Under these circumstances, it seemed quite normal when the king continued to raise his illegitimate children to a high rank. In 1673, three of Mme de Montespan’s offspring were acknowledged and raised to the peerage by letters patent: three-year-old Louis-Auguste, who was created duc du Maine, one-year-old Louis-César, who became comte de Vexin, and newly born Louise-Françoise, now comtesse de Nantes,162 while in 1676, one more of these offspring, Louise-Marie-Anne was in her turn named Mlle de Tours.
That step, obviously, was a first but not uncommon: Across the Channel, Charles II was proceeding in much the same manner. Soon, however, Louis XIV went a good deal further. In July 1675, he told Colbert that the comte de Vermandois was to be given the same rank as the prince de Conti, “just below that of the princes of the blood royal”163; in 1680, he signed letters patent signifying to all that henceforth these four children would bear the family name of Bourbon, as if they had been legitimate.164 Within the next decade, it became clear that the légitimés, as they were known, were being moved closer to the position of genuine members of the royal family. Inasmuch as the king saw himself as above the constraints of mere mortals, this step made sense: In his eyes, it was more important to be descended from him than from the brother of his great-grandfather, as was the case of Monsieur le Prince. Indeed, the constant identification of Louis XIV with Greco-Roman deities may have finally begun to alter his perception of himself: The bastard children of Zeus-Jupiter, after all, peopled the ancient world and were themselves demigods.
This quasi-divine status, of course, fits in nicely with what might be called the Versailles Plan: The domestication of the once ferocious aristocracy now took place in mythological surroundings, and André Félibien caught that note when he described a garden pavilion, the Grotto of Thetis, which was built there in 1672. It is impossible to quote in extenso from the forty pages of small type Félibien needed for a full description, but even then, an impression can be given.
“One can say of Versailles,” Félibien wrote, “that it is a place where Art alone is at work, and that Nature seems to have forsaken it so as to give the King occasion to bring forth, in a sort of Creation, so to speak, several splendid places … Nowhere has Art been more successful than in the Grotto of Thetis …
“This building, square in shape, is placed near the palace … it is a mass of rusticated stone opening by arcades closed by iron gates that are even more cleverly worked than they are rich. Above the central door there is a golden sun whose spreading rays form the bars of the three gates … three large reliefs adorn the front of this building; the central one shows the sun setting into the sea, the other two are full of tritons and sirens rejoicing at his coming; there are also other, smaller round reliefs showing maritime cupids playing with dolphins.”165
As usual, all these mythological allusions were meant to be easily understood: The Grotto of Thetis was the place where the Sun - i.e., Apollo and, by extension, the king - takes his rest once he has come to the end of his daily ride through the heavens. Magnificence and novelty were also important, however. The grotto’s only light came in through the three doors; inside, the walls were covered with small, rough stones, contained, however, within strips of marble; while the statue bases were also of rusticated stones, all the rest of the decor was made of mother-of-pearl. In the vestibule and the three salons alike, there were “paintings” worked in shells and various ornaments of coral, enamel, and mother-of-pearl; the fleur-de-lis, crowns, and “L” motifs were picked out in gold against a blue ground while various aquatic symbols were carved in amethysts. Nor was this ostentation all; the pilasters marching around the walls were made of shells with a central panel in which two large L’s were picked out in pearls on a ground of amethysts while, just above their capitals, were baskets filled with shell fruit and flowers from which a jet of water fell in one of the many black marble basins that had been positioned through the rooms. Then there were festoons of fruit and flowers framing sirens, tritons, and dolphins spouting water, along with mirrors, cornucopias, and sculpture-filled niches. In the center of the main room, water sprang up from a jasper table, struck the ceiling, and fell into a basin, while at the back, the Girardon group of Apollo and the Nymphs,* one of the masterpieces of French sculpture, was seen for the first time. And as if all that still weren’t enough, each room also had its chandelier.
