The Bourbon Kings of France (15 page)

Although Mme de Montespan had finally lost the King, she lingered on at court for several years, growing enormously fat (an Italian observer says that her thigh became as thick as a man’s waist). She had finally been discredited in Louis’s eyes by the great Poisoning Scandal, of which details first began to emerge in 1679, when the arrest of the mass murderess, Mme de Brinvilliers, led to the discovery of a vast network of professional poisoners and witches. During the panic which followed, the King established the
Chambre Ardente
(or ‘Council for Burning’) which accused some of the highest personages in France of murder and black magic, among them Marshal Luxembourg. Over 400 suspects were arrested and more than 200 were found guilty, thirty-six being executed (some were actually burnt). The court was abruptly dissolved in 1682 when Louis realized that Athénais might be involved—there were rumours of love philtres to secure his affections, of poisoned phials to remove rivals. Louis had the evidence destroyed. Eventually ‘dreadful and ignominious Maintenon’ harried ‘thundering and incomparable Montespan’ into leaving court. Like La Vallière, Athénais ended in a convent, where she died with decorous piety.

Mme de Maintenon has been blamed for the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, but the King would have revoked the edict in any case. At the beginning of the reign, despite the loss of its military privileges, French Protestantism still remained something of a state within a state. Meanwhile the Gallican Church, laity as well as clergy, was increasingly critical—the Huguenots’ privileged position made a striking contrast with the hysterical persecution of Catholics in the three kingdoms across the Channel. As early as 1669 measures were taken to make life difficult for French Protestants. In 1681 they were forbidden to enter government service. In 1682 when risings began in areas where the Reformed Faith was strong, dragoons were billeted in their houses with orders to behave as badly as possible (behaviour which included rape and torture). In 1685 the King at last revoked the Edict, orders being given for the destruction of all Protestant ‘Temples’ and for all ministers to leave France within a fortnight, or be sent to the galleys.

Out of two million Huguenots, probably 300,000 left France. Many were skilled artisans so it is often said that the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes postponed the French Industrial Revolution by a century. In addition, more than 600 officers left the army for foreign service. In fact the exodus had surprisingly little effect on the French economy (except in a few specialized crafts such as watchmaking, though even here for hardly more than a decade). The loss of army officers was soon made good by Irish Catholics fleeing from the persecution of the Williamite government. From his own special point of view, Louis was amply repaid by the thunderous applause of the greater part of his subjects.

Paradoxically, he himself was inclined to be tolerant. At one moment he had even hoped that Rome would make doctrinal concessions to the Protestant Churches. The real motive for his persecution of the Huguenots was an anxiety to demonstrate that he was the true leader of the Catholic world; here a certain jealousy may be discerned, of the Emperor and the Polish King who were winning spectacular victories over the Turks. His natural tolerance was shown in 1670 when he took the Jews of Metz under his personal protection, and when he ordered that any criminal charges against Jews must be brought before the Royal Council. In 1687 he told a Siamese embassy that God had given men religions of slightly different hue—‘as the green leaves of a tree subtly vary in colour’.

To the King, the Jansenists, with their fierce criticism of fellow Catholics, seemed just as troublesome as the Huguenots. This austere and noble sect took its name from Bishop Cornelius Jansen, a theologian who had died in 1640 and whose writings were taken up by French admirers; the basis of his teaching was that most men were damned and that only those few whom God had predestined would be saved. In practice Jansenism, with its terrifying consciousness of sin and the fruitlessness of human effort, led its followers to practise a harsh and uncompromising personal religion. The movement centred round a small community of devout gentlemen who settled near the Jansenist convent of Port Royal outside Paris. It soon attracted a distinguished following, including Pascal and later Racine. When in 1653 the Pope condemned five propositions which had been attributed to Jansen, the Jansenists said that they were not to be found in his book. Then the Jansenists attacked the Jesuits for their emphasis on Free Will. Louis, no theologian, could not grasp the finer points of the interminable quarrel. However, many prominent Jansenists had been enthusiastic Frondeurs and he discerned the same rebellious note in their attitude towards the Papacy. As an inveterate optimist himself, he must have found their extreme pessimism distasteful. In 1679 he forbade Port Royal to take novices, and at the end of his reign had the remaining nuns evicted and the convent demolished. In 1713, at the King’s request, Rome categorically condemned Jansenist beliefs.

