Much to Louis’s sorrow, however, the young maiden-of-honor was more devoted to God than to a life at court. He was heartbroken when, after four years of devoted attachment, Louise announced her intention to follow her true vocation, which was to retire from court and enter the Convent of the Visitation as a novice. Reluctantly, Louis let her go, but as he watched her leave, he at least had the consolation of being able to visit her at the convent whenever he liked; during these visits, Louise would urge the king to be kind to his wife so that France might have an heir.14
The personal difficulties between the king and queen might have been alleviated by these diversions, but they did nothing to address what was now becoming a very real problem: France still lacked a dauphin. Until Louis and Anne produced a son, the heir presumptive was Gaston d’Orléans, whose ambition to become king, coupled with his penchant for conspiracies and disreputable associates, made him a very dangerous man. Worse, Gaston had no sons, meaning that upon his death the throne would go to their cousins, the Condés, who wished to drag France back into feudalism, an equally undesirable scenario. At one point, Gaston became involved in a plot to murder Cardinal Richelieu, depose Louis, and force him to annul his marriage, while Queen Anne would marry Gaston, who would then become king. Despite the involvement of her friend Marie de Rohan, Anne was merely a blameless pawn in the conspiracy, but Louis would never be entirely persuaded of her innocence.
Louis’s suspicions seemed to be justified when Anne withdrew to the convent of the Val-de-Grâce. While this had long been her practice, on this occasion she was discovered to be holding secret correspondence with her brothers, Philip IV of Spain, and the cardinal-infante, who was in command of troops in the Spanish Netherlands. The letters, which were passed into Spain through an underground network, were uncovered by Richelieu’s spies; with France and Spain still at war, he felt justified in raiding the queen’s apartments, where more letters were found. Most of these were uncompromising, the natural correspondence of a sister and brother; however, in one, Anne had mentioned a certain monk whom Richelieu planned to send to Spain as an agent. Richelieu viewed Anne’s actions as treason and sent her to Chantilly while her fate was being decided.
Richelieu now had the perfect excuse to finally be rid of a woman he had long regarded as his enemy, an ambition that could only be helped by the fact that she and Louis had been married for twenty-two years and had not yet managed to produce an heir. Anne was acutely aware of her situation, and she had often expressed her fears that she might be repudiated. However, despite his personal feelings, Richelieu knew that the best interests of France could be served only by reconciliation between the king and queen. Taking the matter into his own hands, he confronted Anne with her treason, pointing out the seriousness of her activities and warning her of the consequences both to herself and to France should she persist. He then offered his forgiveness and promised to solicit the king to pardon her, and so Louis and Anne were reconciled.
The king and queen resided at Saint-Germain for three weeks in November 1637 before Anne went to the Louvre, while Louis left to go on a hunting expedition. His first stop was Crosne before moving on to Versailles, where he was installed by December 5. It was during this period that Louis XIV was conceived. An announcement published in the Gazette at the end of January promised good news to come: “All the princes, lords, and people of fashion went to congratulate their majesties at Saint-Germain on their hopes of a happy event, which with God’s help, we will tell you about soon.”15
It was, of course, essential that Anne’s child should be a boy. Although daughters made useful pawns for political alliances, they could not succeed to the throne. With this in mind, Louis requested special novenas to be said in the hope that God would bless France with a dauphin. He also placed France into the hands of the Blessed Virgin and issued orders that the Feast of the Assumption16 should be celebrated each year.
Elsewhere, spiritual assistance was offered by Jean-Jacques Olier, founder of Saint-Sulpice, who took to scourging himself regularly, while Jeanne de Matel of l’Institut du Verbe Incarné prophesied that Queen Anne’s child would be a boy.17 A discalced Augustine, Father Fiacre, urged the queen to make novenas at each of three churches dedicated to the Virgin,18 while the Carmelite Marguerite of the Blessed Sacrament, who claimed to have been visited several times by the Virgin, knew weeks before anyone else that Anne was pregnant.19
Formal confirmation of the happy event came when the Mercure Français announced that “France has hopes of the greatest happiness so far in this august and marvellous reign, namely the birth of a dauphin, destined by God to take place this year.”20 When Anne felt the baby stir for the first time, a fireworks display was held at the Arsenal in Paris to celebrate. As the summer wore on, the queen sent for a precious relic, a fragment of the holy girdle worn by the Virgin as she gave birth. Gifts arrived for the new baby, including a layette and other garments from Pope Urban VIII, while greetings were sent from King Philip of Spain; notwithstanding that their two counties were at war, he was, after all, the baby’s uncle.
