“At the same time, the King ordered the chief clerk to bring him all these registers the next day.”115 This step was eradicating the past with a vengeance, and removing all possible precedents for future resistance. Only one more change was now needed to ensure absolute compliance: the end of the Parlement’s right to refuse registration. In 1668, it began to look as if this measure might be a likely development.
Tackling the Parlement was one thing; being virtually at war with the pope and demanding the humblest of apologies from him quite another. Certainly, by the mid-seventeenth century, the once formidable weapons of excommunication and interdiction had become altogether blunted, but it was a bold Catholic, indeed, who treated the supreme pontiff not like the successor to St. Peter but like the small Italian prince he was in reality. And just as had been the case with the king of Spain, the conflict between Louis XIV and the pope was provoked by an insult offered the French Ambassador.
As it was, France and the pope had been at odds for some time, both over matters affecting the Church in France and over the sequestration by the Holy See of territories France claimed for two of its allies - the duchies of Castro and Ronciglione for the duke of Parma, the town of Commachio for the duke of Modena. Underlying this conflict was the fact that Alexander VII Chigi had, all along, favored Spain over France. Still, none of the issues at stake was crucial, and thinking that a compromise was possible, Louis XIV sent a new ambassador, the duc de Créqui, to Rome as a conciliatory gesture.
Shortly after his arrival, however, an ugly incident resulted in a complete break in diplomatic relations. Rome, under the popes, was always a badly administered city; in the seventeenth century, the prevailing lawlessness was much encouraged by an odd and unique custom: While embassies are always granted extraterritoriality, in Rome that privilege extended to the entire neighborhood surrounding the embassy, and the practical consequence of that anomaly was virtual anarchy since the papal police were powerless to intervene. Sensibly enough, the pope tried to put an end to this situation, but privileges once granted cannot easily be taken back, so the ambassadors protested and the status quo prevailed.
Perhaps, after all, the duc de Créqui had not been a very good choice: Not only was he known for his enormous pride, he had also brought with him an entourage of lively, disorderly young men who proceeded to misbehave as they might have done in Paris, getting drunk, rioting, even beating up the police. Early in August, in fact, several of the duc’s footmen attacked a small troop of the Corsican Guards who were supposed to keep order in the city.
Corsicans were fond of vendettas, and don Mario Chigi, the pope’s brother, who had been offended by Créqui’s domineering manner, encouraged them to seek revenge. As a result, on August 20, 1662, a number of the Guards set siege to the embassy and even shot at a carriage in which the duchesse de Créqui was coming home, killing one of her pages. Obviously, this attack was a direct insult to France, but while don Mario expected some sort of reaction, both he and Alexander VII, who were used to Mazarin’s pragmatism, assumed that the incident would be forgotten within a few months. They had, however, misjudged Louis XIV. Ten days after the incident, a letter such as few popes have ever received went off from Saint Germain.
“Holy Father,” the king wrote in his own hand, “our cousin* the duc de Créqui, our Ambassador Extraordinary, having informed us of the murder attempt against his person, that of the Ambassadress his wife, and all the Frenchmen who were in Rome on the twentieth of this month, by Your Holiness’ Corsican militia, we have immediately ordered our said cousin to withdraw from the States of the Church so that his person and our dignity will no longer remain endangered by attempts unexampled even among Barbarians; we have also ordered the Sieur de Bourlemont, Auditor of the Rota,* to find out from Your Holiness whether you intend us a reparation proportionate to the magnitude of this offense, which has not only violated but shamefully undone the law of nations.
