Of the towns Louis attacked, Philippsburg was the most important, representing as it did a major gap in his defenses on the Rhine.9 Although the real commander of the army was the experienced maréchal duc de Duras, Louis appointed the dauphin, now aged twenty-six, as nominal head of the army. “The Dauphin has become a warrior,” wrote Liselotte as the young man left to join his forces. He told her that after Philippsburg he would take Mannheim and Frankenthal and fight for her interests. “If you would take my advice,” she told him, “you will not go because I tell you frankly that it will give me no joy, but only sorrow to know that my name is being used to encompass the ruin of my own unfortunate country.”10 Liselotte’s opinion counted for nothing, and the dauphin left Versailles on September 25, arriving at the camp on October 6. Although an attack had been attempted three days earlier, the main assault on Philipsburg took place on October 10 and 11. The town finally surrendered three weeks later, on the thirtieth.
Then, just as the dauphin had promised, the troops next advanced on Mannheim, arriving on November 4. A trench was opened on the eighth, and the town capitulated two days later. Mannheim had been built by Liselotte’s father: “My heart bleeds for it,” she wrote.11 The army now pushed on to take Heidelberg, but then the weather closed in. While the army set up its winter camp, the dauphin was obliged to return to Versailles, where he arrived on November 28.
Monsieur de Montausier, the dauphin’s former governor, told Liselotte that the dauphin was her champion and that he was going to win back her lands and property. When she made no reply, he noted, “You seem to take my news very coldly.” She answered, “Sir, I do indeed hear what you say with indifference, because you are talking of the one thing in the world about which I have the least desire to hear.” She went on, saying that she saw no great advantage in ruining her fatherland in her name, and that “far from being overjoyed, I am very much hurt.” She explained to him that she could not hide her feelings, nor could she hold her tongue; as she explained to her aunt, the Electress Sophia, “if people do not want me to say what I think about it, they must refrain from broaching the subject to me.” Montausier was annoyed by her reaction, and her words eventually reached Louis, who “took the affair very badly.”12
Louis was displeased about Liselotte’s grief for the war in the Palatinate. When she lay ill in Paris for ten days, he never once sent to inquire after her, nor did he reply to any of her letters. Rather, despite her furious protests, Louis was determined to cause as much damage in the Palatinate as possible. When spring came and war could resume, so did the devastation of Liselotte’s homeland. Liselotte seemed to believe that Louis continued his campaign to spite her. Confiding in her aunt she wrote, “I am especially heartbroken because the King actually stayed his hand from these devastations until after I craved his leniency for Heidelberg and Mannheim.”13
Amid such sorrow, more bad news arrived. Marie-Louise, whom Louis had sent to Spain to marry King Carlos ten years earlier, had died. “I expected that you would be sorry to hear of the death of our dear Queen of Spain,” wrote Liselotte to her aunt. Although she tried to put on a brave face and “follow the example of her late Majesty’s nearest and most highly-placed relations,” and attend “all sorts of amusements,” she found that her sadness returned the moment she returned home.14
In fact, Liselotte took the news very badly. “I agree with you when you say that the dear Queen is now better off than we are,” she wrote, but then her letter, melancholy as it was, took an even darker turn: “I should take it as a kindness if anyone were to render me the service they did to her and her mother, and help me from this world to the next in twenty-four hours.” Liselotte had revived the belief held by some that Henriette d’Orléans had died of poisoning, and now she suggested that Marie-Louise had died the same way.15
Several weeks later, Liselotte wrote again to say that Monsieur de Rebenac, Louis’s ambassador in Madrid, was “right in thinking that the dear Queen of Spain was poisoned. It was quite evident when they opened her up, and besides she became purple immediately after her death, and they say that that is a sure sign of poisoning.”16
While there is no evidence to support the theory that Henriette had been poisoned, in Marie-Louise’s case, it is just possible. The comtesse de Soissons had fled France in 1680 at the height of the poisons scandal, having been implicated in the death of her husband. Ending up in Spain in 1686, she had become friends with Marie-Louise, much to Louis’s horror. The king asked M. de Rebenac to keep an eye on the comtesse to ensure that Marie-Louise came to no harm. Two years later, King Carlos, who suffered from premature ejaculation, claimed that his affliction was the fault of Mme de Soissons, who he said had bewitched him. He promptly ordered her to leave Spain, upon which she appealed to Marie-Louise for help, only for the queen to support her husband. A successful appeal to Carlos through the imperial ambassador allowed the comtesse to remain in Spain, although she was excluded from the court.17 Then Queen Marie-Louise became very ill, with continual vomiting and colic, and on February 12, 1689, she died under circumstances that were remarkably similar to those surrounding the death of her mother.