“It is,” Félibien tells us, “an azure globe on which three branches, forming the sides of a triangle, are joined at the top to make three lyres complete with strings of gold thread. These branches are azure, but bordered with small yellow shells which are like a gold cord. At the bottom they are enriched with big mother-of-pearl leaves each with a large pearl in its center. At the top, the lyres are joined by festoons of different shells holding up a gold crown; at the bottom there are six mother-of-pearl dragons whose tails twine around the azure globe; their wings are spread and they look as if they might fly away except that their necks are chained by more festoons. Each holds in its mouth a candleholder made of shells where candles can be fixed at night but from which water can also spring up to the vault.”166 Nor were the surrounding gardens neglected. The Mercure galant, whose magazine format precluded it from describing the grotto as completely as Félibien, added: “The miracles wrought by M. Nautre [sic] are no less considerable, The great numbers of orange trees planted right in the ground [i.e., not in pots] prove this as well as the fully grown trees which have been transplanted to widen the main allée, something which had never been done before now.”167 Outdoors as indoors, dazzlement was the order of the day.
Ordering a splendid court, domesticating the aristocracy in Europe’s most splendid palace, exacting the most unquestioning obedience from all his subjects, all that only represented one aspect of the king’s life. Just as important, just as carefully planned, was war. Because, in our own time, war has taken on such a devastating character, the word very properly evokes fear and abhorrence: There can be no excuse, ever, for starting an aggressive war. None of this horror, however, was true in the seventeenth century. Wars were not only shorter and far more limited - guns still most often missed their target, rifles were cumbersome and inaccurate, and took a long time to reload - but they were also only fought part time: There was a campaigning season, from April to November; in winter, the contending armies went into their winter quarters to be safe until spring.
Then, too, the act of fighting was still considered praiseworthy: There was glory to be earned, bravery to be displayed. Great generals were widely admired, and conquered territory seemed highly desirable. This last, no doubt, was especially true in France: Not only was it the strongest and most populated country in Europe, but it had also failed to reach what have been since considered its natural limits, the Alps, the Pyrenees, and the modern border with Belgium. That the province of Franche-Comté, French-speaking and French-surrounded, should be Spanish clearly made no sense, and while Louis XIV never forgot his gloire, the wars of the seventies, with one exception, aimed at giving France more reasonable borders.
Unfortunately, the exception was a very sizable one. In the entire course of his long reign, Louis XIV never made a worse foreign policy mistake than when he decided to attack Holland. Vanquished, it had nothing much to offer him, and if it should resist effectively, it could only damage his reputation. To the king himself, though, the reasons seemed good enough: The Dutch had been instrumental in forcing him to make peace in 1668; by crushing them, he would remove a menace from his flank when the war with Spain resumed; and it is impossible to deny that he had been irked by the Republic’s pride.
As it was, he did not move until he felt sure of victory. Madame, just before her death, had been pivotal in concluding a treaty of alliance with Charles II, thus ensuring that the Dutch would also be opposed by Europe’s greatest maritime power. The princes whose possessions were near the Rhine were bribed into acquiescence. The Treasury was prosperous and Colbert was ready to provide more money when needed. Finally, the army
was superbly trained and supplied thanks to Louvois’s tireless efforts; with generals like Condé, Turenne, and Vauban, the great engineer, it was clearly invincible.
