The Sun King (25 page)

Later in the evening he is still more delighted. They have had a public conversation together, during which she gave nothing away; in other words she was perfect. Monsieur is in a dreadful temper and is now pretending to be ill. (Monsieur was, in fact, furious because his grand-daughter was to take precedence over Madame, who since the death of the Dauphine, had been the first lady in the land. He may also have realized that the King was determined to keep the little girl away from what he regarded as the bad influence of the Court of Saint-Cloud.) The King goes on to send Mme de Maintenon a thousand we don't know whats, because, in accordance with her policy of mystifying posterity, she has here erased two lines. He ends by saying that when the time comes for this princess to play her part she will do so with dignity, poise and charm.

Mme de Maintenon wrote to the Duchess of Savoy, when she had seen Marie-Adélaïde, saying that the King and she herself were in transports of joy at receiving such a treasure. Indeed she now came into her own with a future Queen of France to educate. The little girl was good, but not easy material, astonishingly like that other descendant of Monsieur's who came to marry an heir to the throne, Marie-Antoinette. She was fascinating, spoilt, wilful and proud. Owing to Mme de Maintenon's loving care of her the nobility of her nature blossomed with womanhood — in Marie-Antoinette's case it never appeared at all until brought out by cruel misfortune. Mme de Maintenon and Marie-Adélaïde had a perfect relationship, more intimate than that of most mothers and daughters. ‘Ma Tante' and ‘Mignonne' they called each other. The cynics at Versailles to whom human goodness was inclined to be suspect, and who had watched Mme de Maintenon for a lifetime in all her apparent hypocrisy, said that ‘Mignonne' was servile to ‘Ma Tante', that she had seen the way to the King's heart through his old wife and had, with the innate cunning of her race, regulated her behaviour accordingly. Certainly she had been primed before leaving home; she wrote to her grandmother: ‘I do as you told me about Mme de Maintenon.' But the respect and confidence of the next sixteen years, such difficult years for any young woman, could hardly have been built on an untruth; and there is no doubt at all that she loved the old lady. She was an affectionate little thing, fond of the King and of her grandfather, Monsieur, not so fond of Madame; even less of her father-in law, the Dauphin (who never cared for children) and of her aunts the Princesses not at all, and they were furiously jealous of her. While she and Bourgogne were still in the schoolroom they were indifferent to each other. They met every day, often dining with Mme de Maintenon, but were never allowed to be alone before the consummation of the marriage which took place when Marie-Adélaïde was
fourteen, two years after their wedding. On their wedding night they were put into bed together as part of the ceremony and the Dauphin jokingly told Bourgogne to kiss his wife; but her lady-in-waiting, Mme de Lude, who had been given strict orders by the King, sent the bridegroom packing. The Duc de Berri, pert and forward at eleven years old, said scornfully that nothing would have got
him
out of that bed.

In all his long life the King never loved anybody as much as he loved Marie-Adélaïde. He took her for a walk every day, when the tiny creature looked as if she were coming out of his pocket, and spoilt her totally. At Versailles she had her own private zoo, the
Ménagerie
, in a building by the canal which has now disappeared, so of course she liked Versailles better than all the other residences. She also had her own little theatre where she put on plays with her friends. She asked if she could go to Marly, for the usual two day visit, quite alone with the King and this unheard-of treat was arranged. She lived in Mme de Maintenon's room which the King used as a sort of office. Nothing was forbidden; the word ‘no' was never used. She opened his letters, rummaged about among his state papers and is always supposed to have dispatched many a military secret to her father when, having changed sides once again, he was fighting against the French. There is no hint that she did so, however, in her dull little letters to him and her mother; when she mentions the war it is to beg him to stop it; but the letters are mostly concerned with the appalling toothaches from which she suffered. By the time she was grown up her manners were more or less under control; as a child they were giddy indeed and it is quite understandable that those who were not entranced by her, Marie-Anne de Conti, for example, and Mme la Duchesse, should have found her unbearably irritating. She could never be still for an instant, even at meals when she would sing, hop and dance on her chair, make frightful faces and put her fingers in the sauce. In a carriage she jumped about like a little monkey, first on one person's lap and then on another's. She
tutoyed
the Dauphin to make him laugh — such a thing had never been known in good society. She could be naughty in rather a horrid way. She was dreadful to Mme du Lude for no reason at all; Mme du Lude was a charming, beautiful person whom everybody liked and who had wonderful manners. The King knew exactly how to treat Marie-Adélaïde when she was impossible; Mme de Maintenon had shown him a better method of forming a young nature than the terrorizing that had made the Dauphin so dull. For instance, when Marie-Adélaïde made loud jokes about the appearance of a very ugly officer at the King's supper, the King abashed her, saying in an even louder voice: ‘To me he is one of the best looking men in my kingdom since he is one of the bravest.'