Rebenac was convinced that Marie-Louise had been poisoned, but he placed the blame on two Spanish nobles at court, who acted with the help of one of the queen’s ladies. Certainly, Marie-Louise had lived in fear of being poisoned, and she asked her father to send antidotes, a packet of which was said to have arrived at the Spanish court on the day she died.18 It is possible that a faction at court saw her as an obstacle to an alliance with the Holy Roman Empire and had desired her death for that reason.19 Alternatively, her death might have been caused by drugs given to her to cure sterility, with the Spanish blaming the couple’s childlessness on her rather than her husband.20 Whatever the case, as she lay on her deathbed, Marie-Louise told Rebenac that she did not believe she had been poisoned after all.21 Even so, doubts remained.
The death of Marie-Louise was a tragedy, and it would have its political consequences for Louis. For the present, the king justified his actions in the Palatinate by pointing out that they were necessary as a defensive measure. In the face of the League of Augsburg, he saw it as imperative that he should do all he could to prevent the Germans from occupying the land on their side of the frontier. His actions however, exceeded necessity when the Rhine towns of Heidelberg, Mannheim, Worms, and Spire, as well as the surrounding farmlands, were selected for destruction in a “slash and burn” offensive that even his own generals were reluctant to carry out until stern orders from Louvois pressed them into obedience.
William of Orange, meanwhile, content that Holland was safe while Louis was engaged in the Rhineland, responded to his invitation to invade England and sailed across the English Channel on the day that Philippsburg fell. Louis offered to assist James, but the English king refused. He was concerned about how his own naval officers would react should he accept;22 besides, he thought his forces were more than adequate to repel William. However, when William landed on November 5, many Protestants flocked to his side, including James’s younger daughter, Anne. Despite his stronger position, James lost his nerve and fled in the face of the advancing army. William, reluctant to make a martyr of James, allowed him to escape to France.23
James remained a refugee in France, and Archbishop Le Tellier, who saw the king’s escape as cowardly, poured scorn upon him. Louis, however, welcomed his cousin tenderly and gave him and his family the use of Saint-Germain. Louis was indignant on James’s behalf because William, a king who owed his position merely to an act of parliament, had the temerity to depose a divinely appointed ruler.
William of Orange, now William III of England, ruled jointly with his wife, Mary. He was now able to fulfill his ambition to create a Protestant coalition against Louis, the aim of which was to reduce France’s borders to the limits imposed upon them by the Treaties of Westphalia and the Pyrenees.24 The German princes, horrified by Louis’s “slash and burn” policy in the Palatinate, were only too h
appy to join, as was Spain. Sweden and Portugal remained neutral, but the pope’s continued hostility towards France left Louis without a diplomatic ally.25 The War of the League of Augsburg, otherwise called the Nine Years’ War, was the inevitable result of Louis’s policy of aggrandizement. Much of the fighting was defensive on France’s part, with siege warfare being the predominant strategy. As the war dragged on, Louis would be forced to melt down the beautiful silver furniture at Versailles, including a magnificent throne, to finance it.
Louis was eager to assist James in winning back his throne, and in 1689–90, preparations were underway for a naval invasion of England. It was agreed that action in Ireland would distract the English, and in May 1690, James prepared to join his troops. As Louis bade farewell to his cousin, he told him, “The best thing that I can wish for you is that I may never see you again.”26 Six regiments of French troops had already crossed into Ireland, a total of 6,300 men under the command of the comte de Lauzun. The comte had been released from Pignerol nine years earlier, his freedom purchased by Mademoiselle, whom Louis had persuaded to make over her most lucrative estates in favor of his favorite son by Athénaïs, the duc du Maine.
