The Bourbon Kings of France (13 page)

Louis’s predilection for Versailles owed something to his father’s memory, and something to his visits there with La Vallière. He began to enlarge it in 1661, though until 1668 the little palace was merely extended. In 1664 he gave an open-air fête at Versailles for Louise, which lasted for seven days and far outshone the Carrousel; its theme was
Les Plaisirs de l’Ile Enchanté
(a tale taken from Ariosto’s
Orlando Furioso
). Amid the pageants and the tableaux, supper was served by 200 nymphs and shepherds at tables lit by 4,000 flaring torches. Another part of the entertainment was the first production of Molière’s greatest play,
Tartuffe
.

Versailles in these early days was not yet sufficiently theatrical for the King’s taste. Bernini visited him in 1665 and while his bust of Louis conveys both his good looks and his majesty, the face is as much that of a great actor as of a great King. Louis XIV needed a stage.

The second phase of rebuilding began in 1669. Louis had a complete new palace in mind, but would not allow his architects to demolish Louis XIII’s ‘house of cards’; he told them, ‘If you pull it down I will have it rebuilt brick by brick.’ It had to be included in the new building, enclosed on three sides by an
‘envelope’
of red brick and white stone designed by Le Vau. He soon decided that this second palace was not big enough for anything other than a holiday residence, and a third rebuilding began. Thousands of workmen toiled for years, and so many millions were spent that the sum was made a state secret, but the palace was not fully complete until 1710. It was basically a three-sided building, so big that the garden front had 375 windows. Louis himself, advised by Le Brun, approved every detail of its design and decoration—the gilding and the tiles, the chimneys and the terraces, the marble and the mirrors, the silver furniture and silken tapestries, the urns and sconces.

Although Le Vau designed the original plan, the architect who built Versailles was Jules Hardouin-Mansart—‘a tall, well-built, handsome man of very humble origin but possessing a great deal of natural intelligence’, says Saint-Simon. Louis was not concerned with ‘the vulgarity of his origin’ and became very fond of Mansart, whom he ennobled. On one occasion the King told his courtiers, in the architect’s presence, ‘I can make a score of dukes and peers in a quarter of an hour, but it would take centuries to make a Mansart.’

Of all the mistresses of the French Kings, Françoise-Athénaïs de Montespan was the most formidable. Born in 1640, a daughter of the Duc de Mortemart—his family, the Rochechouart, was one of the oldest and grandest in Poitou—she had married an impoverished rake, the Marquis de Montespan. Like her mother in the previous reign, she became a lady-in-waiting, pleasing the Queen by her apparent piety. She soon endeared herself to Louise de la Vallière as a reassuring confidante. However, as early as 1666 she was having diabolical prayers said by witches to help her seduce the King. At first Louis did not seem interested—perhaps he realized that she was dangerous. While Athénais was very beautiful, dark and sensuous, with violet eyes, scarlet lips and an adorable figure (despite a tendency to plumpness), she was also both wild and arrogant, a compulsive gambler who was heavily in debt; and she combined a savage wit with a vile temper. In any case, she had two children and her proud and fiery husband would not be a willing cuckold. Athénais hid her ambition, biding her time, confident not only of her prayers but also of her charms. For Athénais was not only beautiful, she was interesting. Sophisticated, with a discerning taste in luxury, she dressed delightfully; even more important, she was extremely well-read and spoke exquisite French with a turn of phrase which was admired by Saint-Simon.

In the summer of 1667, during the invasion of Flanders, the King finally became her lover. La Vallière, who had recently been made a Duchess, and who was always trustful, suspected nothing. M de Montespan was furious and beat his wife; dressed in mourning, he drove to court with two great cuckold’s horns waving from the roof of his carriage. The King banished him. Louise was deserted, but to preserve the proprieties was forced to stay at court and retain the title of
maitresse en titre
—she still travelled in Louis’s carriage with the Queen and Athénais. (These could be dreadful journeys for the ladies-in-waiting, as the King would not let them stop the carriage when they wished to relieve themselves.) Louise was allowed to depart in 1674, whereupon she entered a notoriously strict Carmelite convent where she remained—as Soeur Marie de la Miséricorde—until her death in 1710. When told that her son, the Duc de Vermandois, had died, she commented, ‘I mourn his birth even more than his death.’

