Louis XIV

by Olivier Bernier

  As it was, the king went into the purple mourning reserved for royalty, and the obligatory ceremonies took place. After the reading of the late queen’s will, which immediately followed her death, Louis XIV left for his hunting pavilion at Versailles in obedience to the etiquette which forbade the king’s presence in the same house as a dead body. “On the twenty-first, at [7:00 a.m.] … the Queen’s surgeon took out her heart through her side as she had ordered; they embalmed her body though she had forbidden it, but it was so gangrened that it had to be done, since the body had to stay at the Louvre for a few days so as to allow enough time to prepare the coaches … [She was then put into] a lead coffin, which was put in a covering of black velvet and white satin and … topped with a crowned canopy bearing at each corner the Queen’s arms embroidered.

  “On the twenty-second the coffin was put on a platform … with many silver candlesticks holding white candles bearing the Queen’s arms … All the room, including the ceiling, was draped in black … a crown with the fleur-de-lis covered by a black crepe was put on a black velvet cushion at the head of the coffin.”121 All through this time, priests prayed constantly for the late Queen’s soul. But almost immediately, the kind of dispute with which Anne had been all too familiar broke out between the chevalier d’honneur and the dame d’atours as to who would be first to sprinkle the bier with holy water. That squabble was followed by endless disputes between the duchesses and the “foreign princesses,”* and between the representatives of the various courts, all of which had to be settled, sometimes by referring to precedent, sometimes directly by the king, before, on the twenty-eighth, the body was interred in the Abbey of Saint Denis. All in all, these disputes were so varied and so complex that it takes seventy pages, filled with tiny handwriting, in the Register of Ceremonies to account for it all.

  Of course, precedence had always been important and quarrels fierce, but at just about this time, the always complex etiquette begins to undergo a further development, something the king watched with approval: If the nobles had to fight, it was obviously better that it be about the claims to a cushion in church or an eight-foot train. Precedence now began to replace policy as a subject of contention, and that, as Louis XIV knew very well, made his task doubly easy: Not only was his government free from aristocratic opposition, but also the quarrels about points of etiquette must in the end be settled by the king, thus giving him yet another way to reward or punish his courtiers.

  Had the queen mother’s death taken place a few years earlier, it would unquestionably have had serious political consequences. As it was, it made absolutely no difference to anyone except the members of her household, many of whom now retired from the Court, and Queen Marie Thérèse lost not just an aunt and a mother-in-law but also the only person in whom she could confide her chagrin at her husband’s infidelities.

  Although she received all the respect that was her due and was treated with a measure of consideration, the queen knew that she hardly mattered, but always refrained from the kind of complaining the king would have resented. “The Heavens,” Louis wrote, “have perhaps never gathered within one woman more virtue, more beauty, a higher birth, more tenderness for her children, more love and respect for her husband,”122 but because she had neither charm nor intelligence, she was left to mourn, alone now, her rivals’ triumphs.

  The king himself missed his mother, not just because he was so used to seeing her often, but because she set a certain grandly polished tone not seen elsewhere in the young, exuberant, but rather unrefined Court. But it was Monsieur who suffered most from his mother’s loss. While she lived, he could count on her to see that he was well treated by the king: Although she lacked ultimate authority, she still had some influence. Now the king, who undoubtedly felt affection for his brother, simply treated him as a possible rival. His own testimony on this subject is eloquent.

  “I must,” the king wrote in his Memoirs, “tell you about a conversation I had with [my brother] at the most acute moment of our common suffering, and which ought to have been more public because of the warmth of our mutual affection.

  “The most important thing that happened then was that I promised him I would in no way abate the closeness with which I had behaved to him while the Queen our mother was alive, even assuring him that I would extend this to his children; that I would have his son brought up and educated by the same governor and the same preceptor as yourself,* and that, whenever he had a just claim, he would find me as careful of his interests as of my very own.

  “The moment in which I was telling him all this, and my condition as I was saying it left him in no doubt that it was due solely to my love for him; for it is well known that reason is not strong enough to control our speeches and actions when our hearts are in turmoil.

  “But it is however true that, since I must point out everything which may help to enlighten you … if I had planned this speech in the most cool and considerate manner, I could not have thought of anything more appropriate, since, at the same time, I was doing my brother an honor for which he was bound to be grateful and taking as hostage for his good behavior what was most precious to him.”123

  There is no reason to doubt the exact truth of this statement, written within a year of the queen mother’s death, and thus before time had, as it often does, altered memory. We may, however, pause and wonder. That the transformation from the pleasure-loving young man into the very incarnation of monarchy had already gone far was clear to all observers; what is more amazing is that Louis himself was so conscious of it: What others might call inhumanity - the use of his mother’s loss to bind his brother into greater dependence - he saw as mere duty, well carried out; his analysis of himself is uncommonly perceptive when he points out that the genuine affection he felt for Monsieur only helped in putting through a political scheme. Here, indeed, is the first clear proof that Louis XIV actually believed that France came first: Because it is disguised by such kingly splendor, this revolutionary message is easy to miss, but it is there nonetheless. Earlier rulers had thought of the country as a possession: They owned France much as a lesser man might own an estate; now, for the first time, the king is seen as the first servant of an eternal state to whom he owes an unceasing duty. Pushed a little further, that notion leads straight to ideas of the kind expounded by the revolutionaries in 1789. Obviously, Louis XIV did not go that far: To him, the prosperity of France depended on the strength of its monarch.