Once Louis decided that any institution or belief was divisive, he was merciless. A new form of Quietism—the ancient doctrine that all that is necessary for salvation is a passive love of God—was propagated by a certain Mme Guyon, an unbalanced mystic who went in for ecstasies. When Mme Guyon’s lectures to the girls of the school at Saint-Cyr, founded by Mme de Maintenon, resulted in outbreaks of mass hysteria, the King quickly came to the conclusion that her beliefs were a threat to public morality. However, she had a powerful ally in the elegant and saintly Fénelon, Archbishop of Cambrai, who published a partial defence of her views, his
Maximes des Saints
. The book was attacked by Bossuet and ultimately condemned by the Pope. Fénelon was banished to his diocese, while Mme Guyon was shut up in a convent.

Fénelon had been tutor to the Duke of Burgundy, the Dauphin’s eldest son. Born in 1682, Louis de Bourgogne had grown up learned and hard-working; he stooped from too much study and was thin from fasting. Devout and a would-be philosopher, he was genuinely charitable, and on one occasion sold his mother’s jewels to provide assistance for impoverished army officers. The Brandenburger Spannheim thought ‘there was never a Prince of such promise’. What particularly struck him was the contrast between the Duke’s cheerful, vivacious nature and the fact that he spoke little. The King found Bourgogne far more congenial than the Dauphin, despite the Duke’s admiration for Fénelon.

Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet (1627–1704), Bishop of Meaux, was in many ways the reign’s most representative churchman. In his writings, this pillar of Gallican orthodoxy expressed the religious attitude of most Frenchmen of his time. The ‘Eagle of Meaux’ was loud in his praise when Louis revoked the Edict of Nantes, but from a dislike of extremism and dissension rather than from intolerance. His own religion was a balanced and generous French Catholicism which was all but anti-Roman; he drew up the ‘Four Articles’ which re-affirmed the independence of the Church of France from that of Rome; the ‘Pope of Gallicanism’ even showed a certain interest in the Church of England. Tall, white-haired, majestic, he was a familiar figure at Versailles. He moved courtiers to tears with his beautiful sermons, making an art form of the funeral oration (his
oraisons funèbres
, particularly those on the deaths of Queen Henrietta Maria and Madame, have something of the sad and stately measures of Purcell’s ‘Music for the Death of Queen Mary’).

It says a good deal for the French Church of Louis XIV that it could produce men of the calibre of Bossuet and Fénelon. There were many other great churchmen—notably Dom Rancé, the ‘Thundering Abbot’ of the Trappists.

Bossuet was the classical exponent of French Absolutism. He claimed to discern a
‘loi fondamental’
by which the King and his subjects accepted each other’s rights and privileges as immutable and unchallengeable (this acceptance was the ultimate basis of the
Ancien Régime
). The King was indeed God’s image on earth, the only source of law, yet if he acted immorally or ignored his subjects’ rights he ceased to be an absolute monarch and became a mere despot. The distinction was one which Louis XIV undoubtedly recognized.

In his foreign policy, however, Louis showed less respect for other peoples’ rights. Between 1679 and 1686, he bloodlessly acquired the remainder of Alsace, the Saar and much of Lorraine by means of the
Chambres de Réunion
—special legal tribunals who disinterred ancient treaties to justify French occupation. His new towns were made into strongholds by Vauban; Strasbourg (which had been entered by a combination of bribery and intimidation) becoming the strongest fortress in Europe. The King also laid claim to towns in the United Provinces and in the Spanish Netherlands. This aggressive foreign policy, together with an ostentatious build-up of the French army and navy, alarmed all Europe. In the summer of 1686, the League of Augsburg was formed against France—eventually it included the Emperor, most of the German Princes, Spain, Sweden, the Dutch and England. The Nine Years War opened early in 1689. Louis’s greatest enemy was the new Dutch Stadtholder, William of Orange, whom the Glorious Revolution had just made King of England. Louis’s main objective was to break the Dutch and turn William III out of England, even if it meant fighting on five fronts.

Poor James II had been driven out of his kingdom but was not without supporters among his former subjects. Although he used James as a political tool and was well aware of his faults, Louis had a genuine affection for a brother monarch whom he had known since he was a small boy. A magnificent welcome awaited the exiled court at Saint-Germain, which was put at James’s disposal. Mary of Modena was waited on as if she were Queen of France and given presents of gold and silver plate, jewellery, silks and velvets; a purse of 10,000 golden
louis
was on her dressing-table. King James received a pension large enough for him to keep his entire household. The French navy soon drove the English off the sea, routing their main fleet at Beachy Head. A French Armada took James and a Jacobite army to Ireland, which had remained loyal. As anticipated, this second front caused William III the utmost alarm. Unfortunately King James had lost his nerve; without enough experienced troops, he was easily defeated at the Boyne and fled to France once more. The Irish fought on bravely for two more years but the Jacobite cause was doomed.