Lauzun had served under James when he was still duke of York, during the Fronde.27 As the revolution of 1688 unfolded in England, Lauzun requested Louis’s permission to go to James’s aid, which Louis was pleased to grant. Lauzun quickly became James’s confidant, and as danger threatened Queen Mary of Modena and the prince of Wales, Lauzun was the obvious man to conduct them to the safety of France.28 This act of gallantry brought him back into royal favor.
A French naval victory at Beachy Head, off the coast of East Sussex, in June 1690 augured well for the battle to come. The Battle of the Boyne took place a month later; however, James’s army lacked leadership and morale, both fatal flaws. During the battle, James remained with his guards, and “when he saw his Army everywhere giving ground, was the first that ran for it, and reached Dublin, before the action was quite over.”29 The fallen former king of England returned to France aboard a French ship.
The following March, Louis announced his intention to lay siege to the town of Mons. He would take with him the dauphin and the comte de Toulouse, his legitimized son by Athénaïs. At the same time, he removed his daughter, Françoise-Marie, from Athénaïs’s charge and placed her into the care of Mme de Montchevreuil, the wife of duc du Maine’s tutor. This was Louis’s not-so-subtle way of telling Athénaïs, who had remained at court to take care of her children, that her presence was no longer required. In a fit of pique, she asked Bishop Bossuet, one of her staunchest enemies, to obtain Louis’s permission for her to retire to a convent she had founded some time ago, the Filles de la Providence, known as Saint-Joseph’s. Perhaps she was hoping that Louis would tearfully bring her back to court as he had previously done with Louise de La Vallière. If so, she was to be horribly disappointed. Instead, Louis simply agreed that her departure would be most convenient. He gave her rooms in the appartement des bains to the duc du Maine, while Françoise-Marie moved into her brother’s old rooms.30 So ended the court career of Athénaïs de Montespan, perhaps one of the most vibrant and interesting of Louis’s mistresses, whose departure was every bit as unnoticed as her arrival had been.
Louis, unperturbed about the departure of the woman who had captivated his heart and who had been the center of his world for so long, set out from Versailles as planned on Sunday, March 17, 1691, on the first stage of his journey to Mons. Despite suffering from gout, he insisted upon directing the siege and exposing himself to danger. It was almost as though he was tempting fate, taunting the enemy to do their worst while showing the world that nothing could harm the invincible Sun King. The town duly fell on April 9.31
The setback came at sea. The French victory at Beachy Head had alerted the English to the weakness of her sea power. The navy had been allowed to decline. It was stated in Parliament that England’s power rested solely upon her ships, and efforts were made to restore the navy to its former strength. Their renewed investment paid off in May 1692, when a joint Anglo-Dutch fleet triumphed at the battle of La Hogue, off the coast of Normandy.
Louis had lost his supremacy at sea, but there was still everything to fight for on land. He had identified the town of Namur as the best place to lay siege. It was, he wrote,
the strongest rampart not only of Brabant, but of the Bishopric of Liège, of the United Provinces, and of a portion of Lower Germany. Besides securing the communications of all these districts, its situation at the confluence of the Sambre and the Meuse makes it mistress of these two rivers; it is well placed, either to arrest the ventures of France . . . and to facilitate those that can be made against France herself.32
Once again, Louis led the siege in person at the head of forty thousand men and a powerful artillery force. Vauban travelled with the army, laying the trenches and preparing to work on the fortifications as soon as the siege was won. The maréchal de Luxembourg, meanwhile, stood at the head of a force of twenty thousand, who were stationed nearby to keep watch in case William should seek to defend the town, which fell to France at the end of June.33 Riding high on his luck, Louis now planned another attack on England and James prepared to set sail, but a terrible, monthlong storm in the English Channel kept the ships in port, and the attack eventually had to be abandoned.