“We do not hereby ask for anything from your Holiness. You have so well-established a habit of refusing us everything, and have shown heretofore such aversion for all that concerns our person and our Crown, that we think it best to leave to your own prudence the decisions which will prompt our own, and only hope that they will be such as to make us continue praying to God that he preserve, Holy Father, Your Holiness to our Holy Mother the Church.”116
As we read this fulmination, it is Louis XIV’s own voice we hear: No minister would have dared address the pope in so cutting a tone, and actions soon followed. Créqui left Rome for Tuscany and took a group of pro-French cardinals with him; the Nuncio was ordered to remove himself all the way to Meaux, but not before he had received letters promising satisfaction. The French then pointed out that vague promises would not do, and they were further outraged by the news that some of the Corsicans who had been jailed had now escaped, clearly with the connivance of the authorities. By the end of the year, the Nuncio had been expelled from France altogether, Créqui was ordered home, and an attempt by Queen Christina of Sweden, who lived in Rome, to suggest that the whole incident should be forgotten was countered by yet another strongly worded royal letter.
Then, at the end of January 1663, Alexander VII decided to resume negotiations through the Venetian and Spanish ambassadors. He now offered the restitution of Castro, Ronciglione, and Commachio to their respective dukes, but no apology, and his offer was promptly turned down: Not only was Louis XIV intent on showing that no one could insult him and get away with it, his quarrel with the pope also served his foreign policy: Because he announced that, if necessary, he would send an army to Rome, Spain was forced to keep a large garrison in Milan, one of its possessions, just at the time when it was fighting Portugal; it was thus not until June that negotiations were started in Savoy - the Nuncio was still persona non grata in France. Although most of the French demands were accepted, the talks broke down within a month on the restitution of Castro, about which the pope had changed his mind.
Clearly, Alexander VII was not frightened enough, so Louis XIV proceeded to annex Avignon and its province, the Comtat Venaissin, which had belonged to the popes ever since the thirteenth century, and he assembled an army near the Alps under the command of the experienced maréchal du Plessis-Praslin. There was no force capable of resisting it; the memories of the sack of Rome in 1521 were still green: On January 19, 1664, negotiations were resumed and this time, Alexander VII gave in. Castro and Ronciglione were returned to the duke of Parma; the duke of Modena was compensated for the loss of Commachio; don Mario Chigi was dismissed as governor of Rome; a pyramid was built in the City to commemorate the insult and the pope’s humiliation*; a special legate was sent to offer the king a public apology, and Cardinal Chigi, the pope’s nephew, accompanied him. Louis XIV’s triumph was complete: By humbling the pope after the king of Spain, he had shown clearly that he was, indeed, the most powerful monarch in Europe; that, when it came to his gloire, he would stop at nothing; and that, while deeply religious, he had very little respect for the temporal power of the Church. And once again, all of it was achieved at minimal cost and without spilling a drop of blood.
Clearly, none of these successes would have been possible under the old system: Louis XIV could now show proof that his changes were positive, that the new absolute monarchy could enjoy a position which his forefathers scarcely imagined. And as time passed, the Court began to understand that there would be no backsliding. Anne of Austria could have testified to it: It was not just that she was not consulted, she was not even informed. The affairs of state were transacted in the king’s Council, and nowhere else, nor could anyone claim that he was even close to influencing the monarch: Louis XIV actually went out of his way to demonstrate that no one could ever control him.
This exclusion of the royal family was made even more visible because it was not the result of personal conflicts. The king was visibly fond of his brother; he appeared to worship his mother. In April and May 1663, for instance, the old queen fell ill. “The King sta
yed up watching her for several nights when it was feared that the fever would be more violent. He had a mattress brought in, which he had put down on the carpet by the Queen’s bed, and sometimes slept on it without undressing … He also looked after her with the greatest of care, he helped her to change beds and served her better and more gently than her maids.”117
The very fact that his new policy was so impersonal denoted its permanence: Principles, not feelings, were its root. When, however, feeling was manifested, it, too, showed that the king thought he should prevail over everyone. By 1663, it was clear to all that he was very much in love with Mlle de La Vallière; even Marie Thérèse had caught on to the fact. That the wife was hardly likely to prevail over the mistress surprised no one, but when the queen mother intervened, the Court was startled to notice that it made absolutely no difference. Because, on a variety of grounds, Anne of Austria disapproved of the affair, she stopped speaking to La Vallière, and when Louis XIV told her bluntly that this attitude was unacceptable, she announced that she would retire to a convent. After many tears, the king persuaded her to stay, but it was also noticed that she had become far more pleasant to the mistress.