She went to Saint-Cyr three days a week for her lessons; she wore the school uniform and was called Mlle de Lastic. She was never naughty there but good and clever. The day before her wedding, when
she was twelve, she came to show them all her wedding dress, so thickly embroidered with silver that she could hardly stand in it. She loved Saint-Cyr and was greatly loved in return, much more, at this time, than she was at Versailles. Mme de Maintenon saw to every detail of her day, even ordering her dinner: a typical menu was crayfish soup in a silver bowl, twisted bread and wholemeal bread, freshly-made butter, fresh fried eggs, a sole in a small dish, redcurrant jelly, cakes, a carafe of wine and a jug of water.

The King in his new-found piety now only admitted virtuous men to his Council and as a result public affairs were by no means flourishing. Neither Beauvilliers, Chamillart, nor Torcy would have dreamt of feathering their nests like Colbert, of insulting the King and practically raping the duchesses like Louvois, or of quarrelling with and intriguing against each other like the two of them. (Beauvilliers actually refused his salary, a thing which had never been heard of before — it must be said, however, that his nest had already been feathered by Colbert, his father-in-law.) But they were not in the same class as their predecessors and a very poor advertisement for integrity in public life. The King was quite contented with them. As he grew older and more authoritarian, he preferred to rule with second-rate advisers whom he thought he could control. When Louvois died, in 1691, he actually seemed rather pleased, saying to James II: ‘I've lost a good minister but your affairs and mine will be none the worse for that.'

The army had gone downhill since the days of Condé, Turenne and Louvois. Vauban's favour had declined since he had gratuitously advised the King against the revocation of the Edict of Nantes and had spoken to him about the state of the peasantry. There was a serious shortage of first-class general officers; Mme de Maintenon said: ‘I don't know if our generals will frighten the enemy — they terrify me.' Louis XIV was not unaware of this situation and realized that now, if ever, was the time to keep the peace. When the Treaty of Loo was invalidated by the death of the Bavarian heir, he entered into another treaty with William III by which the Spanish empire was to be partitioned; the Netherlands, Spain itself, and the American colonies were to go to Austria, while France was only to have Naples, Sicily and Milan. This moderate arrangement shows that the King dreaded another conflict. It came to nought through the folly of the Emperor Leopold who claimed the whole inheritance and would not hear of any partition.

In 1700 the pathetic King of Spain died, in the thirty-sixth year of his life, and of his reign, with all Europe hanging on his will. Charles II was simple but not, as has so often been said, actually idiotic. He knew perfectly well that foreign potentates were consulting together, without any reference to him, to divide the Spanish empire after his death and was, naturally, displeased. Capable of a certain amount of reasoning, he had noticed that whenever news came from the front (a vague place in the Netherlands, dotted with towns whose names he never
could learn) it was always of a French victory; from this he deduced that it would be better for Spain to have France as an ally than an enemy. His French wife, Marie-Louise d'Orléans, had given him the only joy he had ever known; and the greatest sorrow of his whole sad life was her death without children. His second wife ruled him like a strict governess; he trembled before her and made faces behind her back. She was a Bavarian, a first cousin of the Grand Dauphin's children but also sister of the Empress and she was doing all she could to further the Imperial cause. She was unpopular in Spain, and the Germans she brought with her were loathed.