Athénais held the King for twelve years. She worked hard to do so, dyeing her hair blonde because he liked it better than brown; dieting (Mme de Sévigné once noted that she came back after an absence from court half her size) and having herself rubbed down with scent; patriotically, she dressed in French silks and velvets. To begin with, her life with Louis was an exuberant idyll. Voracious in bed, she satisfied his once insatiable sexual appetite. She accompanied him when he inspected the frontiers in 1678, even though she was pregnant. He adored children, so she presented him with seven (who were put in the care of her dear friend, Mme Scarron). He rewarded her richly, making her father Governor of Paris, paying her gambling debts and buying her wonderful jewels. He built her a fabulous château, Clagny (specially designed by Mansart) where to please him she made a garden filled with jonquils and jasmine, his favourite flowers. (The King was so fond of jasmine that sometimes the entire floor of his bedroom was covered with it.) Everybody else loathed her. Success made her intolerably haughty and unbridled her vicious tongue. Not even the King was spared, and he almost abandoned her in 1672 and again in 1674. To keep him, so it was later alleged, she commissioned blasphemous spells and gave him toad excrement as an aphrodisiac; she was even accused of having a Black Mass, during which a baby was sacrificed, said over her naked body. By the mid-1670s the King was tiring of her. Totally unsubmissive, she reacted violently to his many infidelities. He ceased to sleep with her in 1678, though the final breach did not come till later.

Military glory remained for Louis infinitely desirable. In the brutal Marquis de Louvois, the King had a wonderful Minister of War, whose reforms served France until the Revolution. Louvois introduced regimental uniforms, badges of rank, portable pontoon bridges and standardized artillery. For the first time the ordinary French soldier was regularly paid, well fed from field kitchens and had a chance of rising from the ranks. Louvois was responsible for the foundation of the Hôtel des Invalides—in its day the best old soldiers’ home in the world—and of three schools of artillery, together with cadet companies for training young officers. He introduced grenadiers and hussars, replaced the pike by the musket and plug bayonet, and made the troops march in step to airs on the fife and drums specially composed by Lully. Hitherto the French had considered cavalry as the only soldiering fit for gentlemen; now Louis forbade anyone to join the cavalry without having first served in the infantry. A Corps of Engineers was set up to assist the great Vauban, who in 1663 had deeply impressed the King by his fortifications at Dunkirk, Vauban’s principle being that the lower defences were, the less likely they were to be hit by enemy artillery.

The King restrained himself until this army had begun to take shape—and until Colbert had amassed sufficient funds. By 1667 he was ready. Philip IV of Spain had died in 1665, succeeded by the child Charles II. In May Louis suddenly overran southern Flanders, claiming that the province belonged to his wife as the child of Philip IV’s first marriage, Charles being only the child of the second (the pretext gave the campaign its name, the ‘War of Devolution’). In February 1668 Louis also invaded Franche Comté. England, Sweden and the United Provinces, who had been watching with considerable apprehension, quickly formed a Triple Alliance. In May he was forced to withdraw from Franche Comté, though he kept the towns he had won in Flanders.

The Triple Alliance infuriated Louis. The Dutch, who were its real architects, had already affronted him by responding to Colbert’s tariffs with surcharges on all French wines, spirits and manufactured goods, while the activities of the Bank of Amsterdam were seriously depleting French currency. By the spring of 1672 he had isolated them from their allies, paying Sweden a large annual subsidy and sending Charles II of England a secret pension; in the latter case Louis’s agent was Madame, who, just before her death in 1670, persuaded her brother to ally with France.

The French army was now stronger than it had ever been, with nearly 120,000 highly trained soldiers. Voltaire describes Louis’s newly formed household troops: ‘There were four companies of life-guards, each comprising three hundred gentlemen, among whom were many young cadets, unpaid, but subject like everyone else to the strict rules of the service; there were also two hundred guardsmen, two hundred light horse, five hundred musketeers, all of gentle birth, young and of good appearance; twelve companies of men-at-arms, afterwards increased to sixteen; the hundred Swiss guards accompanied the King, and his regiments of French and Swiss guards mounted guard in front of his house and tent.’ These troops, the
Maison du Roi
, whose uniforms were covered with gold and silver, became the crack troops of the
Ancien Régime
.