  “It must be agreed,” the king goes on, “that nothing is more useful to the public good, or necessary to the greatness of the state, or advantageous to all the members of the royal family, than the links tying them to he who is its head … Then, potential rebels, seeing those princes too bound [to the King], no longer try to seduce them: as they fear that their criminal endeavors will fail and perhaps even be punished, they are forced to remain silent; those who are dissatisfied, finding no one to whom they can rally, are forced to swallow their displeasure in their own houses and the foreigners, deprived of the help given them by the allies who, alone, have made them a menace to this state, are more restrained in their purposes.”124

  This description is, obviously, a recipe for preventing the recurrence of the Fronde; indeed, in 1666, France had not been at peace long enough for its ravages to be forgotten. Because, after 1661, the princes of the blood stopped rebelling, it is easy to think that their compliance was a natural development, that it was bound to happen. Nothing could be less true: It took unceasing vigilance and a personal reign that continued for over fifty years to end that particular peril.

  Still, what may be generally true is often false in particular instances. Louis XIV was obsessed by the memory of his uncle, Gaston d’Orléans, who had provided a rallying point for plot after plot, and so he failed to see that his brother was deeply loyal to him. Although Monsieur was, like his uncle, the king’s brother, his personality was altogether different from Gaston’s; then, too, Gaston’s strength had been that, until 1638, he was heir to the thro
ne while, within a year of his marriage, Louis XIV had already fathered a son.

  As a result, Monsieur was, to some extent at least, made to suffer for his uncle’s sins. “The prince de Conti’s unexpected death,” Louis XIV noted, “caused my brother to feel again that he was entitled to the governorship* of Languedoc. He convinced himself that since my uncle had once occupied that position, he had an unarguable example proving that it should now be his as of right; but I thought it best not to grant him his request, feeling quite sure that (after the disorders which we have so often seen in the realm) it would show an absolute lack of forethought and reason if I were to entrust the governorships of the provinces to Sons of France† because, for the good of the state, they should have no retreat other than the Court, and no stronghold other than the heart of their elder brother.

  “My uncle’s example, which was apparently the foundation of my brother’s claim, was a great lesson for me.”125 Thus was Monsieur’s fate set: This intelligent and brave prince was forced to spend his life doing nothing. Of course, he was given compensations. The king, while denying him every possible power base, was anxious to keep him from being too greatly dissatisfied, so he was given estates and pensions and encouraged to spend his vast income on buildings, jewels, and festivities.

  Even that, however, failed to satisfy the king. Because Monsieur was fascinated by etiquette, and vastly knowledgeable when it came to settling problems of precedence, he was usually consulted about most of these disputes, but when he put forth a claim of his own, it was slapped down with all possible speed. “My brother,” Louis XIV wrote, “decided, in his leisure, on a request that his wife be given a chair* when she was before the Queen.

  “My affection for him was such that I would have wished never to refuse him anything, but seeing how important this was, I told him immediately, in the friendliest tone possible, that I could not grant his request and that, when it came to anything which placed him above my other subjects, I would always do it with pleasure; but that I did not think I should ever allow anything that would bring him too close [in rank] to me …

  “Those who think that ambitions of this kind are mere affairs of ceremonial are wholly deluded; there is nothing in these matters which does not request careful thought or which is not capable of having serious consequences. The people whom we rule cannot penetrate into secrets of state, and therefore judge according to what they see on the outside, so that it is most usually by the place and rank that they measure their respect and their obedience … One cannot, without harming the entire body of the state, deprive its Head of the least signs of superiority which distinguish him from its other members.”126

  There, in that sentence, Monsieur’s position was fixed for the rest of his life. Still, the king did, as he promised, distinguish him from all others at Court. He was, naturally, given precedence immediately following the king and, when he grew up, the dauphin; he was also the only one who instead of addressing Louis XIV as Sire or Votre Majesté called him simply Monsieur; while to the king, he was always mon frère.

  Even more interesting than Louis XIV’s attitude to his brother, however, are two brand-new notions. The first is the importance of etiquette, a matter in which the French Court had until then lagged behind that of Spain; the other was what the twentieth century has called public relations: The king rules in part because he is seen to rule, just as today, presidents of the United States take great care to look “presidential.” Here, too, under the guise of following precedent, Louis XIV was innovating, and as always, for the specific purpose of preventing rebellion and civil war. By raising the king so high above all others that he would come to seem more than human, he made it virtually impossible for people to think they could disobey him and get away with it.