In Germany the French at first conquered all before them. In February 1689, determined to knock the Elector Palatine out of the war, Louis issued an order to his troops to reduce the Palatinate to ashes. The real author of the order was Louvois, who, as Voltaire said, ‘had become less humane through that hardening of sensibilities which a lengthy ministry produces.’ The beautiful Rhineland went up in flames and Mannheim and Heidelberg were gutted; any Germans remaining in their ruined houses were butchered; 100,000 refugees fled north and east. German hatred of the French is often said to date from this campaign. In Italy, after several bloody reverses, the French conquered all Savoy save Turin.

Louis had excellent commanders in Marshals Catinat and Luxembourg. It was Catinat who conquered Savoy, while Luxembourg became known as the
‘tapissier de Nôtre-Dame’
, so many were the enemy flags and standards which he brought home in triumph. In 1690 near Fleurus in Flanders he killed 6,000 of the enemy, taking 8,000 prisoners; in 1691 he took Mons; in 1692 Namur, the strongest fortress in the Low Countries, the King being present. At Steinkirk and Neerwinden (1692 and 1693), two more glorious victories were won, though the casualties were so frightful that people said
De Profundis
ought to be sung, rather than
Te Deum
. Unfortunately Luxembourg died in 1695, just when the Dutch were beginning to recover. The French also did well in Spain where the Duc de Vendôme captured Barcelona. The French navy ruled the waves after a brief reverse and French privateers harried English ships and raided Jamaica and Newfoundland. Newfoundland was almost conquered by the Comte de Frontenac and his
Canadiens
(though at that date the entire population of New France was only 11,000 souls). But for all the bloody battles, all the marching and counter-marching, neither France nor her enemies could win.

Louis was anxious to break up the League of Augsburg before the question of the Spanish Succession would have to be settled. He therefore bought off the Duke of Savoy by returning his Duchy. The League dissolved. At the Treaty of Ryswick, signed at the end of 1697, France gave up Lorraine and most of her conquests in Germany and the Low Countries, besides recognizing William III as King of England. Colbert’s tariffs were abolished. But she retained Strasbourg and other strong-points on the Rhine frontier, and in America gained the Hudson Bay and most of Newfoundland.

Louis took advantage of the peace to redecorate Marly. For Louis XIV, this château—twelve little pavilions flanking a tiny palace—was what the original Versailles had been for his father. Here he relaxed among the people he liked best, etiquette being much less formal than elsewhere, and picnicked with parties of ladies in the woods. At Marly he indulged his passion for tulips; four million a year were imported from Holland. The château’s new decorations, by Pierre Lepautre, are an early example of rococo.

The treaty with Savoy brought to France the last of Louis’s great loves. This was Marie Adelaide, ‘The Rose of Savoy’, not yet twelve years old, who arrived in 1696 to marry the King’s grandson, the Duc de Bourgogne. The King went to meet her. He wrote enthusiastically to Mme de Maintenon, ‘She is very graceful and has the most perfect figure I have ever seen, dressed as if ready to sit for her portrait, with bright, beautiful eyes, admirable black eyelashes, as clear a pink and white complexion as could be desired, and the loveliest flaxen hair and plenty of it …’ Louis continued, ‘I find her exactly what I would wish and should be sorry if she were more beautiful.’ Until her marriage was consummated in 1699, Marie Adelaide lived with the King and Mme de Maintenon as a daughter, attending the school at Saint-Cyr. According to Saint-Simon, Mme de Maintenon, whom she called ‘Aunt’, treated her as a little doll. Louis adored the child; he took her for walks every day and let her sit on his lap and rumple his wig. She remained his favourite when she grew up plain but still vivacious. Marie Adelaide was the idol of the court—even Saint-Simon admired her. Giddy and flighty, hopelessly lacking in decorum, she had many flirtations though they were innocent enough, and was fond of rather coarse practical jokes. The King never scolded her and allowed her to run into his office at any moment of the day and rummage through his papers—she was the one person who was never frightened of him. At first her husband bored her, but then she fell in love and became a devoted wife. They had three children; a short-lived Duc de Bretagne, another Bretagne and the Duc d’Anjou (the future Louis XV).