“The next day, the whole Court visited Monsieur, Madame, and M. le duc de Chartres, but without saying a word: we merely bowed or curtsied in the deepest silence. After this, we went to the Hall of Mirrors as usual, to await the end of the Council and the King’s mass. Madame was there. Her son came to her as he did every day to kiss her hand; at that moment Madame slapped his face with such strength that the noise was heard a little distance away, dreadfully embarrassing the poor prince and causing the countless spectators, among whom I was, an indescribable amazement.”246
As usual, Louis XIV had had his way, and as usual, he was generous: Mlle de Blois received the unprecedented dowry of 2 million livres, a pension of 150,000 livres, and jewels worth another 600,000 livres - a great deal more than her sisters, and at a time when the Treasury was nearly empty; Monsieur, who had merely been living at the Palais Royal, was now given that splendid building. As for the new duchesse de Chartres, her rank was further underlined by the Household the king gave her: It included a dame d’honneur, a dame d’atours, and a chevalier d’honneur, all attendants who, until then, had been reserved for a king’s legitimate daughter. The marriage itself, which was celebrated on February 18, 1692, gave rise to the standard festivities. But there was more: A month later, on March 19, the duc du Maine was married to one of Monsieur le Prince’s daughters, Anne Louise, whose diminutive size concealed great wit and a ferocious ambition. Since, in 1692, the comte de Toulouse was only fourteen, all the king’s illegitimate children were thus moved over to the royal family proper.
All in all, this transformation was little less than a revolution. In a country, and at a time, when society was rigidly stratified, where the right sort of ancestors made all the difference, and where bloodlines were the key to position and success, integrating the bastards into the royal family subverted all custom. It is, of course, true that the king’s illegitimate children were a finite quantity, but a precedent was being set, and the law gave precedents enormous weight. Then, on May 4, 1694, the bastards’ status was elevated still further: The king created for them an intermediary rank which left them below - just below - the princes of the blood royal but placed them above the dukes. Except for one or two details of etiquette, the main difference now between the duc du Maine and the comte de Toulouse, on the one hand, and the ducs d’Orléans, de Chartres, de Bourbon, the princes de Condé and de Conti, was that the former could not succeed to the Crown.
This shift alone would have been change enough, but there was also the concurrent promotion of the middle class. It was quite as clear to Saint-Simon as it is to us today that, by and large, Louis XIV distrusted the aristocracy and, having removed it from most positions of power, was leaning on the bourgeoisie instead. It might still take a duke to be first gentleman of the bedchamber, but the ministers who exerted power in the king’s name were, with a single exception, middle-class men. Of course, they bought titles: Le Tellier’s son was marquis de Louvois, and his son marquis de Barbezieux; Colbert’s son was marquis de Seignelai and his nephew marquis de Torcy; the comte de Pontchartrain, who became contrôleur général, and then chancellor, was the son of plain Louis Phelypaux; and all not only gave orders to men who considered themselves their betters but were treated practically as if they were royalty: Even dukes were expected to address the ministers as Monseigneur.
The reasons for it all will come as no surprise to the reader: The legacy of the Fronde, the greed of the aristocracy, the knowledge that obedience came more easily from a man whose ascension owed everything to the Crown, these were Louis XIV’s basic motivations. It is, however, interesting to see how the king extended these principles within his own family: Here, the bastards were as dependent on his goodwill as the ministers in another sphere; by raising them progressively to the status of a real princess, in the case of the girls, or to one almost indistinguishable from that of the real princes, in the case of the boys, he merely made them depend on him the more. Because they hoped to become actual princes of the blood royal, the duc du Maine and the comte de Toulouse had every reason to behave as well as possible. And at the same time, by marrying the royal bastards, the princes showed clearly that the king’s wish was law. It must be added, however, that these marriages also pleased Louis because he loved his illegitimate children. Clearly, however, affection came second to deliberate policy.
These events at Court also went together with changes in the structure of the government, but while the first were highly visible, and therefore the object of endless comment, the second passed almost unnoticed. The Parlement had been firmly confined to its judicial duties many years before; now, for those who cared to see, the extent of its obedience was clearly revealed. Taxes had traditionally been imposed with the consent of that body; indeed, the Fronde had started with the Parlement’s refusal to register the new taxes Mazarin wanted. Yet when in 1694, Louis XIV instituted a tax that was not only new but revolutionary, not a peep was heard: For the first time, an income tax, the capitation (head tax), was imposed on nobles and commoners alike. Although set at an unvarying 5 percent, so that it fell much more heavily on the poor than on the rich, it broke with the hitherto sacrosanct principle according to which nobles were, by definition, personally tax-exempt. Most of the conseillers and présidents of the Parlement, although socially middle-class, were in law noble, either by individual patent or through the possession of a so-called noble estate, a fief which carried a title of nobility. That they failed to oppose this new tax which affected them directly shows the extent of their submission.
