, allowing himself to be repelled by the difficulties presented by differences of legislation and customs in the provinces. "Perhaps," he wrote to the superintendent of Aix, in 1681, "on getting to the bottom of the matter and considering it in detail, you will not discover in it all the impossibilities you have pictured to yourself." Colbert died without having completed his work; the talliages, however, had been reduced by eight millions of livres within the first two years of his administration. "All the imposts of the kingdom," he writes, in 1662, to the superintendent of Tours, who is complaining of the dest.i.tution of the people, "are, as regards the talliages, but about thirty-seven millions, and, for forty or fifty years past, they have always been between forty and fifty millions, except after the peace, when his Majesty reduced them to thirty-two, thirty-three, and thirty-four millions."

Peace was of short duration in the reign of Louis XIV., and often so precarious that it did not permit of disarmament. At the very period when the able minister was trying to make the people feel the importance of the diminution in the talliages, he wrote to the king, "I entreat your Majesty to read these few lines attentively. I confess to your Majesty that the last time you were graciously pleased to speak to me about the state of the finances, my respect, the boundless desire I have always had to please you and serve you to your satisfaction, without making any difficulty or causing any hitch, and still more your natural eloquence which succeeds in bringing conviction of whatever you please, deprived me of courage to insist and dwell somewhat upon the condition of your finances, for the which I see no other remedy but increase of receipts and decrease of expenses; wherefore, though this is no concern at all of mine, I merely entreat your Majesty to permit me to say that in war as well as in peace you have never consulted your finances for the purpose of determining your expenditure, which is a thing so extraordinary that a.s.suredly there is no example thereof. For the past twenty years during which I have had the honor of serving your Majesty, though the receipts have greatly increased, you would find that the expenses have much exceeded the receipts, which might perhaps induce you to moderate and retrench such as are excessive. I am aware, Sir, that the figure I present herein is not an agreeable one; but in your Majesty's service there are different functions; some entail nothing but agreeables whereof the expenses are the foundation; that with which your Majesty honors me entails this misfortune, that it can with difficulty produce anything agreeable, since the proposals for expenses have no limit; but one must console one's self by constantly laboring to do one's best."

Louis XIV. did not "moderate or retrench his expenses."

Colbert labored to increase the receipts; the new imposts excited insurrections in Angoumois, in Guyenne, in Brittany. Bordeaux rose in 1695 with shouts of "_Hurrah! for the king without gabel_." Marshal d'Albret ventured into the streets in the district of St. Michel; he was accosted by one of the ringleaders. "Well, my friend," said the marshal, "with whom is thy business? Dost wish to speak to me?" "Yes," replied the townsman, "I am deputed by the people of St. Michel to tell you that they are good servants of the king, but that they do not mean to have any gabel, or marks on pewter or tobacco, or stamped papers, or _yreffe d'arbitrage_ (arbitration-clerk's fee)." It was not until a year afterwards that the taxes could be established in Gascony; troops had to be sent to Rennes to impose the stamp-tax upon the Bretons. "Soldiers are more likely to be wanted in Lower Brittany than in any other spot,"

said a letter to Colbert from the lieutenant general, M. de Lavardin; "it is a rough and wild country, which breeds inhabitants who resemble it.

They understand French but slightly, and reason not much better. The Parliament is at the back of all this." Riots were frequent, and were put down with great severity. "The poor Low-Bretons collect by forty or fifty in the fields," writes Madame de Sevigne on the 24th of September, 1675: "as soon as they see soldiers, they throw themselves on their knees, saying, Mea culpa! all the French they know.. . ."

"The severities are abating," she adds on the 3d of November: "after the hangings there will be no more hanging." All these fresh imposts, which had cost so much suffering and severity, brought in but two millions five hundred thousand livres at Colbert's death. The indirect taxes, which were at that time called _fermes generales_ (farmings-general), amounted to thirty-seven millions during the first two years of Colbert's administration, and rose to sixty-four millions at the time of his death.

"I should be apprehensive of going too far, and that the prodigious augmentations of the _fermes_ (farmings) would be very burdensome to the people," wrote Louis XIV. in 1680. The expenses of recovering the taxes, which had but lately led to great abuses, were diminished by half. "The bailiffs generally, and especially those who are set over the recovery of talliages, are such terrible brutes that, by way of exterminating a good number of these, you could not do anything more worthy of you than suppress those," wrote Colbert to the criminal magistrate of Orleans.

"I am at this moment promoting two suits against the collectors of talliages, in which I expect at present to get ten thousand crowns'

damages, without counting another against an a.s.sessor's officer, who wounded one Grimault, the which had one of his daughters killed before his eyes, his wife, another of his daughters, and his female servant wounded with swords and sticks, the writ of distrainment being executed whilst the poor creature was being buried." The bailiffs were suppressed, and the king's justice was let loose not only against the fiscal officers who abused their power, but also against tyrannical n.o.bles. Masters of requests and members of the Parliament of Paris went to Auvergne and Velay and held temporary courts of justice, which were called _grands jours_. Several lords were found guilty; Sieur de la Mothe actually died upon the scaffold for having unjustly despoiled and maltreated the people on his estates. "He was not one of the worst,"

says Flechier, in his _Journal des Grands Jours d'Auvergne_. The Duke of Bouillon, governor of the province, had too long favored the guilty.