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i~,~?71 ~




HISTORY OF FRANCE,
PROM THE
EARLIEST PERIOD TO i789.
BY HENRI MARTIN.
Putvis veterum renovabitur.
PART VIL




This work has received the Great Gobert Prize from  the
Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres, and the French
Academy.








ESTIMATE OF
MARTIN'S HISTORY OF FRANCE
FROM
ELABORATE REVIEWS IN THE "EDINBURGH" AND "NORTH
AMERICAN."
"HOWEVER M. Martin's independence of the government may have recommended him to the Institute, the bold and national enterprise of writing and publishing a voluminous History of France, after a conscientious study of its original
sources, and with great good sense and correctness of judgment as well as vigor of
conception and style, deserves all the patronage that a literary body can bestow....M. Martin is a writer of acuteness and vigor. No one has composed a
History of France in so even and sustained a tone through a series of volumes.
All his competitors have treated but of epochs or portions of French History, except Sismondi (and he certainly abates of vigor in his concluding volumes). The
reigns of Louis XIII. and XIV. are the parts which M. Martin has written with
most spirit, perhaps, and most effect." - Edinburgh Review.
"..... A work of uncommon merit, which certainly stands foremost among the
compositions of the kind in the French or any other language. As a work of thrilling interest, it has rarely been equalled; the most barren epochs are presented in
an attractive form, which allows the reader to find in biographical and literary
sketches a compensation for that dryness, often unavoidable, when the historian
wishes to state the truth and nothing but the truth. It is generally conceded that
the several chapters devoted- to a critical analysis of literary characters and works
present the most complete and trustworthy history of French Literature as yet
written. The history of philosophy, from the ordeal to which it was subjected in
the medieval school to its final development under the Cartesians, not only in
France, but in Holland and Germany, is set forth in a clear, elegant, and comprehensive form..... The arrangement is perfect, and evinces a method which
must remain as a standard for all future historians; for, whatever may be the result
of further investigations, it is evident that they cannot alter our present conception
of the entire field of French history, which, we think, is now complete, at least in
its general outline." - North American Review.




MARTIN'S HISTORY  OF FRANCE.
THE AGE OF LOUIS XIV.
BY HENRI MARTIN.
TRANSLATED FROM THE FOURTH PARIS EDITION'
BY MARY L. BOQOTH.
V OL. L
BOSTON:
WALKER, WISE, AND COMPANY.
1865.




Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864, by
WALKER, WISE, AND COMPANY,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the District of
Massachusetts.
RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE:
STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY
H. O. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY.




PUBLISHERS'...NOTE.
IN presenting this, the Seventh Part of M. MARTIN'S great
HISTORY OF FRANCE, a few words of explanation are due the
Public. The History in question is divided into Eight Parts or
Epochs, each comprised in two volumes; which, with the Analytical Index, make up the seventeen volumes constituting the
entire work.
These several Parts are complete in themselves. With the full
consent of the author, we commence the enterprise of republication, with the AGE OF LoUIS XIV., as of the most immediate
interest.
We shall follow this, by the Eighth and last Part, THE DECLINE
OF THE FRENCH MONARCHY, after which we shall take up the
First Part of the work and proceed in consecutive order. The
translation is made by Miss Mary L. Booth, with the approbation
of M. Martin, who has furnished an interesting introduction to
the Age of Louis XIV., written especially for this edition, and
who will enhance the value of the subsequent volumes by Notes
and other Addenda.
The eminent historian, Hon. George Bancroft, has generously
volunteered his highly prized aid to the translator, and will enrich
the edition by valuable annotations.
It cannot be amiss to present here a brief resume of the contents of Part VIII., the publication of which will follow the present work. The absorbing interest of this period of French History,- including the Regency, the reigns of Louis XV. and Louis
XVI., and the downfall of the ancient r6gime and absolute monarchy in France, cannot be overstated. The principal points
are,
DECLINE OF THE FRENCH MONARCHY. The Regency. Minis



viii               PUBLISHERS' NOTE.
try of Dubois. Law's System.  Ministry of Fleuri. War of the
Polish Election. Peace of Vienna. War of the Austrian Succession. Peace of Aix-La-Chapelle. Louis XV. King. Society,
Arts, and Letters.  Voltaire.  Montesquieu.  Saint - Pierre.
France and her Colonies. Seven Years' War. Peace of Paris.
Philosophy of the Eighteenth Century.  Voltaire and the Encyclopedists. Condillac. Helvetius. D'Alembert.' Buffon. Diderot. Rousseau. Holbach. Mabli. Gluck. David. Turgot.
Ministry of Choiseul. Accession of Louis XVI. Marie Antoinette. Turgot Comptroller-General. Malesherbes Minister. The
American Revolution.  Declaration of Independence of the
United States. La Fayette in America. Treaty of Alliance between France and the United States. D'Estaing and Rochambeau
in America. Ministry of Necker. Manners, Arts, Literature,
and the Sciences after the American War. Society of the Queen.
Bernardin de Saint-Pierre. Lagrange. Lavoisier. Condorcet.
Mesmer.  Freemasonry.  Mirabeau.  Last Days of the Monarchy.  Ministry of Calonne.  Chaos of the Finances.  The
Diamond Necklace. Assembly of Notables. Downfall of Calonne.
Ministry of Brienne. Struggle between the King and the Parliaments. Recall of Necker. The Third Estate. Siey's. Opening of the States-General. The Third Estate declares itself the
NATIONAL ASSEMBLY. End of the Ancient R6gime and of the
Monarchy.
WALKER, WISE, & CO.
BOSTON, October 1, 1864.




CONTENTS OF VOLUME I.
Page
P.REEFATORY NOTE..  Xiii
AUTHOR'S PREFACE.   -    XV
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE....X
CHAPTER I.
LoUIs XIV. AND COLBERT.
FINANCES.- Character of Louis XIV. and Beginning of his Government.
Disastrous Situation of Finances at the Death of Mazarin; Ruin of Agriculture and Navigation; Sufferings of Commerce and Manufactures. Struggle
between Fouquet and COLBERT. Fete at Vaux. Arrest of Fouquet. Colbert administers under the King. Plans of Colbert. Financial Reform.
Chamber of Justice. Trial of Fouquet. {The Iron Mask. Liberation of
the Public Revenues. Financial Liberation of the Communes. Amelioration
of the System of Taxation. (1661-1672).
CHAPTER II.
LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT. (Continue&.)
SECTION I.- THE COURTS AND THE POLICE. Great Days of Auvergne. Council of Justice. Pussort and Lamoignon. Civil Ordinance. Criminal Ordinance. Hospitals. Ordinance on the Police of Paris. La Reinie. Ordinances on Convents and the Population. SECTION II. - WATERS AND FORESTS. AGRICULTURE. CANALS. Ordinance on Waters and Forests. Regulations concerning the Grain-Trade. Multiplication of Stock. Royal Highways. Riquet. (Canal of the Two Seas.)  SECTION III. - COLONIES.
MARINE. COMMERCE. MANUFACTURES. Companies of the West and East
Indies, the North, and the Levant. Free Ports. Navy: Regime of Classes.
Ordinances on the Marine. Naval Constructions. Brest and Rochefort.
Tariff Edicts.  Protective System. Entrepdts. Manufactures.  Statutes
and Regulations on Manufactures. Commercial Ordinance. (1661-1673). 60
CHAPTER III.
Louis XIV. AND COLBERT. (Continued.)
INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL PROGRESS.  SECTION I. - THE GREAT KING
AND THE COURT. The Great Lords. Literary Men. The Academies. The
Clergy. Etiquette. Women. Festivals of the Court. SECTION II. - SCIENCES AND LETTERS. Academpy of Sciences. Huyghens. The Observatory. Picard. Cassini. Roemer. Erudition. Baluze. Mabillon. Ducange.
D'Herbelot. Travellers. Civil Law at Paris. SECTION III.- POETRY.
THE DRAMA. LITERATURE AND SOCIETY. MOLIE-RE. Boileau. RACINE.
VOL. I.                b




CONTENTS.
Page
Lulli and Quinault. Q:estion of the Stage. LA FONTAINE. Madame de La
Fayette.  MADAME DE SkVIGNI.  SECTION IV. - MORALISTS.  SACRED
ELOQUENCE. La Rochefoucauld. Nicole. BOSSUET. Bourdaloue.  SECTION V.-FINE ARTS. VERSAILLES. Colbert Superintendent of Constructions. Lebrun Director of the Academy of Painting and Sculpture and of
the Gobelins. Perrault; the Louvre. Louis XIV. abandons the Louvre
for XTERSAILLES. Hardouin - Mansart.  Lenostre.  The Invalides.  SECTION VI. - THE EDUCATION OF THE DAUPHIN. THEORIES OF LOUIS XIV.
AND BOSSUET. THE STATE OF THE CHURCH. The Politics of the Holy Scriptures and the Memoirs and Instructions of the King to his Son. Affairs of the
Jansenists and Protestants. Controversies between Bossuet and the Ministers. Conversions. Splendor and Perils. (1661-1672)... 138
CHAPTER IV.
LOUIS XIV. (Continued.)
DIPLOMACY AND WAR. - COLBERT, LIONNE, LE TELLIER, AND LOUVOIS.SECTION I. - WAR OF THE QUEEN'S RIGHTS. - Reorganization of the
Army.  Plans of external Policy.  Spain recognizes the Precedence of
France. Acquisition of Dunkirk. Quarrel with Rome; the Pope compelled
to humble himself before Louis XIV. Expedition against the Moors, and
Intervention in Hungary. Projects concerning Belgium and Franche-Comte.
Policy of Holland. Alliance with Holland against England.  War of the
Queen's Rights; Invasion of Belgium; Capture of Charleroi, Bergues, Fumrnes,
Tournay, Douai, Courtrai, Audenarde, and Lille. Peace of Breda, between
France, England, and Holland. Secret Treaty of Louis XIV. with the Emperor Leopold for the eventual Partition of the Spanish Monarchy. Treaty
concluded by Holland with England and Sweden to arrest the Conquests
of Louis XIV. by obliging Spain to make Concessions to him. Conquest
of Franche-Comte in a Fortnight. Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle; Spain cedes to
France the Places captured in Belgium, and Louis XIV. restores FrancheComte. SECTION II. - Resentment of Louis XIV. against Holland; Extensive Negotiations to isolate this Republic and to pave the Way for its Ruin.
Influence of Colbert diminishes. Louis XIV. secretly aspires to the Empire. Treaty with England against Holland. Great Preparations. Affairs
of the East. Expedition of Candia. Project of Leibniitz to turn the Arms
of France from Holland to Egypt.  The Plan is thwarted.  Louis XIV.
declares War against Holland. (1661-1672)..... 242
CHAPTER V.
LOUIS XIV. (Continued.)
WAR WITH HOLLAND. - Financial Preparations of Colbert. Invasion of Holland. Taking of the Cities of the Rhine.  Crossing of the Rhine. Conquest
of the Provinces of Gelderland, Overyssel, and Uitrecht. Dismay of Holland. The Occasion lost of taking Amsterdam. Patriotic Devotion of the
Dutch.  The breaking of the )ikes submerges Holland and arrests the
Invasion. The naval Battle of Solebay prevents a Franco-English Descent
in Zealand. The States-General offer Louis XIV. the'Cession of Maestricht,
Dutch Brabant, and Dutch Flanders. Fatal Refusal of the King, urged:on
by Louvois. Reestablishment of the Stadtholdership:for the Benefit of:the
Prince of Orange. Massacre of the Brothers De Witt.  The Emperor,
Spain, and the Elector of Brandenburg declare themselves in Favor of Holland. Turenne prevents the Junction of the Imperialists with the Prince of




CONTENTS.                               xi
Page
Orange. Disastrous Financial Expedients imposed on Colbert. Taking of
Maestricht by the King and Vauban. Taking of Treves. Maritime Reverses. Junction of the Imperialists and the Dutch. Louis XIV. evacuates
Holland and seizes Franche-Comte. England makes Peace with Holland.
The Germanic Diet declares against France. Battle of Seneffe. Misery of
the People. Disturbances in Guienne and Brittany. Revolt of Messina
against Spain. Brilliant Campaign of Turenne in the Palatinate and Alsace.
German Invasion repulsed. Turenne resumes the Offensive beyond the
Rhine. Death of Turenne. (1672-1675).                             330
CHAPTER VI.
Louis XIV. (Continued.)
WAR WITH HOLLAND, continuation and end. - Repulse of Konsaarbriick and
Loss of Treves. Naval Victories of the French over the Spaniards and
Dutch in the Waters of Sicily. Glory of Duquesne. Taking of Conde,
Bouchain, and Aire. Loss of Philippsburg. Reverses of the Swedish Allies
of France. Bavaria rallies to the Support of France and Sweden. Taking
of Valenciennes and Cambrai. Victory of Cassel. Taking of Saint-Omer.
Victory of Kochersberg. Taking of Freiburg in Brisgau. Maritime Successes against the Dutch. Taking of Ghent and Ypres. Peace of Nimeguen
with Holland. Commercial Concessions to the Dutch. Battle of Saint-Denis
after the Signature of Peace. Louis XIV. restores to Spain Ghent, with
Charleroi and several other Places acquired in 1667. Spain cedes to France
Franche-Comtd, Valenciennes, Cambrai, Saint-Omer, Ypres, and other Towns
of West Flanders and Hainault. The Emperor and the Germanic Diet sign
the Peace after new Reverses. Philippsburg restored to France in Exchange
for Freiburg.  The Elector of Brandenburg and the King of Denmark
restore to Sweden what they had taken from her. General Pacification.
(1675-1679)...... 423
CHAPTER VII.
Louis XIV. AND COLBERT. (Continued.)
END OF THE MINISTRY OF COLBERT. Efforts of Colbert to reestablish the
Finances and to relieve the People. Colonies; Marine. Black Code; Cavelier de la Salle; Discovery of Louisiana. Petit-Renau. Ordinance concerning the Marine. VAUBAN fortifies all the Frontiers and Coasts. Works
of Toulon.  Chambers of Reannexation.  Encroachments on the Empire.
ANNEXATION OF STRASBURG TO FRANCE. Occupation of Casale. War
against the Moors. Bombardment of Algiers. Increasing Oppression of the
Protestants. New Struggles between Colbert and Louvois. MADAME DE
MAINTENON. Quarrel with the Court of Rome. DECLARATION OF 1682.
New Edicts against the Protestants. Troubles in the South. Death of
Colbert. (1679-1683). 479








PREFATORY NOTE.
THE AGE OF LOUIS XIV. properly begins March 9, 1661, at
the death of Cardinal Mazarin, when he assumed the sole administration of the government, and stamped it with his own individuality.  Until that time he had been wholly indifferent to
public affairs, leaving them to be guided by his prime minister, and
the preceding portion of his life and reign may be said to belong to
the times of Anne of Austria and Mazarin. Born September 5,
1638, Louis XIV. was not five years old when his father, Louis
XIII., died, and his mother, Anne of Austria, succeeded to the
government as regent, with Mazarin for prime minister. HIe attained majority at thirteen, September 5, 1651, according to the
laws of France, but continued to abandon the government to
Mazarin, devoting himself to amusement. June 3, 1660, he
espoused the Infanta Maria Theresa, daughter of Philip IV. of
Spain. The detailed account of this portion of his reign is given
in the preceding part of this work, (to be published in the future,)
comprising the administrations of Richelieu and Mazarin. On the
death of Mazarin, to the general surprise, Louis XIV. assembled
his councillors and addressed to them these words, with an allusion
to which this volume opens: —" Sir," said he, addressing the Chancellor, titular head of the councils, " I have summoned you, with
my Ministers and my Secretaries of State, to tell you that it has
pleased me hitherto to permit my affairs to be governed by the late
Cardinal; I shall in future be my own prime minister. You shall
aid me with your counsels when I ask you for them. I request
and order you, M. Chancellor, to seal no decree except by my
orders; and I order you, my Secretaries of State, and you, M.
Superintendent of Finances, to sign nothing without my command." With these words commenced the veritable AGE OF
Louis XIV.- TR.








AUTHOR'S PREFACE.
TO THE AMERICAN READER.
AT the present critical juncture, in the midst of great events
which may involve the future of many generations, it is useful to
bring American thought into connection with French thought, to
overthrow mutual prejudices, to interest them as much as possible
in -each other, and to bind together these two nations whose moral
harmony is so essential to the liberty of the world and the progress
of humanity. Two destinies are here in question, which should be
developed in the same direction, instead of running counter to
each other, in the Old and New Worlds. America is destined to
develop, without obstacle, all that Christian Democracy can produce on a virgin soil, after she has extirpated by such terrible sacrifices the blighting canker of Slavery.  France is destined to
become, among European nations, her sisters and equals, the moral
centre of activity of the federation which will rejuvenate Old
Europe, after having repelled the invasion of Muscovite despotism,
the shameful malady of Europe, as Slavery is that of America.
The double danger to be averted is, that, for lack of well knowing
and understanding each other, both sides will be misled: France
and her neighbors, so far as to favor the Slave system; America,
so far as to countenance Czarism, the absolute antithesis -of selfgovernment, the born enemy of all civilization founded on liberty,
all'right, and all law. Providence'will not perumit, let us trust, a.
misunderstanding so fatal. French writers, among whom we will
quote M. Ampere, a few years since, and, more recently and in
graver circumstances, MM. Laboulaye and De Gasparin, have
labored perseveringly to reveal America to France.  American
writers have conceived the project of contributing to %make the
French nation known to America, by the translation of the History of France, to which the writer of these lines has devoted the
greater part of his life. The historian heartily concurs in this
project, and, full of confidence in the capacity and honorable inten



xvi                 AUTHOR'S PREFACE.
tions of the translator, he presents, in concert with her, her work
and his own to the public of the United States.
The History of France, which embraces so many centuries, may
be divided into several series. The translator has deemed it advisable to begin by offering to the reader the modern periods,
which, more nearly related to ideas and questions now agitated
among us, and above all to the existing causes of anxiety, are susceptible of a livelier and more immediate interest: she will give
later the series which concern the more ancient epochs. May less
stormy times, then, leave the public at liberty to taste sufficient
tranquillity to respond to the scientific interest inspired by distant
ages!
The Age of Louis XIV., which is published first by the translator, may interest the American reader above all by contrast.
Louis the Great was the great adversary with which that Protestant liberty, from which America was born, had to contend. The
author of the History of France, who professes principles quite
opposite to those of the ancient r~gime and the old French Monarchy, has set forth, with all the impartiality in his power, the
lustre and greatness of this monarchy, and the brilliant society of
which it was for some time the nucleus; but, the more resplendent
were men and things, the more decisive is the conclusion, since
all this glory ended only in one vast ruin.  The principles of
Louis XIV. and Bossuet, the principles of political and religious
absolutism, are irrevocably condemned.
In the period that follows the reign of Louis XIV. the reader
will see developed the opposite principles, that is, the principles of
philosophy and free thought; he will see France regenerated by
them, although still enveloped in the forms of the ancient re'gime,
spring to the assistance of the infant American Republic, and
aid in founding, beyond the ocean, the new democratic world,beginning, as is her wont, by aiding others, before occupying herself with her own affairs and attempting her own revolution,
through the phases of which she has been passing since 1789.
Later, the first parts of the History of France will be resumed and
presented to the reader. We shall show there the common origin
of the nations of Western Europe.; we shall refute by facts the
exaggeration of the popular opinion concerning the exclusively
Anglo-Saxon origin of England, and, consequently, of America;
we shall show a more ancient race, the Celtic and Breton Race,
which remained the basis of France, and which equally left a deep
stratum in England, under the stratum of the Anglo-Saxon con



AUTHOR'S PREFACE.                    xvii
querors, in their turn covered over by a Franco-Norman stratum
in the Middle Ages. We shall then describe the successive growth
of France through the intermediate ages and the Renaissance. In
our narration we shall behold France, the true centre of the Christian Republic in the Middle Ages, losing the initiative in Europe
at the epoch of the Reformation; we shall weigh the causes by
which France, while again taking the lead of the European social
advance and the direction of ideas in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, has found her political growth fettered and herself involved, with respect to the order of facts, in a course which
has hitherto rendered so difficult the definitive establishment of the
r6gime of liberty, - an establishment which she will never re.
nounce, and which she must finally attain and fix upon her soil.
HENRI MARTIN.
VOL. I.               C








TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.
THE absence of any comprehensive history of France in the English language forms a hiatus in our literature which has long been
felt, and which is the cause probably of the very limited knowledge that almost universally exists in this country respecting
French history and institutions.  There is no lack of historical
taste among us, as is evidenced by the eagerness with which we
absorb good historical works, and by our general acquaintance with
the histories of England, Spain, Holland, Greece, Rome, our own
country,- of all nations, in short, of which we have good histories in our own tongue, such as those of Macaulay, Hume, Grote,
Gibbon, Prescott, Bancroft, and Motley. That we are less conversant with the history of France is due probably to the fact that
we have no standard history of that country.in our language,
while the French language is a sealed tongue to the masses. Yet
there is no country whose history is richer or more eventful,
no country that has contributed more to art, science, and literature,- no country to whom our nation' owes a greater debt of
gratitude than that France to whom its national existence is so
largely due, and whose best men sympathize so earnestly with it in
its second struggle for life.
The evident necessity of supplying this want has prompted the
translation of Martin's History of France, a work conceded by the
best literary authorities to be the most exhaustive, conscientious,
and accurate history extant in the French language, while its eloquent style and lofty philosophic sentiment place it in the first rank
of historical productions. It is indeed not only a history of political events, but of the progress of society, art, science, letters,
philosophy, and ideas from the remotest ages to the modern world;
and so thoroughly has the author exhausted his subject, that it
must be long indeed before another pen will venture to resume it.
Some explanation seems due to the public respecting the publica



Xx               TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.
tion of this history in distinct parts. This division is made with
the full consent of the author, who agrees with us in thinking that
the work will thus be better adapted to the necessities of the public,
who will be enabled to procure a complete history of any particular
period that they may desire, without having a broken set of books
on hand, valueless without the remainder, or to complete the set as
far as, or when they may wish. The original work is divided into
eight parts, or series, namely: Ancient France; France in the
Middle Ages; the English Wars; the Renaissance and the Italian
Wars; the Religious Wars; Henri IV. to Mazarin; The Age
of Louis XIV.; and the Decline of the French Monarchy. Each
of these parts is complete in itself, without necessary connection
with the other parts, and forms a comprehensive history of the
epoch it includes. It has been thought best to issue them as separate works, but all in uniform size, lettering, etc., and rendered
accessible as a united whole by an Analytical Index.
We are happy to say that M. Martin expresses the warmest interest in the American translation of his great work, and has promised it valuable aid, in the form of notes and other addenda, regarding it as an instrument of drawing closer the bonds between France
and America, by teaching us better to comprehend the spirit of
the French nation, in studying it through its own historians as well
as those of rival nations. A few words respecting M. Martin's
personal history, and the progress of the work to which he has
devoted more than thirty years of his life, may not be out of place
here.
Bon-Louis Henri Martin was born February 10, 1810, at Saint
Quentin, a flourishing manufacturing town in the department of
Aisne, a part of the ancient province of the Isle of France, near
the northern frontier of France. He was destined for the law by
his father, himself a judge of the civil tribunal, and after studying
in the college of Saint Quentin, was sent to Paris to complete his
legal education. But early reading in a large miscellaneous library
left by his grandfather had given him a taste for letters, and soon
abandoning the study of law, he made his debut, at twenty, in literature by a historical novel, which was followed by a series of others
on the epoch of the Fronde, -a species of training which turned
his mind to historical research, while it tended to cultivate his style.:The reputation which he achieved caused him to be selected as
the chief editor, with the bibliophile Jacob and several other literary men, of a History of France from the earliest period to 1730,
designed to serve as an introduction to Thiers' History of the Erench




TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.                   xxi
Revolution, to be composed of extracts from the principal histories
and chronicles, linked together so as to form a continuous narrative.
After the publication of the first volume, his coadjutors abandoned
the task, which he completed in sixteen volumes, 1833-1835. A
second edition appeared without revision.
This preliminary study, so necessary in itself, only had the effect
of rendering M. Martin dissatisfied with the existing historians.
He conceived the project of going back from these to the very
sources of history, and of writing an original work from the standpoint of modern knowledge and thought. Aided by the fullest
access to the annals and archives of the kingdom, he devoted the
next twenty years of his life to the preparation of a History of
France, which was published 1838-1855.  This work received the
warmest encomiums from the public, together with the illustrious
honor of the Great Gobert Prize of 10,000 francs from the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles Lettres as the most learned, and
from the French Academy, the highest literary authority in the
world, as the most eloquent historical work on France. No sooner
was this great work completed, than M. Martin, more severe
towards his book than such critics, deemed that the recent discoveries concerning Celtic antiquities, etc., rendered its reconstruction
necessary, and applied himself to the preparation of a new edition
which he completely remoulded, especially in the parts relating to
the religion of the Gauls, the origin of poetry and language, the
events of the Middle Ages, the feudal institutions, and the history
of the eighteenth century. This fourth edition, from which this
translation is made, appeared in 16 volumes, 8vo, with one volume
of Index, 1855-1860.
Besides the History of France, so gigantic a work in itself, M.
Martin has written various other books, The History of the City of
Soissons; France, its Genius and Destinies; Monarchy in the Seventeenth Century; Study of the System and Personal Character of Louis
XIV.; Daniel Mlanin, etc.; and has contributed to the Monde,
Nationale, Revue Indipendante, _Encyclopedie Nouvelle, Revue de
Paris, and other liberal journals. In 1848 he filled the chair of
modern history at the Sorbonne, which he quitted in consequence
of the interruption caused by the events of 1849, and never resumed. M. Martin has distinguished himself, since the beginning
of the present Rebellion, as one of the most earnest advocates of
the cause of the North in France, and is especially known to us as
one of the authors, in common with Messrs. De Gasparin, Cochin,
and Laboulaye, of the eloquent Letter to the Loyal League, which




XXii             TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.
came with its cheering words, as a welcome New-Year's Gift, the
1st of January, 1864, to encourage the friends of freedom.
It has been endeavored to make the translation conform  as
faithfully as possible to the spirit and letter of the original. In
French proper names, the original orthography has been adhered
to; in others, the most popular authority has been followed. In
geographical names, Lippincott's orthography has generally been
adopted.
In conclusion, cordial thanks are due to the numerous friends who
have proffered their interest and aid to this enterprise, and especially to the Hon. Charles Sumner, for his much-prized appreciation
and assistance; to the eminent historian Mr. Bancroft, who has
promised to enrich the forthcoming part of the work by valuable
notes on the epoch of the French Revolution, where the histories
of France and the United States are so closely interwoven; and to
Mr. Henry Harrisse of New York, whose scholarly assistance in collating and preparing the MSS. of the Age of Louis XIV. for the
press cannot be too highly appreciated.
MARY L. BOOTH.












AGE OF LOUIS XIV.
CHAPTER I.
LOUIS XIV. AND  COLBERT.
FINANCES. - Character of Louis XIV. and Beginning of his Government. Disastrous Situation of Finances at the Death of Mazarin; Ruin of Agriculture and
Navigation; Sufferings of Commerce and Manufactures. Struggle between
Fouquet and COLBERT. Fete at Vaux. Arrest of Fouquet. Colbert administers
under the King. Plans of Colbert. Financial Reform. Chamber of Justice.
Trial of Fouquet. The Iron Mask. Liberation of the Public Revenues.
Financial Liberation of the Communes. Amelioration of the System of Taxation.
1661-1672.
THE Court and France had heard with astonishment the words
by which Louis XIV. had inaugurated his reign. For half a century men had become accustomed to see the right and fact, the
principle and exercise of power constantly separated; the royal
authority being always exercised by delegation, royalty had finally
appeared nothing more than an abstract idea; it suddenly became
a person again.  The multitude, accustomed to impute its ills to
intermediums placed between it and the throne, and always inclined to hope, applauded this revolution, which logically simplified the ruling power; none then perceived its vast consequences. The Court did not wholly experience the same impressions as the people. The first astonishment over, it began
to doubt whether the King would persist in his resolution.  Could
it be believed that a king, twenty-two years of age,' hitherto a
stranger and indifferent to affairs, nourished in child-like docility
toward the minister that he had just lost, and impelled by youthful
ardor toward all pleasures, would long have the strength to sacrifice the better part of himself to arid labors; that he would not
soon abandon audiences for the dance, the chase, and the tournament? The queen-mother shook her head with a bitter-sweet
smile, little satisfied that she had not been called to the secret
council; the courtiers, lately much more attentive to Mazarin than
1 Twenty-two years, six months. He was born September 5, 1688.
VOL. I.      I




2               LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.                 1661.
to Louis, affected to surround only the King and not the ministers,
but carefully watched for any appearance of favor to each of
these, and were prepared, at the first sign, to salute the inheritor
of the power, if not the title, of Richelieu and Mazarin. It was
thought that Louis would more easily relinquish the reality than
the appearance of authority.'
One man especially did not believe, would not believe, in the
perseverance of the King: this was the superintendent of finances,
Nicolas Fouquet. The superintendent, forty-six years of age, was
the son of a wealthy Breton ship-owner, whom Richelieu had formerly called to the council of the marine and commerce, then to
the council of state. Nicolas Fouquet, master of requests at the
age of twenty, had purchased, at thirty-five, in 1650, the office of
attorney-general of the parliament of Paris, and made his way
into the intimacy of Mazarin through the channel of his brother,
the Abbe Fouquet, an intriguer much employed by the cardinal.
We have seen how, after the Fronde, he had entered the administration of finances, and how he had promptly obtained in it effective
authority, even when he had a nominal colleague. His private
fortune and his relations with men of business had enabled him to
render the government services for which he had amply indemnified himself; and Mazarin, his own share secured, had left him
almost unlimited power with respect to all else. Each had made
a very different use of the spoils of France. Mazarin, sure of the
King and needing no other support, had thought only of amassing;
Fouquet, thinking to found his greatness on the affection of the
influential classes, and, moreover, as lavish by nature as Mazarin
was parsimonious, had poured into the greedy hands of the powerful the gold wrung from the privations of the wretched; unbridled
in his pleasure as in his ambition, he pretended to purchase the
devotion of all men and the love of all women. It is affirmed that
he distributed as much as four millions a year in gifts and pensions.
He had labored to attach to himself the great lords and army officers by his largesses, and the magistrates by the services that his
mixed position of superintendent and attorney-general enabled
him to render either to private individuals or companies; the
financiers, to whom he delivered up the kingdom as a conquered
country, were as devoted to him as to themselves. His taste for
letters and arts, not less than his munificence, won for him the
wits, writers, and artists; on good terms with the parliamentarymen, he none the less caressed the Jesuits, whom Mazarin had
1 Mminoires de Choisi, pp. 677-580.




1661.             CHARACTER OF THE KING.                          8
neglected and despised. His intrigues circumvented all men of
importance, and penetrated all secrets, even in foreign courts.  He
believed himself sure of being ere long the arbiter of all destinies,
and expected that Louis, through lassitude, would suffer the reins
of state to fall into his hands.1
Fouquet, a facile and brilliant spirit, full of fascinations and
resources, but superficial, rash, without judgment and without
prudence, had ill understood Louis XIV. The resolution of the
King, however, had not been unforeseen by all. Observers, not
blinded by personal interest, had gathered more than one significant symptom; Louis expressed himself in regard to sluggard
kings (rois faineants) as a prince fully decided not to increase their
number. Some characteristic sayings of the late Cardinal were
quoted concerning him: —" He set out rather late," said Mazarin,
"but he will go farther than any one else..... There is stuff
enough in him  to make four kings and an honest man." 2  Louis
does not seem, as has been claimed, to have been impatient to be
rid of his minister-king; he was affectionate and grateful to him,
and it was precisely because he was capable and worthy of governing that he had made no haste, feeling the gravity of the burden.3
The burden, however, did not appall him; he had in himself a confidence that was, at this first epoch of his life, but a legitimate feeling of his strength and his future. His genius has often been called
in question, his character never. There has perhaps never been
a will superior to his in persistence and intensity. The effort of
attention and labor which it was imagined he would not sustain
three months, he sustained during fifty-four years.
To a thirst for glory, to a passion for the great in all things,
that inspired him with concentrated enthusiasm, he united, by a
sort of contrast, a mind more judicious and clear than brilliant,
more sagacious and exact than profound, more vigorous than broad;
endowed with an upright and sincere soul, born with a love of the
good, the just, and the true,4 he had early formed a theory, conscientious, whether erroneous or not, of the rights and duties of royalty; he had regulated in advance the employments of his life,
according to a plan to which he was almost always faithful. There
has been preserved a monument of inestimable interest, the Me1 Mdmoires de madame de Mlotteville, p. 517 et seq. Les Portraits de la Cour, ap.
Archives Curieuses, 2e ser. t. VIII. pp. 414-417.
2 Memoires de Choisi, 3e ser. t. VI. p. 567. M2ienoires de madame de Motteville, pp.
502-506. Lettres de Gui Patin, t. II. pp. 192-223.
8 See in his (Euvres, t. I. the Mdmoires et Instructions h son fils, pp. 6-8.
Mdmoires de Saint-Simon, t. XXIV. p. 84, edit. in-12; 1840.




4                   LOUIS XIV. AND  COLBERT.                        1661.
moirs and Instructions designed by Louis XIV. for his son, and
drawn up, from his notes and under his eyes, by Pellisson, about
1670. Louis fully reveals himself in these as he was during the
first and fairest period of his reign; he shows therein an elevated
good sense, an uprightness that belies itself only on some thorny
points of diplomacy, very religious sentiments, and as much clearness in ideas as firmness in views. We understand that the man
who has written such words on the severe joys of labor and duty,
on the noble pleasure of governing, the'first of all, -we understand that this man was truly born for empire. He seems to feel
deeply the obligations of the head of the state and the national
unity personified in him.1 He fears flatterers, seeks to protect
himself against them, and the pride that is sometimes revealed in
his grave and lofty language might still be confounded with the
evidence of a complacent conscience.
He had understood, with great practical sense, the necessity of
imposing on himself not only general duties, but regular and periodic obligations, and of setting apart for different occupations certain days of the week and hours of the day. These were, first and
daily, the secret council with the three directing ministers, Fouquet,
Le Tellier, and Lionne; then, twice a week, the council of dispatches, in which the chancellor and secretaries of state sat with
the three other ministers;2 the council of finances, composed of the
superintendent, two comptrollers-general, two directors, and two
1 " The prince, who ought to preserve all the parts of the authority united in
himself, could not permit its dismemberment without rendering himself guilty of all
the disorders that spring from it....  Those who approach him nearest, first
seeing his weakness, are also the first to wish to profit by it; each of these, necessarily having people who serve as ministers to his avidity, gives them at the same
time license to imitate him; thus, by degrees, corruption is communicated everywhere.... There is no governor who does not attribute unjust rights to himself, no troops that do not live dissolutely, no nobleman who does not tyrannize over
the peasants, no receiver, no assessor, no sergeant who does not exercise in his
district (dctroit) an insolence so much the more criminal as the authority of kings
is used to support the injustice..... Nevertheless, the public alone is the victim
of all these different crimes; it is only at the expense of the weak and the wretched,
that so many people pretend to rear their monstrous fortunes. Instead of a single
king that the people ought to have, they have a thousand tyrants at once..... "
- (Euvres of Louis XIV. t. I.; 1Memoires et Instructions, pp. 59, 60. The Workls of
Louis XIV., composed of his political and military memoirs, and his selected letters, were published, in 1806, in six volumes, 8vo, by the booksellers Treuttel &
Wiirtz, with the cooperation of General Count de Grimoard and of M. Grouvelle.
The original manuscripts had been confided by Louis XVI., in 1786, to General de
Grimoard.
2 Of the three directing ministers, Le Tellier alone was Secretary of State. This
council was designed for ordinary dispatches within the realm, and for answers to
petitions.




1661.          THE KING AND HIS COUNCILS.                      5
intendants; sometimes extraordinary -councils, to which were summoned the princes and the great lords, titular members of that numerous council of the King, which Mazarin had wholly ceased to
assemble of late years, and which Louis XIV. called together again
for form's sake, without restoring to it any effective part in affairs.
The King moreover frequently appeared in the privy or judicial
council,1 which, under the presidency of the chancellor, adjudged
the conflicts of jurisdiction between the courts; finally, Louis
reestablished the council of conscience founded by his mother in
1643, under the influence of St. Vincent de Paul, then suppressed by Mazarin: in this the King consulted his confessor and
three or four prelates in regard to the collation of benefices and
other ecclesiastical matters dependent on the royal authority.
Independently of these official labors, the King often worked with
each of his three ministers in private, frequently consulted, teted-tete, the men most eminent for their talents and services, especially two, one of dazzling fame, the other still obscure, Turenne
and Colbert, and granted audience to all comers with great facility;
he had made it known, according to his own expression, that
whatever might be the nature of the affair, it was necessary to ask
directly from him " what was only a favor," and he accorded to all
his subjects, without distinction, the liberty of addressing him both
orally and by petition. Saturday was devoted to answering petitioners. Personal government, in fact, was possible only with this
system of direct communication between the monarch and private
individuals.2
The first acts that followed the death of Mazarin gave, as it
were, the key-note of the new regime, and showed that the scale
of power had been raised. The assembly of the clergy, then in
session at Paris, deferred adjourning, according to the expressed
desire of the King, until the issue of certain edicts which it had
urgently demanded; the King gave it to understand that nothing
would be obtained by such ways as this, and the edicts were not
issued till after the adjournment.  The court of aids having
thwarted certain arrangements of the government, several councillors were exiled; then the upper council, by a decree of July
8th, enjoined the parliaments, the great council, court of exchequer,
court of aids, etc., to defer, on all occasions, to the authority of its
1 Otherwise called the upper council: it was the council of state.
2 (Euvres of Louis XIV. t. I.; Memoires et Instructions, pp. 23-33. Memoires de
madame de Motteville, pp. 506-508. Id. de Choisi, Collect. Michaud, 3' ser. t. VI. pp.
677-580.




6                 LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.                   1661.
decrees. Henceforth the pretension of parliament to recognize " as
the will of the King only what was in the verified ordinances and
edicts," was no longer for a moment suffered, and the parliament
no longer dared contest the supremacy of the upper council. Another very important measure despoiled the military chiefs of a
power as dangerous for the state as oppressive to the citizens: the
King deprived the governors of fortified towns of the revenues of
their governments, which had been abandoned to them during the
Fronde, under pretext of keeping their places in good condition,
and which yielded them enormous incomes; it suffices, to give an
idea of it, to state that the little town of Doullens produced 20,000
crowns. Some governors made over a million a year.1
The situation of France was not such that demonstrations of
firmness toward subaltern bodies and authorities, and a few remedies for partial abuses, could suffice for governing worthily. Louis,
without stopping at the external lustre with which war and diplomacy had surrounded France, cast a long and firm glance within
the kingdom, and saw that this great body, so imposing and so
robust, was undermined by a malady that was progressively invading the vital organs.
The symptoms of this malady were evident: the public wealth,
becoming more and more concentrated in the hands of the unproductive classes, threatened to become exhausted in its sources; the
discomfort of the useful and productive classes seemed continually
to increase as the social scale was descended; on reaching the last
class in rank, the first in utility, the peasants, it was no longer discomfort that was encountered, but frightful misery. The impost
was raised, in 1660, to about ninety millions;2 the proportional part
of the burden borne by those liable to the villain tax was perpetually
increasing. Richelieu had formerly struggled as long as possible
against the thought of increasing the villain taxes; he had several
times reduced them in the midst of the most urgent needs, and had
fallen back upon the towns and wealthy classes by increase of subsidies, loans, and individual taxes; he had, however, yielded to necessity, and, at the close of his administration, the villain taxes and
accessory imposts had reached the amount of forty-four millions.
The villain taxes still increased under Mazarin in proportion as the
1 (Euvres of Louis XIV. t. I.; Memoires et Instructions, pp. 57, 68.
2 A little less than double in the money of the present time, the silver mark being
twenty-six livres, ti sous. The total amount of the revenue, at least in appearance,
had been much higher during certain years of the war; but it was by means of
loans, anticipations, and extraordinary transactions. The taxation had never been
higher.




1661.                  TAXES. COMMERCE.                             7
ability to pay them decreased: they had been forty-eight millions
in 1648; they were still more than forty-six and a half in 1661;1 a
nominal figure, for the whole of this sum was very far from entering
the coffers of the receivers, and an enormous arrearage accumulated
from year to year, in spite of the barbarous violence of the collection, -prosecutions, arrests, imprisonments; poverty, inability was
treated as a crime; hundreds of peasants died of wretchedness and
grief in the depths of prisons where they were crowded, for not
having been able to pay the impost.2 The poorest were first
attacked, then the tax-gatherers ascended to the less wretched, and
ruined them in their turn, in virtue of the terrible solidarity inflicted on the inhabitants of parishes; cultivation of the soil languished; cattle disappeared; the high price of grain indicated the
scarcity, the insufficiency of articles of prime necessity, and by no
means, as has been maintained, the prosperity of commerce in
cereals, a commerce that fluctuated between a limitless and improvident liberty and abrupt and violent prohibitions.3
Commerce and manufactures, without being quite reduced to a
like extremity, suffered and struggled under the restrictions of a
detestable system of taxation. We possess, in regard to their condition, three valuable documents: first, the sixth chapter of the
second part of John De Witt's Memoirs, the illustrious Grand Pensionary of Holland; second, the remonstrances of six bodies of
Parisian merchants to the King against a declaration of 1654,
which increased the import duties on foreign merchandise; third, a
memorial addressed to Mazarin in 1659 on the decline of the commerce of Lyons.4 The remonstrances of the Parisian merchants
attest that France carried on an extensive commerce with foreign
countries, which, already flourishing in the sixteenth century, had
revived immediately after the calamities of the League.5 The
1 Forbonnais (Recherches sur les finances de France, t. I. p. 273) maintains that they
rose to 57,400,000 livres; but there is certainly an error here. See the statement of
1661 in F. Joubleau, Etudes sur Colbert, t. I. p. 16; 1856. As to the years 1657 to
1660, verification is impossible; there exists no account. To forty-six and a half
millions must be added the villain tax of Provence, the amount of which we do not
possess.
2 See the sad details given by M. Floquet, Histoire du parlement de Normandie, t. V.
p. 148.
3In 1649, bad harvest; exportation prohibited; 1650, great dearth; 1651-4,
dearness; 1655-7, reduction of prices, followed by free exportation; 1658, high
prices again; 1659, 1660, dearness. See Forbonnais, Observations ceconomiques, t. II.
p. 13 et seq.; 12mo.
4 These last two documents are in Forbonnais, Recherches sur les finances de la
France, t. I. pp. 274, 281.
6 See our vols. IX. and X. See the Testament politique of Richelieu, Part 2, c.




8                  LOUIS XIV. AND  COLBERT.                      1661.
Parisians complained, that, since the commencement of the great
war, the duties had been constantly increasing on foreign merchandise, and that the merchants were no longer consulted in regard to
imports and import duties, but only the farmers of the revenue, who
valued merchandise at its selling price, without taking into account
the expense of carriage and waste; a general revaluation was made
in 1632, and an increase of import duties in 1644, without any proportion, charging necessary articles more than those that could be
dispensed with; the former duties were quadrupled; the minimum
was twenty-five per cent. of the value, and some articles paid more
than one hundred per cent.; the new duties of January, 1654, again
added ten per cent. in general, and twenty-five per cent. on certain costly articles.  "This is showing a desire to interdict us all
commerce with our neighbors," say the merchants of Paris; foreigners would not fail to retaliate and lay heavy duties on the raw materials needed in our manufactures, -  fine wools, dye-stuffs, spices,
sugars, soaps, hides.l The treasury not only burdened external
products, but those of the country; nowhere were the duties on
national as well as on foreign products so high as in France; export
duties have destroyed certain branches of commerce, for example,
the manufacture of cards, that supported at Rouen seven or eight
thousand persons. The internal duties and tolls, as well royal as
municipal and private, everywhere fettered circulation.2
The memorial on Lyons (1659) complains, on its side, of the
import duties that burdened raw materials: "before 1620, a bale of
silk from the Levant paid only 16 livres, 13 sous, 4 deniers; it
now pays 112 livres, 5 sous, 3 deniers; 3 the raw silks (griges) of
Italy paid only 18 livres, the wrought, 26; the former now pay
118, the latter 143. The customs of Valence... the ruin of the
commerce of our provinces, have increased in such a manner that
IX. ~ 6; on the prosperity of the manufactures of Rouen and Tours, about 1640;
the first, for coarse cloths; the second, for costly goods: silks, velvets, cloths of
gold. We learn from it that Rouen formerly carried on with Morocco an extensive
commerce in linens and cloths. This chapter also contains an account of the commerce of France with the ports of the Levant.
1 It is to be observed that, for the greater part of the raw materials, recourse was
had to foreign nations only voluntarily, and in default of encouraging national navigation and production.
2 The Parisians complain, for example, of tolls exacted by the municipal bodies
of Rouen and Lyons on merchandise traversing their cities on the way to Paris.
They complain also of the increase of postage, as swelling the costs of trade. An
arrangement, however, had recently been made of great use to the advancement of
intercourse: the penny post had been established at Paris in May, 1653.
8 It must be observed that the silver mark had been raised from 20 livres, 5 sous,
4 deniers to 26 livres, 10 sous; 16 livres of 1620 were worth nearly 21 livres of 1659.




1661.                COMMERCE. INDUSTRY.                             9
certain kinds of merchandise pay even three times; as a natural
consequence, less than three thousand bales of silk now come annually into our custom-house (at Lyons), where twenty thousand
formerly came.  The merchants of Germany, Flanders, Holland,
England, and Portugal no longer purchase anything at Lyons;
necessity compels them to imitate the manufacture of our stuffs or
to have recourse elsewhere.1 The duties on drugs and spices have
increased sixfold."   This memorial also charges ill-understood
changes in the relation of the silver mark to the currency with
having caused much money to leave the kingdom.
The result of. these two memorials, the first of which, written
from the commercial rather than from the industrial point of view,
must be read with some reserve, is that the most important interests were delivered up as a prey to a blind fiscal system, equally
foreign to ideas of commercial liberty and national protection.
In spite of so many trammels, and in spite of the decay of the
commerce of Lyons, exportation was still considerable; John Doe
Witt gives the statistics of the principal articles that were exported
to England and Holland; the whole does not amount to less than
forty millions per annum, three fourths at least to Holland, without
speaking of the enormous traffic in salt, which five or six hundred
vessels, mostly Dutch, came each year to load at La Rochelle,
Marans, Brouage, and the isles of Ol6ron and Re.  The balance of
commerce was annually in favor of France to the amount of thirty
millions with Holland, of ten millions with England.2
These statistics at first sight astonish us and seem an index of
1 The custom-house at Valence had succeeded that at Vienne. See our vol. X.
A bale of silk coming from Italy, paid duties at Pont-de-Beauvoisin, on passing from
Savoy into France; it paid a second time at Montluel, on going from Lyons to
Nantua to be wrought, and a third time on returning to Lyons to be manufactured.
A bale of camlet from Lille, weighing 232 pounds, paid, in different duties, in order
to reach Lyons, 203 livres, 15 sous, 3 deniers, without counting the customs of
Valence, if it went farther, and the six deniers per pound. Forbonnais, Recherches
sur les finances, t. I. pp. 281, 282.
2 Alemoires de J. De Witt, translated into French; The lHague, 1709, pp. 183-185.
The costly stuffs from Tours and Lyons count six millions; the ribbons, silk
galloons, buttons, tassels, etc., manufactured at Paris and Rouen, two millions; the
sail-cloth of Brittany and Normandy, more than five millions; bed-furniture, more
than five millions; the wines of Gascony, Saintonge, and Basse-Loire, nine millions;
brandies, vinegar, cider, more than two millions; fruits, pastels, soaps, more than
two millions. France exported hardware, needles, etc. There is no question of
cereals. The Meinoires of John De Witt were written in 1661, and: revised in 1670.
Although he speaks of this commerce in connection with the remonstrance of the
merchants of Paris, which had come to the knowledge of the Dutch government,
the statistics which he gives are perhaps more precisely applicable to a somewhat
later period.
VOL. I.       2




10               LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.                    1661.
prosperity; but the impression changes in proportion as we regard
them closer. If Holland purchased to such an amount from France,
it was because she supplied the greater part of Europe, and especially all the North, with French goods; this was for us a benefit
dearly bought; it was at the expense of our navigation. Dutch
shipping monopolized nearly all the transportation, not only between
Holland and France, but between France and other countries, and
the English took possession of the little that escaped Holland. Our
commerce with the Levant, which, under Henri IV., if we can
believe the ambassador Savari de Breves, employed more than a
thousand vessels,' had begun to decline under Louis XIII. in consequence of treaties of England and Holland with Turkey,2 and
especially in consequence of the progress made by the commerce
of the English and Dutch in the East Indies; the merchandise of
India, China, and Persia, that formerly reached the west by Aleppo
and Alexandria, where the French received it in order to distribute it over all Europe, had changed route, and now went by the
Indian Ocean and the Cape, in ships of the English and Dutch
companies.3  The decay was much more profound under Mazarin,
when French navigation in the Mediterranean was no longer protected against the pirates, as in the time of Henri IV., by the sincere alliance and energetic will of the Ottoman Porte, nor, as in the
time of Richelieu, by a brilliant and active navy.  French commerce was reduced to the necessity of protecting itself under the
flag of England, Holland, or Sweden, to be respected by the pirates,
-a commerce whose flag in former times had protected all Christian nations in the seas of the Levant. There was not a French
merchant, therefore, who possessed ships of any importance.4
The Dutch had even deprived us of our coasting-trade, and the
transportation between France and her colonies. The colonization
of the French West Indies was developed'with as much Eclat and
energy as the colonization of Canada was slow and laborious; tropical agriculture flourished, population increased at St. Christopher,
Martinique, and Guadaloupe; the French had a decided preponderance in the Lesser Antilles, and began to share the island of
St. Domingo with the Spaniards; 5 but this progress did not profit
1 The number is doubtless exaggerated. See Revue inde'pendante of November
25, 1843; Des Relations de la France avec l'Orient, by M. Th. Lavallee.
2 England had obtained, in 1586, commercial equality with France in the Ottoman
empire; the Dutch had obtained the same in 1612.
3 Testament politique of Richelieu, pp. 319-321.
4 Forbonnais, Recherches sur les finances, t. I. p. 283.
6 We have spoken (vol. XI.) of the freebooters and the colony of French Protes.




1661.                        COLONIES.                              11
the maritime power of France. The privileged company, invested
in 1635 with the property of the islands, and a monopoly of their
commerce, had deprived, through its ignorant selfishness, the
mother-country of the advantages which it should have derived
from the colonial establishment, and that without any advantage to
itself. It had voluntarily restricted its shipping designed for traffic
between France and the islands, preferring to sell a little dearly to
much cheaply. This absurd and odious calculation had resulted in
the organization of a vast contraband trade, by which the Dutch
supplied the colonies with European, and France with colonial commodities: sugar, tobacco, indigo, etc. They made four millions a
year on French sugars, which they resold to France!  The company of the islands was ruined, and sold its privileges in detail to
the governors of the islands and other private individuals;l but
the maritime situation was not changed.
A single branch of commerce, very ancient with us, sustained
itself a little better: this was sea-fishery; fishery and the fur-trade
were always important in Newfoundland and Canada, where commerce, the reverse of the West Indies, progressed better than colonization.  More attention was paid to converting and  trafficking
with New Prance than to cultivating it, and too many monks and
not enough laborers had been sent there. Some important settlements, however, sprang up by degrees: Montreal had been
founded in 1641, by Chomedey de Maisonneuve, in the name of
the religious society of Notre-Dame de Montreal.  This city, which
now surpasses Quebec in importance, was long to be a rampart of
Quebec against the incursions of the Iroquois; the Three Rivers
tants authorized to establish themselves, by an exceptional tolerance, in the island
of Tortugas, on the coast of St. Domingo (1641). In 1654, the Spanish retook the
island of Tortugas, but they could not destroy the French, who took refuge in the
woods on the coast of Hayti; in 1660, the French in turn expelled the Spanish from
the island of Tortugas, and a governor was definitively installed there in the King's
name, with the concurrence of the freebooters and buccaneers. See Dutertre, Histoire des Antilles, and Father Charlevoix, Histoire de Saint-Domingue, t. II. i. vii. In
the mean time, the French and English of the Lesser Antilles lived together tolerably well, after having fought with each other repeatedly, and made war on the aborigines, that warlike race of Caribbeans, so different from the mild and feeble inhabitants of the Greater Antilles, destroyed by the Spaniards. In 1660, the French and
the English treated with the Caribbeans, and it was agreed that the islands of St.
Vincent and Dominica should be left to the aborigines under French protection.
See tistoire generale des Voyages, t. XV. p. 540.
1 Beginning in 1642, it had sold to De Boisseret Guadaloupe, Marie-Galante, and
Desirade, and Les Saintes for 73,000 livres; in 1650, it sold to Duparquet Martinique, St. Lucia, Grenada and the Grenadines, for 60,000 livres; in 1651, to
Poinci, St. Christopher, St. Croix, St. Bartholomew, and Tortugas, for 120,000
livres.




12               LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.                    1661.
became a somewhat notable post; - Quebec became the seat of a
bishopric in 1658.1
The symptoms of the malady from which France was suffering
did not escape the glance of the man who claimed to govern her.
Fouquet would have asked nothing better than the honor of finding
a remedy. He had penetration and knowledge in all that concerned maritime trade; he had, of late years, conferred on this subject with Mazarin, who had projected the establishment of a great
navigation company, and formed a council of commerce of which
Colbert was a member. Opinions had been asked of the intendants of provinces and the principal merchants of important towns.
Fouquet had induced rich private citizens to invest funds in maritime expeditions, and, with interested aims, but, after all, to the
profit of the state, he had fitted out, on his own account, vessels for
Newfoundland, for the continent of America, and for the whalefishery; he had purchased the island of St. Lucia, one of the
Lesser Antilles, for 39,000 livres, and sought to possess himself of
the heritage of the company founded in 1642 by Richelieu, for the
purpose of establishing a colony at Madagascar. The great minister had been struck by the admirable position of the island of Malegache,2 between eastern Africa and the Indian Ocean, and wished
to form a settlement there that would secure to France the commerce of India. After the death of Richelieu, Pronis, in 1644 or
1645, had built Fort Dauphin on the southeast extremity of Madagascar, after having taken possession of the richest of the Mascarene islands, to which his successor gave the name of Bourbon;
the company, not wealthy and neglected by government during the
Fronde, had fallen into ruin; Fort Dauphin, however, remained.
Some French adventurers had settled in Madagascar, and many
native chiefs had acknowledged themselves tributaries to the
French. Fouquet labored to appropriate this settlement to himself, with the design of organizing there the commerce of the East
Indies.
Two excellent measures for navigation were due to Fouquet: the
organization of the sardine fishery at Belle Isle and on the coast
of Brittany, a fishery that opened to the state a rich source of revenue; and the imposition of a duty of fifty sous per ton on foreign
1 In 1656 the navigator Bourdon took possession, in the name of France, of
Hudson's Bay; the Englishman Hudson had perished in exploring it.
2 The true name of the island; Madagascar is only the name altered by Europeans. See L'lristoire ge'nerale des Voyaqes, t. VIII. p. 552 et seq. Flacourt, Histoire
de MYfadagascar; Paris, 1661. (Euvres de Fouquet; Paris, 1694, t. V. pp. 329, 330, 339,
340; t. VI. pp. 349-351. These works are the trial and defence of Fouquet.




1661.                   TONNAGE DUTIES.                            13
vessels loading or discharging merchandise in France (1659), over
and above the old import and export duties paid by all vessels,
foreign or national. Henri IV. had instituted, and Richelieu had
renewed, a light reciprocity duty, of three sous per ton, on the ships
of such foreign nations as imposed anchorage duties on French
ships. Fouquet made anchorage duty a serious differential duty in
favor of French shipping.  The anger of the English, who had
never ceased fettering French navigation, in a thousand ways, in
their ports, regardless of treaties, showed clearly that the blow was
just. Charles II. in renewing, in 1660, Cromwell's Navigation
Act, imposed a double duty (six shillings per ton) on French
vessels in the ports of England and Ireland; the Dutch contented
themselves with a duty equal to the French duty. These retaliations could not arrest the slow but certain effect of a measure
destined to suppress the commercial intermediums between France
and other nations. The duty of fifty sous per ton was applied to
all vessels of foreign build, and the crews of which were more than
half foreign (March 12, 1661).  This was a happy imitation of
the Navigation Act.1
In what concerned the internal administration, a certain number
of ordinances, useful to the public interests, had been issued within
a few years; we remark, in the number, the foundation of the
General Hospital of Paris, (the Salpetriere,) a house as large as a
whole town, and designed to bring under authority all the mendicants and vagrants of Paris, and to give them a shelter, work, and
bread (April, 1656); (Lyons had long had similar institutions;)
letters-patent for the improvement of the course of the Marne and
its affluents (October, 1655); a regulation touching the establishment of the manufacture of silk hose (January, 1656); an injunction to deposit a copy of every new book in the library of the
Louvre, "for the service of the King's person; "2 a declaration
1 Forbonnais, t. I. p. 270. Anciennes Loisfranqaises, t. XVII. p. 400. Navigation
Act, in L'Histoire de la puissance navale de l'Angleterre, by M. de Sainte-Croix, t. I. p.
400. See also a conversation on commerce between Louis XIV. and Turenne,
1662; ap. (Euvres de Louis XIV. t. II. p. 899. This dialogue, which does the
greatest honor to the intelligence and knowledge of Turenne, shows to what point
French navigation was fettered in England and Holland by all kinds of restrictions and taxations outside of treaties, whilst in France treaties were executed to
the letter. Cromwell's Navigation Act, as we have seen, had, in 1651, interdicted
all intermediary navigation. In the general state of international relations, it was
absolutely impossible to restore French navigation without differential duties. On
this question of differential duties, see Adam Smith, On the Wealth of Nations, Bk.
IV. c. 2.
2 This is the origin of the double copy exacted by the state; the first copy, by an
ordinance of Louis XIII. was to be deposited "in the Ning's library, serving in




14                  LOUIS XIV. AND  COLBERT.                         1661.
stating that journeymen (compagnons) who should espouse orphan
girls of the Misgricorde, should be received masters of their trade
at Paris (April 22, 1656); a prohibition to establish religious communities, seminaries, or fraternities, without the King's permission
(June 7, 1659), followed by a prohibition to give, in consideration
of life-annuities, any ready moneys, inheritances, or rentes to ecclesiastical communities and other mortmain establishments, save hospitals, under penalty of confiscation of the property given, and 3000
livres' fine against the contracting community (August, 1661);
(the object of this was to protect at once the interest of the state
and the interest of families;) finally, an important ordinance in
favor of the communities (communes) and villages of Champagne,
which were authorized to resume possession of usages, property, and
forests, by them  alienated during the war, on condition of refunding, within ten years, to the purchasers, the price actually paid for
the alienation (June, 1659).1
The merit of these ameliorations doubtless reverted, at least in
part, to the superintendent of finances. Fouquet also announced
the intention of attacking two of the great evils of France, -
the trammels on internal commerce, and the exaggeration of the
villain taxes.  He caused the tolls established on the Seine and its
the university of Paris for the public use."  See Anciennes Lois fanqaises, t. XVII.
p. 366. Several other ordinances are interesting as to the history of manners: in
May, 1657, the establishment of carriages to let in Paris; in December, 1660, a
prohibition to carry in Paris fire-arms, bayonets, knives that are put on the end of
hunting-guns. The bayonet, the name of which does not come from Bayonne, but
from the Spanish word bayneta, (sheath, case, sheath-knife,) was not yet a weapon
of war, or, at least, was only incidentally employed by some chiefs of corps. See
the MlAmoires of Puysegur, p. 612. The combination that makes it so terrible, by
adapting it to the gun, so as not to'hinder firing, had not yet been found. An
anterior ordinance had already prohibited lackeys from carrying swords, under
penalty of death (1655); pages and lackeys were the scourge of Paris, and committed more thefts and murders than professional thieves. On all these edicts, see
Anciennes Loisfranqaises, t. XVII. pp. 318400.
1 It is set forth in the King's name, in this document, that Champagne having
been wholly laid waste by the war, it has been first relieved by diminishing the salttax, and striving to secure a juster redistribution of the villain tax; since, in examining attentively the state of the province, a concealed evil has been recognized which
hindered its reestablishment; namely, that the greater part of the communities and
villages, afflicted by the misfortune of the times, have been induced to sell to powerful persons, as seignors of places, judges, and magistrates, or the principal inhabitants of cities, their property, usages, forests, and commons, without permission of
the King or judicial decree, and at very moderate prices; " and very often the said
prices have amounted to nothing, although written otherwise, by the violence of the
purchasers, who have forced the inhabitants to sign."..... His Majesty resolved
to succor the said parishes and communities, as being reputed minors, puts them again
in full right and possession of said usages, property, and forests, etc.... Anciennes
Lois franfaises, t. XVII. p. 370.




1661.            RUIN OF THE FINANCES.                    17
principal branches of the public revenue, sharing with them, associating them in his administration, and allowing them to take possession of the general revenue-farms on conditions ruinous to the
treasury; so that they became, after his example, lenders in their
own name, and borrowers in the name of the state, negotiating
with themselves, and paying themselves with their own hands.
Nor was this enough: the financiers found means of abstracting
from the state the greater part of these loans already purchased so
dearly. They stipulated, as a condition of their loans, that the
treasury notes in their possession should be immediately liquidated.
These notes were orders on such or such a special fund, delivered
by the paymaster-general, under the requisition of the superintendent, to the creditors of the state, that could not be paid in cash.
The amount of these was enormous, and the real value very unequal, according to the nature of the funds on which the notes were
hypothecated; some of these funds being less burdened, others being
ruined or consumed for a long time to come by anticipation. The
superintendent acted in this respect according to his own will,
giving to his friends and associates good notes to other creditors bad
ones, which were reassigned from year to year, and finally were no
longer reassigned at all. There was, especially, a large number of
them that dated back to the bankruptcy of 1648, and were wholly
discredited. The financiers knew well how to restore their value:
they stipulated, as it has been said, as a condition ofloans, that the
treasury notes which they presented should be instantly reassigned
by cash orders; they bought up the old notes in a body at ten per
cent. and under, and reimbursed themselves at par, thus taking
back the money with one hand which they had lent the state with
the other.
These abominable malversations encountered no kind of obstacle;
they absolutely escaped the court of exchequer, this court being
cognizant of cash orders or receipts only through the registers of
the public treasurer, which announced only the date and the funds
on which these were assigned, not the object or motive. In truth,
the royal government had prescribed the keeping of a secret register on which were to be precisely recorded, day by day, these
same motives, these same origins of cash orders, that were withdrawn from the verification of the court of exchequer; but this
register, designed to control the superintendency, and kept by a
person independent of the superintendent, Fouquet had annulled
est. There were 18,700,000 livres of this excess for the single year 1658. See
(Euvres de Fouquet, t. V. p. 98; edition of 1696.
VOL. I.      3




18                 LOUIS XIV. AND  COLBERT.                     1661.
by making himself receiver and universal paymaster, as well as
comptroller, and by confounding his individual accountability with
that of the state, in consequence of the intermediary position which
he had taken, with Mazarin's consent,'between the state and lenders.  "The treasury being kept at home," that is, all money passing through his coffers, the public treasurers, also his relatives or
friends,' were no longer but his book-keepers, and kept their
accounts, by agreement with him, in such a manner as to render
all verification impossible.  The secret register of funds had fallen
into complete desuetude. The traffic in treasury notes even surpassed the enormous scandals of which we have spoken above; it
was possible to reassign them from one annual statement to another
only by disguising them under suppositions of imaginary expenditures and receipts; these fictions no longer served merely to mask
usurious interest or anticipations; they finally caused purely fictitious credits to be paid by the state to the farmers of the revenue.
The disorder had become so inextricable that Fouquet himself no
longer knew what he owed, or what was owing to him, by several
millions, and became lost in an ocean of cash orders; —they had
been issued to the amount of three hundred and twenty millions
in four years.2.
Whilst Fouquet was plunging the state deeper into ruin, there
was an eye that indignantly followed all his movements, and penetrated after him  into the darkest caverns of finance; there was a
powerful intellect that bent all the springs of an iron will for his
ruin, and meditated in silence how to repair, not only the ills that
he had caused or aggravated, but all the ills- that fifty years of
financial disorders had inflicted upon France. Louis XIV. saw the
evil; Colbert prepared the means for curing it.
The future organizer of France, the man who was to realize
within the kipgdom the thought which Richelieu had made triumph
without, Jean Baptiste Colbert, had sprung from  a very humble
origin. Of the three great ministers of the seventeenth century,
the first, Sulli, had belonged to the high nobility; the second,
1 There should have been but one paymaster-general; there were three who
served in turn a year each.
2 (E'uvres de Louis XIV. t. I.; MAemoires et Instructions, pp. 109, 110. Colbert,
Meinoires sur les affaires de finances de France pour servir a l'histoire; first published in
full by M. F. Joubleau; Atudes sur Colbert, t. II. pp. 266-342. This is an important document. (Euvres de Fouquet, t. V. pp. 105, 310, 389. Me'moires de Gourville,
p. 624. Forbonnais, Recherches sur les finances, t. I. p. 268. Pellisson, Discours pour;bouquet. Walckenaer, loc. cit. P. Clement, Histoire de Colbert, preceded by an essay
on Fouquet.




1661.               RUIN  OF THE FINANCES.                          19
Richelieu, to the middle class; the third, Colbert, sprang from the
counting-rooms of the bourgeoisie.  He was born at Rheims, August 22, 1619, of a commercial family.1 He received only the
elementary education which was given to the sons of merchants,2
and was sent, in his earliest youth, to Paris and Lyons to learn
commerce; he soon quitted this profession, which left in his mind,
ripening early, a rich deposit of observations and recollections. He
returned to Paris, passed from the office of a notary to that of an
attorney, then entered the office of- a treasurer of casual duties,3
thus by turns occupied with merchants, lawyers, and financiers,
and beginning his experience at the foot of the ladder, a condition
so favorable for well understanding the real state of society.
Finally presented to Le Tellier, allied with his family, he was
greatly liked by this minister, fitted to appreciate men of order and
labor, and was introduced by Le Tellier to Mazarin. As early as
1649, Le Tellier had him appointed councillor of state, which aided
him to make, about 1650, a rich marriage. There was, however,
little sympathy at first between him and Mazarin, and in a letter to
Le Tellier, June, 1650, Colbert expresses himself very rudely in
regard to the Cardinal, for whom  he had, he said, "no esteem."4
These two men, in fact, exhibited a singular opposition of nature.
What a contrast between the type of Mazarin, elegant without
nobleness, gentle without goodness, marked especially with the
stamp of cunning and subtlety, -and the strongly marked, austere,
and hard features, the popular and somewhat rough manners, of
Colbert, who, born, thus to speak, a grown-up man, without child1 The Midmoires sur les Troyens celebres, by Grosley, contain interesting documents
on this subject. The great uncle of Colbert, Odart Colbert, a rich merchant of
Troyes, carried on in France and Italy a large trade in woollens, bolting-cloth,
linens, silks, even wines and grain. The grandfather, then the grandmother and
father of Colbert, less favored by fortune than their brother and uncle of Troyes,
were associated partially in his operations. Subsequently, this family, following
the custom of the bourgeois who purchased fiefs and abandoned merchandise for
offices, set up pretensions to nobility, on the ground that two of their ancestors, a
century before, had been made equerries. As to the pretended descent from a
Scotch cavalier established at Rheims in the fourteenth century, we do not find
that it had any support before the ministry of Colbert, who, moreover, held very
cheaply, as a private individual, all these vanities. See Les aEuvres inedites de P.-J.
Grosley, de Troyes, t. I. art. Colbert; P. Clement, Histoire de Colbert, pp. 75-78; and
Pieces justfihcatives, pp. 454-559.
2 He learned Latin when fifty years old, while a minister; he employed in this
study the time occupied in his drives, and kept a professor in his carriage.
3 Treasurer of duties paid the King to obtain offices falling or remaining to the
exchequer, in order to acquire a mastership or be admitted to practise any profession whatever.
4 Bulletin de la Societe de l'Histoire de France, t. II. p. 214; 1835.




20               LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.                  1661.
hood and youth, had never had time to learn the elegances of life,
any more than he had known its pleasures! It suffices to compare
the keen, fawning, and skeptical eye of the Italian prelate with the
proud look that darted from beneath the thick, dark eyebrows of
the bourgeois of Rheims. Colbert was of the race of the lion, and
not of that of the fox. Yet that interrogatory look, which, as we
contemplate the fine portrait engraved by Nanteuil,l seems to wish
to scrutinize your thought to the depth of your heart, only intimidates at first sight; we soon feel in it, instead of the external gentleness of Mazarin, that springs from indifference and facility of
manners, an inward and sincere goodness, emanating from the
depths of the soul.
Mazarin and Colbert differed no less in intellect than in character: the mind of the Cardinal was ready, supple, and brilliant; the
comprehension of Colbert was somewhat slow, and seized only with
effort, but seized invincibly everything it laid hold upon; nature
made him purchase every advance at the price of an obstinate
struggle, but she had compensated him by giving him the instrument of an always certain victory; this was a power of attention
and will that appeared in the same degree in only one man of the
time, Louis XIV.; — it was a perseverance fitted to wear a rock
drop by drop.
The mutual feelings of Colbert and Mazarin changed. Colbert,
without ceasing to have in his mind an ideal of a statesman very
different from Mazarin, appreciated the rare talents of the Cardinal, and the need that France had of him; Mazarin, on his side,
esteemed in others the virtues that he had not himself, when they
could serve him; he gave by degrees his entire confidence to the
prot6g6 of Le Tellier. After having experienced the rectitude
and great sense of Colbert, during the critical period of 1651 and
1652, he took him for intendant, put him in charge of all his private
business, and employed him in many public affairs. The probity
of Colbert, as formerly that of Sulli, did not imply contempt of
riches, which have their value, at least as a -means of action, in the
eyes of a statesman. The intendant of Mazarin profited by his
position, honorably moreover, for himself and family.  He henceforth showed entire devotion to his patron, and resigned himself to
live among disorders that he could not hinder, and contact with
which could but leave some stain, at which, however, he sometimes
1 Nanteuil has evidently softened a little too much the rough features of Colbert;
Girardon also, in the bust that is at Versailles.




1661,           ~COLBERT AND FOUQUET.                       21
freely enough expressed his regret.1 Yet if he bore with the
depredations of Mazarin as an inevitable evil, he could not equally
resign himself to those of Fouquet, who, in his judgment, was not,
like the Cardinal, necessary to France, and who tended to transform
a passing malady into an organic and incurable lesion. He had kept
his eye upon Fouquet ever since his entrance into public affairs.
He at first endeavored to act amicably towards him, as far as the
inequality of their position allowed; then, judging him incorrigible,
he began to wage war on him with the Cardinal.
The embarrassment of Mazarin was great; the Cardinal felt that
the state was being ruined, and would have gladly arrested the
plague, but he knew not how to strike his accomplice without
exposing himself to shameful recriminations, and did not wish to
renounce his own habits. At the moment of Servien's death, the
nominal colleague of Fouquet in the superintendency, Mazarin
hesitated much; then, instead of imposing on Fouquet a surveillant
in the person of a new colleague, he caused the full and entire
possession of the superintendency to be granted to him by the King,
(February 21, 1659,) and adjourned all reform till the peace. The
disorders this year, however, were greater than they had ever been:
the 1st of October, 1659, as the negotiations with Spain drew to a
close at St. Jean-de-Luz, Colbert decided to send from Paris to
the Cardinal a memorial on the reestablishment of the finances:
he proposed at once to punish the past and organize the future;
he desired that a court of justice should be instituted, composed of
members of all the parliaments, for the purpose of prosecuting the
farmers of the revenue, and making them restore their illicit gains;
and he developed a simple, substantial, and luminous plan of reform.2
This paper was to be for Colbert what the famous discourse to the
States-General in 1614 had been for Richelieu, — the programme
of the future minister.
Fouquet, already distrusting the Cardinal's intentions, had agents
everywhere on the watch; the postmaster-general, who had sold
himself to him, intercepted the despatch, and communicated it to
him before letting it proceed to its destination.  Fouquet, terrified,
consulted an intriguer, Gourville, whose very curious Memoirs we
possess. Gourville adroitly intervened with Mazarin, and, on the
1 See the letter of Colbert to Mazarin, June 8, 1657, on the speculations of the
Cardinal in supplies, cited' by M. P. Clement, Histoire de Colbert, p. 91.
2 It was on his return from a diplomatic mission to Italy, that Colbert took this
step. Mazarin had commissioned him to engage the Pope and the Italian princes
to succor Venice against the Turk. Colbert succeeded only at Turin.




22                LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.                     1661.
occasion of reports, which, he said, were circulated in regard to the
impending disgrace of Fouquet, represented to the Cardinal, that, to
overthrow the superintendent and prosecute business-men, at the
moment when much ready money was about to be required for the
King's marriage, was to provoke a financial crisis that would close
all purses.' Mazarin, after having inclined for a moment to reform,
yielded to the observations of Gourville, and even wished to reconcile Colbert with Fouquet. The latter, however, was by no means
reassured, and, thinking that Mazarin had only postponed his destruction, planned the rashest projects of resistance. A multitude
of high personages, at court, in the law, and in the army, owed to
him the obtainment or the cost of their places; he had. neglected
nothing to surround the King, the queen-mother, and the prime
minister with his creatures and his spies. If all the people who
had received his money had given him their devotion in exchange,
he would, in fact, have had a formidable party. He imagined himself able to renew the Fronde; he counted on several governors of
fortified towns; he had purchased Belle-Isle, on his own account,
from the house of Retz, and he fortified this important maritime
position, to give himself a place of security. Thus passed away
the year 1660. Mazarin died; Fouquet thought himself saved.
It was quite the contrary! Mazarin had had no design of destroying him. This minister, in dying, although he had revealed
to the King the principal abuses, had counselled Louis XIV., as we
have already said, to employ both Fouquet and Colbert, — controlling the former by the latter. To the one, thought Mazarin,
might be preserved the active duties; to the other, it is true,
should be given all the confidence.  We are assured that the last
words of Mazarin to Louis were: " Sire, I owe everything to
you; but I pay my debt to your Majesty by giving you Colbert."2
It was in fact by this magnificent legacy that the successor of
Richelieu, so worthily transmitting the heritage which he had
himself received from the great Armand, crowned his services and
merited pardon for his misdeeds from posterity.
In spite of too well-founded prejudices,3 the King at first wished
1 Memoires de Gourville, p. 625 et seq.
2 Memoires de Choisi, p. 579.
3 A scandalous scene, that took place in the ante-chamber of Mazarin, six weeks
before the death of this minister, must have reached the ears of the King, and added
to the effect of the Cardinal's revelations. The superintendent and his brother, the
Abbe, getting into a quarrel, the Abbe called the superintendent a thief, and
reproached him publicly for the heavy expenses of his buildings, table, play and
mistresses. Gui Patin, Lettres, t. II. p. 195; Menoires de Choisi, p. 580.




1661.         LOUIS, FOUQUET, AND COLBERT.                    23
to follow the Cardinal's advice; he was not even contented with
leaving Fouquet in the superintendency; he called him, as we
have seen, to the secret council to which but three of the ministers
had the entrance. Only, he forbade him " to do anything in the
finances without its being registered in a book that was to remain
to him." This was the old register of the funds which Louis reestablished; he confided it to Colbert, whom he directed, moreover, to make a very condensed abstract of this register, wherein
he could " any moment see at a glance the state of the funds and
of the expenses incurred or to be incurred."l Colbert, gratified
with the office of intendant of finances, entered in this capacity
the council of finances, hitherto purely nominal and at the discretion of Fouquet.2  The King declared to the superintendent that
he wished to understand the finances, and conjured him to conceal
nothing from him in this respect, assuring him  " that the past was
passed and forgotten," provided he were sincere in the future.
Fouquet confessed some former disorders, protested his sincerity,
and, from the next day, began to present statements to the King, in
which the expenditures were exaggerated and the receipts diminished. He fancied that no one would be capable of controverting
his assertions, or of seeing clearly in the chaos which he had made
around him. He had not taken into account the genius and science
of Colbert. Colbert, every evening, overturned the figures that
Fouquet had constructed in the morning, and demonstrated to the
King the falsehoods of the superintendent. The most enlightened
of Fouquet's confidants, especially Pellisson, a brilliant litt~rateur,
whom he had made his head-clerk, and Gourville, a witty and
unscrupulous adventurer, whose fortunes he had aided, pointed
out to him the peril, showed him again and again that times were
changed, that he must stop at whatever cost. But how stop? -
renounce this sultan-like3 existence; cease to hold the court and
the city in his pay; turn against those partisans, those business-men,
who were at once his friends and accomplices, who had done nothing but with his consent and for his profit as their own? Fouquet
1 (Euvres de Louis Xl.. t. I.; Memoires et Instructions, pp. 24-26.
2 Memoires de Choisi, p. 578.
8 It is to Fouquet that allusion is made in the following well-known verse of
Boileau: -
Jamais surintendant ne trouva de cruelles.
SATIRE VII.
Women of the highest nobility went secretly " to keep him company at an extravagant price," in his voluptuous retreat of St. Mande. Memoires de Choisi, p.
578.




24               LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.                  1661.
neither would nor could do it. He banished the subject from his
thought, and persisted in the idea that the King would be discouraged with these arid occupations, — that the field would be finally
left free to him.
The King had already decided on his destruction! Louis, according to his own testimony, thought.at first only of removing the
superintendent;' but he soon reflected that so ambitious, presumptuous and bold a man, armed with so many means of injuring, would
not accept disgrace with tranquillity, would take advantage of state
secrets to revenge himself, and would strive to foment troubles, to
obstruct in every way the course of the government. The recollection of the Fronde warmly preoccupied Louis XIV. - Colbert,
and Le Tellier, a personal enemy of the superintendent, did not
contribute to dispose the King to indulgence. The third of the
directing ministers, Lionne, connected with Fouquet by conformity
of tastes and pecuniary interests, was not admitted to the confidence of the King's projects. The arrest and trial of Fouquet were
determined upon in May, 1661.1
This design, however, could not be immediately realized without
exposure to the gravest embarrassments. Before entering upon
a financial revolution, it was necessary that the most urgent needs
should be provided for by payments of funds that Fouquet alone
was in a position to procure;2 moreover, the trial of Fouquet involving the rupture of all leases and agreements concluded by this minister, it was necessary to be able instantly to reestablish the public
revenues, and the summer was the most advantageous season for
this kind of business. The catastrophe was therefore adjourned
till the month of September.
Louis XIV. imposed on himself, during four months, a constraint that he knew how to disguise with marvellous skill, however
painful it was to his imperious nature.  He- possessed in the highest degree the art of dissimulating without lying: a kingly art,
which is scarcely practicable but for the man who interrogates and
is not interrogated. Falsehood was incompatible with his haughty
dignity, and with the respect which he had for himself. The secret,
confined to four or -five persons, was well kept.  Louis, although
he did not consult his mother in regard to ordinary affairs, thought
1 Colbert, Melmoires sur lesfinances, ap. F. Joubleau, t. II. p. 293. (Euvres de Louis
XIV. t. I.; Mi6moires et Instructions, p. 102. Mm6noires de Choisi, p. 580.
2 Fouquet affirms that, from March to September, 1661, he borrowed, on his own
no-'  twenty millions for the King. (Euvres de M. Fouquet, t. V. p. 96.