Having thus carefully prepared his victory, the king left St. Germain on April 29, 1672. On June 12, the king and the army reached the Rhine and crossed it, defeating the Dutch in the process, and raising the reputation of France to the skies. Indeed, a century later, the crossing of the Rhine was still celebrated. “That air of grandeur which heightened all the king’s actions,” Voltaire wrote, “the rapid success of his conquests, the splendor of his reign, the idolatry of his courtiers, finally the people’s, and especially the Parisians’, taste for exaggeration … all that made the crossing of the Rhine seem like something prodigious.”168
The first results of this victory were themselves brilliant. On June 20, Utrecht surrendered; within a few days, the French had reached the suburbs of Amsterdam. Had they taken Muyden, the Little town which controlled the sluices opening or closing the dikes, Amsterdam must have fallen, but the commander of the regiment sent to seize it, the marquis de Rochefort, failed to realize the importance of his mission and was defeated by its defenders. At that point, much against the advice of William Prince of Orange, their new commander in chief, the Dutch government, led by Jan de Witt, petitioned for peace, and it was then that Louis XIV, drunk with his own power, made a costly mistake. First, Louvois, a man famous for his arrogance as well as his effectiveness, was chosen to treat with the Dutch envoys; the Foreign Secretary, Arnauld de Pomponne, had only been in office a year, feared Louvois, and was generally timid; finally, the king himself, encouraged by Louvois, decided to demand exorbitant terms. The results were swift: On July 1, William of Orange became Stathouder, a position of great power, and on August 20, de Witt, who symbolized the peace party, was massacred, under the Prince’s indifferent eye, by an enraged mob. At the same time, all the sluices were opened and Amsterdam became an island: It could no longer be taken; indeed, by allowing even its richest land to be flooded, Holland made itself a purely maritime power, and there, it was superior to all. Already, at the battle of Sole Bay, Engel de Ruyter, the great Dutch admiral, had defeated the combined French and British fleets; now a stalemate was reached, and the war which was supposed to be short, easy, and victorious dragged on. Since no more spectacular victories could be expected, the king went home to be present at the celebration of his conquests, and the army was left to hold a hostile and inundated country.
He was greeted with rapture. In Paris, monuments went up in the tradition of the Roman arches of triumph; Boileau celebrated the crossing of the Rhine in an epic poem while van der Meulen painted it; always obliging, the Mercure galant printed a variety of laudatory verse of which this one is a fair sample: “Quoique vous puissiez attenter Louis de votre sort sera toujours l’arbitre Et se dormant à vous sous cet illustre titre Il vous rendra bien plus qu’il ne peut vous ôter; … En vous soumettant à sa loi … Vous perdrez vingt tyrans pour acquérir un Roi” (No matter what you may try Louis will always be arbiter of your fate And as he gives himself to you under that illustrious title He will give you far more than he can take away; As you bow to his law You lose twenty tyrants and gain a single King).169 Not exactly a sparkling poem, but, no doubt, sincerely meant: Never was the praise given the king more fulsome than on his return from this useless campaign.
Of course, with Holland underwater, but unwilling to treat, and the French army settling down to a blend of sieges and antiguerrilla warfare, the conflict, which was supposed to end with the fighting season, dragged on. And naturally, Louis XIV’s enemies joined in: Along with Emperor Leopold I and the elector of Brandenburg, the Spanish governor in nearby Flanders sent troops to help the Dutch. As for the people of the occupied areas, they, too, turned against the French with a deep, burning hatred, not so much because of the invasion, but because both the maréchal de Luxembourg, a great strategist who was given to the most rapacious looting, and Louvois, who always thought fear a good ally, ravaged towns and villages alike. The king, when he heard about this marauding, was horrified and ordered it stopped, but it was too late: All over Europe, the French were seen as a present danger.
In January 1673, as if to mark a change in the course of the reign, the man who had written so many plays and divertissements for the king’s pleasure died suddenly. In Molière, France and Louis XIV were losing one of the greatest playwrights ever to set pen to paper. Perhaps the time for comedies had passed: Now, grander themes demanded attention, and in the spring, the fighting resumed. Since, clearly, it was time for some new triumph, the king decided to besiege Maestricht, one of the Netherlands’ key fortresses; in doing so, he scrupulously followed the advice given him by Vauban, the greatest living military engineer. It turned out to be yet another progress in the art of war.