The capitation was instituted in answer to a pressing financial need, but it, too, fitted in with the king’s general policy of entertaining the nobility at Versailles, and focusing its attention on quarrels of etiquette, while steadily diminishing its privileges. The new tax implied that, in the government’s eyes, all the French were equal, a truly revolutionary proposition in a country which thought of itself as divided into three eternal orders, nobility, clergy, commoners. By treating the nobles as if they were commoners, the king was affirming the primacy of the state and the individual’s duty to obey, of course, but he was also beginning an evolution which led to the abolition of all privileges in August 1789.
Paradoxically, these radical transformations were accompanied by a growing inefficiency in the actual mechanism of the government due largely to the king himself. It was not power that was lacking here but the effective means of wielding it, and that, in turn, resulted from Louis’s belief that he could do practically anything better than the men who worked for him.
It is, no doubt, one of the great drawbacks of an absolute monarchy that all depends on the person of the sovereign, and that the prolonged exercise of power tends to induce personality changes. In 1661, the young king, while intent on deciding all the great issues himself, was content to follow the practical advice of ministers like Colbert, men of devotion, age, and experience. By the 1690s, Louis XIV had been ruling for over thirty years; the first generation of his ministers was gone; their replacements - usually their children - were not only mediocre but also younger than himself, and so, very naturally, it began to seem as if the king always knew more. As a result, he took over more and more of the details of government, and while, on major questions, his splendid instincts remained unimpaired, his ability to deal with minutiae was not equal to his self-imposed task. And it all happened at a time when France was faced with increasingly difficult problems.
That the king should have chosen to put the sons of earlier ministers in office was due in part to his extraordinary sense of fairness: The fathers, having served him well, had earned the right to have their children succeed them. It also satisfied his sense of order to have the generations thus following each other, but it is also quite clear that he put up with mediocrities because he thought himself capable of supplying their deficiencies. Indeed, it gave him a certain satisfaction to do so: All could see that he, alone, ruled.
Barbezieux, Louvois’s son and his successor as War Minister
at the age of twenty-one, is a good case in point. The young man, who did not lack intelligence or force, was also tactless, often brutal, and more interested in his own pleasures than in his official duties. While his father had lived for his work, Barbezieux was given to spending his evenings, his nights, and frequently his mornings as well, at wild parties in Paris, and since all this revelry took place in the middle of a European war, his work suffered. Of course, the king knew about this negligence, but instead of simply dismissing him - as he would surely have done at the beginning of the reign - he chose to keep him in office while making it plain that he thought little of him.
“I was at the King’s dinner on [March 27, 1693],” Saint-Simon noted. “Suddenly the King said, looking at those present: ‘Barbezieux will learn about the promotion of the marshals of France on the roads.’ Nobody answered. The King was displeased with the frequents trips [Barbezieux] made to Paris in quest of his pleasures. He was not sorry to give him this warning and to advertise how little [the minister] had to do with this promotion.”247 The creation of a marshal of France, who enjoyed the very highest military rank, was a major policy decision, since it predetermined, to a large extent, who would be leading the armies in the next campaigns. That this act should be done without the knowledge of the War Minister showed how very little power he had, and in a Court where personal advantage counted for everything, it meant that Barbezieux’s following would dwindle away.
Since the king had become aware of the enormous power yielded by Louvois, this move obviously fitted in with his long-established decision to be the only fount of honor and advantage. Debasing Barbezieux was an excellent way of elevating himself, hence the remark made at a moment - his dinner - when Louis could count on maximum attention, but at the same time, he was unwilling to put up with the young man’s laziness. There, a public sally would have done no good, so the king expressed his annoyance in a letter to the archbishop of Reims, Louvois’s brother and Barbezieux’s uncle.
“I know what I owe to the memory of M. de Louvois,” he wrote the archbishop some time in 1693,* “but if your nephew does not behave better, I will be forced to make a decision [i.e., to dismiss him]. I will be sorry to do so; but I will have to. He has talents but he does not use them well. He asks the princes to supper too often instead of working, he neglects business for pleasure; he keeps the officers waiting too long in his antechamber; he speaks to them with disdain and sometimes with cruelty.”248 Choosing the archbishop as recipient of this letter was quite shrewd: Not only did it avoid a personal unpleasantness with Barbezieux, it put the whole Le Tellier family on notice that it was in danger of losing position and influence. Needless to say, the archbishop, upon reading this reproof, called upon his nephew. We do not know what he said, but Barbezieux’s attitude improved, for a time at least.
By 1695, however, the minister had clearly forgotten his warning and reverted to his earlier habits. Once again, the king put pen to paper. “The King,” Le Tellier noted, “wrote this memorandum … at Fontainebleau, where I did not have the honor of being part of His Majesty’s suite, I was in Reims. The King came back from Fontainebleau to Versailles on Friday, October 28, 1695. I went there on Saturday the twenty-ninth at noon; His Majesty called me into his cabinet as he rose from table and gave me this memorandum.”
As we read it, it is Louis XIV’s own voice we hear. “The way your nephew lived in Fontainebleau,” Louis XIV wrote in his tall, sloping hand, “is not bearable, it has scandalized the public. He spent his days hunting and his nights in debauchery. He does not work, and that has very serious consequences. His employees, who follow his example, are lazy. The officers can never get in to see him and ruin themselves waiting for him.