1661.           FOUQUET AND LA VALLIERE.                        25
he ought not to take so important a step without acquainting her
with it.'
Remote precautions were taken to disarm Fouquet. His office
of attorney-general secured him the privilege of being judged
only by the parliament, in full assembly; the King did not confide,
for good reason, in the justice of the parliament; Fouquet was
adroitly led to sell his office. He was induced, it is said, to put
off his gown in the hope of the blue ribbon, which the King was
no longer willing to confer on lawyers. He expected, moreover,
to be made chancellor on the death of the aged S4guier. Out of
the 1,400,000 francs, which he received for his office, he offered
a million as a pure gift to the King, who had expressed to him a
desire to have ready money. He thus prepared the instruments
of his own destruction.  It was feared that at the moment of his
arrest, his friends might attempt to fortify themselves in Belle-Isle,
and agitate Brittany and Normandy, where old malcontents were
lurking; a journey into Brittany was arranged for the month of
September, under the pretext of holding the States Provincial at
Nantes, and obtaining from the Bretons a larger gratuity by the
presence of the King; the King in this way was to be in a position
to restrain the West.
The mad confidence of Fouquet seemed to increase in proportion as everything was combined to make his destruction more
certain.  Passion was in harmony with reasons of state against
him. He had wounded the King, not only in' his dignity by
endeavoring to deceive him, but in his closest and dearest affections.  Louis was then in the first ardor of a secret love for Mademoiselle de La Valliere; Fouquet thought to try with this young
lady the golden seductions that had so often succeeded. Repelled
with disdain, he divined with what rival he had to deal, and,
instead of withdrawing in silence, he wished to become the confidant of her whose lover he could not be; he sought to make the
mistress of the King an ally and political instrument.  Mademoiselle de La Valliere was the lover of Louis and not the mistress of
the King; the insinuations of the superintendent seemed to her a
1 Anne of Austria was quite favorable to Fouquet, although she reputed him a
great.thief, as Madame de Motteville said; but the old Duchess de Chevreuse was
employed to make the queen-mother approve the loss of the superintendent. Madame de Chevreuse thus terminated her political career by intriguing for a good
cause; it was perhaps the first time in her life that such a thing happened to her,
and it is just to add that the public interest was of no account in her determination.
See the Memoires de Madame de Motteville, p. 515 et seq. Id. de Madame La Fayette,
ap. Collect. Michaud, 3d series, t. VIII. p. 185.
VOL. I.      4




26                 LOUIS XIV. AND  COLBERT.                      1661.
new outrage, and Louis was exasperated to find Fouquet insolently
prying into the mysteries of his heart.
It was in the mean time that the f~te at Vaux took place, so
celebrated in the souvenirs of the seventeenth century. The King
had instigated it, either more completely to lull the suspicions of
the superintendent, or to judge, with his own eyes, of the magnificence lavished by Fouquet in this fairy palace.l Fouquet had spent:
about nine millions (nearly eighteen of the present time, and perhaps forty-five in relative value) in buildings, decorations, objects of
art, plantations, terraces, canals, fountains; 2 three villages had been
purchased and destroyed to enlarge the park. Vaux surpassed in
splendor Saint-Germain, Fontainebleau, and all the royal houses.
Lebrun, already famous, was preparing to paint the halls and ceilings; Puget had set out for Italy to load three vessels with sculpture to adorn the chateau and gardens; Lenostre, that great artist,
by whom jardins d la franpaise have become monuments as imposing as the palaces that they surround, had begun his renown by
designing the groves and lawns of Vaux.   The fete given by
Fouquet to the King under these beautiful shades, in the midst of
these gushing fountains, full of surprises and ingenious machinery,
contrived by Lebrun and the Italian engineer, Torelli, had for an
interlude a comedy-ballet by Moliere, les Edecheux, with a prologue
by Pellisson.3
The comedy was without, the drama within. The King, in
going through the sumptuous apartments of Vaux, at every step
encountered the rash device of Fouquet. It was a squirrel with
this motto: -Quoz non ascendet (Whither will he not ascend)?4
It is said that Louis saw, in a cabinet, something still more irri1 Vaux-le-Vicomte, the chief of Fouquet's houses, is a league from Melun. It is
now Vaux-le-Praslin.
2 Voltaire is wrong in saying eighteen millions. Siecle de Louis XIV. t. II. p.
192. The lead pipes and water-pieces alone were sold for 490,000 livres, about 1760,
by the Duke de Villars, who had the beautiful groups of leaden statues that formed
the fountains, cut to pieces and sold by the pound. A characteristic peculiarity,
which we get from one of the architects employed in the restoration of the chateau,
is the bad quality of the building materials. Under a thin lining of cut stone are
found poor materials badly cemented. This well depicts Fouquet's want of order;
as he robbed, he was robbed.
8 The Ecole des Maris had already been played at Vaux two months before, in a
fete given to the King's brother. See the letter of La Fontaine to Maucroix; ap.
La Fontaine, edition of Walckenair, t. VI. p. 473. The Songe de Vaux, ibid. t. V.
p. 351.
4 The squirrel is still seen everywhere at Vaux, beneath which crawls an adder,
the speaking arms of Colbert (coluber). In the hall of the guards, the squirrel climbs
above the royal Sun itself. The whole of this immense hall was to be painted by




1661.                 FOUQUET ARRESTED.                         27
tating, the portrait of Mademoiselle de La Valliere.  The royal
wrath overflowed; Louis thought for a moment of having Fouquet
arrested in the midst of the fete;1 the queen-mother dissuaded him
from it, and he left without betraying his intentions (August 17).
Fouquet, nevertheless, had become aware of the peril that threatened him; his infatuation was dispelled. He attempted to retrace
his steps; he made half confessions to the King, implored his pardon, swore to reform. Louis listened to him with so benevolent a
manner, that he thought the danger passed.  Fouquet was mistaken; his incomplete confession had not touched the King, -it
was too late.
Louis XIV. set out for Brittany in the last days of August.
Fouquet, although suffering from a tertian fever, followed the King.
Terrible doubts for moments shook his accustomed confidence.
The whole court was agitated by great expectation; the contest
between Fouquet and Colbert was no longer a secret to any one.
The King arrived, September 1, at Nantes. Fouquet, struck
with the menacing presages that were gathering over his head,
finally took alarm, thought of fleeing to Belle-Isle, and lost two or
three days in hesitation.  September 5, as he was leaving the
chateau of Nantes, after the council, he was arrested by a lieutenant of musketeers. The King, who knew himself to be surrounded
by the superintendent's creatures, had not dared to confide in the
captain of the body-guards, and had used great mystery in his preparations. Fouquet was conducted to the chateau of Angers, amid
the imprecations of the people. His principal clerk, Pellisson, two
of the three public treasurers, and several intendants of finances,
his co-workers and accomplices, were arrested after him; the King
ordered his houses to be sealed. No stir was made, at Belle-Isle
or elsewhere; the court and the financiers were stupefied, so
many people felt themselves compromised! The minister, Lionne,
believed himself lost: his needs and his passions had impelled him
to receive from Fouquet pecuniary services. Louis XIV. hastened
to reassure him; the young King took care not to deprive himself
of the services of this great politician.2
Lebrun, who had projected a composition embracing more than six hundred
figures; he evidently desired to rival the ball-room painted by Primatice, at Fontainebleau. The cartoons have been discovered, and repurchased in Germany, by
the present proprietors, M. and Madame de Praslin. (Written in 1846, a little before
the frightful catastrophe of this family.)
1 The Abbe' de Choisi (p. 586) maintains that Louis had gone with this intention.
2 Mdnmoires de Choisi, pp. 587-590. Conrart, in a letter published in the sequel of
his MHimoires, p. 256, by M. Monmerqu4, says that a note was found among the




28                LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.                     1661.
Louis immediately returned from  Nantes to Fontainebleau,
and, September 15, a royal ordinance appeared that completely
changed the administration of finances. The King suppressed the
commission of superintendent, and announced that he assumed the
government of his finances in person, calling about him a council
composed of honest and capable men, by whose advice he would
act in all the affairs that formerly were determined and executed
by the superintendent alone. The royal council was to be composed
of a chief and three councillors, one of whom should be intendant of
finances. The King reserved to himself alone the signature of all
treasury drafts.  The intendant of finances, who was to have the
honor of belonging to the royal council, should have the treasury in
his department, and should keep a register of all receipts and expenditures, which he should communicate to no one without the express
command of his Majesty. All drafts should be remitted to his
hands, to be referred to his Majesty, registered and signed by
him, and then paid by the public treasurers.1  The said intendant should cause to be rendered all the accounts of revenue-farms,
general receipts, domains, extraordinary affairs, and receipts of
every nature, in order to be referred by him to the royal council,
the said accounts to be decreed and signed by his Majesty, and
then by the members of the council.2
The former ordinary council of finances was maintained, but made
wholly subordinate. All agreements, leases, and treasury lists,, etc.,
were assigned to the royal council.3
The Marshal de Villeroi, appointed chief of the royal council of
finances, had only a nominal authority.  Colbert, with the simple
title of intendant, had the real power, under the active surveillance
of the King, who entered passionately into all the details of the
service, so far as to preside in person at the letting of the revenuefarms.
The finances were for Colbert but a standpoint from which he
was about to seize all the branches of public power. He was ready
for everything, and fit for everything. His long meditations had
papers of Fouquet, in which he portrayed Lionne as a man " without heart, of mediocre mind, fit for nothing, who would undertake anything for one hundred pistoles."
Such a judgment of one of the first diplomatists produced by France, gives the
measure of Fouquet's levity and want of good sense.
1 These treasurers were soon suppressed and replaced by a simple keeper of the
treasury.
2 It was not only in the finances, but in all the departments, that the King thus
reserved to himself the signature.
8 Anciennes Loisfraqnaises, t. XVIII. p. 9.




1661.                 COLBERT MINISTER.                        29
embraced all the parts of government, and he had shown to Mazarin but the least portion of himself; during ten years, he had lived
a double existence: the one external, with Mazarin, the other internal, with the great shade of Richelieu, the object of his inviolable
worship.  He was equally penetrated with all that his master had
done, and all that remained to be done in following out the same
principles;  but he felt that the form was to be different. Richelieu reigned in open day; he could direct only by seeming to obey.
He must manage the self-love of a young king jealous of his authority, eager for action, eager for renown, claiming the initiative of all
enterprises, the honor of all successes.  He would therefore efface
himself, he would take upon himself the cares, the toils, the resentmenfs of injured interests, and would leave to the King the praises
and the gratitude of the people, satisfied to see his inspirations realized, even to the profit of the glory of others, and to remain in
obscurity, provided that, through him, France might be resplendent
with lustre.
The prudently calculated modesty of Colbert was not inconsistent;2 he was contented with the simplest possible titles, with those
merely which were indispensable to justify his interference in the
various services of the state; he was for a long time only entitled
intendant and councillor of the royal council of finances; the title
of comptroller-general, which was attributed to him by commission
only in 1666, had hitherto been shared by two officers, and had by
no means the lustre which it afterwards possessed.  In  1664,
Colbert purchased the superintendency of constructions, in order
to have the chief authority over the fine arts and the pleasures and
tastes of the King;- -this office had hitherto been of little importance.  He undertook his immense maritime labors as simple intendant having the navy department. Lionne had the signature
of that department, as minister' of state, and Colbert occupied in
the navy, towards Lionne, the same position that Lionne had held,
in the department of foreign affairs, towards Brienne. It was only
in 1669 that Colbert was made a secretary of state, having in his
department the navy, commerce, and the colonies, the King's household, Paris, the governments of the Ile-de-France and Orleanais,
1 Whenever any important affair was under discussion in the council, Colbert
never failed to appeal to the memory of Richelieu. It had become with him a kind
of law, to such a degree that Lou'is XIV. joked about it. "Here is Colbert about
to say to us: Sire, the great Cardinal de Richelieu, etc." See the Mtmoire sur la marine
de France, by M. de Valincourt, p. 41, at the head of the Me-moires of Marquis de
Villette, published by Monmerque for the IHistorical Society of France.
2 See the Meinoires de madame de Mlotteville, p. 525.




30              LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.                  1661.
the affairs of the clergy, the stud, etc. He conducted all the affairs
of France for eight years, when he became the equal, in official
rank, with obscure ministers of whom history has scarcely preserved
the name.
From the day of his entrance into the royal council of finances,
all his plans were unfolded in majestic order and with that rigor of
method, that harmony and invincible logic, that mark among all
ages the age of Descartes, and have left monuments as glorious
in the real world as in the world of ideas.
Happy France, happy the whole human race, if the brilliant
monarch who had understood and sanctioned these plans and
reaped their glory had followed to the end the guide that Providence had given him!
We may sum up in a few lines the general idea of Colbert's
system, - great conceptions are always simple.
To reduce the expenses of the state and increase the disposable
revenue by revising all the claims of creditors, reducing the number of offices and reforming the administration.
To lighten the burden of the country districts, by increasing the
number of tax-payers through the suppression of a host of privileges; by reforming the abuses of collection and diminishing the
villain tax and the excise on salt, which weighed chiefly on the peasants.
To compensate the treasury for this diminution, by increasing
the product of indirect taxes, that reached all classes, and especially
the inhabitants of towns; to obtain this increase, n6t by increase
of duties, which on the contrary were to be reduced, but by a
better administration, the progress of consumption and the redemption of alienated revenues.
To diminish the importance of the judicial and financial classes
to the profit of the agricultural, commercial, and industrial classes;
to make the capital devoured in chicanery, and the purchase of
places and offices, flow back towards the useful occupations; inflexibly to repress the violence of the petty nobility, and the agents
of the exchequer against the rural population; to assure everywhere protection and security of person and property.
To encourage the agricultural population, not only by diminishing the taxes and suppressing the most crying abuses, but by a
series of measures designed to favor the increase of stock, —an
essential principle of all good agriculture.
To regulate, in the common interest of agriculture and navigation, the general management of waters and forests; to improve




1661.               PLANS OF COLBERT.                       31
all the old ways of communication, and create new ones by land
and water.
To establish in France a powerful manufacturing industry and
a vast commerce, having for its vehicle abroad, and on our coasts,
a numerous mercantile navy, and for its protection a great military
navy,:- designed, besides, to have a weight in political questions
equal to that of the army on land.
Finally, to develop aspiration within, and the influence of the
national genius without, by lavishing encouragements on arts, letters, and sciences; to make every germ grow, to stimulate all the
moral, intellectual, and material activities of France to universal
expansion.
Writers who have represented Colbert as a special man, favoring
certain national forces at the expense of others, sacrificing, for example, agriculture to manufactures, have understood absolutely
nothing of the genius or the work of this great man, as universal as
his master, Richelieu. Colbert thought that a great nation, a complete society, ought to be at once agricultural, manufacturing, and
maritime, and that France had received from nature in the highest
degree the necessary conditions of this triple function; — the whole
of his life was spent in pursuing the realization of this thought.
We must now survey, in the different parts of the administration, the application of this magnificent plan,1 during the glorious
years in which the thought of Colbert truly reigned, that is, from
1661 to 1672. Later, his career, although still signalized by imposing creations, was no longer but a painful struggle. If we would
render to ourselves a clear account of the principal operations of
Colbert, we must renounce following him, year by year, through
the whole of his works; the infinite variety of objects that he
embraces would only dazzle and confuse the mind of the beholder.
We must confine ourselves to examining successively the principal
objects in the order of subjects.
The reform of the financial administration, of the essential instrument of power, necessarily attracts our first attention. Scarcely
had the royal council of finances replaced the superintendency,
when it inaugurated its accession by a series of striking and decisive
measures. The three paymasters-general, the two directors of
finances, the two comptrollers-general, were suppressed, and all the
services, hitherto independent of each other, came under the jurisdiction of the royal council and the general control held by Colbert
in commission; all the posts of assessors of subsidies created since
1 What concerns letters and arts will be treated in a succeeding chapter.




32                LOUIS  XIV. AND  COLBERT.                      1661.
1630 were suppressed, with many other financial offices; the number of officers was reduced in the former posts of this kind. The
King rejected the immense offers by which the financial officers
strove to revoke this decision.1 The language of Richelieu reappeared, with his ideas, in the preamble of that ordinance in which
the council, in the King's name, cursorily set forth the evils caused
to the " useful occupations," to the country people, and to the state
in general by the multiplication of offices. We feel that the government of reason had returned; the law no longer contented itself
with enjoining; it demonstrated and convinced before prescribing.
All the ordinances of Colbert's ministry are recognized by this
character.2
A  still more important edict declared all accountable offices
casual, that is for life, whilst they had been hereditary like judicial
offices; those " of which there is the most interest to know the
value or the mystery," were put in simple commission, revocable at
-will. It was the condition to which Colbert would have gladly
reduced them all. Accountable officers were subjected to security
and residence; the old provisions that secured to the state unlimited power over the property of fiscal agents were reestablished.
The fiscal agents had long since ceased to keep regular entries, and
to present the periodical statements formerly imposed on them by
Sulli; they pretended never to have money, and advanced to the
state its own funds only in consideration of discounts which they
raised sometimes to five sous in the livre, including the charges of
recoverly and transport. The discounts for the recovery of villain
taxes were diminished from five sous to fifteen deniers; the government freed itself from pretended advances, and secured the immediate availability of the revenue, by requiring the receivers-general
to sign bonds for fifteen months, the delay estimated for the collection of the annual villain taxes; these obligations were negotiated
at a moderate rate.3 Each expense, as in the days of Sulli, was
assigned to a special receipt-fund. The system of public adjudica1 They offer as much as sixty-one millions! Colbert, Mlmtoires sur les finances,
ap. F. Joubleau, t. II. p. 330. This amount astonishes us; it is twice repeated.
2 Forbonnais, Recherches sur lesfinances, t. I. p. 284. The offices suppressed were
compensated for at the real cost to the purchasers. To the officers removed was
left a quarter of the revenue of their offices till their reimbursement, which was
furnished in part by a tax on the officers retained. - Ibid. p. 285.
8 "A very legitimate, very natural expedient, afterwards abandoned, but to
which the first consul was anxious to return in 1801." P. Clement, Histoire de
Colbert, p. 125. This expedient, very useful at an epoch of transition, but not without inconveniences in a normal state, has been replaced, since 1814, by a system
of account current at ten days.




1661.                FINANCIAL REFORM.                          33
tion was resumed with respect to the revenue-farms. The accountability of the receivers-general and revenue-farmers, and the central accountability, were reorganized by a mechanism as simple as
wise.1 Five clerks sufficed for the bureau of general comptrol,
which watched over all the movements of this immense financial
machinery of France!
The money orders "established," says an edict of 1669, "for
the secret expenses of the state, for tolerated loans and extraordinary affairs, and for supplying the ordinary revenues in cases of
pressing need," were too much of the essence of absolute government for Louis XIV. not to reserve to himself their free emission;
Colbert regulated them, at least as much as possible, and the King
consented to reduce them to a moderate amount, in comparison
with the past.2
Parallel with measures that regulated the future, proceeded the
reaction against the past, a rigorous but necessary reaction. All
the administrative reforms would not have extricated France from
the abyss if the financial gulf had not been filled up at the expense
of those who had made it. It was necessary to liquidate the frightful arrears that crushed the state, if one would restore to the state
the faculty of breathing and acting. These arrears, debts or anticipations, exceeded four hundred and fifty-one millions3 (which would
more than equal in value two thousand millions at the present
time).
Two months after the arrest of Fouquet and the creation of the
royal council, appeared an ordinance which instituted a board of
justice for investigating the abuses and malversations committed
in the finances since 1635 (November, 1661). The King therein
declared, that, after having fortunately and gloriously terminated a
war of twenty-five years' duration, he could not better respond to
the favors of heaven than by releasing his people from a part of
the burdens of taxation, in proportion to the reestablishment of the
finances, by banishing luxury, reforming abuses, etc. For this end
he had himself taken charge of his finances, whereof he had become
certain the financial disorders had produced all the ills of his people, "'whilst a small number of persons have, by illegitimate means,
1 Bailli, Histoire financiere de la France, t. I. p. 421. We regret not being able to
cite the exposition of this mechanism ably made by M. Bailli.
2 These orders were to be burned each year in presence of the King; but this
precaution was often neglected. See the papers cited by M. Clement, Histoire de
Colbert, pp. 128-130.
8 Mallet (head-clerk of comptroller-general Desmaretz, nephew of Colbert),
Comptes-rendus des finances, p. 97; Paris, 1789.
VOL. I.      5




34              LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.                  1661.
reared sudden and prodigious fortunes. We have resolved," he
says, "as much to satisfy justice and signify to our people how
much we hold in horror those who have exercised over them so
much injustice and violence, as to hinder their continuation in the
fiture, to bring to exemplary punishment all the authors and accomplices of the enormous crimes of peculation who have exhausted our
finances and impoverished -our provinces." The King therefore
established a court of justice, composed of a first president, another
president and four councillors of the parliament of Paris, four masters of requests, two councillors of the grand council, a president
and two councillors of the court of exchequer, two councillors of
the court of aids, a councillor of each of the provincial parliaments,
an advocate-general of the parliament of Paris, performing the
duties of attorney-general, and a registrar, to investigate and
punish all the crimes committed with respect to the finances "by
any persons of any quality and condition whatsoever." A sixth part
of the fines was granted to denouncers, whom the attorney-general
in the court of justice should not be obliged to make known, notwithstanding the ordinance of Orleans. All edicts, letters royal,
etc., since the month of March, 1635, bearing discharges in favor
of fiscal agents and others for financial acts, were revoked, and the
statute of limitations applied to crimes not prosecuted within twenty
years was ordered annulled.1
This was the execution of a plan proposed to Mazarin by Colbert
in 1659. The financiers had offered.twenty millions down to avert
the blow. The King had refused, although the whole council,
through fear of the disturbance that the court of justice might cause
in commerce and the collection of imposts, was in favor of accepting.  The King decided for moral and political reasons.2
A silence of dismay reigned among the financiers and their titled
accomplices; the people applauded with fury.  For the first time,
since long years, there was rejoicing in the lower ranks, whilst
there was trembling in the upper. The popularity of the King
took deep root among the masses.
The operations of the court of justice were at first pushed with
extraordinary vigor. All the fiscal agents, revenue-farmers, and
those interested with them, having had part in the finances since
1635, were summoned to present immediately a statement of their
possessions, with justification of their origin, under penalty of con1 Anciennes Lois franfaises, t. XVIII. p. 12.
2 Colbert, Mdmoires sur les affaires des finances de France; ap. F. Joubleau, t. IL
pp. 303-305.




1661.               TRIAL OF FOUQUET.                      35
fiscation (December 2, 1661).  The assistance of ecclesiastical
authority was required; monitories were read in the churches by
which all the faithful were summoned, under penalty of execution,
to reveal the financial derelictions within their cognizance (December 11, 1661, October 2, 1663). All private transactions entered
into by financiers since 1635 were invalidated, in order to prevent
the revenue-farmers from shielding themselves under cover of substitutions of property. This time, it was evident the small would
not pay for the great, according to custom. A multitude of rich
men were prosecuted, imprisoned, or put to flight. The most
opulent were the most warmly pursued; for example, the financial
company of the salt-excise, which had, it was said, a fortune of forty
millions, in spite of the enormous profusion of its members.1
A great trial was predominant over all these proceedings; it was
the trial of the fallen king of revenue-farmers, Nicolas Fouquet.
All France followed its dramatic peripeties with a passionate curiosity. The discoveries made at St. Mand6, one of the ex-superintendent's houses, had transpired to the public; there had been
discovered, not only the political and gallant correspondence of
Fouquet, which compromised, in very different ways, so many
men and so many women of rank, but also a detailed plan of
rebellion conceived in 1657, when the first clouds rose between
Fouquet and Mazarin, and subsequently remoulded. The superintendent therein arranged all that was to be done by his relatives
and friends, if the Cardinal should have him arrested; Belle-Isle
and Concarneau, a small place in Brittany, the government of
which he held, were to be the pivots of resistance; he counted, in
case of civil war, on many places and many people that doubtless
would have failed him; but his plan was none the less culpable for
being rash and ill-digested.2  This revelation made a terrible impression on Louis XIV. who found therein all his suspicions changed
into certainties, and thought he saw in it the necessity of a great
example after the manner of Richelieu; Louis, who would at first
have been satisfied with the dismissal, then with the imprisonment
of Fouquet, now desired his head; he was not contented with having
given him judges; seconded by Colbert, he watched, urged, influenced his judges with implacable animosity; king and minister were
too forgetful of the difference that must exist between a judicial
1 P. Clement, Histoire de Colbert, p. 102.
2 M. Clement has published the whole of Fouquet's famous plan, in his Histoire de
Colbert, p. 41, et seq.




36              LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.                 1661.
cause and an affair of state, and seemed to consider the condemnation of an averred criminal but as a question of form.
The man pursued by such formidable adversaries was anything
but generally abandoned, and the wrath of the King and Colbert
could only be redoubled by the zeal that a multitude of people
showed in favor of the captive.  The first bewilderment past,
there was formed, in order to save Fouquet, what might, without
much exaggeration, be called a great party. If many failed the
ex-superintendent who were under obligations to him, the powerful
interests and restless passions disturbed by the reforms of the new
government brought back many partisans to the fallen minister.
The men of the law were favorable to him through a remnant of
the Fronde spirit; the courtiers, through regret for his munificence
and hostility to what they called the avarice of Colbert. Private
interest and party spirit did not alone combat for him: the good
qualities mingled with his vices had won noble hearts; a faithful
friend and a generous spirit, open-handed to all the arts, to every
species of knowledge, he reaped in adversity what he had sown in
prosperity. Wits, artists, and women, all those who are governed
by impression more than by reflection, defended him with ardor. A
woman, who was then the most beautiful ornament of French society and was to be its most amiable and animated painter, Madame
de Sdvign6, made herself in society the active and zealous champion of a man whom she had accepted as a friend, after having
repelled him as a lover; La Fontaine, by his harmonious and
touching elegies; Pellisson, by his -Discourses to the King, masterpieces of eloquence which Voltaire has compared to the imperishable models of this style, even to the Orations of Cicero; others,
by bitter satires against Colbert, worked on public opinion. The
queen-mother and those about her whispered counsels of indulgence; Turenne, naturally benevolent toward the unfortunate,
and, moreover, a little jealous of Colbert, and somewhat discontented that the King, although consulting him often, did not call
him to the council,' agreed with his old rival, Cond6, in soliciting in
favor of Fouquet. Finally, the Parisian bourgeoisie which had had
its part in the feast of abuses, and was irritated to see the rentes,
which it had purchased at a low price, under revision, followed the
movement of the upper classes; each, moreover, interest apart,
1 Colbert; Memoire sur les finances, ap. F. Joubleau, t. II. p. 323. It was on
account of his fame and his great authority that the King kept him out of the council, lest he should rule it.




1661-1664.          TRIAL OF FOUQUET.                       37
yielded to the inclination of the French spirit, always sympathizing
with misfortune, even when merited, and even the poor finally
pitied the lot of the victim whom it was sought to immolate to their
interests.
This movement of opinion would have been powerless to save
the life of Fouquet, if the court of justice had remained closed to
it; but the court was wrought upon at least as actively by the
friends as by the enemies of the prisoner. Although the King had
taken especial pains, as he says in his Memoirs, to keep out all the
relatives and friends of the financiers, the court was composed of
magistrates who did not forget the esprit de corps, and were not
inaccessible to rumors from  without.  The first president, de
Lamoignon, a friend of Turenne, had, like him, desired to have
more part in the government, and did not like the rude and imperious manners of Colbert; he had been wounded at having been unable to hinder the reduction from three quarters to one half of the
increase of salaries acquired at a low price by the magistracy in
late years. He was a man of great virtue, and had never knowingly yielded to private passions; but he believed he was only
doing his duty by standing on his guard against the suggestions of
the King and the minister; the irregularities committed by the government agents at the outset of the procedure, the intervention of
Colbert and his confidants in acts that belonged only to the magistrates, must have gravely indisposed Lamoignon and his colleagues,
accustomed to regard forms as sacred;- a statesman devoted to a
great idea and strong in the purity of his intentions is often impelled to too much laxity in the choice of means, and Colbert had
inherited from his master Richelieu a dangerous contempt of forms.1
Fouquet, moreover, displayed extreme skill in his defence.
Taken to Vincennes at the close of December, 1661, he began by
claiming the privileges attached to the functions of superintendent,
who had no account to render but to the King; then the privileges
of veteran of the parliament, having the right to be judged by that
supreme court and not by a commission. The court of justice overruled them. Fouquet then defended himself, reserving all exceptions, and when, after eighteen months of procedure, the indictment
appeared, he replied, with truly extraordinary promptness, by writings that at first were circulated in manuscript, and which, collected,
1 It is curious to compare the portrait of Colbert by Lamoignon, in the Recueil des Arrets de M. le premier president de Lanzoignon, t. I. p. 28, and the portrait of Lamoignon by Colbert, in the Memoire sur les.finances; ap. Joubleau, t. II.
p. 322.




38               LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.             1661-1664.
form not less than fifteen volumes 18mo.1 His method, very captious, consisted in covering himself with the name of Mazarin, and
throwing back on the defunct Cardinal the responsibility of all disorders. He accused Colbert of having caused the disappearance,
during the inventory of his papers, of everything that could justify
him and compromise the memory of Mazarin. We can scarcely
doubt that Louis XIV. and Colbert, in fact, protected at all cost
the reputation of the late Cardinal, just as they eliminated from the
trial everything that concerned women and courtiers whom they
were unwilling to involve in the ruin of their benefactor; but,
whatever may be thought of this procedure, it is certain that the
suppressed documents, while stigmatizing Mazarin, would not have
justified Fouquet.
The public anxiety increased as this great cause slowly advanced
toward its conclusion. Many other trials had kept pace with that
of Fouquet. The court of justice successively laid heavy taxes
upon all the revenue-farmers; Gourville, and Bruant, one of the
principal clerks of the treasury, had been condemned to death by
contumacy; another financier, named Dumont, was hung before
the Bastille, in which Fouquet was imprisoned (June 15, 1664);
two sergeants of villain tax, guilty of horrible exactions and of
murder in the exercise of their functions, had been capitally punished at Orleans; others were sent to the galleys, amid the acclamations of the people, whom these pitiless men had been accustomed to treat with so much barbarity. The friends of Fouquet
were terrified, the government was rejoiced to see the court of
justice letting the same blows fall upon the financial chiefs and
their miserable instruments.
The pleadings in the trial of Fouquet did not begin till the 14th
of November, 1664, and continued till the 4th of December. The
accused did not show less ability in these than in his written
defence; he repeated that it was Mazarin who had impelled him
to all his questionable operations, even to the purchase of BelleIsle; that, as to the project found at St. Mand6, it was a folly for
which he blushed, but which he had made no attempt to execute.
The two judges appointed by the court of justice to report the
case then presented their conclusions: the first, the master of
requests, d'Ormesson, decided in favor of perpetual banishment
with confiscation of property, for abuses, malversations, and " other
causes appearing from the trial;" the:second, St. H6lene, coun1 The friends of Fouquet had them printed in Holland, as early as 1665. The
government of Louis XIV. allowed them to be reprinted at Paris, in 1696.




1664.                  THE IRON MASK.                          39
cillor of the parliament of Rouen, decided in favor of death.
Acquittal, which would have been a public calamity, had become
impossible, and all understood that the question still at issue was
only between a rigorous and a mild punishment. The party of
Fouquet ardently supported the less severe opinion, which the
government angrily rejected.  The penalty of banishment, which
would have allowed Fouquet to carry abroad his talent for intrigue,
armed with state secrets, in nowise corresponded, as the penalty
of imprisonment would have done, either to the nature of the
offence or to the exigencies of the situation.  Efforts were redoubled by both parties with the judges, with an ardor that passed
all bounds and all scruples.  After dramatic incidents that have
been preserved for us in the letters of Madame de Sevign6, and
the manuscript journal of d'Ormesson, sentence was pronounced
December 20: the opinion of d'Ormesson was adopted by thirteen
votes to nine. The life of Fouquet was saved.1
The King could not conceal his disappointment: that evening,
at Mademoiselle de La Valliere's, he let a terrible sentence escape
him: -  "If he had been condemned to death, I should have let
him die! " 2
Louis did a strange, unheard-of thing, which has been considered, especially in these latter times, as one of the great scandals
of history. Reversing the right attributed to royal clemency to
soften the punishment  of the condemned,. he  aggravated the
sentence of Fouquet, and, instead of sending him into exile, he
imprisoned him at Pignerol, with the intention of never restoring
to him his liberty. In order to appreciate the morality of this action
that offends so deeply all our principles of legal order and justice,
we must recall the maxims then professed by statesmen in regard
to the arbitrary right possessed by the head of the state to deprive
dangerous subjects of liberty.3 Louis XIV. had no more doubt in
regard to his right than in regard to the necessity of using this right,
and committed with a clear conscience an act directly contrary to
public morals. The excessive precautions that-he prescribed for
the safe-keeping of Fouquet, the absolute isolation to which the
prisoner was subjected, the privations imposed upon him, were
1 (Euvres de M. Fouquet, passim. Discours de Pellisson au roi. Lettres de madame
de Sevigne, t. I. lettres 18-28. (Euvres de J. de La Fontaine, ddit. Walckenaer, t.
VI. p. 11. Walckenair, Histoire de la vie et des ounrages de J. de La Fontaine, 3e edit.,
p. 112, et seq. Journal ms. de M. d'Ormesson, analyzed by M. P. Clement, in his
study on Fouquet, and by M. Cheruel, de l'Administration de Louis XIV.
2 0Euvres de J. Racine, 6dit. de Geoffroi, t. VI. p. 335; Fragments histomiques.
8 Richelieu, Testament politique, 2d part, c. v.




40                  LOUIS XIV. AND  COLBERT.                    1664-1680.
dictated much less by vengeance than by the fear, exaggerated perhaps, of the evil Fouquet might do if he escaped. It was only when
a long period of time had relaxed all the ties of affection or interest
established by the unfortunate superintendent, and had annulled,
by the intervening changes in the face of Europe, the importance
of secrets that he possessed, -  it was only then that the rigor of
Louis was by degrees softened, that sequestration "ceased, and
finally that the family of Fouquet obtained permission to go to
reside near him  (May, 1679).  This favor seemed to presage an
approaching pardon; —it is said that permission to quit Pignerol
was signed by the King; but Fouquet could not profit by it: his
health was destroyed and he died March 23, 1680.1
1 This death has been contested, and some have sought to attach to Fouquet a
lugubrious tradition that casts a gloomy shadow over the secret history of the reign
of Louis XIV.
It is known that a masked and unknown prisoner, the object of extraordinZhiry
surveillance, died, in 1703, in the Bastille, to which he had been taken from the St.
Marguerite Isles in 1698; he had remained about ten years incarcerated in these isles,
and traces of him are with certainty found in the fort of Exilles, and at Pignerol, as
far back as about 1681. This singular fact, which began to be vaguely bruited a
little before the middle of the eighteenth century, excited immense curiosity after
Voltaire had availed himself of it in his Siecle de Louis XIV., wherein he exhibited it in the most touching and tragic light. A thousand conjectures circulated:
no great personage had disappeared in Europe about 1680. What interest so
powerful had the government of Louis XIV. for concealing this mysterious visage
from every human eye? Many explanations more or less plausible, more or less
chimerical, have been attempted in regard to the man withl the iron mask (an erroneous designation that has prevailed; the mask was not of iron, but of black velvet;
it was probably one of those loups so long in use), when, in 1837, the bibliophile
Jacob (M. Paul Lacroix) published a very ingenious book on this subject, in which
he discussed all the hypotheses, and skilfully commented on all the facts and dates,
in order to establish that, in 1680, Fouquet was represented as dead; that he
was masked, sequestered anew, and dragged from fortress to fortress till his real
death in 1703. It is impossible for us to admit this solution of the problem; the
authenticity of the minister Louvois' correspondence with the governor of the
prison of Pignerol, on the subject of Fouquet's death, in March, 1680, appears to us
incontestable; and did this material proof not exist, we still could not believe in a
return of rigor so strange, so barbarous, and so unaccountable on the part of Louis
XIV., when all the official documents attest that his resentment had gradually
been appeased, and that an old man who asked nothing more than a little free air
before dying had ceased to be feared. There are many more presumptions in favor
of Baron Heiss' opinion, reproduced by several writers, and, in the last instance, by
M. Delort (Histoire de l'homme au masque de fer; 1825),- the opinion that the man
with a mask was a secretary of the duke of Mantua, named Mattioli, carried off by
order of Louis XIV. in 1679, for having deceived the French government, and having
sought to form a coalition of the Italian princes against it.  But however striking,
in certain respects, may be the resemblances between Mattioli and the iron mask,
equally guarded by the governor St. Mars at Pignerol and at Exilles, however grave
may be the testimony according to which Mattioli was transferred to the St. Marguerite Isles, the subaltern position of Mattioli, whom Catinat and Louvois, in their




1665-1669.      RANSOM  OF REVENUE-FARMERS.                           41
The court of justice, if it had refused the King and Colbert the
bloody example demanded by them, at least conscientiously served
their financial plans. All the fraudulent credits on the state were
annulled; all fraudulent profits were required from those who had
collected them. Rigor against persons was not pushed to e:Ktremity. After some severe chastisements, an edict of July 1665
converted corporal penalties into pecuniary penalties, and the financiers were released for a ransom; but the ransom, this time, was
very effective and rose to enormous sums. The accountable officers were  amnestied  only at the price of twenty-five millions'
fines; ten millions more were levied on the revenue-farmers who
had received pay for rentes created without registration or already
redeemed by the state, or who, being pledged to redeem, for the
state, rentes or offices, had eluded their engagements by the connivance of the former administration. All sorts of financial dereliction unearthed by Colbert were chastised by the board with
a severity not less productive; -the amount of taxes on the
revenue-farmers reached the sum of one hundred and ten millions!
Ladies of the court, princes, people in favor, surely had some part
in this immense plunder, a thing inevitable in a monarchy; but by
far the greater part really profited the state and served to lighten
its burdens. The court of justice was suppressed in 1669, through
commiseration for the families that " the fear of these investigations
kept in continual anxiety." 1
letters, characterize as a knave and St. Mars threatens with'a cudgel, ill accords, we
do not say with the traditions relating to the profound respect shown the prisoner by
the keepers, the governor, and even the minister, -these traditions may be contested,- but with the authentic details and documents given by the learned and
judicious Father Griffet in regard to the extreme mystery in which the prisoner at
the Bastille was enveloped, more than twenty years after the abduction of the obscure Mattioli, in regard to the mask that he never put off, in regard to the precautions taken after his death to annihilate the traces of his sojourn at the Bastille,
which explains why nothing was found concerning him after the taking of that
fortress. Many minds will always persist in seeking, under this impenetrable mask,
a more dangerous secret, a mysterious accusing resemblance; and the most popular
opinion, although the most void of all proof, will always doubtless be that suffered
to transpire by Voltaire, under cover of his publisher, in the eighth edition of his
Dictionnaire philosophique (1771). According to this opinion, the honor of the royal
household was involved in the secret, and the unknown victim was an illegitimate
son of Anne of Austria. The only private crime of which Louis XIV. was perhaps
capable, was a crime inspired by fanaticism for monarchical honor. However this
may be, history has no right to pronounce upon what will never emerge from the
domain of conjecture.
1 Journal de M. d'Ormesson, analyzed by M. P. Clement, ch. 2. Bailli, Histoire.financiere de la France, t. I. p. 416, et seq. Anciennes Lois fi-angaises, t. XVIII. p. 36.
M. Joubleau (t. I. p. 41) speaks of much vaster sums; according to him, two hundred and nineteen millions were levied on the financiers of the second class! We
VOL. i.       - 6




42                 LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.                       1653.
Into the sum of one hundred and ten millions doubtless must
enter the reimbursements exacted from revenue-farmers for rentes
that were usurious, without being precisely fraudulent, during the
course of the great operation undertaken by Colbert for the reduction of rentes.  This operation has been blamed as a whole by
many writers of this and the preceding century, who have represented it as essentially contrary to the principles of public credit.
It is easy, when we are administering under the dominion of a
public credit firmly organized, in which loans are made and rentes
constituted on conditions more or less satisfactory, but always regular, -  it is easy to respect engagements which the nation is rightly
accustomed to regard as inviolable, and which could not be broken
without overturning the state.  But what relation is there between
the modern debt and the financial chaos of the seventeenth century
-a chaos begotten at once by the absence of all administrative
principle and all morality in the administrators? It is necessary to
depict to ourselves what were these rentes of every origin, assigned
by categories to every sort of funds perpetually drawn on to satisfy
the most pressing needs. There were quarterly rentes that were
reassigned from year to year for fifteen or twenty years, without
speaking of the reductions that had already taken place more than
once. The variations of the market-value of the different descriptions of rentes were such that certain descriptions sometimes fell to
three francs, to two francs of principal for one franc of interest.
Speculations in rentes then took place similar to the speculations
in treasury bills (see ante, p. 17). Financiers, courtiers, rich citizens, purchased these depreciated kinds of rentes, and, as soon as
the state found itself a little in funds, they procured a redemption of their rentes by the financial administration, their accomplice,
and secured reimbursement at fourteen, even at eighteen, of what
cost them  but two or three per cent.1  Is it reasonable to reproach
Colbert for not having respected such operations?
The truth is that the excess of the evil impelled Colbert to
proclaim a principle excessive in a contrary sense; to wit, that the
cannot believe in such figures; this sum would be equal to one thousand millions
of the present time! M. Joubleau gives a statement of the employment of taxes,
confiscations, and restitutions in redemption of offices, rentes, duties, etc., repealed,
advances of business-men, etc.; the statement comprises about one hundred and
four millions; by adding to this the redemption of the alienation of a million of
rentes and some reductions of the villain taxes, we reach a figure bordering on one
hundred and thirty-five millions mentioned by us. The court of justice, from
December 1665, to August 1669, was nothing more than a commission of liquidation.
1 Forbonnais, Recherches sur les finances, t. I. pp. 221-228, 273.




1664.             REDUCTION OF RENTES.                    43
state is only under obligations to pay legal interest on the real
capital it has received. Colbert considered the state as a minor,
who has always the right to break onerous engagements that he
has been made to contract, and applied to it principles admitted, as
to rate of interest, in contracts between private individuals. All
theoretical discussion apart, the consequence of this system was to
render borrowing impossible so long as the administration of finances did not inspire unlimited confidence; for, if the lender believes
he is running the least risk, he will not take this risk without hope
of a revenue above legal interest. The state, if men have not faith
in it, finds itself in some respects in a worse position than an ordinary
borrower; it is the only debtor against the bad faith of whom there
is no recourse, which increases the risks of the lender (it is true
that one never loses all with the state, as with private individuals).
Colbert most certainly saw this consequence, but did not stop
for it; in the reactionary ardor by which he was animated against
the disastrous. habit of anticipations, he was not appalled at the
idea of making it for a long time impossible to borrow, since his
aim was to put France in a position to dispense with loans.
The most rigorous deductions were drawn from the principle
laid down. In 1652, it had been prescribed to repudiate the redemptions of rentes effected by the state since 1630, and to oblige
those nominally reimbursed to return the excess of the reimbursement over the purchase-money paid by them, with interest; this
prescription, eluded under Mazarin, was renewed. All the rentes
created subsequent to 1656 were annulled, save reimbursement to
bond fide purchasers on the footing of the price paid by them, after
deducting the excess of interest collected; these rentes amounted
to more than eight and a half millions. All the different kinds of
rentes were successively threatened with revision. The Parisian
bourgeoisie clamored, as it had under Henri IV. and Mazarin, as it
did whenever the rentes were touched; it finally obtained some
concessions; the rentes posterior to 1656, instead of being reimbursed, were provisorily reduced to three hundred francs in the
thousand, and assigned to the revenue-farms; the possessors found
this reduction preferable to reimbursement (the privilege of which
was, moreover, reserved to himself by the King), having acquired
them at so low a price. Recovery of reimbursements effected subsequent to 1630 was not wholly exacted; the debtors were granted
a sort of capitulation (December, 1664).
The general reduction continued; the rentes proceeding from
indefinite emissions, running from 1634 inclusive, were extinguished




44                 LOUIS XIV. AND  COLBERT.                 1662-1669.
at par. In 1664, they had begun to revise all the old rentes; all
were much below their primitive value; the HStel de Ville rentes,
the least depreciated, had been paid a long time only on the footing of two quarters and a half at most; the rentes based on the
land-taxes were paid scarcely more than a quarter.  The marketvalue of negotiable capital had fallen in proportion to the fall of
interest. A plan of proportional reduction enveloped all descriptions of rentes. The rentes that had fallen from one thousand francs
a year to six hundred and twenty-five (two quarters and a half),
were reduced to five hundred, and the capital valued at nine thousand francs, on the footing of five and a half per cent., if the King
judged fit to reimburse it; it was the same with the other categories, even the most ill-treated, which were reduced to three hundred francs in the thousand.  This is the famous retrenchment of
rentes to which Boileau makes allusion,l and of which Madame de
S6vign6 complains so bitterly.2  It must be confessed that the
complaints were not ill-founded; the plan adopted was very arbitrary; the new retrenchment, thus generalized, became unjust, and
it was not equitable to fix a rate of forced reimbursement below
the current price.3
More praiseworthy were the measures whereby the court of
justice and the council of state put the state in repossession of
many duties and revenues alienated at a low price, among which
figured the rolls, the better part of the subsidies, and many townduties (octroi) (1662-1665). A special commission was instituted
in 1667 for the recovery of the alienated or usurped domain,4 which
was well worth three millions of rentes; the bond fide purchasers were
to be reimbursed for what they had paid and for their improvements. In spite of the enormous reductions imposed on most of the
state credits, the reimbursements of purchasers of alienations who
were enjoying public revenues, either directly or by rentes assigned
on the taxes, cost one hundred and twenty millions from 1662 to
1669.6  Such figures have their eloquence!  The levies on the
1....... Plus pole qu'un rentier,
A l'aspect d'un arrgt qui retranche un quartier.
SATIRE m.
2 Lettre du Novembre 27, 1664.
8 Forbonnais, t. I. p. 306, 381, 382. Bailli, t. I. p. 418. P. Clement, Histoire de
Colbert, p. 107. F. Joubleau, t. I. pp. 46-63.
4 Anciennes Lois frangaises, t. XVIII. p. 181. We notice that the usurpers of
waste lands had been confirmed in their usurpations by paying annually one twentieth of the revenue from the land which they had made productive. We recognize
in this the solicitude of Colbert for agriculture. See Forbonnais, t. I. p. 384.
5 Forbonnais, t. I. p. 405. Bailli, t. I. p. 418. P. Clement, p. 107. See also the
edict revoking the board of justice. Anciennes Lois franqaises, t. XVIII. p. 361.




1663, 1664.           FINANCIAL REFORMS.                            45
revenue-farmers and the amelioration of the revenues afforded the
means of meeting this prodigious expenditure.
The financial reforms of Colbert were in some sort crowned by
the edict of December 1663, which lowered the rate of legal interest from five and a half to five per cent. The legal interest,
which Sulli had lowered in 1601, from seven and one seventh to
six and a quarter per cent., and Richelieu, in 1634, from six and a
quarter to five and a half, was still at the point where Colbert
endeavored to fix it, but was not able to keep it. It was not in
view of future loans by the state that Colbert acted on this occasion, - he who had desired to annihilate even the thought of borrowing: it was in the interest of commerce, manufactures, and
agriculture; he sought at the same time to procure for laborers
capital at a low price, and to make the possessors of capital return
to the useful occupations, by diminishing the interest on which
the idle capitalist subsisted.'
The same thought favorable to labor and national production is
found again, associated with the thought of reducing the expenses
of the state, in the diminution of the number of offices, which Colbert caused to coincide with the annulling of fraudulent credits,
the reduction of rentes, and the liberation of the revenues.  Colbert had begun, as we have seen, by abolishing many financial
offices: he prosecuted his work; all the triennial and quadrennial
offices (a single office was divided between three or four holders
who exercised their function in turn) were suppressed (December,
1663). All the offices of the King's household that conferred
titles, emoluments, and privileges without effective duties, were
suppressed (May  30, 1664).   Two hundred and fifteen secretaryships to the King were abolished; the number of notaries,
attorneys, ushers, sergeants, was reduced (April, 1664); the
office of attorney was deprived of its hereditary character; there
1 See the edict requiring reduction of issues of rentes, in Forbonnais, t. I. p. 385.
To the year following, 1666, belongs another important operation, which has completely subsisted till our times: reformation in the making of coin. Coining, before
Colbert, was leased to goldsmiths, or bankers, who paid the state a. small seigniorage
duty. The abandonment of a function of such importance to private individuals
produced some abuses as to the stamp and weight of coin, and moreover, the leases
obliged the King, in the interest of the farmers, to let no piece of wrought silver or
gold leave the kingdom, and even not to give circulation to foreign coin,-restrictions
incompatible with the projects of Colbert in regard to the commerce and manufactures of goldsmiths' wares and jewelry. Colbert caused the making of coin to be
resumed by the state, and confided it to directors, who were at once managers for
the state and undertakers of the expenses of coining, under the surveillance of
comptrollers and a director-general. This mode of administration has not changed
since. See Bailli, Histoirefinanciere de la France, t. I. p. 447.




46                 LOUIS XIV. AND  COLBERT.                      1664.
was a new reduction of the increase of salaries that had been sold
at a low price to officers. Sufficient means for reimbursing the
holders of abolished offices were found, without any extraordinary
expedient.
Colbert would have gladly been able to have gone farther, and
according to a more systematic plan.   In  1664, he caused to
be drawn up, in each generality, a statement of all judicial and
financial offices with their official and real value, their salaries and
the annual tax imposed on them, in consideration of their being
hereditary.1 After the reductions effected during the earlier years
of Colbert, the number of offices still amounted to forty-five thousand seven hundred and eighty, for duties that six thousand might
have performed, if we are to believe Forbonnais.  These forty-five
thousand seven hundred and eighty offices were valued only at a
little more than one hundred and eighty-seven millions, in the
official calculations that served as a basis for the annual duty; but,
on the footing of transactions between private individuals, they
were really worth nearly four hundred and twenty millions (at
least eight hundred and sixty millions of our money). If we would
appreciate the enormous amount of capital engaged in official
places, to these four hundred and twenty millions we must add the
value of places at court and in the army; Forbonnais estimates the
whole at nearly eight hundred millions (perhaps nearly four thousand millions of the present time in relative value!) and thinks
that the purchases of offices and the sums kept on hand for this
purpose annually neutralized sixty millions thus diverted from labor
and production.
Judicial and financial offices produced  8,346,847 francs of
salary, out of which  the government retained two millions for
the annual duty.2  The salaries were but the least part of the
revenue of offices: there were duties, abatements, taxations, fees;
but, upon the whole, the revenue was not very considerable, at least
1 About the same period, Colbert addressed to all the intendants a circular requiring of them general information in regard to the state of the kingdom. What
Colbert demanded was nothing less than the complete statistics of France, admirably classified, with an examination of the means of improvement in every department. We have not been able to ascertain what has become of this important document, mentioned by M. d'Hauterive in his Conseils ac unl jeune voyageur, 1826, 8vo.
The intendants created by Richelieu, suppressed during the Fronde, and reistablished in 1653, were the mainspring of ministerial power. They were chosen among
the masters of requests, or even among the councillors of state.
2 See the accounit of offices in Forbonnais, Recherches sur les finances, t. I. p. 328.
Many officers found ways, through favor, of escaping the payment of the annual
duties, and the retention of two millions was in part nominal.




1664, 1669.         REDUCTION  OF OFFICES.                        47
for the magistrates, for the officers of finance necessarily obtained
from their functions a very different result. It was the consideration, the authority attached to the robe that gave so high a price to
judicial posts. Many people found it difficult to disaccustom themselves to see in Messieurs of the parliament the tutors of kings and
the arbiters of the state. Louis XIV. and Colbert, the latter especially, would have gladly overthrown the principle of hereditability
and of vendibility; biding their time, for reasons at once political
and economical, they attacked the price of posts. An ordinance of
December, 1665, announced that the King was willing to grant the
continuation of the annual right for some years more, although he
would have preferred to reduce the too great number of offices to
the measure of vacancies; but that he wished to put an end to the
disorders caused by the excessive dearness of offices, and to facilitate
the access to posts of persons of merit who were excluded by an
unlimited price. A fixed valuation of posts followed: the office of
president d mortier,1 350,000 livres; of master of requests, or
attorney-general, 150,000; of councillor, 90,000 to 100,000; of first
president of the court of exchequer, 400,000; of another president,
200,000; of master of accounts, 120,000. The sums were less for
the other courts.2
The system followed by the government of Louis XIV. with
respect to the magistrates secured the observance of this edict; the
value that public opinion attached to offices could not fail to be diminished, when, during the operations of the court of justice, bailiffs
were seen installed in the houses of presidents, allies of or interested
with the revenue-farmers, as in the houses of simple citizens; when
the privileges of nobility granted to magistrates since 1644 were
seen to be revoked (1669), and the proud title of sovereign courts
officially replaced by that of superior courts, as if the King recalled
that delegation of sovereignty which these great bodies attributed
to themselves; when finally the last relics of the right of remonstrance disappeared. Hence that fall which remained below the
maximum fixed by the ordinance of 1665.3 Colbert had attained
his end.
1 The first presidency was not vendible: the King appointed the incumbent.
2 Anciennes Lois franqaises, t. XVIII. p. 66. The same ordinance reestablishes
the former conditions of age fallen into desuetude: forty years for a president;
twenty-seven for a councillor; thirty for an attorney-general. This was a new blow
given to hereditary aristocracy, to the profit of legal science and dignity.
3 This fall has been attributed to causes wholly chimerical. It is one of the
errors in which a writer to whom we shall have occasion to return, the economist
Bois-Guillebert, abounds.




48               LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.               1662, 1668.
The great operation of the liberation of the public revenues,
with which was connected everything that tended to reduce the
expenses of the state,1 had been pushed to the last degree, as
we have seen, in the first years of Colbert's ministry, and was
almost completed in 1669. Colbert had carried on, at the same
time with the liberation of the state revenues, another enterprise
less brilliant, but almost as essential; the liberation of the revenues of the communes.  None of his works better revealed his
enlightened devotion to the interests of the people; none raised
against him more interested clamors. Colbert, with that glance
which love of good armed with an irresistible penetration, had
recognized, in the situation of the communal finances, a profound
evil that secretly consumed towns and country. The weight of
taxes, since the beginning of the great war, had led the urban and
rural communities to alienations of goods and to loans; in the
country districts, the seigniors had at little expense seized upon
enormous quantities of communal property; as to the cities, the
ordinance of December, 1647, in despoiling them of their octrois
for the state's profit, had caused the evil to overflow like a torrent
among them. The towns, deprived of an important portion of
their resources, and being unwilling to use the permission granted
them to double the octroi, precipitated themselves into the path of
ruin which they had at first entered with a timid step. An inundation of frightful abuses then laid bare the basis of that regime of
local liberties which, since the central power had stifled their
democratic vitality, had degenerated into petty bourgeois oligarchies in the greater part of France, especially in those state provinces that expiated by more than one grievous compensation the
very great advantage of having nothing to do with the agents of
the exchequer. Here, the rich bourgeois, who monopolized the
municipal offices, caused their towns to contract loans out of proportion to their resources or their needs; 2 we can judge on what
conditions;- they were themselves the lenders.  There, they had
recourse to extraordinary impositions; the notables were not content with putting off the burden on the common people, they
appropriated a part to themselves. Besides, the commons were
alienated; here again the rich men and the urban magistrates
1 Among the reductions of offices must not be forgotten the disbanding of a part
of the army, arranged in such a manner as to diminish the real force as little as
possible. We shall recur to this hereafter.
2 The town of Beaune, which had only 16,500 livres of revenue, the octrois comprised, owed 559,494 livres in 1664. Arnai-le-Duc owed 317,087 livres. See Une
province sous Louis XIV., by Alex. Thomas, p. 246.




1662, 1663.       MUNICIPAL FINANCES.                     49
adjudged them to themselves at a contemptible price; in the suburbs of cities as in villages, the flocks disappeared with the common
pastures.'
Colbert openly attacked the municipal aristocracy, as he had
attacked the revenue-farmers.  In 1662, he demanded that, in
each generality, the statement of communal debts should be sent to
the intendant. In 1663, after the court of justice had annulled
the octroi leases, -a just and indispensable act that has been very
wrongly blamed, — Colbert hastened to restore to the cities one
half of their octrois, and ordered the nomination of commissioners
charged with liquidating the communal debts. The urban oligarchies, seconded in the provinces by the representation of the Third
Estate, which was generally composed of municipal magistrates,
resisted the minister with all the obstinacy of pride and cupidity;
but the people understood very well who were their friends and
who were their enemies, rose in many cities against the magistrates
and the rich who were endeavoring to fetter the good intention of
Colbert, and used political rights, where they had preserved them,
to take from their adversaries the functions of city officers and distributors of imposts. In Burgundy, the parliament wished, according to the terms of its first president, to intervene in favor of honest
men (the honest men who had robbed the communes, the administration of which had been confided to them), to annul the elections
made by the canaille, and chastise the factious.  The King's council arrested this admirable zeal, and transferred the cognizance of
these troubles to the parliament of Dijon, in order to bring it before
the intendant of the province; that is, before a man in the confidence of Colbert (1664, 1665).  The people had gained the
cause. The liquidation of communal debts was effected according
to the same principles as the liquidation of the debts of the state,
and, in April, 1667, appeared the celebrated general regulation concerning alienated communal property.
" In order to despoil the communities," it is therein said, " feigned
debts have been made use of, and the forms of justice have been
abused. So, those communes (commons), which had been set apart
to the inhabitants of places, for the purpose of affording the inhabitants means of feeding their cattle and of fertilizing their lands by
manures, having been alienated, the inhabitants, deprived of the
means of subsisting their families, have been forced to abandon their
houses, arid, by this abandonment, the cattle have perished, the lands
1 In other places, however, the municipal magistrates and the notables were ruined
in turn by the principle of solidarity.
VOL. I.       7




50                LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.                 1664-1667.
have remained uncultivated, manufactures and commerce have
suffered. For these reasons, within one month, the inhabitants of
parishes and communities, throughout the whole extent of the
kingdom, shall resume possession, without formality of law, of
the pastures, woods, lands, usages, etc., and all goods in common
by them sold, or in any manner leased, since 1620, by reimbursing
within ten years the principal of alienations made for legitimate
causes, with interest at five per cent. The necessary sums for
said reimbursements shall be levied on all the inhabitants, even the
exempt and the privileged. All the seigniors who shall have raised
pretensions to a third right in the commons, since 1630, are ejected
therefrom; those who shall have titles and a possession anterior to
1630, shall have power to use but the said third to them adjudged,
and neither they nor their farmers shall have power to use what is
common, under penalty of reunion of their third to the common property. The King remits to the communes the third right that may
belong to him in the commons, with the reservation of a third and
risk (third and tenth; thirteen thirtieths) in the forests." 1
This especially regarded the feudal nobility, as the liquidation of
debts had principally affected the bourgeois patriciate; the municipal aristocracy was struck anew by a decree in council of June
8, 1668, which prescribed to cities that should have deputations to
send to the King to choose other deputies than the maires, ~chevins, consuls, etc.; since they were in the habit of making or pretending business for their communities, in order to cause themselves to be sent to Paris or to court, and their expenses amply
paid when they were called thither by their private interests.
Hence in part proceeded the debts of cities.2
Such facts throw much light on the real state of institutions. It
would be very wrong, however, to conclude from these revelations
concerning municipal abuses that it was well to destroy municipal
liberties, instead of restoring them. We shall see that Colbert
made some effort in their favor.
In 1669, Colbert caused a general statement of the expenditures
and revenues of the communes, with the leases of the last ten years
1 Anciennes Lois franqaises, t. XVIII. p. 187. What we have just cited is little
else than the application, to all France, of an ordinance published in 1659, for the
benefit of the villages of Champagne (see post, p. 527); but the edict of 1667 contains still other dispositions of sovereign importance to agriculture, of which we shall
speak hereafter.
2 The decree is in Alex. Thomas: Une province sous Louis XIV. p. 246; 1844. A
remarkable work on the history of Burgundy, full of precious documents, arranged
with uncommon lucidity and soundness of judgment.




1667-1683.            COMMON PROPERTY..51
and the administrative returns, to be transmitted  to him.  In
1671 he obliged the provinces to extinguish the debts of rural
communities, that is, he compelled the cities to aid the villages
in paying their obligations; for Burgundy alone, this involved
2,800,000 livres. Never had government, not even in the times
of Henri IV. and Sulli, done a like thing in favor of the rural districts, —accustomed to pay for every one, far from having others
pay for them!
After having liberated the communes, Colbert interdicted  to
them alienations absolutely and loans in almost every case, by imposing on them the heaviest securities for the very small number of
cases in which loans might be authorized, with an agreement to pay
within a fixed time.  A statement of communal expenditures was
to be submitted to the intendants and the King's council. Every
extraordinary expenditure, and every tax for the purpose of meeting
it, was to be voted by the general assembly of the inhabitants and
approved by the King, with the advice of the intendant (April,
1683).1
We have just seen how Colbert reorganized the administration
and reconstructed the mechanism of finances, how he rescued the
state and the communes from the fraudulent management of capitalists. In order to complete the picture of the finances, during the
first period of this great minister, it remains to show how Colbert
acted on the very material of the public revenue, on the system of
imposts, and what were the direct results of his administration for
the national treasury.
The three great sources of impost were the villain tax (direct
impost), the subsidies, revenue-farms, etc., (indirect impost,) and
the salt-tax, (direct impost where the salt was compulsorily distributed, indirect where it was purchased voluntarily). At the period
of Mazarin's death, the villain tax was enormous in the election provinces, that is, in three quarters of France; the subsidies and salttaxes were very burdensome to the people, both by their amount 2
and the cruel vexations of their collection, and almost unproductive
1 In regard to the whole of these operations, see Forbonnais, t. I. pp. 311-313.
The same praise could not be bestowed on the prorogation of the power to repurchase the ecclesiastical property, alienated within a century, obtained by the
clergy; this power had been prorogued at different times, despite the grave inconveniences designated by the edict itself, which renewed it for five years (March,
1666); these prorogations were renewed during forty years more. It is true that
the clergy did not obtain these favors gratuitously, and that they gave several millions to the King. Anciennes Lois, t. XVIII. p. 74; 424.
2 The tax on salt produced nearly twenty millions (more than forty of our
money).




52                LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.                    1661.
to the state, on account of alienations and the wretched conditions
of leases. In 1661 the reduction of the villain tax commenced,1 and
Colbert, at the same time, suddenly abolished all the augmentations established on subsidies subsequent to 1645, and that did not
amount to less than ten sous in the livre of the principal:.  We are
struck with admiration to see Colbert begin by reducing an impost
thirty-three per cent., on the increased product of which he founded
in great part his hopes.  Trampling on the routine of the exchequer, he had comprehended that consumption increases in equal
or even greater proportion to the abasement of duties that weigh
on consumable objects, and that the public treasury does not lose
what the well-being of the people gains.
The expectation of Colbert was not disappointed; despite the
reduction of subsidies, subsidies and other revenue-farms were let,
at the close of 1661, three millions higher than in the preceding
leases, which Fouquet had given up to his accomplices at a low
price, and the farmers were required to pay every twelve months,
which attained, with respect to the indirect taxes, almost the same
result as the obligations of the receivers-general to the direct taxes.
In 1662 there was a new increase of almost four millions in the
product-of the revenue-farms, thanks to the union of the impost
duties of Paris with the subsidies in the same lease, and to the liberation of many alienated duties on the subsidies. The salt-tax
was diminished in the election provinces and somewhat increased in
the South, in order to attempt an equilibrium of charges which
Colbert also desired to establish in the villain taxes. The remaining
arrears of the villain taxes anterior to 1656 was remitted to the people.
If we compare the state of the revenues in 1661 and in 1662,2
we find the total advancing from 84,222,096 francs to 87,587,807,
by the increased value of leases. In 1661 the charges had been
52,477,184 francs, the net revenue, 31,845,041; in 1662 the
charges were reduced to 43,543,382 francs; the net revenue advanced to 44,314,376. The apparent progress is twelve and a half
millions; the real progress is nearly twenty-one and a half millions,
1 There is some difficulty in regard to the figures; according to the Memoire of
Colbert on the finances, the King reduced the land-taxes four millions in the last
month of 1661. (See F. Joubleau, t. II. p. 305.) According to an account given by
M. Joubleau (t. I. p. 16), the first reduction was only some hundreds of thousands
of francs.
2 F. Joubleau, t. I. pp. 15, 16. These are some gaps. The accounts given by
M. JoubIeau do not speak of the land-tax of Provence; two millions given by the
clergy in 1661 are also left out, as well as the usual subvention of 1,292,906 livres,
12 sous, 9 deniers, paid by the clergy.




1661-1663.        VILLAIN TAXES AND AIDS.                       53
because Fouquet allowed nine millions of interest to the farmers out
of the net revenue.
From 1662 to 1663, there was a diminution of three millions in
the villain tax, and a reduction of a crown per minot (hundred
pounds) on salt, which diminished the salt-tax a million and a half.
The gross revenue, however, by the increase of casual receipts
and of revenue-farms, again advanced more than a million, to
88,906,002 francs:'the.charges fell to 37,784,300 francs; the net
revenue reached 51,121,802 francs.1
In the same year, 1663, appeared an important regulation in
regard to the assessment and collection of villain taxes, renewing
the regulations of Sulli (1600) and Richelieu (1634), " which the
artifice of rich tax-payers finds means of eluding at the expense of
the poor." Commissioners were appointed to advise in regard to
the reform of these abuses, the intention of the King being that the
ulterior diminutions should exclusively profit people who had been
overtaxed.  One of the greatest abuses'was the pretension of privileged nobles, ecclesiastics or citizens' of free cities, to extend their
privilege to their farmers. The farmers were subjected anew to
the villain tax.2  In 1664, all the letters of nobility granted or sold
after 1634 were revoked, save in cases of signal service, these privileges having been conferred "to the prejudice of several parishes,
incapable since then of paying their villain tax, on account of the
great number of exempts who gathered the principal fruits of the
soil, without contributing to the taxes of which they ought to bear
the.greater part for the relief of the poor." After the new nobles,.the maires, gehevins, and other municipal officers, and all that vain
portion of the bourgeoisie, who, on account of filling or having
filled some petty office, or of having purchased some sinecure title,
pretended to be exempt from the villain tax, were generally despoiled of their privileges; with still greater reason the usurpers of
titles of nobility were severely prosecuted; in Provence alone,
twelve hundred and fifty-seven were discovered.3 The privileges
of individuals and families were not alone attacked; the government
began to lay hands on the privileges.of localities. Not only the
important towns, but certain country districts paid no villain taxes,
1 Forbonnais, t. I. pp. 289-311.
2 The privileged made such a disturbance and raised such a cry, that, in 1667,
they obtained the privilege of cultivating as much as they could with two ploughmen without having them subjected to the villain tax. Anciennes Lois franqaises, t.
XVIII. p. 103.
3 P. Clement, Histoire de Colbert, pp. 159, 160. Forbonnais, Recherches sur les
finances, t. I. p. 316.




54               LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.               1662-1665.
in virtue of exemptions that dated back to the Middle Ages.
Boulonnais was in this condition, and the peasants based their
exemption on the fact that they had preserved an organized militia
among them since the time when they were perpetually at war
with the English of Calais. In 1662, the King having decided to
bring this state of things to a close, a light villain tax was imposed
on Boulonnais.  The people revolted, perhaps "excited by the
nobility," said Louis XIV. in his Memoirs (t. I.; Mem. p. 213),
and several thousand men took up arms. The King sent troops;
most of the insurgents dispersed and were not pursued; some of
those who attempted to defend themselves and were taken with
arms in hand were executed; the greater part were condemned to
the galleys: a very rigorous repression, which Louis XIV. in some
sort excuses, by saying that he thought it his " duty to follow his
reason rather than his inclination." l
In 1664 and 1665, there were new diminutions of a million and
a million and a half in the villain tax. The gross revenue, in 1664,
was 89,243,319 francs;2 the charges were 35,525,214 francs; the
net revenue, 53,718,105 francs.  In 1665: gross revenue, 88,453,641 francs; charges, 39,805,242 francs; net revenue, 58,645,599
francs. The villain taxes were reduced to 35,343,219 francs.3
In four years the annual charges had diminished twenty-two and a
half millions, and the net revenue had increased nearly thirty-six
millions. Such figures say more than any words!
These brilliant results did not yet satisfy the patriotic heart of
Colbert: it had been his wish not only to relieve the people and
enrich the state in the present, but to secure the future by fundamental reforms, which his successors should not have the power to
disturb. It was not enough to diminish the villain tax, which he
expected to reduce still more (his wish had been to reduce it to
twenty-five millions); he would have gladly made a radical change
in the system and substituted throughout France, for the personal
villain tax, assessed on the resources of the taxable arbitrarily valued, the real villain tax, assessed on estates not noble, as it existed
in Languedoc or Provence; it was this difference in fiscal system,
much more than the maintenance of the States Provincial, that
produced the superiority of comfort that was remarked in those
1 (Euvres de Louis X11V., t. I.; Jlemoires, pp. 212-263.
2 According to Forbonnais; Mallet differs by nearly a million less; p. 287.
8 Without the villain tax and the gratuities of the state provinces, valued at about
six millions by Forbonnais, pp. 379-388. In 1664, all the duties and transit imposts
were thoroughly reorganized by a celebrated tariff, of which we shall speak under
the head of commerce.




1666-1669.       EXEMPTIONS ABOLISHED.                      5
provinces. The strictest and sagest regulations never succeeded in
causing the disappearance of the monstrous iniquities that were
facilitated by the arbitrary villain tax. To transfer the inequality
from persons to things would have been an immense step towards
equality; but the difficulties were in proportion to the greatness of
the work: the privileged classes, who enveloped the whole kingdom in an intricate net-work, were disposed to obstinate resistance;
they even took the offensive by endeavoring to reduce the provinces with the real villain tax to the condition of the others. A
royal declaration of February, 1666, condemning the pretensions
of the Provencal nobles, decreed that noble property in Provence
should continue to enjoy freedom from villain taxes in the hands of
plebeians as well as in those of nobles, and that plebeian property
should remain subject to villain tax in the hands of nobles, as well
as in the hands of plebeians. The nobles, by dint of clamors,
obtained the condition that- the measure should have no retroactive
effect, and that compensation should be made for noble property
which they had sold, and plebeian property which they had purchased within a century.'
Colbert attacked in his turn. This gigantic operation could not
be lightly approached: it was necessary to prepare for it long in
advance by vast studies and by partial attempts; Colbert took as a
trial-ground the generality of Montauban (Upper Guienne), caused
the terrier to be made out in three years (1666-1669), and introduced the real tax there, which he assessed not -only on real estate,
but on industrial revenues,2 personal property and rentes; day-laborers, those who had nothing but their hands to live by, were completely exempt, to the great scandal of the idle and the privileged.
It is in this noble regulation, as it is called with admiration by Forbonnais, that must be sought the inmost thought of Colbert in regard
to the fiscal system; Colbert clung, and with reason, to imposts
on consumption, the most equitable in times of privilege, since
they escape privilege; but he did not overlook the inconveniences
of this sort of imposts, so onerous to the poor classes, so costly and
often so vexatious in their collection, and, if he had lived -after the
destruction of privileges, he would perhaps have endeavored to
obtain his principal resources from impost on revenues.
The immediate result did not quite respond to Colbert's expectation, in consequence of abuses that crept into the form of the real
1 Anciennes Lois franFaises, t. XVIII. p. 71.
2 A tenth of the presumed product in cities, a twelfth in the country. All ennoblements of property posterior to the year 1600, were revoked.




56                  LOUIS XIV. AND  COLBERT.                     1669-1683.
villain tax, and the minister-reformer, before applying everywhere
the system tried in the generality of Montauban and establishing the
real villain tax where it did not exist, judged it necessary to correct
it where it did exist. Great events supervened, that deranged his
plans and obliged him to devote himself to seeking financial resources, in the service of a policy that was not his own; his thought
had ceased to be preponderant in the destinies of France, and it
was not till after the peace of Nimeguen that he could return to
his designs. In 1681, he assembled in conference the intendants
of provinces where the real villain tax was established (Languedoc,
Provence, Upper Guienne), and those of the provinces of the mixed
villain tax (Dauphiny and Lower Guienne);1 from this conference
sprung a project of reconstruction of the real villain tax; the project
of the intendants was converted into a law for the provinces of the
south, but Colbert could go no farther: death soon took away this
great man from France, and, with him, perished his designs for the
good of the people. The arbitrary villain tax still subsisted for a
century in three quarters of France, and, when it disappeared, it
was with the whole of the old regime.2
1 In Dauphiny, out of five thousand hearths, fifteen hundred did niot pay the
tax. Monthion, Particularite's sur les ministres des finances, p. 24.
2 Forbonnais, t. I. pp. 317-319. Monthion, Particularites sur les ministres desfinances, p. 22. (Euvres de d'Aguesseau, t. XIII. p. 35; 4to, 1789. Discours sur la vie et
la mort de M. d'Aguesseau (senior). This discourse, which may be compared, for its
predominant moral and religious elevation, with the noblest specimens of antique
and Christian eloquence that have descended to us, is a veritable monument consecrated by Chancellor d'Aguesseau to the memory of a father less celebrated than
his son, but not less worthy of the respect of France.  D'Aguesseau senior, the
confidant, the preferred agent of Colbert, was one of those devoted men who are
swallowed up in the halo of great men, but are their indefatigable and indispensable
auxiliaries, of whom it is just and pious sometimes to remind too forgetful posterity.
The Discourse on the Life of d'Aguesseau contains, in regard to the character and
government of Colbert, precious information, to which recourse has been had too
rarely. Nothing is more striking than the history of the connection of d'Aguesseau
with the great minister. D'Aguesseau, son of a first president of the parliament of
Bordeaux, was master of requests and president of the great council, although still
very young, during the first years of Colbert's ministry. Brought up in parliamentary sentiments and opinions, he had been moreover unfavorably prejudiced against
the minister " by the reputation for hardness that M. Colbert had acquired by wishing to establish better order in the finances." One day (it was in 1665), he had to
report to the council, as master of requests, an important affair concerning the finances: he treated of it as a magistrate, Colbert, as a comptroller-general; a lively discussion sprung up between them; d'Aguesseau maintained, without conciliation and
with remarkable talent, the opinion inspired by his conscience. The council, according to custom, decided in the minister's favor. It was known that Colbert was
very impatient of contradiction; it was believed that the career of employment was
closed to the young master of requests, who resigned himself to it philosophically.
A little while afterwards, d'Aguesseau received the first commission of intendant




1666-1668.             REAL VILLAIN  TAX.                            57
In 1666, external events had somewhat arrested the progressive
amelioration of the system of imposts; the: gross revenue, raised to
93,585,311 francs, 2,400,000 francs of gratuity from the clergy
being comprised in it, had increased more than five millions over
1665; but the net revenue, 59,478,035 francs, had increased only
about 800,000 francs, and the charges, instead of continuing to
decrease, had increased about 4,300,000 francs; the villain tax had
undergone a trifling increase of from 700,000 to 800,000 francs; it
rose again from 600,000 to 700,000 francs, in 1667; but the charges
descended again from  34,107,256 francs to 32,554,813 francs, and
the net revenue reached 63,016,826 in a gross revenue of 95,571,759 francs.l The war from 1666 to 1668, short and successful,
necessitated but little effort, and the movement of amelioration
resumed its course in 1667, in spite of heavy expenditures for fortifications and constructions in which the King was engaged, and for
which Colbert found sufficient means. Divers subsidy duties were
suppressed; duties on wines were diminished; and the old duty of
a sou in the livre was abolished on all merchandise other than wine,
in the cities that had preserved it. The following year (September, 1668), appeared the general regulation in regard to the salttaxes, which M. de Monthion calls "a masterpiece of financial
industry -in it he establishes the least defective organization of
an impost vicious in its nature."2 The compulsory salt-tax, in
1667, had been abolished and changed into voluntary sale, at a
fixed price, in twenty-two salt-d6pots; in 1668, the same change
that fell vacant. Seized with astonishment, he went to thank Colbert: he entered
with fear and repugnance.... he left full of confidence and joy, "less on account
of the tokens of esteem that he received from M. Colbert, than on account of the
good intentions he perceived in him for the relief of the people and for everything
that could contribute to the public weal."
D'Aguesseau successively ruled over, " to the common satisfaction of the minister
and the people," the intendancies of Limoges, Bordeaux, and Lower Languedoc, in
which he left souvenirs of a model administration, analogous to that of Turgot, a
century later. The Chancellor d'Aguesseau makes, from the relations of his father
with Colbert, a picture that might be taken for an imitation of the ideal government
dreamed of by the author of Telemnaque, if its authenticity were not incontestable.
D'Aguesseau, in his old age, did not cease to talk with his children about the happiness of serving under such a minister, during the glorious. years when " a rival,
ambitious and insensible to the ruin of the state (Louvois), did not yet paralyze the
good intentions of M. Colbert. One was sure of making his court to him only by
doing his duty"! What a testimony!
1 Forbonnais, t. I. pp. 397-402. Mallet differs by three and a half millions less
in regard to the gross revenue and the net revenue. The difference once established, the proportion is the same.
2 Monthion, Particularites sur les ministres des finances, p. 25. See also Bailli,.istoirefinanciere de la France, t. I. p. 433.
VOL. I.        8




58               LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.              1667-1670.
was made in thirty-six others; there remained then but forty-eight
depots for compulsory salt-tax.1  The villain tax, in 1668, again
underwent a slight diminution of 700,000 francs.
The general amount of the impost continued, however, to increase, and reached, in 1668, nearly ninety-nine millions, according
to Mallet, and more than one hundred and two, according to Forbonnais; the charges were increased anew to 57,735,477 francs;
but the net revenue had advanced to 64,540,607 francs, according
to Forbonnais, or three millions less according to Mallet. The
increase no longer resulted from destructive exactions, but from the
progress made by commerce, circulation, and public wealth, from
disencumbering the crown property from the increase of the casual
revenue; the imposts on consumption produced more and more in
proportion as they were freed from burdens, and their collection
was rendered less oppressive; the customs also became productive,
and the direct tax of the state provinces was a little increased, whilst
that of the election provinces was diminished, in order to reestablish a just equilibrium. Colbert, nevertheless, found the general
amount too high; but the splendors of the court were very expensive, and the admirable works of frontier places and seaports required large resources.
In 1669, the general impost was reduced about seven millions,
whilst the net revenue was increased more than four millions;
the charges were reduced nine millions, the villain tax was reduced
two millions, and the salt-tax and subsidies were again lightened.
In 1670, the gross revenue and the net revenue increased nearly
alike; the charges decreased below twenty-six millions; again must
be deducted three millions of remission in the villain taxes granted
to suffering provinces; the Hbtel de Ville rentes were reduced to
7,246,000 francs. The villain tax was nearly stationary. This was,
doubtless, still a flourishing condition; yet, for the first time since
1661, an alarming fact appeared: the real expenditure exceeded
the estimated expenditure more than ten and a half millions, and
the net revenue, nearly nine and a half millions. The pomp of the
court, the King's buildings, had produced this deficit, despite the
earnest representations of Colbert in regard to the truly extraordinary fact of ordering expenditure without being certain of the
income that was to cover it.
It was necessary, in order to have an immediate resource, to
raise the duties on wine by wholesale; the first mortification of
1 Forbonnais, t. I. p. 565. Compulsory salt-tax remained in scarcely more than
one fifth of France.




1667-1670.    PROGRESS OF THE REVENUE.                  59
Colbert and the first derogation from his system. At the same
time a registry duty was established on all acts taking place between individuals, proportioned to the importance of the transactions, with a clause annulling all acts that should not come under
registration.' The gross revenue and the net revenue were increased several millions in 1671, in order to regain the balance, and
reached the highest amount yet seen under Colbert; these were,
according to Forbonnais, 104,500,000, and 77,648,911; accordling
to Mallet, 100,000,000, and 73,000,000. Colbert succeeded in not
raising the villain tax, in augmenting the charges but one million,
and, after covering the deficit of 1670, in saving nine millions for the
probable excess of the real expenditure over the estimated expenditure in 1671. This excess, no longer caused solely by the King's
pleasures, but by preparations for imminent war against Holland,
still exceeded the reserve of Colbert by two millions.
Thus was reached the year 1672, which was to have, over the
administration of Colbert and over the destinies of our country, a
great and fatal influence. The eleven years, the principal results
of which we have endeavored to indicate, were the most glorious
period in the financial history of ancient France. We are happy
to be able to repose there a few moments before engaging in the
recital of the less prosperous times which are to follow.
1 Forbonnais, t. I. p. 447.




CHAPTER II.
LOUIS XIV. AND  COLBERT. (CONTINUED.)
SECTION I. - THE COURTS AND THE POLICE. —Great Days of Auvergne. Council
of Justice. Pussort and Lamoignon. Civil Ordinance. Criminal Ordinance.
Hospitals. Ordinance on the Police of Paris. La Reinie. Ordinances on
Convents and the Population. SECTION II. - WATERS AND FORESTS. AGRICULTURE. CANALS. - Ordinance on Waters and Forests. Regulations concerning the Grain Trade. Multiplication of Stock. Royal Highways. Riquet.
(Canal of the Two Seas.) SECTION III. —COLONIES. MARINE. COMMERCE.
MANUFACTURES. - Companies of the West and East Indies, the North, and the
Levant. Free Ports. Navy: Regime of Classes. Ordinances on the Marine.
Naval Constructions. Brest and Rochefort. Tariff Edicts. Protective System. Entrepots. Manufactures. Manufacturing Statutes and Regulations
on Manufactures. Commercial Ordinance.
1661-1673.
SECTION I. — THE COURTS AND THE POLICE.
THOSE lofty and patriotic conceptions which we have just exhibited at work in the finances, will again be found unfolding themselves in a like direction in the other branches of the government
and of national economy, a majestic spectacle that it is not often
given to history to offer to the gaze of men! In the courts and
the police, in agricultural and industrial production, in commerce
and the marine, the idea of Colbert intervenes with equal solicitude. This intervention is a little less patent, but not less certain
in judicial reforms than elsewhere.
As soon as the peace of the Pyrenees had permitted the government to turn its eyes again on the interior of the kingdom, the
disorders that infested some of the central provinces had given rise
to the project of holding the Great Days there, and the enormous
abuses of chicanery had caused a few efforts to be begun for the
reformation of civil procedure;1 but efficacious resolutions were
not taken till after Colbert had executed his principal financial
operations.  The revenue-farmers chastised, the gentlemen and
lawyers were attacked in turn.
1 Gui Patin, Lettres, t. II. pp. 13, 14, 141.




1665.             GREAT DAYS OF AUVERGNE.                             61
We must read the curious account of the Great Days of Auvergne, written by Fl1chier in his youth,1 if we would form  an
idea of the barbarism in which certain provinces of France were
still plunged, in the midst of the brilliant civilization of the seventeenth century, and would know how a large number of those
seigniors, who showed themselves so gallant and tender in the
boudoirs of Paris, lived on their estates, in the midst of their subjects: we might imagine ourselves in the midst of feudalism. A
moment bewildered by the hammer of the great demolisher, which
had battered down so many chateaux, the mountain squires of
Auvergne, Limousin, Marche and Forez had resumed their habits
under the feeble government of Mazarin. Protected by their
remoteness from Paris and the parliament, and by the nature of
the country they inhabited, they intimidated or gained over the
subaltern judges, and committed with impunity every species of
violence and exaction. A single feature will enable us to comprehend the state of these provinces. There were still, in the
remoter parts of Auvergne, seigniors who claimed to use the wedding right (droit de jambage), or, at the least, to sell exemption
from this right at a high price to bridegrooms.2   Serfhood of the
glebe still existed in some districts.3
August 31, 1665, a royal declaration, for which ample and noble
reasons were given,4 ordered the holding of a jurisdiction or court
1 The Abbe Flechier, then about thirty-three years of age, followed into Auvergne
a master of requests, whose son he was educating, and who was in charge of the
seals in the Court of Great Days. His account, extremely witty and facile, but
somewhat light and sportive for so grave a subject, exhibits little indication of the
great sacred orator or of the holy prelate, and savors rather of the mundane abbe,
and a taste for boudoirs in obedience to the fashion of the times; he shows himself at
least as much preoccupied with the gallantries of the town as with the decrees of
the tribunal. We perceive, however, under this affected levity, much reason and
noble sentiments of humanity. The Memnoires sur les Grands-Jours d'Auvergne were
published, in 1844, by M. Gonod, librarian of the city of Clermont.
2 A new proof to add to those which we have given of things that no one doubted
in the seventeenth century, when men still had the living remains of them before
their eyes. See also the supplement of Ducange, at the word Braconagium.
3 In Combrailles; it no longer existed in Auvergne, but inheritances of mortmain still subsisted. See'Flchier, Memoires sur les Grands-Jours d'Auvergne, pp. 112,
174.
4.... "The license of foreign and civil wars, which for thirty years desolated
our kingdom, having not only weakened the force of the laws, but also introduced
a great number of abuses, as well in the administration of our finances as in the
administration of justice, the first and principal object which we have proposed to
ourselves, and that to which, after the confirming of our conquests, the reparation
of our finances and the establishment of commerce, we have given all our cares,
has been to secure the reign of justice, and to reign by it in our State....; but,
as we have been informed that the evil is greatest in the provinces remote from our




62                    LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.                              1665.
" commonly called the Great Days," in the city of Clermont, for
Auvergne, Bourbonnais, Nivernais, Forez, Beaujolais, Lyonnais,
Combrailles, Marche, and  Berry.  A  president of parliament, a
master of requests, sixteen councillors, an attorney-general, and a
deputy procurator-general, were designated to hold these extraordinary assizes. Their powers were almost absolute. They were
to judge without appeal all civil and criminal cases, to punish the
" abuses and delinquencies of officers of the said districts," to reform  bad usages, as well in the style of procedure as in the preparation and expedition of trials, and to try all criminal cases first.
It was enjoined on bailiffs, seneschals, their lieutenants and all other
judges, to give constant information of all kinds of crimes, in order
to prepare matter for the Great Days.
A second declaration ordered that a posse should be put into the
houses of the contumacious, that the chateaux where the least
resistance was made to the law should be razed; and forbade, under penalty of death, the contumacious to be received or assisted.
The publication of the royal edicts, and the prompt arrival of
Messieurs of the Great Days at Clermont, produced  an  extraordinary commotion  in  all those regions.  The people welcomed the
Parisian magistrates as liberators, and a remarkable monument of
their joy has been preserved, the popular song or Christmas hymn
of the Great Days.1 Terror, on the contrary, hovered over the
court of parliament, that the laws are despised there, the people exposed to every
kind of violence and oppression, that feeble and wretched persons find no succor in
the authority of the courts, that noblemen often abuse their credits to commit
actions unworthy of their birth, and that, moreover, the weakness of officers (subaltern) is so great, that, not being able to resist their vexations (of noblemen),
crimes remain unpunished..... To remedy these disorders, we have, etc." —
Anciennes Lois fralaises, t. XVIII. p. 60.
1 In the sequel of Flechier's Meinoires on the Great Days.
Augha, gens, augha!                     Hear, people, hear!
Le ceo vous reprocha,                   Heaven reproaches you,
Qu'aquou ei trop pleghO,                That'tis to yield too much,
Et, sens gro bought,                    Without stirring at all,
Vous leissg raugha.                     To let yourselves be preyed upon.
Laus Grands-Jours                       The Great Days
Ne sont pas toujours.                   Are not always.
Embey No6 le temps s'aprocha            Toward Christmas the time approaches
Par fondre la cliocha;                  To cast the bell:
Laus fourneaux sont tout chauds,        The furnaces are all hot;
Nous z'avons ce que chaut.             We have what is needed.
Courraz, curaz de la parocha,           Hasten, parish cure,
Couraz, parrouchaux.                    Hasten, men of the parish.
L'home de chQte                         The dweller in the chateau
Au grangei arracha                      From the dweller in the farm-house,
Ce que le saute....                     Wrests whatever sustains him....