“Vauban used for the first time the parallel trenches invented by Italian engineers serving in the Turkish army before Candia,” Voltaire noted. “He added mustering centers the better to gather the troops and rally them in case of enemy sorties. Louis, during this siege, showed himself more exact and harder-working than ever before. By his example, he accustomed to patience and hard work a nation which had until then been accused of having only that fiery courage which fatigue soon dispels. After an eight-day siege, on June 29, 1673, Maestricht surrendered.”170 Unfortunately, the world had changed: Not even the fall of the city could bring the Dutch to terms. Only eight days before, de Ruyter had once again beaten the Franco-British fleet; within days, Leopold I of Austria and Charles II of Spain (or rather his Council*) declared war on France. Since, at the same time, the king of England, prudently heeding his aroused Parliament, was preparing to negotiate with the Dutch, and the small Rhenish states were defecting as well, Louis XIV now found himself without significant allies just when he was opposed by the old Habsburg coalition. The results came soon enough: On September 14, the small fortress of Naerden, which was held by the French, was forced to surrender to the Prince of Orange. Militarily, it was an insignificant setback, but as the first French defeat since 1661, it seemed to many a taste of things to come.
If 1672 had, despite the conquest of so many Dutch cities, ended at best in a draw, 1673 seemed less promising still: With Europe leagued against France, the fall of Maestricht hardly mattered any longer, and because wars are expensive, the winter was marked by a series of small tax rebellions: For a monarch who had prided himself on lightening the tax load while balancing the budget and maintaining the most splendid court in Europe, this setback was serious. In this case, however, appearances were partly misleading: Although the new military expenditures (somewhat diminished by the contributions exacted from occupied Holland), added to the subsidies paid both the king of England and his opposition, came to an unexpected 25 million in a year when the deficit was meant to have been an insignificant 1,376,971 livres,171 the money could still be found easily thanks to Colbert’s excellent management. As for the uprisings, which were repressed with great firmness, they soon subsided.
Most important, however, was the attitude of the king himself. In the twelve years preceding 1673, partly through talent, partly through chance, he had known nothing but success - and perhaps been carried away by it into attacking Holland. Now, as the game became more difficult and defeat a real possibility, people watched to see what he would do; far from showing fear, or even worry, he proceeded to give the example of calm assurance. All through the winter of 1673-74, the Court was as festive as ever, and if Louis XIV worked even harder than before, that could surprise no one. What did cause considerable astonishment, however, was his next move: Just as he seemed about to be faced with adversaries far more powerful than himself, he went on the attack. Condé was sent off to fight William of Orange in the Netherlands; Turenne was stationed on the Rhine where the emperor’s troops were expected to attack; the king himself, at the head of yet another army, proceeded to conquer the Franche-Comté for the second time.
As usual, however, thi
s apparently dauntless monarch was taking minimal risks. The key to the Franche-Comté was the attitude of the Swiss: Without their cooperation neither Spain nor Austria could send in enough troops to defend it, and they simply counted on the fact that the fiercely independent cantons would prefer not to have Louis XIV as a neighbor. The king, on the other hand, paid them to refuse passage to the Habsburg troops. The conquest, after that, was a foregone conclusion: The siege of Besançon, the province’s capital and chief fortress, lasted a mere nine days; six weeks later, the entire Franche-Comté was annexed to France. It has remained French to this day, “a monument to the weakness of the Austro-Spanish ministry and the strength of that of Louis XIV.”172
Attacking Spain, especially under these conditions, was easy; the Franche-Comté was geographically isolated, the Spanish army slowly disintegrating for lack of money and generals, and the government itself divided and weak. Austria, however, was a very different proposition. Leopold I was energetic, if not very bright; he had competent advisers, and his troops were led by Montecucculli, one of the best generals of the age. As a result, it took all Turenne’s talent, and after his death in 1675, Condé’s, to resist the imperial armies. For the first time under Louis XIV, France itself was invaded, but the enemy incursion into Alsace was soon repulsed: Not only was Turenne a master tactician, he went on fighting when all sensible men put their troops into winter quarters, and so he won a major battle against the imperial army at Turckheim on January 5, 1675.
That allowed him to cross the Rhine once more and conquer most of its right bank, with utterly disastrous consequences for its inhabitants. The Palatinate, which had been the emperor’s ally, was utterly and systematically ruined on Louvois’s orders. This destruction was meant as a warning of what Leopold’s other allies could expect if they continued the war; instead, it stiffened their will to fight - they knew what to expect if they were defeated - and caused hatreds that lasted for more than a century, all without bringing an end to the conflict.
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