A magnificent victory at the small village of Steinkirk in Flanders on August 3 was destined to go down in history as much for the triumph as for the new fashion it introduced. The Anglo-Scots-Dutch army descended upon the French camp before the maréchal de Luxembourg and his officers had time to complete their toilette. As they rushed out to meet the enemy, their untied cravats flew in their faces, so they twisted them and tucked the ends into a buttonhole. The steinkirk cravat became a favorite fashion item, worn to celebrate the victory. Even women wore one, although they attached theirs to a rever because they had no buttonhole in which to tuck the ends.34
The year 1691 also saw the death of the war minister, Louvois; he was poisoned upon the orders of a foreign prince, so some believed.35 His office was inherited by his third son, the young and inexperienced marquis de Barbezieux. At the same time, Louis reinstated Simon Arnauld, marquis de Pomponne, as secretary of state for foreign affairs. A mild-mannered and diplomatic man, Pomponne initiated tentative steps towards negotiations which would eventually break the Protestant alliance.
Then, in the spring of 1693, Louis travelled to the Luxembourg in Paris. The purpose of his visit was to bid farewell to his cousin, Mademoiselle, who lay dying. As the king approached her bed, she took the opportunity to advance the cause of her kinsman, the marquis de Joyeuse, whom she thought should be made a maréchal of France. Louis obliged his cousin and awarded the maréchal’s baton to Joyeuse. Mademoiselle died on April 5, 1693 at the age of sixty-three.36
In the early summer of 1693, Louis was once again preparing to join his troops in Flanders. He was now fifty-four years old. Throughout his wars, he shared the often difficult life of a soldier, staying out in all weather and exposing himself to enemy fire. He directed sieges and accepted the humble submissions of city fathers of enemy towns along the Rhine. Louis loved war. By his own admission, he loved war too much, but it was not to be an unconquerable enemy that finally defeated him; it was to be his own failing health. For some time, he had suffered from abscesses, trouble with his teeth, and, most debilitating of all, chronic gout and rheumatism.
On May 18, he set out from Versailles and reached Quesnoy eleven days later. Towards the evening, he complained of pain and tension in the muscles of his neck, which was treated with a rub of sweet almond oil mixed with spirits of wine followed by an application of warm ashes wrapped in linen. The treatment had its effect, and Louis felt much better the next day, but his chief physician, Guy-Crescent Fagon, thought it prudent to bleed him. As so often with Louis, being bled brought on an attack of the vapors, but this time it was “accompanied by much affliction, which recurred several
times over the next two or three days, and left His Majesty in this disposition for the rest of the journey.”37 Louis arrived in Flanders on June 2, but he was still unwell. After spending only one week with his troops, he abruptly announced that he was returning to Versailles.
Louis was by no means recovered by the time he arrived home, and as it turned out, he would suffer from intermittent attacks of the vapors, as well as dizziness, until August 5. Only Louis, Françoise, and Fagon were aware of his disposition, and three days after Louis’s arrival at Versailles, Françoise wrote to a friend that he was “in perfect health,” attributing his untimely return to his decision to send heavily armed forces to Germany to take advantage of the capture of Heidelberg. “I am delighted that the interest of the state forces him to return to Versailles,” she added, reiterating once more that “he is very well.”38 As it happened, Louis would never return to the battlefield: to the shock and dismay of everyone, he announced that he would no longer take part in military campaigns.
It was at this point that a crisis arose in Louis’s relationship with Françoise. It began when a certain lady, Mme de Guyon, came into their lives. Jeanne Bouvier de La Motte, Mme Guyon, was widowed at an early age. Rich and beautiful, she was attracted to spirituality and given to episodes of mystical reverie, which inspired her to identify herself with St. Teresa of Avila. She embraced Quietism, a Christian philosophy that preached a childlike innocence of the soul.39 She claimed to have contracted a mystical marriage with the child Jesus, who placed an invisible ring on her finger. The focus on Jesus as a child provided the essence of Quietism, for it represented a “personal” relationship with Jesus before his ministry, the crucifixion, and the resurrection. It was a personal relationship with God before the existence of the church, and even before the creation. As such, it negated the teaching of the church, dispensed with Holy Scripture, and eliminated the need for the sacraments. It also eliminated the need for priests, for a personal relationship with the divine required no intermediary.
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