1665.                  GREAT DAYS OF AUVERGNE.                                          63
chateaux; a multitude of noblemen left the province and France,
or concealed themselves in the mountains; others endeavored to
Le couchou                                   The pig
Io pr6, moun l'auchou,                       He takes, also the gosling,
Le chabri, l'agneau et la vacha.             The kid, the lamb, and the cow.
Annou sio se facha,                          Again, if he is angry,
Pren l'artre et le biaou,                    He takes the plough and the ox,
Et peu l'y douna per la pacha,                And then strikes him in the face,
Et laus c8s sont siaus.                      And the blows are his share.
Le noble que diaou                            The noble who owes for
Tout ce que sa rata                          All the beef that
A mangha de biaou,                            His race has eaten,
Tout le vi qu'io biaou,                      All the wine he has drunk,
Mou6 queuqu'habit niaou,                      And also his new coat,
Ni pagI                                       Will neither
Ne vo ni pleidia;                             Pay nor plead:
Mas le marchand de chez se chassa,            But drives the merchant from his house,
Par tout payamen le menaqa                    And threatens him for sole payment
De caps de baton.                             With blows from his cudgel.
A parler francei,                             To speak plain French,
Ohaque gentilhome                            Each highborn man,
Dau matin au sei                             From morn to eve,
Fou6 creschi saus ceys,                      Swells his rent-roll (his feudal rights),
Et d'un liard n'a seis:                       And from one farthing gains six;
Viaou sens f6,                               Lives without faith,
Prend le pra, le f6,                         Takes the meadow, the hay,
Le champ et laus chaux dau bounhomme,         The fields, and the cabbages of the honest man,
Bat qud que l'y deiple,                      Beats whomsoever displeases him,
Et, comm'un rey dins son royaume,             And, like a king in his kingdom,
Dit qu'aquou l'y pe1.                         Says whatever he pleases.
Vez Cliarmou ou l'yo                          At Clermont there are
Queuques gens de roba,                        Some lawyers,
Que font, dins que lio,                      Who are doing there
Mou6 qu'on ne sonlio,                         Better than usual,..............
Aux pleintis,                                 At the plaintiffs,
Tant iront-ils chaitis,                       However obscure,
Pas un d'ys ne lieu fd la boba:               Not one of them shrugs his shoulders:
Qu'a be fou6, z'an troba.                     Whoever has done right finds him.
S6gur dins son logis,                        Tranquil in his abode,
L'eynoucen ne crent gis;                      The innocent fears nothing;
Mais le meichant que tua, que roba,           But the wretch who kills, who robs,
Fou6 b6 de fugir.                             Does well to fly.
Tant sio sauvaghou                           However fierce may be
Le veitit de seda,                           The man clad in silk,
Loen de sou donjhou,                          Away from his donjon,
Io l'o m6ma jou                              He has the same yoke
Que le boulonghou.                            As the man clad in fustian.
~..........................
Dans chatiaux sens p8,                        From chateaux without bread,
Sens might, ni crouta,                       Without crumb or crust,
Vi, pichez ni pot,                            Wine, pitcher or pot,
Pus nus qu'un tripot,                         More naked than a tennis court,
Chacun fut que pat.                           Each escapes as he can.




64                 LOUIS XIV. AND  COLBERT.                      1665.
conciliate their peasants: "Those who had been the tyrants of
the poor became their suppliants: there was more restitution
made than in the year of jubilee." The peasants raised their
tone in proportion as the nobles humbled themselves, and, as it
happens to men who are suddenly relieved from deep oppression,
they were seized with a kind of intoxication, and put no limit to
their pretensions  and  their hopes.   "If one did not address
them with respect, and if one failed to salute them with courtesy,
they appealed to the Great Days, threatened to bring him to punishment, and complained of violence. A country lady complained that
all the peasants had purchased gloves and thought that they were
no longer obliged to work, and that the King no longer had consideration for any but them in his kingdom..... When persons of
quality and staid morals, who were not afraid of the strictest justice,
and who had secured the good-will of the people, went to Clermont,
these worthy people assured them of their protection, and gave them
certificates of good character. They were certain that the King
had sent this company (of the Great Days) only to reinstate them
in their property, in whatever manner they might have sold it, and,
thereupon, they already counted upon all that their ancestors had
sold, as far back as the third generation, as their inheritance."'
What aids us to understand this pretension of the peasants is,
that, in the country, the same causes which had reduced the communes to the necessity of alienating their ancient common property,
had naturally compelled the laborers to sell a great number of
small estates acquired by the sweat of their own and their fathers'
brows.2
The Great Days could have no such results; it was the diminution of the villain taxes and the assistance given to agriculture that
was to aid the peasant in repurchasing his field or his vineyard.
The Great Days at least did with vigor what it was their. mission to
do: neither dignities, nor titles, nor high connections preserved the
L'home qu'6 fautey,               The man who is in fault,
Gentilhome ou gatey,              Whether nobleman or villain,
Fou6 be d'av6 paou de l'harmina   Does well to fear the ermine
Amou6 dau mortey.                 And the cap of the Chief Justice.
1 Flechier, Grands-Jours.d'Auvergne, pp. 55, 177.
2 There are, on the fluctuation and phases of petty proprietorship in France, some
very eloquent pages in the beautiful book of Michelet: The People. We shall, however, make reservations in regard to the works of Bois-Guillebert. It was not at
all under Colbert, as Bois-Guillebert pretends, but, on the contrary, during the
anterior period,'; that most of the peasant proprietors were obliged to sell their
properties." See Forbonnais, Observations ceconomiques, t. II. p. 14.




1665, 1666.       GREAT DAYS OF AUVERGNE.                           65
guilty. The redoubtable company began with the arrest, trial, and
execution of one of the greatest seigniors of Auvergne, the Viscount La Mothe-Canillac, condemned for murder.  If the capital
executions were not very numerous, it was because most of the
guilty had fled; but condemnations by contumacy, involving demolition of chateaux and confiscation of property, occurred in great
numbers; there were two hundred and seventy-three persons condemned by contumacy to the gibbet, ninety-six to banishment,
forty-four to decapitation, thirty-two to the wheel, twenty-eight to
the galleys. Among the criminals judged in person, we remark a
nobleman condemned to three years of the galleys for having killed
a peasant. The grand seneschal of Auvergne, a relative of the
condemned La Mothe-Canillac, was prosecuted before the criminal
court; the grand provost of Bourbonnais was condemned, as an
accomplice of a murder, to banishment and a heavy fine. The
Marquis de Canillac (all these Canillacs were a diabolic race!) was
executed in effigy with the Count d'Apchier, the Counts du Palais,
relatives of Turenne, and many others.1
The Court of Great Days was not content with punishing evil;
it undertook to prevent its return by wise regulations: first, against
the abuses of seigniorial courts; second, against the vexations of
seigniors on account of feudal service due them; third, concerning
the mode and abbreviation of trials; and lastly, concerning the
reformation of the clergy, who had no less need of being reformed
than the nobility. The Great Days were brought to a close after
three months of assizes (end of October, 1665 — end of January,
1666), and their recollection was consecrated by a medal repre1 Some of these trials were true types of their kind; for example, the affair of
Baron de S6negas. This seignior was accused of having made armed levies of
money on private individuals and even on communities, of having hindered the
levy of the King's villain taxes, laid villages under contribution, exacted undue labor,
demolished a chapel in order to use the materials for fortifying one of his houses,
usurped tithes, assassinated two or three persons, ransomed other individuals, shut
up one of those amenable to him for several months in a damp press in which he
could neither stand nor sit. S6n6gas, who had allowed himself to be taken, escaped
the scaffold by one vote, and was condemned to confiscation of property and perpetual banishment. The Marquis de Canillac was another Senegas, but with a
tincture of jesting wit and buffoonery; he had in his pay twelve bandits whom he
called his twelve apostles, and invented a thousand ingenious ways of despoiling his
subjects by force or trickery, and of making them pay ten taxes for one. A stranger
history still is that of d'Espinchal, a nobleman brilliant in all external gifts, and
capable of all misdeeds, who, condemned to death for assassinations and many other
crimes, escaped search by his address and audacity, finally left France to take
service in Germany, fought there subsequently against his country, and finally procured his pardon by diplomatic services.
VOL. I.              9




66               LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.                    1666.
senting Justice holding the sword and the balance in one hand,
and raising with the other a weeping woman, with this device:
Provincice ab inj)uriis potentiorum vindicatae (the provinces delivered from the oppression of the great).
The regulations of the Court of Great Days concerning civil
matters obtained general approbation, and contributed to lay the
foundations of the great ordinances of 1667 and 1670. The regulation concerning the reform of ecclesiastical morals raised violent
opposition in the assembly of the clergy, which was then sitting at
Paris: the clergy complained to the King of " the most abhorrent
crime of these laymen, who took it upon themselves to order a
visitation of the churches, to inquire whether discipline was observed in the monasteries, and whether the sacraments were administered in the parishes as they ought to be." The King caused
the execution of the regulation to be postponed; and the council,
by a decree of April 1, 1666, ordered that, without regard to the
new regulation, the ordinances of Orleans and Blois concerning
these. objects should be observed, with a prohibition to all lay
judges to take cognizance of the administration of sacraments and
other spiritual matters. The clergy, moderately satisfied, accepted
the decree of the council only in default of being able to obtain
more.
There were, doubtless, useful provisions in the regulation of the
Great Days against the disorders of the clergy; nevertheless, the
true reform, at the bottom, should have been, not to prevent monks
and nuns from, quitting the frock or the veil after having taken it,
but to prevent those who did not wish it from being forced to assume the dress of religion.  Fl6chier seems already to have well
understood this in his narrative.1
In the course of 1666, the work of the Great Days of Auvergne
was completed by similar assizes that a commission from the parliament of Toulouse went to hold at Puy in Velay, for Velay, Vivarais, and C6vennes, and by the powers granted to d'Aguesseau,
intendant of Limousin, to try, in his financial generality, " certain
noblemen who were committing every species of violence, and
who had in their pay forgers, robbers and miscreants." 2
The Great Days had been but an episode of the projected udi1 See the Grands-Jours d'Auvergne, p. 31, et pieces a la suite, p. 398. Fle'chier's
manner of speaking of the young ladies thrown into convents by paternal tyranny
gives us a presentiment of the generous liberator of the nun of Nimes.
2 (Euvres de Louis XIV. t. II. p. 240. Id. de d'Aguesseau, t. III.; Discours sur la
vie et la mort de M. d'Aguesseau.




1665.              PROJECTS OF COLBERT.                        67
cial reforms. A very valuable document  attests the extent of
Colbert's views in what concerns matters of justice, and proves
that here, as elsewhere, the chief impulse came from this universal man. -This is a memorial to the King, dated May 15, 1655.
Colbert, attributing everything to the King, as usual, sets forth
that his Majesty has " said in two words all that the profoundest
meditation of the most skilful men in the world could invent
on this subject in many years; " to wit, " that he wishes to redluce to a single body of ordinances all that is necessary to ren(ier jurisprudence fixed and certain, and to reduce the number of
judges, as the only means not yet attempted of abridging trials;
it remains for us," he adds, "only to explain our views according to the order which it has pleased his Majesty to give thereon
to us, of the means that may be used to reach those two great
ends."
He proposes, therefore, for the first point, the creation of a
" special council for justice, composed of councillors of state and
the most skilful barristers'of parliament,"2 and divided into sections, for civil, criminal, and police courts, in addition to the
sending of masters of requests to the parliaments and other superior courts, who should hold, with the chiefs and'" best men " of
those bodies, conferences that should be reported to the council of
justice. The King should aid and crown this great work by a
general visit of his kingdom, in which the councillors of state and
masters of requests in his suite should render justice wherever his
Majesty sojourned: all other courts of justice, even those of the
parliaments, should be suspended and expurgated in the King's presence. It should belong to the council of justice to revise all the
ancient and new ordinances, to examine the discipline of companies
to make it uniform, of conflicts to prevent their recurrence, of the
different degrees of jurisdiction to diminish their number, and of
trials and expenses to reduce them.
As to the police of the kingdom, a beginning should be made by
giving attention to Paris, " which easily gives the impulse to all
the other cities." In what concerns the general police, " all the
conditions of men who have a tendency to escape from  the labor
1 Project of reform in the administration of justice, published by Colbert, in la
Revute Retrospective, n0 XI. 2e serie, November 3, 1835.
2 This preference awarded to barristers over members of parliament was very
proper; in consequence of the exorbitant price of offices, most eminent jurisconsuits remained at the bar or in the inferior courts. Patru always remained barrister of parliament; Domat was never more than king's barrister in the court at
Clermont.




68               LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.                    1665.
that contributes to the general good of the State must be rendered
difficult;" these conditions are those of officers of justice, priests,
monks, and nuns, when they are too numerous: "' It would perhaps be well to make religious vows a little more difficult, and to
postpone the age for rendering them valid, even to suppress the
usage of dowries and pensions for nuns." 1
On the contrary, " all conditions of men that tend to the public
good, that is, soldiers, merchants, workmen, and laboring people,
must be favored and made as honorable and advantageous as possible."
" After having advanced this work, it may be that his Majesty
will wish that the work shall go on in order to complete the entire
body of ordinances, and that those may be examined in the same
manner that concern the domains of the crown, the finances, the
waters and forests, the admiralty, the functions of all the posts and
offices of the kingdom.... the jurisdiction of the great council,
of the courts of exchequer, of the courts of aids, currency boards,
salt depots, and generally, in order to render this body of ordinances as complete as that of Justinian for the Roman law."
For the second point,- the reduction of the number of judges,
- Colbert proposes the ordinance of which we have spoken before
(p. 47), concerning the diminution of the price of offices, but as
a means of arriving at something much bolder and more important; that is, at the suppression of their hereditability and vendibility within seven or eight years. The King, in the interval,
should redeem the offices that should become vacated, and should
succeed in reducing the number of offices to what it was a century
before, and in making justice gratuitous by increasing the pay of
judges.
Richelieu, in his Testament, had not even dared to dream of
such an enterprise. It was to be given to the Revolution alone to
accomplish the wish of the minister of Louis XIV.!
The council of justice, constituted after the plan of Colbert and
presided over by the chancellor, entered upon its duties October
10, 1665; 2 Colbert, of course, became a part of it, with his wife's
uncle, the aged Pussort, councillor of state, whom he employed
much in judicial affairs, and who was, in his eyes, one of those rigid
1 In 1693, the dowries of nuns were reduced to five hundred and five hundred and
thirty livres of income in monasteries founded since 1600. They were abolished in
the older convents.
2 And not October 28, 1666, as President Henault says. There were, besides the
sections of civil, criminal, and police courts, a section of ecclesiastical affairs and
one of the affairs of the nobility.




1665.            PROJECTS OF COLBERT.                    69
and inflexible instruments needed to take energetic measures in reforms. In the opening session, Colbert, under the dexterous form of
a doubt in regard to the King's intentions, provoked Louis XIV. not
to content himself with reforming the administration of justice, but
to embrace a broader design; namely, " to bring his whole kingdom under the same law, the same measure, and the same weight,"
- a design already formed, he said, by Louis XI., " the most
able of all our kings," and subsequently by Henri IV. " Even
were the thing impossible," he added, " by making efforts to attain
it, your Majesty would certainly find so many admirable things to
do, that you would be worthily recompensed for the cares you
might have taken." 1
Here, again, it was not the monarchy that was to realize the
views of the patriot minister. As thirty years of war had been
needed to accomplish the work of Richelieu, thirty years of peace
would have been necessary to accomplish the work of Colbert, the
complement of the other; Louis XIV. did not grant them. A few
fragments only of Colbert's idea concernig the unity of laws took
form; judicial France lived on these fragments till 1789.
Although the most progressive ideas of Colbert were not reduced
to practice, the general plan of his memorial to the King was nevertheless followed.
The council of justice applied itself without delay to prepare a
great ordinance on civil procedure; the first president, de Lamoignon, the attorneys-general Talon and Bignon, and some other
members of the parliament of Paris, were called upon to cooperate
in this work. According to the biographer of Lamoignon, Colbert,
who had appointed his uncle Pussort to prepare the work, wished
to exclude members of parliament. Lamoignon, feigning to be
ignorant of what was taking place, sought the King and proposed
to him to reform the courts as he had reformed the finances. Louis
told him to act in concert with Colbert and Pussort. Louis, in his
" Memoirs and Instructions " (t. ii. p. 272), affirms, on this subject, that wishing neither simply to send the ordinance to parliament, through fear of " some chicanery," nor to carry it himself to the bed of justice, for fear that it might be afterwards said
that it had been registered without knowledge of cause, he summoned the deputies of all the chambers of parliament to the chancellor's office, where the articles prepared were read and discussed
in conferences between the members of the parliament and com1 Revue Rderospective, no XI., 2e serie, November 30, 1835, p. 248.




70                  LOUIS XIV. AND  COLBERT.                     1665-1667.
missioners of the council; if any reasonable difficulty was raised, it
was reported to the King, who decided.1
The Civil Ordinance, known also under the name of Code Louis,
appeared in April, 1667. It is a veritable code of procedure in
thirty-five titles.  History cannot enter into the details of these
special matters; 2 the preamble sufficiently indicates the object of
the edict. The King therein declares that the ordinances wisely
established by his predecessors for terminating trials were neglected
or changed by time or the malice of pleaders; that they were even
differently observed in several courts, a thing that caused the ruin
of families by the multiplicity of procedures, and by the costs of
prosecutions and diversity of judgments, and that it was necessary
to provide for this and to render the expedition of affairs prompter,
easier and surer, by the retrenchment of several useless acts, and
by the establishment of a uniform mode in all the courts and sees
1 Lamoignon cherished, on his side, the idea of a uniform legislation for France.
Assisted by two learned advocates, Auzannet and Fourcroi, he undertook a vast
work in order to bring into unity the two hundred and eighty-five customs that
divided France,- a great enterprise, but impossible, the common law emanating,
for the most part, from a principle essentially contrary to unity; that is, from the
principle of feudalism.
2 We think it incumbent on us, however, to give the titles of the ordinance, to
make their distribution understood. - I. Of the observation of ordinances. - II. Of
summonses.- III. Of delays for subpoenas and summonses. - IV. Of indictments.
- V. Of discharges and defaults in civil suits. - VI. Of nolle prosequi. - VII. Of
delays for deliberation. - VIII. Of securities. - IX. Of dilatory exceptions, and
of the abrogation of pleadings. - X. Of interrogatories on deeds and articles. - XI.
Of delays and proceedings in the courts of parliament, grand council, and courts of
aids, in first instance and in case of appeal. - XII. Of requirements and collations
of documents. - XIII. Of the abrogation of inquiries in Juturo, and of inquiries by
turbes. - XIV. Of litigations in cause. - XV. Of proceedings concerning the possession of benefices, and of rules. - XVI. Of the form of proceeding before judges
and consuls of merchants. - XVII. Of summary matters. - XVIII. Of complaints
and reinstatements. - XIX. Of sequestrations and of commissioners and guardians
of profits and personal property. — XX. Of deeds that lie in oral or verbal evidence. —XXI. Of searches of premises, price of officers who go on commission,
appointment and reports of experts. —XXII. Of inquiries. — XXIII. Of objections to the admissibility of witnesses. - XXIV. Of challenges of judges. -XXV.
Of issues. — XXVI. Of the form of procedure in judging and passing sentence.
-XXVII. Of the execution of judgments. - XXVIII. Of the receiving of bail.
- XXIX. Of the rendering of accounts. - XXX. Of the liquidation of awards. -
XXXI. Of costs.- XXXII. Of the appraisal and liquidation of damages. -
XXXIII. Of seizures and executions, and sales of furniture, grains, stock, and
personal property (we shall speak hereafter of this title, so important to agriculture). - XXXIV. Of discharge of arrest for debt. - XXXV. Of civil petitions. -
It should be observed that the first title declares this ordinance, like all the
ordinances and edicts which the King may make in future, obligatory for ecclesiastical as well as lay tribunals.




1669-1673.      CIVIL  ORDINANCE.  MORTGAGES.                         71
of the kingdom.  The effects of the civil ordinance have been
summed up, in a few lines, by a learned and virtuous magistrate.'
" Property being for a less time uncertain, by the abbreviation of
litigations brought before the tribunals, the procedures, the expenses
of which devour the products of the soil and of manufactures, being
better regulated and less expensive, the transactions of commerce
were better assured, and, freed from this species of judicial impost,
left a broader margin for the charges of the revenue."
An ordinance of August, 1669, completed the edict of 1666, so
far as concerned appeals, regulation of the jurisdiction of judges,
mittimuses, letters of state, and respites to debtors.2
Several other edicts were again so many appendices to the Code
Louis: these were the establishment of a new  chamber, the civil
Tournelle, in the parliament of Paris, for the trial of suits in which
the sum involved was less than 1000 crowns (August, 1669); the
reduction of the fees and perquisites of judges to the price fixed in
each case by the president, all other charges being abolished
(March, 1673); the prescription of uniform  printed formulas to
attorneys, bailiffs, etc., in order to establish a uniform rate for the
whole kingdom (March, 1673). This useful measure encountered
so many difficulties that it was revoked in 1674.3
The most important, the wisest institution of Colbert in regard
to civil law, was the publicity of mortgages. An edict of March,
1673, established the mortgage system  nearly as it is now; registers
were instituted in the presidial courts for the registration of mortgages; creditors who did not register them lost their precedence.
The lien of the King on the property of the fiscal agents and the
farmers of the revenue, that of minors on that of their guardians,
1 M. de Monthion, Particularitegs sur les ministres de finances, p. 56.- D'Aguesseau,
nevertheless, does not admit that the ordinance attained its end so well, and
says that the ministerial officers and judges annulled its effects by the perfection
of the science of chicanery. (7Euvres de d'Aguesseau, t. XIII. p. 215; edit. in 8~.
The causes assigned by d'Aguesseau for. this recrudescence of the evil pertain to
the return of fiscal abuses that reacted on the courts, which it was impossible for
Colbert to hinder in the last years of his administration.
2 Both ordinances are in the collection of Anciennes Lois franfaises, t. XVIII.
pp. 103, 341. The publication of the Code Louis was consecrated by several
medals, one of which represents the King holding the scales in the presence of
Justice, with this device:.ustitias judicanti (to the judge of judges). See P. Clement,
Histoire de Colbert, p. 242.
3 In January, 1672, we first remark the intervention of the lay authority in keeping the registers of the civil state. It is enjoined on curds or vicars to carry to the
registrar of the presidial bench, in the precinct where they dwell, the registers of
baptisms and deaths for the past forty years, to be signed by the judge. Anciennes
Lois franqaises, t. XIX. p. 1.




72                  LOUIS XIV. AND  COLBERT.                        1673.
of wives on that of their husbands for dowers, dowries, obligations contracted with and for the husbands, that of children for
their settlements, "in cases wherein it is their own," were legally
reserved without registration.  However great may be the imperfections that at the present time call for reform, the mortgage system was then an immense progress, so bold a progress that Colbert
could not maintain it. The motives alleged in the preamble of the
ordinance were to establish security in mortgages, and to prevent
"' the property of a solvent debtor from being consumed in legal
proceedings, in default of ability to make the solvency appear";
but the intention of Colbert was to protect the capital of the bourgeoisie against the loans of the nobility, by compelling the latter to
reveal the real state of their property to their creditors, and to give
them  a definite pledge instead  of a vague and illusory general
mortgage. It was also a means of causing much of the capital
that was swallowed up by the facility of borrowing to flow towards
agriculture  and  manufactures.   The  Don  Juans and Dorantes
found it very unpleasant to be no longer able to use M. Dimnanche
and M. Jourdain at their ease; the courtiers clamored so loudly
against this revelation of the state of families, that the King revoked
the ordinance the following year.1
Nevertheless, the council of justice passed from civil to criminal
procedure. The Criminal Ordinance was published in August,
1670.2  This code of criminal procedure is remarkable for the same
1 Anciennes Lois franfaises, t. XIX. pp. 73, 86, 89. La Ferriere, Histoire du Droit
franqais, t. I. p. 459; ire edit.
2 The following are the titles: Title I. On the jurisdiction of judges. It is therein
seen that the officers of the short robe or military judges, maires of Paris and
others, take cognizance in last resort of crimes committed by vagrants, vagabonds,
or criminals. Ecclesiastics, noblemen, and secretaries of the King (an honorary title
much sought after by the upper bourgeoisie) may demand to be judged by the whole
chamber of the parliament where suits shall be brought against them. Provost
judges (inferior to presidial judges) cannot take cognizance of crimes committed
by noblemen or judicial officers. -Title II. On procedures peculiar to maires of
Paris, vice-bailiffs, vice-seneschals, and criminal lieutenants of the short robe. -
Title III. On complaints, denunciations, and accusations. —Title IV. On the
minutes of judges.- Title V. On the reports of physicians and surgeons. - Title
VI. On informations. - Title VII. On monitories.  Ecclesiastical judges are
required, under penalty of seizure of their temporalities, to accord the monitories
demanded in the name of the King, and the curds and vicars are required to publish
them. (The monitories enjoined, under penalty of excommunication, all private
persons, clerical or lay, to reveal to justice everything known to them in regard
to crimes committed. Civil and religious institutions were still too mixed up to
make this assistance exacted from ecclesiastical authority by the judicial power
appear strange to any one.) - Title VIII. On the recognition of written pleas and
signatures in criminal matter. - Title IX. On forgery. - Title X. On writs of ap



1670.                   CRIMINAL  ORDINANCE.                               73
merits of order, clearness, unity, and simplicity, as the Civil Ordi-,
nance: many abuses in detail were corrected; but, unfortunately,
pearance, their execution and discharge. - Title XI. On the excuses or essoins (exonerationes, acquittals) of the accused. - Title XII. On judgments of assets. - Title
XIII. On prisons, registers of jails, jailers and turnkeys. This title prescribes various
measures to prevent the exactions of jailers towards prisoners. Prisons shall be so
arranged that the health of prisoners may not be injured. The cares to be bestowed on
them in case of sickness are regulated. - Title XIV. On interrogations of the accused.
Interrogations shall be commenced at latest within twenty-four hours after imprisonment, under penalty of damages and costs against the judges. The accused shall
not be able to obtain counsel except in cases of extortion, bankruptcy, forgery, and
other crimes, in which the state of persons is involved. (The first of these dispositions was excellent; the second, which only confirmed existing laws, was not only
hard, but in the highest degree unjust to the accused, since they were interdicted
what was granted to their adversaries, civil parties.) - Title XV. On cross-examination and confronting of witnesses. - Title XVI. On letters of abrogation, remission,
pardon, in order to appear before the judges, recall from banishment or the galleys,
commutation of punishment, rehabilitation, and revision of suits. No letters of abrogation shall be given for duels or premeditated assassinations, for rapes with violence,
for outrages on magistrates.- Title XVII. On defaults and contumacies. The
oontumacious have five years in whiqh to present themselves.-Title XVIII. On
the deaf and dumb and those who refuse to answer. - Title XIX. On judgments
and proceedings in questions and tortures. The accused shall not be twice questioned for the same act. Once arraigned and completely exonerated, he shall not
be a second time put in jeopardy. This was introducing the first gleam of humanity
into the most odious and absurd part of the barbarous procedure of the Middle Ages;
but it was done at the expense of logic, for institutions the principle of which is
radically irrational and inhuman, could not be mended. - Title XX. On the conversion of civil into criminal suits, and reception into ordinary suits. - Title XXI. On
the prosecution of cities, towns, and villages, corporations and companies, in cases
of rebellion, violence, collective crime; condemnations shall be for civil reparation,
damages, fines, loss of privileges, etc. - Title XXII. On the manner of prosecuting
the dead body or memory of one deceased, for duel, suicide, or forcible resistance
to justice. (The prosecutions of dead bodies for suicide, an act of which God alone
is judge, sprung from that confusion of religion and civil order which has been
designated while speaking of monitories.)- Title XXIII. On the abrogation of
decrees, written pleas and bars in criminal matters. - Title XXIV. On definitive
conclusions of king's attorneys and attorneys of seignioral courts. —Title XXV.
On sentences, judgments, and decrees. It requires at least three judges for judgments subject to appeal, and seven for judgments in last resort; if the number of
officers on the bench is not sufficient, graduates (in civil law) will be taken. It
requires a majority of one to condemn in the first instance; of two to condemn in
last resort. The sacrament of confession shall be offered to those condemned to
death, and they shall be assisted by an ecclesiastic as far as to the place of punishment. This last disposition is dictated by a sentiment not less humane than religious. - Title XXVI. On appeals.- Title XXVII. On procedures for the purpose of purging the memory of a deceased.- Title XXVIII. On justifying facts.
The expenses of proving justifying facts shall be at the charge of the accused, if
he is able to pay them; if not, they must be advanced by the civil party, if
there is one. (A bad disposition, resulting from that deplorable system of justice
paid for by the parties to the suit, which Colbert would willingly have destroyed
but could not.) —See the Ordinance ap. Anciennes Lois friangaises, t. XVIII. p.
871.
VOL. T.             10




74                 LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.                      1670.
the principle of the evil was not touched; that is, the baleful provisions of the ordinance of Villers-Cotterets (1539), concerning the
secret procedure and the interdiction by the minister of counsel to
the accused in most cases.1 Those prohibitions, so tainted with arbitrariness, so opposed to the rights of the defence, so far from the
true means of enlightening the conscience of the judges, were confirmed. A spirit of ill-judged severity impelled Pussort to maintain
the principles of Poyet, the chancellor of 1539, against the wiser and
more humane maxims maintained by Lamoignon. The Criminal
Ordinance has remained, as a whole, the least bold, the least innovating, and the least praiseworthy of Colbert's legislative reforms.
We may comprehend these errors to some extent, when we see a
magistrate like d'Aguesseau approving this ordinance.
To these same habits of the Middle Ages pertain certain measures
against blasphemers. The parliament, in 1647, had renewed all
the atrocious penalties of former times against those who blasphemed, not only God, but the saints; in 1666, a declaration of
the King, while implicitly suppressing the penalty of death sometimes applied by the parliament, maintained the penalty of slitting
the lip to the sixth time, and of slitting the tongue, if the blasphemer continued.2
By way of compensation, reason and humanity were indebted
to the government of Louis XIV. for a notable service; namely,
for having put an end to trials for witchcraft. A large portion of
this eulogy reverts to the parliament of Paris, a thing very singular
to whomsoever is acquainted with the stationary spirit of this great
body. From 1660, the parliament of Paris " no longer recognized
sorcerers, therefore none came within its jurisdiction." 8 Several
parliaments followed the same tendency. The parliament of Rouen,
on the contrary, persisted in finding sorcerers everywhere, and its
history presents a multitude of trials for magic in the first half of
the seventeenth century.4 In 1670, it began again in earnest, and
1 Secret procedure was anterior to 1539, but not general before that period.
2 Anciennes Lois franqaises, t. XVII. p. 65; XVIII. p. 86. In 1681, a sentence
by the provost-marshal, rendered by order of the King himself, to whom the case
is referred, condemns a vender of brandy following the court to have his tongue
bored. Louis XIV. ought to be thanked for having banished from the court, and
having striven to banish from the kingdom, the gross and impious habits of oaths
and blasphemies that were fashionable before his time; but such savage proceedings
were not the proper way of attacking the evil.
3 Lettres de G. Patin, t. II. p. 46.
4 Floquet, Histoire du parlement de Normandie, t. V. p. 619 et seq. In 1647, there
had been at Louviers a great trial that singularly recalled the too renowned affair




1670-1682.          SORCERERS. - HOSPITALS.                         75
caused the arrest of thirty-four sorcerers at a single stroke. The
King's council set bounds to this exuberant zeal; letters of the King,
(August 7, 1670,) commuted to simple banishment the sentence
of death already pronounced against four of these unfortunates,
and ordered suspension of proceedings as to the others; then a
decree in council, in 1672, suppressed all the proceedings entered
into in Normandy on account of the crime of sorcery, and ordered
the prisons to be opened to all persons detained for this fact alone,
Ten years later, in 1682, a royal declaration fixed the jurisprudence
for the whole kingdom, retained the punishment of death for sacrilege alone, prescribed banishment for diviners, and threatened with
exemplary punishment whomsoever "should delude ignorant and
credulous people by operations of pretended magic." The pretended associates of the devil were no longer, in the eyes of the
King's councillors, but knaves or fools; reason triumphed in the
ordinances of statesmen as in the books of philosophers.1
According to the plan of Colbert, the reform of the police, taken
in the broadest sense of the word, had kept pace with his labors on
civil and criminal jurisprudence.2
The hospitals, " through motives of charity and not by order of
police," as an ordinance of 1656 says, had attracted the attention
of government before the ministry of Colbert; the spirit of beneficence, introduced into the circle of the queen-mother by Vincent
de Paul, had created the general hospital of Paris, an asylum for
more than six thousand poor. The great question of extinguishing
vagrancy and mendicity warmly engaged the attention of the King
and Colbert,3 and, in the month of June, 1662, an edict ordered
the establishment of a hospital in each city and considerable town
of the nuns of Loudun. This time, it was an old enemy of Richelieu, Montchal,
Archbishop of Toulouse, who, sent by the regent at the head of a commission,
sanctioned the procedure and proclaimed the authenticity of the possession of the
nuns of Louviers: an unfortunate vicar called Boulle' was burned alive at Rouen.
There is no means of investigating here the alleged political machinations, and the
catastrophe of Boulle may serve'to explain that of Grandier. The role played by
the capuchins in both affairs completes the analogy. The difference consists in the
starting-point: at Louviers, the madness of the nuns had sprung from confessors
who had taught them a materialistic and sensual mysticism, a species of Adamismn
or Molinism. - Floquet, t. V. p. 686 et seq.
1 Floquet, t. V. p. 718 et seq. See Malebranche, De la Recherche de la Veritd, 1. II.
3e part., c. vi; Des sorciers par imagination et des loups-garous.
2 We shall speak hereafter of what concerns the police of grain and manufactures, these matters requiring to be treated apart, on account of their importance.
3 The King proposed to undertake " that there should be no one who should not
be assured of his subsistence, either by his labor or by ordinary and regulated
succor."  (Euvres de Louis XlV. t. I.; Memoires et Instructions, p. 154.




76                LOUIS XIV. AND  COLBERT.                 1662-1670.
of the kingdom, for the sick, invalid, and orphan poor, "who should
be instructed in piety and the trades of which they should show
themselves capable."   Several cities had analogous institutions
already, and the best royal ordinances were often only the generalization of certain municipal establishments, it must be said to the
praise of our old communes.l
The institution for foundlings, founded by the venerable Vincent
de Paul, was erected into a hospital, united to the general hospital,
(June, 1670,) and augmented by a branch establishment.
The general hospital of Paris and the other analogous institutions rendered immense services, but their resources were not
sufficient to give work and bread to all who lacked them, and,
moreover, the professional mendicants, a class as vicious as
wretched, desired neither work nor sedentary life at any price;
they entered the hospital only by force. Vagrancy, therefore,
remained and continued to furnish recruits to the lackeys and disbanded soldiers who formed those formidable bands of nocturnal
malefactors, through whom
"Le bois le plus obscur et le moins frequente
Est, au prix de Paris, un lieu de sfirete.2"
"The most obscure and least frequented wood,
Compared with Paris, is a place of safety."
Even in the daytime, affrays and murders sometimes took place
in the very galleries of the court-house; the bad organization of the
police, the guard and the watch, too few in numbers, and too poorly
paid, rendered repression almost fruitless.
All this was changed. The prohibitions to pages and lackeys to
carry arms were renewed under terrible penalties, which, this
time, were no longer a vain threat. The soldiers and police-agents
were reorganized on a new footing. Wise regulations were promulgated for the lighting, cleaning, and security of Paris, which
at last emerged from its centuries of darkness and dirt, and a new
institution assured the maintenance and vigorous direction of these
salutary innovations. The office of civil lieutenant of the marshal
1 Anciennes Lois franqaises, t. XVIII. p. 18. See the interesting details given by
M. P. Clement on the institution for the poor at Beauvais, a workhouse in which
the indigent were employed, according to their age and strength. Histoire de Colbert, p. 116. The Third Estate, in the States-General of 1614, had asked that hospitals might be established everywhere, but at the expense of the Church, according
to the original destination of ecclesiastical revenues.
2 Boileau, Satire, VI.




1670-1682.          SORCERERS. - HOSPITALS.                         75
caused the arrest of thirty-four sorcerers at a single stroke. The
King's council set bounds to this exuberant zeal; letters of the King,
(August 7, 1670,) commuted to simple banishment the sentence
of death already pronounced against four of these unfortunates,
and ordered suspension of proceedings as to the others; then a
decree in council, in 1672, suppressed all the proceedings entered
into in Normandy on account of the crime of sorcery, and ordered
the prisons to be opened to all persons detained for this fact alone,
Ten years later, in 1682, a royal declaration fixed the jurisprudence
for the whole kingdom, retained the punishment of death for sacrilege alone, prescribed banishment for diviners, and threatened with
exemplary punishment whomsoever "should delude ignorant and
credulous people by operations of pretended magic." The pretended associates of the devil were no longer, in the eyes of the
King's councillors, but knaves or fools; reason triumphed in the
ordinances of statesmen as in the books of philosophers.1
According to the plan of Colbert, the reform of the police, taken
in the broadest sense of the word, had kept pace with his labors on
civil and criminal jurisprudence.2
The hospitals, " through motives of charity and not by order of
police," as an ordinance of 1656 says, had attracted the attention
of government before the ministry of Colbert; the spirit of beneficence, introduced into the circle of the queen-mother by Vincent
de Paul, had created the general hospital of Paris, an asylum for
more than six thousand poor. The great question of extinguishing
vagrancy and mendicity warmly engaged the attention of the King
and Colbert,3 and, in the month of June, 1662, an edict ordered
the establishment of a hospital in each city and considerable town
of the nuns of Loudun. This time, it was an old enemy of Richelieu, Montchal,
Archbishop of Toulouse, who, sent by the regent at the head of a commission,
sanctioned the procedure and proclaimed the authenticity of the possession of the
nuns of Louviers: an unfortunate vicar called Boulle' was burned alive at Rouen.
There is no means of investigating here the alleged political machinations, and the
catastrophe of Boulle may serve'to explain that of Grandier. The r51e played by
the capuchins in both affairs completes the analogy. The difference consists in the
starting-point: at Louviers, the madness of the nuns had sprung from confessors
who had taught them a materialistic and sensual mysticism, a species of Adamismn
or Molinism. - Floquet, t. V. p. 686 et seq.
I Floquet, t. V. p. 718 et seq. See Malebranche, De la Recherche de la Firitd, 1. II.
3e part., c. vi; Des sorciers par imagination et des loups-garous.
2 We shall speak hereafter of what concerns the police of grain and manufactures, these matters requiring to be treated apart, on account of their importance.
3 The King proposed to undertake " that there should be no one who should not
be assured of his subsistence, either by his labor or by ordinary and regulated
succor."  (iuvres de Louis XlV. t. I.; Mdrmoires et Instructions, p. 154.




76                LOUIS XIV. AND  COLBERT.                 1662-1670.
of the kingdom, for the sick, invalid, and orphan poor, "who should
be instructed in piety and the trades of which they should show
themselves capable."   Several cities had analogous institutions
already, and the best royal ordinances were often only the generalization of certain municipal establishments, it must be said to the
praise of our old communes.1
The institution for foundlings, founded by the venerable Vincent
de Paul, was erected into a hospital, united to the general hospital,
(June, 1670,) and augmented by a branch establishment.
The general hospital of Paris and the other analogous institutions rendered immense services, but their resources were not
sufficient to give work and bread to all who lacked them, and,
moreover, the professional mendicants, a class as vicious as
wretched, desired neither work nor sedentary life at any price;
they entered the hospital only by force. Vagrancy, therefore,
remained and continued to furnish recruits to the lackeys and disbanded soldiers who formed those formidable bands of nocturnal
malefactors, through whom
"Le bois le plus obscur et le moins frequente
Est, au prix de Paris, un lieu de sfrete.2"
"The most obscure and least frequented wood,
Compared with Paris, is a place of safety."
Even in the daytime, affrays and murders sometimes took place
in the very galleries of the court-house; the bad organization of the
police, the guard and the watch, too few in numbers, and too poorly
paid, rendered repression almost fruitless.
All this was changed. The prohibitions to pages and lackeys to
carry arms were renewed under terrible penalties, which, this
time, were no longer a vain threat. The soldiers and police-agents
were reorganized on a new footing. Wise regulations were promulgated for the lighting, cleaning, and security of Paris, which
at last emerged from its centuries of darkness and dirt, and a new
institution assured the maintenance and vigorous direction of these
salutary innovations. The office of civil lieutenant of the marshal
1 Anciennes Lois frangaises, t. XVIII. p. 18. See the interesting details given by
n. P. Clement on the institution for the poor at Beauvais, a workhouse in which
the indigent were employed, according to their age and strength. Histoire de Colbert, p. 116. The Third Estate, in the States-General of 1614, had asked that hospitals might be established everywhere, but at the expense of the Church, according
to the original destination of ecclesiastical revenues.
2 Boileau, Satire, VI.




1667-1672.             POLICE OF PARIS.                           77
of Paris was suppressed, and its duties were divided between a
new civil lieutenant, charged solely with judicial functions, and a
lieutenant-general of police, having the care of all that pertained
to the security and health of the city, supplies of provisions, surveillance of the markets, fairs, trades' companies, and judgments
of offences to which penalties affecting the person were not attached
(April, 1667). The first police-lieutenant of Paris was the celebrated La Reinie, one of those men of brain and action that
Colbert knew how to choose. The new police was, under its
founders, an instrument of protection and public security; if, later,
it became a machine of espionage, tyranny, and corruption, in the
service of the most shameful passions, they are not to be blamed
for it.'
The institution of lieutenant of police did not despoil the municipal corps of its ancient authority, and the celebrated ordinance of
December, 1672, regulated everything that concerned the police of
the H~tel de Ville and the jurisdiction of the prdvot-des-marchands
and gchevins, and the provisioning and economy of the capital. The
general spirit of this kind of economic charter was to protect the
consumer against monopolies and the coalitions of middlemen,
who placed themselves between him and the producer,2 and to
secure as far as possible the cheapness of commodities; but the
means employed were far from being all satisfactory, and the
authors of the ordinance did not sufficiently understand that, since
middlemen could not be dispensed with, obstacles should not be
put in the way of their legitimate operations that would in the end
injure alike the producer and the consumer. The ordinance, to
facilitate the direct provisioning of the Parisians, went so far as to
interdict to merchants the purchase of any provisions within a
circuit of some leagues around the city, and thus obliged the producers of the environs to bring their own products to the market
of the capital. What was more praiseworthy was the abolition
of the Iiench Company's duties -on transportations by water, "' in
1 Anciennes Lois fianqaises, t. XVIII. p. 100. An edict of January, 1662, had
granted to the Duke de Roannez, the friend of Pascal, and to two other seigniors,
the privilege of establishing carriages at five sous, with conditions nearly analogous
to those of omnibuses. - Ibid. p. 16. -
2 In case of coalition among merchants to monopolize merchandise and raise the
price by storing it in the ports or places where it was purchased in the provinces,
the pr6vdt-des-marchands and ichevins had the power to compel the merchandise to be
brought to Paris, by reimbursing the proprietors. The jurisdiction of the prdvdtdes-marchands and echevins extended over the Seine, the Marne, the Yonne, the Oise,
the Loing and affluents; their judgments were executed by assets, notwithstanding
appeal.




78                LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.                    1666.
order to leave entire freedom to commerce and to stimulate the
merchants, trafficking on the rivers, to bring provisions to Paris;"
of the monopoly of merchandise by water, which was lost in the
night of centuries, there remained nothing more than a light hanse
duty, a Teutonic name that reminds us of the Franks.
The ordinance on the police of Paris was followed by another
edict that makes an epoch in the annals of the capital.  In February, 1674, the sixteen seignioral courts, under whose jurisdiction
a part of the city and nearly all the suburbs still remained, were
suppressed and reunited "to the presidial bench and the provostship and viscountship of Paris, held at Chatelet." The ecclesiastical seigniors and their officers were indemnified by the King.1
All the efforts of government, at different epochs, to arrest the
increase of Paris had been powerless; the walls, extended by
Richelieu, were already too confined. In 1670, the erection was
commenced, on the north side, beyond the limits of Richelieu, of
new boulevards enclosed with walls and planted with trees; these
boulevards, renowned throughout the world, have changed much
in appearance, but have not changed place; only, another Paris
has been formed beyond the razed walls and filled-up ditches.
Important measures concerning the general police of the kingdom accompanied the edicts that specially affected Paris and the
other cities.  Such Was the edict that rigorously interdicted the
establishment of new convents without the express permission of
the King, grounded on the advice of the ecclesiastical and municipal authorities. The convents that should be established without
being authorized should never be able to obtain authority afterwards; this was the indispensable complement of the preceding
interdiction. Rigorous measures were prescribed against bishops,
and royal or municipal officers, who should connive at the violation
of the ordinance. All letters of amortization, granted to communities for property that they might acquire in the future, were
revoked. All communities established within thirty years, diocesan
seminaries excepted, should return their letters of authorization, for
confirmation, suppression, or reunion with other monasteries (December, 1666).2
1 Anciennes Lois franqaises, t. XIX. pp. 25, 129. The Archbishop of Paris was
made brevet duke and peer, with six thousand francs a year as an indemnity. - The
edict of 1674 was not wholly definitive; for the Prior of St. Martin-des-Champs and
the Abbd of St. Germain-des-Pres, succeeded in causing themselves to be reinstated
in their feudal rights (1678-1693).
2 Ancietnnes Loisfitanqaises, t. XVIII. p. 94. A regulation of October, 1670, attacks
a very scandalous and common abuse. Certain ecclesiastics procured cures and




i666-1667.             POPULATION.                         79
An ordinance of November, 1666, offered a significant contrast to
the edict against convents. The King therein declared, that, after
the example of the Romans, imitated by the province of Burgundy
in its particular usages, he had resolved to accord privileges to the
fecundity of marriages. The King, therefore, exempted from all
contribution to public burdens, till the age of twenty-five, those of
his subjects who should marry before they were twenty.  Every
father having ten living children, born in lawful marriage, none of
whom was a priest or a monk, should be exempt from all contribution
to public burdens, either of the state or of the city and community.
A child that had died under the flag should be counted as living.
Every father having twelve children living or dead should be
equally exempt. All subjects liable to the villain tax, not married
at twenty-one, should, on the contrary, be taxed in proportion to
their property, resources, and trade. Noblemen and their wives,
having ten children living or dead in the service, not priests or
monks, should have a pension of one thousand livres; those who
had twelve, should have two thousand livres. The bourgeois not
liable to the villain tax, and inhabitants of free cities and their
wives, should have in the same cases half of the pension granted
to nobles.
In July, 1667, the King went much further: the favors granted
to noblemen, the one thousand and two thousand livres' pension,
were extended to all subjects of the King in like case.1
We will not here discuss the grave and complex problem of
population. For centuries, priests, statesmen, philosophers, have
agreed in representing the indefinite increase of population, the
former, as a sign of Heaven's protection, the latter, as the principle of public prosperity. Since this increase, favored by very
different causes, has become much more rapid, fear has seized most
statesmen and economists, who now behold in it a scourge and the
principle of misery. However it may be with this question which
involves so many others, and which does not carry its solution in
itself, Colbert only put in practice what was the universal opinion
of his times- what was still, in the following century, the opinion
of Montesquieu and Forbonnais.
The exclusion from privileges and pensions of parents who had
children that were priests or monks, must have had an excellent
prebends for the purpose of resigning them to others, at heavy charges, which put
the titulars out of condition to care for their benefices with requisite assiduity and
decency.- Ibid. p. 423.
1 Anciennes Lois franvaises, t. XVIII. pp. 90-190.




80                LOUIS XIV. AND  COLBERT.                     1669.
effect in preventing the inferior nobility and bourgeois from forcibly
imposing the religious profession on their male children; the incitement to marriage before tw-enty-one years of age certainly does not
merit the same eulogy, and cannot be justified from any point of view.
The suppression of seventeen fetes, conceded by the Archbishop
of Paris, and his associates after his example, was for the increase of
production and the comfort of workmen, one of those encouragements the efficaciousness of which none could question. This suppression was far from sufficient, but more could not be obtained.1
SECTION II. - WATERS AND FORESTS. AGRICULTURE. CANALS.
LIKE  the ordinances concerning the courts and the police, the
regulations concerning the domain and the commons, of which we
have spoken above in detail (April, 1667. See ante, pp. 45-50),
and the general regulation for the courts of exchequer, and all the
accountants and financial officers 2 (August, 1669), were so many
applications of Colbert's plan.
It was the same with the magnificent ordinance concerning waters
and forests (August, 1669). If any parts of Colbert's economic
system are difficult to defend against modern economists, here, on
the contrary, it may be affirmed, not only that nothing has been
improved, but that all changes made in the main provisions of Colbert's work have been disastrous. " Meditated and planned during
eight years by Colbert and by twenty-one commissioners, chosen
from among the men most skilful in their specialities, this regulation
alone would have rendered a minister illustrious.  Since Charlemagne, who had also organized the so important service of waters
and forests, a multitude of confused, contradictory laws having
supervened, the overseers, without direction and without responsibility, allowed to private cupidity encroachments most prejudicial
to the public good.  The new regulation.... founded unity of
system in all the provinces and uniformity of jurisprudence for all
offences; it caused the area and extent of forests to be established
1 See (Euvres de Louis XIV. t. II. p. 238; an. 1666. There remained thirty-eight
holidays on which no work was performed, which made, with Sundays, ninety
days of rest every year.
2 Article 43 of this regulation establishes that financial officers taking possession
of their offices since the 1st of January, 1661, who shall not take part hereafter in
revenue contracts and extraordinary transactions, or shall receive only legal interest on loans which they shall make to the king, shall be exempt from all investigation by the board of justice. - Anciennes Loisfrainfaises, t. XVIII. p. 311.




1669.              FORESTS. AGRICULTURE.                         81
with precision, determined the mode of their preservation and management, and the precautions and formalities relating to the cutting
and sale of their products." i  We can only indicate here a few
essential prescriptions: — One fourth of the forests belonging to
the communes and to ecclesiastics should be of large growth, in
conformity with the ordinances of 1573 and 1597. The State had
a right to take, in the forests of individuals and of communities,
the timber necessary for the navy and royal houses, by paying the
just value estimated by experts. Rules were prescribed for all
subjects of the King to oblige them  to preserve in their woods a
sufficient quantity of trees of large growth. Those who possessed
forests of heavy timber within ten leagues of the sea and two
leagues of navigable rivers, could only sell them, or cause them to
be used, by giving six months' notice in advance to the grandmaster of waters and forests and the comptroller-general of finances, under penalty of three thousand francs' fine and confiscation
of the timber cut or sold. Other articles secured the maintenance
of forest-roads and tow-paths along the rivers.  All tolls established without title on the rivers within a century were suppressed,
under penalty of quadruple the amount collected, against the
seigniors or their farmers who exacted them; none of these
duties, even with title, should be preserved where it was not justified by the maintenance of a causeway, ferry-boat, dam, or bridge,
at the expense of the seignior or proprietor.
The interest of maritime and fluvial navigation was predominant in the forest code of 1669; it was for the navy and commercial marine that Louis XIV. and Colbert, as they declared in such
noble terms in the preamble of the edict, protected with so much
solicitude the large timber proper for ship-building; agriculture,
however, was by no means forgotten in this management of the
part of territory which did not belong to it, but which exercised
over its domain a mysterious influence. Not only was the clearingup of forests prohibited without express authority, but it appears
1 See Clement, Histoire de Colbert, p. 243. The jurisdiction of the judges of waiers and forests was very extensive, and comprised, among other things, the offences
of hunting and fishing, devastations and enterprises detrimental to rivers. The penalty for the offences of hunting was somewhat softened by the edict of 1669; the
penalty of death disappeared. The prohibition was renewed to all common people
and those not possessing fiefs, seigniories, or high judicial position, to hunt in any
manner, under penalty of fine, and of pillory and temporary banishment for a third
offence. By way of compensation, there was a rigorous prohibition to seigniors to
hunt on lands where the crops were up, and in vineyards after the 1st of May.
Anciennes Lois franfaises, t. XVIII. p. 219.
VOL. I.             11




82               LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.                    1669.
that all lands of steep declivity were subjected to forest-regulations,   a disposition of admirable forethought, which, if it had
been maintained, would have spared France the fatal consequences
of having her mountain-sides stripped of timber! The ordinance
concerning waters and forests was one of those monuments that
may be overturned, but not replaced, for they are order and reason
themselves, and the forest code of 1827 is far from being an improvement on the code of 1669. Nothing more could be desired
for France than the forest system of 1669,1 completed by a system
of irrigation and a system of promoting new forest-growth.
With the ordinance concerning waters and forests, we have just
touched upon agriculture, to which also relates, in its most important articles, the ordinance on the police of Paris. The moment
has come to examine the administration of Colbert under a new
aspect; after having examined the regulation of revenues, the system of imposts, courts, and police, - whatever concerns the direction and conservation of existing forces, - it is necessary to pass
to what may be called the superior part of the government, that
is, to the direct or indirect creation of forces and new wealth, to
production or incitement to production.  This is, above all, the
work in which enlightened governments show themselves the ministers of Providence; it is also the work in which the firmest
views may be troubled, in which the imperfection of human faculties arrests, sometimes leads astray, the greatest geniuses.
The measures adopted by Colbert on the subject of agricultural
products have raised up against his memory warm and incessant
attacks since the middle of the eighteenth century. The system of
a government and of an epoch ought not to be judged according to
purely abstract maxims, without taking into account the state of
the country and the anterior legislation. This is, however, what
the antagonists of the great minister have done; they have gone
further; they have accepted false data without verifying them;
they have followed unfaithful guides, and even when they may
have been right concerning principles, they have been completely
deceived concerning the facts.
The starting-point of all this polemic is in the two works of
Bois-Guillebert.2 The economists of the eighteenth century, allured
1 It is understood that we are only speaking of what regards the system of
administration.
2 Detail de la France, 1697; Factum de la France, 1707; followed by Traitd des
Grains. We had approached this author with the most favorable prejudices; but he
is one of those who must not be proved by the touchstone of history! We here
judge only the historic part of his works; we have not yet to occupy ourselves




1661.                    AGRICULTURE.                            83
by the new and audacious propositions, by the trenchant assertions,
by the kind of incorrect and abrupt eloquence of this precursor of
their doctrines, have, for the most part, confidently repeated his
judgments on the past, and when the most learned and impartial
among them, Forbonnais, recovering from the sort of surprise which
he too had for a moment experienced, had overthrown all this scaffolding of ill-digested facts, false dates, and disputed figures, which
had already been so rudely shocked by the good sense of Voltaire,
the others appeared to take little account of it, and certain of their
successors seem to-day to have completely forgotten it.
To appreciate the value of the accusation framed by Bois-Guillebert, it is necessary to sum it up in all its crudity. If we are to
believe this writer, "during eleven hundred years, the subsidies
had been proportioned in France to the ability of the tax-payers,
as they still are in the rest of the world, even in the most barbarous
countries!".... The roads had been free (from  tolls), the
commerce free, in France as elsewhere!.... Thanks to the
parliaments, the palladium  and tutelary deity of ETrance, the kingdom " found itself, in 1660, in the most flourishing state in which
it had ever been seen.'" After 1660 or 1661, after the accession
of pretended great men, everything grew worse, everything was
lost; the revenue of France diminished five or six hundred
millions a year, — five or six hundred millions is saying much
too little, —fifteen hundred millions! —in thirty or forty years
(he wrote in 1697) France had lost half her revenue; property
had lost half its value; consumption had diminished three fourths.
The causes of this ruin were the arbitrary and ill-regulated villain
tax, the increase of aids, tolls, and customs, the extraordinary transactions with the revenue-farmers, lastly, the shackles put on commerce in grain, and the efforts of government to maintain corn at
a low price, which crushed the producers of the primary wealth of
the country.
We fancy ourselves dreaming on beholding these monstrous paradoxes rise up before us. Freedom of transactions, comfort, just
proportion of burdens reigning during the whole of the Middle Ages,
and maintained throughout the world, except in France under Colwith his intentions or his theoretical views; we will only say that an impartial examination of the whole of his labors enables us to comprehend at once both the
contempt of Voltaire and the admiration of economists. It is singular that the
same mind should have exhibited so little judgment and criticism in the appreciation of facts, and so much force and, at times, penetration, in the investigation of
economic laws. Recueil des kconlomistes financiers du XVIIIe siclce, published by M.
E. Daire, pp. 171, 244, 254, 261, 265, 308. Paris, Guillaumin, 1843.




84                 LOUIS XIV. AND  COLBERT.                       1661.
bert! France, at the height of prosperity during foreign and civil
wars and universal pillage, precipitated by Colbert from the summit
of this prosperity! The abuses of the villain tax, of aids, of tolls,
of transactions with the revenue-farmers, imputed to Colbert, who
rescued France from the revenue-farmers; who touched the vil*lain tax only to diminish it and to repress its abuses by the same
means as Sulli; who touched the aids, at least during the first ten
years of his ministry, only to reduce them, and to demand the
increase of revenue from the increase of consumption, - an infallible sign of the increase of public comfort; who finally touched the
tolls and exportation duties (except on corn) only to diminish their
number and magnitude!.
To set forth such follies is to refute them! There remains, however, a serious question, - that of the commerce in grain, and the
restrictions on this commerce.
And, in the first place, did there exist, before Colbert, on this
matter, a system of liberty, and did Colbert substitute for it a system of prohibition?
No; there existed no such system! The system anterior to
Colbert consisted in alternate exportation without duties or restriction, and sudden prohibition. Unlimited exportation with absence of storehouses, produced dearness: l tardy prohibition did not
bring back the products carried away at a low price by foreigners, did not calm the panics that exaggerated the dearness much
beyond the real deficit, and the shackles put on internal circulation by the local authorities changed dearness into famine; the
reservations of grain maintained by some cities, better administered than others, only relieved those cities, and did not prevent
men from dying with famine roundabout.2 It may be admitted
1 The authority did not store, prohibited the merchants from storing, and allowed
cultivators to store only within certain limits.
2 M. Pierre Cldment, in his estimable and conscientious Histoire de Colbert, in
which we regret that he has yielded too much to the prejudices of economists, says
that free trade in grain had been a common right, from Charlemagne to the end of
the reign of Charles V. This is a grave error; there was no common right in the
Middle Ages; all the excesses of despotism and all the abuses of license were then
contending; the circulation of grain was then subjected to panics and the caprices
of seigniors, communes, and royal officers. The extreme difficulty of transportation must have rendered commerce in grain to any distance almost void. See
Bailli, Histoirefinanciere de la France, t. I. p. 57, on the Establishments of St. Louis,
who strove to destroy within the royal domain the most crying abuses and monopolies, by determining the exceptional cases in which the exportation of grain from
one province to another might be interdicted. Under Philip of Valois, an edict
prohibited all purchase of grain except for immediate consumption. Analogous
measures abound in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.




1661.                   AGRICULTURE.                         85
that exportation was oftener permitted than prohibited, and that dearness was frequent: the people, wrote Jean Bodin in the sixteenth
century, liked war better than peace, because in times of war grain
remained in France instead of passing to England and Spain. Under
the ministry of L'HIospital, restrictive measures predominated both
within and without. The most ancient attempt made to generalize
the principles of forecast adopted by certain cities belongs to Chancellor Birague, the first of our ministers who regulated the material
interests of the kingdom according to a systematic plan: an edict
of 1577 prescribed to all cities to maintain reserves for three
months, and ordered free circulation from province to province.
At the same time, the prohibition of 1569 to proprietors and farmers to hoard their corn more than two years in their granaries was
renewed. Sulli himself by no means erected free exportation into
a legal principle; he favored it by permissions which he seems to
have renewed annually, and maintained with firmness internal circulation against the local authorities, always ready to trammel it.
The alternations of exportation and prohibition began again
under Louis XIII. and Mazarin: there were enormous variations in
price, - cruel scarcities; it may be affirmed that never, since the
religious wars, had the country districts been so unfortunate as
during the period from 1650 to 1660, presented by Bois-Guillebert
as the culminating point of prosperity.
Louis XIV. and Colbert took the government in hand under painful circumstances. After three years of high and almost insupportable price, corn had risen at a fearful rate in consequence of the bad
harvest of 1661, and the parliament of Paris, by a decree issued a
fortnight before the fall of Fouquet (August 19, 1661), had prohibited merchants from forming any association for commerce in corn,
and from making any accumulation of grain, and authorized the
courts of justice to reserve, for the consumption of the people of
their districts, the corn harvested within the region of their jurisdiction. It was thus that the parliaments, those tutelary deities of France,
as they are called by Bois-Guillebert, protected free commerce in
grain, which this same Bois-Guillebert proclaims the salvation of
the state. And the decree of 1661 was by no means an exceptional fact.  This decree, reproduced by the other parliaments,
did not fail to aggravate the evil that it was designed to combat.
The scarcity, in some provinces, reached the most frightful famine.l
1 Forbonnais, Recherches sur les finances de France, t. I. p. 291; and Observations
economiques, t. II. pp. 14-17; Bailli, Histoire financiere de la France, p. 452. See the
mournful details given by M. P. Clement concerning the misery of the central




86                LOUIS XIV. AND  COLBERT.                 1662-1683.
The King and the minister did all that it was possible to do, according to the notions of the times.  In spite of the decrees of the
parliaments, which Colbert is wrongly accused of having maintained,
the government obliged the provinces to succor each other and to
succor Paris;  it constrained "private individuals to open their
storehouses and to offer their products for sale at an equitable
price;" these are, at least, the very words of Louis XIV. in his
Memoirs (t. I. p. 152). We may condemn, in the name of science, the maximum, which, moreover, is almost always illusory;
but it is just to remember that the fixing of the price of products
by royal, provincial, and municipal authority had always existed in
right and in fact; we also find products taxed in the customs, in
the permanent laws.2 The importation of foreign grain was habitually free; the government invited it by exempting from the duty
of thirty sous per ton all foreign vessels laden with corn; grain
purchased at the expense of the public treasury was brought from
Dantzic and other remote ports, which the state resold in part at a
moderate price, and gratuitously distributed the rest. The King
had one hundred thousand pounds of bread distributed every day
at two sous per pound. An attempt was made to relieve cities
with  corn, the country districts with money.  These remedies
were, however, very insufficient. The evil, which reached its
climax during the summer of 1662, diminished but little after the
harvest of that year, which was not good, and did not cease before
the harvest of 1663.3
These calamities produced a profound impression on Colbert.
He sought means of preventing their recurrence. The previous
r6gime, under which they drifted at random for years from one
extreme to the other, seemed to him condemned by its fruits.
He formed a system: this was by no means, as has been repeatedly affirmed, absolute prohibition to export, it was prohibition or
permission with duties or even without duties, according to the
provinces; Histoire de Colbert, p. 118, et seq. According to M. Clement, the price
of a muid of corn, from one hundred and fifty-eight livres, which it was in February, 1659,- a price already very high, - rose to three hundred and forty-six
livres at Paris in June, 1662. In the provinces it was much worse. The muid sold
at Blois as high as six hundred and fifty livres.
I It was necessary to employ constraint to cause twenty-five thousand sacks of
corn to be brought from Guienne to Paris, which the parliament of Bordeaux
wished to retain. P. Clement, Histoire de Colbert, p. 112.
2 See Dutot, Essai sur le Commerce, in the Recueil des Economistes financiers du dixhuitieme siecle.
8 CEuvres de Louis XIV. t. I.; Mgmoires et Instructions, p. 153. Lettres de G. Patin,
cited by M. P. Clement, Histoire de Colbert, p. 112.




1661-1683.               GRAIN TRADE.                            87
estimate of the harvest and national resources annually made by
the government.  The decrees in council relating to grain, during
the first years that followed the scarcity of 1661-1663, have not
been preserved; but we possess a great number of them from 1669
to 1683, and it is seen by these that exportation was authorized
nine years out of fourteen. Eight decrees authorize it, in consideration of a duty of twenty-two francs per muid; five, with duties
one half or three fourths less; eight, with exemption from all duties.
The maximum of twenty-two francs per muid would represent a
duty of from two francs to two francs thirty-five centimes, or thereabouts, of our money per hectolitre,' in which there is indeed nothing exorbitant. It is important to add, that the prohibition during five years out of fourteen was not a normal state in the eyes
of Colbert, and that the decrees in council oftenest gave as a reason for it the necessity of subsisting large bodies of troops during
the war with Holland, and of preventing the enemy from seeking
resources in France. In time of peace the prohibition would have
been rarer.
This is certainly not saying that the system adopted by Colbert
was the best possible; it had grave defects; it did not give to dealers in grain, useful agents for equalizing prices, the latitude necessary to calculate their operations; and, on the other hand, it did
not regulate importation, which ought to be governed by a law
corresponding to the law of exportation, under penalty of injuring
the national producer. It is to be regretted that Colbert did not
reach the idea of a sliding scale of duties, to which his conception
might have led him; 2 but we cannot accuse him if, as all evidence
tends to show, he did better than any one else had done before him.
Colbert, it must be acknowledged, did not desire that France
should have a large foreign commerce in grain; laboring to create
a powerful manufacturing interest, and, consequently, to develop
internal consumption by creating a manufacturing population by the
side of the agricultural population, he preferred that the products
of France should serve to nourish French workmen. Was he so
1 The muid weighed 18TH70 hectolitres. The silver mark was 26 fr. 10s. before
1678; 29fr. 6s. 11d. from 1679 to 1683. Bois-Guillebert speaks of a duty of 66fr.
per muid; this duty never existed under Colbert, and was apparently established by
his successors.'2 We do not speak of the fixed duty, equal on importation and exportation,
which highly enlightened minds prefer to a sliding scale. This system was much
farther from the order of ideas followed by Colbert. It has great advantages for
commerce; but, in case of scarcity, it would encounter grave difficulties: —how
maintain an importation duty in the presence of a famishing people l




88               LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.               1661-1683.
wrong, at least in the present? After all, the especial market for
products of prime necessity is the internal market; all increase of
population or of comfort in the country, every improvement in
roads and canals, opens to the agricultural producer an outlet superior to remote outlets. The importation and exportation of grain
amounts, in ordinary times, to but little in comparison with the
consumption of a great people. Foreign commerce ought to be
considered less in itself than for its influence on opinion; it is destined to be a kind of regulator of prices which hinders products
from falling too low, by the possibility of tempting fortune abroad,
and which hinders them from rising artificially by opposing to the
manceuvres of monopolists the possibility of foreign competition.
The real evil under Colbert was much less in the restrictions on
exportation than in the fetters on internal commerce. The ordinances on the police of Paris, especially the great ordinance of
December, 1672, bristle with restraints and rigorous formalities.
It is interdicted to sell grain elsewhere than in places designated
for this purpose. It is forbidden to meet products and purchase
them on the way. It is forbidden to purchase products in ports for
the purpose of selling them there again. Dealers and hotel-keepers are forbidden to purchase except at certain hours and in small
quantities. Aliens (merchants from without) must sell in the port
itself the grain and flour brought by water, and neither land nor
store them, except by permission of the local authorities, in case
the merchandise should be in danger of spoiling; the products,
in this case, must be brought back into port again, within a given
time, to be sold there.  The sale once opened, -the first price
accepted cannot be increased. It is prohibited to purchase corn
unripe and befbre the harvest.
Some of these prescriptions might have been necessary; but
there are others that no one at the present time would support, and
that must have been injurious at any time. In this, however, no
more than in what regarded exportation, did Colbert render the former order worse. The ordinance of 1672 was nothing else, in this
respect, than the ordinance of 1415 rejuvenated, which had never
ceased to be the code of the police of the Hotel de Ville.1 All
that the great minister can here be reproached with is not having
made improvements.
Now, what were the effective results of Colbert's administration
on the price of grain and the prosperity of agriculture? It is cer1 Anciennes Lois francaises, t. XIX. p. 25. See ante, p. 77, and compare with the
edict of 1415; Anciennes Loisfranfaises, t. VIII. p. 430.




1661-1683.             GRAIN TRADE.                         89
tain that Colbert was much occupied with the idea of preventing
the excessive variations that crushed the poor consumer and were
by no means for the true interest of the producer; but is it true
that, under him, the cultivator was ruined by permanent depreciation in the price of his products? See on what a basis Bois-Guillebert affirms it; he establishes a pretended economic law according
to which the price of corn, from the middle of the sixteenth to the
middle of the seventeenth century, must have doubled every thirty
years, in consequence of the greater abundance of the precious
metals, and parallel with the rise in value of all other commodities.
After 1660, this progress must have been violently arrested; the
price of corn must have fallen instead of continuing to increase
like that of other commodities. Supposing the figures given byBois-Guillebert to be authentic, he should not have confounded the
nominal with the intrinsic value of money, - an error that he commits continually,- and he should have reduced the nominal livre
of 1550 and that of 1650 to the common standard of the silver
mark. Not only has he not done this, but, were it done for him,
his law of increase, thus reduced, would still remain a gross exaggeration, for his figures are controverted.  According to Dupr6
de Saint-Maur and Forbonnais, the price of the Paris setier was
equivalent, on the average, in the middle of the sixteenth century,
to thirteen or fourteen livres; I under Charles IX. and Henri III.,
in the years when the civil war was not raging, it was worth fifteen
or sixteen livres; under Henri IV., twenty or thirty years later,
at the eminently agricultural epoch of Sulli and Olivier de Serres,
fifteen or sixteen livres still; the advance did not come until under
Louis XIII., from 1621 to 1626, when the price rose to twentythree livres eight sous, then to thirty-seven livres, but on account,
of scarcity, and when the government of Richelieu strove to arrest
this accidental advance by prohibiting exportation. Finally, under
Mazarin, from 1637 to 1660, the setier cost a little more than
twenty-five livres. In a century and more, the value therefore
had not quite doubled; but, what is more, the twenty-five livres
were not a normal price, but a price elevated by scarcity of products, the result of the misery and discouragement of the peasant.
It was natural, then, that abundance of production and security of
labor should cause a fall of price under Colbert, the famine of
1662 once past; the average, from 1665 to 1685, seems to have
1 We follow the valuations made by Forbonnais in the money of his time (about
1760); the relation of the livre or franc to the mark has since undergone a variation
of ten per cent.
VOL. I.           12




90                  LOUIS XIV. AND  COLBERT.                    1661-1683:
been about twenty-two livres, with fewer variations and crises than
had before been seen.1 This price was, to the price in the time of
Sulli, almost as three to two, and would now be equivalent to fifteen
francs the hectolitre; this price, despite the enormous depreciation
which money has undergone within a century and a half, would
even to-day be too low by only about one fourth.
Are these the ruinous conditions, the crushing of agriculture,
which have been the subject of so much declamation? 2.. Not
1 Forbonnais, Observations ceconomiques, t. I. pp. 3-12. Averages are of value in
statistics, only when they bear on a period that has not been traversed by extraordinary crises. In a period of ten years, one year of famine renders the average
price of grain altogether illusory. M. Clement, Histoire de Colbert, p. 276, gives the
average from 1643 to 1662 compared with that from 1663 to 1682. In the first of
these periods there were two famines, in 1650 and 1662, to say nothing of scarcities; in the second there were none. There is, then, no room for comparison.
2 We find in the documents following the Me'moires sur les Grands-Jours d'Auvergne,
p. 401, a tariff of provisions at Clermont in 1665-1666, which proves that the price
of bread was by no means low in comparison with other edibles. Bread of pure
wheat was rated at nine deniers for ten ounces, which would be at the present time
about twelve and three quarter centimes the half kilogramme. Bread two thirds
wheat and one third rye, was ten denriers the pound, nearly thirty-five centimes the
loaf of two kilogrammes. Beef was two sous the pound, (now twenty centimes);
mutton and veal, three sous the pound (thirty centimes); a pair of capons, from twenty to thirty sous (two to three francs); meat was therefore proportionally cheaper
than bread. We have in our hands the titles and leases of a piece of land in Vexin,
one of the districts in which Bois-Guillebert has sought most of his examples; of all
the period of time between the middle of the seventeenth and the middle of the
eighteenth centuries, the first half of Colbert's ministry, the half during which this
minister directed France according to his principles, offers the highest price of farmrent. Conclusions cannot be drawn from a particular fact; but we are persuaded
that this fact would be reproduced in almost every instance in which analogous
researches should be made. Forbonnais, at a period, however, when he had not yet
wholly rejected the data of Bois-Guillebert, demonstrated, in his Recherches sur les
finances de France, t. I. pp. 297-299, that the condition of the country people was
much worse about 1750 than in the times of Colbert; one of the causes of this
decline, according to him, was a depreciation in the price of grain posterior to the
death of Colbert that had become permanent, so that in 1754, corn, contrary to the
increased value of everything else, was much lower than in 1683. The restrictions
on commerce, greatly aggravated after Colbert, may have rendered the depreciation
exaggerated in France; but the depreciation was general in Europe, a fact independent of laws and police; and England, while adopting, subsequent to 1688, a
system of factitious rise by premiums on exportation and restrictions on importation, had succeeded only in maintaining at home an average of twenty-two livres
ten sous the setier, almost exactly the average of Colbert. See Observations ceconomiques, t. II. p. 18, et seq., on the causes of this depreciation. The most general
cause must be the extension itself of the cultivation of wheat, which formerly was
a luxury, and which being produced more economically by improved processes of
cultivation, has become the aliment of the majority. We have followed the figures
of Forbonnais; those of Messance (Recherches sur la population) are still more favorable to Colbert in an agricultural point of view. We may therein follow the gradual
depreciation of corn from the beginning to the middle of the eighteenth century. -
We are astonished that M. Joubleau, in his Etudes sur Colbert, rich in facts and new




1663.                       CATTLE.                                 91
only was the price of grain not reduced under Colbert, but its depreciation was not sufficient to secure wheat bread at a moderate price
to all the workmen in the shops created by this minister, and the
majority among the laboring classes were obliged to continue to live
on inferior grain.
If, on examining by itself the delicate question of commerce in
grain, and recognizing the abuses of the restrictive system, we have
nevertheless seen the phantasmagoria evoked against Colbert dispelled; if we have been compelled to acknowledge that the rural
districts were in a better condition' under him than they had been
before, than they were for many years2 afterwards, how will it be
if we turn from the question of grain to the other phase of the
agricultural problem - to the question of cattle? What is, in the
eyes of every agriculturist, the true sign of agricultural prosperity?
- the multiplication of cattle, the generator of abundant harvests,
and the source of the laborer's profits.
Let us see what Colbert did on this subject.
After having promised gratuities and premiums to receivers of
the villain taxes who should collect the impost within a given time,
without prosecutions or constraints,3 he passed to direct encouragements.
In 1663, the ancient prohibition to seize beasts of labor for the
villain tax was renewed.
The duty on cloven-footed cattle was abolished twenty leagues
around Paris.
The poverty of most of the farmers and metayers did not permit
them to procure cattle for the purpose of fattening them, in addition
to their beasts for labor and the road; many of them were not even
owners of their teams; it was necessary to encourage landholders
documents, should not have paid more attention to the decisive observations of
Forbonnais, and that he should have repeated that Colbert "dealt a mortal blow to
agriculture."
1 Better, or not so bad, if you prefer; for, good it could not be, as long as feudal
rights, tithes, arbitrary villain tax, and compulsory salt-tax subsisted. Here the
hand of a great minister was not sufficient!-Apropos of this, let us remark in
passing that it is pretended that tithes did not burden the peasants, that they only
diminished the rent of the indolent landholder; as if there were no peasant landholders! Many peasants were already in full proprietorship of parcels of land; a
multitude of others had lands on perpetual lease, which was a true proprietorship
only burdened with an invariable rent; they indeed paid tithes to their cost!
2 The grievous facts that are cited by M. Cldment (pp. 278-279), and which are
posterior to 1672, prove conclusively that there was still great misery in the rural
districts, but not that this misery had not been, and would not again become much
more general and permanent.
8 Bailli, Histoire financiere de France, t. I. p. 491.




92                 LOUIS XIV. AND  COLBERT.                1663-1670.
and capitalists to lease the cattle to the farmers for half the profit.'
An ordinance, therefore, intervened, which prohibited the seizure,
for the villain tax of those hiring cattle for half the profit, of more
than one fifth of the cattle thus leased, and the seizure of anything
on account of the solidarity between the hirers and their coparishioners.2
In 1667, a disposition of the Code Louis (tit. XXXII. art. 14)
ordered that in case of seizure, one cow, three sheep, and two goats
should be exempt.
The same year, the ordinance on the commons, in the sequel of
the excellent dispositions mentioned above (p. 50), proclaimed the
following prescription:
" Inasmuch as it would be impossible to reestablish the cultivation
of lands, and to improve them by manures while leaving the cattle
subject to seizures, we prohibit bailiffs and sergeants from seizing
or selling cattle for four years, either for the debts of communities
or of private individuals, under penalty of loss of office, and 3000
livres' fine, without prejudice to the privilege of creditors who
shall have let cattle on shares, and of proprietors of farms and
lands for their rents and shares of crops."
The prohibition to seize cattle for debt was renewed every four
years, as long as Colbert lived.
The effect of these measures was such that, after 1669, France
not only needed no longer to seek cattle abroad, either for herself
or her colonies, but had them to sell, to use Colbert's own words.
The multiplication of cattle was so rapid, that it exceeded the needs
of consumption, less ready to increase, and that the country people
complained, in 1670, of not finding a ready sale for their cattle.
They had, nevertheless, been protected, both by an increase of
duties on importation, which almost wholly excluded cattre from
Germany and Flanders, and by the suppression of import and
export duties on cattle between the provinces.3 Colbert, moreover,
if he felt the influence of the prejudice against the storing of corn
by the merchants, none the less maintained within the kingdom
1 We know that by this kind of contract the farmer divides with the lender the
increase and profit of the cattle lent, and returns, when the lease expires, the same
number of head that he received.
2 Forbonnais, Recherches sur les finances, t. I. p. 320. - Even after these important
restrictions on seizure for the villain tax, Colbert also expressly recommended to
tax-gatherers to seize the non-exempt cattle only very rarely, " at the last extrem.
ity, and in order to terrify." - P. Clement, Histoire de Cotbert, p. 267.
8 Letters of Colbert of June 10, 1669, in Forbonnais, Recherches sur les finances, t,
I. p. 321, and of November 28, 1670, in P. Clement, p. 268.




1665-1670.            HORSES. RIQUET.                         93
the free circulation of grain as well as of cattle,- these two questions must not be confounded.1
The increase and improvement of breeds of horses, the noblest
branch of the domestication of animals, the most important perhaps
on account of its double relation to agricultural wealth and military
power, could not fail to share the cares of Colbert with the multiplication of cattle.  He occupied himself with this immediately
after his accession, and here, as for the waters and forests, what he
did has remained the model of all that can and should be done. A
decree in council was rendered, October 17, 1665, for the purpose
of reistablishing the studs ruined by past wars and disorders, and
" even of increasing them in such a manner, that the subjects of the
King should no longer be obliged to carry their money into foreign
countries to buy horses." The King had caused stallions to be
purchased in Friesland, Holland, Denmark, and Barbary, and
ordered the distribution of coach-horses on the coast, from Brittany
to Garonne, " where there were mares of the requisite size for this
purpose," and of barbs in the interior of Poitou, Saintonge, and
Auvergne.  Divers privileges were granted to private individuals
in charge of stallions, which were confided to land-holders in easy
circumstances in preference to assembling them in expensive establishments; brood mares and their foals were not to be seized for
villain taxes, imposts, or debts of communities.2
Not less essential to agriculture than the encouragements to
improve breeds of cattle and horses, was the amelioration of means
of transportation by land and water, also urgently required by
manufactures and commerce.  What indeed would be the use of
producing commodities that could not be made to reach consumers?
Colbert did much towards opening national highways; he resumed
the work of Henri IV. and Sulli, repaired the old roads, opened
new ones, began that excellent system of royal highways, which
was continued, after him, by the eighteenth century, protected the
navigability of rivers against the usurpations of those living along
their course who obstructed them, and crowned his labors of this kind
by an imperishable creation, the canal of the Two Seas. Doubtless,
the chief glory belongs to the extraordinary man who, without the
aid of science and by the sole force of his natural genius, dared to
1 It is also necessary to add to the benefits of Colbert towards the people of the
country the ordinance by which the inhabitants of Picardy, Champagne, and Troistveches, who had so cruelly suffered by the war, obtained a remission of half the
ground-rents which they had been unable to pay from the commencement of the
war to 1661. See Forbonnais, Recherches, etc., t. I. p. 313.
2 Anciennes Lois frianfaises, t. XVIII. p. 63.




94              LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.                 1665.
conceive and knew how  to realize the colossal enterprise that
prejudice declared impossible; but this man would never have
reached his end, had he not met a man at the summit of power,
who understood him, loved him, and sustained him with an unconquerable perseverance against the obstacles of prejudice and envy.
Patrons like Colbert are required for inventors like Riquet.
The idea of uniting the Ocean and the Mediterranean by a canal
was not new. It seemed as if the territorial unity of France would
not be complete, so long as our maritime commerce should be
obliged to make the immense circuit of Spain in order to pass from
one of our seas to the other. As soon as French engineering, improving on the inventions of Italy, had made, in the sixteenth
century, the decisive discovery of canals with locks, and as soon as
it was judged possible to connect the channels of two rivers in spite
of the elevated land between them, Adam de Crapone, the great
Provencal engineer, proposed the union of the two seas by the way
of the Garonne, the Arigge, and the Aude. The most brilliant
hopes were attached to this idea; it was imagined that the commerce, not only of France, but of Europe, would desert the way of
the Straits of Gibraltar, as soon as a passage should be opened to
it through southern France. The Religious Wars ensued, which
postponed all labors and all improvements; then Henri IV. and
Sulli, without failing to recognize the value of Crapone's project,
attached themselves to another project of this illustrious man, and
opened the canal of Briare, as the starting-point of a great system
of canalization. Subsequently, surveys had been repeatedly ordered
by the governors and Estates of Languedoc; but the canal of the
Two Seas still remained a mere project. The difference of elevation between Upper and Lower Languedoc, the dryness and inequality of the ground, the enormous difficulty of making use of the
waters of the Black Mountains,l which were alone sufficient to feed
the canal, appalled the boldest. A young officer of finances, " a salttax man," as he modestly calls himself in his correspondence, almost
illiterate and destitute of mathematical knowledge, but a born geometrician like Pascal, resolved the problem by patient observations
directed by that instinct or rather that miraculous intuition which
makes inventors. Pierre-Paul Riquet found the most available
point of departure, not between the Ariige and the Aude, where
Crapone sought it,'but between the two small rivers of Fresques
and Lers, which flow, the first into the Aude, the second into the
1 A great detached branch of the Cevennes, which runs southwesterly in the
direction of the Pyrenees, and almost connects those two mountain ranges.