  Stiffening the etiquette might impress the once rebellious princes and nobles, but they were, after all, only a small part of the population. At the other end of the social scale, its overwhelming majority was not expected to have any opinion at all: Peasants worked so hard, led such uncertain lives, and were so ill-informed that they were simply supposed to obey. Still, that left an ever more significant group, the growing, increasingly rich, increasingly powerful middle class, who did not attend the Court but controlled a good deal of the country’s wealth and were often the most active. In an age without radio, television, or newspapers,* the government depended on writers of all kinds for its propaganda, from Racine, who was to become Royal Historiographer, to the humblest of pamphlet writers. Their steady output was also important in that it could be expected to reach foreign courts.

  Praise, in fact, whether spontaneous or bought, now became one of the most visible elements of the king’s new way of ruling. A wave of pamphlets appeared, all adulatory in tone. There was, for instance, a proposed inscription on the new gate to the Louvre: “Monde, viens voir ce que je voi Et ce que le soleil admire Rome dans un palais, dans Paris un Empire Et tous les Césars dans un Roi” (World, come see what I see And what the very sun admires A palace worthy of Rome, Paris the heart of Empire and a King worthy of all the Caesars).127 There were sonnets, like this one: “Montrer la majesté peinte sur le visage Avoir l’air d’un héros, au dessus des humains Être plus généreux, plus vaillant et plus sage Que ne furent jadis les Grecs ni les Romains … Enfin surmonter tout sans rencontrer d’obstacle La nature, soi-même et tous ses ennemis C’est dans le grand Louis qu’on voit tous ces miracles” (His majesty shows in his face He looks like a hero, above common mortals He is more magnanimous, valiant and wise than ever were the Greeks and the Romans … No obstacle stops him, he overcomes all Nature, himself and all his enemies All these miracles are seen in Louis the Great).128 Dreadful verse, and dutiful praise, but even here, a key element of Louis XIV’s new style is noted: “He overcomes … himself.” This mastery over one’s own feelings was well understood to be a key element of greatness; already in 1640, Corneille, who in many ways set the tone for the reign of the Sun King, had Augustus say: “Je suis maître de moi comme de l’univers”* (I rule over myself as I do over the world). This absolute mastery over self, which never ceased to amaze his contemporaries, was one of most powerful components of the new image.

  This praise is all quite a change: Traditionally in France, songs and pamphlets were critical, not laudatory; indeed, the mazarinades began the Fronde. That this tradition was not quite yet at an end is attested by verse like: “Le peuple que jadis Dieu governait lui-même Las de son bonheur voulut avoir un roi Eh bien, dit le Seigneur, peuple ingrat et sans foi Tu sentiras bientôt le joug du diadème Celui que je mettrai à ce degré suprême Comme un cruel vautour viendra fondre sur toi … Ainsi regne aujourd’hui par les voeux de la France Le monarque absolu que Dieu nous a donné” (The people whom, once, God governed himself weary of happiness wanted to have a king Well, said the Lord, ingrate and faithless folk You will soon feel the full weight of a Crown He whom I will place in the highest place Like a cruel vulture will prey upon you … Thus reigns today through the wishes of France the absolute monarch the Heavens have given us).129 This verse may well have been the work of a former Frondeur, or that of a friend of Fouquet; in any event, it represents a rare, generally unheard false note in the universal concert of praise.

  By the end of 1666, however, there were some criticisms, especially at Court; war, everyone agreed, was the noblest of pastimes; it gave men the chance to show how brave they were, earn some glory, and be rewarded by the king. But while no one doubted that the French army was superior to all others, Louis XIV obstinately refused to use it, and some of the young nobles began to murmur that the king must be a coward. As it happens, they were right, in one respect at least: While Louis XIV appears to have been physically brave, he was very well aware that battles are uncertain and wars expensive. Unlike many of his ancestors, therefore, he intended to refrain from fighting until all the chances were so overwhelmingly on his side, and the campaign so thoroughly prepared, that victory would be all but certain.

  This stra
tegy involved three key elements. The first was money: Without it, the army would disintegrate, but by 1666, the king and Colbert together had seen to it that the Treasury was well stocked. The second was military preparedness: France had a long and unpleasant history of disasters brought about by untrained troops and undisciplined commanders, but that had changed because the king had himself been supervising the reorganization and retraining of his army. The third was, obviously, the relative strength of the enemy, but that was now nothing to worry about: Spain was not only in decline but ruled by a weak and incompetent regent, so the king had every prospect of success.

  Even that, however, was not enough. Partly in order to reassure the rest of Europe, partly in order to provide himself with the best possible propaganda, when, in May 1667, the French army crossed the border into the Spanish possessions in Flanders, it was merely, the king said, to claim his wife’s property. Because the huge dowry stipulated by Mazarin in the Treaty of the Pyrenees had never been paid - an event fully anticipated by the cardinal - Marie Thérèse’s renunciation to her Spanish inheritance was no longer valid. And as if that were not enough, Louis XIV had his lawyers dredge up a “right of devolution” from the distant past, in virtue of which the queen was now entitled to Flanders, Brabant, Luxembourg, and the Franche-Comté.