Until now, luck had always favored Louis; it had been helped, of course, by his own exertions and that of his ministers, and by the fact that France was the richest and most populated country in Europe. But even so, when fate seemed briefly undecided, it had in the end favored him. From 1688 on, however, the reverse seems true: Time after time, events for which he was not responsible and over which he had no control brought severe setbacks with them. Between 1661 and 1688, his only real failure had been during the attempted conquest of Holland, and even then, peace had been made on his terms. From 1688 on, the limits of his power were made very evident, and so was the scope of his character. Repeated triumphs, at worst, make for overweening pride; appalling difficulties, on the other hand, require persistence, courage, and discernment if they are to be overcome. Those qualities were the very ones that were now tested in the king.
Friendship with England had always been one of the bases of Louis XIV’s foreign policy. Charles II’s death in 1685, although it removed a wise and friendly monarch, did not alter this amity. The new king, James II, a kind, brave, honorable, but exceedingly dense man, was himself a Catholic, but in spite of their now traditional hatred of Rome, his subjects, who looked to the succession of his Protestant daughters, Mary, Princess of Orange, and Anne, Princess of Denmark, were content to let him rule. As for Louis XIV, he had every reason to expect that James would be, if anything, friendlier than his late - and Anglican - brother.
Still, James, all unknowing, faced dangers from outside: William of Orange, France’s implacable enemy and James’s son-in-law, longed for a league uniting the emperor, Spain, certain German princes, and England. Clearly, however, there was very little chance of that as long as England, no matter how Protestant, was ruled by a Catholic. Equally clearly, the solution lay in a well-conceived coup d’état: If James were replaced by the next heir, William’s own wife, then England’s accession to the league would be a certainty.
William was as clever as James was dumb, but all his stratagems would have availed him nothing if it had not been for an unexpected quirk of nature: After fifteen years of marriage and several miscarriages, James’s second wife, Mary of Modena, unexpectedly gave birth to a healthy boy. Faced with the prospect of a Catholic heir, the English began to feel very differently about their Catholic monarch, and they were further alienated by what looked very like an attempt at importing a French-style absolute monarchy to their country. Whether or not that was, in fact, James’s intention - it most probably was not - hardly matters: It looked as if it must be, and that was enough. So when, in November 1688, William of Orange landed in England, James found himself virtually deserted; in a state of rage and confusion, he fled with his wife and son, throwing the Great Seal overboard into the Thames as he sailed away.
The overthrow of a Catholic monarch was, in itself, bad news for Louis XIV: As an ardent Catholic himself, he had hoped James might bring England back into the Church. Far more devastating, however, was the accession of Mary II to the throne, especially since she refused to rule alone and insisted that her husband become King - as opposed to merely Prince or King Consort. Mary herself showed little interest in policy-making and was content to leave it to William, and while his powers were restricted by Act of Parliament, still, he could and did join the anti-French alliance known as the League of Augsburg. Sweden, formerly an ally of France, and several of the more powerful German princes were added to that combination, so that, with England, it included virtually the whole of Europe.
Although history seems to offer many examples of the contrary, it did sometimes happen that a king was simply too stupid to rule, which was unquestionably the case of James II. Louis XIV, who had a first-rate intelligence service, had been aware of William of Orange’s intentions and of his plans to land in England; he had actually warned James of them and offered his assistance, only to be told to stop meddling. Whether, even with the help of the French fleet, James could have kept his throne is obviously an unanswerable question, but at any rate, Louis had every reason to wash his hands of the exiled James. In fact, he did exactly the opposite, partly because he did not approve of the people dethroning a king, partly because James was obviously a useful weapon against William and Mary. When, in January, the exiled couple arrived in dispersed order - first James’s wife, then James himself - they were met as if they had never been dethroned. The king went to greet her at Chatou, near Saint-Germain, and promptly offered her the use of the latter palace. “I render you a sad service, Madame,” he told her, “but hope soon to render you greater and happier ones,”229 an obvious allusion to future military aid.