1665-1672.       CANAL OF LANGUEDOC.                    95
Garonne. This was at the place called Pierres-de-Naurouse, not
far from Castelnaudary, two hundred and fifty-three metres above
the two seas. Master of his whole plan and certain of success, he
addressed himself to Colbert, and intrepidly proposed to make at
his own expense the first trial of a water conduit on a small scale.
He was authorized and succeeded (1665).
The enterprise was decided upon; but the cost would be great:
neither the King nor Colbert wished to put the entire expense on
the treasury, and the Estates of Languedoc showed nothing but illwill. Riquet proposed to become the contractor for as well as the
engineer of the canal, provided, that the King would undertake to
indemnify the proprietors whose lands should be taken, and provided that the canal, the feeders, and the tow-paths should be
given to him in perpetual fief with the exclusive right to build, on
the banks of the canal, mills, storehouses, etc. The question
whether it would be proper that the canal should remain in the
hands of the state, or should be alienated to private individuals,
was debated in the council of the King. The offer of Riquet was
accepted. It is quite improbable that Colbert should have regarded
the abandonment of the property of the great public highways to
private individuals, as a thing good in itself; the imperfection of
the means and the personnel at the disposal of government, at a
time when the state could not even directly collect the whole of its
taxes, and found itself under the necessity of giving up the greater
part of them to revenue-farmers, evidently decided Colbert to follow
the example set by Richelieu, at the time of the completion of the
canal of Briare (from 1638 to 1642). It is a pity that the government of Louis XIV. did not follow the middle course of a very
long lease, of a centenary emphyteusis.
An edict of October, 1666, gave the force of law to the proposition of Riquet. The King fixed the tolls to be collected on transportation, and, by creating a certain number of vendible offices for
the benefit of the contractor, indirectly obliged the Estates of.
Languedoc to bear their share in the expense by redeeming these
burdensome offices.
Riquet devoted the whole of the rest of his life to the execution
of his great work; eight thousand, ten thousand, sometimes as many
as twelve thousand workmen labored on it incessantly during nearly
fifteen years. Feeders twenty leagues long intercepted on the
wild sides of the Black Mountains the torrents that they conducted
to the basin of Naurouse, the point of separation from which the
two branches of the canal were directed, the one towards the Aude,




96              LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.             1672-1681.
the other towards the Garonne. As a security against drought,
an enormous dam in masonry was built across the valley of St.
Ffreol, in the Black Mountains, below Revel; in this valley the
waters shed by the mountains were arrested in their course and
formed into an artificial lake seven thousand two hundred feet long,
three thousand feet wide, and a hundred and twenty feet deep.
The shorter of the two branches of the canal, which rejoins the
Garonne at Toulouse, was completed in 1672; the other, more
than three times as long, required eight or nine years more, and
was combined with another great undertaking.
It had been ascertained that the Aude could not be made use of,
the watercourse being insufficient, and that it was necessary to
continue the eastern branch of the canal to the sea. The double
mouth of the Aude, by Narbonne and by Vendres, terminated in
shallow lagunes (the marshy lakes of Bages and Vendres), which
empty into a shallow roadstead. The Aude was left to the right;
the beds of several rivers, the Orbe, Hlrault, etc., were crossed
and the canal was directed to Lake Thau, the only one of the salt
lakes on this coast that could float large ships. Between the lake
and the sea rises the promontory of Cette, at the foot of which the
Estates of Languedoc, in 1598, had already established a port.
The canal was made to terminate in Lake Thau, then the lake was
connected with the port by another canal, a thousand paces long,
and the port was dug out to render it capable of receiving vessels
of five or six hundred tons burden. The position was so happily
chosen, that Cette is still at this day the only notable port of Languedoc, and is of constantly increasing importance.
Riquet had not the joy of inaugurating his glorious work himself: he died, October 1, 1680, and the junction of the two seas was
completed in the spring of 1681. The canal of Languedoc is about
fifty-six leagues (twenty-five to the degree) long from Toulouse to
Cette, and seventy-five locks carry it over the intervening elevation. Its depth is nine feet; its width forty feet. It cost about
seventeen millions (almost double in the present currency). The
admiration testified by Vauban, when he inspected the works after
the death of Riquet, is the measure of the respect merited by this
creation superior to the most imposing works of the Romans. The
material result was not so magnificent as had been hoped; the
inconveniences of transshipping merchandise and the uncertainties
of navigation on the Garonne, prevented foreign commerce from
abandoning the Straits of Gibraltar for the new route offered to it;
but the canal was none the less anr inestimable boon to the interior




1678-1692.            CANAL OF ORLEANS.                           97
communications of the different parts of the south of France, and
especially to exchanges between the agricultural region of Toulouse
and Agen and the manufacturing region of Lower Languedoc.
The canal, to use the expression of d'Aguesseau, became the soul
and life of Languedoc.'
The work of the canalization of France was not again interrupted: before the end of the seventeenth century, the canal of the
Two Seas was prolonged, under different names, from Cette to
Aigues-Mortes, and to the Rhone, and went to seek the salt and wine
of those countries at the places where they were produced. During this time a new communication was opened between the Loire
and the Seine. The canal of Briare, that debouches at Montargis
on the Loing, a navigable affluent of the Seine, secured communication between the Upper Loire and Paris, as far as the caprices
of this river would permit; but the boats of the Lower Loire,
during summer droughts and east winds, could only ascend as far
as Briare.  The King's brother, to whom  the duchy of Orleans
had been given in appanage in 1661, offered to undertake a canal
from Orleans to Montargis, in which should be collected the waters
of the forest of Orleans, on condition that the canal should be
joined to his appanage, which was done (1679-1692). Finally,
the illustrious Vauban executed, in the north of France, canals of
which we shall speak at the same time as of his military works,
and made projects that were not fuilly realized till our days.
Among these projects, the idea of the canal of Burgundy, which
was to unite the valleys of the Rhone and the Seine by the way
of the Saone' and the Yonne, had passed from Henri IV. and Sulli
to Colbert.2
1 Histoire du canal de Languedoc, by the descendants of P. P. Riquet de Bonrepos,
1 vol. 8vo. Discours sur la vie et la mort de M. d'Aguesseau, ap. (Euvres of Chancellor
d'Aguesseau, 4to, t. XIII. D'Aguesseau, senior, intendant of Languedoc from 1673
to 1685, powerfully seconded Riquet. Mlemoires pour servir h l'aHistoire du Languedoc,
by M. de Basville (successor of d'Aguesseau in the intendancy). Vie de J. B. Colbert (by Sandraz de Courtils), reprinted in the Archives curieuses, 2d series, t. IX. pp.
81-89; a malevolent and mediocre work, but containing precious details on the
public works under Colbert. P. Clement, Histoire de Colbert, pp. 202-212.:F. Joubleau, ktudes sur Colbert, t. I. pp. 273-283. Encyclopedie Nouvelle, art. CANAL, by M.
L. Reynaud.
2 Anciennes Lois franfaises, t. XIX. p. 187; Costaz, Histoire de ladministration en
France, t. I. p. 62; Encyclopedie Nouvelle, art. CANAL, by M. L. Reynaud.
VOL. I.             13




98              LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.                  1661.
SECTION III. - COLONIES, MERCHANT-SHIPPING, NAVY, COMMERCE,
AND MANUFACTURES.
THE history of roads and canals naturally leads to the domain of
the arts and manufactures, commerce and navigation, - objects for
which Colbert did such great things, and things not less controverted than his measures relating to agriculture.
We have already made an exposition (ante, p. 7 et seq.) of the
situation in which commercial France was found under Fouquet,
on the eve of Colbert's entrance into the ministry. The merchantshipping and the navy were almost annihilated, the effect of the
new differential duty not having yet had time to make itself felt.
Commerce and manufactures were ruined, stifled, not by any
system, but by a blind zeal for the interests of the public treasury.
The systematic attempt made under Charles IX. by Chancellor
Birague,1 to favor national labor by prohibiting the products of
foreign manufacture, had been ill sustained. The fiscal habits
agreed neither with the prohibition of foreign merchandise, nor
with the suppression of export duties on national merchandise;
the revenue defended its domain as a thing inviolable, and exportation, which in the Middle Ages had always borne the greater
part of the customs, bore it perhaps still in 1661! As to the
internal organization of manufactures, no important modification
had been introduced therein by legislation since the ordinances
of 1581 and 1597. The edict of 1581 had generalized the obligation imposed on citizens to cause themselves to bbe received as
master-workmen, in order to work on their own account, by wardens of trade corporations, where there was wardenship, or by
royal officers where wardenships did not exist; at the same time,
in truth, the conditions of mastership had been rendered less difficult and less onerous, and some guaranties had been given to aspirants against the ill-will and exactions of their former masters,
always disposed to barricade the entrance to their guild. Established artisans had ceased to be completely nailed to the place
where they had been received as masters, and were enabled,
although with some restrictions, to transfer their industry elsewhere. The edict of 1597 had subjected commerce to the same
regulations as manufactures.  There remained, however, a few
privileged asylums of free labor, and some exemptions were
granted, here and there, to certain trades, to certain classes of
1 See Vol. IX., Martin's Histoire de la France.




1661.           STATE OF MANUFACTURES.                      99
persons. In the States-General of 1614, the Third Estate, in its
instructions to its deputies, which have justly remained famous,
demanded the accordance of the ordinances of 1581 and 1597,
the suppression of all admission-fees from the artisan on moving
his shop, the abolition of trades-companies and wardenships established subsequent to 1576, and the free exercise of trades that
had not been erected into corporations before that epoch, save
inspection of works and merchandise by experts, the abolition of
privileged companies for foreign and colonial commerce, and full
liberty of commerce,l traffic, and manufactures within the kingdom, combined with Birague's prohibitive system towards foreign
nations.
The prayers of the Third Estate were not granted, but the bond
of industrial organization was relaxed in some respects, and a confusion was introduced that at times benefited free labor, at the
cost of continual contention and strife between corporations and
private individuals who claimed to work alone, and who, where
wardenships existed, oftenest succumbed under litigation and trickery. In general, the disorder rather served than injured monopolists, and it was useful regulations more than abuses that fell into
desuetude.  Trade-marks, guaranties of the quality of merchandise, became illusory; but corporations knew well how to maintain
or aggravate the tyrannical domination of masters over their apprentices and the taking advantage of consumers by merchants.
Colbert inaugurated a complete system in regard to all these
matters: to reestablish ruined or suffering manufactures, to create
new ones; to attract to France all kinds of manufacturing that
could be done there, the manufacture of luxuries included, against
which sumptuary laws always lost their force, and which it was
necessary to decide to receive either from the hands of natives or
from those of foreigners;
To resume, as to customs, the plan attempted by Birague, but
improving it, and almost generally substituting protection, which
stimulates to labor, for absolute prohibition, which encourages idleness;
To organize producers and merchants as a powerful army subjected to an intelligent and active guidance, so as to secure the
industrial victory of France by order and unity of efforts, and to
obtain the best and finest products, by imposing on all workmen
the processes recognized as the best by competent men;
To lighten the fiscal fetters that obstructed circulation;
1 There is no question here of commerce in grain, considered as wholly apart.




100              LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.                 1665.
To restore to France the part that belonged to her in the maritime commerce of the world; to restore to her the transportation
of her products taken from her by her neighbors, especially the
Dutch; to aggrandize and develop the colonies and attach them
exclusively to the mother-country as consumers and producers,
after the examlple of other nations; to send French commerce to
the East Indies to seek directly the merchandise of Upper Asia,
instead of receiving it through the medium of the Dutch, and to
secure at least to our shipping the benefit of this transportation,
since a traffic, reputed disadvantageous to Europe, could not be
dispensed with (the commerce of Upper Asia was carried on
almost entirely by means of silver,, and attracted to the East a
great part of the precious metals extracted from America by the
Spaniards);
To organize seamen and distant commerce in large bodies like
the manufactures and internal commerce, and to give as a support to
the commercial power'of France a navy established on a firm basis
and of dimensions hitherto unknown.
As soon as the finances were reestablished, Colbert attacked the
commercial questions through the colonies and the maritime commerce. He had begun by laying hands on the customs in a manner
that, at first sight, might seem contrary to his aim. Holland had
protested with much energy and perseverance against the duty of
fifty sous per ton imposed on her navigation: in a treaty of alliance, renewed between France and the United Provinces, April 27,
1662, France granted a concession; namely, that the fifty sous per
ton should be exacted from Dutch ships but once for each voyage,
on leaving and not on entering French ports, and that ships coming
to load with salt should pay only half the duty.l The measure
adopted by Fouquet had been somewhat abrupt and rude, and our
maritime provinces themselves, the relations of which he ruptured
without being yet in a position to indemnify them, had joined
their complaints to those of foreigners; diplomatic considerations
relating to Portugal and England also militated in favor of the
Dutch.
This was recoiling in order to advance more surely: Colbert,
during this time, labored with ardor to put French commerce in a
state to dispense with these onerous brokers. The government, in
1 Dumont, Corps diplomatique, t. VI. 2d part, p. 412. The duty was integrally maintained on English ships. The Dutch retained the right to engage in France in
all kinds of traffic, save that of whalebone and whale oil, granted by Fouquet to a
privileged company.




1663-1664.          PRIVILEGED  COMPANIES.                        101
1663, repurchased Canada, Newfoundland, and Nova Scotia 1 from
the hands of the Company of New France.  Then, from 1664 to
1665, it successively withdrew  all the French West Indies from
the hands of private individuals, who had purchased them from the
Company of the Isles, and who made of them species of feudal
principalities.2 The Company of Madagascar and the East Indies
also remitted to the King'a privilege which it was unable to use,
although a heroic adventurer named Lacase, who had obtained an
extraordinary ascendency over the Malegaches, had recently saved
the little French colony, compromised by the imprudent intolerance of a missionary (1663-1664).3
Colbert had then to choose between two courses: to give up the
colonies and ocean navigation to free commerce, protecting the
colonists and navigators by military establishments at the expense
of the state, and preserving to the state the direct administration
of the colonies; or to constitute new companies, richer, more numerous,' more strongly organized and more energetically sustained
by the royal power. At the commencement of the century, a
voice worthy of being heard, the voice of the Third Estate, had
pronounced against privileged companies; but, subsequently, the
system of monopolies had prevailed in maritime states. To the example of the companies founded by Richelieu, which had succeeded
ill, were opposed the successes of the English and Dutch companies;
the brilliant fortune of the Dutch East India Company especially
fascinated minds; before the war of the United Provinces against
Cromwell, this association had made a dividend of twenty-two per
cent. to the stockholders, and one year the dividend had reached
sixty-two per cent.4 This prosperity was proposed as a normal
example, although, in Holland itself, despite the commercial skill,
1 In 1644, the company, feeling its inability to make use of its privilege, had
ceded all its useful rights to the colonists, in consideration of a thousand beaverskins per annum; it had therefore, nothing more than a simple suzerainty.
2 Martinique, Saint-Lucia, Grenada, and the Grenadines, sold for 60,000 livres
by the company, were repurchased for 220,000 livres by the state; Guadeloupe and
its dependencies, sold for 73,000 livres, were repurchased for 125,000. Saint Christopher, St. Croix, St. Bartholomew, and Tortugas, and the claims upon St. Domingo, had been bequeathed to the order of Malta by the purchaser, who had paid for
them 120,000 livres; the King repurchased them  for 500,000. Forbonnais, Recherches sur lesJfinances, t. I. p. 324.
8 Histoire generale des voyages, t. VIII. p. 554 et seq.
4 P. Clement, Histoire de Colbert, p. 135. The profits of the war against Spain
had swollen the dividends; from 1621 to 1634, the company had taken from Spain
five hundred and forty-three vessels, the sale of which brought one hundred and
eighty millions. It possessed as many as eight hundred vessels. See Weiss, Histoire d'Espagne depuis Philippe I1. t. I. p. 338




102             LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.                1664,
economy and good management natural to this nation of merchants
and sailors, the West India Company, founded in 1622, was far
from having the same success as the East India Company; but the
decline of the West India Company was explained by the loss of
Brazil, which the Portuguese had finally succeeded in retaking
from the Dutch.'  The fear lest isolated individuals would not
risk themselves with sufficient boldness, or with means enough,
seems to have decided Colbert in favor of the companies. This
was an unfortunate resolution, although perhaps inevitable: privileged associations, that interdict commerce to all the rest of the
citizens and maintain commodities at a price artificially raised by
the natural effect of monopoly, can be good institutions nowhere,
although they may sometimes have been a necessary evil;2 but
these intermediary bodies between the state and the citizens seem
especially antagonistic to the genius of France.
The principle laid down, Colbert applied it with his usual vigor
and intelligence.
The continent of South America had not been comprised by
Richelieu in the privilege granted to the West India Company:
Cayenne and the neighboring coasts, explored in 1604 by the
Breton La Revardiere, had been, subsequent to 1624, the object
of several attempts at colonization, a very serious one of which, in
1651, had failed on account of the bad conduct of its leaders. The
island of Cayenne and Fort Louis, built in 1637 on this island,
were abandoned, and the Dutch, who had founded a prosperous
settlement in another part of Guiana, occupied Cayenne in 1656.
A new company, however, was not long in organizing itself in
France in order to establish a colony on the main-land of South
America. In 1663, the ships of this company obliged the Dutch
to evacuate Cayenne.  Colbert took the Company of South
America as the nucleus of a great West India Company, to
which the King, by letters patent, May 28, 1664, granted for forty
years all the West Indies, the island of Cayenne, and all the
main-land of America called equinoctial France, from  the river
Amazon to the Oronoco, New Prance, " from the north of Canada
to Virginia and Florida," together with all the coast of Africa,
from Cape Verd to Cape Good Hope, "whether the said countries belong to us," said the King, "on account of being or having
heretofore been inhabited by the French, or whether the said com1 The Dutch West India Company failed in 1665.
2 These are the very words of the illustrious John De Witt. See his Melmoires,
c. X-XI.




1664.              EAST INDIA COMPANY.                     103
pany establish itself therein by expelling or subjecting the savages
or natives, or the other nations of Europe who are not in our
alliance." 1
Within a fixed period, all subjects of the King had the right to
enter the company by contributing an amount to its capital, the
minimum of which was fixed.
The Dieppe and Rouen Company that occupied the station
founded in 1626 at St. Louis, in Senegal, had ceded Senegal for
one hundred and fifty thousand livres to the West India Company;
this company had thus the right to make use of the whole western
coast of Africa. A sad use, a sad commerce, that took man for its
chief merchandise!  The' transportation of slaves to the West
Indies was what connected the coast of Africa with the American
possessions of the company. All European nations entered more
and more, in the sequel of Spain and Portugal, into the fatal path
of the slave-trade; the development of tropical cultivation was to
cost humanity dear! It will be seen hereafter that Colbert, who
had found slave labor established in the colonies, strove to arrest
its most odious excesses and to reserve to the negroes at least a
few of the rights of human beings.
The company was exempt from all import and export duties on
materials necessary for its shipping, and from half the duties on all
the merchandise it carried from France to the countries ceded to it,
or from these countries to France. The reimbursement of previous
concessions repurchased by the state had been charged to the
capital of the company; the King indemnified the stockholders by
advancing a sum equal to one tenth of the capital, out of which he
engaged to pay the losses suffered by the company. A superior
council was established at Martinique, with power to try in last
resort civil and criminal suits; it was composed of a governor, provided by the King on the nomination of the directors of the company, and officers commissioned by the directors and graduates
residing in the island, or, in default of these, by six of the principal
inhabitants.2
At the moment when the ordinance founding the West India
Company appeared, Colbert was actively preparing another association for the East Indies. This second society was more difficult to
constitute. There was not for this, as in the case of the other, a
1 Anciennes Lois franfaises, t. XVIII. p. 385. We see that Louis XIV. laid claim
to all Guiana, which had been embellished with the name of equinoctial France, by
way of taking possession.
2 Anciennes Lois franQaises, t. XVIII. pp. 37-41. Forbonnais, Recherches sur les
finances, t. I. p. 324.




104             LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.                 1664.
colony already established as a basis; on the contrary, it was
necessary to confront powerful foreign companies in possession of
all the advantages to which the new company aspired. Three
French companies, since the time of Henri IV., had tempted fortune with limited resources and had been ruined. Colbert made
extraordinary exertions to secure public favor. He caused an
appeal to the public, a kind of manifesto, to be drawn up by an
academician named Charpentier, and he indoctrinated the principal
merchants so well with his hopes, and designs, that a commercial
assembly at Paris presented to the King, May 26, 1664, a plan of
statutes for the future company. The plan was approved with
some modifications, and letters were sent by the King and by the
provisional syndics to the maires and gchevins of each of the leading cities, to invite them to convoke the inhabitants in general
assembly, and to draw up a list of those who would take shares in
the company. All the bodies of magistrates, all the dignitaries, all
the rich people were invited to subscribe: it was soon known, at
the court and elsewhere, that no one could be agreeable to the
King who was not interested in the company. The King and
Colbert, while establishing the monopoly, would have gladly suppressed it in fact by causing every one to participate in it; but the
association could really be universal and national only by finding a
combination that should remain perpetually open to all comers,
instead of being open to all only for a few months.
The edict constituting the East India Company appeared in
August, 1664. Any one could become interested in it without
derogation from nobility or loss of privileges. The minimum of
subscription was fixed at one thousand francs. Foreigners were
authorized to subscribe, with divers privileges and guaranties;
privileges were granted to royal officers and private individuals
who subscribed.  The company was to be ruled by a board of
twenty-one elective and temporary directors, twelve from Paris and
nine from the provinces; at least three fourths of these were to be
active merchants; the others, retired merchants, except two noncommercial bourgeois.' The internal affairs of the company were
to be judged by three directors chosen as arbiters; the external
affairs, by consul-judges. Consular tribunals were to be established
in the cities that did not possess them, and where the need of them
was felt. The King granted to the company for fifty years the
privilege of commerce and navigation in the East Indies and all
1 Colbert was president for life of the board of directors, with the prvdot-desmarchlands of Paris for vice-president.




1664-1666.         EAST INDIA  COMPANY.                      105
the seas of the East and South, from the Cape of Good Hope to
the Straits of Magellan and Le Maire, in making the circuit of the
globe from east to west.  He granted to the company, in perpetuity, all the lands, places and islands that it might conquer or
occupy, including Madagascar and the neighboring islands, in consideration of fealty and homage, and a crown and sceptre of gold,
weighing fifty marks, at each change of king. The company
should be obliged to establish in the conquered countries, ecclesiastics to instruct the people in the Catholic religion. It had the
right: first, to institute sovereign judges, who should take an oath
of allegiance to the King, and should render justice gratuitously,
according to the laws and ordinances of the kingdom, and the custom of Paris; second, to appoint, for the command of armies, a
lieutenant-general, who should be provided by the King, and should
take an oath of allegiance to him, as all the inferior officers should
do; third, to make peace or war with the kings of India; fourth,
to carry on its vessels the white flag.1 Not only the French colonists, but the inhabitants of the subjected countries, who should
embrace the Catholic religion, should be reputed natives of France,
entitled to all civil rights. The artisans who should have followed
their trades during eight years in the said countries, should be
received masters in France without presenting a masterpiece.
Spoils taken from the enemy by the company, beyond the Equator, should belong to it. The King promised to send a naval
escort with the convoys of the company to the Indies, the return
voyage included.2 While the privilege lasted, the articles necessary for the construction and provisioning of the company's ships
should be exempt from all impost duties. Merchandise from the
Indies, discharged for the purpose of being reexported to foreign
countries, or to exempt provinces, should be stored in the ports of
the kingdom without paying any duties. The King should advance
one fifth of the value of the first three expeditions, not only without interest, but engaging to bear out of this advance the ]cs;ses
that the company should experience during the first ten years of
its existence (the King exceeded his engagements and expended
four millions). The aggregate capital of the company was fixed
at fifteen millions. The King granted to the company a premium
1 This was the privilege of vessels of war; commercial vessels carried a blue
flag with a white cross. See Jdits, declarations, reglements et ordonnances sur la
marine; (Ordinance of October 9, 1661. Paris, 1675, 4to.)
2 To avoid expense and to acclimatize the marines, a system of triennial stations
was adopted for the colonies, instead of sending the vessels of war continually baelr
and forth.
VOL. I.       14




106             LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.             1666-1669.
of fifty francs per ton on exportation, and of seventy-five francs per
ton on importation for vessels that should be fitted out and loaded
in France. (This premium was equivalent to the remission of
duties granted to the West India company.)
Two years afterwards, in 1666, the King donated to the Oriental Company all the waste lands that belonged to the domain at
Port-Louis and in the bay formed by the embouchures of the Blavet and Scorff. The company established its locks, warehouses, and
arsenal, not at Port-Louis, but on the other side of the bay, at the
embouchure of the Scorif; this was the origin of the city and port
of Lorient (l'Orient), which was only an entrepot under Louis
XIV., and which did not become a rich and flourishing city until
in the course of the following reign.
The King had given as a device to the East India Company a
fleur-de-lis with this motto: Florebo quocumque ferar (I shall blossom wherever I may be carried). This brilliant prophecy was not
realized. The company began by installing a sovereign council at
Madagascar, the name of which had been changed to Dauphin
Island in order to celebrate the birth of a son born to the King in
1661. We remark, in the police regulations of Madagascar, the
prohibition, under penalty of death, to introduce the slave-trade
into this island, and the order, under severe penalties, to treat humanely the natives whose services should be employed. Louis
XIV. and Colbert, while accepting slavery where it existed,
wished at least to prevent its introduction where it did not exist.
Unfortunately, if the statutes were wise,1 the conduct of the men
employed to apply them was not so. Most of the employees and
even of the chiefs commissioned by the company, had neither order
nor harmony among them, and knew not how to avail themselves of
the elements of success which they had in their hands: they allowed
all the fruits of the exploits of the heroic adventurer Lacase, who
had espoused a Malegache princess, and secured to the French thousands of vassals and auxiliaries, to be lost. The colony was so
badly conducted that, in 1670, the company, disheartened, ceded
the island back to the King: most of the colonists quitted Fort
Dauphin and Fort St. Louis (in the bay of Anton Gil, in the
northeastern part of the island), and crossed over to the Isle of
Bourbon, where St. Denis had been founded in 1665; the few
French remaining at Madagascar were massacred by the natives,
1 At least in part; for the obligations imposed on colonists to carry with them the
customs of Paris to the end of the world has been blamed, and not without reason;
as if legislation should not vary with climates, needs and situations.




1664-1669.    EASTERN  COLONIES.  PREMIUMS.                   107
and, during nearly a century, there was no new attempt to use the
rights reserved by the crown over the great island that had been
called African France.
The commerce of India, which was the end of what the settlements of Madagascar and Bourbon were only the means, had
nevertheless begun with some activity: a station had been founded
at Surat in 1668, and, in 1669, liberty had been obtained from the
King of Golconda and the Carnatic to traffic without paying any
duties in his states; a station had been founded at Masulipatam and
a fortress at Porto Novo, in the neighborhood of Madras, where the
English were already established. A station was then installed at
Bantam, in the island of Java, to compete with the Dutch colony
of Batavia. In 1672, preparation was made for an attack on Ceylon,
a position well chosen to rule the Indian Ocean, and it was still
hoped that the check at Madagascar might be repaired in the seas
of India.l
Whatever might have been the defects of privileged companies,
the impulse given to minds towards maritime affairs was eminently
salutary. All imaginations were fascinated by the extraordinary
impulse produced along our coasts by the enlistments, the arrivals,
the construction of powerful ships for the companies, as large
as the Spanish galleons, (from eight hundred to fourteen hundred
tons), without their misshapen heaviness. The government encouraged, by the most extensive favors, the impulse which it had
created: premiums of from four to six francs per ton were granted
to all merchants who should build ships of over one hundred tons
burden.  Prizes were decreed to the most skilful ship-builders.
The navigation of the Northern Seas was especially encouraged by
a premium  of forty sous per ton on all French ships that should go
to the Baltic in quest of tar, building timber, etc.2 The cod-fishery
of Newfoundland, of great importance, was wisely regulated.3
Ships were declared personal property in order to facilitate transactions. Finally, a royal ordinance of August, 1669, authorized " all
noblemen to take interest in merchant-ships, goods and merchandise
thereof, without being considered as having derogated from nobility,
1 See Histoire de la Compagnie des Indes Orientales, by Dufresne de Francheville,
and the appendix; - and Histoire generale des voyages, t. VIII. pp.'561-596.
2 Forbonnais, Recherches sur les finances, t. I. p. 326.
8 Anciennes Lois franvaises, t. XVIII. p. 433. Colbert declared obligatory on all
French fishermen a regulation made by the Breton ship-owners in 1640, and confirmed by the parliament of Rennes, for the fishery on the northern coast. The
Bretons alone were then engaged in this fishery; but, subsequently, the other maritime provinces had begun to share it with them.




108                 LOUIS XIV. AND  COLBERT.                   1664-i668.
provided they did not sell at retail."'   This persevering policy
did not remain fruitless.  In 1664, at the moment of the formation
of the two great companies, French commerce possessed in all two
thousand three hundred and sixty-eight vessels, one thousand and
sixty-three of which were only barks of from ten to thirty tons;
three hundred and twenty-nine only were above a hundred tons,
and eighty-five above two hundred tons; there were but nineteen
of from three to four hundred tons, and none above this last figure.2
France did not long remain reduced to a naval state so little worthy
of her, and, from year to year, the number and tonnage of her vessels
were observed to increase.
The modifications that the colonial system, especially in the
West, was not long in undergoing, perceptibly contributed to this
progress. The West India Company had followed, with little difference, the errors of its predecessor, the old company founded by
Richelieu. It had claimed to interdict to the French islands commerce with the Dutch, before being in a condition to supply its
place, which had wellnigh occasioned a scarcity and a revolt among
the planters.  It claimed to take products from  the planters at a
low price, and to sell them again at a high price in France. Its
affairs, already involved by this short-sighted selfishness, suffered
much from a war in which France engaged in the sequel of the
1 The nobility, in the States-General of 1614, had asked to be enabled to engage
in wholesale traffic without derogating from their standing. The preamble of the
ordinance of 1669 is very striking. " Commerce," it says, "and particularly that
which is carried on by sea, has always been in great consideration among the best
regulated nations.... but, inasmuch as the laws and ordinances of our kingdom
have properly prohibited noblemen from retail trade, with the exercise of the mechanic arts and the working of the land of others; inasmuch as the penalty of disobedience of the regulations which have been made on account of this has been
only privation of the privileges of nobility without an entire extinction of rank;
inasmuch as we, as well as our predecessors, have often been led to relieve our
subjects from such derogations; inasmuch as, by the custom of Brittany and the
privileges of the city of Lyons, nobility. and engagement in business have been rendered compatible..... As it imports the good of our subjects and our own satisfaction to efface the relic of a public opinion universally prevalent, that maritime
commerce is incompatible with nobility.... we have deemed it proper, etc."
Anciennes Lois frangaises, t. XVIII. p. 217. Montesquieu (Esprit des Lois, 1. XX.
c. 21-22) blames this measure, and says that it is " contrary to the spirit of monarchy that the nobility should engage in commerce." He may be right from the
monarchical point of view; but Colbert was of that school of Richelieu which was
not accustomed to sacrifice the interest of national power to the abstract interest
of a political form.
2 Atat envoy6 par les officiers de l'amiraute' a M. Colbert, intendant des finances ayant
le dipartement de la marine, en 1664; in l'Histoire de la marine frangaise, par E. Sue, t.
I. pp. 271-274; 2d edition. It is to be regretted that the author has given a romantic form to this book, full of precious and perfectly authentic documents.




1668 —1676.         CANADA. WEST INDIES.                         109
Dutch against England, in 1666, which, although very short and
without serious consequences to the mother-country, was somewhat
warmly waged in the American seas.1 Colbert, dissatisfied with the
manner in which the colonies of the West were governed, thought
seriously of applying a remedy. In Canada, the evil was of another
nature than in the West Indies: it was the predominance that the
ecclesiastical element, especially the Jesuits, had been allowed to
assume there.  Whilst under the first two Stuarts, the English colonies of Virginia, and especially New England, had become the
asylum of a multitude of dissenters, who sought religious and political
liberty beyond the sea, and carried thither an energetic spirit of
activity and progress; a narrow and tricky orthodoxy had, on the
contrary, turned away Protestants from our Canada, and the monastic spirit had shackled the development of the colony by stifling
the free aspiration of individuality so necessary to a young community. Colbert, in 1668, addressed to the King's intendant in
Canada a very interesting memoir on the means of improving
the colony. The Jesuits, he said, established their authority too
rigidly by the fear of excommunications.  The intendant should
strive to induce them to soften their too great severity.2 The
Jesuits kept the savages away from  the French, and prevented
them from mingling with the latter by vicinage, education of children, and marriages. It was necessary to act gently in order to
make them quit this pernicious maxim and attract the savages
among the French. Too great a number of priests, monks, and
nuns should, as far as possible, be prevented. Marriages should
be encouraged, and all imaginable expedients sought to preserve
and multiply the inhabitants.
Colbert, well seconded by the intendant Talon, imparted some
activity to the Canadian colony; nevertheless, in 1676, it did not
yet number eight thousand colonists.  The West Indies progressed
1 We shall elsewhere recur to these events.
2 ", Never let the Jesuits perceive," said Colbert, " that the intendant wishes to
blame their conduct, for in that case he would become almost useless in the King's service."
See the Instruction, ap. Joubleau, t. II. pp. 385-389. The Jesuits gave as a reason for
their system of isolation the greater facility that they would thus have for maintaining the purity of religion among the converted savages; their idea was that which
they had realized in Paraguay: to create a model society outside of European
habits. As to commerce in wine and brandy, which is much in question in Colbert's Instructions, we must say that, whatever might have been the facts that gave
rise to the recriminations to which we have alluded (Vol. XI. Histoire de la France),
the contest, in Colbert's time, seemed wholly serious and sincere between the
commercial interest of the colonists and the moral interest in the name of which the
colonial clergy, Jesuits and others, combated this traffic.




110                 LOUIS XIV. AND  COLBERT.                  1668-1671.
more rapidly. Experience began to demonstrate to Colbert the defects of monopoly: the colonists of St. Domingo, freebooters, buccaneers, and others, had rebelled against the company, who sold their
merchandise two thirds dearer than the Dutch did. The governor,
d'Ogeron, obtained from Colbert a decree in council that authorized
all French vessels to trade with the West Indies, with the permission of the company, and by paying it a duty (September 10, 1668).
The company had too much need of the government to refuse the
permissions that were imposed on it. This wise return to commercial liberty was equally propitious to the colonists and the French
ship-owners, especially when supplementary measures were extended to them, and secured the effects two or three years after.1
D'Ogeron succeeded in pacifying his turbulent subjects: it was he
who civilized the freebooters, and transformed them into true colonlists.2
Colbert thought it impossible, for a long time as yet, to touch
the monopoly of the East India Company; but everywhere else
he renounced the principle of exclusive commerce, and attempted
a mixed system; that is, he organized companies endowed with
certain advantages by the government, without forbidding private
individuals to compete with them. Thus, Fouquet having formed,
from 1660 to 1661, a Company of the North, to which he had exclusively granted the commerce in whalebone and whale-oil, and
this company having failed, Colbert founded another for twenty
years, without monopoly, but with premiums of three francs per
cask on brandy exported, and of four francs per ton on all other
merchandise exported or imported (the premium coming from deduction of duties).  There were no duties on munitions and objects
1 Forbonnais, Recherches sur les finances, t. I. p. 434. Anciennes Lois frangaises, t.
XVIII. p. 198. Despite the laws that excluded from the colonies whomsoever was
not Catholic, the Jews had established themselves in Martinique, where they had
made great outlays in the cultivation of lands; Colbert obtained from the King permission for them to remain with liberty of conscience. P. Clement, Histoire de Colbert,
p. 179. In 1671, a general amnesty was granted to the inhabitants of the islands of
Tortugas and St. Domingo; that is, to the buccaneers and freebooters. The following month (November, 1671), a regulation was published on the command of the
armies, courts, police, finances, and choice of officers for the American islands.
The governor-general appointed by the King was to have precedence in the sovereign council of each island, when he was there; after him, the director or general
agent of the West India Company; then the particular governor of the island. The
governor-general was to have the choice of army officers. The custom of Paris and
the ordinances of the kingdom were to be followed in the matter of courts. The
sovereign councils were to labor to perfect the manufacture of sugar, tobacco, etc.
Anciennes Loisfranfaises, t. XVIII. p. 439.
2 Rainal, Histoire philosophique des Deux Indes, t. III. p. 413.




1664.                    THE LEVANT.                         111
necessary for equipment and victualling.  There was no transit
duty. A promise was made to purchase from the company, on
account of the state, at a reasonable and moderate price, all merchandise adapted to the construction and fitting-out of the King's
vessels, and to the equipment and provisioning of naval forces.
The right of naturalization was granted to foreign sailors who
should have served six years on the company's ships.
The King subscribed one third of the capital, and was to take
upon himself the losses of the first six years. The convoys were
to be escorted by the King's vessels.l
Colbert labored at the same time to restore the commerce of the
Levant, formerly so flourishing, then so much decreased. Not only
had France lost the exclusive advantages which she had possessed
in the Ottoman empire, but she had not even kept pace with her
rivals: England, Holland, and Venice no longer paid but three per
cent. customs in Turkey; France continued to pay five per cent.
Continual molestations harassed French merchants, and Moorish
piracy was constantly let loose, with the connivance of the Ottoman
Porte. In 1664, at the moment of the foundation of the Companies of the Two Indies, Colbert suggested to the King to attempt
a settlement on the Algerine coast, so as to have a point of support
for the repression of the pirates and to secure to France the commerce of these countries. A  French squadron attacked and took
Jigeli; the place was lost again almost as soon as taken, by the
fault of the leader of the expedition, and the end failed.2 The
relations of the French Cabinet with the Ottoman Porte remained
very unsatisfactory during several years. Colbert none the less
pursued his design. The malevolence of the Turks and their
custom duties had no more contributed to depress French commerce in the Levant than the bad organization of the consulships, erected into hereditary posts. The consuls, instead of performing the duties of their posts, farmed them out to men who
committed numberless exactions; they contracted debts in the
name of the state, traded on their own account, despite the
ordinances, and abused their authority to ruin their competitors.
Colbert began by launching against these abuses rigorous decrees
in council (1664-1666); then, after having reformed the consular
1 Edicts of June, 1669, -in the proofs of P. Clement, Histoire de Colbert, p. 460.
The facilities for the naturalization of foreign sailors were generalized shortly afterwards. Forbonnais, Recherches, etc. t. I. pp. 421, 432. The company was to trade
to Zealand, Holland, the coast of Germany, Denmark, the Baltic Sea, Sweden, Norway, Russia, etc.
2 We shall recur elsewhere to this expedition.




112              LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.              1669-1673.
body, he addressed to all the consuls one of those admirable circulars which will remain perpetual models of the instructions of a
government chief to his subordinates (March 15, 1669), and
caused a new ambassador to be sent to Constantinople, charged with
energetically urging the reparation of the grievances of France.
The ambassador, M. de Nointel, had at first little success, and received an order of recall in 1671: the divan took alarm at this
signal of rupture, and entreated the ambassador to remain, and renewed the negotiations, which, in June, 1673, ended at last in a
treaty advantageous to France.  The custom duties were reduced
to three per cent. for the French as for the other most favored
nations; all the former immunities that the French had enjoyed
were renewed and confirmed, as well as the rights of France to
protect the Holy Sepulchre and the Christians of the East. The
Sultan acknowledged the precedence of the French ambassador
over the envoys of other Christian kings and princes residing near
his happy Porte.1
The commerce of France, that of Marseilles especially, was in a
position to profit by this return of fortune. Marseilles had formerly
been a free port, and the custom duties were not collected there,
but the local duties had been multiplied and made so burdensome
that foreigners had by degrees shunned it; Marseilles, however, had
neither capital nor vessels enough to suffice for the vast trade of
which its position ought to have made it the centre.  Colbert, by
the advice of the commercial deputies of France, reestablished the
fall freedom of the port despite the people of Marseilles themselves, more jealous than enlightened in regard to their true interests, and offered great advantages to foreigners in order to attract
them thither: he exempted them from escheatage, which gave to
the state the property of foreigners deceased in France (save
exceptions stipulated by treaties); he suppressed all the taxes to
which they were subjected, and promised them, in case of war
with their governments, exemption from reprisals, and three
months to retire with their property. He granted them naturalization by the simple fact of marriage, the purchase of a house,
or twelve years' trade carried on at Marseilles. There was one
exception to the freedom of the port: a duty of twenty per cent.
was established on merchandise from the Levant that should
not be directly imported, -an exception adroitly calculated to
1 Forbonnais, t. I. pp. 408, 428. P. Clement, Histoire de Colbert, p. 248 et seq.
Recueil des traite's de commerce et de navigation, t. II. p. 468.




1661-1664.          INSURANCE COMPANIES.                          113
make Marseilles the entrepot of the Mediterranean (March,
1669).'
The following year, Colbert encouraged the formation of a Company of the Levant, to which the King lent 200,000 francs and
granted for four years a premium of ten francs on each piece of
cloth that it should transport to Turkey, with some other privileges.
The hopes of Colbert were not deceived. Commerce with the
Ottoman empire revived: the merchants of those Italian states
that had no treaties with the Porte flocked to Marseilles, carried
thither their capital, built ships there under the French flag, and
doubled the wealth and activity of the great Provengal city. The
products of French manufactures, especially cloths, thanks to the
treaty of 1673, began again to circulate in the ports of the Levant,
to the great chagrin of the English, and for the first time penetrated to Armenia and Persia.2
The Company of the Levant, strange to say, was not the author
and had not the benefit of this prosperity: the competition of
private individuals prevailed over it, and it finally failed.3 The
Company of the North was not much more prosperous; a Company
of the Pyrenees, founded for commerce with Spain, and, it would
seem, charged with furnishing timber and other products of the
Pyrenees to the marine, had still less success.  Experience pronounced decidedly against every kind of privilege, as well as
against absolute monopoly.   The  superiority of individual and
spontaneous activity over these factitious aggregations was demonstrated by facts.
A much preferable kind of association was that which, leaving to
each the liberty and responsibility of his efforts, guaranteed all
against accidents that human prudence cannot prevent. Companies
1 Anciennes Loisfranfaises, t. XVIII. p. 295. One of the articles of the ordinance
confirms the edicts according to which silks brought from Italy, the Levant, Persia,
and Africa by sea could enter only by way of Marseilles at Rouen: silks coming
by land from Italy entered by way of Lyons.
2 Forbonnais, Recherches sur les finances, t. I. p. 429 et seq. See the interesting details given by M. T. Lavallde (Revue independante of January 10, 1844) on the infinite
care taken by Colbert of the relations with the Levantine ports, and on the development of these relations. " The Proventals," says Father Labat, "regard the
Levant as their Indies; they send almost all their sons thither to be educated in
commerce." -" The commerce of the Levant," says the traveller d'Arvieux, " was
so flourishing that more than sixty agents of the merchants of Marseilles and Lyons,
who dwelt at Saida and in its vicinity, gained considerable sums by investing their
property in this country, besides what their commissions produced."
8 Forbonnais, Recherches, t. I. p. 434. P. Clement, Histoire de Colbert, p. 184. The
company had displeased Colbert by the bad faith of certain of its operations calculated to discredit French commerce.
VOL. I.          15




114              LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.                  1665.
of insurance against heavy risks and perils of the sea were instituted
by Colbert at Paris and Marseilles, on the model of analogous associations that already existed, on a smaller scale, in several of our
ports.'
Colbert neglected the Ocean no more than the Mediterranean;
he disputed with England the commerce of Portugal, founded
there several consulships, obtained from the Portuguese government the establishment of a free entrep t at Lisbon, strove to
secure for France, by wisely combined measures, the land-transit
from Flanders to Spain and Italy, and made Dunkirk, which had
again become French,2 the free port of the North, as Marseilles
was that of the South; the port of Bayonne, also free, but less completely so, was, as it were, the halting-place between Dunkiik and
Lisbon.
The creation and organization of the navy, the masterpiece of
Colbert, which each generation salutes in passing with a cry of admiration, was developed simultaneously with the progress of the
merchant-shipping, powerfully protected in all waters by the royal
flag. Here were no schools, no groping the way in the dark, no
unfortunate experiments, — everything was cast in bronze at the
first trial.
The fundamental question was the personnel of the sea-forces.
In the land-forces, the misery of the people during the great war,
the increasing military spirit among the lower classes, the allurement of pay, which was much greater than it has been since the
eighteenth century, had hitherto furnished recruits in superabundant numbers; recruiting was carried on among the whole people,
and the first comer made a soldier. It was not the same in the navy.
There it required men fully prepared for a service much more difficult, -men who, by their occupation and habits, form a nation
apart within the nation. And these men did not come voluntarily
at the call of the government; they preferred the service of commerce to the service of the King, as more productive and less severe.
Hitherto, there had been no other resource for obtaining crews
than to close the ports, to interrupt commercial expeditions by violence, and to impress seamen. Whether the government undertook this operation itself, or caused it to be done by cities and districts on which it imposed a contingent, the process of obtaining
sailors was always arbitrary, -a gross and iniquitous system which
1 P. Clement, Histoire de Colbert, p. 287. Vie de J. B. Colbert (by Sandraz de
Courtils), ap. Archives Curieuses, 2d series, t. IX. p. 116.
2 We shall describe elsewhere in what manner.




.1665-1670.        MARITIME ORDINANCES.                      115
was then universal, and which has subsisted till our days among
our neighbors, so proud of their liberties and their maritime greatness.
Among us, Colbert put an end to this system by a conception of
genius. He proposed to the King to decide that all seamen should
henceforth be one great national army, serving the country by
turns in war and in commerce.
An ordinance of September 17, 1665, prescribed the enrolment
of all sailors in the departments of La Rochelle, Brouage, and the
isles of Re and Oldron, and their division into three classes, " one
of which should be reputed engaged from the first day of the year,
under the guaranty of the communities of the maritime coasts, to
serve on the vessels of his Majesty, and, the next two years, on
merchant-vessels; and thus the said classes should alternate between his Majesty's vessels of war and those of merchants."
Three years afterwards (September 22, 1668) the establishment of the system of classes was prescribed throughout France.
This was the basis of those maritime institutions, the finest in the
world, which have made the glory of France in her great epochs,
and which, in days of abasement, have remained standing to
promise the return of better times.1
Supplementary ordinances: 1st. Exempted fishermen and masters of barks, provided they had always an apprentice, a deck-hand,
who, after two years' apprenticeship, should be inscribed in the
classes. 2d. Accorded divers exemptions and privileges to sailors
embarked on the King's vessels. 3d. Secured half-pay for the
year that they were not in service to those sailors who should not
be embarked, if the whole class was not employed. Brittany and
Provence became restless, and protested against the excess of the
service exacted; concessions were made to them: Provence had
four classes instead of three; Brittany obtained five (1670-1671).
The general classification and apportionment of service were not
completely organized until some years afterwards: in 1671, the
ordinance was not yet executed in Languedoc, Normandy, and
Picardy; two edicts of 1673 and 1674 ordered their execution to
be completed. A first enumeration had taken place, however, in
1670, and had shown an effective force of thirty-six thousand
1 The first form of the system of classes has been necessarily modified; the
annual alternation had too many inconveniences and practical difficulties, and has
been replaced by a combination which at once furnishes to the state resources
still greater and prompter in case of danger, and establishes equitable differences
between single and married sailors and fathers of families.




116               LOUIS XIV. AND  COLBERT.                 1670-1683.
sailors; officers, masters, patrons, apprentices, and cabin-boys not
included.  This number unceasingly increased.1
The sailors who were serving in foreign countries in great numbers had been recalled by the severest injunctions: an ordinance
of August 1669 interdicted, under penalty of confiscation of body
and goods, engaging in military or maritime service abroad; the
penalty of death against those who thus forgot "what they owed
to their birth and country," was, shortly afterwards, replaced by
the galleys. The penalty of death was maintained against deserters.
The maritime inscription secured sailors; the King and Colbert
were careful to form  officers.  From 1668 to 1670, a company of
two hundred marine guards was formed, one hundred and fifty of
whom were young noblemen, and fifty " soldiers of fortune." This
was a kind of military school for the marine. Later, in 1683, the
marine guards were increased to the number of eight hundred;
they pursued courses of hydrography, geography, and mathematics,
and learned the management of ships.  Naval lieutenants and
ensigns were required to pursue with them courses in the schools
of hydrography or pilotage.  On one hand, the nobility were
stimulated by every means to enter the maritime service, for which
they had little preparation and taste; on the other hand, grades
were offered to skilful captains of merchantmen, "so as to afford
emulation to the one (the merchant-service), and to incite the
other (the nobles) to instruct themselves."2 Later, this same
principle of generous emulation was applied to crews, by those
collective decorations, those crosses that were suspended to the
masts of vessels distinguished for some brilliant action.
To the schools of hydrography were united coast surveys of
France and foreign countries ordered by Colbert. Schools were
also founded for naval artillery.
Whilst efforts were made to form a corps of officers instructed in
their true duties, they were relieved of functions that did not properly belong to them. The administration was strongly organized
and wholly separated firom the military command. An exception
was made only for a single man, the illustrious Duquesne, who,
Etdits, Degclarations, etc., sur la marine, Paris, 1675, 4to, pp. 807, 323, 345, 548.
Code maritime, by Beaussant, t. I. pp. 27, 28. Preicis historique de la marine franfaise,
by M. Chasseriau, p. 637. P. Clement, Histoire de Colbert, p. 377. Instruction de
Colbert au Marquis de Seignelai, son fils; ibid. p. 476. F. Joubleau, ttudes sur Colbert, t. II. pp. 43-88. It is thought that Brittany furnished from a quarter to a third
of the inscription. Anciennes Lois franqaises, t. XVIII. pp. 366-369, 427; t. XIX.
p. 114.
2 Principes de M. Colbert sur la marine, published by E. Sue.




1668-1674.                    THE  NAVY.                              117
while retaining his command of a squadron, had charge of the
works at Brest and on the neighboring  coasts.   Two  general
intendancies were created: one at La Rochelle, for the ocean, under
Colbert du Terron, cousin of the minister, the other at Toulon, for
the Mediterranean, under Leroux d'Infreville, an energetic old man
who had taken the most active part in the first organization of the
marine under Richelieu, and served Louis XIV. and Colbert with
no less efficiency. The principal wheels of this great machine, under
the intendants-general, were the intendants of ports, the commissioners of survey, and the commissioners of ports. The payment
of the sailors and the furnishing of provisions were withdrawn
from  the captains of men-of-war.  All traffic, all transportation of
merchandise, was interdicted to them. They were prohibited from
leaving their ships to sleep on shore.
Numerous ordinances succeeded each other in regard to the
construction and equipment of vessels, to the conservation of arsenals, and to the naval police. All the progress made in the art of
construction among the English and Dutch  was profited by, in
order to excel foreigners and to build ships of colossal dimensions1.
1 Vessels of the first class were to have three decks, and from seventy to one hundred and twenty guns; vessels of the second class were to have two decks, and from
fifty-six to seventy guns; those of the third class, two decks, and from forty to fifty
guns; fourth class, two decks, and from thirty to forty guns; light frigates, a single
deck, and from eight to sixteen guns. Excellent provisions were made for clearing
the decks, facilitating manoeuvres, placing the guns (ordinances of July, 1670, and
March, 1671). - Colbert especially recommended imitating and surpassing, if possible, the "neatness and order of the Dutch "; this was "the soul of the navy."
At the same time he condemned luxury among officers. He did not wish that
vessels should linger on the stocks; " that more than a year should be consumed
in building a vessel."-A council of construction was established ineach of the principal ports: vessels were to be longer and narrower than before; the height between
decks was to be diminished; the draught was to be diminished by flattening the
bottom (March 23, 1671). - August 21, 1671: uniformity of weights and measures
was prescribed in ports and arsenals. - October 23, 1671: a regulation was made
for the preservation and police of naval arsenals and vessels. - September 13, 1673:
a regulation was made on the forms and uniform proportions to be given to ships.
There were to be models or draughts in all the ports. Especial attention was paid to
lightening ships; even the figures in relief decorating the poops were suppressed,
only light ornaments being permitted. -November 22, 1673: a regulation was
made concerning pay. The captain of a vessel of the first class was to have three
hundred francs per month, besides rations; the lieutenant, one hundred; ensign,
fifty; officers of marines, masters, pilots, aids, from fifteen to fifty; sailors, from
twelve to fifteen. Vessels of the first class were to have crews of from six to eight
hundred men.- October 6, 1674: a great regulation was made concerning the
police of arsenals, which has remained the basis of all ulterior improvements. The
word police is here used in its most extensive sense; for in it the whole administration is treated of: 1st, The construction of stocks, magazines, and all other buildings




118                 LOUIS XIV. AND  COLBERT.                     1661-1671.
The increase of the French fleet in ten years was calculated to
confound the imagination. In 1661, there were, besides the galleys, but thirty ships of war, only three of which had from  sixty to
seventy guns: in 1666, there were seventy, of which fifty were
ships, and twenty fire-ships; four vessels carried from eighty to
eighty-four guns; in 1671, from seventy, the number had increased
to one hundred and ninety-six!  The King fixed the normal effective force at one hundred and twenty vessels, divided into five
classes, and carrying from twenty to one hundred and twenty
guns; thirty light frigates, corresponding to our small brigs; twenty
fire-ships, and twenty-four supply-ships; in all, one hundred and
ninety-four vessels, distributed between the five arsenals of Toulon,
Rochefort, Brest, Havre, and Dunkirk, without counting the galleys
stationed at Toulon and Marseilles. This effective force was to employ five thousand iron guns, and three thousand copper or brass
guns.1
necessary for arsenals; 2d, The purchase of merchandise, timber, arms, and munitions; all the supplies were to be from French sources, except copper, lead, tale,
and certain kinds of timber, which might be obtained abroad through the agency of
French merchants. (What would Colbert have said, could he have foreseen that a
time would come when the French government would obtain "from abroad, by
foreign ships," the most important supplies, on account of an imperceptible difference in freight, and this in the face of the suffering and decay of the national merchant'marine? - Written in 1846.) There was to be always a supply of double the
quantity necessary for the maintenance of existing vessels, and in each arsenal,
always timber for building six new vessels; the furnishing was to be adjudged to the
lowest bidder. Provisions then ensued concerning the keeping of registers and the
arrangement and preservation of materials; concerning workmen in arsenals; concerning the manufacture of utensils of iron, of cordage and of sails, and concerning
foundries. Colbert had introduced into France foundries of iron cannon. The calibres
of ordnance, for brass cannon, were thirty-six, twenty-four, eighteen, twelve, eight,
six, and four; for iron cannon, eighteen, twelve, eight, six, and four. Provisions
were to-be French like other munitions. The police of vessels was also regulated
in course, as well as the preservation of ports, roadsteads, and mouths of rivers
serving as arsenals, and the duties of civil and naval functionaries. The King
prescribed the establishment of two hospitals in the arsenals of Rochefort and Toulon,
for marines crippled in the service. There was to be an hospital-vessel appended
to fleets.
Edits, Declarations, etc., sur la marine, pp. 43, 47, 52, 59, 81, 93, 379. Instruction
de Colbert a Seignelai, son fils, published by M. P. Clement, in the documents of the
Histoire de Colbert, p. 483 et seq. We remark, in the regulation of 1674, that sculptors and painters were asked to retrench superfluous expenses on the interior of
ships, " where it was not proper to put so many ornaments." At the present time,
a puerile sumptuousness of furniture is too often displayed within, whilst without
the ships are naked and sombre in their black and white shell. At that time it was
the contrary that was desired.
1 Forbonnais, Recherches sur lesfinances, t. 1. pp. 389, 460. E. Sue, 2e edit., Histoire
de la marine franfaise, t. I. p. 121. Prdcis historique de la marine franfaise, par M.
Chasseriau.




1629-1665.                   BREST.                             119
The immense naval constructions were unequally divided between the five ports just named.  The port of Dunkirk, which the
successfuil diplomacy of Louis XIV. had just given to France,
admirably situated for privateers and second-class vessels, lacked
room  and depth for vessels of the first class.  Havre had been
regarded as unfit for a naval station, and was henceforth neglected
for Brest, the greatness of which was beginning.
Brest had been, till the time of Richelieu, a military post rather
than a port. It was d'Infreville who revealed Brest to the great
Cardinal. At that extremity of the continent where the ancient
Born of Gaul thrusts itself into the ocean, between the granite
masses of L6onnais and Cornouaille, the sea has opened for itself a
passage, a league in length by a mile in width, through which it
flows, unobstructed, into an interior bay where all the fleets of
the world might manceuvre. On the northern shore of the bay, a
league from the narrows through which the sea flows, rose an old
fortress and a hamlet on a little river, the Penfeld, which empties
into the bay between the rocks of schist and granite. D'Infreville,
during an inspection of our coasts of the West, which he made in
1629 by order of Richelieu,' perceived that this was the first of our
positions on the ocean.  Two years afterwards, March 29, 1631,
a royal ordinance, of high interest in the annals of our navy, took
from  captains of vessels the charge of their ships when they were
not employed, and ordered a union of all the King's vessels in the
three ports of Brouage, Brest, and Havre.2 The predilection of
Richelieu for Brouage and the coasts of Aunis, the theatre of his
glory, gave way at length to evidence; but Richelieu died before
the works of Brest were much advanced, and everything was suspended under Mazarin. The banks of the Penfeld had long since
relapsed into their silence of ages, when, in the spring of 1665,
Duquesne arrived from the Mediterranean with a squadron in the
bay of Brest. He was sent by Colbert. For eight or nine years,
the great seaman scarcely quitted these parts. In concert with
the intendant de Seuil, he directed the construction of ships, magazines, docks, everything that formed this immense arsenal, which
1 Another agent of the Cardinal, M. de Seguiran, first president of the court of
exchequer at Aix, inspected, the same year, the coasts of Provence and made a
chart of them. The aim of Richelieu was a general fortification of the coasts.
Eugene Sue has published the narratives of MM. d'Infreville and de Seguiran in
the sequel to the Correspondance de Sourdis, t. III.
2 This important ordinance is unpublished; it has been analyzed by M. A. Billard, in his excellent Notice of Brest; Histoire des villes de France, published under
the direction of M. Aristide Guilbert, t. I. p. 187.




120              LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.             1661-1669.
is a city in itself. The powder, that blew in pieces the granite
of the Penfeld, wrested from the port, while enlarging it, indestructible materials for the arsenal and the new ramparts. Both
the shores of the narrows were armed with formidable batteries to
close the roadstead of Brest to hostile fleets. The ill-will of the
parliament of Brittany and of the forest proprietors did not succeed in arresting this gigantic work.
Another port has just been mentioned, the name of which figures
for the first time in this history: Rochefort was in fact a creation
of Louis XIV. and Colbert. The resolution had been taken, at
the same time that Brest was being founded on the bases laid by
Richelieu, to establish another great arsenal in the latitude of
Aunis, the centre of all the maritime movements during the preceding reign. Brouage, despite the part which it had played,
offered no suitable conditions; the mouth of the Seudre, then the
Charente, was thought of.  The depth of this river allows the
largest ships to ascend its course several leagues: the government hesitated between Soubise and Tonnay- Charente; then
by the advice of the intendant-general Colbert du Terron and the
engineer Clerville, decided in favor of Rochefort, then a chateau
and village situated between the two small cities just mentioned
(close of 1665). It has been regretted that the village of Vergeroux, nearer the mouth of the river and situated in a purer atmosphere, and in a location more convenient for the ingress and egress
of vessels, had not been preferred to Rochefort. Perhaps it would
have been less secure in a military point of view. However this
may be, the works of Rochefort were pushed with miraculous
activity; a new city seemed to spring from the waves in a few
years. To judge of the imposing proportions of the new arsenal,
it suffices to remember that thirteen large vessels were built there
in the single year of 1671, and that thirty-one were fitted out
there. The entrance of the Charente, which the fortresses of the
Isles of Re, Ol6ron, and Aix already protected, was defended by
several forts.'
Meanwhile, Dunkirk and Havre were fortified, and the foundation was laid for the aggrandizement of the port and city of Toulon,
become wholly insufficient for the destinies promised them; but
the gigantic works of Toulon were not seriously undertaken before
the completion of Brest and Rochefort. Colbert projected a naval
entrepot at Belle-Isle, and the enlargement of Port-Vendres, in
order to have a military post on the frontier of Spain. Colbert
1 See Notice of Rochefort, in the Histoire des villes de France, t. III. p. 391 et seq.




1664.               ORDINANCE OF 1681.                      121
also cherished another design to complete the naval armament of
France: he felt that a point of attack and refuge was wanting to
us at the termination of that peninsula of Cotentin which Lower
Normandy projects like an enormous promontory in the face of
England; it was not his fault that France did not possess in the
roads of La Hogue a port that might have prevented a fatal catastrophe!
It was under cover of Lionne, who occupied himself only with
his diplomacy, and as simple intendant of finances, that Colbert
had conducted all these great things during the first six years of
his maritime administration. In 1667 the King gave him the
direction in a more official form, Lionne, however, retaining the
signature of despatches. The same regulation of the King determined that Colbert should remain charged with the fortification of
places, both on sea and land, and with supplies, both for armies
and for garrisons.  Thus Colbert even participated in the ministry
of war.1  Finally, in 1669, Lionne who, since 1663, had had the
title of secretary of foreign affairs, wholly ceded the department of
the navy to Colbert, who had been made secretary of state. The
same year, the superintendency of navigation, which had been for
some time an embarrassment if not a hindrance, was suppressed at
the death of the Duke de Beaufort, who was its titular holder, and
the admiralty, abolished by Richelieu, was nominally reestablished
for the benefit of a natural son of the King and Mademoiselle de
La Valliere, Count de Vermandois. Colbert obtained soon afterwards (1671) the survivorship of the post of secretary of state for
his son, the young Marquis de Seignelai,2 and the King, in 1672,
formed a council of marine, composed of Colbert, Pussort, six other
councillors of state and masters of requests, and Seignelai, having
the department of the marine.3 In this council was elaborated
the renowned ordinance of 1681, the crowning act of Colbert's
administration and the object of the admiration of all Europe.
Whatever concerned commerce by land and sea, and manufactures, the source of commerce, had been regulated by Colbert
according to the same conditions as the marine, and with the same
intelligent and indefatigable cooperation on the part of the King.
The King presided once a fortnight over a council in which com1 See this regulation in E. Sue, Histoire de la marine franFaise, t. I. p. 264.
2 The finest passages that we have from the hand of Colbert are the instructions
addressed to his son, who knew how to profit by them, -a rare thing among the
heirs of great men. See Forbonnais, t. I. p. 448 et seq.; P. C14ment, pp. 468-491;
Joubleau, t. II. pp. 376, 420.
8 Anciennes Loisfrangaises, t. XIX. p. 165.
VOL. I.       16




122             LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.                 1664.
merce and manufactures were discussed: an edict of 1664 divided
France into three great commercial divisions, and ordered merchants to choose two deputies in each maritime or commercial city.
The deputies of the three divisions were to meet annually in three
groups, for the purpose of examining the state of commerce and
manufactures, and of addressing their views to the King through
the channel of three from among them designated by Colbert to
follow the court.1
The first of Colbert's great measures on tariffs and general commerce was the edict of September, 1664. This ordinance began
with an exposition of what the government had done for the country since the King had himself taken charge of the finances, and
the announcement of what it wished to do.2  " The sieur Colbert... intendant of finances, having the department of revenuefarms and commerce," had been charged with presenting a report
to the King on all the duties that impeded the circulation, and the
importation and exportation of merchandise, which had continued
to increase since the middle of the preceding century. The King
was aware of the enormous abuse of these duties, so multiplied and
so confused that they stopped the merchant at every step and subjected him to the suspicious discretion of clerks, always sure of
being supported, in their exactions, by the exceptional tribunals
that took cognizance of these matters. There was a certain duty,
for example, that was levied not only between Anjou and Brittany,
but between the different cantons and almost between the villages
of Anjou; and this deplorable exaction dated, nevertheless, from
the wise ministry of Sulli! The King proclaimed the necessity
of reducing most of these duties to a single import and a single
export duty, and of diminishing them considerably, in order to
encourage long voyages, arts, and manufactures, etc., -" and to
divert," he adds, "'by honest occupations, the inclination of our
subjects to an indolent and servile life, under the pretext of divers
offices without duties, and under the false show of a feeble attachment to letters or to the practice of law which degenerates into a
dangerous chicanery that infects and ruins our provinces."
Several internal imposts were therefore suppressed; all the
duties on importation and exportation, simplified and united, were
to be transferred to the frontier.  The Third Estate, in the
States-General of 1614, had demanded the commercial unity of
I Forbonnais, t. I. p. 327.
2 The King announced that he would devote a million annually to the encouragement of manufactures and navigation.




1664.                  TARIFF OF 1664.                        123
France; but most of the exempt provinces, which, without being
completely fireed from all duties in their commerce with foreign
nations, were not subject to the general custom-duties, had refused
to defer to the patriotic wishes of the Third Estate, and showed
the same opposition to the views of Colbert. Those provinces,
remote from the centre, and obstinately attached, partly through
fear of taxation and partly through prejudice and vanity, to the
remnant of the privileges that the King had sworn to preserve to
them at the time of their annexation to France, preferred continuing to see the line of custom-houses between them and the rest of
the kingdom to seeing them between themselves and foreign countries. This was the greatest obstacle remaining to the homogeneousness of France. It was apparently very strong, since Louis
XIV. and Colbert dared not overthrow it! The lines of tariffbureaus, therefore, only encircled Normandy, Picardy, Champagne,
Burgundy, Bresse, Bourbonnais, Berry, Poitou, Aunis, Anjou, and
Maine, without speaking of the provinces enclosed by those we
have just mentioned, as Ile-de-France, Orleanais, Touraine, and
Nivernais. Nearly half the kingdom, that is to say, 1st, all the
South, from Angoumois, Limousin, Saintonge, Marche, Auvergne,
and Lyonnais, to the Pyrenees and the Mediterranean; 2d, Brittany; 3d, Artois and the portions of Flanders and Hainaut acquired
by the treaty of the Pyrenees, preserved the previous system with
all its diversities: they were qualified, in financial language, as
foreign provinces.'  Finally, Alsace, Trois Ev~ch6s, and the three
free ports, Marseilles, Dunkirk, and Bayonne, were treated as foreign countries, with respect to custom-duties; that is, they preserved entire freedom of commerce with foreign countries without
any duties, but paid, in commerce with the interior, the same duties
as foreigners.
However incomplete provincial resistance had rendered the edict
of the tariff, it was still an admirable result to have simplified and
rendered uniform the indirect imposts and custom-house duties in
half of France.  In the interior, a multitude of vexatious and
complicated duties had been consolidated and reduced. " Colbert,"
says a writer of great knowledge in financial matters,2 " founded
1 The regime of Provence and Languedoc was mixed: as exempt from aids
(Languedoc paid an equivalent), those provinces were reputed foreign; nevertheless
they were subjected to certain custom-house duties, or import and export levies;
even Provence was enclosed between a double line of bureaus, on the interior border and the foreign border. See Forbonnais. Recherches sur les fiances, t. I. p. 356
et seq.
2 M. le marquis d'Audiffret, Systeme financier de la France, t. II. p. 426.




124                LOUIS XIV. AND  COLBERT.                      1664.
the system of bonded receipts, the ingenious control of which permits the government to follow the movement of merchandise from
the place of its production to that of its retail sale, never to require
the impost in advance from the proprietor or merchant, and securely to await payment from  the very hand of the consumer.  This
valuable method was applied successfully to a great number of
commodities, and especially to wines, brandies, and other beverages,
the producer of which was even freed from all duties on his consumption in the places of their production."
Externally, a system of skilfully calculated production replaced
the fiscal chaos: the exorbitant import-tax on raw materials and
tropical products was reduced; -by way of compensation, the importduties were moderately increased on most articles of foreign manufacture, and those that were exempt were subjected to them; all
export-duties on manufactured articles were diminished, as well as
the export-duties on wines and brandies, the exportation of which
Colbert encouraged, like internal circulation, by wholly peculiar
favor: here he found himself again on the ground of agriculture.l
The tariff edict terminated with a happy and wise innovation,
which in part effaced the defects of that custom-house system which
divided France into two halves foreign to each other. Eleven free
entrep6ts were established in the cities of La Rochelle, Ingrande,
Rouen, Havre, Dieppe, Calais, Abbeville, Amiens, Guise, Troyes,
and Saint-Jean-de-Losne, all situated in the provinces subjected to
the regime of the edict, and not far from the line of custom-houses.
Merchants from  the so-called foreign provinces were authorized
to send to these entrep6ts their merchandise destined to foreign
countries, without paying duties for traversing the provinces subject to the edict (or provinces of the five great revenue farms): the
interior barriers were thus removed for reexpprtation, and only
subsisted for commerce between the two halves of France.2
1 As to iron, Colbert, who feared that it might become dear and scarce, maintained an equilibrium between import and export duties. See Forbonnais, Recherchies sur les finances, t. I. p. 507. Forbonnais reproaches Colbert with not having
made the duty proportional to the respective value of wines: there has been no
advancement in this respect in two centuries, and this equitable proportion does
not yet exist. The practical difficulties of verifying the vintages have always been
shunned. The reduction of duties was not effected in the ratio of the intrinsic value
of merchandise, but in that of anterior taxes, which relieved every one, but by
leaving the proportional inequality of charges. This was a concession to fiscal
routine, which succeeded in reestablishing some of the suppressed taxes and causing export-duties to be maintained higher than they ought to have been for the
interest of exportation. See Forbonnais, t. I. p. 350, et seq.
2 See the edict in Forbonnais, t. I. pp. 325-330; and Histoire du tarif de 1664, by
Dufresne de Francheville, 2 vols. quarto.




1664-1670.            MANUFACTURES.                        125
A few years afterwards (February, 1670), Colbert took a new
step: he extended the privilege of entrepots to all maritime cities,
and allowed foreign merchants to profit by them; he offered to them,
according to his own expressions, " the ports of France as a general
stopping-place for storing all kinds of merchandise, whether to sell in
France, (with duties,) or to transport beyond the kingdom, in consideration of the restitution of import-duties which they had paid."
Colbert hoped thus to make France the entrepot of European
commerce.
An excellent institution, created to obviate the abuses of taxgathering, completed the edict of 1664: "In order to put an end
to the frequent collisions that arose between the clerks and the taxpayers, Colbert established a committee of three merchants and
three farmers-general, charged with reconciling the difficulties or
resolving the doubts arising from the application of tariffs." 1
It was in this same year, 1664, that an impulse began to be given
to manufactures. In August, 1664, the King, judging it " useful toreeistablish the manufacture of Flanders tapestries, introduced at
Paris and elsewhere by Henri the Great," and neglected under the
regency of Maria d' Medici, ceded the privilege to a Parisian upholsterer, by the recommendation of Colbert, to found a tapestry
manufactory at Beauvais. The manufacture of the Gobelins was
reestablished three years afterwards (November, 1667), and speedily
acquired a European renown by its magnificent reproductions of
the great works of painting.
In the preamble of the privilege granted to the manufactory at
Beauvais, the King announced the intention of putting his kingdom " in a state to dispense with having recourse to foreign nations
for things necessary fbr the use and convenience of his subjects." 2
Colbert has been severely reproached for this doctrine by economists, as conducing to the annihilation of all exchange between
peoples: carried to the extreme by the spirit of system or by exclusive interests, it leads in fact to a violation of the providential laws
that have not made all climates and all nations fit for all kinds of
production; nevertheless, in the state of antagonism in which nations
lived, -an antagonism that has only diminished by the influence
of the spirit of the eighteenth century,  it was natural that each
people should abstain from seeking abroad what it could produce
on reasonable conditions at home, and should especially secure the
freedoWg of its movements by avoiding dependence on a rival for
1 D'Audiffret, Systeme financier de la France, t. II. p. 431.
2 Anciennes Loisfirangaises, t. XVIII. p. 39.




126               LOUIS XIV. AND  COLBERT.                1665-1671.
commercial articles of prime necessity.1  France, moreover, so well
adapted to create almost every kind of production, but so conveniently situated to receive on all sides the productions of other peoples, would have allowed her most precious faculties to lie dormant,
and would have continued to fall short of her industrial destinies,
had there not been manifested in her a certain reaction against this
facility of opening herself passively to all external things, and a
salutary incitement to produce, wisely sustained by her chiefs. We
are constrained to say, that, if the principles of Sulli and the industrial economists had prevailed over the principles of Henri IV. and
Colbert,2 France would have manufactured neither silks, nor cottons, nor fine cloths, nor stuffs of fine wool, to say nothing of so
many other manufactures, which have successively come from
abroad to increase the national wealth.  Free trade is, like universal peace, an ideal end towards which we must tend, but it is not
the starting-point of industrial progress.
Among the fallen staples revived by the cares of Colbert, figures
that of madder, one of the dye plants now most important (about
1671). This profitable branch of industrial cultivation, of Eastern
origin, which dates among us from the Romans, which had remained
quite flourishing under the Frankish kings, and the full value of
which was recognized by Olivier de Serres, was revived under
Colbert and developed in the eighteenth century, thanks to an
intelligent adventurer who had lived in the East, Jean Althen;
it now covers the whole plain of Comtat, and yields more than
twenty-five millions to those regions.3
In 1665, manufactures sprung up on every hand: factories for
linen fabrics were established at Quesnoy, Arras, Rheims, Sedan,
ChAteau-Thierry, Loudun, Alengon, Aurillac, etc.  The Van Robaises, skilful Dutch manufacturers, attracted by Colbert, introduced at Abbeville the manufacture of fine Holland cloths.4  Cloth
and serge factories, tanneries, leather-dressing factories, were multiplied and perfected.   The point-laces of Genoa, Venice, and
Spain were introduced into France; a manufactory of mirrors
was established in the faubourg Saint Antoine, in imitation of
1 The dependence is reciprocal, it will be said; this is not always true; it would
be easy to cite contrary examples.
2 See Vol. XII., Histoire de la France, by Henri Martin.
3 We were led into error in our preceding edition in regard to madder and J.
Althen. See Notes sur Jean Althen, la culture et le commerce de la garance: Avignon,
Bonnet, son, 1849, octavo, (by M. Achard.)
4 The factory of Sedan was anterior to Colbert; it dates from 1646. That of
Louviers was not organized till 1681. That of Elbeuf is of the time of Colbert.




1666, 1667.             MANUFACTURES.                           127
Venice; those who maintained these two kinds of manufactures at
Venice were mostly Frenchmen. Colbert recalled by every means
to France the manufacturers, artists, and sailors who lent to foreign
nations the intelligence and skill demanded by their native country;
at the same time he attracted from abroad, by all kinds of advances and liberalities, the most skilful foreign artisans. Stockinglooms, formerly invented in France, then forgotten among us
whilst they came into use in England, had been brought back by
two citizens of Nimes, in 1656; this branch of manufactures grew
largely. There were established glass and crystal factories, foundries and forges of copper and brass, tin factories, factories for
cordage and sail-cloth, then, in 1668, iron and steel mills, and steel
manufactories.
In 1666 and 1667, thread-points, gold and silver stuffs and
fringes, and laces, coming from abroad, were prohibited. Absolute
prohibition, as we see, was imposed only on certain articles of luxury; for everything else there was protection, not prohibition.1
Protection was, in truth, powerfully strengthened in 1667. Colbert aspired to dispense with products manufactured in England
and Holland, as well as with their maritime brokerage. The industrial advance of the last three years made him believe that he could
act without circumspection.  A  new  tariff increased the exportduties on several prime articles (leather, raw  hides, and goats'
hair) which Colbert wished to reserve for the national manufactures, and doubled, or nearly doubled, the import-duties on cloth,
hosiery, carpets, manufactured leather, linens, sugars, fish-oils,
laces, plate-glass, and tin.2
Were the proper limits exceeded or not? Were the general
interests of France served or injured by this industrial coup d'6tat.
This is a delicate and difficult question, which, even at the present
time, remains undecided in many enlightened minds. As to
colonial commodities, and the product of fisheries imported in
foreign ships, it is clear that Colbert should be approved without
reservation. Was not the rest temporarily necessary for the establishment of manufactures?
1 See in the Medmoires et Instructions de Louis XIV. ((Euvres de Louis XIV. t. II. p.
255) a curious passage on the opposition to prohibitions made by Parisian commerce. " The merchants, long accustomed to commerce in these fabrics, believed
that they profited more by merchandise coming from abroad, the exact value of
which was unknown, than by merchandise manufactured here in sight of the whole
public."
2 See P. Clement, Histoire de Colbert, pp. 231, 315. This same tariff freed from
all duties the trade in cattle between Berry and Bourbonnais, on one side, and the
foreign provinces on the other.




128                LOUIS XIV. AND  COLBERT.                     1667.
England and Holland showed themselves equally irritated at the
blow which fell upon them.  England, with her usual violence, did
not content herself with reprisals by increasing the duties on our
wines and brandies; she made these duties retroactive for several
years! Colbert had thought that the English, whatever we might
do, could not dispense with our wines. The event did not prove
him wrong during his lifetime, and the English, despite the increase
of duties, continued, for a considerable time longer, to procure our
wines and brandies from Gironde and Charente; I finally, however,
they substituted for them the wines of Portugal and the Canaries.
This was a great loss to Guienne; but the tariff of 1667 was not
the only, nor perhaps the principal cause of it. After England
had completely subjugated Portugal, commercially, by the treaty
of Methuen, she had an evident interest in preferring Portuguese
to French wines, which, moreover, became in great part English
property. This change might therefore have been effected in any
case. It must also be said that the exchange of French wines for
English cloths, which constituted the basis of the commerce between the two countries, was effected in a manner most disadvantageous to France: even before the Navigation Act, English regulations, contrary to the spirit of treaties, exclusively reserved the
importation of wines for English ships, and the systematic vexations to which foreigners were subjected in English ports produced nearly the same result as to the exportation of cloths.2
In the sequel of the tariff, of 1667 and the English reprisals, negotiations were carried on for several years for the purpose of adjusting differences and arriving at a treaty of commerce. Colbert
would have consented to take as a basis the complete equality of
treatment between the subjects of the two nations. The refusal
came from England.3 This is quite decisive, and radically justifies
the tariff of 1667.
The Dutch, still more seriously affected than the English, since
1 There was even a considerable increase of exportation from 1667 to 1674. See
Joubleau, t. I. p. 384. In 1688, England alone still obtained fifteen thousand tons
of wine annually from France; in 1828, England, Scotland, and Ireland united, did
not procure more than six or seven thousand. See Journal des Econonmistes, t. IV. p.
390; Question vinicole, by M. Laissac.
2 This inequality in commercial relations was found everywhere. Thus, after
the treaty of 1606, English cloths, recognized as of bad quality on entering France,
were to be sent back to England; in similar cases, French cloths presented in England were confiscated. See Recueil des traites de commerce et de navigation, by MM.
d'Hauterive and de Cussi, t. II. p. 9.
8 p. Clement, Histoire de Colbert, pp. 319, 320.