A team of wet nurses was engaged, as well as midwives and the royal accoucheur, or obstetrician, Dame Peronne. There was a heightened sense of excitement when Louis returned from the front in August to attend the imminent birth of his first child. However, when Anne had still not given birth by the nineteenth of the month, he grew impatient and angrily wrote to Richelieu stating that he wished he had not arrived so early and that he would prefer still to be with his army in Picardy. He then announced his intention to go to Versailles for two or three days, having found “the female sex as senseless and impertinent as ever” and expressing his desire to “be away from all these women.”21
By August 28, the baby was considered overdue and prayers were said in Paris, while the Blessed Sacrament was displayed in the churches. Anne had already withdrawn to the Château-Neuf of Saint-Germain, the smaller and more comfortable of the two châteaux, for her lying-in. A week later, towards midnight, she went into labor surrounded by her attendants, while witnesses watched her at every moment. Chief among these was Gaston d’Orléans, who had arrived at Saint-Germain in the middle of August; with the integrity of the succession at stake, witnesses ensured that the queen’s child was not substituted for another—a boy exchanged for a girl, or a living baby to take the place of one born dead.
At 11:20 in the morning of Sunday, September 5, the future Louis XIV was born. He was a healthy baby, weighing nine pounds. Upon seeing the child who now took his place in the succession, Gaston retired to his estates and “complained of his misfortune with thousands of tears.”22 Meanwhile, the gentlemen of the court threw their hats into the air as a signal to everyone that the queen had given birth to a boy. Louis fell to his knees and thanked God for the blessing bestowed upon him, although he forgot to kiss his wife until it was pointed out to him that he ought to.
The birth of the dauphin was seen as nothing short of a miracle. For Montglat, the baby appeared to have come from the hand of God.23 Mme de Motteville also credited divine intervention through the medium of the king’s friend, Louise de La Fayette, for Louis, “having stayed with her too late to return to Saint-Germain for the night as he intended, he was constrained to go to the Louvre and share the bed of the queen, who had come to Paris for affairs of no importance; and so it is said that this gave us the king reigning today.”24 This short passage would provide the basis of Griffet’s legend.
The baby was taken and ondoyé; that is, given his first, informal baptism by Dominique Séguier, the king’s chaplain. This was a necessary precaution in times of tragically high infant mortality; it meant that should the baby die, his soul would immediately be admitted into heaven. The child was named Louis after the saintly King Louis IX and Clovis, who had united the tribes to form the country now known as France;25 and his own father, Louis XIII. The king was proud of his son; upon showing him to the Venetian ambassador, he said, “Here is the miraculous result of the grace of Alm
ighty God, for what else may describe such a beautiful child after twenty-two years of marriage and my wife’s four miscarriages.”26
France greeted the new dauphin with rejoicing and celebration. At Saint-Germain, four silver dolphins spewed an endless flow of wine; the air rang with the sound of church bells; in each church the Te Deum was sung and the Blessed Sacrament exposed; cannon were fired in salute and lanterns brightened the windows of every house. On Monday, all the shops remained closed so that everyone might enjoy a holiday.
On the following day, the tiny dauphin held his first audience when representatives of the sovereign courts accepted the king’s invitation to come to the Château-Neuf of Saint-Germain and offer their compliments. The secretary of state then escorted the magistrates into the dauphin’s bedchamber so they could look upon the new infant. Mathieu Molé recalled that the child’s governess, Madame de Lansac, “held the sleeping M. le Dauphin, his face uncovered, on a pillow of white satin and showed him, and said that he would open his eyes to see his faithful servants.”27
Horoscopes were drawn up as attempts were made to determine the character and destiny of the future king.28 It was noted that the dauphin’s constellation was composed of nine stars, signifying “great genius.” Among these were Pegasus, “the puissant cavalier”; Sagittarius, “the infantry”; Aquarius, for “naval power”; and the Swan, or Cygnus, signifying that “poets, historians and orators would sing his praises.” That the constellation touched the equator signified “justice.” Being born on a Sunday, “the Dauphin, like the sun, by his warmth and light will be the happiness of France and her allies.”