The “sad service,” in fact, was as magnificent as might have been expected from the Sun King: On arriving at Saint-Germain, Mary of Modena found herself surrounded by the same luxury - furniture, plate, clothes even - as if she had been Queen of France, with, on her dressing table, 10,000 gold louis (240,000 livres). When James arrived, besides similar appurtenances, he was informed that he would henceforth receive 600,000 livres a year. “Never,” Voltaire commented, “did the King seem so great; but James seemed small”230: His lack of intelligence and his inordinate passion for the Jesuits soon became all too clear. Whether, under these circumstances, it was wise to be so very welcoming to the dethroned king is a question that needs asking: No amount of force could make up for James’s own deficiencies, after all. It might therefore have been wiser to give up the hope that he would one day rule England again.
Louis XIV was certainly not responsible for what the English call the Glorious Revolution, but it is impossible not to feel that his new piety was one of the substantial causes both of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes and of the support he gave to James II. Of course, the king felt, not without reason, that William III was an irreducible enemy, that he had become king of England solely so that he might attack France, and that any effort to reach an agreement was foredoomed. Still, it is significant, and regrettable, that no attempt was made. By January 1689, the once cautious monarch who had only gone to war when he was quite sure of winning was beginning to feel that he could not be beaten: It was more important to look magnanimous by taking James in and, a little later, launching him on an attempted reconquest, than to conciliate William, whom, in any event, the French generals had defeated with absolute regularity. And, of course, James’s triumph would also have been that of the Catholics.
At the same time, the king’s chief adviser, Louvois, provided him with inaccurate information. Not only was the war minister convinced that a civil war would break out in England, but he also encouraged Louis XIV to attack the emperor at what he considered a well-chosen moment.
We may suppose that Louvois was less than honest in his appraisal of the situation in England: Operations there would have been the province of Seignelai, the navy minister and a member of the Colbert family, and that was reason enough to advise against them. As for a war against the emperor, Leopold I, he pointed out that the Turkish peril was receding - the siege of Vienna had been lifted in 1684 and by the fall of 1688, the imperial army under a general of genius, Prince Eugene of Savoy, was about to beat the Turks before Belgrade. It therefore seemed wise to attack the emperor while he was still fighting Turkey, a state of affairs which looked like ending soon, and if that meant war with the emperor’s allies, well, it could be managed also.
Of course, a pretext was needed. Louvois found two. One was exceedingly simple: He claimed that Madame was entitled to part of the Palatinate as an heiress to her late father. Of course, upon marrying Monsieur, she had renounced all such rights, but her dowry had not been paid in full. So without consulting the princess, who had no wish to claim anything, Louis XIV demanded a share of the Electorate.
The other had to do with the traditional French influence on the Rhine area. The bishop of Cologne was, ex officio, prince elector of that small state, and he was chosen by the chapter. First, Louis XIV put pressure on the chapter until it appointed his nominee, Cardinal von Fürstenberg, as coadjutor,
i.e., successor designate to the bishop; then, in September 1688, he demanded that the cardinal be elected and that the emperor officially approve the election. This directive, together with Madame’s claim, formed the object of an ultimatum which was dispatched on September 24 and gave Leopold three months to comply.
So far, the king, while making inordinate demands, was still playing the normal game of power politics. But then, just one day later, at Louvois’s instigation, he behaved in such a way as to unite Europe against him: Without the customary declaration of war and without any warning at all, a French army, led nominally by Monseigneur - whom the king could trust neither to outshine nor to disobey him - but really by the maréchal de Duras and Vauban, the great engineer, marched on the Rhine. Almost immediately, it occupied the whole left bank of the Rhine and set siege to Philippsburg, which it took on October 22. The king received the news while he was attending mass at Fontainebleau; in a paroxysm of pleasure and pride, he interrupted the sermon and, tears streaming down his cheeks, he announced this latest triumph.