1670, 1671.    STATUTES ON MANUFACTURES.                      129
their commerce was much more extensive,l complained with no less
warmth, and the sharpness of their ambassador Van Beuningen's
remonstrances contributed not a little to increase the unfriendly
feelings of Louis XIV. towards their republic. Nevertheless they
hesitated three whole years before using reprisals, fearing to injure
themselves as much as France by burdening with heavy duties
French wines and brandies.  From three to four hundred Dutch
vessels, according to the testimony of Colbert, carried away every
year a quantity of our liquids, one third of which Holland consumed, and two thirds of which she reexported to the North. Holland threatened to supply the place of French wines with the wines
of the Rhine; Colbert was but little disturbed by this, persuaded
that the North would not change its habits to please the Dutch, and
-would receive the products of France directly from French ships,
instead of receiving them from an intermedium, which was precisely his aim; he did not even believe that Holland could reduce
her.internal consumption without damage to her shipping.2  He
attacked..wthout hesitation the Dutch commerce in the West
Indies, at the same time as in the north of Europe. After having
established the freedom  of commerce between the colonies and
France, he forbade foreign ships to land in the colonies and the
inhabitants to receive them, under penalty of confiscation (June
1670); next, he prohibited the owners of ships, built in the Islands
and in New France, from trading with foreign nations; exempted
from all duties French merchandise destined for the colonies (June,
1671), and even gave premiums for the transportation of the beef,
bacon, and linen of France, etc., to the Islands, forbidding the introduction of similar foreign products. The plan of Colbert succeeded
as to America, and the commerce of the French West Indies henceforth profited only France.3 Colbert had also many chances of
success in the North.
The internal regulation of labor had closely followed the promulgation of the first tariff that protected labor from without. The
first regulation of Colbert concerning manufactures and factories,
1 Their manufactures had taken an extraordinary start. See the dmemoires de J.
De Witt, who affirms that they were the source of subsistence to seven hundred
thousand persons, as ocean fishery was to five hundred thousand.
2 Despatches of Colbert in Forbonnais, t. I. p. 418. Colbert, seeing that the
French ship-owners were not in a state completely and immediately to take the
place of the Dutch, after the United Provinces had prohibited the wines, brandies,
and manufactures of France, took measures with the merchants of Hamburg, Denmark, and Sweden for the exportation of our products to the North. Ibid. p. 464.
8 See Anciennes Loisfranfaises, t. XVIII. pp. 871, 434, 439.
VOL. I       17




130               LOUIS XIV. AND  COLBERT.                 1666-1673.
bears date April 8, 1666: the statutes and regulations of the different branches of manufactures succeeded each other rapidly; the
statutes of the old corporations were revised; new ones were created, and trade corporations were established in many cities where
the edicts of 1581 and i597 had fallen into disuse, and where labor
had been left to itself. The edicts that organized these new corporations alleged as a motive that, wherever there was no constituted
mastership (by wardenship), confusion and disorder reigned, and
that the workmen having had entire liberty to make their stuffs of
various widths and lengths, according to their caprice, their sale had
considerably diminished, on account of their defects.' An ordinance of 1669 regulated the length, width, and quality of cloths,
serges, and all stuffs of wool and thread. Silk stuffs, tapestries, etc.,
were regulated in their turn. Dyers were subdivided into two state
organizations, for fast colors and fugitive colors. Finally, in March,
1673, an edict, rendered on account of the community of barbers,
bath-keepers, and peruke-makers, expressly prescribed the execution
of the edicts of 1581 and 1597 throughout the kingdom, and thus
generalized the system of communities and wardenships for all
1" those who follow the occupation of commerce, commodities, or
arts."  Mastership without wardenship was little else than a fiscal
formality; the wardenship alone constituted the corporation, by the
election of guardians and trade wardens charged with watching over
the statutes, examining the masterpieces of aspirants to mastership,
and deciding on receptions. Community boards were instituted in
all the Town Halls, for the purpose of summarily regulating the
defects of manufactures and holding wardens and workmen to their
duty.
The adversaries of Colbert have waged a rude war on the organization of labor conceived and realized by him, which, according
to them, made the condition of the workmen worse. The masters,
they say, were oppressed by manufacturing regulations so rigorous
that the least infraction exposed them to fine, confiscation of goods,
and even corporal punishment.2 The workmen were oppressed in
1 Edict of August 23, 1666, concerning the manufacture of Aumale serges, ap.
Recueil des reqlements concernant les manufactures et fabriques du royaure, 4 vols. 4to,
1730-1749, t. II. p. 408.
2 A decree of the King in his royal council of commerce, December 24, 1670, ordered the defective stuffs to be exposed on the pillory, with the name of the merchant
or workman found in fault. In case of second offence, the merchant or workman,
besides the exposure and destruction of his merchandise, was to be reprimanded by
the masters, guardians, or wardens of the trade, in full assembly of the body. For
the third offence, he was himself to be bound to the pillory during two hours.
Recueil des reglements concernant les manufactures, t. I. p. 524. This exorbitant pen



1666-.1673.        INDUSTRIAL STATUTES.                       131
their turn by the hard conditions of the industrial apprenticeship, and
by the maintenance of the custom that gave to aspirants for mastership their rivals for judges. The edict of 1581 permitted masters
to have an unlimited number of apprentices; the new edicts granted
but a single apprentice to each master, which more and more restrained the right of labor, erected into a privilege. The duration
of apprenticeship was extended in many of the states to five years;
journeymanship — an intermediary condition between apprenticeship and mastership -lasted no less time. After this long novitiate, the aspirant was required to present a masterpiece as a specimen of his capacity, and the guardians and wardens of his craft, who
judged him, were his future competitors; he was often obliged to
conciliate them by presents and expensive banquets, to say nothing
of the initiation fees that he was to pay to the King and the corporation. The sons and sons-in-law of masters, by the old privileges
that Colbert found and left standing,l were exempt from a great
part of these charges and conditions, from  all even, in certain
trades; feudal heirship, the principle of caste, was thus established
even among artisans.
A part of these reproaches are just; others refer to usages so
firmly rooted in the old trades-companies, that it is more than
doubtful whether the state of society would have permitted Colbert
to destroy them. On certain points, the solicitude and largesses
of the minister provided for the defects of the. established system.
It was interdicted to seize the furniture and tools of artisans, — a
measure analogous to the prohibition, so often repeated, to seize
beasts of labor. Numerous pecuniary favors were granted to artisans, at the same time as to contractors for manufactures.  The
workmen in the royal manufactories were exempt from taxes as
a whole or in part: they escaped, moreover, a great part of the
onerous conditions of corporations. The license of thirty livres
(sixty francs) paid by journeymen (compagnons) was reimbursed
to them, and tools were even given them gratuitously; every
workman who espoused a woman of the district where he worked
received a gratuity of six pistoles (132 francs of our money), and
two pistoles at the birth of the first child.  The state thus contributed largely to the expenses of the establishment of artisans.2
alty seems to have been only a threat; Colbert probably felt its exaggeration and
odiousness, - it was not executed. The fines were applied, one half to the King,
one fourth to the wardens, one fourth to the poor.
1 He notably diminished them.
2 P. Clement, Histoire de Colbert, p. 235.




132               LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.              1666-1673.
It may also be affirmed that the watchfulness of Colbert and his
agents made the guardians and trades-wardens circumspect in the
exercise of their power; the provisions of the old ordinances that
interdicted exactions from aspirants, and banquets at their initiation, had been renewed, and observed with severity.
Unfortunately, the remedies were of a less enduring character
than the abuses. The remedies were destined to disappear, for the
most part, with the man who applied them; the abuses subsisted
in the very foundation of the institution. We may be permitted
to regret that Colbert, carried away by the desire of subjecting all
manufactures to a principle of unity, had not followed the wish of
the States in 1614, which was to leave labor free everywhere except in the old trades-companies, under condition of the inspection
and stamping of products by experts and jurymen; but Colbert
doubtless did not believe himself able to organize an efficient sLrveillance without wardenships.
The statutes and regulations of manufactures have not been less
attacked from the point of view of the general interests of commerce. The extreme division of labor, the subdivision of manufactures into numerous bodies which were forbidden to encroach
upon each other, must, it is said, have multiplied legal contentions
between these corporations, and hindered the industrial combinations whence the greatest progress may spring. The dearness of
products —the necessary result of a monopoly of close corporations
that make the law for consumers, and have to support expenses
which they throw back on the public - must have made most
of those products inaccessible to the peasants, to the mass of the
people. The rigor of the regulations against all alteration of prescribed processes -  consequently against all innovation -  must
necessarily have rendered manufactures stationary.
These imputations were not without foundation. The manufacturing system contained in the germ many embarrassments, sufferings, and perils for the future. —Yes; but, in the present, it
brought wealth and prosperity. Those regulations, those statutes,
which, through the progress of natural sciences and mechanical arts,
were one day to become an obstacle, and, as it were, a chain on the
feet of French manufacture, at first gave it wings. Masterpieces
1 For example, the costs of suits against rival corporations, or the costs for
purchasing letters of mastership created by bursal edicts. When the King made
these creations, no one could be received as master in the trade in question till
the letters of mastership had found purchasers. The wardens purchased them and
amortized them in the interest of the sons of masters, whose establishment would
have been retarded.




1616-1672.          INDUSTRIAL STATUTES.                         133
of the industrial science of the century, they erected into general
laws the most improved processes that the first manufacturers of
Europe had been able to discover, -processes which routine, still
all-powerful, would perhaps have rejected for whole generations;
they offered, at the same time, to the purchaser the most powerful
guaranties of the integrity of commerce and the quality of the
product. They impelled France fifty years forward! It was for
the successors of Colbert to follow the spirit, and not the letter of
his laws, and to modify them according to the needs of the times.
As to the suits of trades-companies among themselves, and of
manufacturers against merchants, Colbert had striven to protect
the laborer against chicanery by the multiplication of consular tribunals, and by extending to municipal magistrates jurisdiction in
the first instance over differences between the workmen of manufactories and between the workmen (manufacturers) and the merchants (Paris and Lyons preserved their peculiar:usages).l
Neither did the vigilance of government, and the necessity of
competing with foreigners in the markets abroad, permit an unlimited increase of price, and France recovered the commerce of the
Levant, thanks especially to the trade-marks, which inspired in the
Orientals a merited confidence. Whatever certain contemporaries,
in whom the spirit of system finds too easy an echo, may have been
able to say through envy or levity, the success of Colbert was
brilliant:2 from 1669, more than forty-four thousand looms were
employed in the manufacture of woollens; the commerce of Lyons,
the object of Colbert's incessant cares, revived, never more to decline; silks soon produced a movement of fifty millions per annum
(one hundred millions of the present time, which would perhaps
represent two hundred and fifty millions). The greatest industrial
future was open to France in 1672, the culminating epoch of Colbert's ministry. If, later, the progress abated, if the great minister
saw, before dying, less prosperous years, the cause was in politics
and war, and not in economic laws.
1 Anciennes Loisfranfaises, t. XVIII. p.'363.
2 We are astonished that a writer as grave, as enlightened as M. P. Clement can
have cited as an authority against Colbert the frivolous Abbe de Choisi, who was
much better acquainted with boudoirs and green-rooms than with manufactures, and
did nothing.but revive in academic style a saying of Sulli, accompanied by trenchant
assertions and malignant reflections of his own. D'Aguesseau, Forbonnais, and the
satirical- Saint-Simon himself, furnish testimony somewhat more serious. We will
cite, among modern economists who have equitably estimated the immediate results
of Colbert's establishments, two eminent men who carry as far as possible opinions
favorable to the liberty of commerce, MM. Vincens and Renouard. See Journal des
Economistes, t. II. p. 2, and t. VI. pp. 39, 40.




134                 LOUIS XIV. AND  COLBERT.                        1673.
An imposing legislative monument, the ordinance on commerce,
crowned this brilliant period. This ordinance was to commerce
what the statutes were to manufactures, except that public opinion
has always been unanimous in its favor. Several partial edicts had
preceded it. A declaration of January 9, 1664, on the making
and negotiating of letters of exchange and notes to order and to the
bearer, fixed the delays and formalities of protests, recourses, etc.
Two ordinances especially concerned the commerce of Lyons: the
one (April, 1664) authorized in that city and the territories of
Lyonnais, Forez, and Beaujolais, women to obligate themselves
conjointly with their husbands, without reservation of dotal property or paraphernalia, contrary to the Roman law; the other concerned the jurisdiction of the prgvot-des-marchands and echevins of
Lyons, guardian-judges, and conservators of the privileges of fairs
in the said city. The cognizance of all suits relating to trade in
civil and criminal matters, fraudulent bankruptcy included, was
attributed to them: they judged in last resort commercial suits to
the amount of five hundred livres (July, 1669).1
The ordinance concerning commerce did not appear till March,
1673. This was a veritable code in twelve titles, worthy in almost
every point of the enlightenment of the minister and of the special
man whom he called to aid him in the work.2- Title I. On apprentices of tradesmen and merchants, both wholesale and retail.The sojourn in the paternal house is reckoned as apprenticeship to
the sons of merchants; but, after apprenticeship, they must, like
other aspirants, still serve during an equal period (corresponding
1 On these edicts, see Anciennes Lois franfaises, t. XVIII. pp. 28, 83, 211. The
edict of April, 1664, is interesting for the history of legislation: " Certain provinces," it is said therein, "preserve the privilege of deciding according to the Roman law affairs concerning which there has been no ordinance made by the kings:
others are ruled by customs; others, although generally ruled by the Roman law,
have received, in certain cases, different usages. Lyons, Lyonnais, Forez, and
Beaujolais, are among the latter, which have established, by a long series of years,
a usage different from the Julian law of dotal property, and have regarded as valid
the obligations made by wives, conjointly with their husbands, without distinction
of property, etc..... because they here found the said usage more favorable to the
affairs of families, which, in times when they have need of money (as often happens
among the nobility, whose property ordinarily consists of funds which they can
rarely pledge on account of entails), would find no aid on the most pressing occasions, if the wives could not give security on their part; this usage is not less necessary for the great commerce that flourishes in our city of Lyons and the surrounding regions. For these considerations, on the remonstrances of our dear and wellbeloved pr6vdt-des-mrarchands and echevins of Lyons, against certain decrees that for
some time have destroyed, according to the Julian law, the obligations of women,
contrary to this established usage, we declare, etc."
2 Savari, author of the Parfait Negociant.




16(73.            COMMERCIAL ORDINANCE.                      135
to the journeymanship [compagnonnage] of artisans), before being
received as masters. No one can be received as master till he has
completed his twentieth year. Individuals and associations are forbidden to take from aspirants any present for their reception under
penalty of fine; the aspirant is forbidden to make any entertainmeiit, under penalty of the annihilation of his reception.  Merchants and workmen on buildings must demand payment within a
year: provision dealers and some other retailers must demand it
within six months. Beyond this delay, they can, however, still require an oath from debtors. - Title II. On bank agents and brokers. -  Title III. On the books and registers of tradesmen, merchants, and bankers. To the measures designed to guarantee the
authenticity of books are joined provisions concerning correspondence
and inventories.-Title IV. On associations.  In every association,
contests between the parties thereto shall be decided by arbitrators.
-Title V. On letters and bills of exchange, and promises to furnish
them. Letters of exchange must be paid or protested within ten
days'after falling due. — Title VI. On interest on exchange and
reexchange. It is forbidden to take interest on interest. - Title
VII. On arrest for debt. - Title VIII. On separation of goods. -
Title IX. On defences and letters of respite. This title relates to
deposit of balance-sheet. - Title X. On cessions of property. -
Title XI. On failures and bankruptcies. Fraudulent bankruptcy
is punished with death.l —Title XII. On the jurisdiction of consuls
(tribunals of commerce). This is the development and extension
of the principles laid down in the edict of 1563, which had created
the first tribunals of commerce.  "Under the empire of the edict
of 1565, the consular competency was limited to the disputes of
merchants among themselves concerning merchandise: it was at
once personal and real. The ordinance of 1673 imprinted a character of legality on an essentially commercial contract, which had
its origin in the strife' and persecutions of the Middle Ages, - the
letter of exchange. A rapid vehicle of commercial value, a bond
of distant relations, an effective transportation of sums due to foreign places, the letter of exchange was considered as an act apart,
an act commercial in its nature, and attributive to consular jurisdiction; it determined a purely real competence; between all persons, it was submitted to the jurisdiction of consul-judges." 2
1 This extreme rigor was only the consequence of the legislation on theft. Fraudulent bankruptcy was assimilated to theft of the worst kind.
2 Laferriere, Histoire du droit franqais, t. I. p. 453, 1st edition. Bills of exchange,
for letters of exchange furnished or to be furnished, observes M. Laferribre, had not




136               LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.                    1672.
Colbert thereby attained the double aim  of the ordinance: to
protect the honest merchant against fraud, and commerce in general against chicanery.
We have completed the consideration under its various economic
phases of that colossal administration which seems to have united in
a few years the labors of many centuries. Never had France been
seen in a situation similar to that which she occupied in 1672;
never had she reached such a height of power and majesty. Not
only the admirers and panegyrists of the reign of Louis XIV., but
its most systematic detractors, Saint-Simon himself, have bowed
before the recollection of this immortal epoch.  "Everything was
flourishing in the state," exclaims Saint-Simon; " everything was
rich therein: Colbert had carried the finances, the marine, commerce, manufactures, even letters, to the highest point! i...." 
France grew by peace, as she had grown by war. As to affairs
abroad, since the treaty of the Pyrenees, events had supervened
that had rendered the superiority of France over Spain much more
striking; the warfare of tariffs and premiums, skilfully conducted by
Colbert, tended to reduce within just limits the exorbitant growth
of commercial and maritime power which Holland had arrogated
at the expense of other nations, and to restrain England, which
was burning to wrest this supremacy from Holland in order to use
it in a manner much more dangerous to Europe. The interest of
France, which had just been easily victorious in a brilliant and
fruitful military promenade,2 seemed to be peace in Europe and
America; a mysterious voice, at once the voice of the past and
the future, called for her warlike activity on other shores.
We shall see later why this call was not heeded, and how our
country was drawn aside from the path of wisdom and prosperity
in which Colbert had led her; but, before entering upon this other
epoch in which glory will no longer be the sister of justice, in which
France will sometimes combat for interests that are no longer those
of progress and humanity, it remains to contemplate, under new
aspects, the happy period during which so many marvellous geniuses
enlightened and embellished that France which Colbert enriched
the same character: in order that they might be attributed to consular jurisdiction,
it was necessary that one of the two contracting parties should be a merchant. By
the code of existing commerce, the bill of exchange has become an act of commerce in all cases, and the bill to order has been placed in the mixed condition in
which the bill of exchange was under Colbert. Under the edict of 1673, the bill to
order was an act of commerce only between two merchants.
1 Saint-Simon, t. XXIV. pp. 65, 121, edition in 12mo.
2 The wax of 1667; we shall give an account of it hereafter.




1672.               COMMERCIAL  ORDINANCE.                          137
and strengthened.  These ten or twelve years are the most glorious
that our country has ever enjoyed; let us not hasten to quit them.
Temples and palaces, theatres and academies, summon us from
bureaus, work-shops, and ports. Everywhere radiates the fruitful
activity of a great people; everywhere overflow torrents of life and
light. Here, again, we shall find the great minister by the side of
the great King, no longer creators, but inspirers and protectors,the centre, one and the other and the one by the other, of that
magnificent circle formed by the union of all glories.1
1 We must not terminate this study on the principal period of Colbert's administration without paying homage to the vast publication of M. Depping: Correspondance administrative sous le regne de Louis XIV.; ap. Recueil des Documents inddits.
The introductions that precede these four volumes are documents of great importance. T. I. Provincial Estates; municipal and communal affairs. T. II. Administration of justice; affairs of parliaments and other judicial bodies; public and secret
police; galleys. T. III. Finances, commerce and manufactures. T. IV. Public
works; religious and ecclesiastical affairs; Protestants; literature, science and arts.
VOL. I.         18




CHAPTER III.
LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT. (CONTINUED.)
INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL PROGRESS.  SECTION I. — THE GREAT KING AND
THE COURT. The Great Lords. Literary men. TheAcademies. The Clergy.
Etiquette. Women. Festivals of the Court. SECTION II. - SCIENCES AND
LETTERS. Academy of Sciences. Huyghens. The Observatory. Picard.
Cassini. Rcemer. Erudition. Baluze. Mabillon.  Ducange. D'Herbelot.
Travellers. Civil Law at Paris. SECTION III. -POETRY. THE DRAMA.
LITERATURE AND SOCIETY. MOLIERE. Boileau. RACINE. Lulli and Quinault. Question of the Stage. LA FONTAINE. Madame de LaFayette. MADAME DE SEVIGNf. SECTION IV. -MORALISTS. SACRED ELOQUENCE. La
Rochefoucauld. Nicole. BOSSUET. Bourdaloue. SECTION V. -FINE ARTS.
VERSAILLES. Colbert Superintendent of Constructions. Lebrun Director of
the Academy of Painting and Sculpture and of the Gobelins. Perrault; the
Louvre. Louis XIV. abandons the Louvre for VERSAILLES. Hardouin-Mansart. Le Nostre. The Invalides. SECTION VI. - TIE EDUCATION OF THE
DAUPHIN. THEORIES OF LOUIS XIV. AND BOSSUET. THE STATE OF THE
CHURCH. The Politics of the Holy Scriptures and the Memoirs and Instructions
of the King to his Son. Affairs of the Jansenists and Protestants. Controversies between Bossuet and the Ministers. Conversions. Splendor and
Perils.
1661-1672.
SECTION I. -LOUIS XIV. AND HIS COURT.
WE have just attempted to show Louis XIV. in his council,
directing, under the inspiration and by the hand of Colbert, that
great administrative and legislative laboratory whence emanated so
many useful reforms and glorious creations. It is time to behold
him in the midst of his court, to study his thought in what may be
called the government of manners and ideas, as we have studied it
in the government of material interests, in economical institutions.
There is no other way of penetrating to the heart of the French
society of this time. Our historians of the old r6gime have often
deserved the reproach of having written the history of courts instead
of the history of nations. It was from Louis XIV. that they took
this habit; their point of view, so false when applied by them to a
distant past, was almost true relative to the best years of the great




1661, 1662.     THE KING AND THE COURT.                      139
King. During the period which this history has reached, France
appeared absorbed in the court, the court in the King; it is impossible to stand elsewhere than on the steps of the throne if we would
compi"hend and judge the national advance of this century.
The court, in our annals, like the vesture of royalty, has changed
from age to age in proportion as royalty has been transformed;
each of the phases of court-life corresponds to a social or political
revolution. In the Middle Ages, when the kingdom was divided
into great fiefs, and the great fiefs into small seigniories, isolation
was at first the rule, life in common the exception. It was only at
certain epochs and for certain solemnities that the petty nobles
gathered about the great lords, or the great lords about the King
holding his full court. The progress of sociability coinciding by
degrees with that of the royal wealth and power, the first Valois
surrounded themselves with the higher nobility during entire seasons, and realized the ideal of court-life according to chivalric manners.1  All this was swallowed up in the English wars. When the
monarchy was reconstructed, L6uis XI., the antipodes of'chivalry,
had no court. The court was re-made by degrees under the following reign, and shone with unknown lustre under Frangois I.,
in whom the modern manners of the Renaissance were united to
the relics of chivalric tradition. The royalty of the sixteenth century appeared surrounded with powerful individualities, princes,
and governors, that, while proceeding from it, had also considerable personal importance, - an importance which'was so far exaggerated under the feeble successors of Frangois I. as to give birth
to great factions. This monarchico-aristocratic court disappeared
in its turn in the Religious Wars. There was little or no court
under Louis XIII. Like Louis XI. after the English Wars,
Richelieu, after the Religious Wars, was continually occupied in
chastising and terrifying the higher nobility, that is, the essential
element of the court. Richelieu descended to the tomb, the abortive reaction of the Fronde demonstrated to all the powerlessness
of the party of the nobility. Royalty could thenceforth summon
the higher nobility about it; — it had the power to mould it to its
will.
Louis XIV. comprehended this, and, with the surety of perception and the perseverance which distinguished him, resolved to
1 The name and thing belong to chivalrous society. The most characteristic
derivative of the word court is courtesy, which is, relative to castle-life, to chivalrous
and feudal society, what the words politeness, urbanity, civility, are to city-life, to civilization of Greek or Latin origin.




140             LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.             1661-1672.
bring the higher nobility wholly within his grasp by constraining
it, on the one hand, to establish itself at court and surround the
King with a permanent retinue, and, on the other, to serve regularly in the army, under conditions quite contrary to its habits,
prejudices, and pretensions.1
The consequences of these innovations could not but be extremely important. No more seigniorial cabals in the provinces,
no more traditional domination or influence in the localities where
the great lords ceased to reside; no more castle-life or noble domestic service; the great lords, devoured by the constantly increasing luxury of the court, a luxury which rendered them more and
more dependent on royal favor, had no longer either the means or
the need of maintaining the petty nobility in their pay. It was
the end, this time most real, of feudal life; all the households of
the great lords were absorbed in the household of the King, which
had all the higher nobility for domestics, in the ancient acceptation of the word. The petty nobility, already embarrassed by the
progressive rise in price of everything and the increase of artificial
wants, saw all its younger branches fall back upon it for support.
The King and Colbert above all wished to open to it the resource
of commerce, but it refused to countenance it, and would accept no
other honorable resource than positions in the army, which it filled
to overflowing. The great lords in their turn, once fully encumbered, fell back upon the King for support.  There was in this,
in compensation for immense political advantages, grave financial
embarrassments for the future: royalty would be obliged in consequence to support all this society at the expense of the people.
Let a weak and disorderly reign ensue, and the transformation of
the monarchy into a general exploitation of France by the allied
courtiers might be predicted.
But who, about the young and triumphant monarch, thought of
these far-off contingencies? In the present, Louis fully attained his
end and completed the general results of his internal policy by
some special measures, the most notable of which was the three
years' duration of governments, which had been demanded by the
States of 1614. The governments of cities and provinces, for life
by law, hereditary in fact though the system of reversion passed
into use, had wellnigh renewed feudalism. Louis XIV. granted
them no longer but for three years, with the reservation of pro1 We shall enter into a few details on this subject in describing the organization
of the army.




1661-1672.         THE KING AND LETTERS.                        141
rogation by new provisions, and thus crowned the work of Richelieu by depriving these military offices of all character of direct or
indirect property for the purpose of reducing them again to mere
temporary functions.l
Louis had no occasion to use compulsion to succeed. It sufficed
for him to make it clearly understood that all favors, whether useful or honorary, were for those who lived at court and served the
King; but this was not the only motive at his disposal; the inexpressible attraction exercised by his court was more powerful than
interest itself. When one had once tasted this life so brilliant,
so animated, so varied, he could no longer quit it to return to his
native manor without dying of languor and ennui; everything
seemed cold and dead away from this place of enchantment, which
appeared to town and province as the very ideal of human life.
It was a terrestrial empyrean for the exile from which none could
be consoled. There were united all the pleasures of the body and
the mind, all the excitements of the imagination and the intellect.
Louis not only summoned about him the privileged by birth, but
all that were distinguished by any claim whatsoever, wit, talent,
knowledge, even the brilliant vices that follow in the train of
riches.2 To unite in order to reign is the maxim of great governments.3   To unite everything in order to grasp everything, in
order to sum up everything in himself: this was what Louis XIV.
claimed to do and did. Every species of glory became a ray of
the royal sun, which borrowed from all, but also reflected light
on all by the irradiation which it communicated to all that surrounded it.
The conduct of Louis XIV. was not less adroitly studied towards
men of letters than towards men of quality. He recognized, accepted, and turned to the service of his greatness, the constantly
increasing importance which intellectual things were acquiring in
the nation. His personal inclinations led him to this not less than
his policy.  He had this in common with his great minister, that
both made up for a deficient education by rectitude of judgment
and natural taste; Louis being of the, two, as it seems, the better
I He had already deprived the governors of the handling of the funds which
Mazarin had suffered them to resume. The garrisons, renewed by degrees without the participation of the governors, became, in reality, no longer troops of the
governors, but troops of the King. See (Euvres de Louis XIV.; Memoires et Instructions, etc. t. I. p. 197; 1662.
2 Good players, parvenus, men of luxury and pleasure, easily found their way into
the court. Their liberality stood them in lieu of their birth.
8 See the reflections of Louis XIV. on this subject; (Euvres de Louis XZV. t. II.
p. 189.




142                LOUIS XIV. AND  COLBERT.                 1661-1672.
judge in literature, and Colbert in the fine arts. Here again is the
trace of Richelieu which Louis and Colbert resumed in laboring to
develop the destinies of which the Cardinal-King dreamed for the
language and literature of France. Louis aspired to and won the
horpor of exhibiting to literary Europe another Augustan age; he
knew that letters are not ungrateful, and that they give the prince
who protects them popularity at home, and a less direct but more
extended and more profound influence abroad than that of diplomacy. The progress of letters was destined to have still other
results, less apparent but not less certain. Everything is linked
together in the manifestations of the intellect and activity of a
people; it is impossible for the sentiment of the beautiful, the
noble, and the elegant to reign in literature, without being reflected, not only in the fine arts, but the industrial arts, the inventions and manufactures relating to the necessities of life. Colbert,
according to the observation of an author-statesman,l certainly
connected in his mind the assistance given to letters with the triumphant efforts made by him to secure to French arts and manufactures that superiority of taste and elegance which they were
destined never to lose.
Literary men were, therefore, attracted to the court like the
great lords, with the difference that what in reality debased the
latter exalted the former.  Men of letters were definitively removed from the domestic service of the nobility to become the
pensioners of the King; no longer by ecclesiastical benefices, flung
surreptitiously in commendam to a few wits, but by pensions made
directly payable on the treasury to whomsoever was reputed worthy
of encouragement. This was not independence, doubtless, but it
was to depend no longer, but on the one upon whom all depended.
Thus was regulated upon a grander scale what Richelieu and
Mazarin2 had begun.
1 M. Necker.
2 The first list of literary pensions, decreed in 1663, comprises thirty-four French
writers. It was drawn up by Chapelain and Costar, by order of Colbert. Chapelain does not maltreat himself therein, but adjudges himself a pension of three
thousand francs, as " the greatest French poet that has ever been and of the most
solid judgment." With this exception, the list is what might be expected, a jumbling of illustrious names, esteemed names, and names decried or forgotten. Posterity alone is competent, in such a case, to make the selection; and Chapelain,
after all, was a tolerably good judge, if he was not the greatest French poet, etc. Corneille is designated as the " first dramatic poet in the world," and Moliere, who was
not yet the author of " Tartufe " and the " Misanthrope," as an " excellent comic
poet."
The list of 1663 is inserted in the (Euvres de Louis XIV. t. I. p. 223, from the
manuscript of Colbert. The society of French bibliophiles published, in 1825, the




1661-1672.                   ACADEMIES.                            143
The patronage offered to letters was not limited to pecuniary
assistance. The body which officially represented literature, the
French Academy, received from Colbert, who sat upon its
benches,' every species of encouragement and favor. The King
declared himself in person protector of the Academy, which, at
first, had Chancellor Seguier for its official protector, and admitted
it to the rank of the great bodies of the State, by authorizing it to
come and harangue him on solemn occasions, "the same as the
parliament and other superior companies." In the society of'the
seventeenth century, in which ceremony plays so important a part,
this was a most important innovation in behalf of the dignity of
letters.
By the side of the French Academy arose, in the interval, another academy, at first of modest proportions.   This was a little
council formed by Colbert, "for all matters dependent on belles
lettres." In the concert of magnificence which was to surround the
King, the little academy was to furnish inscriptions for monuments,
designs and legends for medals, subjects for the inspiration of
artists, devices for festivals and tournaments, and descriptions of
them designed to dazzle foreign countries with the royal splendors.
Lastly, it was to prepare and write out the history of the King in
proportion as he should realize the great deeds which he had projected. The Academy of Inscriptions and Belles Lettres, the
work of a wholly individual and political thought, was destined one
day to break the bonds of its birth and to become the centre of
historical, philological, and archaeological science as the French
Academy is the centre of national literature.
The plan of Richelieu was enlarged and generalized. The discipline imposed by him on letters in the interest of the French language was extended to the arts and sciences. England had just set
lists of the subsequent years to 1679. The total, in 1663, scarcely exceeded sixty
thousand livres to French writers; it never went much beyond eighty thousand.
See Dulaure, Histoire de Paris, t. V. p. 292, 6th. ed.
1 Colbert by no means procured his exemption from the obligatory reception
speech, as the Abbe d'Olivet pretends in his Histoire de l'Acadeymie. He harangued
the learned association, on the contrary, with great grace and success, according to the
Gazette de France, April 30, 1667. He established the jetons de presence to stimulate
the completion of the famous dictionary. The publicity of the reception sessions,
which greatly increased the influence and popularity of the Academy, belongs to
the same epoch. See the Meimoires of Charles Perrault, liv. I. and III., upon all
that concerns the academies. Colbert maintained, in a characteristic circumstance,
that equality among the academicians, which was the idea of the founder. A
great lord, one of the members of the Academy, having caused an easy-chair to
be brought him, Colbert sent for thirty-nine more. This was the origin of the
forty easy-chairs.




144                LOUIS XIV. AND  COLBERT.                   1661-1672.
the example, as regards the sciences, by founding the Royal Society of London (1662).  Louis XIV. and Colbert responded by
the establishment of the Academy of Sciences (1666). These
two societies, which so many great discoveries were to render illustrious, were destined to a rivalry eminently fruitful to European
civilization.'
The Academy of Painting and Sculpture had been instituted in
1648, under Mazarin; it received new regulations from Colbert,
and the Academy of Architecture was founded in 1671.   The
methodical and systematizing spirit of the seventeenth century
deluded itself concerning the results that academic discipline could
produce in the fine arts, that inalienable domain of free inspiration,2 but Colbert none the less rendered French art a great service
by creating at Rome a branch of the Parisian Academy, an establishment which seemed inspired by the spirit of Poussin himself,
and to which the young French artists repaired to mature their
talent amidst the ancient and modern masterpieces that people
Italy (1667).
The benefactions of Louis XIV. and Colbert to literary men,
scholars, and artists did not stop at the frontiers of the kingdom;
the King commissioned his ambassadors to seek out the men in all
countries, whose labors merited public esteem; some were attracted
to France by the offer of honorable and advantageous positions;
others received gratuities and pensions, accompanied with the most
flattering letters from the hand of Colbert, without other condition
than  the tacit obligation of loudly expressing  their gratitude.3
The effect of this liberality which sought out merit throughout
Europe, without distinction of nationality, and which made the
I The two French and English academies existed, in point of fact, as free
societies, long before receiving the official sanction. The French scholars met at
the house of M. de Montmor, Councillor of State, as the literary men had formerly
assembled at the house of Conrart, before the letters-patent of Richelieu. It was
from Chapelain that Colbert demanded the plan of organization for the Academy
of Inscriptions and the Academy of Sciences. Chapelain's reports have been preserved. He appears in them as a man of good sense and good counsel, and worthy
of the confidence which Colbert reposed on him. See Revue Retrospective, 2e serie, t.
I. p. 84, et seq.
2 It was fancied that the Academy of Rome, known as St. Luke, had produced
"all the great subjects which had appeared for two centuries in the arts." - Ordinance of November, 1676; from the Recueil des anciennes; lois frangaises, t. XIX.
p. 169.:
8 See Colbert's letters to Vossius, Heineccius, Gratian'i, Allatius, Beklerus,
Servatius, Hevelius; according to the Revue Retrospective,2e: serie, t. I. pp. 78-838.
A few foreign scholars, nevertheless, accepted conditions of: another nature: and
became secret agents of French diplomacy; as Hermann (tonring. See P. Cl6ment,
Histoire de Colbert, p. 190.




1661-1672.      FOREIGN  SCHOLARS. CLERGY.                        145
King of France the protector of the republic of letters, was immense and out of all proportion to the material expense.1 From
Rome and Florence to Stockholm, everything resounded with the
praises of Louis the Great.
The material benefactions and social advantages accorded to the
literati and artists, are very far from fully explaining the action
which Louis XIV. exercised on the genius of his time. To the
sciences, he liberally furnished the instruments necessary for their
experiments and observations: this is all that depends on the
supreme power; for letters and arts, he could do and did more.
He offered them at his court, surroundings which determined their
development in a certain direction.  He imposed on them, in a
sort of general harmony, the spirit of order, unity, and gravity, tempered by the elegance which was in him and was, as it were, himself. He resumed from the throne the species of intellectual direction which had been possessed by an exclusive society, and constituted himself tile heir of the Hotel de Rambouillet, enlarging the
inheritance.  What an influence must have been exercised on the
productions of the intellect and imagination by the admission of
writers and artists into that court-life where everything breather
an air of greatness, taste, and magnificence, - where everything
at once animated, sustained, and restrained the flight of the mind!
The same was true of the clergy, the members of which, most
eminent for talent and knowledge, the King liked to draw near his
person, while keeping them away from political affairs. The ecclesiastical orators, who were beginning to rise to unknown heights,
gained singularly by frequenting such society, and finally divested
themselves of vulgar declamation and scholastic pedantry. The
clergy was no less indebted, in the moral point of view, to Louis,
who generally made a conscientious use of the rights recognized to
royalty by the concordat, and called to the prelacy those best fitted
to raise the consideration of the episcopate. The only reproach
1 The pensions to foreign scholars-did not much exceed twenty thousand livres a
year; the gratuities, it is true, were much larger. The astronomer Hevelius, of
Dantzic, having lost his library in a fire, Louis XIV. replaced it.  The Italian
astronomer Viviani "built a house at Florence through the liberality of Louis
XIV. He put in letters of gold on the frontispiece, iEdes a Deo datce; an allusion
to the surname of God-givern, which the public voice had bestowed on this prince at
his birth." Voltaire, Siecle de Louis XI V., c. xxv. Twelve panegyrics of Louis
XIV. were pronounced in as many Italian cities, and foreigners contributed no less
than the French to the adoption of the mythological and idolatrous language
with which the great king was intoxicated. The pensions to French and foreign
men of letters, and the academies, cost Louis XIV. 1,707,148 livres, from 1664 to
1690. See Eckard, Supplement aux recherches historiques sur Versailles, p. 69.
VOL. I.             19




146-             LOUIS XIV  AND COLBERT.                 1661-1672.
that can be made to him in this respect is that of rendering many
of these prelates uncanonical, by making an abode in his court
pleasanter to them than in their dioceses.1
When we have thus analyzed the elements of this court, we are
no longer so much astonished that historians have seen all France
in it. It was, at least, the epitome of France and the summary of
all her powers. The order maintained by Louis XIV. in this little
world of which he was the soul, was scarcely less interesting to
study than the elements themselves of which this world was composed.  Etiquette, without accepting the extravagant restraints
which the court of Spain endured, and which French genius would
not support, assumed an unknown extension, proportioned to the
increase of royal splendor.  The number of court offices and functions relating to the service of the person of the King was increased.
The distance was diminished or transposed between the different
classes, and increased between all classes and the King. Diminished,
at least indirectly, between the classes, it was strongly marked in
what it was deemed proper to preserve, at the same time that unaccustomed respect was imposed on superiors towards inferiors, the
King himself setting the example.2 Etiquette is adapted to serve
the monarchy at the expense of the aristocracy: it tends to make
functions prevail over birth,- distinctions which proceed from royal
favor over those which are inherent to race. The dukes and peers,
whose titles vaguely recalled the great system of vassalage, although
there was not even a shadow of it remaining among them, were
multiplied in order to reduce their importance, and the King gave
the marshals precedence over them, but gave it to them, by way of
compensation, over the presiding judges of the superior courts. Ministers of bourgeois extraction were covered with titles and elevated
by degrees, in the ceremonial, to the level of men of noble birth,
then of the dukes and peers themselves and the high officers of the
crown. In the army, the higher nobility was no longer necessarily
preferred to the lower, nor even to the commonalty,. with respect
to grades, and men were measured therein by grade and no longer
1 We remember Racine's epigram, which concludes thus:
Nous avons cinquante-deux pr6lats
Qui ne rLSsident pas.
2 We have already seen the energetic repression of acts of violence committed
by the nobility. A characteristic anecdote is that of the Marquis de Pellevd, who
had beaten a villager. The latter complained to the King in person. Louis treated
Pelleve so harshly that the courtier thought that he could do no less, to return to
favor, than equip a regiment at his own expense and offer it to the King. —He was
killed in the war with Holland.




1661-1672.                   ETIQUETTE.                             147
by rank. Certain honorary prerogatives were nevertheless reserved
to the higher nobility to console it for having seen the real power
pass into plebeian hands. The blue ribbon was given only to men
of ancient nobility or reputed such; the noble conduct of Marshal
Fabert is known, who refused the blue ribbon rather than consent
to disguise his plebeian birth.1 The permission to eat in public
with the King was likewise a privilege of rank. The justau-corps
d brevet -a costume adopted by the King, and which no one,
not even the princes of the blood, were permitted to wear without
a brevet from the royal hand — was a distinction which was
accorded only to the personages of the court most important
through birth or favor, but which established a sort of equality
between those gratified with it by the King. As to men distinguished by their talents, who had neither birth nor high offices,
the King indemnified them by private favors, marks of intimacy
and honorable familiarity; he honored them as man to man, while
leaving the official distance of rank and dignity in force with respect to them.2
The court was a scientific and complicated machine which Louis
guided with sovereign skill.   Every word, every movement, the
whole conduct of the King, was arranged in accordance with an
invariable plan, without seeming to be so, and sometimes even,
perhaps, without the consciousness of Louis himself, his policy
demanding scarcely any effort from his instincts and naturally confounding itself with them. At all hours, in all places, in the most
trifling circumstance of life, he was always king: a marvellous art
of reigning, the secret of which he had found, and was to carry
away with him. His affability never contradicted itself: he expressed interest and kindliness to all; he showed himself indul1 Voltaire says erroneously that Fabert refused, although he was exempted from
furnishing proofs of nobility. The King had made it a law to himself to observe
the statutes of the- order, which exacted four generations of nobility; but would
have shut his eyes on proofs such as of the Fabert family, as he did later on
those of the families of Colbert and Le Tellier. See Fabert's letter to the King,
and his answer; (Euvres de Louis XIV. t. V. p. 64. These two letters are alike
honorable to the King and the marshal. Fabert was, if not one of the most brilliant
figures of the seventeenth century, at least one of the noblest and purest characters
produced by this great epoch. A correspondence of this marshal has just been
published, in which he not only shows himself a loyal and devoted soldier, but a
religious philosopher and true sage. See the Ve'rite sur les Arnauld, completke a I'aide
de leur correspondance inedite, by M. P. Varin; 2 vols. in octavo, 1847.
2 Saint-Simon, Memoires, ed. of 1840, t. XXIV. pp. 74-80; 137-139. Saint-Simon
estimates etiquette from the aristocratic point of view. (Euvres de Louis XIV. t.
VI. p. 375; Voltaire, Siecle de Louis XIV. t. II. chap. 23; WalckenaSr, Mem. sur
Madame de S&vigne, t. II. passim.




148              LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.             1661-1672.
gent to errors that could be repaired; his majesty was tempered
by a grave familiarity, and set the limit which he wished to maintain by the very politeness from which he never departed towards
others; he wholly refrained from those pointed or ironical speeches
which wound so cruelly when falling from the lips of the man that
none can answer. To excite the zeal of Frenchmen to serve him,
he knew how to employ all springs, - action, patriotism, ambition,
honor, emulation, even flattery; but if he flattered his subjects,
it was as a king, and not, as Louis XI. of old, by inverting the
parts.
Resolved to make his court the type itself of civilization, and to
secure to France the supremacy of manners as that of language
and literature, he felt that society is stamped by the position
assigned in it to women and the conduct adopted towards them.
He taught all by his example the most exquisite courtesy towards
women, even of the most modest condition.' He reduced to a
system the noble and serious gallantry for which his mother, the
Spaniard Anne of Austria, had given him a taste and habit. The
tone and manners of the court, although less studied and fieer than
the tone of the Hotel de Rambouillet, became perfectly decorous
and refined. Manners acquired unequalled elegance. The last
relics of the ancient rudeness and grossness which still produced
strange discords in the brilliant and artistic court of Franois' I.,2
disappeared entirely under Louis XIV., and for the first time
French society attained true harmony of polished manners. In this
age, so far distant from chivalry and the Middle Ages, was realized
the chivalric ideal of manners and forms.  The fetes of Louis
XIV. exceeded everything of which romancers had dreamed. We
should transport ourselves in thought in the midst of these jousts,
where danger was suppressed by substituting contests of address for
those of strength, where the most brilliant youth in the world
competed in grace and agility before an incomparable 6lite of
women resplendent with wit and beauty. We should resuscitate,
through contemporary narratives, those days full of enchantment,
those blazing nights3 in which water and fire, ruled and transformed by the hand of man, lavished innumerable magic spells
among the thickets interspersed with masterpieces of art and the
1 " Never did he pass the humblest coif without taking off his hat, I say to chambermaids, and those he knew to be such." - Saint-Simon, ed. of 1840, t. XXIV. p.
144.
2 We remember the singular anecdotes in which Brant6me abounds!
8 Racine, Berdnice.




1661-1672.         SCIENCES AND LETTERS.                      149
ephemeral palaces improvised by the genius of machinists and
decorators, - in which, in fine, the fairy splendors that wearied the
eyes were interluded with the noblest pleasures of the intellect,
the creations of poetry, - and such poetry!... But, above all,
if we would comprehend it, we must never lose sight of the great
figure for which this magnificent frame was designed.  Always
Louis was upon the stage; always he was the centre and principle of all things. Whether appearing in mythological ballets
under attributes borrowed from the Sun-god;1 whether riding in
tournaments in the armor of the heroes of antiquity; or whether
simply presiding at plays and banquets in his ordinary apparel,
with his thick, flowing hair, his loose surtout blazing with gold
and silver, and his profusion of ribbons and plumes, -a costume
the theatrical fulness of which set off still more his great mien, —
always his air and port had something unique; always he was the
first among all. His whole life was like a work of art, ordered
in a rhythm full of harmony and majesty. The role was admirably played, because he played it conscientiously and, as great
actors do, at once by inspiration and reflection. Louis took his
attitude for himself, as for the court, for France, and for the world.
The innumerable testimonials which remain to us of the general
admiration attest Louis's.success before this immense public. Flattery did not need to tell him what was seen by all eyes, and —a
thing almost unique in history - courtiers could be sincere. From
a just admiration to a blind idolatry, the descent was to be almost
insensible.
SECTION II. —SCIENCES AND LETTERS.
LETTERS and arts, in the eyes of contemporaries, were but a portion of the vast concert the harmony of which was regulated by
Louis; they were considered only with a view to the whole; they
were a means, the monarchy, the King, was the end. The monarchy of Louis XIV. has passed away with the society formed
around it and for it; the intellectual creations 6f the seventeenth
1 He took the sun for a device in 1656, in a festival given at the Palais-Royal;
but the well-known legend, Nec pluribus impar, was not invented till the celebrated
tournament of the Tuileries, which gave its name to the Place du Carrousel (in
1662). The body of the device represents the sun illumining the earth with its
rays, and the legend signifies that it would be sufficient for several worlds. This
legend is very pompous, and, above all, obscure and perplexing, as Louis himself
admits in his Memoirs. (Euvres de Louis XLV. t. I. Mem. p. 196.




150              LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.               1661-1672.
century will not pass away, and have almost become the entire century to posterity; they demand, therefore, a place in history superior to the transitory forms and customs which they survived;
nevertheless, history, which strives to revive this extinct society
in its pictures, should seek in these immortal works, not only their
intrinsic value, but also their immediate influence on the France
of their times.  The life, the creations, the tendencies of the
great writers are unceasingly blended with the life and policy of
the great King. Nought remains here of the sovereign independence of Descartes, Pascal, or Corneille.1 The poets and artists, like the administrators and soldiers, were more or less the
lieutenants of Louis XIV.; almost all concurred in a common
work, as it were, under the same discipline.
It is naturally in literature proper and the fine arts that this
spirit is found most strongly imprinted, since in these are translated
the moral and social sentiments and ideas of a generation. The
sciences of abstract ideas and external nature have not so direct a
relation to the social state, but- are connected therewith, as has been
said, by the aids and instruments furnished them by the ruling
power. The thought of the seventeenth century displays universal activity. We will attempt to follow it in its different directions,
at least by rapid outlines.
The scientific advance of modern times pursued its course, which
was never more to be checked. A multitude of distinguished
intellects advanced in the path opened by great geniuses, -the
Descartes, Fermats, and Pascals. Minds expanded, enlightenment
was diffused, numerous learned societies were formed at Paris and
in the provinces, and by degrees gained the preponderance over
the clubs of wits, which had been as it were the small change of the
hotel de Rambouillet, and whose gallant and poetic scholasticism
began to fall into discredit.  Men descanted on method, on the soul
and nature, instead of on the Perfect Lover and the geography of
the Empire of Tenderness.  A  powerful blast agitated France;
women seemed disposed to follow men in this austere path, and
girls of eighteen were seen studying their soul and forming their
mind, no longer ill Astrcea or Clelia, but in the Metaphysical Meditations or the Christian Thoughts.  Metaphysics, mathematics, and
the natural sciences maintained their fruitful alliance in the broad
bosom of philosophy. Cartesianism reigned in the free societies and
encroached upon the corps of instruction through the learned cor1 Corneille vainly humbled himself in his prefaces to the great and even rich men
of his times; in reality, he served no one and asked inspiration of no one.




1661-1672.       ACADEMY OF SCIENCES.                     151
poration of oratorians; organized as a great party, it had its
preachers and missionaries everywhere; some teaching its metaphysics, others its physics, a few its whole doctrine. Whilst numerous disciples applied themselves to reproducing literally and commenting upon the thought of the master, without adding or correcting anything, great philosophic books were in preparation in
France and elsewhere, which were to appear in a few years and to
develop, transform, or change the nature of the work of the father
of the science. Spinoza and Malebranche were at work. In mathematics, a few eminent men, the Robervals and Bouillauds, while
profiting by the Cartesian method, followed a course towards the
indivisible and the infinite nearer approaching Fermat than Descartes, but which was destined only to attain its end outside of
France, with Leibnitz and Newton. In metaphysics, the little
atomical and sensualistic school of Gassendi was attempting here
and there to dispute the ground without much brilliancy or success.
Rival schools were not what Cartesianism had to dread, at least at
present, but much rather the ecclesiastical and laical powers whose
suspicions increased in proportion as its intellectual domination
extended.
These suspicions, Rome and the Jesuits, at last declared against
Descartes,1 labored to impart to Louis XIV. In 1667, the remains
of the philosopher were borne from Sweden to France, and solemnly deposited at St. Genevieve, in the same place whence the
Revolution was one day to bring them back in triumph to inaugurate the Temple of Great Men. Worthy funeral honors were prepared for Descartes..... These funeral honors were refused him!
The adversaries of philosophy awakened in Louis XIV. that fear
of ideas natural to all absolute power; the protector of letters and
arts forbade the funeral eulogy of the greatest genius that ever rendered French literature illustrious to be publicly delivered!....
This reactionary act of political royalty against the royalty of the
intellect did not however arrest the effects of the good will which
Louis and Colbert testified towards the sciences in general, and the
Academy of Sciences was founded in the interval. Among the
first members of this celebrated society are remarked the geometricians Roberval and Carcavi, the anatomist Pecquet, the physicist Mariotte, the physician Cureau de La Chambre, a profound
physiognomist, whose quick intuition and sagacious indications
Louis XIV. willingly consulted; Claude Perrault, a scholar and
1 The works of Descartes were placed on the expurgatory at Rome, in 1662, done
corrigerentur. This was not an absolute condemnation; Rome was not wholly wite
out prudence.




152             LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.             1661-1672.
artist, physician, physicist, anatomist, and architect, one of those
flexible minds that undertake and succeed in everything; the Abb6
Picard, a geographer and astronomer, one of the men to whom
French science owes the most gratitude; lastly, a foreigner attracted
to France by Colbert, the Hollander Huyghens, already illustrious
for his discoveries concerning the system of the planet Saturn, and
the application of the pendulum to clocks and to the investigation
of longitudes. The Academy was divided into five sections: pure
and mixed mathematics, astronomy, botany, anatomy, and chemistry. This division was doubtless still imperfect; but a decisive step
attested the triumph of the true scientific spirit; astrology and the
search for the philosopher's stone were formally excluded from the
circle of academic labors. The sublime discoveries which had revealed the physical infinite to science and impelled it towards the
mathematical infinite, gave to its activity a field vast enough for it
no longer to waste its strength in the investigation of chimerical or
intangible laws; having attained manhood, science renounced the
dreams which had lulled its imagination during its long infancy.
This was again a victory for the Cartesian method; it was indeed
in this direction that Descartes had proscribed the occult qualities
and the investigation of final causes.
To these five sections had been for a moment added a section of
theology; but the Sorbonne took alarm, and protested so warmly,
that Colbert consented to suppress theology.  " It was at the same
time resolved that there should be no disputation on matters of
controversy or politics, on account of the danger of agitating these
subjects without mission or necessity."1  The existence of a section of theology would logically have led to the establishment of
sections of metaphysics, ethics, and politics, and the foundation of
a society truly encyclopedic, embracing the whole domain of the
human intellect; its suppression confined the Academy within the
exclusive domain of mathematics and external nature.
This field, still so extended, and destined to expand continually,
the Academy understood how to cultivate with glory. Pure mathematics had the preponderance at Paris, as experimental physics
in the Royal Society of London, a respective superiority somewhat
in conformity with the genius of the two nations. In another
science, experimental in its processes, philosophical in its spirit,
France had the same supremacy as in mathematics: namely, comparative anatomy. In anatomy proper, the two nations rivalled each
I Ch. Perrault, lMenoires, t. I. p. 51. Perrault gives interesting details concerning the early days of the Academy.




1661-1681.               HUYGHENS.                         153
other in effort. A Frenchman, Pecquet, completed the discovery
of the Englishman Harvey, by showing in the thoracic canal the
reservoir of chyle where the blood is elaborated.  Two other
Frenchmen, Duvernei and Vieussens, improved, the one the knowledge of the organ of hearing, the other the anatomy of the nerves.
The part of the Cartesian theory relative to the human body and
to the union of the soul and body received a violent shock through
the Discourse on the Anatomy of the Brain, published at Paris by
the Dane, Stgnon.  The Danish anatomist divested the pineal
gland of the important character attributed to it by Descartes, who
made it the centre of the perceptions and the functions of the soul
(1669).
The French had that superiority in surgery which they were
destined to keep indefinitely.
Chemistry, freed from alchemic superstitions, began seriously to
study the elements of the composition of bodies. Ldmeri, in his
Course of Lectures on Chemistry, published in 1675, extricated
this science from the mad pretensions and barbarous language
to which it had been subjected, and clearly set forth its end and
means.1
Mechanics were cultivated with equal ardor in principles and applications. The influence of Colbert did not suffer practical utility
to be neglected. The Academy presided over the construction of
the machinery, whether already known or newly invented, required
by the government for the marine, the manufactures, or any other
use.2 Huyghens requited French hospitality magnificently by imperishable labors; whilst he gave to practice the clock, watch, and
chronometer, he gave to theory, in his Jiorologium oscillatorium,
dedicated to Louis XIV. (1673), the principle of the preservation
of vital forces, thus passing beyond the Cartesian physics, pure
mechanics, to enter the domain of dynamics. Through this principle he had perhaps the glory, without being a philosopher, of
determining the direction of the greatest philosophical genius that
was to appear among the successors of Descartes. This physicist, a
stranger to metaphysics, may be considered as the connecting link
between Descartes and Leibnitz.
Numerous works on the collision of bodies, the fall of heavy
bodies, and the laws of motion in general, and important improve1 Concerning anatomy and chemistry, see Portal, Histoire de l'anatomie, t. III. p.
464; IV, p. 101. Fontenelle, Eloge de Lemeri.
2 Ch. Perrault mentions in his Memoires (p. 48) the invention of dredging machines, saw-mills, stocking and ribbon weaving machines, etc.
VOL. I.       20




154             LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.             1666-1672.
ments in optical instruments, also signalized the stay of Huyghens in
France, where he passed fifteen years (1666-1681). To an epoch
subsequent to his life belong, at least by the date of their publication, his admirable studies on light, upon which we know that he
founded a theory inspired by the Cartesian spirit, and which, eclipsed
for a moment by the English school, was destined to appear in our
age, perfected and victorious.1
Astronomy, during this time, profited actively by the benefactions of the royal power, which had built it'a palace filled with the
most powerful instruments then at the disposal of science, the Observatory, constructed, from 1667 to 1672, from the designs of
Claude Perrault. Picard organized in some sort practical astronomy,
invented instruments (the micrometer, and essaying-glass) which
remodelled the whole system of observations, and first conceived, as
it seems, the decisive idea of simultaneous observations at different
points of the globe. He joined with Carcavi in urging the King and
Colbert to bring from Italy Dominica Cassini, famous throughout
Europe for his Bologna meridian which had permitted him to resolve important problems touching the theory of the sun, and his
discoveries concerning the system of Jupiter and the rotation of
this planet and of Mars. Cassini was received by Louis XIV. as the
prince of science (1669). Scarcely was he installed in the Observatory, when, in concert with Picard, he caused an observer to be
sent to Cayenne, to study there, under conditions more favorable
than at Paris, the parallax of Mars, then very near the earth. This
journey established by observation the exact value of the parallax of
the sun, which Cassini had divined by induction; and the true distance of the earth from the sun and the dimensions of our planetary
system, far vaster than Kepler had imagined, were at last known.
The law of the decrease of gravity from the pole to the equator,
the basis of Newton's demonstration on the flattening of the earth
towards the poles, was also ascertained (1671-1672). Cassini next
discovered four new satellites of Saturn. He fulfilled the views of
the French government by making his astronomical labors subservient to the progress of geography and navigation. Naturalized and
married in France, where he founded a family of scholars, he was
sumptuously recompensed for his services; but perhaps the marked
and merited favor of the brilliant Italian caused a little too much
neglect of the good and modest Abb6 Picard, whose projects for rectifying the geography of France were by no means actively enough
1 Biographie Universelle, art. Huyghens; Dictionnaire de Chaufepid, id.




1661-1677.            CASSINI. ROEMER.                      155
seconded. To Picard nevertheless belongs the honor of having
first undertaken to measure a degree of the terrestrial globe; in
1669 he commenced that celebrated meridian of the Observatory
which was to serve at once as the basis of our national geography
and of the celestial system of Newton. This was finished by La
Hire and Cassini.
France owed Cassini in part to Picard; it also owes him RoemeC, whom he met during a scientific journey in the north of
Europe, and brought back with him from Denmark to Paris, without fear of giving himself an additional rival. The young Danish
astronomer stamped an ineffaceable imprint upon the history of the
Academy of Sciences. Like Huyghens, he at once developed
and rectified the Cartesian philosophy; he corrected an error of
Descartes which trammelled the advancement of science and proved
that the propagation of the solar light is not instantaneous but
successive (1675).  Huyghens, on his side, established a correlative truth; namely, the elasticity of the etherial medium traversed by this light, which Descartes believed hard, and composed
of closely compressed and immovable globules. Huyghens set out
from this to develop the beautiful Cartesian theory which makes
light, not a body, but a simple mechanical effect resulting from the
motion communicated by the sun to the etherial medium, which
reacts in turn on our atmosphere and visual organs. Roemer, after
observing with Huyghens and Cassini the quantity of time required
for the perception of sound and light (1677), succeeded in calculating the velocity of the solar ray; a truly marvellous triumph
of genius, Besides his great discoveries, the Observatory was indebted to him for ingenious apparatus for the indication of the
planetary movements and the calculation of eclipses.'
The scientific advance, viewed as a whole, was therefore as fruitful as well directed,2 although the distrust of the religious power
still interposed more than one obstacle. No one yet dared teach
the Copernican system openly, and Cassini never clearly declared
himself in its favor. A storm was gathering, on the other hand,
against that audacious Cartesianism which pretended to subject
everything to reason. The practical reservations made by Descartes relative to the religious domain did not tranquillize tradi1 Encyclope'die nouvelle, art. Cassini, by M. J. Reynaud.  Biographie Univers., art.
Roemer and Picard. Dictionnaire of Chaufepie, art. Roemer. Ch. Perrault, Me'rn.
t. I.
2 As a work for the popularization of science, may be cited the Eledments de geom-.
trie of Antoine Arnauld, an excellent model of all works of the kind, and well
worthy of coming from the same hand as l'Art de penser.




156               LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.                1667-1706.
tional authority, which was fully conscious that these reservations
were little in accordance with his method, and that the disciples
would sooner or later draw the consequences of the principles laid
down by the master.
Historical studies, which were not yet allied to general science
and philosophy, like the exact and natural sciences, continued to
follow, in the modest but eminently useful path of pure erudition,
the vigorous impulse given during the first half of the century.
The monuments of the national annals were more and more sought
out and brought to light. The spirit of nationality intervened sometimes in a singular manner in the labors of erudites. Some writers, with more patriotism than criticism, sought to make of the
Franks a Gallic colony returned to its native land, in order that it
might not be said that Gaul was "a conquered country."  The
Jesuit Lacarri lent the aid of his erudition to this opinion already
enunciated in the sixteenth century by Jean Bodin and quite recently by the feudist Chantereau-Lefivre.1 Indefatigable workers
passed their lives in extracting materials for history from the careers
of the past.  Etienne Baluze, the librarian of Colbert2 and his
scientific agent, edited and commented upon numerous monuments
important to religious and national history, some wholly new, others
edited from the best texts; his most notable work is the collection of the Capitularies and ETormularies; that is, of the legislation
of the Frankish kings. The congregation of Saint-Maur pursued its
vast labors inaugurated under Richelieu and Mazarin; a monk who
sums up in himself all Benedictine science, and whose name has
become, as it were, that of erudition itself, Father Mabillon, made
his d6but, in 1667, by the edition of the complete works of St.
Bernard, then published successively the eight folio volumes of the
Acts of the Saints of the Order of St. Benedict, a vast repertory
of ecclesiastical and general history. He gave next, in his -Diplomacy, the principles by which to verify the authenticity of a
great part of historical sources, and thus regulated the advancement
of science (1681). For more than twenty-five years after this important work he was to pursue his career without hindrance or repose. As worthy of veneration for his courageous sincerity as astonishing for his knowledge and activity, we shall see him by turns
serving Gallicanism with the weapons familiar to him, combating for
1 Chantereau-Lefbvre, Traite des Fiefs, 1662. Lacarri, Historia coloniarum tam a
Gallis missarum, etc., quam in Gallias deductarum ab exteris, etc., 1677. Aug. Thierry,
Considerations sur l'Histoire de France.
2 The rich library of Colbert, formed by the care of Baluze, is now one of the
principal foundations of our Bibliotheque nationale.




1657-1689.           DUCANGE. TILLEMONT.                           157
science, now against asceticism, then against superstition, and dying
at last, pen in hand, as he had lived, over a great work undertaken
at sixty, which death alone could force him to interrupt.
A man of a class which furnishes few subjects to letters, an officer of finances, rendered services to science superior perhaps to
those of Mabillon himself: Charles Dufresne Ducange, Treasurer
of France in the generality of Amiens, did more perhaps by hims;lf alone than all the other savans together, for the knowledge of
the Middle Ages.  After giving to the public the History of Constantinople under the French Emperors (1657), and the Memoirs
of Joinville, enriched with remarks, dissertations, and documents
of the highest interest, (1668,) after drawing up, at Colbert's
request, the plan of a new collection of the historians of France, a
plan destined to be the basis of the immense Benedictine Collection, he brought to light the Glossary of Low Latin; that is, of that
strange official language of the Middle Ages, in which innumerable
radicals of the barbarous tongues were fused in the mould of a
corrupt Latin; a work of incomparable difficulty and utility, which
entitles its author to everlasting gratitude.1 He also did, later,
for Byzantine Greece what he had done for Low Latin ( Glossarium
medice et infimce arcecice, 1688), and published the principal Byzantine historians, with original works on the annals of Constantinople
(1670-1680-1686-1689).2
The name of no other contemporary scholar can be placed in
comparison with the names of Mabillon and Ducange; yet there
were still laborious workers in science whom history should not forget; as, Denys Godefroi, the second of the name, author of the
Ceremonial of France (2 vols. in fol.) and of the History of the
Officers of the Crown, and editor of the original historians of the
reigns of Charles VI., Charles VII., Louis XI. and Charles VIII.,
etc.; Le Laboureur, who added to the historians of Charles VI. the
admirable ChAronicle of the Monks of Saint-Denys, and threw so
much light on the history of the sixteenth century by his Commentaries on Castelnau; and the Abbd Mordri, who died, worn out with
1 Glossarium ad scriptores medice et infimce latinitatis, in quo latina vocabula, novatce sgq.
nificationis, explicantur, complures Levi medii ritus et mores, legumn, consuetudinum municipalium et jurisprudentice recentioris formnulce et obsoletce voces, utriusque ordinis ecclesiastici
et la'ci dignitates et officia, etc.; enucleantur et illustrantur; 1678, 3 vols. in fol. The
Benedictines have since revised and completed the work of Ducange, and extended
it to 9 vols. in fol. It has recently been published in 8vo.
2 Cousin, president of the Court of Exchequer, deserves to be named next Ducange for his numerous translations of Greek and Byzantine historians, among others, Eusebius of Cesarea. " No one," says Voltaire, " has more fully laid open the
sources of history."




158               LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.             1672-1697.
labor, after publishing at thirty his.Historical Dictionary (1673),
an essential work which, remodelled and enlarged after the author's
death, has remained and will remain, in spite of its imperfections,
one of the bases of every library. To the Jansenist Tillemont
belongs a higher place than that of mere scholars, the two or three
great names of erudition excepted; he is not only a preparer of
historical materials, but a historian, who may leave something to be
desired in an artistic point of view, but who satisfies all the requirements of the most rigorous method by the solidity of his criticisms,
the extent of his researches, and the rectitude of his judgments.
With reference to a great history of the Church, which he projected
and another was destined to execute, he elucidated the chronology
and political history of the centuries corresponding to the early
ages of Christianity, and published the History of the Roman Emperors, and afterwards excellent Memoirs on Ecclesiastical History.
Numismatics, one of the sciences auxiliary to history, was constituted meanwhile by Spanheim, Vaillant, and Jobert, as was diplomacy by Mabillon. Vaillant, by order of Colbert, went to seek
materials for the science, through innumerable perils, in the regions
of classical antiquity, and formed of them the Royal Cabinet of
Medals, the origin of the Cabinet of the Bibliothdque Royale.l Jobert systematized, a little later, in his book on the Science of Medals, the results of the labors of his predecessors (1692).
Greek and Latin philology remained in a flourishing condition;
Latin poetry was even more brilliant among us than in the sixteenth century, and several churchmen, such as Santeuil and the
Jesuits Rapin and La Rue, employed distinguished talents in this
artificial style.
Oriental studies were progressing. A superior man, D'Herbelot,
whom Italy had sought to appropriate and whom Colbert recalled
to France, passed his life in concentrating, in the form of a dictionary, the fruit of vast researches concerning the history and literature of Western and Mahometan Asia. The Bibliotheque Orientale,
which did not appear until after the death of D'Herbelot (in 1697),
was to Europe a veritable revelation. Everything therein is drawn
directly from Arabic, Turkish, Persian, and Tartar sources.
D'Herbelot had for pupils and continuers in Orientalism, Petis
de La Croix, and Galland, so popular through his translation of the
Thousand and One Nights.
1 In 1666, Colbert had the Bibliotheque Royale transferred from the Rue de la
Harpe, where it had been since Henri IV., to two houses in the Rue Vivienne,
which belonged to him, near his residence.




1665.    THE EAST. TRAVELLERS. FRENCH LAW.                159
Numerous journeys to the East, both scientific and political, were
undertaken by order of the French Government. The curious
-relations of d'Arvieux concerning Arabia and Syria deserve especial mention. Other travels of this epoch have remained more
celebrated, - the adventures and narratives of men whom curiosity
and the spirit of discovery impelled spontaneously to the heart of
Asia, such as Chardin, the son of a jeweller of Paris, so well
known by his excellent writings on Persia; the daring and indefatigable Tavernier, who died, so to say, on the highway, at eightyfour, after sixty years' travel over the globe; Thdvenot, the great
traveller, compiler of travels, and archaeologist; and Bernier, the
Montpelier physician, who became the physician of the Great Mogul, and carried Descartes and Gassendi to the court of Shah Jehan
and Aurungzebe.1
Great things were done by Louis XIV. and Colbert for a science
which, more than all those the progress of which has just been
indicated, is intimately connected with the science and duties of
government, - the science of law. The teaching of civil law, of
Roman law, was reinstalled at Paris, where it had made but a brief
appearance in the times of Cujas, and whence ecclesiastical authority had succeeded hitherto in banishing it.  At the same time,
French law, the law of customs and ordinances, was erected from
simple practice into official science, and taught in the universities,
first in that of Bourges (1665), then successively in the rest. An
excellent edition of the Theodosian Code, the posthumous work of
Jacques Godefroi, had appeared in 1665; several jurisconsults published commendable works in which the rational spirit of the Roman
law enlightened customs; thus Ricard commented upon the customs of Senlis, Basnage upon those of Normandy, and Salvaing
upon the feudal usages of Dauphiny. A great mind, known in the
religious world by his close alliance with Pascal and the whole
school of Port Royal, was preparing, under the double inspiration of
Christian sentiment and the new philosophic method, a book destined to rule over one of the principal phases of the history of law;
but the publication of the great work of Domat belongs to a more
distant epoch.
1 Bernier relates that the Vizier Daneck Mend Khan passed every afternoon in
philosophizing with him, on Descartes and Gassendi, the terrestrial globe, the
sphere, and anatomy.-Voyages de Bernier, Paris, 1670-1671.




160              LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.             1659-1661.
SECTION III. — POETRY. THE DRAMA. LITERATURE AND SOCIETY.
MOLI1ERE. BOILEAU. RACINE. LA FONTAINE. MADAME DE SEVIGNE.
HOWEVER important may have remained a few of the scientific
names which belong to the first period of the government of Louis
XIV., the prodigious lustre of the literary names casts them in
the shade. Scarcely had Louis XIV. seized the helm of state,
when a blossoming forth of poetry ensued such as France had
never beheld. Four geniuses, if not equal among themselves, at
least each sovereign in the portion of space which he appropriated,
at once invaded that heaven of poetry, in the highest region of
which hovered solitary the aged eagle of Corneille.
The first that came to take place in the magical \circle which
Louis XIV. had traced around him was the genius of comedy. The
epopee had proved abortive; tragedy had not awaited the coming
of the great King to leap at one bound to the highest summit;
comedy, to which the great tragedian had opened a career in the
interval of his heroic creations, took possession in turn of the domain which social progress had prepared for it by the constantly
increasing advance of relations and ideas; this art, which can flourish only in highly polished, advanced, and c6mplex civilizations,
was about to surpass the height which it had attained among the
ancients, and the glory of conquering Aristophanes and TUrence was
given to a child of old Paris, born under the pillars of the markets.
Moliere summed up in himself and carried to sublimity the qualities of that Parisian wit which is itself only the sum and, as it
were, the essence of French wit.
Biographers have more or less exactly recounted by what circumstances the son of the weaver, who seemed destined to grow
up among vulgar surroundings, was called to receive the strongest
and most learned education, but not perhaps the best conducted as
to the guidance of the mind. Reared in scientific epicureanism by
Gassendi in person, then connected with a little society of practical
epicureans, who, very different in their habits from those of the
grave Gassendi, mingled unbelief with pleasure, this beginning
influenced the sequel of his life more than was desirable for his
repose and happiness, although his thought rallied later to the support of a higher philosophy.l \ At twenty, he mounted the stage,
1 See his dispute with Chapelle on Descartes and Gassendi, in his Life, by Grimarest, reprinted from the Archives Curieuses, 2d ser. t. X. He was very intimate, in
his last years, with the famous Cartesian, Rohault. Grimarest deserves no confi



1661-1664.                MOLIERE.                          161
which he was never more to quit, and, like Shakspeare, began to
prepare himself, by representing the ephemeral productions of contemporary authors, to replace them by immortal works. His renown
was in no wise precocious. Comedy is the fruit of mature age, to
poets as to nations. He strolled over the provinces a long time
with a troop of comedians, studying the world and life, and preluding his creations by essays full of vivacity and wit, but which did
not yet disclose the original poet.  Les Precieuses Ridicules at
last revealed Moliere: it was the inauguration of the true comedy
of manners (1659).  The success was brilliant and legitimate, for
Moliere had attacked only the false precieuses and not the true
ones; that is, the romantic eccentricities which, already wearisome
in the best society, became insupportable in inferior imitators.
Master of his art and sure of himself, Moliere returned to Paris.
Protected by Fouquet, who monopolized all talent, and for whom
he wrote two works, he became part, as it were, of the spoils of
Fouquet which Louis XIV. transported from Vaux to Versailles,.and his troupe was not long in becoming officially the royal troupe.,
Each of his pieces was thenceforth an event.
The appearance of comedy, which addresses itself less to the
passions than to the judgment, could not excite the intoxication
which had welcomed the birth of tragedy; but with what inmost
satisfaction, with what serene joys of the mind, did not enlightened
men behold the living reproduction of French society substituted
for the cold imitations of Latin and Spanish comedy, and the moral
lessons that spring from the very sight of happily chosen reality,
for the vain and sterile curiosity of imbroglios!  The exquisite
and charming naturalness of characters and language, the style,
in which the freedom and vivid coloring of the antique French
were united to the spirit of order and clearness which marked the
new century, the unequalled originality of style and ideas, the
never-failing vein of dialogue, the verse as full and powerful as
the Cornelian verse, and in which the comic character gushed
forth with the same force and unexpectedness as the heroic character in Corneille, - everything, in short, in Moligre conquered
and delighted healthy intellects.
Moliere touched not alone upon questions of art and form, as is
perceived by the agitation that he excited around him; it is the
characteristic of true comedy to stir society to its depths.  The
dence as to the history of Moliere's youth; but the anecdotes relative to the glorious days of the great comedian were doubtless matters of public notoriety when
Grimarest wrote. See Vie de 3Moliere, by M. de Taschereau.
VOL. I.         21




162              LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.             1661-1664.boldest innovating ideas broke forth in l'tcole des Maris and l'fEcole
des Femmes.uThe old Jewish and Roman maxims on the submission
and inferiority of the wife were attacked at once by the weapons
of ridicule and reason. These maxims incarnated in the laws, the
enthusiasm of the chivalric reaction had striven without success
to destroy, by prostrating man before woman; now, philosophy,
by the lips of a poet, condemned them in the name of equity,
domestic happiness, and the family better understood. An honorable liberty, a worthy equality, a veritable society in marriage,
such was the true and human ideal which the poet proposed, in
place of that chivalrous Utopia which, declaring itself incompatible
with the necessities of life and the family, was unable to uproot
ancient domestic tyranny.
The precieuses, those women formed in the school of the Hotel de
Rambouillet, who had so many claims to the gratitude of French
society, clung, nevertheless, too much to what there was chimerical
in the spirit of chivalry degenerated into the romantic spirit; they
knew not how to recognize to what degree the new comedy served
the interests of their sex.1 They persistently exaggerated the few
remnants of somewhat vulgar pleasantry and old comic license
which Moli/ere was wrong in not banishing from his comedies;
they leagued themselves with the triflers and fops of the court,
the born enemies of naturalness and good sense, and the poet was
assailed with clamors which some fools carried to the extent of
insult.
Reprisals were not long in coming. Moliere consummated a
rupture, in more than one respect to be regretted, with the precieuses, and charged full tilt upon the marquises.2 The impertinence of the young nobility, its whims, then its vices, were translated upon the stage before the court and France, and derided
with pitiless vivacity. The marquis became the butt of comedy:
thenceforth, as Moliire told him to his face, he was destined to
replace the buffoon valet of Latin comedy. What a revolution in
manners, when the lord becomes the sport of serfs! What a vengeance for the citizens so long scoffed at by the nobles!
This vengeance would have been impossible, if Moliere had not
been able to rely upon an illustrious accomplice. Louis XIV. was
his second against the marquises. The absolute monarch encouraged, at least, if he did not inspire the popular poet, and took
1 There are always exceptions to these generalities: it would be certainly very
erroneous to suppose that all women of good society were unfriendly to Moliere.
2 See the Critique de l'Ecole des Femmes, and the Impromptu de Versailles (1663).




1661-1664.          MOLI1RE. TARTUFE.                      163
delight in permitting the pride to be humbled of the so often rebellious nobility, whom he forced to laugh at themselves against their
will. This was again the work of Richelieu continued with new
weapons, the most decisive of all. If a celebrated anecdote is to
be believed, Louis went so far as to seat at his table, in the presence of the stupefied nobles, the comic poet whom his gentlemen
valets de chambre " had not thought fit to eat with them." I
Molidre, moreover, was far from lacking moderation and prudence in his system of aggression: the poet furnished the King,
by his adroit reservations, the best excuses for not abandoning him.
Adroit in shunning extreme positions, he managed to neutralize
reasonable persons of the very classes that he attacked. If he
derided prudes, he eulogized good morals. If he attacked fops, the
honest man whom he reproduced unceasingly as his favorite type
was the elegant and polished man of the world. He opposed the
intellectual and sensible to the extravagant courtier, and acknowledged two judges with equal rights: the court and the pit, the
judgment of refined minds and the feeling of the masses.
This moderation was not lacking in the boldest and most generous enterprise of his life.
In 1664, Louis XIV. gave that incomparable seven days' fete
at Versailles, in which he assembled every marvel, less to dazzle
his court and the world than to charm the eyes of a single woman,
who modestly concealed her triumph amid the crowd, and would
gladly have hidden her happiness, troubled by remorse, from all the
world. There, in the interval of tournaments, balls, and festivities, interludes of mythological poetry translated in allusions, understood by all, the passions which agitated the court, even to the
heart of the monarch. Moliere accepted with Benserade, the ordinary singer of the court gallantries, a poetic strife in which it was
to his honor not to conquer, then diverted the brilliant audience by
a buffoonish comedy. It was to have purchased the right to be
wise by sufficient folly: he rose up and terminated the fete by
Tartufe as by a thunderbolt.
r Tartufe is as it were the second part of the Provinciales, destined
to remain as famous and much more popular than the first, because
dramatic poetry vivifies forever the types once touched by its
breath, and because the subject here is not susceptible of growing
1 Louis XIV. never invited Moliere to his public table; etiquette, erected into
maxims of state, forbade it; but he may, as is related, have breakfasted with the
poet, in his room. The anecdote, moreover, is not certain. An illustrious poet,
M. Ingres, has recently given currency to it.




164             LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.            1664-1669.
old. It is really the sequel of the same warfare, but elevated to a
wholly new character of generality: on one side, the philosopher
has replaced the sectarian; on the other, the adversaries are also
modified. Pascal attacked the errors of the mind; Moliere attacks
the perversity of the heart.  Tartrufe is no longer the Jesuit, but
the Atheist travestied as a Jesuit. There was in this attack against
hypocrisy an inspiration truly prophetic.  This was not yet the
ruling vice of the epoch. So long as the King was young, gallant,
of a free and open mind, the danger did not appear very imminent,
although alarming symptoms might be seized here and there, such
as the refusal of a public eulogy to Descartes. But let the King
turn to practical devotion and rigidness, with the spirit of unity,
external order, conventionality, and imitation that reigned, and
hypocrisy would invade everything. It was the foe of the morrow
that Moliere combated in advance. In this we recognize genius!:
Moliere had this time waged war against a more formidable adversary than the marquises and precieuses; Tartufe knew well how
to show his power and to engage in his cause the greater part of
the sincere devotees, those whom Moliere had nevertheless separated so carefully from their fraudulent copyists. The men most
worthy of respect for their true piety suffered themselves to be
persuaded that the interests of heaven were at stake: the Archbishop P4rdfixe launched a mandate; the first president de Lamoignon caused the representation of the piece to be interdicted at
Paris; the great Christian orator, Bourdaloue, stormed in the pulpit; l Louis XIV. continued to shield Moliere with his protection.
The elite of the court, headed by the great Condd, ever the friend
of boldness of mind, despite the circumspection which he afterwards imposed upon himself, sustained the poet with the monarch.
Louis, notwithstanding, hesitated to permit the work to follow its
course. The piece was authorized, then suspended anew; after
various alternations, the formidable cabal was reduced to silence,
and Moliere, at last, remained victorious (1665-1667-1669). Few
incidents do more honor to Louis XIV.
This brilliant picture was not, however, without shadows. The
favor of the King was purchased by sacrifices of more than one
sort. However far we may be from prejudices hostile to the stage,
we cannot help a painful impression at seeing this great thinker
obliged to yield himself the slave of the every-day pleasures of the
King, and to play the buffoon to divert his master.  A graver
accusation has been brought against Moliere: allusions have been
1 See the Sermon sur l'hypocrisie.




1666-1668.     MOLItRE. THE MISANTHROPE.                    165
sought in his Amphitryon, a free imitation of Plautus, flattering:to that new phase of the royal amours, so baleful to public morality, in which Louis, weary of being happy, became unfaithful to
the gentle La Valliere for the brilliant and haughty Montespan, -
-in which, weary of self-restraint, he emerged from the obscurity
with which La Valliere had compelled him to shroud himself,
and began to display to all eyes the pride of his double adultery.
A more attentive examination of facts and dates happily permits
us to exculpate the poet from a guilty connivance; in 1668, the
date of Amphitryon, the King still preserved appearances, and
would not have permitted his Olympian amours to be celebrated
on the stage under his own auspices.'
It is a great misfortune for a writer to have to please another
master than the public, be this master Louis XIV.  It cannot
be doubted that Molieire, while entertaining an affection for the
prince on whom he was dependent, more than once felt the bitter-,ness of the dependence. His most perfect work reveals the sadness and smothered anger that brooded under the compulsory
gayety of the comedian.  It is true that domestic affections had,
perhaps, still more to do with his melancholy than external circumstances. Himself the victim of the passion at which he had jested
most, jealousy, he ennobled the sufferings of his wounded sensibility by supporting with dignity the consequences of an overexpiated fault.2
v — The typical creation of Moliere is evidently the Misanthrope
(1666):; it is in this that he pours out all his great soul wounded
by itself, by others, by society. This type, notwithstanding, he
did not seize at the first effort; Alceste was conceived at first,
like Don Quixote, only as the personification of an eccentric or
ridiculous man; then both personages grew, became transformed,
took possession of the poet, became the poet himself; at heart,
Moliere is Alceste as Cervantes is Don Quixote; but the reason of
both great moralists has remained free, and they judge themselves
in judging their heroes. The impetuous outbreaks of Alceste come
from the depths of Moliere's soul, and Moliere's reason, or, if we
will, his resignation to the inevitable course of the world, reproves
their violence. Alceste and Philinte are again the ideal and the
1 We erroneously accepted this tradition in our previous edition.
2 The fault of having married for love the young sister of a woman who had
been his mistress. It has been advanced that this pretended sister was the daughter
of,the former mistress of the poet. Some even go further. His enemies dare
accuse him of having married his own daughter, a calumny the absurdity of
which has been demonstrated by contemporaries.




166               LOUIS XIV. AND  COLBERT.                      1666.
real, the antitheses of Don Quixote and Sancho, only instead of
spirit and matter, what are especially in opposition here are the true
and the conventional, man according to nature and man according
to society.
Moliere and comedy had attained together their greatest height;
they could make no further progress after the Misanthrope.1 A))
At the moment when Molikre reached the summit of his glory,
younger poets began to rise by his side. One of these valiantly
seconded in some respects his moral and political work, while executing a most special and characteristic individual work. This was
another child of Paris, reared in the purlieus of the palace, as
Moliere in the quartier Saint-Honor6.2  Boileau also represents
Parisian wit, but with less extent, imaginative force, and philosophic depth. Devoid of that creative power, that universal sensibility, that multiform  passion which makes the dramatic poet,
as well as of the fiery wings of lyricism, he judges himself with
admirable good sense, and plunges into satire, epistles, and didactic
poetry. His kingdom has somewhat narrow bounds, but he is
absolute monarch therein. His work has this in particular, - it is
fully studied and of a logical rigor which seems to belong to the
spirit of mathematics more than to that of poetry. Boileau proceeds
to his end by the most direct route, even though it be somewhat
dry and dusty, without suffering himself to be drawn aside by the
flowery footpaths around. It cannot be said of him that the poet is
a trifler!
Boileau undertook and executed, outside the Academy and
against the academicians themselves, the general police, then the
legislation of Parnassus.   To appreciate what he did, it is necessary to recall the state of taste and literary opinion when he
appeared. French literature resembled a gallery wherein immortal
pictures are confounded with mediocre or vile paintings, which the
inexperienced eye of an ardent but unskilled public knows not how
to separate clearly. Boileau was the expert who established order
and taught discernment. He did more; he not only showed what
1 We cannot refrain from recalling in passing the astonishing figure of Don Juan,
that magnificent and corrupt grandee, atheistical and hypocritical, like Tartufe,
brave as the heroes of the Spanish stage, whence he derives his origin, philosophical and human by flashes, in the midst of his depravity, full of abysses deeper than
the fantastic gulf in which he is swallowed up (1665). The primitive type does not
belong to Moliere; but with what vigor has he marked with his lion-like grasp this
creation, destined to receive successively the imprint of the most brilliant geniuses!
2 Boileau styled himself the descendant of the famous provost of Paris under
St. Louis, Itienne Boileve or Boileau.




1665.                      BOILEAU.                         167
must be done, but how to do it. The language of prose was complete after Balzac, Descartes, and Pascal; the language of poetry
was not yet so after the incomparable but unequal Corneille.
Malherbe had only conquered by halves, and called for a successor.  Moliere, it is true, was shaping at this moment the language
of comedy; but this was as it were but one of the dialects of the
poetic tongue; and again, rapidity of labor did not always permit
the great comedian a certain degree of finish which one scarcely
thinks of regretting in reading Moliere, but the importance of
which he feels in reading Boileau. This man is the greatest
artisan of style that ever existed. And style must be taken here
in its broadest acceptation: he who thinks only of form does not
suffice for form; he who knows not how to fill the mould of verse
with thought does not cast the verse in bronze: fine verses do not
flow in vacuum.1
The thought of Boileau is rarely elevated and profound; but it is
almost always healthy, strong, and upright, and flies to its end like
a winged shaft.  He assails false ideas as well as false verses.  He
extricates poetry from whatever renders it heavy as from whatever
disfigures it, from pedantic erudition as from witticisms and tinsel;
this perhaps is the most original feature of the revolution which he
consummates. The most laughable of all mistakes would be to
take Boileau for a college pedant. His stock of literature is slender
enough; three or four of the ancients, and Malherbe almost alone
among the moderns,- these are all his authorities, or rather, he
recognizes but one authority, reason, and only occasionally cites
the ancients as his interpreters. He flings across the abyss the
bridge that unites the seventeenth century to the sixteenth century
and the Middle Ages, in order to secure to literary genius the same
spontaneity, the same freedom of mien which has been resumed by
philosophic genius.2
Doubtless, a few rhetorical commonplaces may be raised up
against him; he does not always shun either declamation or vulgarity, that double danger of satire and of familiar poetry; but the
blemishes are rare and the beauties innumerable. For propriety of
terms, accuracy of expression, choice and logical sequence of metaphors, he is a model that cannot be too much studied; his verse,
full, flexible, and strong, easy and unconstrained, satisfies alike the
1 Boileau has rendered himself justice in this respect:
"And my verse, good or bad, always says something."- Epitre ix.
2 We will not examine here the inconveniences more or less compensated for by
the advantages of this rupture of traditions.