Now the most outstanding personage at Madrid was the French ambassador, the Marquis d'Harcourt who, by his charm and intelligence, had overcome apparently insurmountable obstacles there. At the beginning of his mission the Queen had made it impossible for him even to have an audience with Charles. D'Harcourt was not discouraged; he kept a magnificent embassy; little by little, he won over the grandees, the clergy, the
toreros
, the King and even the Queen herself: his task was made easier by the miserliness and tactlessness of his Austrian colleague. D'Harcourt's diplomatic activities were cleverly backed up by neighbourly help to the Spanish king such as French convoys for his ships bringing gold from America and assistance in his running warfare with the Barbary pirates. During the last months of his life Charles II rebelled against his Queen; he only saw her in order to make last, desperate efforts to have a child, and treated secretly with statesmen and ambassadors. He went to Marie-Louise's grave, had her coffin opened and kissed the poor remains. A pro-French Pope did the rest. Still undecided about his will, pious, desperately ill, Charles II wrote and asked the Holy Father what he ought to do and was told to leave everything to his great-nephew Anjou. And so he did, adding a rider that, should Louis XIV not accept on behalf of his grandson, the messenger who brought the will was to go straight on to Vienna and offer the Spanish empire to the Archduke Charles. The whole thing was a triumph for French diplomacy; and d'Harcourt was made a duke, to the annoyance of Tallart who had only been rewarded for his success in London by a marshal's
bâton
and the order of the Saint-Esprit.

Charles II's will arrived, with the news of his death, at Fontainebleau, 9 November 1700. The King, whose face gave no indication of its contents, put off a day's shooting and ordered Court mourning. He then called a council in Mme de Maintenon's room to decide whether his grandson should or should not accept the legacy. It seemed almost certain that to accept would provoke a European war. The Dauphin, who of course was out hunting, hastened back to attend the Council and surprised everybody by speaking up in favour of his son's rights, using brilliant arguments with an eloquence of which he was not known to be capable. The decision was a foregone conclusion; and indeed it is difficult to see how Louis XIV could have refused, since this would have
meant putting his greatest enemy on two French frontiers with only the doubtful Duke of Savoy as a buffer on the third. From the time that Mazarin forced the King to marry Marie-Thérèse, French foreign policy had been based on the hopes that a day would dawn when there would be ‘no more Pyrenees'.

Louis went back to Versailles, taking the Duchesse de Bourgogne, the Princess de Conti and the Duchesse du Lude in his own coach and eating a picnic without stopping. They left at 9.30 a.m. and arrived at 4 p.m. The following morning he sent for the Spanish ambassador whom he received alone with Anjou, and told him that he might salute his King. The ambassador well on his knee and made a long speech in Spanish which the King understood but the Duke did not (oddly enough he had never been taught the language). Then the double doors of the council chamber were thrown open and the waiting courtiers bidden to enter, a thing which had never happened before. Louis XIV, having with a long, piercing, majestic look seen exactly who was there, said: ‘Gentlemen, here is the King of Spain.' It was a memorable scene.

They went to Mass, Louis taking the new King into the box where he always worshipped alone. He offered the only hassock to the boy who refused it, so they both knelt on bare boards. The King of Spain was given the state bedroom in the Grand Appartement — the only person to sleep there in all the history of Versailles. The Dauphin, delighted at his son's good fortune, went about saying ‘few people can speak of the King my father and the King my son!' He seems not to have known a prophecy, made at his birth, son of a King, father of a King, never a King; but the courtiers all knew it and gave each other significant looks.

By a lucky chance this King, Philip V, had more of the Spaniard than the Frenchman. Had the crown fallen on the head of his brother Berri it would most likely have fallen off again, for Berri was a French boy through and through and could never have endured the twilit gloom of the Spanish Court. Philip had the esteem of all who knew him and very quickly captured that of his subjects. He was handsome, with a strong look of Philip II, proud, brave, truthful and generous, rather melancholy, religious, uxorious. His first wife, Marie-Louise of Savoy, was the sister of Marie-Adélaïde. Human beings outside his family meant little to him and after he arrived in Spain the only friend at Versailles he ever enquired for was Mme de Beauvilliers. He tenderly loved his father and two brothers and never got over the death of Bourgogne, perhaps the person he loved most in the world. When he left for Spain the farewell scenes were heartrending: the Dauphin, usually so impassive, was terribly distressed — everybody felt that it was goodbye for ever, although the King said that, when Philip was quite established in Spain and when he had a son, he could pay them a visit on his way to the Spanish Netherlands. It never happened. Philip outlived them all by many years, and founded a dynasty which lasted almost exactly a century longer
than his brother's. His conscience was to trouble him when he remembered, late in the day, that Marie-Thérèse had renounced the Spanish throne for her descendants. He began to see himself as a usurper, and even abdicated for a while. But during the lifetime of Louis XIV he was ruled by him and assumed what God had sent with sober satisfaction.