Nor did it stop there. After Mainz and Heidelberg, Mannheim was taken on November 11; Speier, Trier, Worms, and Oppenheim surrendered on the fifteenth, and it was clear once more that the Sun King was invincible; indeed, whatever he wanted was his to take.
That the fortresses of the Palatinate should have surrendered so quickly was perhaps not so surprising after all: They belonged to a small, not very warlike state. The French successes, like Hitler’s blitzkrieg in Poland, made it quite clear to the rest of Europe that it could either cooperate now to resist, or submit later, and that Louis XIV’s territorial greed was insatiable. In fact, the invasion of the Rhineland was simply a preventive attack in a war which was obviously going to be declared on France at one point or another, but the chambres de reunion were not forgotten, and, without the benefit of hindsight, the main European powers can well be forgiven for believing that the borders of France would keep creeping forward unless something were done to stop that alarming phenomenon.
The manner in which the Palatinate was invaded only confirmed these fears; as for the way in which the conquered state was treated, it evoked - and rightly - horrified anger. That it was Louvois’s policy and not the king’s made no difference, nor did the king’s anger when he discovered what had been done in his name: The fact remained that an innocent people watched in terror as their cities were burned to the ground, their fields devastated, and they themselves attacked and often killed. The purpose of this apocalypse, according to Louvois, was to create such fear that, henceforth, there would be no resistance in the occupied territories while other potential enemies, aware of what was awaiting them if they were beaten, would think twice before attacking. It must also be said that these methods suited the undoubtedly brutal minister, who, no doubt, enjoyed giving his orders.
To us, at the end of the twentieth century, such horrors seem all too familiar; in the less sophisticated 1680s, they branded France the enemy of all mankind, and much of the energy displayed by its enemies in the ensuing wars was due to this revulsion alone. Nor is the fact that the king stopped this barbaric treatment of the Palatinate when he found out about it any excuse: He took special pride in controlling his ministers, in being aware of all that was done in his name; he was, therefore, responsible for all. When he gave Louvois powers extensive enough to rape and ravage, he became, by his own standards, an inadequate king. It had not happened before; it never happened again. But, in this particular case, and no matter how great his repulsion when he finally heard the horrors committed in his name, there can be no denying that the ultimate responsibility was his.
Almost as important, this morally indefensible policy also turned out to be useless. In the spring of 1689, much of the Palatinate rose against the French; at the same time, the armies sent by the emperor arrived. They were commanded by the duke of Lorraine, whose state had been appropriated by France: To his very considerable talents as a general he added the anger of a man ruined, and he proceeded to beat the French. Mainz was retaken in June, Bonn in November, while, on France’s northern border, the maréchal d’Humières was defeated by the Prince of Waldeck, also in June. Once again, the king saw that Louvois was fallible: Humières, the minister’s favorite, was an incompetent commander.
That Louvois’s position must have been eroded in the long run is certain: He had tried hard to stop the king from marrying Mme de Maintenon, and the lady knew it; now, in the year extending from the early summer of 1688 to that of 1689, he had made a number of very serious mistakes. As a result, Louis XIV became himself again: Humières was replaced by the maréchal-duc de Luxembourg, one of Louvois’s most violent enemies.
Luxembourg, in fact, was also everything the king disliked: A former Frondeur, he was a notorious debauché who liked to scandalize the faithful; he had been so severely implicated in the Affair of the Poisons as to be sent to the Bastille; he was also the head of one of the oldest and most powerful aristocratic families in France. On the other hand, he knew how to win battles, and the time was no longer when Louis had the choice between Turenne and Condé. Luxembourg, who refused to communicate with Louvois, demanded and was given the unheard-of privilege of writing the king directly, instead of going through the minister, and receiving orders only from him. Catinat, a newcomer of talent, was sent to command on the Italian front; the elderly but highly competent maréchal de Lorges went to Germany; the equally competent duc de Noailles took charge of a small army whose orders were to invade Catalonia.