Even more striking than the resolution of this crisis is what Louis had told his mother. After admitting that he was wrong to commit adultery and make his wife miserable, he continued: “I know my problem, I sometimes feel sorry and ashamed, I have done what I could to stop offending God and resist my passions, but I am forced to admit that they have become stronger than my reason. I can no longer resist them, and do not even feel the desire to do so.”118 It was a telling admission: Whatever the king wanted he must have, and he was so far above ordinary mortals that it no longer mattered if he ignored the laws that bound them.
* It was possible in seventeenth-century France to buy, with the king’s permission, an estate which carried a title; thus Le Tellier had purchased Louvois and its marquessate for his son.
* Certain taxes had to be voted by a variety of provincial estates, but in fact, under Louis XIV, they almost invariably were.
† Subject to confirmation by the pope, in theory, but that had become purely a formality. The pope never refused his assent.
* Anyone with enough money could buy himself an office in the Parlement and thus become a judge, whether he was qualified or not.
* Mlle d’Orléans, that is, whom the king had forced to marry the Hereditary Prince of Tuscany.
† The king’s cousin and former leader of the Fronde.
‡ This meant that French plays were performed as opposed to the Comédie italienne, the Commedia dell’arte.
* An allusion to Spain, where the king virtually never left his palaces and was only visible, on rare occasions, to the grandees; it is typical of Louis XIV to contrast the free French to the enslaved Spanish.
* The grand maître was the chief officer of the king’s household.
† The duc de Beaufort was an iliegitimate grandson of Henri IV; he had been one of the leaders of the Fronde.
‡ The Important were an aristocratic element of the second Fronde.
§ The maids-in-waiting were young unmarried women of good families who surrounded the queens and Madame.
* Because of a malformation of her spine, she limped and had one shoulder higher than the other.
* As well, of course, as his first cousin: Her mother was his father’s sister.
* The queen, of course, was expected to remain strictly faithful.
* The palace of the Tuileries was used as the main royal or imperial residence after 1789; it was burned by the Commune in 1871, and torn down shortly thereafter.
* He reigned from 1461 to 1483 with conspicuous success.
* The Protestants. RPR stood for religion prétendue réformée, or so-called reformed religion.
* Underlined by the king himself.
* Today, we might replace God by the unconscious.
† Not ruling in place of the king, that is, as Richelieu, Mazarin, and Fouquet had done.
* Colbert’s two daughters, for instance, each married a duke.
† Richelieu and Mazarin, because they were cardinals, that is princes of the Church, and dukes besides, had been called monseigneur, but no other ministers were.
* The cour des aides supposedly oversaw the collection of a consumer tax but was, in fact, a Parlement-like tax court.
† The conseil d’en haut was composed of the king, the chancellor, and a few ministers; it was the supreme judicial organ of the state.
* As the Parlement demonstrated amply during the minority of Louis XV.
* The king usually received such deputations in public, with the Court watching and listening.
† Private suits and criminal trials, that is.
* As a matter of etiquette, the kings of France called all dukes and cardinals “mon cousin.”
* The French representative before a Church tribunal.
* It was torn down, with the king’s permission, a few years later.
A submissive Court, talented but obedient ministers, a prosperous Treasury, and an adoring people: In January 1666, the magnitude of the king’s achievement was evident to all, and yet, as is often the case with rapid change, the transformation was not as thorough as it might have appeared. By the end of the year, however, two great events had deepened the impact of the reforms: Louis XIV was preparing to attack Spain, and the queen mother was dead.
Powerless though she had become even in small matters, Anne of Austria nonetheless represented a survival of the past: To see her was to remember the Fronde and the king’s minority. And while her attempt at freezing out La Vallière had been wholly unsuccessful, she still embodied a powerful (even if only potential) moral force, and because she was the only remaining member of the older generation in the royal family, she stood for a certain kind of tradition. Early in 1665, however, it became clear that this standard, too, was about to change, when she was discovered to be suffering from breast cancer.