168             LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.             1665-1669.
ear and the mind. In short, none has ever written or will ever
write better in French verse.
Like all innovators, Boileau has his excesses; the violence of his
language toward contemporary authors, whose usurped glory he
overthrows, is truly outside the pale of modern courtesy; but there
are, in these bitter personalities, in this violence, a courage and independence which make us pardon the vehemence. The -men whom
he attacks are powerful at court and. in the academies; they are
those who hold, as has been said, the list of literary prizes. He
risks shutting the door of favor upon himself, and does not hesitate
between his fortune and the interest of art. He not only arraigns
bad poets, but bravely ranges himself by the side of Moliere in the
struggle of plebeian poetry against patrician haughtiness; the satire
on or rather against the nobility exceeds in boldness the immolation
of the marquises to the laughter of the pit; the attack on the principle itself of hereditary nobility is direct and rigorous.
The tide was with him; these were, it is said, the first verses of
Boileau that, still unpublished, reached Louis XIV., and the great
King lent them an indulgent ear (1665). The Discourse to the King,
which proved that the satirist knew also how to praise in case of
need (1665), was calculated to inspire Louis still more favorably;
but the numerous and influential enemies whom the poet had drawn
upon himself, closed to him for several years all access to court,
and Boileau had as yet had no personal intercourse with the King
when he addressed to him his beautiful First Epistle (1669).
Boileau, in this piece, adroitly abandons warlike commonplaces to
the crowd of subaltern flatterers, and applies himself to celebrating
in Louis the man of government, the great administrator. Rare
skill is displayed here in an artistic point of view, but there is also
a certain courage in these attacks against conquerors and this eulogy
of moderation in the face of a youthful monarch, thirsting for glory
and intoxicated with himself. The great Corneille had already
shrouded the same counsels in analogous praises.
-- Boileau was at last presented to the King, and called to the
midst of that brilliant society which so much needed to profit by his
exquisite judgment and severe taste. A natural sympathy caused
Louis XIV. fully to appreciate this mind more upright than broad,
clearer and more vivacious than brilliant, but above all enamored
of order and method. The court altered neither the frankness of
the.man nor the vivacity of the writer.
Comedy and familiar poetry could not however suffice for the
intellectual needs of this society. By the side of these too faithful




1667-1669.                RACINE.                       169
mirrors of reality, it aspired to find another expression of itself,
idealized by heroic poetry. A third poet had appeared. While the
caustic Boileau was hurling his darts unsparingly against the writers
in vogue, a young man, full of gentleness and grace, and whose
large, noble, and regular features extraordinarily resembled those
of the King, had made his entrance into the literary world and at
court, under the auspices of Moliere. This young man, bound by
friendship at once to Moliere and to Boileau, was Jean Racine.
He was, like them, of plebeian origin, but a stranger in Paris and
without fortune. Moliere opened to him his purse and his dramatic experience. Boileau taught him not to abandon himself to
his facile vein, and to condense in order to strengthen it. His
growth was rapid. In 1664, at twenty-four, he made his d6but
in the drama by la Thlba'ide, which was little more than a
rhetorical amplification; in 1665, he produced Alexandre, which,
among insipid passions, in the style of Scud6ri, abounded already in
fine verses and lofty sentiments; in 1667, Andromaque revealed to
France a tragedian of the first rank. Racine's heroes assuredly
are not Greeks. How make Homeric Greeks understood by this
France of the seventeenth century, so full of itself, so absorbed in
its own life! And we are not to forget that it was above all the
superiority of modern manners touching the relations of the sexes,
which would not permit the true ancients to be brought on the
stage on this occasion without shocking the spectators. Racine's
characters are much less Greek than those of Corneille are Roman,
but they are men, that suffices! Jealousy, maternal love, regret
for lost happiness, the inmost voices of the heart, had never yet
spoken so penetrating and harmonious a language. The two
admirable characters of Hermione and Andromaque announced to
Corneille a rival and to the drama a new path.
Les Plaideurs (1688), a charming piece of humor, in which the
memories of Aristophanes and Rabelais are mingled, coincided
happily with the celebrated Civil Ordinance of 1667, rendered in
great part against chicanery, and showed Racine under quite another aspect; but this very pardonable infidelity to the tragic muse
was not to be renewed.
After treading upon the ground of Moliere with les Plaideurs,
Racine invaded the domain of Corneille with Britannicus (1669).
Its popularity was less at first than that of Andromaque; the interest
is less touching and passionate, and we do not recognize, in this
Roman subject, the thunderbolts of Corneille; but Britannicus is a
work which grows by reflection: the scholarly historical represenVOL. I.         22




170               LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.                1669-1670.
tation, the infant Nero and Agrippina, so strongly drawn, the art of
the so skilfully graduated shades and transitions, the sustained
perfection of the style, the truth of the characters, true, this time,
for the most part both as men and as Romans, brought back the
thinkers to Racine, and through the thinkers, the public.
A tradition resting on the testimony of Boileau, ascribes to
Britannicus a success of another nature.  Louis XIV., it is said,
renounced figuring in public in ballets and tournaments after hearing the verses in which Racine shows Nero giving himself as a
spectacle to the people, and disputing prizes unworthy of his hands.
If the fact be true, it must have been a success which the poet
obtained unsought, for Racine certainly had not dreamed of making
so insulting an allusion to Louis XIV! Be this as it may, Louis
was then entering upon his thirty-second year, and the sentiment
of propriety which he possessed in so high a degree would probably
have brought him of himself to quit diversions which had heightened the lustre of his early youth, but which were no longer suited
to the gravity of mature age.
Racine immediately followed Britannicus by a new contest with
Corneille; but here the great old man imprudently let himself be
drawn into an element in which his youthful rival had every advantage over him. A princess, who was the idol of the court and the
muse of writers and artists, the sister-in-law of the King, Madame
Henrietta of England,' proposed to the two poets, as a subject of
competition, the loves and separation of Titus and Berenice, a theme
more elegiac than tragic (1670). We know what an inexpressible
charm  Racine skilfully threw  over this melancholy and tender
drama, and what interest was added thereto, for contemporaries,
by direct allusions to the rupture of the King and Marie Mancini,
more veiled allusions to the mutual but restrained inclination
of the King and Madame herself, and that portrait of Berenice
which so well recalled La Valliere.  Everything contributed to
give to the sentiment which filled this piece the profoundest accent
of truth. It was in his own heart that the poet studied the heart
of the monarch; we are not ignorant that the actress who rendered to the moved public the image of all these illustrious loves
was herself the object of the poet's passion.2
1 The daughter of Charles I., and wife of Philippe of France, Duke of Orleans,
brother of Louis XIV.
2 There is reason to believe that Champmesle was indirectly the chief obstacle to
the reparation of a serious wrong committed by Racine against Moliere; Racine
had abandoned Moliere's theatre to carry his pieces to the theatre of the hotel de
Bourgogne, where Mademoiselle de Champmesld was playing. The self-love of the
author had drawn him thither; love retained him.




1672.                   THE OPERA.                      171
The attraction of the allusions has passed and the charm remains; time has robbed Bdrdniee of none of its graces.  This is
because, from Andromaque to Bdrdnice, Racine had made a prodigious step. Here, the jargon of gallantry finally disappears before
the eternal language of the heart.  Virgil is equalled by this
poetry, the very richness of which seems to be only the natural
outpouring and not the ornament of passion. The verse of Racine
is the perfect verse of Boileau, transfigured by a vivifying inspiration which diffuses over this cold and correct beauty a light of
unequalled mellowness.
The stage on which Corneille, Molidre, and Racine shone at once,
blazed with a glory without parallel both in the modern world and
in Roman antiquity; we must go back to the best days of Athens
to find thus, flourishing together, the two principal forms of the
dramatic art. A new kind of composition, without adding anything
to the literary greatness of France, added singularly to the splendor
of the drama by the union of various arts in a single one. Music,
poetry, dancing, painting, and mechanism ufiited to bring forth the
opera, which calls to mind that external magnificence of Greek
tragedy which was too much denied to French tragedy. Mazarin
had first introduced into France this kind of poem born in the melodious land of Italy, but without securing its fixed establishment,
and the great Corneille, who touched on every style, had given, in
1650, a tragedy with machinery, Andromeda. The Royal Academy
of Music, after divers attempts, was definitively founded in 1672,
by the partnership of the Florentine musician Lulli and the French
poet Quinault. The royal charter formally authorized " gentlemen
and ladies to sing at the representations of the said Academy without derogation." 1 Quinault was known before this epoch by numerous tragedies, comedies, and mixed pieces, all mediocre save a
single one, la Mere coquette, which announced real talent. His
smooth, flowing, and easy versification was found essentially suited
to music; his talent for composition improved, and his operas gave
him a distinct place in our literature. Boileau was very severe
to him; but since, rehabilitation has been carried too far.  We
must listen to many prosers to discern flashes of true poetry and
impassioned feeling in Quinault; we have great difficulty in interesting ourselves in the lovers of the opera on rising from Be'renice.
Whatever may be pretended, the judgment of the most illustrious
contemporaries concerning Lulli and Quinault was founded on reason: the simple, copious, powerfully accented style of the composer
1 Fe'libien, Histoire de Paris, proofs, t. IV. p. 226.




172              LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.               1661-1668.
is vastly superior to the lukewarm inspirations of the writer, and
shows the cause of the preponderance and high favor obtained by.the creator of dramatic music in France.1 It is easier to defend
Quinault in a moral point of view against the rigid Boileau; his
amorous commonplaces, separated from the pomp and harmony
which heightened their effect, appear indeed innocent enough.
If Boileau reproved the opera as enervating in its influence,
others went further, and absolutely condemned all kinds of scenic
representation. The question of the drama, become so important a
part of the intellectual life of France, assumed the proportions of
a veritable social and religious question.  Richelieu had settled it.
Seeing in the drama a powerful instrument of civilization, and too
rigorous a logician to honor the art while stigmatizing the artists,
he had solemnly abjured, firom the steps of the throne, the prejudice which debased the profession of comedian; but the prejudice
against the drama was too firmly rooted to disappear by a word
from  the political power.  Under Mazarin, at the time of the
introduction of the opera at court, a warm discussion arose among
the theologians: the indulgent prevailed and tranquillized the wavering conscience of Anne of Austria. The Jansenist spirit revived
the quarrel in the first years of the government of Louis XIV.,
and directed a violent attack against the stage. Nicole, the most
moderate however of the illustrious Port Royalists, treated theatrical poets as public poisoners in one of his polemics, which called
forth from young Racine, an ex-pupil of Port Royal and deserter
from Jansenism, a witty and caustic reply, which would have come
better from other lips.2 Among the combatants that engaged pen
in hand in this contest, is remarked the Prince de Conti, that
brother of the great Condd who, still very young, had been formerly one of the leaders of the Fronde, then, from the friend of the
arts and protector of Moliere, had become an enthusiastic Jansenist
with his sister, the celebrated Duchess de Longueville. Bossuet
did not write against the drama until long after; but already celebrated and influential through his oratorical talent, he was in heart
and tongue with the most obstinate adversaries of the dramatic art.
The intervention of such a name indicates clearly enough that
1 Lambert, Boissier, and the musician Moliere also contributed to the musical
revolution which was wrought in France. " They began at that time to introduce
a greater number of instruments in the orchestra: to violins were joined flutes, harpsichords, guitars, theorbos, and lutes." Walckenagr, Me'moires sur Madame de S~'vigne, t. II. p. 479.
2 See the first Visionnaire of Nicole, and the letters of Racine.




1661-1670.    THE QUESTION  OF THE: DRAMA.                   173
the point in question here was neither blind prejudice nor gross
fanaticism, but a great moral problem. All the theologians of
strict dogma, of rigorous Christianity, are agreed against the drama; I it is to them only one of the innumerable logical deductions
from the dogma of eternal punishment. All meetings for diversion,
and especially balls and dramatic spectacles, may, as a general rule,
lead directly or indirectly to sin, and, in fact, certainly lead more
or less Christian souls to sin. Now, every mortal sin which the
soul does not acknowledge and repent in this world involving everlasting damnation, the essential rule of conduct is to suppress, at
all costs, the occasions for sin. It is necessary, therefore, to reduce
the manifestations of human life to the least possible expansion: the
less one lives, the less he sins. It is necessary, therefore, to suppress all assemblies where the passions are kindled and the intensity of life is increased by the communication of feelings and ideas,
should it impoverish human nature by the loss of its richest faculties, and mutilate the most beautiful work of God.2
Thus, in this conflict, all the theological logicians were on one
side; on the other were united the indulgent through complaisance
and policy, — the school of the Jesuits, - and the indulgent
through feeling, whose heart, as well as imagination and mind,
revolted against this gloomy theory, - the men who had the good
sense to know how to be right contrary to logic. Fl6chier was
among these; 3 St. Francis de Sales would have been likewise.
The drama had happily become too necessary to the France of
Louis XIV. for the anathema of a fraction of the Church to suffice
to overthrow it: it pursued its triumphant course; but the war was
not ended, and the mysteries of the human heart had in store,
before many years, a shining and unhoped-for triumph for the enemies of the profane art, - the conquest of the second of French
tragedians.
Moliere, the most assailed of the dramatic poets, had continued
to reply by successes. tIn 1668, he had given L'Avare, one of the
masterpieces of character comedy.  In 1670, Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme appeared, - a piece which conceals grave designs under
scenes of buffoonish gayety.  Already, in L'Pcole des _Femmes, he
had attacked bourgeois vanity and plebeians who changed the
1 See Vol. XII., Martin's Hiustoire de la France.
2 We will see later, in the eighteenth century, the same spirit resumed outside
of Christianity by the stoical spirit, which is the Jansenism of philosophy.
8 Flechier approves of comedy, "provided it offends neither propriety nor the
order of civil society."-Grands Jours d'Auvergne, p. 140




174              LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.                  1672.
names of their parents for noble pseudonyms; this time he flagellated, during three entire acts, that nobility of the strong-box
which Boileau, on his part, spared no more than the nobility of
title-deeds, and showed beyond dispute, that, if he was the poet
of the bourgeois, he was not the poet of the bourgeois aristocracy.
Moreover, he took care so to act that this assault on the parvenus
should not be mistaken for an apology to the marquises: if the citizen is ridiculous in his piece, the noble is vile.  Count Dorante is
the type of those chevaliers d'industrie, living at the expense of
enriched folly, who were to be the butt of second-class comedy
after Molieire.
To these pieces in prose succeeded a great work in verse, worthy,
as to form, to be placed by the side of the most perfect works
of Moliere; namely, Les Femmes savantes (1672).  Unhappily,
the form alone deserves this praise;and the exceptions which have
been made to Amphitryon in the name of morality, must be renewed
here in the name of philosophy. Had Moliere wished only to
attack pedantry among women, nothing could have been better;
but so petty, so exceptional, so little formidable an eccentricity, did
not deserve so great an effort; it was to take Hercules's club to
crush a fly. Neither had the excess of spirituality and the contempt
of matter been ever a danger, when not allied to religious asceticism;
and, no more in the times of Moliere, than before or after him, did
the education of women sin through excess of scientific development. If, as it is difficult to doubt, Moliere looked beyond pedantry; if he sought, like Boileau afterwards, to ridicule the soaring
of women toward ideas and science, - a soaring destined to be so
favorable to the philosophy that he loved, — if he wished- to-flatter
the King's-distrust'ofideas,- we must blame him frankly, or rather
pity him for having contradicted himself, and wellnigh returned to
the old party of Arnoljphe against his own.  It belonged to Arnolphe,
and not to Chrysale, a reasonable man, to enjoin on women"To leave science to the doctors of the town."
Doubtless, outside cares should belong to the husband, as the
cares of the household belong to the wife; but mental acquirements
are not outside affairs.l
There was also, very evidently, upon another point, a deplorable
influence weighing upon Moliere. The thoughts of others pierce
through the words of the poet when, in most discourteous terms,
1 See, on this grave question of the education of women, the sensible and practical considerations of M. E. Legouv6, The Moral History of Women.




1673.                 END  OF MOLIERE.                        175
he reproaches writers for believing themselves important personages on account of having been printed and bound in calf.  Literary men are strangely immolated to men of the world, to the
court; the equilibrium which Moliere usually maintains with so
firm  a hand is here suddenly destroyed; another, a sovereign
hand, has doubtless turned the scale. It is a curious fact that
Louis XIV. throws his poet off his balance at the same moment
that he destroys the balance of Europe: les Femmes savantes
appears with the war with Holland.
Moliere would have returned, it may be presumed, to his true
path, but the limit of his too brief career was already set.  His
health was ruined, and, in the beginning of 1673, he expired almost
on the stage, where his solicitude for his troupe, whom he treated
like a father, had retained him till his strength was utterly exhausted.1  He was scarcely fifty-one years old.
The quarrel of the drama was resumed ere his remains were
cold.  The great man was near not finding six feet of ground in
that Paris which was indebted to him for so much glory! Louis
XIV. was forced to interfere to oblige the rigorists of the clergy
to grant sepulture to the comedian-poet. We know with what an
anathema Bossuet outraged this forever illustrious tomb. Another
churchman replied, reproaching Frenchmen, in fine verses, for
their ingratitude to the reformer of the city and court. This was
the Jesuit Bouhours, a lovable and refined mind, able critic and
elegant writer, who deserves one of the most honorable places
among our second-class authors.2
Posterity has pronounced in favor of the defender, against the
adversary of Moliere.
None of the great literary portraits of our history has remained
more popular than this beautiful, melancholy, yet smiling face, full
of reflection, sensibility, raillery devoid of bitterness and indulgent
wisdom.
If Moliere had failings and weaknesses, if he doubted many
things, he never doubted humanity; and never was more goodness
united to more genius. National tradition has set him opposite to
Corneille as the other pillar of French poetry. His imperfections
proceed from other causes than those of the father of tragedy; that
1 The death-crisis seized him as he finished acting the principal part in the Malade
imaginaire, his last work, a continual running fire of jests upon medicine and pllysicians, that he had so often taken as a butt. Here, too, he somewhat exceeded his
end, and the ridicule cast on so essential an art is not without objections.
2 Vie de MoliBre, by Voltaire.




176             LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.                 1674.
is, from the rapidity of labor, necessitated by his complex position
as author, manager, and actor; and from the concessions made to
his two masters, the King and the people. His denouements are
almost always feeble; he does not always avoid incongruities, and
his humor too often degenerates into buffoonery.  His prose is
generally excellent, doubtless; nevertheless, he himself would have
been greatly astonished at being praised for having written a part
of his works in prose; for he wrote in prose only when he. had not
leisure to write in verse. In character, position, capacities, and
defects, he bears numerous analogies to Shakspeare; but if there
is in him less breadth, there is more lucidity, and the blemishes are
infinitely less, thanks to his better balanced mind and the superiority of the society in which he lived. They deserve the common
praise of being the two modern poets who have best understood
mankind.
No one could replace Moliere; but the great poets that remained
in France seemed to strive to lighten the regret for his loss by
surpassing themselves by new creations.
Boileau published at the same time, in 1674, the first four cantos
of his heroi-comic poem, Lutrin, a masterpiece of narrative and
descriptive poetry, and l'Art podtique, that summary of the whole
thought of the great critic, which is the code of the literature of the
seventeenth century, and, we may add, the code of good sense, at
least in general views and counsels for literary conduct. L'Art
poetigque seems a collection of cantos and maxims, so much does it
abound in verses that have become proverbs; but this poetry has
become hackneyed only by dint of being judiciously thought out
and vigorously written. If we would judge of its value, we must
endeavor, as it were, to hear it for the first time.
The special applications, the particular rules, are controvertible;
it could not be otherwise. As regards the rules of dramatic poetry,
the subject of so much discussion, we must remember that they were
universally admitted in France before Boileau took up the pen;
and that to him belongs only the merit, or demerit if we will, of
putting them into good verse.  It is pardonable to suppose that
Boileau somewhat exaggerates the dignity of the art, literary
decorum; general opinion has not ratified his severity toward the
farces of Moliere, his decree of proscription against what may be
styled low comedy. In his judgment of the past, he shows a disdainful ignorance of the old national poetry; he affirms that our
old romancers knew no rule but their caprice, and does not take
the trouble to assure himself that Troubadours and Trouveres were




1674.                     BOILEAU.                          177
very well acquainted with number, and caesura, and measure also 
We are disposed to be'irritated at this haughty superficiality, when
a ray of light reveals to us the meaning of the critic's aversion to
the Middle Ages: it is feudal poetry that the bourgeois poet thrusts
back with his foot into the darkness. He rescues from the Middle
Ages but a single name; he recognizes therein but a single ancestor; not Thibauld de Champagne or Charles d'Orleans, but the
vagrant Villon, that poetic flower that germinated in the kennels
of Paris. Popular poetry has made its way well from the Court
of Miracles to the main entrance of Versailles!
Boileau does not break therefore, in fact, with all the past of
France; if he rejects the ancient forms, he none the less inherits
from them the spirit of the Parisian schools, the spirit of the fabliaux; he is the heir of Rutebceuf as of Villon. He preserves;the popular French spirit, while returning, no longer in the name
of authority, but in that of reason, to the discipline of our old masters, the Greeks and the Romans, a necessary return to secure our
intellectual conquests and strengthen our mind in the order, taste,
and enlightenment taught Gaul by Greece and Rome.
Not that he fully comprehends this antiquity under which' he
takes shelter. He proclaims poetry and mythology as inseparable,
yet he does not comprehend mythology.  None can comprehend
it that has not plunged into Nature like the ancients, and Boileau
takes for a system of abstract allegories that pantheism of universal
life which is the soul of Greek poetry!
He wishes nevertheless to chain poetry to what is no longer, to
him, but a cold abstraction, a lifeless form, yet absolutely proscribes
to Christianity the marvellous, on the contrary, not through contempt, but through over-respect, as being unable to receive without
sacrilege the ornaments of the imagination.  This became the
subject of a new quarrel, analogous to that of the stage: the Jansenists and rigorists shared the opinion of Boileau; the men of sentiment and imagination, whom the austere nakedness of the cross
did not satisfy, and the politicians who were unwilling that religion
should be deprived of any kind of prestige, strove to prevent the
banishment of Christianity from Parnassus.' Neither the one nor
the other appeared to suspect that Christian mythology had just
given birth to its Iliad and Homer on-the banks of the Thames.
1 Boileau's idea must not be exaggerated; he by no means pretended to interdict to poetry the expression of Christian sentiments or the reproduction of the
historical facts of Christianity, but only the intervention of religious supernatural
beings in fictitious action.
VOL. I.       23




178             LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.             1672-1677.
Boileau and the rigorists, moreover, agreed upon principle, were
opposed as to consequences; for the one concluded thence the almost
absolute condemnation of art, the other, its independence, its secularization, as it were. Boileau preached rigid ethics to writers, but
the firm balance of his mind and his love of art restrained and
would always restrain him on the brink of Jansenism, into which
the ardent Racine was not long in plunging.
At the epoch which we have reached, nothing yet presaged such
a reaction in the brilliant tragedian whose crown was almost every
year enriched with a new gem.  In 1672, Bajazet introduced
upon our stage the mysteries of the seraglio and of Ottoman policy, without adding much to the renown of the author of Andromaque, Britannicus, and Bdrenice. In 1673, Milithridate brought
back Racine to the domain of Corneille. The imitation is evident; it is happy, but without quite attaining the Cornelian height.
There is nevertheless in this piece one of those creations the model
of which none had furnished to Racine; the noble and touching
figure of Monime is the greatest beauty of Mithridate.
After this second trial, Racine determined to quit the domain of
his formidable rival, and a new flight carried him back, with Iphig6nie, to heroic Greece, to which he had owed his first triumph
(1674). Never had his genius beamed with such lustre: he vies
in coloring and harmony with the greatest poets of antiquity. His
heroes are not Greeks in manners, whatever his society and himself
may have thought, but they are such in the beauty of language
and the flower of poetry which sparkles in them. There are no
more of those incongruities which shock us sometimes in Andromaque.  The harmony is as well sustained in characters and sentiments as in style. The changes of the scenes, the arrangement of
the action, the deep interest of the subject, all unite to carry away
the spectator, — all command unreserved admiration.
The Greece of the gods and heroes had welcomed Racine too
warmly for him to abandon this adopted country of his muse. He
soared on still stronger pinions into the sparkling empyrean of Hellenism. Iphige'nie paled before Phedre (1677). The tragedy of
passion could no longer exceed this limit; Racine had attained perfection in his mode. Bdrdnice is the most perfect expression of
subdued feeling, Phedre of passionate feeling; the one is elegiac
love, the other veritable tragic love. Both together express the
genius of Racine as Nieomede expresses the genius of Corneille.
It was only when Radine had thus produced allthe fruits of his
youth that it was just to draw a parallel between him and the




1677.            CORNEILLE AND RACINE.                  179
author of the Cid, as had been prematurely done. The struggle
between these two renowns, after dividing contemporary society,
has been prolonged to our days, each of the poets turning the scale,
according as energy or refinement has predominated in manners
and ideas. Everything was in contrast between these two men;
their countenances alone sufficed to indicate the difference of their
genius; the majesty that shone on the brow and lips of Corneille
was somewhat rugged and rustic like that of the gods of ancient
Rome; the beauty of Racine was the most refined and regular, but
least strongly marked, perhaps, of the countenances of the great
men of the time, all so beautiful. The life of both differed no less.
The simple, silent life of the most powerful of tragedians is a shining
contradiction to those who insist that poetry can only blossom amid
an existence full of agitation and tumult, among the tempests and
irregularities of unchained passions. In Corneille, nothing is expended outside; the whole vital force is concentrated in the heart
and brain. In the beginning of life, a deep but not violent, unhappy and resigned love, which long left gentle and sad memories,
then a second attachment, marriage, a calm and obscure family life
in a mediocrity too often bordering on indigence,- this is all the
private man; the rest belongs to genius. Scarcely ever entering
society, Corneille goes on free, alone and almost savage like Michael Angelo; he is awkward and heavy in the world like the
swan out of his element. Perhaps this perpetual concentration in
himself, while condensing his strength, makes him somewhat stiff
and constrained; perhaps more of real life would have rendered
the movements of this inflexible colossus more supple and natural.
In Racine, on the contrary, external life is brilliant and animated, although there is always dignity, measure, and number, so
to say, in this agitation. A man of the world and of the court,
deeply involved in the vicissitudes of contemporaneous society, he
is inspired both by his own passions and by the passions of those
who surround him, and causes all the impressions of the moment to
vibrate about him, restoring to society, in an ideal and splendid
form, all that it has lent him of inspiration. His career is destined
to astonishing revolutions: from an ascetic education, he has
passed to the drama, to the free and brilliant life of the artist;
ere long we shall see him, overcome anew by the memories of
his childhood, break with profane art, with Hellenism, with love
and fame, to fall back under the austere yoke of his first masters,
and this at the epoch when a revolution much less complete, but
analogous in some respects, will be wrought in the manners of the
monarch who is his ideal.




180              LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.                  1677.
There is no need to dwell at length on the characteristics
that distinguish the works of the two great masters of tragedy,
works that all remember. The progress due to Racine consists
especially in sustained harmony, unity of tone and color, and improvement in dramatic arrangement: concentration and gradation
of interest are admirable in him; he can no more be surpassed in
plot than in style which unites as in his models, in the ancients,
strength and grace, boldness and good sense, brilliancy and simplicity. Nevertheless, it must not be forgotten, Corneille, much
less finished, is more varied in form as in invention. Racine has
only one style, perfect, indeed; Corneille in poetry, like Pascal in
prose, has all styles.'
The essential, the incontestable superiority of Corneille, is in
the admirable principle of his art.2 Not that, in the Racinian
tragedy, the lessons are directly contrary to morality, nor that
duty is systematically sacrificed to passion; but the dramatic interest rests on passion and not on sacrifice of passion; the impression left on the spectator moves the soul with tender pity. The
interest, in Corneille, rests on virtue, and the final impression
exalts and strengthens the soul instead of softening it.
It was not yet time, however, at this epoch, to judge Racine
definitively.  He could no longer be surpassed in the career in
which he had achieved his triumphs, but he might still open for
himself some new way. We shall meet him again.
We have studied separately three great poets of the reign of
Louis XIV.  However different in genius and nature, they are
allied by generous traits, which they hold even in common, to a
certain point, with the great man of the preceding generation whose
old age was prolonged to their time. These traits are the essential
characteristics of the art of the century.
The natural sociality of France, developed with rapid progress
since the close of the Religious Wars, and carried to its height by
court life as constituted by Louis XIV., rules over all the literature of the seventeenth century, combined with the Cartesian
spirit.  Cartesianism teaches man to study himself in himself from
the height of his reason. Society, the court, which is society preeminently, teaches him to study himself in his relations with the
rest of mankind. Literature, poetry especially, turns almost entirely on this double pivot; it is exclusively human: on the one
1 We owe this observation to a great master of style, the great poet whom France
has lately lost, Beranger.
2 See Vol. XII., Martin's Histoire de la France.




1661-1669.              LA FONTAINE.                       181
hand, it forgets external nature, and, on the other, absorbed at
once by the activity of collective life and the strong feeling of
individuality, it has little sentiment of the infinite and of the
great unity. Cartesianism contributes to make poets disdain the
external world, which is nothing more, in its sight, than an inanimate machine in which universal life, so deeply felt by the
ancients, is extinct.
The greater part of the poets of this time speak of nature only
by tradition and through mythology, the mysteries of which they
no longer understand, as we just observed with respect to Boileau.
Nothing is more striking than the difference between this age and
ours in the manner of feeling nature. The smallest solitary valley
is to'the men of the seventeenth century a horrible solitude; the
smallest rock, a frightful chaos. Nevertheless they are not pusillanimous, and the comparison, as to moral strength, would not be
to our advantage; but it is the excess of their sociality, the absolute necessity of conversation, that gives them  this abhorrence
of the desert. Man is all- to them, in real life as in poetry; they
see the whole world in this epitome of the world; hence both their
superiority and their deficiency.
There is, nevertheless, at the same epoch, a fourth great poet
who escapes this common definition, and whose inspiration is so
different that he almost seems not to belong to this century.
Jean de la Fontaine, the friend of Moliere, Racine, and Boileau,
and nearer,.by his age, to the first than the two others,1 was the
most tardy of all to yield the fruit of his genius. He prolonged his
youth in dreaming and abandoning himself to epicurean indolence,
consuming time with the same carelessness as other riches. A
few light poems, stamped with nonchalant and voluptuous ease,
escaped now and then, as by caprice, from his indolent pen. A
heartfelt cry, wrung from him by Fouquet's catastrophe, first attracted a beginning of celebrity to his name. He was already forty
years old. Soon after, some tales in verse, inspired by the gallant
and unscrupulous society of Mazarin's nieces,2 and which remind
us, by the choice of subjects, of Boccaccio and the Queen of Navarre, announced by their grace, mingled with license and naivet6,
another original writer.
La Fontaine next rose to the expression of more delicate and
poetic sentiments. His Psyche, a novel mixed with verse, in which
1 La Fontaine was born in 1621; Moliere, in 1622; Boileau, in 1686; Racine, in
1689.
2 The Duchesses de Bouillon and de Mazarin, and the Countess de Soissons~




182             LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.              1668-1694.
Greek legend is so happily blended with descriptions of the marvels
accumulated by Louis XIV. in the mythological gardens of Versailles, has preserved, despite changes of taste, all the charm of its
graceful fancies and elegant badinage (1669). Among all the
works of this kind, subject to fade like fashion and circumstance,
it alone has retained its bloom.l La Fontaine's little mythological poems are of a still superior order; a voluptuous and tender
languor, a sort of soft and penetrating twilight, therein reigns, quite
different from the brilliant light that Racine spreads over his Greek
subjects; this is a more negligent beauty, which finds in its very
abandonment a new attraction; the fluid and numerous verse flows
without effort like the natural form of the poet's thought. The
epistles and other familiar poems present the same spontaneity, the
same happy and charming naturalness. Nothing is more striking,
in this kind of composition, than the contrast between Boileau and
La Fontaine; a single idea fills the one and constitutes his strength,
but makes him somewhat rigid and uniformly magisterial; the reformer, the lawmaker of Parnassus, never forgets his mission. The
other, on the contrary, receives inspiration and does not command
it; he draws you along the better that he knows not whither he is
leading you, and nevertheless he is, at the bottom, more philosophic
than Boileau, and almost as much so as Moliere, but philosophic in
his own way, by instinct rather than method.
His philosophy, his poetry, his whole soul are summed up in a
creation through which his name will live forever. He would be
a rare writer with the works alone which we have pointed out;
but these are not his title par excellence. A year before Psychke,
he published the first six books of his -Fables (1668): Books VII.
to XI. appeared ten years after (1678-1679); Book XII. not till
1694.
Ancient apologue, with which the East had lulled the infancy ot
the world, had reached France after passing through Greece and
Rome. The novel of Renard, an imitation of the antique IndoPersian poem of Kelileh and Demneh, had developed apologue into
Chansons de Gestes; the fabliaux had restored it to a form briefer
and less distant from the proportions given by classical antiquity:
the sixteenth century, after the Middle Ages, had sometimes repeated these lessons given to human pride by the borrowed organ
of inferior creatures. La Fontaine took possession of these materials, transfigured them, and consecrated them to immortality.
1 This is also among Fouquet's spoils. La Fontaine had first attempted this
style of composition for his patron, in his unfinished work, Songe de Vaux.




1668-1694.               LA FONTAINE.                         183
Everything has been said of the infinite art of these innumerable
little dramas in which all creatures that live or vegetate come by
turns to give lessons to the king of nature, some in their true character, others humorously travestied as men. The morality of the
fables has awakened some controversy. We have been wrong, indeed, in seeking in La Fontaine a teacher of morality for childhood.s
La Fontaine was too much like children, by lack of the spirit of
consistency and foresight, to be fit to instruct them. He was rather
fitted to teach men indirectly. If there are contradictions in the
morality of the fables, the bonhomme thinks nothing and cares
little about it. Although he says:
"The tale makes the precept pass,....
And to tell for the sake of telling seems to me a small affair."
It may be suspected, without over-temerity, that he lays more
stress on the tale than on the precept.  He writes according to the
idea that comes uppermost and the subject furnished him by the
mine of ancient apologues, as rich in contradictions as that of
proverbs, in which the most opposite traditions come into collision.
Some few of the fables, it must be admitted, seem to preach selfishness and prudence of the lowest order; but the greater part abound
in excellent counsels: some flatter, others boldly enough attack
absolute power. These are characterized by gentle and ingenuous
sensibility, those are illumined by flashes of the highest philosophy: 2
if there are no general rules of conduct therein, what a treasure
of observations escapes the fabulist without his thinking of it!
A general feature stamps all La Fontaine's work; the author of
the Eables is characterized by precisely what his illustrious contemporaries lack,- the sentiment of external nature. Others say:
reason; he answers: nature.  He also has reason, assuredly, but
somewhat resembling that of his heroes; it is from instinct and
inspiration more than reflection. He plays with his animals; but
he loves them, lives with them, studies them with solicitude. His
refutation of the Cartesian doctrine concerning the mechanical
existence of animals is a most earnest appeal to general sentiment
and experience in their favor. He does not confine himself to the
study of animals; he knows physics very well, and is not one to
be guilty of Boileau's errors concerning astronomy; in more
than one place he eloquently expounds the discoveries of natural
1 See the reflections of J. J. Rousseau, in Emile.
F2 or instance, Mort et le Mourant, 1. vIII. fab. 1; and the fine verses against
astrology and fatalism, 1. vIII. fab. 17; and against the stoics, who destroy man
while destroying the passions, t. XII. fab. 20.




184              LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.              1668-1694.
philosophy; bolder than the professional astronomers, at least than
Cassini,1 he valorously sides with Copernicus; he decides between
Descartes and Gassendi.
The preponderance of nature is the principle of his faults as of
his virtues; the license with which his tales and light poems have
been reproached proceeds much less from libertinism of mind than
from an ingenuous abandonment to natural instinct. The grain of
malice with which his voluptuous pictures are seasoned should not
deceive us in this respect.
At the bottom, there were tendencies, in La Fontaine, which
must have displeased Louis XIV.'and an exceptional inspiration
which could be but partially understood by other contemporaneous
poets, and especially by the lawmaker of Parnassus. His free fancy
was too indocile to the spirit of order and regularity which essentially signalized this reign.  He was a stranger, if not an enemy,
to the court of the Great King. His advances remained useless.
It was the nature of his genius, much more than his attachment to
Fouquet, that alienated him from favor. Fouquet's friendship had
not prevented the success of Pellisson, far more deeply involved
than La Fontaine in the disgrace of their common patron, yet summoned from the depths of a dungeon to the cabinet and the intimate confidence of the King.
The popularity of the fabulist, insufficiently appreciated in his
times, has increased from generation to generation; it has become
universal. Amidst literary revolutions, one is obliged at times to
explain and defend Boileau; no one in the world would dream
to-day of disputing La Fontaine.2
This is because no poet is more firmly rooted or clings more
closely to facts than this writer, nevertheless so spontaneous. His
unique and inimitable language, which one scarcely finds courage
to reproach with a few blemishes of negligence and indolence, adheres closely to the ancient French tradition, the old Gallic, as it
was then called, -which the other poets reject. He preserves or
retains in part the forms of speech and ternms of the sixteenth century and the Middle Ages, and adorns them with new beauty.
Ancient Paris and old Champagne, his mother, the story-tellers of
olden times, Marot and Rabelais, live again in him. He is the par1 See Fables, i. VII. p. 18, Un animal dans la lune.
c" I render it motionless, yet the earth journeys on,"
says La Fontaine in speaking of the sun.
2 Since we wrote these lines, there has been nevertheless an illustrious excep.
fion.




1670-1678.          FEMALE WRITERS.                     185
tisan of ancient France, and, at the same time, without imitating
any of the writers of Greek and Latin antiquity, he is more of
their family than any of our classics  nature binds himto antiquity;
he understands, with Theocritus and Virgil, the secret voices of the
waters and forests, and the inspiring light of the Sicilian songsters,
the serene light of beautiful summer evenings also gilds the verses
which flow so smoothly from his vein.
Like the ancients, notwithstanding, it is finite nature that La Fontaine sings. If, in the seventeenth century, he is the only great poet
that represents nature, while the rest shut themselves up in the
heart and reason of man, no more than his rivals does he express
the sentiment of the infinite. Like antiquity, the spirit of which
he reproduces less through imitation than analogy, the age of Louis
XIV. too closely embraces man, reality, practical reason, the finite,
to embark willingly in limitless spheres; the age is anthropomorphous, he too, he who comes to make for himself almost a visible
God of a man, of a king! He is very great, but of an exact and
measured greatness, the bounds of which are everywhere seen.
Scarcely have we saluted the exceptional genius of La Fontaine,
when, to continue this literary review of the great reign, we must
return to the general advance of the time which presses upon us
inr so many forms. The exclusive study of man reappears in every
branch of literature.
A salutary revolution began to be wrought in another style of
composition destined to become, as it were, the commentary and
complement of the drama, for patiently fathomed and elaborated
analyses of the human heart. The romance, after the drama, at
last escaped the false taste of which it had long been the chief centre, and, while a scholar of vast erudition and active imagination,
the celebrated Huet, set forth its origin and theory, a woman
reformed its practice by her charming works, and transported it
from hyperbolical gallantry and false wit, where another woman
had retained it, to sentiment and nature: by Zaide (1670), and
above all by the Pri~cesse de Cleves (1678), Madame de La
Fayette dethroned Mademoiselle de Scud6ri.
The romance seems to belong by right to women; but this was
not the only species-of writing seized upon by the vivacity of their
mind, which shone with so much lustre in this society where reigned
by turns the graceful Henrietta of England and the sparkling Montespan. The historical memoirs which they wrote are animated like
the drama itself by reality; we meet here again Madame de La
Fayette by the side of Madame de Motteville, Mademoiselle de
VOL. I.          24




186               LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.                1661-1690.
Montpensier, and the Duchess de Nemours.  Several succeeded in
poetry. Madame de La Suze merited the praises of Boileau and
took place among the best modern elegists. Madame Deshoulidres
began to essay her ingenious and facile vein.
But the women of this time owe their chief glory, in the eyes
of posterity, to what could become a branch of literature only in
such a social state. Spoken conversation produces written conversation, both being based on the habit of analyzing all our sentiments, ideas, and incidents of life, and the need of mutually conversing upon them  with those we love.  Thence those renowns
acquired by correspondence to which friendship gives at first a
semi-publicity, a sort of unpublished publicity, and of which the
public then makes books.  Everything is so highly toned in this
powerftl epoch that the familiar letters of a mother to her daughter
become a great historic and literary monument.1
The,Epistolary composition is personified in Madame de S6vignd.
We must be resigned to be commonplace, if we would speak, after
so many and such excellent panegyrists, of the qualities of this
charming mind that has succeeded in putting such prodigious
variety in the expression of a sentiment always the same, and in
making the court, the city, the province, the whole world, revolve
around her daughter. But history cannot dispense with recalling
the fact that all the memoirs of the times together do not give a
more faithful and more complete picture than Madame de S6vignd
alone. The letters of Madame de S6vignd are not a book on the
age; they are the age itself, the indestructible image of which is
reflected in a marvellous mirror.  Here alone it looks us in the
face, in all sincerity, — this age at once mocking and submissive, reasoning and religious, reasoning yet raising questions so fundamental
outside its reasoning, religious with a religion very external, very
decorous, not hypocritical nevertheless, the sentiment of regularity
and propriety having penetrated the very depth of its life: more
than one doubt concerning certain religious dogmas,2 or concerning
royalty, that other earthly dogma, is dimly discerned at times; yet
men do not dwell on them, but hasten onward, shutting their eyes.
This sort of religious spirit does not admit of indifference to this
1 In speaking of the literary claims of the women of the seventeenth century, it
must not be forgotten that the pr6cieuses took the initiative in that orthographical
reform which triumphed in the following age with Voltaire. See the interesting
studies published by M. Walckenaeir on the language and literature of the H6tel de
Rambouillet, from the Revue independante, July 10 and 25, 1847.
2 Madame de Sevignd's repugnance, though half a Jansenist, to the dogma of
eternal punishment, is well known.




1661-1665.                DE StVIGNP.                         187
world's goods; these men so devout, far from possessing ascetic
renulciation, have not even philosophic indifference.1 We recognize in the French society of Louis XIV. that same blending of
calculating interest and religion which is immovably established
among Protestant peoples, after the example of the Jews; nevertheless, the conversions, the brilliant retreats, which frequently precipitate women and sometimes men from the midst of the pomp of
the court into the most austere cloisters, attest that the ascetic
spirit is not extinct; but it is not to it that the greatest sacrifices
are made. Thus, the natural affections are more and more sacrificed to family pride both among the nobility and the higher classes
of citizens; we see even in the family of the illustrious woman
who was a model mother, but who was not imitated by her daughter, a great intellect and a cold heart. By the side of the species
of gravity which gives so exact an arrangement of things, we meet
a singular disposition to jest at everything, which often denotes
strength of soul, the heroic Gallic carelessness, but which sometimes too much resembles insensibility. This has caused Madame
de S6vign6 on some occasions to be judged unfavorably; it is not
her heart that we are to blame for it, but the habits of mind which
are common to her with all her contemporaries.
As to the errors in judgment and taste which Madame de S6vign6 may have committed, they have been greatly exaggerated;
she mistakes completely only when her personal affections are
involved, as where Fouquet and Colbert are in question; in literature, she thinks in general with the highest minds of her times,
and, if she does not render full justice to Racine, she is none the
less in the right in sustaining the cause of the aged Corneille. She
thus protests in the name of the great generation of Richelieu's
contemporaries against a generation more polished, more elegant,
but already weaker, and with a lower ideal.2
I There are very characteristic facts in Bossuet's correspondence concerning this
need of comfort and sumptuous living; the illustrious prelates of the seventeenth century were very far, in this respect, from the customs of the ancient
Fathers.
2 The first edition of Madame de Sdvigne's "Letters to her Daughter" was not
published until 1726. The collection has been completed in the subsequent editions.




188             LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.                 1665.
SECTION IV. - MORALISTS. SACRED ELOQUENCE. BOSSUET.
BOURDALOUE.
AFTER having studied the writers who systematically celebrate
or ingeniously depict the brilliant society of Louis XIV., we must
now pass to the writers who probe the moral wounds concealed beneath this splendid exterior, or who, while pretending to show the
nothingness of this lustre like that of all human things, increase
in the eyes of posterity, by the very eloquence of their demonstrations, that glory of their age which they trample underfoot.
The first who presents himself among the moralists is a personage already known in political history before becoming so in literary
history, the Duke de La Rochefoucauld, one of the former leaders
of the Fronde.  His Maxims or lrioral Reflections appeared in
1665.  La Rochefoucauld belongs to the class of moralists that
observe, rather than to the class that dogmatize on manners. His
little book is as it were a continued fire of acute, ingenious, striking,
or profound observations, sometimes paradoxical, contestable, or
over-subtle, oftenest just, at least in point of fact, and always expressed in excellent language, with incisive and luminous precision.
It is the first published work in this vivid and abrupt style, -
these rapid jets of thought; for Pascal's Thoughts did not see
light until eight years after their author's death, in 1670. We
compare here, of course, only the conciseness and vivacity of style,
for the power and startling brilliancy of Pascal's thoughts are
incomparable.
The work of La Rochefoucauld is one of rare' merit, yet the impression which results from the reading is unhealthy to the mind.
Not that the observations are false; things happen oftenest, indeed,
as he says; but the evil comes from the fact that he is too much
given to generalizing what happens often as happening perpetually
and necessarily, and above all that he shows no ideal above this
vicious reality. He exaggerates vice, moreover, for want of well
defining it. Not only does he not show the ideal, but he denies it
implicitly, in denying, or very nearly so, all the virtues, that is, all
the principles which lead man to act in view of the general order
and not of private interest, and in presenting them as appearances
under which is hidden the only spring of action, self-love. Now
of this self-love, to which he refers everything, he neither penetrates the essence nor discerns the bounds, for want of metaphysics.
That a certain amount of self-love should be mingled with all our
actions is natural and even necessary; it is needful that the distinc



1670-1678.     LA ROCHEFOUCAULD. NICOLE.                    189
tion of our personality should subsist in each of our acts; but that
there is nought but self-love, -here is the error. Self-love is one
of the two phases of life; La Rochefoucauld has not seen the other,
the attraction which draws us towards others, and which becomes
virtue by regulating itself in accordance with the moral order. La
Rochefoucauld knew men, he did not know man.
The active life of the author of the Maxims had great influence
over the direction of his ideas. The conquered and discontented
Frondeur reappears constantly under the moralist. The Fronde
had not been a school in which to learn to look on the bright side
of humanity; there had been in it all the moral miseries and not
one of the virtues which rise to the surface in earnest revolutions.
Unhappily for La Rochefoucauld, he, more than any other, had set
the example of these miseries, and his misanthropy has no right to
move us; it has not the causes of that of Alceste. When he depicts
selfishness, he need not look for his model outside hiinself.1
To pass from La Rochefoucauld to Nicole, from the Maxims to
the Ethical Essays (1670-1678), is to change atmosphere.  Both
are excellent observers; but the one is quicker, subtler, of a logic
which leaves demonstration to be inferred without giving it; the
other, elaborating what his rival indicates with rapid stroke, is
ampler, more connected, calmer, and at once more metaphysical
and more sympathetic. The one captivates the mind, the other
touches the heart. The one compresses us within a narrow personality and shuts us up within the bounds of ourselves as in an
iron ring; the other proves the same miseries only to excite us
to free ourselves from them and forces us outside ourselves and the
world to throw us upon God. The ideal is nothing to La Rochefoucauld; it is everything to Nicole. Unhappily it is the ideal of
Jansenism. In truth, this Jansenism has not the gloomy rigor of
that of Pascal, and Nicole's violence against the drama is an exception in this moderate and gentle mind. There are admirable passages in his.Essays, which must be accepted by every lofty and
sincere belief.2
In short, if the moral effect produced by La Rochefoucauld is
bad, the impression left by Nicole is beneficent, despite a few partial
objections bearing on what he has in common with all writers of
1 We have treated him too well in our preceding edition; M. Cousin has been
but just in showing himself so severe towards this sad personage. See Mladame
de Longueville, passim.
2," The Essais de Morale will not perish. The chapter on the means of preserving peace in society especially is a masterpiece to which there is nothing of the kind
equal in antiquity." Voltaire, Catalogue des derivains du siccle de Louis XIV.




190             LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.             1670-1678.
his belief. The soul is saddened by reading the one, upraised and
consoled by reading the other. Their observations are often the
same; their judgment on these observations is always different,
because they are separated by the length and breadth of a principle-charity- which enlightens Nicole and refuses its light to
La Rochefoucauld.
There is another class of professional moralists, who do not offer
their individual sentiments to the deliberate judgment of the reader,
but who, from the pulpit, authoritatively teach hallowed maxims to
the submissive multitude. Religious eloquence appears, in the age
of Louis XIV., under two principal forms. The qhe, essential to
Christianity which it has founded, maintained, and defended during
eighteen centuries, is the sermon, preaching, a work of moral and
dogmatic instruction in which beauty of form should be only the
accessory, in which the orator should find eloquence only while
seeking truth. The other, the funeral oration, unsanctioned by
the Christianity of the early ages, is especially a work of art, a
sort of compromise between the pride of the great men of earth
and the severity of religion. The funeral oration shows religion
consenting to display the pomp of human glory on condition of
withering it before the breath of God and opposing to the greatness
of a day the greatness that endures forever. The funeral oration
had been long in use; but the unheard-of lustre which it received
in the time of Louis XIV. made it as it were a new creation and
the property of this age.
In 1652, in the height of the Fronde, two young men of from
twenty-five to twenty-six had competed together for the licentiate
before the Theological Faculty of Paris. The first, sprung from
a powerful Parisian family, of shining intellect and knowledge,
armed with an energetic character and obstinate will, but carried
away, in his earliest youth, by the ardor of an impassioned imagination, amidst the pleasures and storms of the world, seemed to
presage another Cardinal de Retz. The second, born of a bourgeois provincial family, in the country of St. Bernard, grave and
self-restrained from childhood, endowed with almost unexampled
well-balanced faculties and dominion over himself, had, since arriving at years of discretion, bent the extraordinary power of his
mind and will exclusively towards theology. The one was named
Armand Bouthillier de Ranc6; the other, Jacques-B6nigne Bossuet.1 Ranc6, excessive in everything, fill of tempests and abysses
1 Rance, born in 1628, was of the Bouthillier family, which had furnished two
ministers under Richelieu. Bossuet was born at Dijon, in 1627.




1652-1663.           BOSSUET AND RANCi.                          191
like Pascal, would fling himself ere long without transition from
the arms of love and ambition into a terrible asceticism, and
found, in the midst of a system of civilization accustomed to
adapt religion, despite itself, to the world, something harsher than
Port Royal and more sepulchral than the Thebaid, the very ideal
of mortification, the religion of despair, - that order of La Trappe
designed no longer, like Port Royal, to reform the Church, and,
through the Church, the world, but to isolate itself from the world
and the Church itself in an anticipated tomb, as if all effort were
useless and all chance lost to regenerate Christianity.1 Bossuet,
calm and methodical in his theology as Descartes in his philosophy,
would devote his whole life, with a force and perseverance which
nought could weary, to defending, enlightening, moderating, and
strengthening that Church militant which Ranc6 had quitted, shaking the dust from his feet.
While still a child, the majesty of the Bible revealed Bossuet to
himself by awakening the instinct of his genius. At fifteen, he
arrived at Paris, on the very day that Richelieu, victorious and
dying, returned thither in that strange guise which was at once a
triumph and a funeral display. The career of the young student,
already a man in strength and persistence of thought, opened under
these solemn impressions. The study of the classics, and the frequenting of the high literary society of Paris, that admired his
precocity, polished and disciplined his mind overflowing with the
impetuous grandeur of the Scriptures.  His first relations contributed to draw him in the direction of Gallican opinion. He made
his d6but in the ecclesiastical profession by an appeal resembling
denunciation, a presage of his struggles with the court of Rome.
He received encouragement and counsel from the critic de Launoi,
the great demolisher of the superstitions of the Middle Ages. His
laborious studies of the history of the Church, and his predilection
for the most ancient traditions, confirmed him in Gallicanism.  His
1 Rance established his order in 1664, in a convent of reformed Cistercians, in
the depths of the forest of Perche. Port Royal preserved science as a means of
action; La Trappe, no longer wishing to act, rejects science as useless. No more
monastic studies; manual labor is the only diversion from prayer. As human activity must always find employment, the Trappists have become excellent agriculturalists. Trappism is the final extremity of the moral movement attempted by
Saint-Cyran, which, having failed, shuts itself up in its despair; - of the moral movement, we say, for Rance does not meddle with dogmas, and deems disputation useless. Trappism and Jesuitism are the opposite poles of the monastic spirit; —the
Jesuit is a monk who mingles with the world to rule the world; the Trappist is a
monk who not only forbids himself all action in the world, but imposes on himself
the law of being ignorant of what takes place in it.




192               LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.                 1659-1669
rigidity attracted him towards the ethics of the Jansenists; his great
practical and comprehensive sense made him reject their doctrine
of grace, in which he discerned Calvinistic fatalism. He saw with
Jansenius and Saint-Cyran the perils that threatened the Church,
but he comprehended the defensive strategy differently. Jansenius
and Saint-Cyran had attempted to regenerate the Church by a
single principle carried to its furthest consequences: Bossuet believed that he saw the safety of Catholicism in quite an opposite
system: namely, in putting aside questions which God has been
pleased to render obscure to man; in imposing silence " on ardent
and ultra minds better fitted to act out Christian truths as a whole
than to reduce them to their natural unity;";in stifling everything,
in short, that has an air of novelty and partisanship, in order to rally
all the forces of the Church on the most central ground. There
was in this less boldness and greater breadth, less logic and more
policy than among the members of Port Royal; but this policy cost
the conscience nothing, for it was merely the carrying into action
of a profound conviction. Bossuet would strive as far as possible
to advance only the opinions most anciently and generally admitted in the Church; 2 his originality would consist in having no originality in matters of dogma; while the other great theologians had,
for the most part, won their renown by elaborating certain particular doctrinal points, Bossuet would render himself illustrious by
taking his stand at the centre of doctrine without especially appropriating any part of it to himself; he wished to become, and would
become, the very voice, as it were, of the Church.
Made priest the same year as doctor of the Sorbonne, after a
retreat at Saint-Lazare, where he was under the evangelical influence of the excellent Vincent de Paul, which must have contributed happily to temper his severe and imperious nature, he returned for six years to Metz, where he occupied a canonicate, and
prepared himself by prodigious labors for the destiny which he felt
himself called to fill. A few successes in controversy with the
Protestants of Metz did not allow him to be forgotten at Paris.
1 See the Oraisonfunebre de Nicolas Cornet, 1663.
2 There are nevertheless a few exceptions in him; as the Immaculate Conception. As to the gloomy doctrine of the damnation of infants dying without baptism, he supports it on a double decision of the Councils of Lyons, under: Gregory
X., and of Florence, under Eugenius IV., which " makes the souls of those who die
either in actual mortal sin or in original sin alone, descend into hell, to be chastised
there, however, by unequal punishments." See (Euvres de Bossuet, ed. Didot, 1841,
t. I. p. 553. Calvin is therefore much less rigorous than Bossuet and the Councils
at the end of the Middle Ages.




1659-1.669                BOSSUET.                          193
He returned there at length, and made his dbbut in preaching at
the Minimes of the Place Royale, in Lent, 1659. The city was
astonished at these accents, such as never before had been heard
from the French pulpit. The court was moved in turn. Louis
XIV. summoned Bossuet to preach before him in Advent, 1661.
These two men comprehended each other at the first word, the first
glance. Their destinies inclined towards each other, and united
never more to separate. Louis, seized with a sympathetic impulse
rare in so reserved a soul, wrote to Bossuet's aged father to congratulate him on having such a son.1
The sacred orator pursued. his career; torrents of eloquence
flowed uninterruptedly during more than ten years, in the pulpits
of Paris and the court (1659-1669), until the promotion of Bossuet
to the bishopric of Condom, then to another greater place, occurred
to change his position and duties. But a portion of the sermons.of this period of his life have been collected; they fill nineteen
volumes in 12mo.2 Bossuet never preached the same sermon twice.
By the fruitfulness as by the loftiness of his genius, he must have
called to mind the indefatigable doctors of the early ages.  We
cannot judge, from the appearance of the inert scorice, of the terrible majesty of the burning lava overflowing the crater.  This sort
of eloquence was designed for the ear and not the eye. Yet notwithstanding, the abrupt grandeur of this half-written speech,
these incomplete and truncated discourses, is more thrilling in its
negligence than the most finished art would be. One would call it
an immense trunk, from which uncultured shoots of superabundant
vigor put forth on every side.
Among the sermons are remarked a number more carefully
w*rought out and of a peculiar character. These are the Panegyrics
of the Saints, an intermediate style between the sermon proper
and the funeral.oration, the praise of the glory of heroes blending
therein with the pious conclusion, instead of contrasting with it as
in the funeral oration, since heavenly not earthly heroes are here
in question.  The sublime Panegyric of St. Paul is perhaps the
first place in which Bossuet rises to his full height.
But it is in funeral orations that the Corneille of the pulpit
truly displays the full complement of his prodigious capacities;
1 Histoire de Bossuet, by M. de Bausset, t. I. p. 143.
2 There are in this collection but few sermons belonging to subsequent times,
Of the innumerable discourses delivered by Bossuet as Bishop of Meaux, very few
were written. Those of the sermons from 1659 to 1669 discovered were not published till 1772.
VOL. I.                25




194             LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.             1662-1670.
these will remain to latest posterity the most popular title of his
fame.
Bossuet had triumphed over, in preaching, the great contemporary renowns, the Cheminaises,' and Desmares; 2 he encountered,
in funeral orations, rivals no less famous: Mascaron, whose name
has outlived his works; Flechier, a name loved for the memory of
the man still more than for that of the writer, a skilful artist in
discourse, stately without magniloquence, flowery without insipidity
if not without studied polish, rarely forcible, but always elegant and
fluent. This polished art in the walks of literature is broken before
the thundering eloquence of Bossuet like a fine Damascus blade
before a sledge-hammer. Here is no manner, no set style, no
rhetorical artifice; it is the very contempt of art that brings forth
in Bossuet a high art by which all the incorrect beauties of the
sermons are condensed, disciplined, and arranged, and which is only
the inspiration regulated and guided; it is still the same continued
jet of internal flame, but mounting straight to heaven without
flickering in the varied breath of thought.
Bossuet makes by himself alone a world apart in this great literary world of Louis XIV. The rest are the adopted sons of Greece
and Rome; he too has passed through Rome, but on his way from
a more distant land; he transports the East to the West by alliances of words and ideas of incredible boldness and novelty, by
gigantic figures which European taste would not have suggested,
but which he knows how to proportion harmoniously by carrying
the measure into immensity itself. Such is the fruit of his continual communion with the Bible, the only nutriment strong enough
for his genius. Other theologians have coldly studied the Bible as
the material of their science; he sees in it living science, palpitating and flaming speech; he shrouds himself in it and becomes
imbued with it; he makes both spirit and form his own, as far as
the difference of times and languages permit.  He elaborates
into colossal pictures the boldest sketches flung down by Pascal's
burning pencil. Hovering over all literary ages, embracing all
geniuses, he unites the amplitude of the Latin period and the rich
coloring of our sixteenth century to the impetuosity of Pascal
and the clearness of Descartes. He sweeps along worlds of ideas
and images as in sport, and hurls down, with a precipitancy like
the flight of the storm, the heavy masses of his discourse. Whether
celebrating the conservative science of a doctor or the pious labors
1 Of the company of Jesus.      2 Jansenist oratorian.




1662-1670.            FUNERAL ORATIONS.                         195
of the superior of a religious order, or hovering like an eagle over
the revolutions of empires which precipitate kings on the scaffold
and queens into exile, or lending his lamentable and sublime cry
to the consternation of the court, terrified at a death which seems
to overwhelm at a blow all earthly splendors and favors,l he is
always above his subject and always surpasses expectation. It is
now unheard-of stateliness, then, on the contrary, that sort of sublimity produced by the grandeur of the idea resplendent in august
nudity by the very simplicity of expression; then sudden flashes
like lightning in a serene sky, bursting forth from the point of the
horizon where least expected. The severe and prolonged harmony
of his style resembles those great voices of nature that roll with
prolonged echoes through the mountains.
If there is no method of style in Bossuet, there is a method of
composition simple enough and given by the very nature of the
kind of writing as it was conceived; namely, the contrast of the
ephemeral greatness of this world with everlasting greatness; but
of this method he has made such use that none will ever more
attempt it!
France, which could oppose to the glories of the antique stage
Corneille, Moliere, and Racine, needed not henceforth envy Greece
and Rome their triumphs of eloquence; her pulpit equalled their
rostrum; Demosthenes and Cicero were equalled by Bossuet,
equalled as to genius, surpassed as to sublimity of tone and subject.
There are, nevertheless, objections to be made; in a religious
point of view, to the kind of composition itself of funeral orations,
as rendered illustrious by Bossuet.  The inevitable allurements
of panegyric lead to the erection into finished types of virtue of
personages far distant from this ideal; admirable lessons are given
under their names, but these names thus serve as examples only at
the expense of truth.   Not only the dead are flattered by the
orator; these funeral eulogies invariably end in the eulogy of the
King, a greater administrator than great ministers, a greater warrior than great generals, — juster, wiser, more pious and more
magnanimous than all who are praised and mourned. Doubtless,
advice is always concealed beneath this praise; but this praise in
fine evidently exceeds the decorum of the Christian pulpit.  That
1 Oraison funhbre du P. Bourgoing, ge'neral de l'Oratoire, 1662;- id. du docteur N.
Cornet, recteur de Sorbonne; 1663; — id. de la reine d'Angleterre, veuve de Charles L.;
1669; —id. de Madame Henriette d'Angleterre, duchesse d'Orle'ans, 1670. The other
funeral orations are subsequent. That of Anne of Austria, delivered in 1666, unfortunately has not been preserved.




196              LOUIS XIV. AND -COLBERT.             1662-1670.
a Bossuet should come to flatter him tells more than the whole
world of the universal intoxication of the age.1
Other more general considerations regard Bossuet's oratorical
work as a whole; it is essential fully to comprehend the nature'and tendencies of this powerful mind. Something of his system
has already'been indicated. Bossuet's most original characteristic
is the contrast which the dogmatic and disciplinary rigor of the
doctor, the regulator of the Gallican church, shut up in his prudent
and defensive doctrine as in a fortress, offers to the daring imagination of the orator and writer, so independent of all literary conventionalities and scholastic rules.  Blending the Hebraic and the
Roman genius, Bossuet has the audacious grandeur of the one, the
positiveness, the exactness, the authority, the policy of the other,
the strength of both.  The Old Testament, rather than the New,
has developed the forms of his thought. The Hebrew genius, the
medium between the Upper East and Europe, and extricated, by a
violent concussion, from the pantheistic unity of Egypt and Asia,
has something finite, limited, abruptly checked in sublimity itself,
and fears dreams of the infinite. So is it with Bossuet. The idea
of the infinite reaches him inevitably in these questions of eternal
life which he handles unceasingly; but he does not plunge therein,
so strictly is the dogmatic circle closed to him! He would fear to
depart from it, should he yield to the attraction of boundless speculations, to the impulse of the soul towards the unknown.
Much more, in the things of earth, are impulses towards the future strangers to him. His mind turns towards the past, he would
gladly render the present'immutable; everywhere, without knowing it, he comments eloquently on the great Braminic image of
this terrible world preying upon itself. Change is evil; immutability is good; paradise is the immutable state.  All his ethics and
eloquence rest on a vast antithesis. Wherever the notion is lacking
of progress in the world, that is of the march of the imperfect toward
the perfect, its source and end; and wherever the condemnation of
the world is deduced from the original fall, nought can be:seen in
the universe but the antithesis of the transient and the everlasting,
and all that moves, all that belongs to time, appears but vanity.
There is opposition, not harmony between heaven and earth: one
cannot love both God and the world, the present and the future
life. He cannot even love both God and h imself.2  This idea is
1 These remarks pertain to funeral orations as a whole, and not simply to those
of the period which we describe.
2 " There are," says Bossuet, after St. Augustine, - " there are two loves which




16:69-1670.               BOURDALOUE.                           197not indeed peculiar to Bossuet; it is the very foundation of rigid
Christianity; but Bossuet appropriates it to himself by such magnificent elaborations and such forcible applications that he seems
to create it anew.1
The condemnation of the world necessarily leads to the strait
and narrow way; Bossuet, apart from his reservations with respect
to grace, is as Augustinian as the Jansenists. Austere in the flesh,
he is no less so in spirit; while proscribing the superstitions peculiar to the Middle Ages, he maintains beliefs which scandalize
more and more the modern mind, such as the reality of magic and
apparitions, and the absolute reprobation of the ancient systems of
religion as having been only the sacrilegious worship of demons,
which involves the damnation of all the heroes and sages of antiquity.2  The Middle Ages themselves had more than once recoiled
before this sinister doctrine.
If he inclines toward the Jansenists through the spirit of rigor
and exclusiveness, tempered in him in daily life by good sense
and policy, he also shares their spirit of charity towards brethren
in Christ, and he is nowhere greater or more Christian than in
his sermons in behalf of the poor.
From 1670, for a number of years, Bossuet, devoted to other
occupations, almost entirely abandons the pulpit; we shall meet
him again ere long, displaying new phases of his genius, and acting by other means upon his age.
In this fruitful age, no place long remains vacant; at the very
moment that Bossuet descends from the pulpit, another great sermon-writer enters it.  Bourdaloue makes his debut in Paris in
1669, at the court in 1670.
Here is again one of the men, less rare than at any other epoch
of history, in whom character is in perfect harmony with talent.
Enlisted very young in the able Society of Jesus, always on the
watch for budding talent (it had sought to enroll Bossuet himself),
Bourdaloue always remains a stranger, we not only say to all
intrigue, but to all interest other than his evangelical mission, and
serves his society only by the lustre which he sheds upon it and
which effaces in part the mark of Pascal's anathemas, without howmake all things here: Amor sui usque ad contemptum Dei; amor Dei usque ad contemptumrn sui. - Sermon on the profession of Madame de La Valliere. - Logically, he approves Rance, and admires the living death of La Trappe.
1 Pascal's ruling idea is similar, but differently propounded. Pascal puts the
antithesis in man himself, the inner man.
2 He treats Socrates, Marcus Aurelius, Scipio, &c. as enemies of God, deprived
of his knowledge and his eternal kingdom. - Oraisonfunebre du prince de Condd'.




198             LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.             1670-1680.
ever carrying things back to the point where they stood before the
Provincial Letters. Bourdaloue, indeed, elevates anew the name,
but not the doctrine of the Jesuits; his glory does not prevent the
theoretical attempt of the society from being a failure, and he renders himself illustrious only by preaching the same ethics and the
same theology as Bossuet; that is, the rigid ethics and the general
theology of the Church.
Great practical reason, luminous good sense, simple and sustained dignity of sentiment and expression, a profound knowledge
of the human heart, attested every moment by analyses and pictures of manners which are so many masterpieces; a style of typical correctness and purity, the precision and firmness of which leave
nothing to be added and nothing to be curtailed; a clear, exact,
and rigorous method, perhaps a little too symmetrical, instead of
the great outbursts of Bossuet which overstep all common style
of discourse; a calm, elegant, and severe eloquence, which rises
little above its accustomed level, but which never falters; a brilliancy more equal than shining; lastly, and in all things, an odor
of uprightness and sincerity which exhales from every word, - such
are the most characteristic traits of this celebrated orator. That
serene satisfaction of mind, which results from the reading of other
great writers of the times, as we have already pointed out, is often
experienced in the highest degree in the perusal of Bourdaloue.
Not that Bourdaloue had great metaphysical scope. His Accordance of Reason and _Faith can convince few minds not convinced in
advance, and he limits the rights of speculative reason more than
is indispensable to the cause of faith; neither Bossuet, nor the old
Fathers, nor the schoolmen would have ratified the interdiction to
fathom mysteries in the terms in which he sets it forth. He excels
in counsels for practical life much more than in lofty speculation.
He is a moralist of the first class; he is not a philosopher in the
full acceptation of the word.
His timidity in theology and metaphysics, which moreover are
not the essential objects of the sermon-writer, he fully redeems by
his boldness in regard to social ethics. He is in sympathy, in this
respect, with the broadest Christian tradition, and goes far beyond
Bossuet, who, while condemning the vanities of this world, and
speaking most worthily of the poor and of charity, is inclined,
through his authoritative spirit, to sustain the nobility and established hierarchy. We feel the throbbing in Bourdaloue, of that
popular sympathy which Pascal possessed and Bossuet lacks. He
not only attacks powerful vice; he does not spare social insti



1670-1680.     BOSSUET AND BOURDALOUE.                   -199
tutions that are contrary to the spirit of the Gospel. He warmly
attacks the hereditary transmission of office, in the very interest
of incapable inheritors and their souls. He goes further: The
idea of equality takes possession of him; he often recurs to it;
he expresses himself in surprising terms on " the community desired," he says, " by nature and reason, and which human corruption has rendered impossible." He demands that the rich shall
return to it, in some sort, "by reestablishing, by the abandonment of their superfluity, a species of equality between them and
the poor. When riches are applied according to the command
of God, all conditions will become wellnigh alike." He treats as
acts equally criminal the spoliation of property and the refusal
of the rich to succor the poor.'
To fully experience the satisfaction of which we have just
spoken, the reader, of course, must abandon himself to the impressions produced on him by the rectitude of mind and heart which
he feels in the writer, and must not call his premises in question.
General objections inevitably begin at the point of divergence between the beliefs of the seventeenth century and the modern philosophic opinions upon such grave questions as the small number of
the elect, the definitive ordeal of the present life, and the terrible
supernatural character of death considered as an absolute break in
the chain of existence and as the annihilation of time. But it
should be said to the honor of Bourdaloue, that there is scarcely a
religious writer who arouses so few individual objections.
His boldness in regard to social questions in which a society so
firmly seated thought not of seeking peril, was no obstacle to his
success with the monarch and the higher classes. His popularity
as a sermon-writer was greater, or at least destined to be more
lasting than that of Bossuet; his sermons were finished works for
reading as for oral preaching, and not, like Bossuet's sermons, mere
sketches or incomplete pieces not designed for publication; nevertheless, this was not perhaps the only cause of the species of preference evinced by contemporaries; the sublime enthusiasm, the Biblical height of Bossuet, too much exceeded, as it would seem, the
horizon of Versailles, where the methodical reasoner was better
appreciated than the inspired genius. It was much less by his eloquence than by his doctrine and character that Bossuet succeeded
in swaying the whole contemporaneous generation. In him, in the
sight of the men of his times, the orator seemed absorbed by the
1 See the Sermon sur l'aum6ne.




200             LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.                 1661.
doctor of the church; it was because he had more of the idea than
the form of the age of Louis XIV.
For several years, Bossuet and Bourdaloue formed a sort of pious
league for the reformation of the King and court; the latter acting through the pulpit, the former through private influence, direct
and confidential counsels, facilitated by his new position in the
royal household, the King having appointed him to the post of preceptor to the Dauphin (1670). Nothing discouraged them in their
efforts to put an end to the scandal of the trigamy of the King between the three queens, the legitimate wife, the ruling mistress, and
the former mistress whom Louis retained despite herself, through
a remnant of friendship, if not love. Bossuet has been unjustly
accused of having tolerated this strange position; being neither
the pastor nor confessor of Louis XIV., he had no authority over
his conscience and could not share the responsibility of the complaisance of the King's Jesuit confessors, more accommodating
than their fellow, Bourdaloue.
The efforts of the two great Christian orators were to last long,
but not always to be futile; the brilliant retreat of Madame de la
Valliere to the Carmelites, that La Trappe of women, was to be
but the first victory of Christian austerity over this world of pride
and voluptuousness.
SECTION V. - FINE ARTS. VERSAILLES.
WE have seen how the general movement of letters was concentrated about Louis XIV.,- some among the writers caressing the
inclinations of the monarch, others striving to modify or correct his
tastes, almost all taking him for the habitual object of their art,
almost all reproducing his more or less idealized portrait under a
thousand forms, and making Louis preeminently the type of man.
The fine arts could not fail to offer a like spectacle, under still
more apparent traits. Indeed, letters in general are more dependent on governments than sciences, and arts much more than letters.
Arts, led away both by their very nature and the peculiar circumstances in which they stood under Louis XIV., were much more
completely subjected to this dominant object than letters, and this
was a cause of their inferiority, compared with poetry and eloquence. Variety and, to a certain extent, liberty were preserved
in letters; the powerful breath that animated them had not permitted them to become enslaved, while accepting a common end




1661.                      FINE ARTS.                           201
and general order.  Uniformity prevailed in the arts, unforbidden
by so strong a vitality, and a burdensome discipline compressed
therein the individual soaring of talent, if not of genius.
This was because Louis XIV. and Colbert exercised over the
arts no longer merely great influence, but direct and decisive action.
Colbert had taken possession of the arts, both through taste and
system. He wished to have a hold on Louis through all his inclinations,- through the imagination as the reason and heart; he
had not only rendered himself necessary to the king in all great
public functions; he had made himself the confidant of the secrets
of the man in the most delicate circumstances of Louis's relations
with Mademoiselle de La Valliere; 1 he desired also to be the agent
of the monumental creations which the love of glory and magnificence was about to suggest to the King, in order to direct these
works of art towards a truly national end. He purchased, in 1664,
the superintendency of constructions, made of it the general direction of the fine arts, and gave it the importance of a special ministry. Unfortunately, the King and he brought to it that regulating
spirit which desired unity not only in ideas but in forms, -a spirit
suited to the central administration of a state, but incompatible
with the spontaneity which is the principle of the fine arts.
The situation of arts confirmed the King and minister in their
way and served them as an excuse. There did not appear therein,
as in letters, an abundance of varied and original geniuses that
could not be coupled under a common yoke without a species of
sacrilegious violence.  At the moment when Louis XIV. took the
government in hand, of the two great French painters, the younger,
Lesueur, had already expired in the flower of his years; the other,
Poussin, so long established in Rome, was approaching the end of
his career. The only contemporary sculptor of genius, Puget, was
also in Italy, and, indeed, his full power was not yet known. In
France, there were numerous imitators of the Carracci and Poussin, skilful portrait-painters,2 distinguished landscape-painters, many
good painters and not a single great one. It was the same with
the sculptors, who had received the tradition of Michael Angelo,
1 See in the Revue retrospective, t. IV. p. 251 (July, 1834), curious extracts from a
MS. of Colbert, entitled, Journal fait, par chacune semaine, de ce qui peut servir a l'histoire du roi, du 14 avril, 1663, au 9 janvier, 1665. We see from this that Colbert
presided at two secret accouchements of Mademoiselle de la Valliere and at the baptism of the two children under fictitious names.
2 Petitot, of Geneva, revived enamelling, declined with the school of Limoges
since the sixteenth century, and painted the whole court of Louis XIV. in enamel,
These were all little masterpieces.
VOL. I.         26




202                LOUIS XIV. AND  COLBERT.                 1661-1667.
moderated and softened by the French prudence of Franqueville I
and Sarrasin, and who maintained their art on a respectable level,
but without brilliant creations.   The three artists most in sight
were three painters: Philippe de Champagne, already a sexagenarian; Pierre Mignard, who, lately returned from  a long sojourn
at Rome, was laboring to decorate, with the brothers Anguier, the
rich edifice of Val-de-Grace, and covering the dome with a vast
composition which calls to mind the great mural pictures of Italy
by  material dimensions, but not by inspired majesty; 2 lastly,
Charles Lebrun, then in the full vigor of age and talent.
The King and Colbert, in quest of the head of a school, hesitated little between the three. Champagne had always been more
prudent than fertile and bold;. neither his age nor nature fitted him
for the requirements of the young monarch. Neither had Mignard
the faculties needed for Louis's designs. We have already spoken
of Lebrun; 3 of what he lacked within, and of his external excellencies. His excellencies had increased. These were, an amplitude of imposing composition, a science of theatrical effect, which
was to the dramatic science of Poussin what the opera is to the
drama of real life, but which never deviated, however, from propriety and good sense; an astonishing activity of invention and
execution; genius, not for true monumental painting, wherein an
august simplicity of lines should prevail, but for decorative painting; an inexhaustible store of subjects, allegories, tricks, and costumes, fed by laborious archaeological studies which put all antiquity at his disposal. Colbert felt that this was the man whom
the King needed, and Louis became attached to him at first sight.
There was, between Louis XIV. and Lebrun, preistablished htarmony, as an excellent critic has wittily said.4
1 An eminent artist, who is not estimated among us at his true value, because
his finest works are at Genoa.
2 This work, which procured Mignard the honor of being celebrated by Moliere,
is far from being without merit; Mignard, an elegant designer and g6od colorist,
but cold and uninventive, had nevertheless neither the elevation of mind nor the
energy necessary to obtain real success in so colossal an enterprise. The sculptures
of the brothers Anguier, in the same church, have grace and nobleness.
8 Vol. XII., Martin's Histoire de la France.
4 M. Vitet. —Is it to be regretted that Puget, the greatest French artist of the
times, was not chosen instead of Lebrun? It is very doubtful. Puget was greatly
superior in power of genius to Lebrun, but his school would have been worse than
Lebrun's. He, who has been styled the French Michael Angelo, much more than
the great Florentine, whom he copies at a distance on a smaller scale, transcends
the province of sculpture, and too often forgets, in his overwrought forms, the true
tradition of his art, the simple and serene majesty of higher epochs. His disciples
speedily fell into the Berninesque style.




1667-1672.                LEBRUN.                         203
Lebrun was therefore appointed chief painter to the King and
director of the Academy of Painting and Sculpture: he had been
the chief contributor to the formation of this body, in 1648, as
well as to the promulgation of regulations which organized all the
artists and pupils under academic discipline. He made his precedence a veritable dictatorship over the innumerable works of art
executed by order of the King for the palaces, chateaux, and monuments of all styles. His dominion was not confined to painting
and sculpture; appointed director of the Gobelins (in 1667), where
not only tapestries were manufactured, but mosaics, articles of
jewelry, and all kinds of ornamental sculpture and architecture in
marble, bronze, and precious metals, "he set himself about the
duty of organizing, not only the fine arts, but all the industrial
occupations in which the fingers can hold a pencil." For more
than a quarter of a century " he became the supreme arbiter and
judge of all artistic ideas, the dispenser of all types, the regulator
of all forms; it was from his models that children drew in the
schools; it was he who gave sculptors the design of their statues;
furniture could not be round, square, or oval, except at his good
pleasure, and stuffs were figured only after cartoons that had been
traced under his eyes." 1
An astonishing spectacle, the unequalled symmetry of which
rejoiced the eyes of Louis XIV. as much as of Lebrun himself!
The King, so to say, was mirrored in the artist. Lebrun was
admirably seconded. His direction was alike adapted to stifle
original geniuses and to bring out second-class capacities. His
pride and ambition once satisfied by the first place, he was generous
in his conduct, and willingly played the Moecenas; he was in need,
moreover, of able auxiliaries. A multitude of talents were born or
transformed about him, but they were all alike within a few shades;
not one had a type of his own, not even the most distinguished of
all these artists, the sculptor Coisevox and his rival Girardon, who
has preserved an illustrious name, and who merited it by the beautiful tomb of Richelieu.2  It is worthy of remark, that, with the
exception of one man whose renown belonged to a somewhat tater
period, and who knew how to form and to remain himself, while
maintaining general relations with Lebrun, -the painter Jouvenet, - the sculptors of this generation prevail in quality, and
I Vitet, ktudes sur les beaux arts en France.
2 In the Church of the Sorbonne. The arrangement of the subject, as in the
greater part of Girardon's works, belongs to Lebrun. The paintings in this church
are by Philippe de Champagne.




204               LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.                1660-1666.
perhaps in numbers, over the painters, which is frequently seen
among us, and pertains to the spirit of French art; while submitting to Lebrun's type, they elevated it insensibly, simplified it,
and made it somewhat nearer the antique, not the high Greek
antique, an ideal too lofty for their flight, but at least the GrecoRoman antique.
If, in painting and statuary, the domination of Lebrun tended to
hinder the production of other original creations than his own, in
the secondary arts, those which contributed to the ornament of
dwellings and the elegance of life, it produced a grand and imposing
result, a kind of majestic harmony which astonishes us even now,
when we gaze on the productions of these times. As the furniture, the vases, the jewelry, all the decorations of the sixteenth
century, are recognized by their brilliant fancies and infinite variety
of imagination, so the age of Louis XIV. is recognized by its nobleness, fulness of form, and a mixture of richness and gravity free
from the tincture of clumsiness in the taste of Henri IV. and of
Louis XIII.
The empire of Lebrun stopped, however, on the threshold of
the art which is, as it were, the medium through which the other
arts flourish, —the threshold of architecture. The chief painter
to the King had here only counsels to present, not to impose. Architecture was in bad hands at the accession of Louis XIV. and
Colbert. The clumsy Levau, chief architect to the King, has left
to posterity an indifferent enough proof of his talent in the College
Mazarin (now the Institute); he was not the man capable of realizing the designs meditated by Colbert, who wished to finish the
Louvre and to join it to the Tuileries in a single palace as large as
a whole city. Charged with repairing and modifying the,Tuileries,
in 1664, Levau acquitted himself very badly, crushing, by a heavy
and distorted dome, the elegant constructions of Philibert Delorme.1
He had begun, in 1660, to work on the Louvre. Already, under
Louis XIII., the architect Lemercier, in enlarging the plan of
Pierre Lescot, had altered it by the construction of the dome of
the clock, which Levau imitated in the Tuileries, rendering it still
1 At this epoch were decorated the great gallery of the Louvre and the pavilion
of Flora, constructed under Henri IV., and the pavilion Marsan, erected under
Louis XIII. This explains why the emblems of Louis XIV. are everywhere seen
on these buildings anterior to his reign. The greater part of the paintings of the
Tuileries are also of this time. In 1665, the garden of the Tuileries was joined to
the palace, from which it was separated by a street, and completely remodelled by
Le Nostre. In 1670, the planting of the Champs Elysees, called at first the Grand
Cours, was commenced.