“He is a liar, obsessed with women, always about, hardly ever to be found. The world thinks him incapable of application because he is usually seen anywhere but at home.
“He rises too late, spending his nights at late supper parties, often with the princes.
“He is rude in speech and letter.
“If he does not change completely he cannot remain in office …
“I will be very sorry to make a change [e.g. dismiss him] but will not be able to avoid doing so; his work cannot be successful when he neglects it so.
“I wish him to amend himself without my being involved.
“It is impossible not to make many mistakes when the work is so neglected; and they must cost me much.
“In a word, it is impossible to do worse than he is doing, and it cannot go on.
“[If it did] I would be blamed for allowing this at a time like this when the weightiest and most important business [the war] depends on him.
“I cannot delay reaching a decision for the good of the state, and even to avoid being guilty myself; I warn you [the Archbishop], although perhaps too late, so that you may act in whichever way will seem best to his family. I feel sorry for it, and for him in particular, because of the friendship and esteem I feel for you.
“Do the best you can to show your nephew the abyss where he is about to fall and force him to do what will best suit everyone. I do not want to lose your nephew; I am fond of him, but, for me, the good of the state comes before all else.
“You would not respect me if I did not behave this way.
“This must be settled one way or the other; I would prefer it to be by [Barbezieux]’s doing his duty … but he can do that only if he gives up all the amusements which distract him; his office must be his sole amusement.”249
All the king’s motivations are there: the desire to spare a family that has served him well, his preoccupation with his gloire, his devotion to the state. Most interesting, perhaps, is the fact that at no time does he reproach Barbezieux for failing him personally: It is the state that counts; it is the state that must be served.
As it was, Barbezieux improved, if only slightly; the war ended in 1697, thus making his ministry less important; the king kept him in office until his death in 1701 at the age of thirty-one. More remarkably, all the defects so eloquently denounced by Louis XIV do not seem to have hampered the armies’s efficiency. In May 1694, the maréchal de Noailles, having crossed the Pyrenees, took Gerona; he tried to follow this triumph by besieging Barcelona, but the city was too strongly defended and the siege had to be lifted.
Once again, this victory was a useless one: The war continued, but it was becoming increasingly clear that, while neither side could be defeated, neither could win. Still, at the end of the year, what seemed like a great event took place: Mary II of England died, raising hopes in France that her husband might have to leave the throne; in fact, the queen’s death turned out to be no more than a news item. William III went right on ruling and only modified his earlier policy by being more amiable to Princess Anne, his successor designate.
Another death, that of the maréchal de Luxembourg on January 4, 1695, had far more important consequences: He had been the last of the great French generals. His replacement, the maréchal de Villeroy, was an old friend of the king’s, a tall, handsome, and seductive aristocrat, famous for his many love affairs and his sense of fashion. His absolute loyalty no doubt seemed a welcome relief to Louis XIV after Luxembourg’s indiscipline and intrigues. And with Villeroy, sharing the command, went the duc du Maine. Here was a chance to humble the princes of the blood by raising du Maine still further: A successful campaign and the king and Mme de Maintenon’s beloved duc might well be treated as if he were a legitimate son.
Unfortunately, Villeroy, whatever his charms, was an incompetent leader; as for the duc du Maine, he showed himself indecisive, frightened of responsibility - he was given to consulting his Jesuit confessor at key moments - and even cowardly. By September 1695, Namur, whose conquest had been so celebrated, was taken by William III, and with Namur went the Spanish Netherlands: For the first time, the French army found itself defending its own land instead of conquering someone else’s. As for the king, he felt the blow keenly.
Du Maine disgraced himse
lf in early July; the news reached Louis XIV on the 14th, and Saint-Simon was there as usual. “It was for M. du Maine that he had taken such care. At that moment he saw that it had all availed nothing, and the pain of it was unbearable to him. He felt, for this beloved son, all the weight of the spectacle given the army, and of the mockery he read in the foreign gazettes, and his disappointment was inconceivable. This King, so even tempered, so much the master of his smallest movements, broke down on this single occasion. Coming out of table at Marly with all the ladies, and before all the Court, he saw a footman who, as he cleared the table of the dessert, put a biscuit in his pocket. At that moment, forgetting his dignity, holding the cane he had just been given together with his hat, he ran to this footman, who no more expected something of the kind than those he pushed away as he went to him, cursed him, and broke his cane over his shoulders. In truth, it was a reed and did not last long. From there, the broken cane still in hand, with the look of a man beside himself, and still cursing the footman who was long gone, he crossed the small salon and an antechamber and went in to Mme de Maintenon’s as he often did at Marly after his dinner. When he left her to return to his own apartment, he came across the Père de La Chaise [his confessor]. As soon as he saw him standing there among the courtiers, ‘Father,’ he said in a loud voice, ‘I have just given a good beating to a rascal and broken my cane across his back; but I do not think I offended God,’ and he went on to tell about the so-called crime. All those who were there were still trembling either from what they had seen themselves or from what they had been told. Their fear redoubled upon this speech: those closest to the King started buzzing against the footman.”250
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