Even seventeenth-century doctors, incompetent though they were, understood that a mastectomy was indicated, but the state of medical knowledge was such that the operation would have entailed a far more rapid death than the absence of treatment. In the queen mother’s case, however, because the patient was so famous, something had to be done, and so the doctors devised a method of unparalleled barbarity. For an entire year, the wretched Anne submitted, at regular intervals, to a sort of semi-ablation in which slices of both breast and tumor were cut off by her physicians; the pain inflicted by this procedure in an age wholly without anesthesia can be readily imagined, as well as the horror of bandages adhering to the raw flesh and removed without regard for the patient’s suffering; all, of course, to absolutely no avail. Throughout the year of her martyrdom, Anne behaved with a courage that earned her the admiration of everyone, and the king spent much time trying to comfort her. By January 1666, however, she was clearly at death’s door; indeed, she is reputed to have said, looking at her once beautiful hands which had become swollen with cancer: “I can see it is time I went.”
Even then, however, she remained a public figure: There were quarrels about who was to inherit what, the king, in particular, claiming her famous pearls, and Monsieur disputing violently about his share of her inheritance. Almost to the last, whether at Saint Germain or at the Louvre, where she was eventually moved, she continued to receive courtiers. Her religious observances, always strict, now came to occupy much of her time, and her attendants, watching her dedicate her sufferings to God, did not hesitate to call her a saint. At last, between four and five in the morning of January 20, Anne of Austria, infanta of Spain, queen and erstwhile regent of France, breathed her last, leaving behind her an apparently inconsolable family.
“I was told by people who slept in the King’s bedroom [the next night] that he wept in his bed for almost the entire night,” Mme de Motteville noted. “The next day, speaking to the duchesse de Montausier about the Queen Mother, he said that he had the consolation
of knowing that he had never disobeyed her in anything of real consequence; and, continuing to extol her merits, he added that the Queen, his mother, was not only a great Queen but that she deserved to be ranked with the greatest Kings.”119 And Monsieur, who cried quite as easily as the king, but whose tears were perhaps the signs of a more affectionate nature, was clearly devastated for weeks. Then, too, he must have realized that there was no longer anyone to whom he could appeal against his brother’s decisions.
To say that Monsieur’s affection went deeper than the king’s does not, however, imply a lack of sincerity on the latter’s part; as always, a distinction must be made between the king’s personal and public feelings; thus, excluding his mother from the Council or disregarding her admonitions about La Vallière implied not lack of love but an overriding concern for his duties and prerogatives as king. Indeed, when later in the year he reflected about the recent past, the result was a singularly handsome, and unquestionably sincere, tribute.
“Nature,” Louis XIV wrote, “had formed the first links which tied me to the Queen, my mother; but the closeness resulting from a kinship of the soul is much harder to end than that due only to blood. To explain both the extent and the justice of my sorrow, I would have to set out here the full merit of this Queen, and that would be a very difficult undertaking. The most eloquent men of this century, whom I set to working on this subject, have scarcely been able to fulfill their task; the simple tale of this princess’s actions to be found in history will always surpass all the praise they have given her.
“… The respect I paid her was not of that forced kind of duty we owe to appearances. The habit I made of living in the same house and eating at the same table with her, the assiduity with which I could be seen to visit her several times a day were not an obligation I imposed on myself for reasons of state but a sign of the pleasure I found in her company; and in fact the way in which she had freely transmitted the sovereign power to me showed me clearly enough that I had nothing to fear from her ambition to allow me to dispense with insincere marks of affection.”120 These words say more than, perhaps, Louis XIV intended: Then and henceforth, blood ties meant little to him except inasmuch as they gave certain people certain positions, and he was grateful to his mother less for her many achievements during and just after the regency than for the ease with which she had given up power. In the event, she died just in time: Philip IV, her brother, had predeceased her, dying on September 17, 1665, and leaving as his heir a retarded four-year-old child. The situation was obviously right for further French expansion, a process that would surely have deeply distressed the queen mother.
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