Fighting all Europe in this way was, everyone agreed, glorious; it was also extremely expensive. By the spring of 1689, Louis XIV had 300,000 men under arms and no money to pay this unprecedented number. So he called in the head of the Garde-meuble, the man in charge of all the furnishings of the royal palaces, and ordered that all his silver, including the admirable furniture of the Grands Appartements at Versailles be sent to the Mint, there to be melted down into coin.
That this development was a major tragedy hardly needs saying: We know the silver furniture from contemporary illustrations and a few examples sent to Charles II of England. It seems hard to accept that so great an artistic treasure should have disappeared just to pay for yet another war; and yet this action, too, had a highly positive side. Since Versailles could hardly be left empty, new, gilt-wood furniture was made, and that, in turn, started an art form which, from its very beginnings, proved superior to anything else that was done in Europe. One can fairly say, in fact, that if, in the eighteenth century, French furniture set new standards of perfection, it was in good part because Louis XIV melted down his silver.*
Still, aside from the loss of beautiful pieces, the move had another meaning: After all those years when the budget had been wholly or nearly balanced, it had once again become a bottomless pit. Colbert might have prevented it, but he was dead; Le Pelletier, his successor, was an incompetent. So now the king replaced him with Pontchartrain, an energetic and effective minister, but one who unfortunately lacked Colbert’s almost instinctive understanding of finance. Pontchartrain knew how to tax and make sure everyone paid, but he never realized that taxes are only productive when the country is prosperous.
He was, at any rate, much admired by the king and Court. When Seignelai died in November 1690, the king gave Pontchartrain the navy, so that Colbert’s combination of offices came near to reviving - the new contrôleur général was never in charge of the king’s Buildings - and he eventually became chancellor, remaining in office until shortly before his death. “He was,” Choisy wrote, “as faithful and at least as disinterested as [Le Pelletier], a tireless worker, seeing all, able to do all, who, for the last eight years [this was written in 1698] has raised 150 million a year with parchment and sealing wax by imagining offices and other nonsense which sold very well. He remained modest in spite of his success, received no gift from the King except an office as conseiller at the Paris Parlement for his son; he reached decisions easily, finishing more in a day than his predecessor in s
ix months; believing firmly that it is always best to go ahead even if that sometimes entails making a mistake, and then, if need be, mending without blushing the errors due to a little too much speed …
“People complain that he does not empathize enough with their difficulties, and that when a poor man, ruined by a tax, comes to ask for relief, he answers with a smile: ‘Monsieur, you must pay.’“231
It all sounds very modern, but must be read with a grain of salt. It is quite true that taxes went up as a result of the war, and that even the nobility was required to pay something like 5 percent of its income; it is also true that, as always, the main burden was borne by the peasantry. But Choisy’s “poor man” is, of course, a courtier: The actual poor did not have access to the controller general. Seen in hindsight, therefore, Pontchartrain’s efforts seem, on the whole, praiseworthy. In one respect, however, he created a fatal precedent: The sale of sinecure offices of every kind - there was even a Wig Carrier to the King who, of course, never carried anything - was certainly profitable, but while it raised money on the instant, it meant that salaries would henceforth have to be paid. So when Pontchartrain remarked with satisfaction that no matter how absurd the offices he created, there would always be some fools to buy them, he was being less clever than he thought: Year by year, the burden of the unnecessary offices grew heavier and heavier.
For a while, at least, the king’s sacrifice seemed to pay: A French fleet returned James II to Ireland - “The best I can wish you is never to see you again,”232 Louis told his English cousin - where he was greeted, by the predominantly Catholic population, with cheers; promptly showing once again that he had understood nothing, he appointed a Jesuit as his secretary of state. Even better, on July 10, 1690, for the first time ever, a French fleet under Tourville crushed the Anglo-Dutch navies off Beachyhead. That triumph, however, was short-lived: The very next day, at the Battle of the Boyne, William III, powerfully helped by exiled French Protestants, trounced his father-in-law’s army. True to precedent, James immediately fled to France. Louis XIV’s great project had failed.
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