1666.                    PERRAULT.                         t05
heavier. Lemercier had finished in the Louvre the interior facade
on the west, and continued that on the south; Levau commenced
the exterior faqade on the east, which was to be the principal one,,on the site of the old towers of feudal royalty, which had remained
standing on this side till the accession of Louis XIV. It was in
the interval that Colbert obtained the superintendency of constructions; he saw Levau's plan, rejected it, and put the great faqade
of the Louvre up for competition among all the architects of France
and Italy, inviting each one to send a design; then, from the extraordinary reputation which the Cavalier Bernini then had in Italy,
he resolved, by extraordinary honors and gifts, to attract to France
this celebrated architect and sculptor of the popes, who had moved
mountains of stone and marble at Rome, and who passed for the
Michael Angelo of the seventeenth century.
The illusion was quickly dispelled when this pretended great
man was seen near by. Bernini was a genius, if you will, but his
was the genius of the decadence.  The Italy of this age was no
longer but the shadow of itself. In poetry it knew no longer but
" The dazzling madness for false gems;"
in the arts, its great painters had disappeared; its architects and
sculptors took exaggeration for strength, distortion for grace, the
gigantic for grandeur. It was Michael Angelo -degenerated into
caricature. The sentiment of form and line became more and
more lost. The France of Louis XIV. had too much good sense
for Bernini to succeed there. He found Lebrun cold, weak, and
common; Lebrun found him extravagant.  Lebrun, if theatrical,
was not at least ridiculously bombastic, and there was nothing in
the disposition of his works any more than in his artifices and figures, to shock the reason. Bernini offended every one by his boasting, and departed again at the end of a few months, to Colbert's
great satisfaction, leaving a plan which was not executed. The
design which finally prevailed was that of a man hitherto a stranger to the profession of architecture, but adapted to everything by
the marvellous variety of his intellect and knowledge: the physician,
Claude Perrault, who owed the first idea of his plan to his brother
Charles, the chief clerk of constructions under Colbert.'
The work was begun in good earnest in 1666, under the direction of the physician-architect; the great eastern and two other
exterior facades, on the north and south, rose successively from the
1 See the full history of the journey of Bernini and the plan of Claude Perrault,
in the Mfmoires of his brother, Charles Perrault, 1. II.




206             LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.             1666-1670.
ground. Of the two secondary fronts, that on the north is remarkable only for a simplicity which is not without grandeur, that on
the south, more ornamented, preserves an imposing severity in its
rich decoration; the principal fauade on the east has become one
of the most celebrated monuments of Europe under the name of
the Colonnade du Louvre.  Its aspect is certainly imposing and
magnificent. These pure lines, these beautiful proportions, attest
the superiority of taste acquired by France over degenerate Italy,
and Perrault's superiority over other contemporaneous French
architects. Nevertheless, Perrault has been rightfully reproached
for having coupled his magnificent columns two by two, without
any justification for this singularity, instead of placing them in a
line as a continuous peristyle. There is another objection to Perrault's whole system: he banished, by the suppression of apparent
roofs, the last vestiges of the national architecture. The sixteenth
century had already suppressed those cages of staircases, the descendants of the turrets of the Middle Ages, which furnished so
many happy subjects for architecture; the high false roofs disappeared in turn, nothing longer remained but a cosmopolite style,
stripped of all special and indigenous stamp.
There were not in this, therefore, the elements of veritable
French architecture. It was again but one of the phases of that
era of transition commenced in the sixteenth century, and in which
our architecture was still fluctuating; but this phase bore in its
constructions a character of elegance and majesty which puts it in
harmony with the literature, manners, and ideas of the age of Louis
XIV. Perrault seems to us, in his style, to attain a greater height
than Lebrun.
Perrault was unable to finish his work. From 1670, on glancing
at the King's expenditures for buildings, we see the funds assigned
to the Louvre suddenly diminish, then wholly disappear after a few
years.
Colbert nevertheless had not grown cold towards the Louvre;
what Colbert had wished once, he wished always. The completion
of the Louvre and Tuileries, the garden of the Tuileries re-made
by Le Nostre, the Champs Elys6es and the Boulevards Du Nord
planted, the quays constructed, the streets widened, the superb
triumphal arches erected at the Porte Saint-Antoine, the Place Du
Trone, the Porte Saint-Bernard, then at the Portes Saint-Denis and
Saint-Martin, — the two finest and the only ones which have endured,-all this vast plan of works emanated from  the same
thought, to embellish Paris as the capital of France, and the




1666-1670.      THE LOUVRE AND  VERSAILLES.                      207
Louvre as the capital of Paris and the glorious residence of the
head of the nation.1
Such were the views of Colbert; but Louis XIV. had other
views. When the expenses of the Louvre diminished, the expenses
of Versailles increased. Here was manifested the first division between the King and the minister. Louis showed himself less and
less partial to that abode in Paris where Colbert desired to establish his royal majesty. He oftener preferred, even in winter, his
chateaux at Fontainebleau, Chambord, and Saint-Germain: the last
had at first the advantage; then Versailles obtained an increasing
preponderance; there Louis sheltered his amours; there he gave
his court the most brilliant of those fetes which Paris had been
admitted to view but a single time, at the opening of the reign;2
there he began to erect great structures.
Colbert then attempted an energetic effort to check Louis in
this path.  He wrote to the King:" It is, sire, a very difficult task that I am about to undertake:
for nearly six months I have been hesitating whether to say to
your Majesty the strong things which I said to you yesterday, and
those which I am about again to say to you..... Your Majesty
knows, that, in default of brilliant deeds of war, nothing marks the
greatness and spirit of princes more than buildings, and posterity
always measures them by the standard of the proud structures
which they have erected during their lives. Ah! what a pity that
the greatest and most virtuous of kings... should be measured
by the standard of Versailles! And yet, there is reason to fear this
misfortune. While your Majesty has expended very great sums on
this house, you have neglected the Louvre, which is'certainly the
most superb palace in the world and the most worthy the greatness
of your Majesty; and God grant that the many occasions which
may constrain you to enter into great wars may not deprive you
of the means of finishing this proud structure." 
1 The arch of the Porte Saint-Antoine dated from Henri II., and was only enlarged by Blondel, in 1670. That of the Place Du Trone, undertaken by Perrault
in 1669, was never finished. The arch Saint-Bernard was the work of Blondel, as
well as the Porte Saint-Denis, a work which has never since been equalled, and
which was sculptured by the brothers Anguier, partly from the designs of Lebrun.
The Porte Saint-Martin is by Bullet, pupil of Blondel. The Portes Saint-Denis,and Saint-Martin were commenced in 1670, as is proved by a medal of that year.
2 The tournament of 1662.
8 Monthion, Particularites sur les ministres des finances. - Guillaumot, cited by
Eckard: Lettre'a M. J. Taschereau, au sujet des depenses de Louis XIV., etc.; Versailles, 1836, p. 18. The letter, of which we quote but an extract, cannot be of 1663,
as Guillaumot affirms; the allusions contained in it prove that it is of 1666.




2Q08             LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT,                      1670.
The courageous admonitions of the minister seemed at first to
produce an impression on the King.  The works of the Louvre
were pushed with vigor, and the expenses of Versailles were mod-.erated. But ere long the scale turned anew and irrevocably. Louis
listened no longer but to his own thought.
What was then the meaning of this discussion?  Why did
Colbert wish the King at Paris?  Why did not Louis wish to be
there?
This discussion had a deep meaning: a whole system, a whole
policy was pending upon this question of the royal residence,
Colbert wished that the King should be what Richelieu had
been, France personified; that he should be the thought, as Paris
was the head of France, and that the thought, so to speak, should
not be divorced from the brain in which it was elaborated..
Louis, on the contrary, tended insensibly to absorb France in
his own personality,-  to be the state, instead of expressing and
representing the state; to be by himself and for himself, instead of
being by and for France.  Paris importuned him and weighed him
down; he felt his greatness straitened in that queen city that did
not proceed from him, and that clasped him  in its gigantic arms;
he hated that popular power which had humiliated his childhood
-and more than once thrown down his predecessors.  Jealous of
Paris, he was jealous even of the shades of his own ancestors, or
at least he would be subject in nothing to their memory.  If he
preferred his chateaux to Paris, he preferred Versailles to his other
chateaux, because Fontainebleau, Chambord, Saint-Germain, were
existences ready created, which Francois I. and Henri IV. had
stamped with the ineffaceable imprint of their glory: 1 at Versailles,
everything was to be made, save the modest beginning left by
Louis XIII., s:save that little chAteau of his father which the Great
King would respect through a filial piety -that would cost his pride
nothing: Louis XIV. did not fear the memory of Louis XIII.
At Versailles, everything was to be created, we say,- not only
the monuments of art, but nature itself.  This solitary elevation of
ground, although pleasing enough through the woods and hills that
surrounded it, was without great views, without sites, without.1 It is pretended that the distant view of the bells of Saint-Denis, the farthest
limit of royal greatness, drove Louis XIV. from Saint-Germain. Louis XIV. certainly was not of a pusillanimous nature; but this perpetual memento mori mnay have
been, if not terrifying, at least importunate to the -intoxication of life and power
which was overflowing within him. Moreover, Saint-.Germain was guilty, perhaps,
of a greater fault in his sight than that of showing Saint-Denis, - namely, of show.
ing Paris filling the horizan.




1670-1683.       VERSAILLES. MANSART.                   209
waters, without inhabitants; it was a favorite without merit, according to the witty saying of a contemporary; l but it was a merit to
have merited nothing of itself and to owe everything to the master!
What Louis did in the choice of his palace, there was reason to
fear that he would do some day in the choice of his generals and
his ministers!
There were no sites, no waters, no inhabitants at Versailles; the
sites would be created by creating an immense landscape by the
hand of man; the waters would be brought from the whole country
by works which appalled the imagination; the inhabitants would
be caused, if we may say so, to spring from the earth, by erecting
a whole city for the service of the chateau. Louis would thus
make a city of his own, a form of his own, of which he alone
would be the life. Versailles and the court would be the body and
soul of one and the same being, both created for the same end, the
glorification of the terrestrial God to whom they owed existence.
The first works of Versailles had been directed by the same
Levau from whom Colbert had taken away the Louvre. Levau
dying in 1670, the direction of the works, with the title of chief
architect of the King, was confided to a very young man, Jules
Hardouin-Mansart, whose uncle, Frangois Mansart, had had great
renown in architecture,2 and had contributed more than any one
to impel builders to the servile imitation of the antique.  The
nephew caused the uncle to be forgotten, and became the Lebrun
of architecture. The small but picturesque chateau of Louis XIII.
was surrounded by immense structures, which recalled the style of
Perrault, and offered to the eye a richly decorated story, erected
on a simpler surbasement, and crowned with an attic. From the
side of Paris, where the chateau of Louis XIII. remained in sight,
the contrast of this edifice with the new structures made Versailles
an irregular pile, but with a singular and striking effect, by the
arrangement of the three courts, which continued to diminish in
breadth to the third, a kind of sanctuary, in the recesses of which
reposed royal Majesty. From the opposite side, the aspect changed
as by enchantment; there, all was the work of Louis XIV., all
was new and completely symmetrical. The vast development of
horizontal lines compensated for the little elevation of buildings.
There were no more of the happy accidents of the old national
architecture.  The monotony of this absolute uniformity was interrupted only by the extreme projection of the central body in front
of the two wings, a projection which announced the part of the
1 The Duke de Crequi.     2 He invented the Mansard roofs.
VOL. I.        27




210              LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.            1670-1683.
palace consecrated by the master's presence.  This central body
overlooked all sides, whether viewed in front from the midst of the
gardens, or whether, from the foot of the wooded hills of Satory, it
was seen from the side, rising on its prodigious terrace between that
double Giants' Staircase, to which nothing could be compared. It
was necessary to ascend everywhere to reach the place where
supreme majesty was enthroned.
The same idea filled the interior of the palace. Painting deified
Louis there under every form, in war and in peace, in the arts and
in the administration of the empire; it celebrated his amours as his
victories, his passions as his labors. All the heroes of antiquity, all
the divinities of classic Olympus, rendered him homage or lent him
their attributes in turn. He was Augustus, he was Titus, he was
Alexander; he was thundering Jupiter, he was Hercules, the conqueror of monsters; oftener, Apollo, the inspirer of the Muses and
the king of enlightenment. Mythology was no longer but a great
enigma, to which the name of Louis was the only key; he was all
the gods in himself alone. If the gods abdicated before him, the
kings and nations were prostrate at his feet. In proportion as his
reign unfolded itself, art reproduced on canvas and in marble in
hyperbolical traits each of his triumphs, each humiliation of his
enemies, and fixed upon the dazzling arches of Versailles a perpetual hosanna in honor of the future master of the world.
Louis, always served in his desires by the fertility of his age,
had found a third artist, Lenostre, to complete Lebrun and Mansart. Thanks to Lenostre, Louis, from the windows of his incomparable gallery of mirrors, saw nought that was not of his own
creation. The whole horizon was his work, for his garden was the
whole horizon. This was at once the masterpiece of the marvellous
artist who covered France with his monuments of verdure, and
the masterpiece of that singular art which must be judged, not by
itself alone, but in its relations with the edifices to the lines of
which it weds its lines, - the vegetable architecture which frames
and completes the architecture of stone and marble. Whole thickets were brought full-grown from the depths of the finest forests
of France, and the arts of animating marble and of moving waters
filled them with every prodigy of which the imagination could
dream. An innumerable nation of statues peopled the thickets
and lawns, was mirrored in the waters, or rose from the bosom of
the wave. All the deities of the forests, the rivers, and the sea,
all the visions of antique poetry, seemed to have met by accord at
the feet of the Great King. Neptune seemed to force the waters




P1670-1683.         COST OF VERSAILLES.                       211
of Versailles to gush forth on every side and cross each other in
the air in sparkling circles: Neptune had made himself the servant of Louis; Diana, the solitary goddess of the woods, had
become his mistress in the guise of the chaste La Valliere. Apollo,
his favorite symbol, presided over all this enchanted world. At
each extremity of the vista was seen the mythological sun, the
transparent emblem  of the sun of Louis, emerging in his chariot
from the waves to illumine and rule the earth, then plunging again
thereinto rest from  the celestial government in the voluptuous
shades of the Grotto of Thetis.
Louis had done what he wished; he had created about him  a
little universe, in which he was the only necessary and almost the
only real being.1
But terrestrial gods do not create with a word like the true
God. These buildings which stretch across a frontage of twelve
hundred yards, the unheard-of luxury of these endless apartments,
this incredible multitude of objects of art, these forests transplanted,
these waters of heaven gathered from all the slopes of the heights
into the windings of immense conduits from Trappes and Palaiseau
to Versailles, these waters of the Seine brought from Marly by
gigantic machinery through that aqueduct which commands from
afar the valley of the river like a superb Roman ruin, and later, an
enterprise far more colossal! that river which was turned aside
from its bed and which it was undertaken to bring thirty leagues
to Versailles over hills and valleys,2 cost France grievous efforts
and inexhaustible sweats, and swallowed up rivers of gold increasing from year to year.," Sire," wrote Colbert in 1675, -" Sire... I entreat your
Majesty to permit me to tell you that neither in war nor in peace
have you ever consulted your finances to determine your expenditures, which is so extraordinary that it is certainly without example; and, if you will be pleased to examine and compare the times
and years during the last twenty-five years that I have had the
honor of serving you,3 you will find that, although the receipts
have greatly increased, the expenditures have far exceeded the
receipts, and perhaps this will persuade your Majesty to moderate
1 It would be true plagiarism in us not to cite the interesting work of M. H. Fortoul, Les Fastes de Versailles, where the ideas which we have just summed up concerning the symbolism of Versailles are elaborated in so ingenious a manner. See
also Ch. Perrault, Medm., 1. III.
2 The river Eure. We will speak of this hereafter
8 Colbert had entered the administration in 1650.




212               LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.                 1664-1710.
and curtail what is excessive, and by this means to put a little more
proportion between the receipts and the expenditures." 1
But Louis replied by one of those vague and trenchant maxims
that veil sophistry and cover all faults;"The King gives alms in spending largely." 2
We feel to what such an axiom, true in one sense and most
false in another, must lead.  Doubtless, a government that spends
largely for works adapted to increase the national wealth and profitable to the mass of the citizens, really serves the interests of the
poor classes; but it is not the same with one which consumes
much in expenses for luxuries, in unproductive expenses,3 and
which thus puts into the hands of the few the money wrung from
the sweat of the many.
Versailles has cost France dearly, very dearly; nevertheless it is
important to historic truth to set aside in this respect too long accredited exaggerations. We must judge neither by the vague declamations of Saint-Simon, grossly ignorant on the subject of statistics,
nor by the hyperbolical estimates of orators and writers much more
enlightened than Saint-Simon, but hurried away by the ardor of
the reaction against monarchy, such as Mirabeau and Volney.
The accounts, or at least the abstracts of the accounts, of the
expenditures of Louis XIV. for building, during the greater part
of his reign, have been discovered. The costs of the construction,
decoration, and furnishing of Versailles, from 1664 to 1690, including the hydraulic works and the gardens, in addition to the
appendages, -  that is, Clagny, Trianon, Saint-Cyr, and the two
churches of the new city of Versailles, -amount to about one hundred and seven millions, to which must be added a million, or a
million and a half perhaps, for the expenses of the years 16611663, the accounts of which are not known, and three million two
hundred and sixty thousand francs for the sumptuous chapel, which
was not built until 1699-1710. The proportion of the mark to
the franc having varied under Louis XIV.,4 it is difficult to arrive
at an exact reduction to the present currency; it has been calcu1 Extract from a Melmoire of Colbert to the King, cited by M. Blanqui, Histoire
de l'tconomie politique, t. II. p. 9. We have already seen that the expenditures
began to exceed the receipts in 1670.
2 Lemontey, t. V. p. 144.
3 Is it necessary to remark that we do not qualify as unproductive, expenses for
works of art calculated to develop the sentiment of the beautiful in the minds of
the people? But a small part of the expenses at Versailles can be reduced to this
category.
4 The mark was, from 1640 to 1678, 26 livres, 10 sous; from 1679 to 1689, 29
livres, 6 sous, 11 deniers; from 1690 to 1714, 80 livres, 10 sons, 11 deniers.




1670.                      THE INVALIDES.                             213
lated that by doubling the amount, then subtracting nearly one
ninth, we shall have the absolute value; but to attain the relative
value, the debasement of precious metals and the increase in price
of natural and manufactured products for a century and a half past
being taken into consideration, we cannot do less, it would seem,
than again to double the estimate. We come in this manner to
establish that the expenses of Versailles would represent to-day
more than four hundred millions.' This amount is enormous;
but it is not monstrous like the twelve hundred millions of which
Mirabeau speaks, nor, above all, madly fantastic like the four thousand six hundred millions imagined by Volney. A nation may
indeed be exhausted, but it is impossible to extort from it what
does not exist.   Where would  Louis XIV. have  found  these
thousands of millions? 2
Whilst the Louvre was abandoned unfinished, and the treasures
of France were dwindling away in the drawing-rooms of Versailles, Louis nevertheless gave to the capital a royal token of his
remembrance: he enriched it with one of the most majestic edifices
of modem  times.  Whilst he raised to his own glory a vast temple of which he was the god, he offered to the victims of this
glory, to the soldiers worn out or mutilated in fighting for his ambition, an asylum, or rather a magnificent palace.  Since the for1 Written in 1847. This amount must be increased, on account of the quantities
of gold produced in the last ten or twelve years from California and Australia.
2 The contemporary, Saint-Simon, far more chimerical still, pretends that Louis
XIV. consumed thousands of millions at Marly, that offshoot of Versailles, which was
commenced in 1679. Marly cost, from 1679 to 1690, four and a half millions, and
probably nearly as much, perhaps a little more, from 1691 to 1715; perhaps in all
ten or twelve millions, the relative value of which would represent to-day about
fifty millions. To obtain the aggregate expenses of Louis XIV. for buildings,
works of art, and public works, both of luxury and utility, we must add the cost
of Marly, the Invalides, the works executed at Saint-Germain, Fontainebleau,
Chambord, the Louvre, and the Tuileries, the various triumphal arches of Paris,
the Observatory, the Place Vendome, the Canal of Languedoc (the part paid by
the King), the Gobelins and other manufactures, etc. The sum of the accounts
known amounts to forty-four millions, which, added to about one hundred and
twelve millions for Versailles and its appendages, make nearly one hundred and
fifty-six millions, to which must probably be added twelve millions for the expenses
of Marly after 1790 and for those of the Invalides from 1670 to 1677 and from 1692
to 1703. It is probable that the sum total of the works would cost to-day at least
seven hundred millions. Upon this important financial question, see the Depenses
de Louis XZV. en bdtiments, by Lemontey, in the Revue retrospective, t. II. p. 329, et seq.
1834; the Suppldment aux recherches historiques sur Versailles, by M. Eckard, 1836,
containing the details indeed of all the sums employed by Louis XIV. in the creations at Versailles, Marly, etc., and the letter of M. Eckard to M. J. Taschereau,
editor of the Revue retrospective, Versailles, 1836. M. Eckard's work appears to us
in its main subject decisive, and leaves only a few minor points to be rectified.




214              LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.             1670-1704.
mation of regular armies, a few partial measures had been taken in
behalf of invalid soldiers; a number had been placed, under the
name of lay monks, in the charge of abbeys and priories; a few
served as pensioners in the garrisons of the interior and in the castles
of the nobles; but the greater part were abandoned to public charity. Henri IV. first assigned to them a special hospital; Louis XIII.
placed a few hundreds at Bicetre; but these institutions were quite
insufficient. Louis XIV., in 1670, undertook at last fully to satisfy
the duties of the State towards its defenders; vast structures were
erected in a suburb of Paris, perhaps as usual with too much sacrifice to pomp; but the greatness of the idea and its result may well
excuse a few errors. Six or seven thousand old warriors found in
this edifice, as large as a city, secure comfort and honorable repose;
thenceforth the poor man, impelled by his courage under the
banners of his country, would no longer be restrained by the
thought of the neglect and misery that threatened his old age or
disability. Whatever personality there might still be in the inspiration of Louis, the interest of his greatness was confounded on
this occasion with the interest of the national greatness: it is just
that the advantage of this happy confusion should redound to his
memory.
The Hotel des Invalides, the work of the architect Liberal
Bruant, responded, by its virile character and wholly military
ornamentation, to its noble design.  It was finished in 1674.
The church, which was commenced by Bruant and finished by
Mansart, was not completed until thirty years after. To the latter
is due the dome covered with azure and gold, and surmounted with
a bold spire, which is one of the most beautiful ornaments of Paris.
The details and ornaments of the dome but too well attest the decline of taste, which became less and less pure toward the end of
the reign, but the general appearance is striking, and no monument of Paris, Notre -Dame excepted, produces from afar so
powerful an effect.
Europe resounded only with the splendors of the Great King of
France; the people, who bore the weight of this magnificence,
listened to the stories of it with a kind of pride, so long as the
burden did not become too insupportable, and seemed to take delight in being reflected in this dazzling individuality. The host
of Frenchmen and foreigners that unceasingly crowded to the
gates of Versailles to judge with their own eyes of these marvellous tales, found them less marvellous than the reality; for Louis,
if he did not wish to see Paris, was well pleased that Paris, France,




1668-1670.      EDUCATION  OF THE DAUPHIN.                      215
and the world should come to see Versailles, and to bring to the
foot of his throne the tribute of their admiration.
SECTION VI. -  THE EDUCATION OF THE DAUPHIN.  THEORIES OF
LOUIS XIV. AND BOSSUET. THE STATE AND THE CHURCH.  SUMMARY.
Louis XIV. had therefore impressed his personality upon every
form of French thought; he had become, as it were, his age itself
incarnate. But Louis XIV. did not pretend to be only a brilliant
meteor. After laying down and expressing his individuality under
all aspects and by all means of human power, he wished to formulate the general idea which he had of his functions and his right,
and to secure the perpetuity of his work and his system.
Thence came the extraordinarily solemn character which he
gave to the education of the Dauphin, his son.1 It was an ideal
king, a type of royalty, that he designed to form, in order that art
might continue in another what nature and will had made in himself. It is in the monuments of the education of the Dauphin
that we seize the very depth of the thought which was manifested
externally in the court, in arts, in letters.
The choice of the two men charged with superintending this
education was significant: one, the governor, Montausier, the husband of the celebrated Mademoiselle de Rambouillet,2 passed for
the representative of French society in its highest phase of intelligence and morality; his appointment appeared a pledge given to
good morals by Louis XIV., amidst the effervescence of his own
passions, in the person of a man so renowned for his austere virtue.3 The name of the other, the preceptor, tells everything. It
was Bossuet whom Louis adjoined to Montausier, and who took in
fact, in the common work, the preponderance due to his genius.
Louis and Bossuet, as we have said elsewhere, had comprehended
1 Louis of France, born November 1, 1661.
2 The royal child passed from the hands of the wife to those of the husband, for
Madame de Montausier had been governess of the Dauphin during his infancy.
Montausier was appointed governor of the young prince in 1668; Bossuet was appointed preceptor in 1670.
8 Unfortunately, there are reservations to be made; both Montausier and his
wife, irreproachable in their personal morals, showed to the passions of others an
indulgence which was not disinterested when the culprit was the King. It is a
most striking example of the deleterious influence exercised over characters by the
spirit of the court, - a terrible compensation for the social advantages which we
have described.




216               LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.              1670-1680.
each other at the first word. Bossuet's love of external order and
stability, his conservative and traditional opinions, essentially opposed to the spirit of sectarianism and individual innovation, which
governments hate instinctively, had revealed to the King a powerful auxiliary in the theologian.  In the Middle Ages, the spirit of
authority, which was common to them both, would have set them
in opposition; now it drew them toward each other, Bossuet,
inclined to submit to the authority of facts, having accepted as
providential the prodigious development of the temporal power of
kings. In early youth, in the midst of the Fronde, Bossuet had
announced his monarchical opinions by a sermon from the characteristic text: Timete Deurn, honorificate regem  (Fear God; honor
the king).1 God and the king — it was on this double basis that
he would build, indeed, his whole social theory.
A general plan was skilfully arranged by Bossuet and Montausier
to develop the mind and character of their royal pupil in every direction, and to make him a complete man and a model prince. The
ablest philologists, Pierre Danet, Father de la Rue, and the learned
Anne Lefevre (afterwards Madame Dacier) who proved that
erudition is no more inaccessible to women than the arts of the
imagination, and many more besides, were commissioned under the
direction of the sub-preceptor Huet, a man of letters and universal
scholar, to publish editions of the Latin classics, explained, elucidated,
and annotated, in order to initiate the young prince into antiquity.2
Writers eminent for the profundity of their knowledge, or the
splendor of their eloquence, ransacked for him the annals of nations.
Cordemoi threw light, after Adrien de Valois, upon the darkness
of the first two races. Fl1chier and Tillemont labored to offer him
examples, the one in the life of Theodosius, the other in that of
Saint-Louis, whom Bossuet never wearied of commending to the
admiration of his pupil as the very type of royal virtue.3 Blondel,
the architect of the Porte Saint-Denis, taught him mathematics applied to the art of war. Lastly, Bossuet himself, hovering
over all these talented men who brought him the fruit of their
vigils as simple materials for his great work, unfolded before the
heir of Louis the Great the sum total of human knowledge, and
l Vie de Bossuet, by M. de Bausset, t. I. p. 51.
2 These are the celebrated editions styled Ad usum Delphini.
8 La Vie de Saint-Louis, by Filleau de la Chaise, was written from Tillemont's
materials; the original work of Tillemont, much more extended, has recently been
published by M. de Gaulle for the Historical Society of France. For the whole plan
of education followed by Bossuet, see his letter written to Pope Innocent XI. in
1679.- (Euvres de Bossuet, ed. Didot, 1841, t. I. p. 1.




1670-1680.       PHILOSOPHY OF BOSSUET.                    217
built him monuments which will endure as long as the language
and literature of France.
There were three of these, alike imposing, and which, connected
by a logical bond, formed together a vast edifice. One contained
philosophy, another history, the third, politics.
The first was the treatise On the Knowledge of God and of Ourselves.1
The analysis of it is unnecessary here. However judicious, solid,
and excellent in almost all its parts may be this book, which will
always remain one of the bases of philosophic teaching, it is not
an original conception, but a luminous application of the principles
of Descartes. However little inclined Bossuet might have been to
innovations, his lofty reason had been unable to reject the enlightenment of the Method. It was a glorious triumph for the father of
modern philosophy that, at the very moment when he was refused,
as it were, a tomb, when jesuitism and scholasticism combined
were about to prohibit the public teaching of his doctrine, this doctrine imposed itself authoritatively on the most illustrious defender
of the established powers, and constrained him, despite his secret
distrust and anxieties, to serve as an organ to the great innovation.
It was as it were despite himself that Bossuet demanded the assistance of the innovator to prove the fundamental truths of theodicy;
he would have gladly had Descartes expurgated, as the Roman
censure prescribed; he expurgated him himself as far as he could,
for he did not fear to suppress two of his unpublished letters; 2 but
he never attacked him; he treated him with circumspection, as
Descartes had treated the Church, and seemed to struggle between
gratitude for the aid brought to theodicy, and the fear of the imminent invasion of faith by reason.
Although the metaphysical treatise of Bossuet is not as a whole
an original creation, so powerful a mind could not touch the creation
of another without adding something thereto. Bossuet takes a step
in advance of Descartes: he reduces all the passions to love as
their sole principle, but he does not draw the consequences from
this: he does not separate moral principle from occasional external
causes in the passions, and completely abandons passion to sensation: he does not place love or sentiment opposite understanding
as an equal principle, and puts conscience only in reason, and not
in sentiment. The question of the union of the soul and the body
is treated with as much copiousness as strength, although with
1 Not published until 1722.
2 Renouvier, Manuel de philosophie moderne, p. 207.
yOL. I.        28




218             LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.             1670-168.0.
more reserve than in Descartes; the description of the human
body is a masterpiece. The senses and sensation are placed clearly
in the soul, and not in the organs of which the soul avails itself.
The soul is sensitive as well as intellectual.  The soul and the
body are a natural unit.  The soul does not govern the body
as a foreign thing, but as a thing natural and intimately united.
"The reasonable soul is an intelligent substance born to live in a
body.      The whole man is comprised in this definition."
" No," it may be rejoined, " the whole man is not comprised in
this definition; for the soul is not only an intelligent substance,
but also a loving substance." He recognizes this himself, further on. " Intellect," he says, "' is for the true; love is for the
good."
Towards the end of the book, monarchical policy and historical
theology begin to invade the domain of philosophy, and we behold
with astonishment a political maxim introduced among the eternal
truths and unvarying rules which the philosopher shows us in God.
" By these unvarying rules," he says, " a subject who feels himself part of a State sees that he owes obedience to the prince who
is charged with the direction of the whole." Thus the ideas of
subject and prince figure in his eyes among the universals and
archetypes.
Then, at last emerging from the Cartesian method, he makes his
whole study of God and man end at original sin, by a somewhat
abrupt and unexpected transition, with strange arguments concerning the penalty transmitted from father to children. We experience
a singular impression in falling from the philosophic heights whither
he had transported us to words like these: " It is no less just to
punish a man in his children than in his members and in his person.... Civil laws have imitated this primordial law." Pascal,
at least, had truly recognized that the justice which punishes the
father in the children has nothing in common with the human
idea of justice. We feel the breath here of the austere genius of
the past in its primal fatality, and already begin to discern how
hereditary monarchy is connected, in Bossuet's thought, with religion, by that doctrine of transmission from father to son which is
the basis of original sin.
His metaphysics are, however, far distant from Calvinistic fatalism. "A man whose mind is not perverted," says he, " does not
need to have his free will proved to him, for he feels it. The so
clear notion that we have of our faults is a certain token of the
liberty that we have had to commit them." Liberty, according to




1670-1680.           HISTORY  OF BOSSUET.                       219
him, is born of reflection, — that faculty which God has given to
man and refused to animals.'
He even writes a special treatise on Free Will, which is as it
were the complement of his great philosophic treatise. He establishes in this that free will is evident to us: first, by the evidence
of sentiment; second, by the evidence of reason. He therefore perceives here the two great principles of certainty: had he pushed
further and generalized this great aperception, he might have completed Descartes and the philosophic method. But he appears to
blend sentiment somewhat confusedly with experience, and goes
no further in this path.
He clearly proves, both the indubitable reality of our liberty and
the no less indubitable reality of the government of our liberty by
God, whether we do or do not conceive the harmony of these two
truths. As to the explanation of this harmony he inclines towards
that of St. Thomas.   He advances, moreover, on this subject
nothing contrary to Descartes, and recognizes that original sin has
not changed the relations of God and man as to free will, and to
the dependence of human liberty relative to God.
The second of the three works is the Discourse on Universal
History,2 which remains, with the Funeral Orations, the most popular work of Bossuet. The idea is more easily rendered familiar
to the mass of minds under the vivid form of history than under
the abstract form of theory. This book might be entitled the
history of the government of Providence on earth. It is a sublime
conception and a creation without model. We need not revert
to Bossuet's genius and eloquence; 3 let one picture to himself this
genius and eloquence applied to such a subject as the annals of the
human race embraced from  the height of the Bible!
The Discourse on Universal History is divided into three parts:
first, Epochs, or the Course of Time; second, Considerations on
the Course of Religion; third, Considerations on the Changes of
Empires.
1 The chapter on the difference of man and animals is very profoundly studied,
apart from a few errors, and very strongly reasoned in what concerns the refusal
of reason to animals. The prudent sense of Bossuet is nevertheless repugnant to
the absolute mechanism of animals.  Bossuet does not declare himself clearly
concerning the soul of beasts; if he denies them reasoning, he seems inclined to
accord them sensations. Now, he has established that sensation is in the soul;
therefore, animals have a soul; that is, an indissoluble and indestructible principle,
although this soul is not endowed with reason. He seeks to elude this consequence, but without success.
2 Published in 1681.
8 See ante, ~ 4.




220              LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.               1670-1680.
As regards epochs, Bossuet takes literally that chronology of the
Vulgate which, by a kind of antithesis of the almost infinite periods
of the Indian Genesis, makes the world a thing of yesterday, and
compresses the origin of the human race within so few centuries
that it is as it were stifled therein. He consents, nevertheless,
that the chronology of the Septuagint should be preferred, if it is
desired, which leaves a little more latitude to the early ages. His
primitive world has been transformed by the progress of history.
Ethnograplhy, the science which teaches the consanguinities of races
and the formation of nations, was not yet born, and he was not, on
this point, in advance of his contemporaries.
Concerning the two other parts, there are some preliminary
objections to be made to him, nearly the same that might have
been addressed to Pascal.  The notions acquired are insufficient.
All Upper Asia is left entirely outside his plan, as it is outside the
Mosaic ethnography; the Persians themselves are to him nought
but worshippers of the sun, and he knows little more of the beliefs
of our fathers, the Gauls. The importance of these vast hiatuses
to the comparative history of religion may be conceived. The
radical opposition which he establishes between true and false
religions, the one coming from God, the others from the devil, is
not founded on a sufficient knowledge of religions other than that
of Moses. He condemns without understanding. Likewise, is
the absolute opposition between the unity of religion "in its different states " and the mutability of empires as true as it is specious
and fruitful in brilliant images? Are there not also here, in a certain sense, unity, transmission and succession of civilization, of
political society, "in its different states? "
The point of departure once admitted, the symbols of the antehistoric ages accepted literally as facts of positive history, and Judea laid down as the sole centre of the world,' this unique work is
constructed with a captivating majesty, and enchained with a force
that sweeps away all before it. Never had -the sum of the traditions on which the doctrine of Christian revelation is based been
concentrated and coordinated by such a logician. The impression
produced on the mind of a generation, already so much inclined
to ideas of sequence and unity, must have been and was prodigious.
1 He does not wholly disguise the inferiority of the Jews, compared with the
Gauls and other peoples, in so far as he discerns the clear and firm belief of the
latter in the immortality of the soul; but he adroitly evades the question by showing as an evil this truth, known too soon, since God was not yet known.




1670-1680.        POLITICS OF BOSSUET.                    221
Profound flashes of light burst forth on theodicy at times from
amidst this wholly historical theology; here we meet for the first
time in him that admirable metaphysical explanation of the Trinity
which had escaped him while writing the treatise On the  Knowledge
of God and of Ourselves, and which he was later to elaborate in
his IJlevations sur les 1Mysteres.1
Magnificent pictures of the revolutions of empires, views full of
grandeur concerning the Greeks and Romans, illustrate the last
part of the Discourse; despite his systematic condemnation of
paganism, the attraction of genius for genius hurries away Bossuet
whenever he is in the presence of the ancients and of their glory.
The continuation of the Discourse on Universal History, which
was to treat of modern times, was never written; nor was a work
projected by Bossuet on the laws and customs of the kingdom of
France.
The third work, the one of the three of a nature to exercise the
most direct influence upon the affairs of this world, was Politics
drawn from the Scriptures' own Words,2 an extended treatise in
which the author strove to identify his political theory with religion,
and to base the throne on the altar so strongly that they could
never more be separated. From that inexhaustible biblical arsenal
whence the English Independents had lately drawn their republican
sword, he claimed to bring forth an impenetrable suit of armor in
which to clothe royalty.
The first book treats of the principles of society among men.
His point of departure is incontestable: the fraternity of men in
God, the principle of human sociability. He then sets forth the
division of the human race according to tongues and families, and
the necessity of a government in each nation. From government,
he says, is born the right of property; all right must come from
public authority (all right over things, he would say).
Here a powerful objection arises already. The right of property,
inherent to human individuality, the natural extension of the human
person over things, is not born from government; social right determines it, limits it, but does not create it.
The partition of property among men, he continues, and the
division of men themselves into peoples and nations, should not
alter the general society of the human race.3 The law of Moses,
1 (Euvres de Bossuet, ed. Didot, 1841, t. I. p. 213. We will speak again of the
Eldvations sur les Mysteres.
2 Not published until 1709, after Bossuet's death.
8 At the same time that he protests in behalf of the unity of the human race, he




222              LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.              1670-1680.
again, reduces, in some sort, to common stock the goods which
have been divided for public and private convenience.
He had before established the necessity of laws; that is, of general rules of conduct in government. The first principle -of laws
is to recognize the Divinity; the second, to do to others as we
would that they should do unto us.
" Law is, in its origin, as it were, a pact and solemn treaty by
which men agree together, by the authority of princes, on what is
necessary to form their society. This does not mean that the
authority of laws depends on the consent and acquiescence of
peoples, but only that the prince is assisted by the wisest heads of
the nation." Strange to say, Bossuet cites, in support of this doctrine, an example from the Bible which gives positively the contrary conclusion; for the Scriptures show Moses, the representative of God himself, proposing the law for the express consent of
the whole people.
According to Bossuet, the prince is, therefore, anterior and
superior to the law. Who, then, has established the prince? Is
the prince established directly by God himself? This is indeed
the conclusion to which Bossuet hereafter arrives.
Nevertheless, the prince, he says, should not arbitrarily change
the law. In general, the laws are not laws if they are not in some
sort inviolable; that is, if they are variable and without consistency. -There are fundamental laws which cannot be changed; it
is even very dangerous to change unnecessarily those which are
not fundamental.
Book II. is entitled On Authority.
" God is the true king." In other words, sovereignty is only in
God. This is obvious. But Bossuet does not mean it only in this
ideal sense, and adds that God has reigned visibly in person, first
over all mankind, next over his chosen people.
" The first human empire was the paternal empire in each family; then families assembled in societies under kings who stood
them instead of fathers. There were in the beginning an infinite
number of petty kingdoms; conquerors broke up this concord of
nations. Monarchy is the most common, the most ancient, and
the most natural form of government."
Nothing is more certain than that the first human empire was
the government of the family by the father; but from this to royprofesses sound maxims concerning the love of country. He who does not love
"the civil society of which he is part, that is, the state (the nation) where he was
born, is an enemy to himself and to all the human race."




1670-1680.        POLITICS OF BOSSUET.                     223
alty, there was no natural transition.  The most ancient and most
natural government must have been that of the associated heads
of families. The necessity of unitary action may have then urged
them, in the greater part of these primitive groups, to choose a
single chief; but in almost the entire East, these chiefs have never
had anything in common with monarchs, such as Bossuet defines
them. The absolute government of a single man remained unknown to our ancestors during a long succession of generations,
the power, in all degrees, having been always at least shared between the chief and the elders, priests, or popular assemblies. In
the East itself, where Bossuet's opinion seems less distant from the
truth, another principle, sacerdotal inspiration, theocracy, has at
least balanced the monarchy.
The monarchical government is the best, pursues Bossuet, and
he seeks its type in the leadership of armies, which requires unity.
" Military government, having the power in hand, must in the end
prevail. It is better, therefore, that it should be established at
first, it will be less violent."
In wishing thus to constitute society on the basis of an exceptional state, such as the state of war, he does not appear to suspect
that there is a means of preventing the military government from
prevailing; namely, to put arms into the hands of the whole nation,
instead of leaving them to a warlike caste.
"Of all monarchies," he resumes, " the best is the successive or
hereditary, from male to male, and from eldest to eldest. It is
that which God has established among his people."
Here, again, the Bible does not seem to be very aptly quoted,
for it was in spite of the prophets, in spite of the inspired of the
Lord, that royalty was established in Israel; God, according to the
relation of the Scriptures, suffered it to be established, but did not
establish it, and later, when there was derogation of birthright, it
was by divine inspiration.l
" One of the reasons for which this government is the best, is,
that it is perpetuated of itself. Nothing is more enduring than a
state which endures and is perpetuated by the same causes that
make the universe endure, and that perpetuate the human race."
Is this to say, according to Bossuet, that the government of
forces, free and endowed with reason,- of beings whose peculiarity
it is to choose, - should be assimilated to the government of physical nature, ruled by fatal and immutable laws?
While representing monarchy as the government par excellence,
1 1 Samuel viii.; 1 Kings ii.




224             LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.             1670-1680.
Bossuet does not deny the legitimacy of other governments.  "It
is necessary to remain in the state to which a long lapse of time
has accustomed the people. He who undertakes to overthrow
legitimate governments, in whatever form they may be estab —
lished, is not only a public enemy, but also an enemy of God."
He sums up by affirming that he has established, by the Scriptures, that royalty has its origin in Divinity itself, and that the
monarchical constitution is the most in conformity with the will of
God.
When one lives in an order of ideas different from  that in
which Bossuet was placed, it is not without difficulty that he can,
we do not say admit, but comprehend, this singular deduction of
earthly from heavenly royalty, and this doctrine which makes the
king the image of God. If we place opposite the absolute and
infinite being, the multitude of finite beings, it seems evident that
the multiple can reproduce the imperfect image of unity only by
the harmonious association of its living elements, all equal by
nature; all finite beings are equal before the infinite. The monarchical doctrine sets to work differently; it chooses arbitrarily,
or rather leaves to be designated by the fatality of birth, a certain
being whom God has made precisely like the rest, and pretends
that this being is, in himself alone, the image of the Supreme
Being.
Bossuet next develops (Books III. IV. V.) the nature and properties of royal authority.
"Royal authority is sacred; God establishes kings as his ministers, and reigns by them over peoples.
" We should obey princes through principles of religion and
conscience. God has put in them something divine.
"Kings should respect their own power, as being the power of
God, and use it sacredly and religiously for the public good.
"Royal authority is absolute. The prince should render an
account to no one for what he prescribes.  Princes are gods,
according to the language of the Scriptures, and participate in
some manner in Divine independence. Against the authority
of the prince there can be no remedy except in his authority.
There is no coactive force against the prince. Kings are not on
this account affranchised from the laws (in right, for in fact no
one is empowered to constrain them to submit thereto). Royal
authority is subjected to reason."
A feeble guaranty, if reason has no visible and authorized
organ!




1670-1680.         POLITICS OF BOSSUET.                     225
" The people must fear the prince.
" What is majesty? -  The prince is a public personage; the
whole State is in him; the will of the whole people is comprised in
his. See an immense people united in a single person; see this
sacred, paternal, and absolute power; see the secret reason which
governs the whole body of the State comprised within a single
brain, - you see the image of God in kings, and you have an idea
of royal majesty."
There are indeed some correctives to this exaltation of royalty.
The great antithesis of the funeral orations recurs from time to
time to warn these gods of flesh and blood, these gods of clay and
dust, that they will die like men; but these warnings to men none
the less leave subsisting the apotheosis of the institution.
Book VI. concerns the duties of the subjects toward the prince.
"We should not examine how  the power of the prince was
established; it is enough that we find him established and reigning.
"The only exception to obedience is when the prince commands
contrary to God (again the resistance must be passive).
" We owe tribute to the prince (that is, the consent of the people
is not necessary for the levying of taxes).
" It is not justifiable to rise against princes for any cause whatsoever. To speak against the King is a cause worthy of the greatest punishment, and this crime is treated as almost equal to that of
blasphemy against God.
"A  sanctity is inherent to the royal character which can be
effaced by no crime, even among infidel princes." 1
Books VII. and VIII. contain the particular duties of royalty.
" The prince should employ his authority to destroy false religions in his State.  Those who are unwilling to suffer the prince to
employ rigor in religious matters, because religion should be free, are
in impious error."
He adds, indeed, that gentleness in general is preferable, and
that recourse is to be had to rigorous measures only in extremity;
but this is only a question of application; the principle is clearly
laid down. Bossuet reminds the heir to the crown of France of
the coronation oath, in which is comprised the pledge to extermi1 In applying his principles to the history of France, Bossuet should have condemnned the usurpation of Pepin and of Hugues Capet. He did not: he says, with
respect to the first, that, the Merovingians having failed, God raised up another
race; as to the Capetian race, whom he loads with praises, he makes no reflections
on its accession.
VOL. I.             29




226              LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.             1670-1680.
nate heretics,l which has remained in the formulas of the monarchy as a threatening protest against the principle of the edict of
Nantes.
He next lays down, between absolute government and arbitrary
(or despotic) government, a distinction which Montesquieu was to
reproduce later under other names.  In the latter government,
"the subjects are born slaves; there is neither property nor right
of succession; the funds belong to the prince, who disposes of the
life as of the possessions of his subjects. There is no law except
his will (this is not quite accurate; there is scarcely any despotic
State that has not some sort of fundamental law; the Mussulman
despots, for instance, are subject to the Koran)."
Under absolute government, there are laws contrary to which
all that is done is invalid by right; and this it is that is called
legitimate government (that is, founded on the laws). In a legitimate government, persons are free, and the ownership of property
is legitimate and inviolable.:" The first effect of justice and the laws is to preserve, not only
to the whole body of the State, but also to each part that composes
it, the rights accorded by the preceding princes."
In fact, these rights are subordinated to the will of the reigning
prince, since no one is empowered to oblige him to respect them.
The last two books (IX. and X.) treat of the aids (the means
of action) of royalty; namely, arms, finances, and counsels.
He protests forcibly against ambitious conquerors. " Those who
make war to satisfy their ambition are enemies of God."
" The prince should moderate taxes and not overburden the
people, but proportion the taxes to the necessities of the State and
the public expenditures."
He arrives at length at the abuses and temptations of royalty,
and interrogates the remedies that may be applied to them.  He
pretends to find none within the grasp of man, and sets aside the
vain search for human remedies to have recourse to more general
remedies, "to those which God himself has ordained for kings
against the temptation of power," and which are summed up in
the fear of the judgments of God and posterity.
We need not comment at length on this deification of absolute
monarchy. The consequences are clear enough. The experience
of history is at hand to teach us whether the mind and heart
of man are capable of resisting the vertigo of this absolute power
1 Exterminare, in the primitive sense of the word, means at least to expel, banish,
See note, Vol. X. p. 346, Martin's Histoire de la France.




1670.            THEORIES OF LOUIS XIV.                    227
which is fit only for the absolute being, and of conquering these
temptations, the incalculable strength of which Bossuet cannot
disguise.  The Gospel, on its part, does not tell man to throw
himself in the way of temptation, confident of overcoming it; it
says, "Lord, lead us not into temptation."  If the fear of God is
insufficient against the vertigo and error of the pious prince, what
will it be if the prince is indifferent or impious?
In this case, the theorist of passive obedience would say: we
are to submit to the bad prince; we are to endure injustice,
oppression, the greatest acts of violence, rather than disturb the
peace. What is this abstract peace then to which all real liberty
on earth should be sacrificed?, Is there peace where there are
oppression and violence?  What remains to be disturbed, and
what have we to lose!
Let us quit these generalities; let us apply the theory to the
France of the seventeenth century.  Let us admit that we meet
the just and perfect, prince, such as Bossuet conceives. In what
direction would he guide the State?  He would undertake no
unjust conquests; he would not burden the people with taxes.
So be it! but abroad, he would be led, for the interest of the human
race, to intervene systematically in other States to oppose the movements therein that are contrary to monarchy, that government preferred of God, or to the interests of the true religion; at. home, he
would crush religious dissensions by force, if persuasion did not
suffice to reistablish unity.
Bossuet's prince would therefore annihilate the national and
rational policy which had made the greatness and prosperity of
France, to substitute for it a policy contrary to all the tendencies
and conquests of the modern mind.
Nor was this yet all. Bossuet's prince was not completely the
prince of Louis XIV. The theorist of monarchy still fell short of
the ideal of power according to the monarch, and the theories of
Louis XIV. exceeded those of Bossuet.
Louis also contributed directly, on his part, to the education of
the -Dauphin.  In the 2Memoirs and Instructions to his qSon, which
we have already many times cited, and in some other writings,
he lays down his doctrines on the rights and duties of royalty.
He expresses therein upright and humane sentiments; he speaks
of religion in a manner quite different from what we might suppose
from the reputation for ignorance which historians have given him
in this respect.' On almost all points he agrees with Bossuet.
1 After having shown what interest princes have in sustaining religion, he estab.




228                LOUIS XIV. AND  COLBERT.                       1670.
Thus, Bossuet would sympathize with the abhorrence manifested
by Louis for the condition of princes who are subject to popular
assemblies, and who have not alone the decision of affiairs.1
Bossuet would accept, as simply a different reading of his own
definition of monarchy in general, the definition of the French
constitution, as it is found in a treatise on public law, written by
order of the King.  " France is a monarchical State in the full
extent of the expression. The King represents therein the entire
nation, and each private individual represents only a single individual toward the King.  Consequently all power, all authority,
resides in the hands of the King, and there can be no other in his
kingdom than that which he establishes. The nation does not form
a body in France.  It resides entire in the person of the King." 2
But there is a fundamental point where this conformity ceases.
Bossuet reserves, outside of absolute authority, the right of individual property. Louis does not admit this reservation.
" Everything that is found in the extent of our States, of whatsoever nature it may be, belongs to us by the same right..... The
moneys which are in our coffers, those which remain in the hands
of our treasurers, and those which we leave in the commerce of our
people, should be alike managed by us. Kings are absolute lords,
and have naturally the full and free disposal of all the goods possessed as well by churchmen as by laymen; to use them  at all
times.. according to the general need of their State." 3
There is no great practical difference between this doctrine and
that which admits the absolute right of the prince to levy taxes as
he sees fit; but there is nevertheless between the two the breadth
of a principle.  To use the terms of the Politique de l'Ecriture
lishes that the interior with them should correspond to the exterior, and that
princes should believe themselves what they wish others to believe; whence he
sets out to establish religion on universal consent, in a truly remarkable manner,
which proves that, if he were unacquainted with the details of theology, he had
reasoned seriously on its general principles. See (Euvres de Louis XIV. t. I.; M@moires et Instruct. pp. 89-95.
1 Ibid. t. II. p. 28.
2 Manusc. quoted by Lemontey; Essaz sur la monarchie de Louis XTV. See (Euvres
do Lemontey, t. V. p. 15.
8 (Euvres de Louis XIV. t. II. pp. 93-121, This passage was written with refer.
ence to the resistance of the clergy to the pecuniary demands of the crown, and is
followed by forcible and judicious reflections on the claims of churchmen to be exempted from public burdens. Here again the monarch and the theologian disagree;
for Bossuet strongly insists on the privileges of ecclesiastical goods and persons,
and on the punishment inflicted by God, in the Bible, on the violators of these
privileges. Politique de l'tcriture Sainte, 1. vII. 4-11 propositions. Here, it is Louis
XIV. that, while advancing a monstrous principle, maintains in fact common law
and general interest.




1670.              THEORIES OF LOUIS XIV.                        229:Sainte, Bossuet stops at absolute monarchy; Louis XIV. goes on
to arbitrary monarchy.l
Such was the famous education of the Dauphin, in which monarchy, arrived at its complete realization, took full cognizance of
itself. If we think on what became of the object of these unheard-of
cares, if we compare the nothingness of the result with the greatness of the effort, we are involuntarily carried back to the prodigious contrasts of the Funeral Orations and the Universal History; the vanity of hereditary transmission adds a new chapter to
those human vanities depicted with so much eloquence by the preceptor of the Dauphin. This ideal heir, over whose cradle all the
treasures of genius are poured out, -this child whom it is sought to
make a god, they do not even succeed in making a man. Scarcely
shall we have to name him in the continuation of this history, and
if we have dwelt so long on his education, it has been only to seek
therein the principle of his father's acts.
What must have been the consequence of the opinion which
Louis XIV. had of his rights, combined with the opinion that he
had of his person, if not that of adoring himself, or, taking things
in the most favorable sense, of adoring in himself the reflection of
God.and the image of perfection on earth!  Louis indeed had for
himself a profound and, so to say, naive admiration: we may read
in his Memoirs the magnificent portrait which he draws of his person; he chants to himself with emotion the hyimn of his own
praise.2  He salutes in himself that visible miracle$ proclaimed by
his court and his age.
His belief in his absolute rights very naturally explains acts
which seem, to the men of our days, contrary to all morality and
honesty.  For instance, the rentes on the State were refused to
their legitimate holders, and employed for another purpose.4 Had
not the King the right to manage, as he chose, the moneys which he
left to his subjects, and to withdraw from them those of which they
1 See the anecdote related by Lemontey concerning the traveller Bernier, who
was " questioned with care by the ministers (Louvois?) on the state of property in
Egypt, Persia, and Mogul.... Bernier... perceived but too well the design of his
interrogators, and strove to prove to them that the property system of the East
was only fit to produce famine and deserts." See (Euvres de Lemontey, t. V. p. 11.
Louis XIV. had therefore some desire to proclaim himself -unequivocaUy the sole
proprietor of the soil.
2 (Euvres de Louis XIFV. t. II. pp. 357, 424; Saint-Simon, 12mo. ed. t. XX V.
p. 76.
A8 Pellisson's expression.
4 See the anecdote concerning the brothers Quesnel cited by Lemontey. Wuvre.
de Lemontey, t. V. p. 132.




230                LOUIS XIV. AND  COLBERT.                       1670.
made a bad use? The violation of the secrecy of letters, which,
under the preceding administrations, had only taken place exceptionally and in moments of disturbance and peril, was erected into a
system and became a public function, —a ministerial attribute.1 Had
not the King a -right to know everything in order to provide for
everything?
As Louis was led away by the logic of a false principle and not
by depravity of heart, the man in him did not abuse, in order to satisfy evil private passions, the monstrous prerogative which the king
arrogated to himself in invading the secrecy of private individuals.
The same testimony, however, cannot be rendered him on all
points; if the respect which he had for himself and the foundation
of probity which he retained preserved him without difficulty from
the infamous deeds into which degenerate royalty was to plunge
after him, his pride, which treated all resistance as sacrilege, hurried him away more than once to abuse his royal power over the
liberty of citizens to punish whatever thwarted his passions. Thus,
the long imprisonment of that nobleman who had committed no
other crime than that of serving as the medium between Mademoiselle La Vallikre and the convent to which she wished to retire, at
the epoch when Louis still pretended to retain her, while being
unfaithful to her; 2 thus, the exile of Montespan, guilty of having
disputed his wife to the King without circumspection, and the judicial separation between the favorite and her husband, imposed by
complaisant judges.
" When one can do whatever he wishes, it is not easy for him to
wish only what he ought to do."
Louis himself, in his Memoirs,8 pronounces in these words the
condemnation of the regime wherein a man can do whatever he
wishes.
1 This only took place in the latter part of the reign, after Colbert. See SaintSimon, t. XXIV. p. 140. By way of compensation, perhaps the most characteristic
acts of Oriental despotism committed by Louis XIV. were anterior to the administration of Colbert and the death of Mazarin; namely, two ordinances, the first of
which, April 2, 1658, forbids all landed proprietors, not only to hunt on their grounds
within six leagues around the Louvre, a domain set apart for the King's pleasures,
but also to build houses in the fields, or to dig ditches around their estates which
may interfere with his Majesty's hunting; the other, November 6, 1660, forbids the
erection of private buildings in Paris and within ten leagues about without permission, and threatens all workmen who disobey with the galleys, in order to secure a
sufficient number of laborers for the King's works. The object of these two edicts
justifies us in imputing them to the young King rather than to Mazarin, although
Louis did not yet participate in the government. See Recueil des Anciennes Loisfrangaises, t. XVII. p. 364. Lemontey, t. V. p. 142, et Gui Patin, t. II. p. 153.
2 Walckenaer, Memoires sur madame de S&vigne, t. III. p. 211.
8 T. II. p. 81.




1661-1672.  LOUIS XIV. AND THE PROTESTANTS.             231
Such acts, notwithstanding, were rare in the beginning of the
reign. Good intentions, good counsels, and natural good sense
restrained at first in many respects the dangerous tendencies and
the progress of selfishness in the man who, being the centre of
everything, was so strongly tempted to immolate everything to
himself. To his despotic maxims on the universal property of the
prince, Louis adds, by way of corrective, that "the virtuous prince
levies only with restraint and exacts only with compassion." 1 He
shows himself, in general, in accordance with Bossuet concerning
the duties of royalty.
But on two most important questions, religion and external
policy, Louis did not need, in order to be misled and to mislead
France, to be at variance with the theory of the throne and the
altar. On the contrary, there was reason to fear only that he
would be seen to remain too faithful to it.
As regards religion, he at first fell short, in turn, of Bossuet's
theory, and the intentions towards the Protestants which he expresses in his Memoirs, written in 1670, are important to be noted
as a point of comparison with what he would do later.
"As to that great number of my subjects of the so-called Reformed religion, which was an evil... which I regard with sorrow... it seems to me that those who wished to employ violent
remedies did not know the nature of this evil, caused in part by the
warmth of minds, which must be left to pass away and to die out
insensibly, instead of exciting it anew by such strong contradictions,
always useless moreover, when the corruption is not confined to a
certain known number, but diffused throughout the State.
" I believed that the best means, in order to reduce the Huguenots of my kingdom by degrees, was in the first place not to
constrain them at all by any new rigor, to cause that to be observed toward them that they had obtained from my predecessors,
but to accord them nothing beyond this, and even to confine its
execution within the narrowest limits which justice and propriety
could permit.
" As to the favors which depended on me alone, I resolved, and
I have since observed this somewhat strictly, to grant them none... in order to oblige them by this to consider from time to
time, of themselves and without violence, whether it was for any
good reason that they voluntarily deprived themselves of advantages which might be common to them with all my other subjects.
"I resolved also to attract, even by reward, those who should
1 aEuvres de Louis XIV. t. II. p. 45.




232               LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.                1661-1672.
become docile; to stimulate the bishops, as far as I could, that they
might labor for their instruction; to put, in short, in all the places
(ecclesiastical) of which I have the appointment, only persons of
piety, application, and knowledge, calculated to repair, by a directly
opposite conduct, the disorders which that of their predecessors
had principally produced in the Church."'
Certainly, this plan of conduct, in a moral point of view, was
open to very grave objections; these material privations and
rewards, employed as instruments of conversion, blended strangely
with Catholic preaching and other legitimate means of proselytism.
This was already far from Richelieu, who called capable men
to high offices without distinction of creed, and who derived so
much benefit from it, as did France also! But, at least, violent persecution was explicitly condemned, as powerless if not criminal.2
Another religious discussion preoccupied Louis XIV. and his
contemporaries no less than the old quarrel of Protestantism, - the
new schism that was fermenting in the very bosom of the Catholic
Church. Louis appeared at first harsher towards the Jansenists
than towards the Protestants, for he contented himself with undermining the established heresy, but openly attacked the infant
schism, in order to prevent it from establishing itself. It was the
spirit of innovation and independence that he prosecuted among
the Jansenists much more than the doctrine itself, and above all,
than the special opinion that was the immediate cause of the theological contest. It was not doubtless greatly to the interest of
the King that the Pope, or even the Church, should be reputed
infallible on facts as on dogma;3 but he was irritated that the
Jansenists should pretend to continue to argue after he had commanded peace and silence.  He esteemed his authority involved.
On their side, the recluses of Port Royal, and the greater part of
the nuns who shared their convictions, dispersed, persecuted,
remained steadfast, and continued the warfare of the pen in which
the powerful author of the Provincical Letters no longer lent them
the aid of his hand, frozen by death. Four bishops, one the brother
of Antoine Arnaud,4 and a host of ecclesiastics, continued, like
them, to refuse to sign the Anti-Jansenist formula imposed by the
1 (Euvres de Louis XI V. Memoires et Instruct. t. I. p. 84.
2 At least, persecution against Protestant worship was authorized by law; for
barbarous condemnations fell from time to time on disbelievers or eccentric religionists; two sinister affairs, during the best years of Louis XIV., call to mind the
trial of Vanini; the satirical poet Petit and the mystic Morin were burned alive.
8 See Vol. XIII., Martin's Histoire de la France, p. 493.
A The bishops of Aleth, Angers, Pamiers, and Beauvais.




1661-1672.    LOUIS XIV. AND THE JANSENISTS.            -  233
Pope and the King. In 1665, a new formula, confirming the preceding-one, was sent by Pope Alexander VII., by the request of
Louis XIV., and registered in bed of justice in the parliament.
The King, in his declaration, treated Jansenism as infant heresy,
and threatened with temporal and canonical prosecution the bishops
who should not purely and simply subscribe to the formula. The
four bishops persisted in their resistance. Twenty prelates, who
nevertheless had subscribed, undertook to defend their fellows from
the rigorous measures that threatened them; many others also,
without being inclined to Jansenism, secretly favored the opponents, by esprit de corps through fear lest the prosecution of the
four bishops might shake the privileges and authority of the episcopate.
The King, at first greatly incensed, talked of nothing but causing
the four prelates to be brought to trial; caused the circulation of
the letters published in their favor by their fellows to be forbidden,
and demanded commissioners from the Pope for their trial. Notwithstanding, prudent reflections were suggested to him: he was
made to feel the peril of casting a firebrand into the Gallican
Church for the interests of Rome, which he had little reason to
praise, much more than for his own. Ideas of compromise were
insinuated to him, which he did not reject. The Duchess de
Longueville employed for the protection of the Jansenists the
activity which she formerly used in the service of the Fronde.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Lionne, took possession of the
affair, and conducted it with his accustomed ability.  The four
bishops at last consented to subscribe to the formula against the
five propositions, but without retracting either their mandates or
commentaries, and accepted, for themselves and their clergy, only
a submission of respect and discipline on the point de facto; that
is, on the question as to whether the five propositions were or were
not in Jansenius (September, 1668). Lionne induced the nuncio,
and afterwards the Pope, to content himself with this semi-obedience; the recluses returned to Port-Royal; Antoine Arnaud,
the great polemist of the party, was presented to the King, and
the Academy of Inscriptions celebrated by a medal this reconciliation, more apparent than real, pompously entitled the peace of
religion.1
No one had called for this pacification more ardently than Bos1 J. Racine, Ilistoire de Port-Royal. Histoire des Cinq Propositions (by a Jesuit).
Memnoires chronologiques et dogmatiques. (Euvres de Louis XIY.; Mem. t. I. p. 83;
t. II. p. 241.
VOL. I.           30




234             LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.            1666-i668.
suet, as desirous of peace within the Church as of war outside of
it. He wished to turn to the profit of Catholicism those forces
which disturbed, while pretending to reform it. The recluses of
Port-Royal had published in Belgium a translation of the New
Testament, which the Archbishop of Paris, the friend of the
Jesuits, and the Roman censorship, had hastened to condemn.
Bossuet joined with Port-Royal in revising the New Testament of
Mons, and procuring the removal of the censures laid upon it, an
enterprise which the opposition of the Archbishop Harlai, the successor of P6rdfixe, obliged him to abandon. With more success
he urged the members of Port-Royal to plunge into the controversy against the Protestants. These indefatigable athletes would
have entered it readily enough of themselves. Arnaud could not
live without combats.
It was not Arnaud, however, but Nicole who was the principal
author of the most important work that signalizes this phase of the
history of Port-Royal, the Treatise on the Perpetuity of -Faith
touching the Eucharist (1669, 1671, 1674). The discussion on
the real presence, one of the chief subjects of dissension between
Catholicism and Protestantism, was renewed with more warmth
than ever.  The doctors of the Reformation, the Claudes, and
Aubertins, sustained the shock.  On the ground of tradition
and historical testimony, it can scarcely be proved that there
were either conquerors or conquered; the fathers were greatly
divided on this point, as on several others; and if it was not true
that the Catholic dogma was invented in the ninth century, it was
not more so that the opinions reproduced by Luther, Zwingli, and
Calvin were without defenders among the greatest names of the
primitive Church.l Each could lay claim to his tradition. Their
great argument remained to the Catholics: "The Church has
decided."
The authority of the Church was in fact the central point of
the whole combat among the Christian sects. No one felt this
more deeply than Bossuet; no one directed with so much
ability towards this decisive point all the efforts of theologic
strategy.
A first writing, published at Metz as early as 1665, on the Visibility, Perpetuity, and Infallibility of the Church, had revealed in
Bossuet a great controversialist, and attracted the attention of the
government towards him in this respect. The Cardinal de Richelieu, from the capture of La Rochelle to his death, had often in1 See Vol. III., Martin's Histoire de la France, p. 90.




1666-1668.     EXPOSITION OF THE FAITH.                  235
dulged the thought of a pacific reunion of the two religions which
divided France.' This idea had not ceased to hover in the upper
circles of the government; the Memoirs of Louis XIV. allude to
it,2 and serious attention was given to it about 1666. An important
part was destined to Bossuet in the plans of the King. Turenne
was consulted.  He was at once the most illustrious adherent
remaining to the Reformation in France, and the one most disposed
to become reconciled to Catholicism, although he had lately refused
to sell his religion for the constable's sword. His answer has been
preserved: he opposed therein the plan of a general conference
between the Reformed pastors and the Gallican theologians as
being calculated only to alarm the Protestants concerning the
maintenance of the Edict of Nantes, and counselled local conferences without noise or display; he expressed himself moreover
very nearly as a Catholic.3  His wife and sister, zealous Calvinists,
had long restrained him on the brink, but after their death he
daily advanced a step nearer the Church by the path of Jansenism. What the books of Port-Royal had commenced, a book of
Bossuet, as yet unpublished, completed. This was the celebrated
IExposition of the Catholic Faith.
This brief, substantial treatise, crowded with logic, resplendent
with clearness, was, without contradiction, the masterpiece of the
kind. Bossuet applied himself therein to free the ground from all
secondary considerations, or of those he reputed such; he reduced
Catholicism to its simplest expression; he set aside the superstitious
practices and traditions which, without ever having been officially
sanctioned by the councils, or even by the popes, were in fact, with
the connivance of Rome, almost the whole religion of the masses
in the south of Europe; he put aside the quarrel of the Ultramontanes and the Gallicans as not bearing upon a point of faith;
he then strove to prove that none of the essential doctrines of
Catholicism, as defined by the Council of Trent, overthrew the
foundations of the faith as recognized by the Protestants themselves, and could not be a lawful cause of separation. He disguised nothing, whatever may have been said of it, but he authoritatively retrenched part of the difficulties, and accosted the others,
not while veiling them, but, on the contrary, while throwing on
them  the most vivid light.  The harshest features, those most
contrary to feeling and reason in his Exposition, - for instance, the
1 See Vol. XI. Martin's Histoire de la France, pp. 511, 512, note.
2 (Euvres de Louis XIV. t. I. p. 88.
8 (Euvres de Louis XIV. t. VI. p. 359.




236              LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.              1671-1672.
condemnation of children who have died without baptism, which
makes the eternal destiny of a soul depend on a wholly external
sign, and the negligence of others, — could not weaken his argument against Genevese Calvinism, which, exceeding Calvin, now
accepted this sinister belief.
The abjuration of Turenne, in 1668, reverberated afar. A multitude of others followed, among which are remarked those of the
celebrated littgrateur Pellisson and the Prince de Tarente, head of
the house of La Tr4moille.' The Reformation scarcely counted
longer in its ranks a single descendant of those great feudal families
that had fought for it so often.
The Protestant ministers had exclaimed at first that the Catholicism of Bossuet was not the Catholicism of Rome, that the Exposition would be condemned by the Pope. The Exposition, which
was circulated for some time unpublished, was published in 1671.
Rome had the wisdom to approve it. This was a great resolution
on its part; it was to accept the ground of the dogma as now circumscribed by Gallicanism, and implicitly to renounce the imposition of its pretensions as articles of faith.2 The ratification of
Bossuet's doctrines by the Holy See took away a powerfuil argument from the Reformers, and served to give a motive for, or to
color a number of conversions.
There remained to theReformers the resource of attacking the
sincerity and disinterestedness of the recusants. The exclusive
favor which an all-powerful monarch testified to the Catholics, the
encouragements of all kinds lavished on the converts, rendered
these criminations but too probable, even in this first part of the
reign when the power abstained from material violence, and when
the traffic in consciences still retained some shame. Nevertheless,
there would certainly be injustice in seeing nothing but falsehood
and corruption everywhere in this orthodox reaction. Although it
is not an easy thing to read the consciences of men, who do not
always read them clearly themselves, we do not willingly doubt
the sincerity of a Turenne, and his conversion is naturally enough
explained by a gradual transformation of opinion which we follow
step by step in his history, without wishing to seek in it interests
of ambition and of family.  The history of Turenne was that of
I Montausier, the governor of the DIauphin, had also abjured Protestantism in
order to espouse Mlle. de Rambouillet.
2 It will be remembered that Rome and France had been more than once on the
point of mutually declaring each other heretics on questions of the supremacy of
the Pope or the Council, and the temporal authority and infallibility of the Pope.




1671-1672.               CONVERSIONS.                            237
many others. The ardent passions of the sixteenth century once
appeased, and the discussion become calmer, the insufficiency of
the original bases of the Reformation had begun to appear. It no
longer found itself in a condition to maintain its primitive position
against the most formidable offensive reaction that it had ever had
to repulse. Bossuet, doubtless, neither gave nor could give satisfaction to the feelings, the inmost aspirations which had aroused the
great movement of Protestantism, but he destroyed the formulated
results, the logical construction, and demolished stone by stone the
counterfeit of the infallible Church attempted at Geneva. When
the Ultramontanes, in the name of the spiritual sovereignty and
the infallibility of the Pope, attacked the Reformation on the
ground of its newness, it could rejoin: " You, too, are new, for
your doctrines were unknown to the early ages of the Church "
But if these questions were found set aside among those which
the Church had not decided, and which might be disputed in
the schools, the argument fell to the ground; there remained, in
the face of the new-born Protestantism, the great and ancient
Church, one in its fundamental dogmas, in its general discipline,
and in its uninterrupted tradition, although divided on secondary
points.l  Bossuet forced his adversaries into this dilemma,-  either
to submit to the Church, as the only authority solidly established,2
or to proclaim the denial of all visible authority, at least of all
infallible authority, and the emancipation of the individual conscience. The majority of the Arminian school took more and
more openly the latter side, beyond which Bossuet anxiously saw
dawn the enfranchisement from the letter of the Bible, the sovereignty of the reason and of the conscience, deism, and natural
religion.8 A few Arminians and many Calvinists shared the fear
of the Catholic doctor, and preferred the part of submission.
Besides these theological reasons, the success of Catholicism
and the losses of the Reformation are also explained by the gen1 Or reputed such, for these points are of the utmost importance as to consequences. These questions, "which may be disputed in the schools," are not abstract problems of metaphysics or theology, but are among those whose opposite
solutions overthrow or establish society. The question here is nothing less than to
know to whom the world belongs.
2 In fact, it remains, notwithstanding, to be established that the Council of Trent
was ecumenical, - a difficult task.
3 ", When we cling, either wholly to faith, as the Catholics do, or wholly to
human reason, like the infidels, we can establish a sequence, and make as it were
a smooth doctrinal plan; but when we wish to make a compound of both, we fall
into opinions the mere inconsistencies of which show their manifest falsity." - Exposition de la doctrine de t'glise catholique; ap. (Euvres de Bossuet, edit. Didot, t. I.
p. 731.




288             LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.                 1672.
eral tendency of French society of this time towards unity, the
great inverse movement to that of the sixteenth century. This
unity was at least as monarchical as religious, and it was towards
the religion of the King quite as much as towards that of the
Church that men felt themselves attracted. The spirit of nationality, more ardent than reflective, which exalted France, precipitated itself towards the brilliant personification offered it by Louis
XIV., and without discussing the theory of absolute power, complacently accepted the transient form in which the Great King
thought forever to envelop this spirit destined to many other
phases.
How well pleased are we, in the religious quarrel, with this controversy so worthy, so grave, so moderate, so charitable even in its
eloquent attacks, so honorable to Bossuet and to the whole Gallican
Church! Who could have believed, on reading writings which
present such a contrast to the savage polemics of the sixteenth century, that he was on the eve of the return of persecution! And
yet it was the theory of the great Gallican doctor that gave the
impulse towards this abyss. If one believes that violence is lawful,
although gentleness is better, he will be unconquerably hurried on
to violence. What will decide as to its necessity, if not passion and
pride which are irritated by all resistance?
Louis XIV., at first restrained by Colbert and by his own reason,
would have gladly checked or at least moderated the impulse which
hurried him to this formidable descent. But practical reason, when
not lighted by genius, is very weak to struggle against the imperious logic of principles, and especially of principles reinforced by
passions! It was necessary to oppose to the principles of Bossuet the principles of L'Hospital and Henri IV.; now Louis XIV.
did not believe in them.  Richelieu himself had respected religious liberty rather as a patriot than as a philosopher; rather
because its violation would have been fatal to France than because
this violation would have been contrary to right. The same motive
for maintaining the Edict of Nantes subsisted; the eagle-eye of
Richelieu did not err on this point; the eye of Louis XIV. would
one day err thereon! The illusion of acquired successes would
envelop him by degrees, and veil the obstacles to the consummation
of the work. Louis would become involved more and more beyond
his original plans; the means of action would become more and
more condemnable; the purchase of conversions, at a regulated,
fixed rate, would become a branch of the public administration,
under the direction of the convert Pellisson. Not only would the




1672.            DANGEROUS TENDENCIES.                      239
execution of the Edict of Nantes be confined within the narrowest
limits, but new obstacles to the exercise of worship, vexations against
the persons of reformers, would be multiplied from day to day. The
majority of the clergy and of the magistracy was continually exciting the zeal and sometimes transcending the orders of royal
power. A great part of the population shared the same sentiments;
the Edict of Nantes had been to many minds only a long truce, and
its principles had not penetrated to the depth of hearts. Many
inferred the ancient religious unity, unity imposed on beliefs, from
the new political unity, and the notion of liberty of conscience was
obscure in souls; a strange anomaly in an age in which human individuality had acquired so prodigious a development, in the age of
Descartes, and perhaps among his disciples themselves, a part ot
whom, according to the letter and not the spirit of the Method,
abandoned the domain of faith to established authority.
We have just seen whither the government of Louis XIV. was
tending, as regarded religion. We shall see directly whither it was
tending in international policy. Whither it was tending was not
understood by France when it greeted, with blind enthusiasm, royalty resuming with its own hands the reins of state, long abandoned
to the prime ministers.  "The policy of modern France, conceived
by a soldier and philosopher king, who owed the crown much less
to his birth than to his merit, had been triumphantly realized by a
minister, a kind of dictator, who owed nothing to the chance of
birth, and who, in the plenitude of his free will, followed no other
compass than the interest of French civilization, and made the
monarchical form the means and not the end. The successors of
Richelieu, Colbert above all, remained faithful, as far as they could,
to the maxims of the master; but now that royalty had again seized
upon the effective authority, would not the form prevail over the
substance? Would not other interests predominate over the national
interest? Would not dynastic ideas and passions shake the foundations of the admirable political edifice raised by the hand of
genius? 1......
The answer unhappily is not doubtful, above all when royalty
is seen armed with so rigorously logical a theory, whilst the national
policy, more practised than formulated and taught, remained a sort
of arcana to the nation itself.2 The passions of Louis would not
1 Henri Martin; De la France, de son genie et de ses destinde's, p. 189, 1847. The
political edifice of which we speak is that of the foreign policy; it is important to
prevent all equivocation.
2 The association of nationalities under the guaranty of France, which is the
basis of this policy, had not been clearly extricated from the European balance of




240               LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.                    1672.
be confined even within the theory of Bossuet, and the ambition
of the monarch would break through the monarchical policy.
Thus, on this splendid horizon of the seventeenth century, clouds
thick with storms rose by degrees: lightnings as yet without thunder furrowed the expanse; but the eyes of the multitude, dazzled
by the royal sun, did not discern these threatening gleams: France
abandoned herself with intoxication to the contemplation of her
present glory, without thinking of seizing upon or fixing the true
principles of this glory, nor felt that she was beginning to be drawn
towards a future full of dangers.
Never was error more excusable!  How resist this seduction
which all endured and which all contributed to practise? Society
was like an immense concert, in which all the parts joined to form
by their different tones universal harmony. Each class, each man,
gave all that he could give to the work of the common greatness.
The popular masses, confiding in the good intentions of the prince,
relieved by the good order of the administration, bore their burden
more lightly, and patiently awaited greater relief from the future.
The clergy, more worthy and more enlightened than at any other
epoch of our history, and confined to its ministry as much as the
state of the country permitted, instructed and rendered moral the
society which it no longer governed. The nobility, that had gained
in discipline not less than in politeness what it had lost in independence, furnished the greater part of the military men; the third
estate furnished almost all the rest, especially the great administrators and writers. In point of moral and intellectual energy,
practical sense, inventive and active force, French bourgeoisie had
attained its highest degree of development; what a bourgeoisie was
that which had produced in half a century, Colbert, Corneille,
Pascal, Moliere, Racine, La Fontaine, Boileau, Bossuet, Bourdaloue, Arnaud, Nicole, Domat, Fabert, Poussin, Lesueur, Le Lorrain, Lebrun, the Perraults, and Puget, without counting the men
as powerful for evil or more so than for good -  the Fouquets and
Louvoises! 1
Marvellous whole of the most elaborate and complete society
power, which was only its covering, and this very balance of power was little in accordance with the mass of claims on all sorts of foreign countries, accumulated by
Richelieu's publicists under the title of Rights of the King. Richelieu, incapable of
deviating from the true end, saw in all these only the instruments of diplomatic
intimidation; but Louis XIV., in his unbounded ambition, would undertake to make
a different use of these dangerous weapons.
1 Descartes himself, the child of a family of the robe, belonged rather, in reality,
to the bourgeois patriciate than the nobility.




1672.             SPLENDOR OF FRANCE.                    241
that has appeared in the world since the ancients: vast and living
picture, the aspect of which produced a general fascination on all
that surrounded it! All peoples admired and imitated. The language, the fashions, the ideas of France, overran Europe. Literary
forms, like forms of costume, like forms of articles of art and luxury,
like habits of life, at least in the higher classes, all followed, for a
long time, the French fashion. This was not the breath of a fleeting infatuation; it was like an atmosphere which by degrees envelops all objects and beings, and in which we accustom ourselves to
live.
It was at last conquered - that sceptre of intellect and civilization of which Richelieu had dreamed for France! Why did men
already prepare to endanger this beneficent supremacy by pursuing
abroad, by other means, another dominion, and abandoning within
the principles which had procured to France unexampled prosperity I
VOL. I.        81




CHAPTER IV.
LOUIS XIV. (CONTINUED.)
DIPLOMACY AND WAR. - COLBERT, LIONNE, LE TELLIER, AND LOUVOIS. - SECTION I. -Reorganization of the Army. Plans of external Policy. Spain
recognizes the Precedence of France. Acquisition of Dunkirk. Quarrel
with Rome; the Pope compelled to humble himself before Louis XIV.
Expedition against the Moors, and Intervention in Hungary.  Projects concerning Belgium and E ranche-Comtd. Policy of Holland. Alliance with
Holland against England. War of the Queen's Rights; Invasion of Belgium;
Capture of Charleroi, Bergues, Furnes, Tournay, Douai, Courtrai, Audenarde,
and Lille. Peace of Breda, between France, England, and Holland. Secret
Treaty of Louis XIV. with the Emperor Leopold for the eventual Partition
of the Spanish Monarchy. Treaty concluded by Holland with England and
Sweden to arrest the Conquests of Louis XIV. by obliging Spain to make
Concessions to him. Conquest of Franche-Comte in a Fortnight. Peace of
Aix-la-Chapelle; Spain cedes to France the Places captured in Belgium, and
Louis XIV. gives up Franche-Comte. - SECTION II. - Resentment of Louis
XIV. against Holland; Extensive Negotiations to isolate this Republic and to
pave the Way for its Ruin. Influence of Colbert diminishes. Louis XIV.
secretly aspires to the Empire. Treaty with England against Holland. Great
Preparations. Affairs of the East. Expedition of Candia. Project of Leibnitz to turn the Arms of France from Holland to Egypt. The Plan is thwarted.
Louis XIV. declares War against Holland.
1661-1672.
SECTION I. - -WAR OF THE QUEEN'S RIGHTS.
1661-1668.
AFTER having studied the administration, internal policy, ideas
and manners, letters and arts during the first period of the government of Louis XIV., it remains to follow this government in
its relations with foreign peoples and cabinets during the same
lapse of time, that is, to the great war which overthrew European
policy and changed the destinies of France.
Louis, at the moment when he seized the power, cast on Europe
the same firm and penetrating glance which had penetrated the
heart of France.   To take the treaty of the Pyrenees, not as
an end attained by the French monarchy, but as a starting-point
towards ulterior aggrandizements, at the expense of the Spanish




1661.               EXTERNAL POLICY.                    243
monarchy, - such was the thought which at first took possession
of Louis, and became the first principle of his external policy.
This thought, if restrained within certain limits, was still but. the
continuance of the national policy, since France had not attained
the bounds of its natural growth, by the treaty of the Pyrenees,
and since Spain still retained several provinces on Gallic soil.
In the point of view of positive right, arguments were not wanting
for the pretensions of the young King; Spain, declining more and
more under an enervated government, whose caducity seemed to
have lost all memory and foresight, - Spain had been guilty of the
imprudence of not paying, within the stipulated time, the dowry in
consideration of which the eldest daughter of Philip IV. had
renounced the paternal inheritance on giving her hand to the
King of France. Louis XIV. and his queen, on their side, had
not renewed the renunciation stipulated by the treaty.
Louis, certain that motives or pretexts for acting would not be
lacking in case of need, impatiently awaited the occasion of great
events, and prepared for them by organizing in peace the resources
of war. We have already described the admirable instruments
that had been left him by the preceding administration. Colbert,
with the same hand that organized the economy of France, still
exerted a powerful weight on diplomacy by commerce and the
marine, and on the military administration by the finances, by the
appropriations for supplies and fortifications, by measures of order
and discipline, and by the regulation of the relations between
soldiers and citizens. Lionne had no rival in Europe in the conduct of negotiations. The Secretary of War, Le Tellier, who shared
the care of the affairs of the interior with Colbert, carried to his
special ministry the same order and vigor as Colbert to the rest of
the administration, and prepared himself an assistant and successor
in his son, afterwards so famous under the name of the Marquis
de Louvois. The youthful Louvois, associated at an early age
with his father, had the War Department in 1666, Le Tellier
remaining in the Council as Minister of State.
The government labored to consolidate the French sway over
the newly acquired countries, while waiting to acquire others.
The sovereign councils of the countries annexed to France were
changed into inferior courts of judicature under the jurisdiction
of the neighboring parliaments. The principal places were given
to Frenchmen chosen from among the dlite of the royal officers.
The King negotiated with the heads of the Church to break all
temporal bonds between the ecclesiastical persons and goods of




244                         LOUIS XIV.                      1661-1666.
the countries annexed and foreign authorities. He at last obtained
the oath of the ten imperial cities of Alsace, hitherto refused him.1
The land-force was remodelled on a new footing.  Immediately
after the conclusion of the treaty of the Pyrenees, the army had
been reduced to less than seventy-two thousand men by the disbanding of more than half the companies; but Louis found means
to retain the officers of the disbanded companies in great part in his
service; he filled with these choice men, by giving them high pay,
the cavalry corps which composed the King's household (bodyguards, musketeers, and gendarmes), and from which Le Tellier
expelled, by the establishment of a more rigid discipline, everything
that was not purely military. Farmers and wealthy peasants had
bought places in these corps to exempt themselves from the villain
tax, then purchased exemption from actual service. This abuse was
rendered impossible, and the King's household, increased from two
thousand five hundred to three thousand two hundred cavalry,
became a model corps and school for officers.2 The pensioners, impotent and useless soldiers, who formed the small garrisons of the
interior, were suppressed; the passe-volants, sham soldiers that the
officers brought out on review-days and dismissed on the morrow,
disappeared definitively as soon as all handling of funds and furnishing of supplies were taken away from the military leaders, and
the Minister of War knew at last with certainty how many men he
had It his disposal; there were no longer any but genuine soldiers
under the banners. The establishment of the uniform, by retaining
the cost of it from the soldiers' pay, definitively established the good
appointment and unity of the different corps, and rendered surveillance easier and the suppression of soldierly excesses more efficient.
All Europe ere long imitated France in this respect as in so many
others.  A good organization of military inspections completed the
work whilst another innovation, the most decisive of all, consum1 (Euvres de Louis XIV. t. I.; Mom. p. 78.
2 The infantry of the royal guard amounted to six thousand men, both French
and Swiss guards. There is a letter from Colbert to the King, of the highest interest, on this question of the privileged corps, which hold so important a place in the
military system of monarchies. The patriotic minister, in reference to the increase
and sumptuous uniform of these corps, openly declares himself against the principle of royal guards, in behalf of the unity of the army. " The prodigious difference that will be found between these troops and those of the army, will discourage the cavalry and infantry officers and undermine them.  These troops will be
regarded as the especial object of the favor and expense of the King, which will
produce bad effects on the minds of the other troops, who will certainly comprise
the greater number." Monthion, Particularites sur les ministres des finances, p. 76.
Colbert was not, nor hardly could have been, listened to.




