LOUIS XIV Also by John B. Wolf THE DIPLOMATIC HISTORY OF THE BAGDAD RAILROAD EARLY MoDERN EuRoPE THE EMERGENCE oF THE GREAT PowERS, I685-17I5 FRANCE, I8I4-I9I9 Loms XIV TowARD A EURoPEAN BALANCE OF PoWER, I64o-1715 Louis XIV A PROFILE Edited by John B. Wolf WORLD PROFILES General Editor: Alda DiPace Donald MACMILLAN EDUCATION COPYRIGHT@ 1972 BY JOHN B. WOLF SOFI'COVER REPRINI OF THE HARDCOVER 1ST EDITION 1973 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED FffiST PUBLISHED IN THE UNITED STATES OP AMERICA 1972 FffiST PUBLISHED IN THE UNITED KINGDOM 1972 BY THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD LONDON AND BASINGSTOKE ASSOCIATED COMPANIES IN NEW YORK TORONTO DUBLIN MELBOURNE JOHANNESBURG AND MADRAS SBN 333 13498 2 ISBN 978-1-349-01472-9 ISBN 978-1-349-01470-5 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-01470-5 Contents Introduction lX• Brief Biography of Louis XIV xix The Formation of a King I JOHN B. WOLF The Administrative and Military Monarchy of Versailles 30 A. DE SAINT-LEGER and PHILIPPE SAGNAC Louis XIV and, Foreign Affairs 47 LOUIS ANDRE The Daily Life of the Great King 73 DUKE DE LA FORCE Religious Strife and the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes IOI PIERRE GAXOTTE The Cult of the King 127 JOHN B. WOLF vi CONTENTS The Political Philosopher 152 LOUIS BERTRAND The World of Ideas 100 LOUIS BERTRAND The Legacy of Louis XIV 169 G.P. GOOCH A Tolerably Great King 199 DUKE OF SAINT-SIMON A Neo-Augustan Age 222 VOLTAIRE The Self-Defeating Reign of Louis XIV 229 ERNEST LAVISSE A Man in the Universe 235 PIERRE GOUBERT Bibliography 259 Contributors 261 Note F THE THIRTEEN SELECTIONS in this volume, four O have not previously appeared in English. Barbara Kennedy translated the selection from Andre; the remaining selections­ Saint-Leger and Sagnac, La Force, and Lavisse-were translated by John Githens. Introduction HEN TWENTIETH-CENTURY MEN speak of a king, W the image that usually comes to mind is Charlemagne or Louis XIV; no other rulers so completely dominated their lands both in their own times and in the memory of posterity. For a century after his death Louis XIV was the model for strong rulers; both Frederick the Great and Napoleon recognized him as the prototype of the enlightened despot, and princes everywhere sought to imitate him by building chateaux more or less modeled on Versailles and establishing etiquette aping Louis's court. Historians no less than rulers have been fascinated by the reign of the Sun King. From the days of Saint-Simon and Voltaire to those of the congeries of republican, socialist, nationalist, monarchist, and aca­ demic historians, Louis XIV has been presented with varying de- ix X JOHN B. WOLF grees of scholarship in many different interpretations. Too often in the books of these historians Louis XIV has become a protagonist for this or that political party, or a whipping boy used to demon~ strate the wickedness of this or that political position; it is often difficult to find the king himself in the pages that have been written about him. Part of the problem is the fault of the king himself. Louis XIV did not want to be remembered as an ordinary man who happened to be king. He and Madame de Maintenon systematically destroyed letters and memoranda that would reveal him as a man. The result is that Louis XIV, the king, is nearly always seen with the diadem and scepter, so much in the act of being king that he is almost an institution rather than a man. This has allowed many historians who write about his reign to interpret it to suit their own political preferences rather than to present it in terms of the manners and values of the period in which Louis actually lived. No one reading the selections in this volume will miss the fact that several of them -the Duke de La Force, Pierre Gaxotte, and Louis Bertrand, for example-present the reign of Louis XIV as a most fortunate event, while others, with Saint-Simon as their leader, give quite a contrary view. The academic historians pretend to neutrality, but Lavisse's republicanism and Gaubert's sympathy with the fate of the com~ mon man tend to bias their judgments. G. P. Gooch uses Louis XIV to show that hereditary monarchy fails because a great king like Louis XIV is followed by a weakling like his great-grandson. Saint-Leger and Sagnac, Andre, and myself try, with more or less success, to present the reign as a part of the process that created the characteristic forms of French society. One of the intriguing questions about Louis XIV concerns his motivation. Here was a man who spent much of his waking time working at the problems of state. Most princes before and after him found the pleasures of the court, the hunt, women, and