Besides Condé, the King had the services of another great captain, Turennes. Although the Dutch possessed the most formidable navy in the world, they had pitifully few troops. France declared war in April 1672, and in June the French cavalry swam the Rhine, Louis and the infantry following over their new pontoon bridge. The King, in jack-boots, a leather coat and a red-plumed hat, shared his men’s rations but insisted on full ceremonial and used his tent as an audience chamber. By the end of the month Turennes had turned the Dutch line of defence, and Amsterdam was only twenty miles away. The Dutch fell back on their last resource, breaking down the dykes and flooding all the country around Amsterdam. Then they begged for peace.

Louis’s terms were too much—a crushing indemnity and a large slice of territory. On hearing them, the Dutch overthrew the government of de Witt—he and his brother were torn to pieces by a mob—and replaced them with the young Prince of Orange who was appointed Stadtholder. By now all Europe went in fear of Louis, and the Dutch found new allies—Brandenburg and the Empire at the end of 1672, Spain and Lorraine in 1673, Denmark and the Rhine Palatinate in 1674.

Withdrawing from Holland, Louis struck swiftly at the Spanish and conquered Franche Comté in six weeks, this time for good. Turennes laid waste to the Palatinate, burning two towns and twenty villages, and destroying vineyards, crops and livestock so that the enemy would be without supplies. When the Germans invaded Alsace at the end of 1674, Turennes drove them back in a terrible winter campaign, inflicting 40,000 casualties; while Condé repelled a Dutch and Spanish invasion. Next year the French were not so successful. A stray cannonball killed Turennes (Louis buried him in the royal sepulchre at Saint-Denis). Condé drove the Germans out of Alsace for a second time, but France was growing tired. Despite Colbert’s striving, taxes had risen to enormous heights—the war was costing France something like £ 30 million a year—and there were sporadic risings among the Breton peasants.

The war dragged on for three more weary years, during which the French won some slight victories—Monsieur, painted and powdered as always, defeated the Prince of Orange at Mont Cassel by a courageous gamble, much to the King’s jealousy. Meanwhile Louis was waging a most skilful diplomatic campaign; setting the Dutch against the Spanish and attacking the latter in Italy; stirring up rebellion in Hungary; he even managed to foment quarrels between the Dutch republicans and the Stadtholder’s supporters. Louis’s enemies grew even wearier of the war than the French. A peace conference met at Nijmegen in the summer of 1678 and was brilliantly handled by Louis’s diplomats. A treaty signed in August gave him Franche Comté and twelve towns in Flanders—the latter constituting a valuable reinforcement to France’s weak northern frontier—and Nancy. A separate treaty with Holland reduced the French tariffs, though it did not abolish them entirely. Nijmegen was an undoubted triumph for Louis and his policy of aggression.

The years which followed Nijmegen were the zenith of Louis’s glory. In 1680 the Parlement of Paris bestowed upon him the title of ‘The Great’. When the poor Queen died in 1683 Bossuet, in his funeral oration, spoke not only of her
‘piété incomparable’
but also of
‘les imortelles actions de Louis le Grand’
. Versailles was a fitting shrine. The King moved in permanently in May 1682. The following year Mme de Sévigné, visiting it for the first time, wrote ecstatically,
‘Tout est grand, tout est magnifique.’
The King’s chief joy was the vast garden created by André le Nôtre. Louis loved to stroll through geometrically-arranged terraces, down countless avenues, over the lawns (or ‘green carpets’) shaded by carefully planted groves, along great canals and lakes. There were a thousand fountains and innumerable statues. He enjoyed chatting with the charming Le Nôtre or with M de la Quintinie, the amiable kitchen gardener, or visiting the orangery to see his beloved orange trees (he was so fond of these trees that he even had them in his rooms, in silver tubs). The King wrote a little guide to the gardens, so that sightseers would know the correct sequence in which to visit them. Louis spent nearly as much time in his gardens as he did hunting.

His Versailles was a return to the Dijon of the medieval Dukes of Burgundy, to the Fontainebleau of François I. Far from being a Spanish importation, its ceremony was essentially French, with rules laid down by Henri III in 1585. Louis merely brought them up to date. There had to be more functionaries because the court now numbered thousands instead of hundreds. The ritual quality of life at Versailles was due not so much to the ceremonies as to Louis’s own awe-inspiring personality.