In a departure from usual royal protocol, Anne of Austria insisted upon keeping the Dauphin Louis with her at all times, although she did not nurse him. The baby’s voracious appetite showed itself early, when he went through several wet nurses, an uncomfortable experience for them, since he had been born with two teeth. Still resident at Saint-Germain, high above the Seine looking down on Paris, Anne was often found wheeling her son around in his carriage. Meanwhile, the young Louis performed his first official function when, at only sixteen months old, he received a napkin from the maître d’hotel and handed it to the king.
It was at about this time that Anne found herself pregnant again, but the king was now greatly concerned about her influence over their firstborn. Writing to Richelieu, he announced that he was “most displeased with my son. As soon as he sets eyes on me, he yells as if he were looking at the devil and always cries for his mother. He must be cured of these tantrums and taken away from the Queen’s side as soon as possible.”29
A few days later, Louis noted that “thanks to the good offices of Mme de Lansac my son begged my forgiveness on his knees and played with me for an hour and more.” The next day he wrote again, reporting that the child “cannot bear to leave me, he tries to follow me everywhere. I fondle him as much as I can. I think that a little speech I made in front of some people who were sure to pass it on, and the offices of Mme de Lansac have contributed to this change.” Louis had told his household that his son was in the company of too many women, and that they were trying to make the child afraid of men. He had then threatened to remove all the child’s attendants except Mme de Lansac if the tantrums continued, for “I wanted him to see nothing but men from now on.”30 The dauphin was barely two years old.
Anne gave birth to her second child, Philippe de France, on September 21, 1640. The king was even more pleased with his second son than he had been with the dauphin because, as he said, he had not expected the great happiness of being the father of two children, when he had feared he would have no children at all.
Louis, however, continued to be concerned about the attention Anne was lavishing on his sons. On one occasion he arrived home from the hunt and changed into his nightclothes early. The three-year-old dauphin, unaccustomed to seeing his father in a nightcap, took fright and began to cry. The king flew into a rage, chiding the queen for bringing up the child in aversion for his person and threatening once again to take both boys away from her.31
However, Louis XIII was now very ill; the tuberculosis that would kill him within two years was quite advanced, and it did nothing to calm his increasingly irascible temper. Nevertheless, as he prepared to go on a journey with the marquis de Cinq-Mars, his new favorite, he bade farewell to the queen, urging her to take care of his children and never to leave them. The young marquis appears to have brought out a gentler side to Louis’s character.
In time, it became clear that the king was dying. In April 1643, he suffered a “hepatitic flux with a species of slow fever”32 and was put to bed. He was concerned that the dauphin had not yet been christened, and this was rectified in a service at Saint-Germain on April 21, with the princesse de Condé as godmother and Jules Mazarin, Richelieu’s protégé, as godfather. The child was described as “beautiful as an angel, manifesting in all this action a modesty and a self-control extraordinary for one of his age”33 and given the name Louis-Dieudonné, Louis the God-given. A story later told that, when the ceremony was ended, the boy, still wearing his gown of silver taffeta, went to his father’s bedside. “What is your name now?” the king asked him. “Louis the Fourteenth,” the child replied. “Not yet, my son,” the king sighed, “but you will be soon, if that is God’s will.”34
When the king asked how long he had to live, he was told “two or three hours at the most.” He joined his hands in prayer, saying that he consented to it with all his heart. Then he ordered the curtains surrounding his bed to be drawn aside so he could look out the window. Gazing at the distant spire of Saint-Denis, the traditional final resting place of the kings of France, he whispered, “There is where I will go soon, and where I will stay for a long time.”35 Shortly afterwards, he died. It was May 14, 1643, and the long reign of Louis XIV had begun.