all the other distractions available to a man placed on the throne more interesting than the mechanics of government and the problems of politics. In his Memoires for the education of his son, Louis tells us that he enjoyed immensely the "trade" of king, that much pleasure came from knowing the secrets of princes as well as of Introduction xi courtiers, that he was happy to assume the task that God had given him: but he does not give us real insight into the character patterns that forced him or persuaded him to spend so many hours at his desk when other amusements could easily have distracted him. Also difficult to understand is Louis's exclusion of all women, even his beloved mother, from his councils. There is no evidence that any mistress ever had the slightest influence on his politics; even Madame de Maintenon, his second wife, discreedy avoided placing herself in a position between the king and his ministers, at least not until age and infirmities reduced Louis's ability to act. The writers of "scandalous histories" of the reign delight in the king's affairs with women, but none of them pretend that those women had any political impact on his government. At most, they secured pensions, favors, and gratifications for themselves, their families, and friends, but they were never responsible for the fall of a minis­ ter or the change of royal policy. If we listen to the king he will tell us that he considered the most important aspects of the "trade" of the king to be: first, the choice of suitable servants to operate his government; then, the consideration of projects, plans, and policies; and, finally, the mak­ ing of rational decisions for action. His reign largely confirms this set of priorities. Louis XIV was a man of plans; he was a king who made decisions, and he selected his ministers with care. The question that arises, however, involves the process of government, the actual mechanics by which decisions were reached. If we under­ stand that Louis XIV tried to find ministers whose knowledge of the problems with which they had to deal was greater than his own, we can begin to see the inner workings of his regime. The king sought the advice of "experts" and forced them to debate their proposals in council. This did not always result in the establishment of a wise policy, but it did assure the king against the possibility that one of his ministers could dominate him and his government. Mazarin taught the young Louis XIV that he had in him "the stuff to make several great kings" if only he would "apply himself to the art of government" and refuse to allow any one, as first minister or minister favorite, to usurp the direction of the state. Perhaps it was this fear of domination that led Louis to surround xii JOHN B. WOLF himself with experts in the several fields of government while he himself was the only "generalist" in the council. He did not pretend to initiate policy, but he did insist upon the discussion of policy before council and upon his right to make the final decision. In­ deed, if there is one generalization that can be made about Louis XIV as king, it is that he insisted upon picking his ministers, supporting them, confronting their projects in council, and assum­ ing final responsibility for the decisions. This was the "trade" of king; it required careful attention to details, consideration of argu­ ments, and willingness to assume responsibility for action. French historians have come to recognize the three Bourbon kings of the seventeenth century as "rois eclaires," enlightened kings, whose rule brought order and direction to French society. Henry IV; Louis XIII and his minister Richelieu; Anne of Austria, as regent for her son, and her minister Mazarin-all prepared the foundations for the centralized monarchy that was in the process of emerging under Louis XIV. These seventeenth-century rulers faced enormous problems: the kingdom was a maze of provinces and towns, of corporate interests, and of feudal anachronisms, all eager to defend their "liberties." French liberties, like liberties else­ where in Europe, meant the traditional rights, privileges, and im­ munities of towns, noblemen, magistrates, clergymen, and others who resisted the processes building the centralized states and pro­ viding a sort of uniform order for the kingdom. Henry IV had already started to recover some of the rights and powers of the crown that he had been forced to surrender to secure recognition of his claim to the throne. Richelieu and Louis XIII, as a result of the Huguenot civil wars, wrested from the adherents of the "so­ called Reformed Religion" most of the military and political pow­ ers that had made the Huguenot party a republic within the king­ dom.