TWO
To Educate a Living God
The little boy’s face was that of a cherub, round and pale with bright blue eyes framed by blond curls1 tied in ribbons and a lace cap complete with an ostrich feather. Over a floor-length gown, he wore a white apron trimmed with lace and adorned by a sky blue ribbon of the Ordre du Saint-Esprit. A blue mantle powdered with golden fleur-de-lis was placed upon his shoulders as Anne of Austria knelt before him in homage. He was only four and a half years old, but Louis XIV was king of France.
It was a new dawn; the rising sun brought with it a renewed hope, filled with promise, but Louis was not safe. He was surrounded by ill-wishers who looked for, and were ready to exploit, any weakness in the new regime. Some were to be found among the gloriously robed magistrates, who concealed their ambition behind smiling expressions of love and oaths of loyalty. Then there was the nobility, whose lineages were at least as long as Louis’s, men who saw their families as the foundation upon which France rested.
These men represented danger enough, but even more treacherous were the princes of the blood, the king’s own relatives who sought to usurp the power that had devolved upon him by an accident of birth. Of these, Gaston d’Orléans posed the greatest threat. A foppish and unscrupulous bon vivant whose ambition had driven him on numerous occasions to agitate against his brother, the late king, Gaston had been heir presumptive for many years before the Dieudonné came. No less dangerous was Henri II de Bourbon, prince de Condé. An intriguer and rebel, his mutinous spirit was calmed for a time by Richelieu, who arranged for Condé’s son and heir to be married to his niece. Finally, there was César, duc de Vendôme, an illegitimate son of Henri IV by his mistress, Gabrielle d’Estrées. He had once joined Condé in rebellion, but his main threat lay in his son, François, duc de Beaufort. Thirty years old, tall, and possessing the blond beauty of a Viking, Beaufort was a hotheaded adventurer, but he was popular with the people, especially the women. This gallant had once praised Queen Anne’s beautiful hands, a sure route to her heart, and she, fearing a coup d’état, now engaged his services in order to protect the young king. Beaufort and a detail of Cent-Suisses formed
a cordon around Louis. Anne had ensured her son’s safety in the face of his enemies, but she also saved him from himself: a dark story had it that, as the court waited for Louis XIII to die, a gentleman usher asked the young dauphin if he wished to be king. The child cried, “Non! I do not wish to be king. If he dies, I shall throw myself in the moat of the château.”2 Anne could take no chances.
On May 15, 1643, the court left Saint-Germain, abandoning the dead king to the care of priests, embalmers, and history. Louis XIV made his entrance into Paris, his cortège surrounded by musketeers commanded by M. de Tréville. The journey, which would take about an hour under normal circumstances, took seven. The royal progress was stopped at every turn by endless speeches made by various dignitaries, while the ecstatic crowds pressed on all sides to catch a glimpse of their child-king, to touch his hair and kiss his clothes as he passed. One witness, the magistrate and royal councillor Olivier Lefèvre d’Ormesson, wrote in his Journal that the crowd was enchanted by Louis and his brother, Philippe, and could not agree which child was the more beautiful.3
Louis was unconcerned about all the adulation shown to him. He behaved with astonishing maturity, possessing the gravity and poise of a much older person. Well coached by his mother and his godfather, Mazarin, in the correct way to perform in public, it was frequently noted that he rarely laughed and barely moved.4
The royal family took up residence in the Louvre. The palace, which dated back to the twelfth century, had grounds that sprawled onto the right bank of the Seine. It was still undergoing the renovation work that Louis’s grandfather, Henri IV, had begun almost fifty years before. Once the king and Philippe were settled into their apartments, the first order of business was to summon parlement, and the date was set for Monday, May 18. Its purpose would be to discuss the late king’s will and his carefully laid plans for the regency. Initially, Louis XIII had debarred Gaston from the regency council and would have excluded Anne too, had he not been prevented from doing so by tradition, which granted queens regency powers upon the accession of a minor king. However, he could restrict her power, and, as death approached, he revised his will, appointing Gaston to the council as lieutenant-general of the realm and Cardinal Mazarin as president. A final clause decreed that decisions reached by the regency council would be binding upon Anne, who would be obliged to act upon their recommendations. Anne would be regent, but her powers would be severely restricted.
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