1661.                       THE ARMY.                             245
mated the revolution which tended to concentrate in the hands of
the ministers all the authority before dispersed among a host of
functionaries, from high officers of the crown to simple captains
of companies. In the infantry, for instance, all the heads of companies held their powers from  the Colonel-General of Infantry,
and not from the Minister; the captains in turn chose their subordinate officers.  The office of Colonel-General of Infantry was
suppressed in 1661, at the death of the Duke d'Epernon, son of the
celebrated favorite of Henri III.; the heads of regiments, invested with the title of colonel, were no longer merely the first
among the captains, and the regiment, not the company, became
and remained the veritable unity, which gave the infantry, formed
in compacter groups, a more solid organization. The regiments, in
turn, were in case of need grouped in brigades. On the other hand,
these were subdivided into field battalions and reserve battalions.
The King, in order to elevate the French infantry, gave the post of
colonel to the "1most capable young men of the court," as soon as
he perceived that they were competent, and obliged all who aspired
to the choicer offices in the cavalry to serve first in the infantry.
Brigadiers, colonels, captains, lieutenants, ensigns, all were henceforth at the appointment of the Minister. It was the same with fortified towns as with regiments. The governors of fortified towns
saw themselves deprived of the choice of their subordinates, whilst
the governors and lieutenants-general of the provinces saw their
authority almost entirely annulled by that of the intendants, -  those
powerful ministerial agents who took possession of all functions,
and became species of proconsuls under the supreme power of
the King's council. Then only was modern centralization truly
founded.'
An effective force of seventy-two thousand men being evidently
insufficient to face contingencies, the government began to swell
the land-force gradually by levies quietly executed.
1 (Euvres de Louis XI V.; Memoires et Instructions, t. I. pp. 57, 197, 206; t. II. pp.
11, 21, 77, 92. Anciennes Lois franfaises, t. XVII. p. 406; t. XVIII. pp. 93, 192, 369.
Mlein. de Bussi-Rabutin, t. II. p. 169. Quinci, Histoire militaire de Louis le Grand,
t. I. p. 254. With reference to the army and to military customs, it is in place
here to make a somewhat interesting observation concerning duelling under Louis
XIV. The severe ordinances promulgated, the medals struck to celebrate the
extinction of this homicidal madness, must not deceive us; duels became rarer, less
talked of, and less scandalous, but did not disappear. Louis XIV. himself thought
otherwise, in this respect, as a man than as a lawgiver, and would not have
suffered an officer in his household that would not have resented certain insults.
Only it was necessary that the duel should pass for a fortuitous encounter. See
LUmontey, t. V. p. 46.




246                       LOUIS XIV.                        1661.
As to the navy, which no longer existed, and which had never
been organized on a regular and permanent plan, the great efforts
made to create it are described elsewhere.1
When Louis received the reins of state from  the dying hands
of Mazarin, Europe was at peace, except at a few extreme points;
namely, Hungary, which the Turks, raised from their premature decay by two energetic viziers: the Kiouprouglis, father and son, were
threatening to wrest wholly from the Austrian empire, ancient
Crete, which Venice was disputing inch by inch with these same
Ottomans; lastly, Portugal, for the ruin of which Spain was assembling the remnant of animosity and resources that was left her.
Louis first gave Portugal his chief attention; he thought that the
Spanish monarchy, the full exhaustion of which was not yet known
to him, would revive and again become dangerous to France, should
it recover Portugal, and was confirmed in his resolution, already
taken under Mazarin, to succor the Portuguese secretly in spite of
the treaty of the Pyrenees. He labored to engage England in the
same design, both because he did not think himself able to act
alone effectively enough, being unable to furnish any but secret
assistance, and because he judged it essential to his views on Belgium to embroil England with Spain. Negotiations on this subject
had been entered into in 1660 by Turenne, with Mazarin's consent; a German general in the service of France, Count de
Schomberg,2 had gone to England to propose to the newly restored
king, Charles II., to espouse the sister of the King of Portugal,
then led to Lisbon a troop of officers and choice soldiers, just disbanded by Louis XIV. March 30, 1661, a few days after the death
of Mazarin, the younger brother of Louis XIV., Philippe of France,
had espoused Henrietta of England, the sister of Charles II.,
and received as a wedding-gift the Duchy of Orleans. A second
marriage-treaty was signed, June 23, between Charles II. and the
Infanta of Portugal; a rich dowry in ready money was secured to
the English monarchy, with the cession of Tangiers in Africa and
Bombay in India.
Strange vicissitudes of history! How contracted is the glance
of the most acute statesman, and how easily it loses sight of the
great outlines of policy to grapple with the accidents of the way1 See ante, 114-117.
2 Of a different house from the two Marshals de Schomberg who have been in
question in this history. These first Schombergs, who became extinct in 1656, were
of Saxon origin; the other Schonmberg (or rather Schoenberg) was originally from
the Electorate of Treves; the picturesque ruins of the chateau of Schcenberg are
still seen on the banks of the Rhine.




1661-1662.   PORTUGAL. HOLLAND. ENGLAND.                  247
side! Mazarin and Turenne allying Portugal to England, and
inviting England to the Straits of Gibraltar I 1 It is permissible,
however, to believe that Richelieu would not have done it.
The French government next arranged a settlement between
Portugal and Holland, which reluctantly renounced Brazil, reconquered by the Portuguese, and ceased its profitable cruises against
the Portuguese East Indian shipping. The treaty of August 6,
1661, accorded to the United Provinces the right to traffic between
Portugal and Brazil, and to carry on a, direct trade in the Portuguese possessions in Africa; the Dutch were in this way admitted to
a part of the commercial advantages which the English had arrogated to themselves by the treaty that Cromwell had imposed on
the Portuguese.
Louis XIV. moreover sent ai.ntally considerable subsidies to
Portugal, and furnished the pay of a part of the troops that
Charles II. dispatched to the aid of his brother-in-law Alphonso.
After securing the protection of Portugal and compromising
England with Spain, Louis al.c. his ministers advised upon the
means of preventing Holland from leaguing with the cabinet at
Madrid for the eventual protection of Belgium. The relations of
France with Holland had been somewhat acrimonious under Mazarin, since the United Provinces had treated with Spain without
France in the great Westphalian negotiations. Mazarin had suffered
the French corsairs to capture in a few years more than three hundred Dutch merchantmen, without consenting to render satisfaction,2
and the celebrated De Ruyter having taken two French ships of
war by way of reprisal, they had come to a mutual embargo in
1657. Nevertheless, as neither side desired war, they had finally
effected a reconciliation, with the promise of concluding a new
treaty of commerce and navigation  but, in the interval, the establishment of a duty of fifty sous per ton in French ports in 1659,
had renewed the dissatisfaction of the Dutch to the highest point.
After long discussions, the French government at last consented to
reduce the duty of fifty sous on Dutch ships one half, and a treaty
of commerce and defensive alliance was signed April 27, 1662.
The two parties mutually guaranteed to each other all their possessions on land and sea, and especially the right of fishery, an article
urgently demanded by the Dutch, and which must have been dis1 This first time they did not maintain it; Charles II. knew not what to do with
Tangiers, and evacuated it in 1668, discouraged by the expense of keeping it up and
by the hostilities of the Moors. See Burnet's Histoire des revolutions d'Angleterre, t. I.
p. 409, French translation; The Hague, 1727.
2 It is pretended that he was interested in the prizes.




248                      LOUIS XIV.                      1662.
agreeable to the English; England, by virtue of her pretended
sovereignty over British seas, contested with Holland the right of
fishery on the fishing-grounds of Scotland.l Louis XIV. was by
no means disposed to recognize the arrogant maritime supremacy
of England; and however desirous he was of connecting Charles II.
with his policy, he did not design to pay so dearly for the English
alliance. A warm discussion with the English government on the
question of the flag ensued. It is known that England pretended
to compel the lowering of all foreign flags to her own in her surrounding waters and even upon the high seas; when a reconciliation was effected between Louis XIV. and Charles II. on account
of Portugal, a middle course was sought in order to avoid conflicts
between the two marines. The English cabinet having assumed
somewhat too haughty a tone, Louis wrote a magnificent letter full
of resolution and pride to his ambassador at London.
"Neither my brother, the King, nor those of whom he takes
counsel, know me well as yet, when they put on haughty airs with
me, and a firmness that savors of menace. I know of no power
under heaven capable of making me advance a step in this manner,
and evil may indeed happen to me, but not a sensation of fear....
It belongs to me to prevent them, by my conduct, from remaining
long in such errors..... I intend ere long to put my naval forces
in such a condition that the English will hold it as a favor that I
will then please to listen to compromises touching a right which is
due to me more legitimately than to them. The King of England
and his chancellor may indeed see very nearly what are my resources, but they do not see my heart..... I shall know how to
maintain my right, whatever may come of it." 2
The English government, without formally desisting from its
pretensions, yielded in fact.3 Louis having this year transferred a
squadron from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, it was agreed
that the two navies should avoid, as much as possible, meeting on
the high seas, and that in case of encounter there should be no
salute on either side.
Louis XIV. succeeded in reconciling England and Holland, at
least for a moment; and as he had turned Holland from guaranteeing Belgium to Spain, he succeeded in turning Switzerland from
guaranteeing Franche-Comt6, and in drawing closer than ever the
1 Dumont, Corps diplomatique, t. VI. 2d part, p. 412. Vie de Ruyter, t. I. p. 33 et
seq.; The Hague, 1679.
2 (Euvres de Louis XIV. t. V.; Lettres particulieres, p. 67; January 25, 1662.
8 See a letter from Colbert, cited by M. P. Clement, Histoire de Colbert, p. 317.




1661-1663.                 SPAIN.                        249
old alliance of France with the Helvetic cantons, who expressly
promised to subordinate every other alliance to that of their most
ancient ally (September 4, 1663).1  It is to be remarked that in
this treaty Louis resumes the old titles of Duke of Milan, Count
of Asti, and Lord of Genoa.
Whilst he was setting all these springs in motion, that Spain
might find herself isolated in case of rupture, Louis had entered
into negotiations with the cabinet at Madrid to endeavor to attain
his end amicably; that is, to secure the annulling of his wife's
renunciation of the paternal inheritance (June, 1661).  The
youthful brother of the Queen of France, the heir of the Spanish
crowns, died in the interval, which rendered the question still more
imminent; but a few days after, the Queen of Spain brought into
the world another son, a feeble creature, a kind of withered infant,
destined never to become a man, and with whom the race and
monarchy of Charles V. were slowly to die out (November 1-6,
1661).
At the moment of the birth of the new Infant of Spain, an
incident occurring outside the negotiation threatened to bring
about the immediate resumption of hostilities.  The point in
question here was again a question of precedence as in the affair
of the flag. The crown of France had always held the first rank
in Europe after the Imperial crown. In the treaty of the Pyrenees, Mazarin, caring little for etiquette, had accepted equality in
fact, in the ceremonial, between France and Spain. Since this time
the ambassadors of the two crowns had avoided meeting at foreign
courts. Nothing was better than equality, had it been admitted
everywhere and among all States; but as soon as there were ranks,
it was necessary to preserve one's own. Louis would have no
more middle terms, and ordered his ambassadors to take precedence
in all ceremonials over the representatives of Spain. The Spanish
cabinet, on its side, resolved not to yield. The quarrel broke out at
London, where Philip IV., despite the engagements of Charles II.
with Portugal, still kept an ambassador. On the day of the entrance of an envoy from Sweden, an armed conflict, premeditated
on both sides, ensued between the escort of the Count d'Estrades,
the French ambassador, and that of the Baron de Vatteville, the
envoy of Philip IV. The London populace, won much less by the
pistoles of Vatteville than by its old antipathy against the French,
intervened and decided the victory in favor of the Spaniards, not
without the cost of some blood. Estrades's carriage was broken;
1 Dumont, Corps diplomatique, t. VI. 2d part, p. 473.
VOL. I.       32




250                       LOUIS XIV.                  1661-1662.
several of his followers were killed; many others, his son himself,
was wounded, and Vatteville paraded through London the triumphant precedence of Spain (October 10, 1661).
Frivolous triumph, which might have cost dearly!  At this
news, Louis XIV. enjoined the Spanish ambassador to quit France,
and the French ambassador in Spain to exact the punishment of
Vatteville, with a reparation that should render " such enterprises "
thenceforth impossible. He signified to the cabinet of Madrid that
he should know how to do justice to himself, if it were not done
him.
All the pride of the Spanish cabinet fell before the threat of a
war which it felt itself incapable of sustaining. Philip IV. endeavored to cover his retreat by writing to his daughter that he loved
his son-in-law as his own son, and that, being the elder, it belonged
to him to be the wiser. Vatteville was recalled and exiled to Burgos, and an ambassador extraordinary was dispatched to declare to
Louis XIV. that the representatives of Spain would thenceforth
abstain from competing with the French ambassadors in all public
ceremonials at which the latter were present. Louis took an official certificate, in the presence of the whole diplomatic corps, that
the Catholic king had given orders to his ambassadors to yield rank
on all occasions to those of the King of France (March 24, 1662).1
Amicable relations, or those reputed such, were therefore renewed.
While Louis aimed to obtain the annulment of his wife's renunciation, the Spanish cabinet, on its side, endeavored to induce France
to join it against England and Portugal. Louis, who had just united
with his own hand the houses of Stuart and Braganza, nevertheless
did not repulse the advances of Spain, and threw out hints that he
might accept them, were sufficient motive offered him to justify him,
in the eyes of the world, for entering into war without cause against
his friends and allies, as he naively says.2 He demanded that his
wife's renunciation should be declared void, and that immediate
advantages should be secured to him besides; that is, a territorial
concession, such as Franche-Comt6 and a part of the Catholic Netherlands. Strictly, he authorized his ambassador not to insist as
regarded the renunciation, if sufficient advantages were accorded
him on the side of Belgium, and he invoked for the first time, in
these negotiations, his pretensions to lay claim to several provinces
of the Netherlands as belonging to France, by virtue of the right
1 Dumont, Corps diplomatique, t. VI. 2d part, p. 403. (Euvres de Louis XIV.
t. I., Melm. p. 118. La Hodde, Histoire de Louis XIV. t. III. p. 26.
2 Mignet, Succession d'Espagne, t. I. p. 102.




.1662.                   LORRAINE.                       251
of devolution.' Philip IV. consulted his theologians on the validity
of the renunciation imposed on his daughter, then at last replied
negatively, as well on this point as on the territorial concessions
(August, 1662). It was already something to have succeeded in
discussing this question and in discovering signs of hesitation among
the leading members of the Spanish councils. In his conferences
with the Archbishop d'Embrun, the French ambassador, the Minister Medina Sidonia, one of the successors of Don Luis de Haro,
had put the case wherein the renunciation of the Queen of France
being annulled, and the Infant dying, it would be necessary to consider whether the two crowns might not be united on the same
head.
It could not be said therefore that the negotiation had been useless.  Louis, if he had obtained nothing, had established a date
for his pretensions of all kinds, and knocked at the doors of the
future.
France continued to assist Portugal, which defended itself with
the most brilliant success against the efforts of Spain; the Spanish
monarchy exhausted the remnant of its resources in this unhappy
war, in which it had great difficulty in preserving its own territory,
while France, its victorious rival, prospered and grew daily in the
eyes of dazzled nations. The Vatteville affair had revealed Louis
XIV. to Europe. Other events still heightened the opinion which
had been conceived of the youthful monarch and his policy.
In 1662, Louis attempted to round off the kingdom at the east
and fill up the gap still made by Lorraine between our ancient
Champagne and the new French provinces of Trois-EIvech6s and
Alsace. The duchies of Lorraine and Bar had been surrendered
to Charles IV. in 1661, only on condition that he should not restore
the ramparts of his cities, that he should have but one fortified
town, Marsal, and that the French troops should keep the right of
transit through it. Lorraine was therefore under the power of
France, but it was not French. Louis wished more. He adroitly
took advantage, through Lionne, of the fickle temper of the old
King, who lived on bad terms with his family. Lionne induced the
Duke to sign a treaty, by which he ceded his two duchies to the
King, in consideration of a life-annuity of 700,000 livres, an annuity
of 300,000 livres revertible to whomsoever he might choose, the
extinction of his debts and those of his predecessors, and the title
and rights of princes of the blood of France to the princes of his
1 Mignet, Succession d'Espagne, t. I. p. 178. Concerning the right of devolution,
see Vol. XII., Martin's Histoire de la France, p. 512.




252                        LOUIS XIV.                    1662-1663.
house, to take rank after the princes of the blood then existing
(February 6, 1662). The dukes and peers protested against the
barrier raised between the Lorraine princes and themselves; the
aged chancellor S4guier claimed that the King " could make princes
of the blood only with the queen." The treaty was nevertheless
recorded in bed of justice in Parliament; but the judicial decrees enjoined that the Lorraine princes should not enter into
the enjoyment of their new rights until after all had given their
adherence to the cession of Lorraine. This condition was not fulfilled. The brother and the nephew of Charles IV. refused their
ratification. The Duke himself, according to his custom, wished to
undo on the morrow the work of the day before, and recalled his
nephew to the succession.1 The King, on his part, maintained that
the treaty could not be invalidated by the opposition of third parties, ana demanded, by the terms of the compact, the remission of
Marsal, the only fortress of Duke Charles. The latter gained all
the time he could; Louis lost patience, and despatched a body of
troops against Marsal. The Duke bent to necessity, and surrendered
Marsal, on condition that the rest of his estates should be restored
to him, according to the bases of the treaty of 1661; the treaty of
1662 was thus in some sort implicitly annulled, and the King, postponing the annexation of Lorraine, contented himself with having
completed its subjugation (August 31, 1663).
Another design of Louis XIV. for the aggrandizement of France
had a more complete success. It was with a lively feeling of regret
and disquietude that Louis saw that warlike Dunkirk, wrested from
France through the disorders of the Fronde, in the hands of the
English. His relations with Charles II., with respect to the affairs
of Portugal, had permitted him to study thoroughly the position of
the English Restoration and the personal character of the restored
Stuart. Despite the munificence which Parliament had displayed
towards the crown in the first effusions of the Restoration, the
financial situation would have been difficult, even for a prudent
prince, by reason of the burdens which the Revolution had bequeathed to royalty. For the prodigal and dissolute Charles II.,
the situation was impossible. Unable to confine himself within the
1 This recall took place in a whimsical document; namely, the marriage contract
of the Duke with the daughter of a Parisian apothecary. The old Duke Charles IV.
was madly enamored with this young person, and to induce his brother to appear
in the contract, he revoked what he had done to his nephew's detriment. The King
prevented this strange marriage by shutting up the girl in a convent, by lettre-decachet. (See the various treaties in Dumont, t. VI. part II., and GEuvres de Louis
XI V. t. I., Mermoires et Instructions, p. 160.)




1662-1663.        DUNKIRK REPURCHASED.                     253
narrow limits of his civil list, with his favorites and mistresses, he
would have sought even in the infernal regions the gold which his
subjects measured out to him with too parsimonious a hand.  The
French ambassador, d'Estrades, was in the secret of Louis XIV.,
and paved the way for, but had not the trouble of making advances.
Charles II., who had already consumed the dowry of his wife,
the Princess of Portugal, anticipated him, and proposed to sell
to France Dunkirk and its dependencies, which he said, cost him
too much to keep up. He asked twelve million francs; he fell
at last to five millions, and the treaty was signed October 27,
1662. It was time; the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of London,
informed of the negotiation, had determined to offer Charles II.
whatever he wished in behalf of their city not to alienate Dunkirk.
Charles dared not retract his word, which would have been, as
D'Estrades told him, to break forever with Louis XIV., and on
the 2d of December, Louis joyfully made his entry into his good
city, reconquered by gold instead of the sword.1
Louis rose in the opinion of France by all that destroyed Charles
II. in the opinion of England. The English never pardoned the
Stuarts for having alienated this new Calais, due to the genius of
Cromwell, and for having increased, by English hands, the maritime power of France: this was one of the grievances that paved
the way for the downfall of the restored monarchy.
Scarcely had Dunkirk again become French, when it was invaded
by a whole army of laborers; thirty thousand men came thither to
construct vast fortifications by land and sea, and to dig a new dock
between the sea and the citadel, capable of containing thirty ships
of war. Dunkirk was no less favored with respect to commerce;
and its port, gratified with absolute freedom from duties, became
the entrep6t of the whole coast.2  The gallant Dunkirk sailors
were ere long as devoted to France as the oldest Frenchmen.
Here, Louis owed his success to his own adroitness and the
passions of others.  Elsewhere, as we have already seen in the
Vatteville affair, he'broke down all opposition by main force.
HIis diplomacy presented a rare mixture of pride and address.
The French government had been for some years at variance
with the court of Rome. The Pope then reigning, under the
1 (Euvres de Louis XIV. t. I., Mem. p. 167. The treaty in Dumont, t. VI. part. II.
p. 431. Louis gained 500,000 francs discount on the 5,000,000 by paying ready
money through the medium of a banker.
2 Ancienrnes Lois franfaises, t. XVIII. p. 21. The ordinance on the freedom from
duty of Dunkirk, accords the right of naturalization, without letters or money, to
strangers who shall settle there.




254                     LOUIS XIV.                     1662.
name of Alexander VII., was that Fabio Chigi who had formerly
been seen as nuncio in the Congress of Miinster, maintaining
against France the interests of the House of Austria. Since his
elevation to the sovereign pontificate he had lived on very bad
terms with Mazarin, who had just missed excluding him in the
name of France, and who had affected to refuse him all share in
the negotiations of the Treaty of the Pyrenees. Mazarin dead,
Louis would have willingly approached the Holy See, provided his
dignity did not suffer by it; he dispatched an ambassador extraordinary, the Duke de Cr6qui, to the Pope; but difficulties of etiquette, which the pride of the monarch and his representative did
not permit them to evade, embittered anew the minds that this
proceeding seemed adapted to reconcile. The relatives and favorites of the Pope, who ruled Rome, piqued by Cr6qui's superciliousness, testified little respect for the prerogatives, more or less
reasonable, but sanctioned by usage, enjoyed by ambassadors. The
swordsmen that Creiqui had in great numbers in his suite, sought
quarrels, on their side, instead of avoiding them, and disturbed the
peace of Rome by that petulance with which there is reason too
often to reproach Frenchmen in foreign countries. There were
continual affrays with the sbirri and the Pope's Corsican guard.
Mario Chigi, brother of the Pope and commander of the pontifical
troops, and the Cardinal Imperiali, governor of Rome, instigated
the police-guard, it is said, to take vengeance for the affronts given
them by the French. August 20, 1662, a new quarrel brought
about a general engagement between the followers of the ambassador and the Corsicans. The Corsican guard, its officers at its
head, drove back its enemies; who had no other arms than their
swords, to the Farnese palace, where the ambassador lodged, riddled the fagade with bullets, and fired on Crequi himself, who
appeared on the balcony to appease the tumult, and on the carriage of the ambassadress, who was returning home. A page was
killed at the door of the carriage.
Whatever might have been the previous faults of the French,
the violation of the right of nations was so flagrant that the ambassadors of the powers least friendly to France thought it impossible
to avoid demanding satisfaction for Crequi. The Pope manifested
some regret for what had happened; but these demonstrations
appeared derisive to the outraged ambassador; the Cardinal Imperiali, suspected of having instigated the riot, was found at the head
of the body charged with punishing the authors, and Mario Chigi
had favored the escape of the most criminal during the week that




1662-1663.        QUARREL WITH ROME.                    255
intervened before the Pope set a price on their heads. Crequi,
having no hope of sufficient reparation, quitted Rome, and retired
to Tuscany.
At the news of the violence committed on his representative,
Louis XIV. wrote a violent letter, in which, throwing aside diplomatic forms, he plainly asked the Holy See whether it designed or
not to give him a satisfaction proportioned to the greatness of the
offence. " We demand nothing of Your Holiness in this juncture,"
added he; " you have hitherto expressed so much aversion to our
person and crown that we think it best to refer to your own prudence the resolutions according to which ours will be regulated
(August 30)." 1
Acts answered to words. The nuncio was sent back under
escort to the frontier. It was resolved to refuse all direct negotiation with the Pope and his ministers, and to oblige them to treat
with the offended ambassador; transit was demanded of the Court
of Spain and the Italian princes for the French troops through the
territory of Milan and the states contiguous to Rome.
Louis counted that the threat of war would suffice to bend Alexander VII.; but the Pontiff hoped, on his part, that delays would
cool the first ardor of the youthful monarch, and that the House of
Austria would intervene in favor of the Holy See. Alexander
rejected as exorbitant the pretensions manifested by Cr6qui, and
even braved the King by new favors accorded to the persons whom
the French ambassador accused of having been the instigators of
his affront.  The attitude of Spain began to shake the Holy
Father; Philip IV., who was unwilling at any cost to embroil
himself with his formidable son-in-law, sided, reluctantly, with
Louis XIV. The Pope received the resignation of the CardinalGovernor of Rome, and at last caused a Corsican and a sbirro to
be hung (December, 1662); but neither the ambassador nor King
esteemed themselves satisfied at this price.  The most hostile
movements ensued during the course of the following year. The
Parliament of Aix gave notice to the Pope, in the person of the
vice-legate who governed Comtat-Venaissin, to produce the titles
by virtue of which the Holy See retained this ancient appanage
of Provence. The vice-legate refused. The people of Avignon
rose, tore down the papal arms, and replaced them by the arms of
France. The Parliament of Provence decreed the reannexation
of Avignon and Comtat to the kingdom (July 26, 1663).
1 Desmarets, Histoire des dinle's avec la cour de Rome, quarto edition, p. 41;
Preuves, p. 9.




256                     LOUIS XIV.                 1663-1664.
During this time, the Parliament of Paris was fulminating
against theses maintained by some ecclesiastics in favor of the
Pope's infallibility, and the Sorbonne condemned, by a solemn
declaration, the doctrine which attributed to the Pope, 1st, any
authority whatever over the temporal affairs of kings; 2d, the
right of derogating from the ancient canons; 3d, supremacy over
the General Council; lastly, 4th, infallibility (January-August,
1663).1
Towards autumn, the troops that had marched into Lorraine
and obliged Duke Charles IV. to surrender Marsal, crossed the
Alps, and went to establish themselves in the territories of Parma
and Modena. All the passes were opened to them by the Spanish
governor of Milan and by the Italian States. Louis XIV. fixed
a delay for the Holy Father to accept his propositions, which was
to expire February 15, 1664.
All means of resistance failed the Court of Rome. The power
of public opinion can do everything or nothing, according to the
state of minds, and the mind of the Catholic population was not
roused by this contest, which there was no means of construing
into a religious quarrel. The Emperor, after some hesitation, followed the example of the King of Spain: he had affairs of too
great importance in Hungary, to be able, without temerity, to compromise himself with Louis XIV. The Pope capitulated at the
last moment, February 12. He promised to dispatch to France,
with the title of legate, his nephew, Cardinal Chigi, to protest to
the King the "very great sorrow" caused his Holiness by the
4 unhappy' accidents " of August 20, 1662; "His Holiness never
having designed that his Majesty should be offended, or the Duke
de Crequi, his ambassador." Chigi was besides to testify to the
King the profound respect, devotion, and fidelity of his whole family
towards the person and House of his Majesty. " If I or our House,"
he was to add, " had had the least share in the criminal attempt'
of August 20, we should deem ourselves unworthy of the pardon
which we would have gladly and justly entreated of your Majesty."
" The Cardinal Imperiali shall go in person to present his humblest vindications to the King.
" Don Mario shall declare to the King, on the faith of a gentle..
man, that he had no share in what passed on the 20th of August,
and shall remain outside of Rome until the Cardinal Chigi shall
have presented to his Majesty the excuses of his whole house.
"Don Augustin (another brother of the Pope) shall go to meet
1 Memoires chronologiques et dogmatiques.




1664.             QUARREL WITH ROME.                      257
the ambassador at San Quirico or Civita Vecchia (that is, at the
frontier), and shall testify to him the displeasure of his Holiness.
" The whole Corsican nation shall be declared forever incapable
of service both in Rome and in the whole ecclesiastical State, and
the bariyel of Rome (chief of the police) shall be dismissed.
" A pyramid. shall be erected at Rome, opposite the former Corsican body-guard, with an inscription containing, in fitting terms,
the decree rendered against the Corsican nation."
Lastly, the Pope recognized the right of the Duke of Parnia,
the ally of France, to redeem, at a price fixed upon by treaty, the
domains of Castro and Ronciglione, which had been annexed to
the States of the Church, and accorded an indemnity to the Duke
of Modena for the valleys of Comacchio. The King, on his side,
restored Avignon and Comtat.1
Centuries had passed since the Court of Rome had been humiliated to this point by a Catholic sovereign. It was renewing,
under a less brutal form, the affronts of Boniface VIII.  The
Pope, on the 18th of February, protested secretly against the
treaty.2  He nevertheless executed all its clauses; and the moral
effect at which Louis XIV. aimed was fully produced. " The Cardinal Chigi was the first legate of the Roman court ever sent to
ask pardon." 3
It was thus proved that no one in Europe could offend the King
of France with impunity.
While he treated the head of the Church so rudely, Louis XIV.
affected only the more zeal for the interests of Christianity against
enemies abroad, against the Turks, who continued to press the
siege of Candia, to extend their conquests in Hungary, and to
devastate by their piracies the shores of the Mediterranean. The
ancient alliance of the crown of France with the Ottoman Porte,
always unpopular, and less necessary since France had become so
strong, was at this moment wellnigh broken, to the great satisfaction both of the Christian nations of the South and of the Austrian
empire. Mazarin, shortly before his death, had recalled from Constantinople the French ambassador, La Haie, who had received
grave insults fri-om the Vizier because of his connivance with the
Venetians, and France no longer had a representative near the
Porte. Divers plans were proposed in the King's council for
attacking the Ottoman power on the Moorish coasts. and for re1 Dumont, Corps diplomatique, t. VI. part III. p. 1.
2 Daunou, Essai sur la puissance temporelle des papes, t. II. p. 171.
8 Voltaire, Siecle de Louis XIV. c. VII.
VOL. I.          33




258                       LOUIS XIV.                      1664.
pressing the pirates, who were the terror of the merchant-shipping
and maritime provinces. Colbert induced the King to attempt a
military settlement among the Moors as the best means of holding
them in check. A squadron commanded by the Duke de Beaufort, the former hero of the Fronde, landed five thousand picked
soldiers before Jijeli (or Djigelli), a small Algerine port between
Bougiah and Bona. They took possession of Jijeli without difficulty (July 22, 1664); but discord arose between Beaufort and his
officers; they did not work actively enough to fortify themselves
in this post commanded by neighboring heights, and were ere long
hemmed in by the Algerine Turks, reinforced by numerous Arab
and Kabylese bands, while Beaufort went to cruise before Tunis
instead of making a diversion against Algiers, as the King had
ordered. The military resources of the Algerines, especially their
artillery, were better than had been thought. Sickness broke out
in the little camp of Jijeli, and, after repulsing the first attack,
the troops were compelled to embark with such precipitancy that
they could not carry away their guns (September 30). An accident by sea cost the French more men than the sword of the
enemy: a ship of war, which carried the Picardy regiment, was
wrecked on its return on the coast of Provence, and nearly the
whole regiment perished.'
The success of Beaufort's squadron, commanded under the duke
by the celebrated Chevalier Paul, ere long effaced the impression
of this reverse: two Algerine flotillas were destroyed in the course
of 1665. The Dey of Algiers had at that time among his captives a French officer, Porcon du Babinais, commandant of a frigate
of thirty-six guns, fitted out by the town of St. Malo to protect its
merchant-vessels. Porcon du Babinais, after destroying numerous
pirates, had finally succumbed under the attack of a whole flotilla.
The Dey sent him to France to carry propositions of peace to Louis
XIV., after making him swear to return if he failed in his negotiation, and warning him that the heads of six hundred Frenchmen
would answer for his word. The propositions were not acceptable:
the prisoner put his affairs in order like a man who knows that he
has nothing more to hope after his return, and set out again without hesitation. The Dey, furious at the refusal of Louis XIV.,
beheaded Du Babinais.2
1 Account of the Jijeli Expedition, ap. Recueil historique contenant diverses pieces
curieuses de ce temps; Cologne, 1666. (Euvres de Louis XIV. t. V.; correspond.
an. 1664. AMein. de Monltlat, ap. Recueil Michaud, third series, t. V. p. 336.
2 Histoire des villes de France, t. I. p. 56, art. SAINT-MALO.




1660-1662.    THE EMPEROR AND THE TURK.                   259
The devotion of this Breton Regulus was not lost: despondency
soon took the place of anger in the heart of the Moorish chiefs.
Tunis yielded first to the guns of the French squadron, brought to
bear on it from the Bay of Goletta.  The Pacha and the Divan of
Tunis obligated themselves to restore all. the French slaves they
possessed, to respect French ships, and thenceforth to release all
Frenchmen whom they should capture on foreign ships; merchants
and passengers, without ransom, soldiers and sailors, for one hundred and fifty piastres per head. Free trade was reestablished in
consideration of the ordinary duties, as well as the preeminence of
French over other consuls. Rights of aubaine, and of admiralty
and shipwreck, were suppressed as regarded Frenchmen (November
25, 1665). The station at Cape Negro was restored to France,
which derived from it annually twenty thousand muids of corn and
forty thousand sacks of vegetables for the provisioning of the marine. Algiers submitted, six months after, to nearly the same conditions imposed on it by Louis XIV.: one of the articles stipulated
that French merchants should be treated as favorably as any foreign
nation, and even more so (May 17, 1666). More than three thousand French slaves were set at liberty.l
The French marine thus began to be of some account in the
Mediterranean, as it was destined to be everywhere ere long.
The intervention of Louis XIV. in the Hungarian war was still
more brilliant.
Hostilities had recommenced, in 1660, between the Ottoman
empire and Austria, on account of Transylvania. The Turk was
suzerain of Transylvania, and directly held Buda and the part
of Hungary on the west and south of the Danube, projecting like
a wedge between Upper Hungary, Styria, and Vienna. George
Rakoczi, Prince of Transylvania, having perished in combat against
the Sultan, his suzerain, the Turks had pursued the House of Rakoczi into the domains which it possessed in Upper Hungary. The
Rakoczis, and the new prince elected by the Transylvanians, Kemeni, invoked the aid of the Emperor. The Italian, Montecuculi,
the greatest military chieftain in the service of the House of Austria, expelled the Turks from a part of Transylvania, but could not
maintain himself there; Kemeni was killed in a skirmish. The
Turks installed their protege, Michael Abaffi, in his place, and
renewed their attacks against Upper Hungary (1661-1662).
1 Dumont, Corps diplomatique, t. VI. part III. p. 57.- III. - Lavallee, Des RelaLions de la France avec l'Orient; ap. Revue independante of November 25, 1843.
(Euvres de Louis XIV. t. II. p. 141.




260                       LOUIS XIV.                         1663.
The secret of these alternations lay in the state of feeling of the
Hungarians and Transylvanians, who, continually divided between
two oppressors, the Turk and the Austrian, and too weak to rid
themselves of either, always preferred the absent to the present
master. When the Turks appeared, they called for the Imperialists; then, the latter arrived, they were in haste to see them depart; they furnished them neither provisions nor lodgings, and
when -they had recourse to violence, rose against them. Religious
distrust also complicated political distrust; Protestantism, crushed
in Bohemia, remained powerful and irritated in Hungary.
The Emperor demanded the assistance of the Germanic Diet
and all the Christian states against the enemy of Christianity.
France certainly had no interest in protecting Austria, but she
could not hinder Germany from being convulsed at the approach
of the Turk, and it was better for her to fall in with this movement
than to compromise her influence by standing aloof. Louis XIV.,
at the first request of Leopold, supported by the Pope, replied by
offers so magnificent that they appalled the Emperor. Louis proposed not less than sixty thousand auxiliaries, half to be furnished
by France, half by the Alliance of the Rhine; that is, by the Confederates of France in Germany. Leopold did not desire an invasion disguised under the show of succor.  "The King of France,"
he exclaimed, " will be more of a master in the Empire than myself I " He asked for money, which Louis did not grant.
The Emperor was alarmed, not without cause, at meeting
everywhere the hand of Louis. The Alliance of the Rhine, that
powerful mechanism constructed in Germany by France against
Austria,i was at this very moment prorogued for three years
(March, 1663). Leopold endeavored in vain to organize a counter league.  Louis accustomed the German princes to invoke
his mediation in their discussions, and insnared Germany more
and more by extending the net of his diplomacy over the Empire,
even to the states most remote from France. A defensive alliance
was concluded, August, 1663, between France and Denmark, in
the sequel of a treaty of commerce advantageous to the French
marine.2  A  secret negotiation of very great importance was en1 See Vol. XII., Martin's Histoire de la France, p. 510.
2 The treaty of commerce is in Dumont, Corps diplomatique, t. VI. part II. p. 436
(October, or November, 1662). The provisions are interesting. Great facilities are
accorded to French navigation; for instance, French ships are exempt from visit
in the Straits of the Baltic and the mouth of the Elbe, and the Danish customhouse accepts the declaration of the papers on board concerning the cargo. The
duties are not paid on the passage through the Straits into the Baltic, but only on




1663.                COLBERT AND POLAND.                          261
tered upon at the same time in Poland. In 1661, this republic
had taken Louis XIV. for arbiter in its quarrels with Muscovy.1
In 1663, the King, John Casimir Vasa, discouraged by the continual disturbances of Poland and the reverses brought upon the
kingdom by these internal disorders, thought of laying down the
crown; his wife, princess of the branch of the Gonzagues which
ha i been long established in' France,2 put herself in relation with
Louis XIV. to pave the'way for the election of the Duke
d'Enghien, son of the great Conde, to the throne of Poland. Cond6
himself, or the Prince de Conti, his brother, was also for a moment
in question. Louis saw with regret the precipitation of the fall of
Poland, a victim at once to its defective constitution and to the
Swedish reaction on the one hand and the Greco-Russian on the
other, provoked by the fatal aggressions of the Jesuits against
Lutheranism  and the  Greek religion.  Poland  had lost, under
John Casitnir, Smolensk, Tchernigov, etc., invaded by Muscovy;
Esthonia and a part of Livonia, ceded to Sweden; the suzerainty
over the warlike hordes of the Cossacks, who turned towards the
Czar of Muscovy or even the Turk; and the suzerainty over the
Duchy of Prussia, which the Great Elector, Frederick of Brandenburg, had rendered independent. Louis XIV. would have
gladly arrested this destruction by doing what Henri III. had shamefully failed to do, by enthroning the French spirit on the soil of
the Jagellons. Colbert, who is met wherever the true interests
of France are at stake, passionately urged the King to this course,
as is attested by one of those admirable letters in which he poured
out his whole soul.3
the return, provided security is given. The Danes, on their part, obtain from
France the same concession as the Dutch, of 60 sous per ton. The end of the
treaty is especially to procure materials for ship-building from Norway at a moderate
price. The Treaty of Alliance is, ibid. p. 470.
E1 uvres de Louis XIV. t. I. Merm. p'. 141.
2 This was the Marie Louise de Gonzague who had formerly loved Cinq-Mars.
On her correspondence with Louis XIV., see (Euvres de Louis XIV. t. V. pp. 105-139.
5 "Your Majesty has four kinds of expenses to incur: the first and most necessary of all at present is war by sea; the second, foreign affairs; the third, war by
land; the fourth, expenses within the kingdom, the pleasures and diversions of
your Majesty..... The fourth should suffer all the rigor of retrenchments and
all possible economy, through the glorious maxim: Save five sous in unnecessary
things, and throw millions away when your glory is in question. I declare to your
Majesty, on my own part, that a useless dinner worth 3000 francs gives me incredible pain; but when millions of gold are in question for Poland, I would sell all
my possessions, I would pledge my wife and children, and would go on foot all my
life to furnish them, if it were necessary."
Letter quoted by Monthion, Particularite's sur les ministres des finances, p. 44.
This letter is dated 1666, the epoch when there was question of sending an army




262                       LOUIS XIV.                     1663-1664.
The Emperor, dismayed by, and jealous of this diplomacy which
hemmed him in on all sides, would have gladly been able to
dispense with the aid of France and his confederates; but the
more pressing danger prevailed over the more remote.  The
Turks had made a great effort during the summer of 1663. The
second of the Kiouprouglis, the Vizier Achmet, taking Austrian
Hungary in the rear, had crossed the Danube at Buda with a
hundred thousand fighting-men, invaded the country between
the Danube and the Carpathians, and hurled his Tartars to the
doors of Presburg and Olmiitz. Montecuculi had with great difficulty been able to maintain himself on the island of Schiitt, a
species of vast intrenched camp formed by nature in front of Presburg and Vienna. The fortified towns of Upper Hungary fell one
after another, and the Germanic Diet, which Leopold had gone to
Ratisbon to meet, replied with maddening dilatoriness to the
urgent entreaties of the head of the Empire. The Diet voted no
effective aid until February, 1664; but the Alliance of the Rhine, in
particular, had already accorded six thousand five hundred soldiers,
on condition that the Diet should decide, before separating, certain
questions relative to the interpretation of the Treaty of Westphalia. The Pope, Spain, and the Italian States furnished subsidies.
Louis persisted in offering nothing but soldiers, and Leopold resigned himself to accept six thousand Frenchmen.
He had no reason to repent it. The only auxiliaries that rejoined
the Imperial troops in, time for the opening of the campaign were
the troops of the Alliance of the Rhine. The Diet, so slow in
promising its soldiers, had been no less slow in arming them, and
its quota did not arrive until July, at the same time that the French
under the orders of the Count de Coligni-Saligni, the former Frondeur, returned from exile with the Prince de Cond6.
When the junction was effected, the position of the Imperialists
was one of great peril. They had resumed the offensive on the
south of the Danube in the beginning of the year; but this diversion, contrary to the advice of Montecuculi, had succeeded ill.
The Grand Vizier had repulsed them, and, after carrying back his
corps to Poland. The most enlightened men of Germany already foresaw, on
their part, the consequences that would ensue from the fall of this republic. The
Great Elector, Frederick of Brandenburg, while wresting Prussia from Polish suzerainty, expressed himself in this respect in a very remarkable manner, in a
proclamation addressed to all the Germans, in 1658, on the occasion of his contention with Sweden. "LWhat misfortunes," he says, "are in store for Christian
nations, should Poland, that renowned bulwark of Christianity, fall to ruin!"
Pfister, Histoire de Allemagne, 1. III. ep. 2 div. c. I.




1664.             BATTLE OF ST. GOTHARD.                    263
principal forces to the right bank of the Danube, threatened to force
the passage of the Raab and invade Styria and Austria. The Confederate army was in a condition to stand the shock just at the decisive moment.  An attempt of the Turks to cross the Raab at the
bridge of Kerment was repulsed by Coligni (July 26, 1664). The
Grand Vizier reascended the Raab to St. Gothard, where were the
headquarters of the Confederates, and on August 1, the attack
was made by all the Mussulman forces. The janizaries and spahis
crossed the river and overthrew the troops of the Diet and a
part of the Imperial regiments; the Germans rallied, but the Turks
were continually reinforced, and the whole Mussulman army was
soon found united on the other side of the Raab. The battle
seemed lost, when the French moved. It is said that Achmet
Kiouprougli, on seeing the young noblemen pour forth, with their
uniforms decked with ribbons, and their blond perukes, asked,
"Who are those maidens?"
The maidens broke the terrible janizaries at the first shock; the
mass of the Turkish army paused and recoiled on itself; the Confederate army, reanimated by the example of the French, rushed
forward and charged on the whole line; the Turks fell back, at
first slowly, their faces towards the enemy, then lost footing and
fled precipitately to the river to recross it under the fire of the
Christians; they filled it with their corpses.
The fatigue of the troops, the night that supervened, the waters of the Raab, swelled the next day by a storm, and above all
the lack of harmony among the generals, prevented the immediate
pursuit of the Turks, who had rallied on the opposite bank of the
river and had preserved the best part of their cavalry. It was
expected, nevertheless, to see them expelled from all Hungary,
when it was learned with astonishment that Leopold had hastened
to treat, without the approbation of the Hungarian Diet, on conditions such that he seemed the conquered rather than the conqueror.
A twenty years' truce was signed, August 10, in the camp of the
Grand Vizier. Transylvania became again independent under its
elective princes, but the protdgd of the Turks, Abaffi, kept his principality; the Turks retained the two chief towns which they had
conquered in Upper Hungary, and the Emperor made the Sultan
a present, that is, he paid him 200,000 florins tribute.1
1 See Mem. of Montecuculi, French edit., Paris, 1760; Id. of Count de Coligni,
published by M. Monmerque for the Historical Society of France, p. 83 et. seq.
Coxe, Histoire de la maison d'Autriche, t. III. c. 62. Lavallee, Des Relations de la
France avec I'Orient; ap. Revue independante, Nov. 25, 1843, pp. 246, 246. The treaty
in Dumont, t. VI. Part III. p. 23.




264                     LOUIS XIV.                     1664.
The Emperor and his councillors had thought that the Germanic'Diet would grow cool as soon as the danger had passed, and that
France and the Alliance of the Rhine would not aid Austria to
derive advantage from the victory which they had given it. In
fact, Louis XIV. had already despatched an order of recall to his
troops, as the Memoirs of their commandant Coligni inform us.
The resources of the Emperor were indifferent, those of the Turks
still great; lastly, the probability of the approaching end of the
King of Spain made Leopold wish to be delivered at all costs from
war against the Turk to be able to face the contingencies in the
internal affairs of Europe.
The Germanic Diet had profited by the Emperor's embargassment to extend its prerogatives, and to render itself in some sort
permanent by the establishment of permanent delegates; Louis
X-IV., on his part, had also extended his influence over Germany;
several petty princes adhered to the Alliance of the Rhine (16641666). The Elector of Brandenburg, Frederick William, a profound politician, who was preparing great destinies for his race, and
a new era for Northern Germany, avoided being drawn into the
Alliance of the Rhine, for fear of putting himself under the
dependence of France, but had consented to sign separately a
defensive alliance with Louis XIV. (March 5, 1664). The Elector of Saxony had signed a similar treaty, April 12, and moreover
had secretly pledged himself, in consideration of a pension of 20,000
crowns, to vote in the Electoral College and in the Diet according
to the wishes of Louis XIV.; the House of Saxony degraded itself
in this matter, while the House of Brandenburg rose by its political
forecast.l
The French troops acted as a police in Germany in the name
of the Alliance of the Rhine; they repaired to Thuringia to compel the city of Erfurt to return to the suzerainty of the Elector
of Mayence, a pensioner of Louis XIV. (October, 1664).
All these movements, which show France formidable to some,
helpful to others, present, acting, and preponderant everywhere,
were, in the mind of Louis, means of increasing that force of public
opinion which doubles the positive force of States, and often averts
the necessity of having recourse to it; but they were also means of
putting aside the obstacles which might come between him and his
true end, or, at least, his immediate and principal end, that is, the
territorial aggrandizement and, especially, the completion of France
1 Mignet, Succession d'Espagne, t. II. p. 20.




1664.                   HOLLAND..  265
at the expense of the Spanish monarchy by the acquisition of
Belgium and Franche-Comt6.
Whence would come the obstacles to this great design?
The most difficult to surmount would not be Spain itself; it would
not be the Emperor; not even jealous England, restless under the
enervating sceptre of the restored Stuart; it would be the ancient
ally of France, that Holland whose wealth and power so immeasurably exceeded its scanty territory and slender population.'
The umbrage of Holland was of long standing. As soon as
France had begun to gain the ascendency over the House of Austria, the fear of being in immediate contact with so great a power,
and the desire of maintaining a barrier between France and the
United Provinces, had troubled the Dutch, and contributed to determine their defection in 1648. The opposition between the two
governments, becoming more and more marked on religious questions; the vague apprehension that Louis XIV., the son-in-law of
the Catholic king, might some day stand forward as the heir of the
ancient claims of Spain to the United Provinces themselves; lastly,.
the better founded fear that France might repair a great injustice
by reviving Antwerp through the opening of the Scheldt, and thus
resuscitating a rival to Amsterdam and Rotterdam, rendered the
idea of the annexation of the Catholic Netherlands to France as
unpopular in Holland as it was popular at Paris. The efforts of
Fouquet and Colbert to develop French commerce and shipping
had brought new grievances. The Dutch would have been glad
if France had contented herself with producing raw materials to
supply their commerce.  The treaty of 1662, although advantageous to their navigation which it guaranteed against the English, had not been sufficient to satisfy them, and they had viewed
with great discontent the acquisition of Dunkirk by Louis XIV.
The essential danger, the real adversary of Holland, was however
England, not France. Doubtless, with the supremacy of France,
Holland would witness the reduction of that exorbitant growth
procured for it by the apathy and momentary inability of other
nations to use their natural advantages; with the supremacy of
France, it was a diminution of power; with the supremacy of
England, - of England, exclusively commercial and maritime like
Holland, and armed with infinitely superior resources of territory
and population, —it was destruction. But the first of these two
perils was close at hand, the second remote; no one likes to de1 Slender in comparison with great States, but enormous in proportion to its
territory.
VOL. I.       34




266                         LOUIS XIV.                      1661-1663.
scend, and the Dutch politicians least disposed to an open struggle
with France flattered themselves that they could turn aside the
designs of Louis XIV. and resist without breaking with him.
Such was the idea of John De Witt, the statesman on whom
the guidance of the Dutch policy then rested.
We have already mentioned in this history the civil dissensions
of the United Provinces, the sometimes sanguinary strife of the
stadtholder and republican parties: the one headed by the Nassaus
and formed of the ancient feudal nobility, warriors, and Calvinist
ministers; the other made up of the wealthy citizens and traders:
the one tending to monarchy, the other maintaining federal institutions with a somewhat aristocratic republicanism, which had not
been wise enough to conciliate the middle classes of the towns, and
had let itself fall under the influence of the Nassaus. In 1662, a
violent attempt of the youthful William II. of Nassau against the
States-General had failed, and the stadtholder had died a few
months after his defeat, leaving his wife pregnant with a child destined to become the celebrated William III. The stadtholdership
had been abolished, and the Grand Pensionary of the province of
Holland had become the first personage of the United Provinces,
and, as it were, the president of the States-General.'  John De
Witt had performed these high functions since 1653; elected at
twenty-five, he had shown thenceforth the maturity of a great
statesman and the devotion of a great citizen; he never contradicted himself.  Of a mind at once philosophical and practical,2
loving letters and arts as well as business, a learned administrator,
an able diplomatist, a student transformed into a hero in case of
need, he resembled those last great men of Greece who have left
us their testament in the pages of Plutarch, and a contemporary, a
most competent judge, Count d'Estrades, compared his mind to that
of Cardinal de Richelieu.3
1 Holland was so far superior in wealth and population to the other six provinces
that it paid alone from 57 to 58 per cent. of the federal tax. This is why all the inhabitants of the seven Netherland provinces are confounded among us under the
name of Hollanders. The Grand Pensionary was the perpetual deputy of his province to the States-General; he proposed the subject of their deliberations, and drew
up their resolutions. He was elected for five years, but was indefinitely reeli'gible.
See Basnage, Annales des Provinces Unies, t. I., and Williams, Histoire des Gouvernements du Nord, t. I.
2 He had been one of the principal disciples of Descartes.
8 Pellisson, Histoire de Louis XIV. t. III. p. 43. There is a fine portrait of him
in the Museum of the Hague, opposite that of his enemy, William III.; he somewhat resembles Pascal, with more calmness and moral equilibrium in his melancholy expression.




1661-1663.           JOHN DE WITT.                      267
John De Witt had always striven to soften the differences between his country and France, and had maintained friendly personal relations with the ambassadors and ministers of Louis XIV.
The restoration of the Stuarts, so nearly allied to the Nassaus, made
him deem it more necessary than ever to lean on France, in order
to hinder the stadtholder party from rising again by. the aid of
English influence; but, absorbed by his national point of view, he
unhappily did not sufficiently comprehend either the passions or the
interests of others, and would not see clearly enough that it was
impossible to preserve the amity of France while claiming to shut
her out from Belgium.
Doubtless, the statesmen who claimed to forbid France new
acquisitions had very specious reasons to offer. They could oppose
the French policy to itself, by opposing the French principle of
European balance of power to the natural instincts that urged
France to complete herself.  In the position in which Europe
stood, - Spain exhausted, Austria weakened and bound, Sweden
relapsed from its heroic impulse into a sort of swoon, Poland rent
by discord, England which, although robust and full of promise,
was no longer pursuing, under the restored Stuart, the daring flight
of Cromwell, - nowhere a force appeared capable of counterbalancing the French power, were new progress immediately permitted
it, even in the natural order of its destiny.
Whatever might have been the worth of these arguments, it
would have been very difficult to assure their acceptance, even by
the worn-out prudence of an aged politician, to believe them a
sufficient barrier against the ardor of a youthful king, eager for
action and glory, was wholly chimerical. Holland had in reality to
choose only between the French alliance, with its necessary conditions, inconveniences, and risks, and a terrible struggle in a near
approaching future. John De Witt trusted too much to the resources
of diplomacy, which cannot surmount the force of facts.  He
attempted middle courses and dilatory expedients; he took the
initiative and proposed to Louis XIV. to regulate eventually the
fate of the Catholic Netherlands and to return to the former project
of erecting Belgium into a republic, with the exception of a few
towns detached for France and Holland.  This idea had been
Richelieu's at an epoch when, believing himself still unable to
conquer all Belgium, he preferred seeing it independent to sharing
it with Holland and abandoning to the latter the mouths of the
Scheldt. If Belgium had been constituted as a body politic, under
the common patronage of France and Holland, the preponderant




268                     LOUIS XIV.                  1663-1664.
influence would have doubtless belonged to the more powerful of
the two patrons, - to the one whom community of religion everywhere, and community of language and manners in several provinces, inclined towards the people patronized.  In case of war
against England or the Empire, Belgium would have followed, as
an ally, the fortunes of France.
De Witt spoke first of uniting the seventeen provinces of the
Netherlands in a single body politic, which was unacceptable; then
of a Catholic republic under the patronage of the two neighboring
powers; in case this design should not succeed, its division between
France and Holland was to follow.  (March-May, 1663.)
According to grave testimony, Colbert strongly supported with
the King the plan of constituting Belgium as a republic.1 Louis
consented to the alternative proposed by John De Witt; but when
the questions of time and means ensued, it was impossible to make
terms. The Dutch were unwilling that the enfranchisement or
partition of Belgium should take place until after the death, not
only of Philip IV., but of the Infant, his son; this was to delay
the enterprise indefinitely, and implicitly to deny the pretensions
on which Louis XIV. built all his policy towards the Belgian provinces. Louis thought himself almost doing a favor to his father-inlaw, Philip IV., by waiting till the death of this prince to dispose of
the provinces falling to the queen of France by right of devolution.
De Witt appeared to enter into the reasons of the King, and
endeavored to persuade the leading men of the Dutch cities2 to
suffer the clause regarding the Infant of Spain to be struck from
the projected treaty; he failed. He at least succeeded in preventing the United Provinces from yielding to the entreaties of Spain,
who urged them to guarantee to her the Catholic Netherlands by a
defensive alliance (February-March, 1664). He attempted anew
to induce his colleagues to accept the conditions of Louis XIV.;
but at heart Louis preferred to remain with his hands free; it was
he that would not renew the negotiation.3
France and Holland remained on indifferent terms, but without
quarrelling: the tariff established by Colbert in 1664 on foreign
merchandise was of a nature to render the feeling of the Dutch still
less amicable; but the perils to which the United Provinces found
themselves in the interval exposed, obliged them to approach France.
1 Monthion, Particularites sur les ministres des finances.
2 The States-General had but a very limited power, and their resolutions were.
finally, approved or rejected by the cities.
8 Mignet, Succession d'Espagne, t. I. part II. sec. 1.




1665             ENGLAND AND HOLLAND.                   269
The maritime and commercial quarrels between Holland and
England, which the mediation of Louis XIV. had for a moment
appeased, were renewed with increasing warmth. After many mutual acts of violence in all the Eastern and American waters, the
English Company of the coasts of Africa had invaded the Dutch stations at Cape Verd and Guinea, and an officer of the Duke of York's
household had taken possession of New Amsterdam, formerly a
Dutch settlement, and given it the name of New York in honor of
his patron. Admiral De Ruyter sailed to recapture the African
stations; but during this time the English, according to custom, suddenly attacked their rivals in the British Channel and the neighboring seas, and captured a hundred and thirty Dutch merchantmen.
They declared war afterwards (February 22, 1665).'
War was not yet officially declared when the Dutch ambassador
to France, Van Beuninghen, already claimed the assistance of
Louis XIV. by virtue of the defensive compact of 1662. This
was a lively embarrassment and vexation to Louis. This war complicated the European situation in a manner disadvantageous to his
designs. He would have gladly avoided breaking, in the interest
of a very doubtful ally, with the King of England who expressed
for him an interested inclination, and who seemed quite as much
disposed to become his pensioner as the petty German princes.
Charles II. went so far as to offer Louis carte blanche as to the
Catholic Netherlands, if he would not assist Holland.
Louis endeavored at least to obtain from the Dutch, in exchange
for his aid, the recognition of the rights of his wife over a part of
Belgium. The Dutch persisted in demanding, before everything,
the execution of the treaty of 1662, which obliged France to succor
them within four months from the declaration of war. The King
temporized as much as possible, dispatched an ambassador to London to try to interpose his mediation, and thus gained the autumn
of 1665 without taking sides. The Dutch had offered to accept
the Parliament of Paris as the judge of the validity of the captures
made from them by the English before' the declaration of war.
During this time, the terrible maritime struggle of 1652 was
renewed with still more colossal proportions. June 13, 1665, the
navies of England and Holland met near Lowestoft, on the Suffolk
coast. The English, commanded by the Duke of York, numbered
one hundred ships and frigates, several of which were three-decked;
1 Lingard, Histoire d'Angleterre, t. XII. c. 2. VWe de l'amiral Ruyter, Amsterdam,
1678; t. I. p. 30, et seq. De la Neuville, Histoire de Hollande, t. III. p. 228, et seq.;
Paris, 1693.




270                     LOUIS XIV.-                    1665.
the Dutch, under the orders of Admiral Opdam, had a few more
vessels, but less officers accustomed to handle large ships. Nearly
ten thousand cannon shook the air afar with their appalling reverberations. After nine hours' fighting, the death of Admiral Opdam,
who was blown up with his vessel, and the English superiority in
manoeuvring, decided the defeat of the Dutch. The English in
this action fought for the first time in line, an innovation due to the
Duke of York. Twenty Dutch ships were taken or burned; the
rest regained, not without difficulty, the low grounds of the Texel
and Meuse, which their flat keels permitted them to enter, while
the English vessels, differently built, were unable to follow. England celebrated her victory by a medal bearing the device, Quatuor
maria vindico, (I claim the four seas).
The energetic activity of John De Witt, and the return of the
heroic De Ruyter, who had just returned from sweeping the Caribbean Sea, reanimated the Dutch so promptly, that their fleet set
sail again in two months.  De Witt embarked in person with
De Ruyter. The winds and waves seemed conspired with the
enemies of Holland; a tempest dispersed the Dutch fleet, and
wrecked or delivered to the English a considerable number of
ships. Nothing could overcome the magnanimous obstinacy of John
De Witt. He took the sea again with the scarcely rallied fleet,
and went as far as the mouth of the Thames to offer combat to
the English, who refused it. A murderous epidemic, which was
devastating London, had reached the British fleet and was counterbalancing the success which the sea had accorded the English (August-October, 1665).
Louis XIV. indeed would not willingly have seen England gain a
decided superiority in the contest, but he was not sorry to see the
two rival fleets weaken each other reciprocally, without involving
his reviving navy in their collision. He was, besides, preoccupied at
this moment with an affair of vast personal interest. The event,
in view of which he had moved so many springs and shaped so
many combinations, had arrived. After experiencing reverse upon
reverse in her attacks on Portugal, Spain, exhausted, ruined, had
lost her king.
The last years of Philip IV. had been very mournful: the long
series of misfortunes that had filled his reign had at last changed
his carelessness into a sombre melancholy. Spain indeed had not
felt all her weakness until after the peace with France, as a wounded
man is unconscious of the depth of his wounds till he ceases to be sustained by the animation of the conflict. The monarchy of Charles V.,




1663-1665.         RIGHT OF DEVOLUTION.                       271
the monarchy of both worlds, had no longer to face but the little
kingdom of Portugal, yet could not overthrow it. It had no more
finances, no more navy, no more army. The arsenals were empty;
the Moorish pirates captured the Spanish ships within sight of the
unarmed harbors. The President of the Council of Finances had
dared openly to advise the relinquishment of the royal navy, for lack
of means to maintain it. Military spirit was wholly extinct in the
higher classes; the marasmus was everywhere; solitude invaded the
uncultivated fields.1 It was only by unheard-of efforts that the Spanish councils succeeded, in 1663, in assembling a slender squadron
and an army of twenty thousand men, for the most part foreigners.
This army marched to be conquered, at Ameyxial, by the Portuguese, reinforced by French and English volunteers, and commanded
by Schomberg, Turenne's pupil (June 8, 1663). In 1664, the Portuguese encroached in turn upon the Spanish frontier, and took
several towns. Philip IV. made a desperate effort, drew from
Belgium, Italy, and Germany all the soldiers he could, and hurled
twenty-two thousand fighting-men upon Portugal. The Spaniards
were again completely defeated at Villa Viciosa (June 17, 1665).
The unhappy monarch let fall the letter which informed him of
the fatal news, exclaiming, God wills it! Worn out with sorrow,
he expired three months after (September 17, 1665).
He left a puny infant, that seemed continually on the point of
dissolution, under the regency of an incapable mother, Maria Anna,
of Austria, ruled by a foreign monk, almost as incapable as she, the
Jesuit Neidhard (Nithard, or Nidhardo), formerly preceptor of the
Emperor Leopold, who had become Confessor of the Queen of
Spain. Philip IV., by his will, declared his second daughter, Margaret, the Emperor's betrothed, the heir to his monarchy in default
of his son, Carlos II., - his eldest daughter, Maria Theresa, Queen
of France, being excluded by her renunciation.
According to the pretensions of Louis XIV., not only was this
renunciation void in case the young king, Carlos II., should die,
but the rights of the Queen of France were fully in force over the
provinces which, according to custom, reverted to the daughter of
the first marriage in preference to the son of the second marriage.
1 See, on the ruin of Spain, t. II. of L'Espagne depuis Philippe II. jusqu' aux Bourbons, by Charles Weiss. The author clearly analyzes all the causes of this decline:
the quality of real estate given to large personal property by inalienable majorats
and ecclesiastical mortmain; the mesta, or common pasture, fatal to agriculture; the
prejudice against commerce and manufactures; the system of taxation; the continued expatriation of the elite of the nation to America and foreign European countries, etc. See also, Mignet, Succession d'Espagne, t. I. p. 314.




272                     LOUIS XIV.                      1665.
Louis hesitated whether he should act immediately. Having failed
in his attempts at mediation, he did not think it incumbent on him
to make Holland wait longer for the execution of the treaty of
1662, and he judged that the success of his designs would be
endangered should he have to fight at the same time England,
Spain, and probably the Emperor. Colbert, in the interest of
commerce and manufactures, warmly persuaded him not to engage
at once in a general war. He resolved, therefore, to postpone the
invasion of Belgium until he should have compelled England to
peace with Holland: for this, it was necessary to pass through
war. War was declared against England, January 26, 1666, but
with strange precautions. Louis gave Charles II. to understand
that the necessity of keeping his word alone constrained him to
this extremity, and kept a door open for treaty. At the same
time he entered upon negotiations with Spain, as if hoping for
satisfaction by pacific means, and foiled, by the most adroit diplomatic strategy, the plans of the English cabinet, that sought to put
itself forward as mediator between Spain and Portugal, and to
form a league against France into which England and Spain were
to draw the Emperor and Portugal itself. Portugal, on the contrary, riveted its bonds with France by the marriage of King
Alphonso VI. with a French princess, Mademoiselle de Nemours
(March, 1666). Sweden rejected the proposal to break with France,
while Denmark, at the instigation of Louis XIV., broke with
England. The Emperor, kept respectful by the Alliance of the
Rhine, dared not second the English actively, and even Spain
suffered herself to be lulled by the propositions of the French ambassador.1
The mother of the King of France and aunt of the new King of
Spain, Anne of Austria, had died meanwhile, January 20, 1666;
this princess had made vain efforts to mediate between her son and
her house; she had long since ceased to have any serious influence
on the policy of France.
In the autumn of 1665, Louis had begun to fulfil his engagements to Holland, by sending eight thousand fighting-men to join
the troops of the United Provinces against the Bishop of Miinster.
This warlike and turbulent prelate, a sort of mitred condottiere,
having claims on a few towns occupied by the Dutch, had levied a
considerable army with money from England, and precipitated himself on the provinces of Overyssel, Drenthe, and Groningen, which
he ravaged mercilessly. He vainly urged with the King his char1 Mignet, Succession d'Espagne, t. I. part II. sec. 3.




1666.                MARITIME WAR.                      273
acter as member of the Alliance of the Rhine; the French, together with the Dutch and the troops of the Dukes of Liineburg,
drove him fiom the United Provinces and pursued him on his
own territories. The Elector of Brandenburg, at the instigation
of Louis XIV., also declared himself for Holland, and the bellicose
prelate was forced to lay down his arms (April 19, 1666).
The- treaty of 1662 was not as well executed on sea as on land,
and( the Dutch still bore almost the whole weight of the maritime
war in the campaign of 1666; nevertheless, the reproaches which
Louis XIV. has undergone from historians in this respect appear
exaggerated. Before the close of 1665, the King had peremptorily
recalled the fleet commanded by the Duke de Beaufort from the
Mediterranean to the Atlantic; if this order was not executed, it
was because, during the winter, an English squadron appeared in
the Mediterranean. Beaufort received an injunction to fight the
enemy wherever he found him. He set sail from Toulon in April;
the English had again passed the Straits of Gibraltar. Beaufort
was then advised to wait before Lisbon for some vessels charged
with conducting the new Queen of Portugal from La Rochelle to
Lisbon; it was feared that this fleet might be intercepted by the
Spaniards if its entrance into the Tagus were not insured. Louis
XIV. urged the Dutch to await Beaufort's arrival on the French
coast of the west before quitting their ports; but Admiral De Ruyter was already at sea when this advice was addressed to the StatesGeneral. De Ruyter had under his orders eighty-three ships-ofwar, exclusive of fire-ships and small yachts. The English were
guilty of the imprudence of dividing their forces: Prince Rupert,
cousin of Charles II., went with some twenty sail to meet the
French fleet, which the English believed about to enter the Channel, while it was tranquilly stationed at the mouth of the Tagus.
The bulk of the British fleet, numbering about seventy sail, proceeded against the Dutch, under the command of Monk. A
furious collision took place, June 11, between Dunkirk and North
Foreland.  Night alone separated the combatants.  The losses
were terrible on both sides, but the English had suffered much
more than their rivals; the chain-shot, a formidable invention of
John De Witt, had made great ravages among their ships. The
combat was renewed the next morning; at evening, the English,
no longer able to sustain the victorious effort of the Dutch, retreated to their coasts, burning such of their ships as they could
not carry away. They laboriously regained the entrance of the
Thames, leaving stranded on a sand-bank their finest vessel,
VOL. I.       35




274                     LOUIS XIV.                      1666.
The Prince Royal, of ninety-two guns, which was taken and
burned after several others. On the evening of the third day,
Prince Rupert's squadron rejoined them. They returned to the
charge with desperate obstinacy, and the fourth day was the most
bloody, and long the most uncertain of all. At last De Ruyter
having broken the English line and placed the centre between two
fires, the English fleet ceased to dispute the victory. A thick
mist, which caused the victor to lose sight of the fleet, saved it
from utter destruction. It had lost at least twenty-five large vessels, captured, burned, or sunk. It was the most terrible naval
battle ever seen; it covered De Ruyter with immortal glory.
The English, as firm as the Dutch had been the year before,
made such efforts to repair their defeat, that Monk found himself
in a condition to offer battle anew in seven weeks (August 4).
The French fleet had not yet appeared. This time, the skilful
manoeuvres of De Ruyter and his lieutenants had not as happy
success. While the squadron of Vice-Admiral Tromp repulsed
and pursued one of the English divisions, De Ruyter, ill seconded
by another squadron, the two leaders of which had just been killed,
had to support the shock of greatly superior forces, and was constrained to retire, making the enemy that pursued him fall back
from time to time by his proud bearing. He probably owed his
safety to the French volunteers, who, springing into boats, warded
off a fire-ship launched against his vessel.
This day, glorious for the English, who had so speedily effaced
their reverses, nevertheless gave them no serious advantage; the
Dutch soon rallied, and the English fleet twice refused them their
revenge by avoiding battle. Meanwhile, Beaufort at last arrived
from Lisbon at La Rochelle (August 23). The correspondence
of Louis XIV. proves that the French admiral had no orders, as
has been pretended, to shun the English, but that he was, on the
contrary, to effect his junction, without more delay, with the Dutch
fleet. If this junction did not take place, it was through the fault
of Beaufort and not of the King; an illness happening to De Ruyter also contributed much to it. The Dutch, no longer feeling
themselves guided by his firm hand, hesitated to advance into the
Channel to meet their allies, and Beaufort arriving at Dieppe with
forty sail, after having passed in sight of the English fleet, which
the wind prevented from attacking him, learned that the Dutch
fleet was north of the Pas-Du-Calais. The King sent him word
to set sail towards Holland or to return to Brest, " according to the
bearing of the enemies." Beaufort regained Brest, after a sharp




1666-1667.               NEGOTIATIONS.                          275
engagement between his rear-guard and an English squadron; a
French vessel of fifty-four guns was taken after a glorious resistance; the rest of the rear-guard extricated itself bravely from the
enemy's squadron, far superior in numbers (the beginning of October).1
This trifling check had been more than compensated for in
advance by the success of the French in distant waters.  The
island of St. Christopher, one of the Lesser Antilles, was divided
between two French and English colonies. The English, who
were six thousand against two thousand, having assumed the offensive against neighbors more warlike than they, had been completely
defeated and driven from the island (April, 1666); then, the
struggle having become general in the Archipelago, the English
islands of Nevis, Montserrat, and Antigua had fallen into the
hands of the French; the English, it is true, had, on their part,
despoiled the French of Acadia.
Louis dreamed of greater and nearer conquests. 1667 was opening; a year, almost eighteen months had elapsed since the death
of his father-in-law, yet, turned aside from his end by a diversion
which he had been unable to prevent, he had as yet claimed the
rights of his wife only in words; he lost patience.  The situation
of England offered him an opening upon which he ardently precipitated himself. The losses of war had not been those most fatal to
Great Britain: the plague of 1665, the conflagration of 1666, had
terribly devastated its capital; two thirds of London had been
laid in ashes in the last September, and immense wealth had been
destroyed.2  Attempts at negotiation had taken place during the
winter, with little good-will on the part of John De Witt, who
dreaded a peace destined to set Louis at liberty to act in Belgium.
In February, an English ambassador came to Paris to discuss the
preliminaries of a conference to be opened between the belligerent
powers. The King gave this envoy to understand, through Lionne,
that he would engage to restore the Lesser English Antilles, which
1 See (Euvres de Louis XIV. t. II., Mdm. pp. 215-230; and t. V. pp. 380, 382, 391;
letters of July 23, August 12, and October 20, 1666. If the French fleet was not
attacked on its first passage, it was on its return. There was not, therefore, as
Eugene Sue affirms, a secret agreement on this subject between Charles II. and
Louis XIV. 1Histoire de la marine franfaise, t. I. p. 211, 2d edit.  Concerning the
two great naval battles, see Vie de l'amiral Ruyter, t. I. pp. 215-291. Lingard, History of' England, Vol. XII. chap. 2.
2 This catastrophe is the prime cause of the regularity of construction which
astonishes the traveller in London; the city was rebuilt almost entire at an epoch
of symmetrical taste and improvements in municipal government and public
hygiene.




276                       LOUIS XIV.                      1667.
Charles II. ardently desired, if Charles would promise to do nothing
for a year contrary to the interests of France, while waiting till a
closer alliance could be established between the two kings; it was
in reality a truce for a year; for Louis engaged thereby implicitly
to give Holland no more assistance, at least offensive. Charles
consented to this secret compact (April, 1667). Yet Louis had
quite recently been very indignant because the States-General had
suspected him of the intention of making terms without them with
the King of England, and he had authorized his ambassador to
conclude a new agreement with the States for the junction of the
fleets, an agreement which he no longer designed to execute.  He
probably excused himself in his own eyes by saying that the Dutch
run no risk, since the English, in their financial distress, only fitted
out two small squadrons of light frigates this year, and that he did
not conclude peace without his allies, since public conferences were
about to be opened at Breda between France, England, and Holland, by the mediation of Sweden.'
At the moment that he thus assured himself of English neutrality, he had just concluded with Portugal an offensive treaty
against Spain (March 31, 1667); a compact of war in which the
interests of commerce were not forgotten, and in which the French
were found admitted to all the commercial advantages enjoyed by
the English and Dutch. Portugal engaged not to make peace with
Spain, and the King of France engaged to pay Portugal a subsidy
of 1,800,000 livres a year, until he himself should declare war
against Spain.2
Neither had Louis neglected anything to assure himself of Germany. He did not succeed, however, in causing the Alliance of
the Rhine, which was renewed triennially, to be prorogued anew.
The German princes no longer dreaded Austria, not in a condition
to attack their liberties, and began to fear absorption by the formidable ally which had freed them. The union formed in 1658 was
thus dissolved; but Louis partially repaired this check by buying
one by one several of the Rhenish princes: their fears yielded to
their avidity. The Duke of Neuburg,3 the Electors of Cologne
and Mayence, the Bishop of Miinster, lastly, in spite of his recent
1 (Euvres de Louis XIV. t. II. p. 279, et seq.; t. V. p. 299. Mignet, t. II. pp.
40-45.
2 Dumont, Corps diplomatique, t. VII. p. 17.
3 The mediation of Louis XIV. had just terminated long discussions which had
lasted since 1610 between the houses of Brandenburg and Neuburg for the succession of Cleves. Brandenburg definitively kept Cleves, Mark, and Ravensburg;
Neuburg had Jillich and Berg.




1667.         WAR OF THE QUEEN'S RIGHTS.                277
quarrels with France, promised to close the way to the troops whom
the Emperor might attempt to send into the Catholic Netherlands,
as the Alliance of the Rhine had closed it in 1665, at a moment
when Spain had wished to reinforce her Belgian garrisons by German levies.
In the course of 1666, Louis had insinuated to the Dutch ambassador, Van Beuninghen, that he was disposed to take into consideration the apprehensions of Holland, and to make terms with
the provinces nearest to France, allowing the Dutch to extend
themselves by way of compensation in their neighborhood.l De
Witt had turned a deaf ear, although Holland had just grievances
against Spain, which, through spite at having been unable to obtain
the guaranty of the Dutch for its possessions, had furnished aid to
the English and to the Bishop of Miinster.  Louis, then, had
thought no longer but of lulling both Holland and Spain. Until
the last moment, he had skilfully diverted the inept Spanish camarilla from doing anything to put Belgium and Franche-Comte
in a state of defence. The complaints of the Governor-General,
Castel-Rodrigo, who saw the storm approaching, could not disturb
the apathy of the regent and her confessor. These strange heirs
of Charles V. and Philip II. believed that they had done everything in replying to the demands of Louis XIV. that the late king
had forbidden, by his testament, the alienation of a single village
of the Netherlands. Louis not having acted immediately, they
thought that he would never act. Their powerlessness, doubtless,
was great; but their torpor was still greater. May 1, 1667, Louis
wrote again to his ambassador at Madrid a letter reassuring to
Spain; April 27, he had promised Holland to undertake nothing
without apprising her; May 8, the storm burst forth. Louis signified to the regent of Spain the resolution that he had taken "' to
march in person, at the end of this month, at the head of his army,
to endeavor to put himself in possession of what belonged to him
in the Netherlands, by right of the Queen, or of an equivalent."
He offered again to terminate the difference by an amicable accommodation on moderate conditions, and, provided justice was
done him, to defend against all aggression the rest of the estates
of his brother of Spain. "We do not consider," said he, finally,
"that the peace is broken on our side by our entrance into the
Netherlands, although with arms in our hands, since we march
thither only to strive to put ourselves in possession of what is usurped
from us."
1 (Euvres de Louis XI V. t. H. p. 60.




278                      LOUIS XIV.                     1667.
To this letter was joined a book, entitled, " Treatise on the Rights
of the Most Christian Queen over divers States of the monarchy
of Spain." This treatise, compiled by a secretary of Turenne,
named Duhan, who, it is said, was the first to point out to the
King the existence of the right of devolution, first laid down the
pretensions of the Queen Maria Theresa to the whole succession
of the Spanish monarchy, should the male line become extinct;
then her existing rights over several provinces: namely, Brabant,
Antwerp, Mechlin, Limburg, Upper Gelderland, Namur, Artois,1
Cambr(sis, as subject to the right of devolution; Hainault, like
the preceding, as a freehold estate and according to its custom, belonged to the children of the first marriage; one third of FrancheComte, governed by a law which admitted the equal partition
between the children; one fourth of Luxemburg, the custom of
which also admitted all the children to the succession, but gave the
sons double the portion of the daughters.
The discussion of these points of customary right would be now
somewhat tedious;-the conclusion of the treatise, or rather of the
manifesto, transferred the question to another ground. " The King
is certain that these peoples (of the Catholic Netherlands) will not
forget that the kings of France were their natural lords even before
there were kings of Castile, and that they will choose to return to
the bosom of this ancient country." 2 This was, under a monarchical form, in which the kings of the Franks and the kings of France
were confounded, the revendication of the principle of affinity of
origin and of that of natural frontiers.
The treatise, " On the Rights of the Queen," was sent to all the
princes and States of Europe. The King announced to Christendom the invasion of the Catholic Netherlands as a mere journey.
The King set out from Saint Germain, May 16, to put himself
at the head of the army. Everything was ready. The preparations had kept pace with the negotiations. The military force of
France had been raised, by degrees and with little noise, from seventy-two thousand to one hundred and twenty-five thousand men;
sixteen hundred cannon had been cast in France, many more purchased in foreign countries; great magazines had been prepared in
Picardy, and fifty thousand soldiers awaited the signal on the northern frontier. All of the operations were to be conducted by Marshal-General Turenne; the King had told this great captain that
he wished to learn under him the " trade of war." 3 The active
1 There still remained to Spain, in Artois, Aire and Saint-Omer.
2 Mignet, Succession d'Espagne, t. II. pp. 58-89.
8 (Euvres de Louis XIV. t. II. p. 431.




1667.             CHARLEROI. TOURNAY.                   279
army was divided into three very unequal corps: the principal one,
of twenty-five thousand infantry and ten thousand cavalry, was,
under the King and Turenne, to operate in the heart of Belgium,
between the Meuse and the Lys; the left wing, of six or seven
thousand foot and two thousand horse, under Marshal d'Aumont,
had orders to act between the Lys and the sea; the right, commanded by Lieutenant-General Cre'qui, three thousand five hundred
cavalry or dragoons, and three thousand infantry strong, of which
two thousand five hundred were auxiliaries exacted of the Duke
of Lorraine, was posted at Sierck, on the Moselle, to watch the
movements of Germany and to threaten Luxemburg.
The King arrived, May 20, at Amiens, where were the head-,iuarters of Turenne.  The 24th, hostilities commenced by the
occupation of Armentieres; the commandant was surprised while
demolishing his fortifications according to the orders of the Governor of the Netherlands. The Governor, Castel-Rodrigo, on the
news of the French invasion, had ordered the second-class places to
be everywhere dismantled in order to concentrate in the most important the few forces at his disposal. The principal army corps,
assembled at Amiens, Pgronne, and La Fere, moved rapidly from
the Somme and the Oise, on the Sambre, and, leaving on its left
Cambrai, Valenciennes, and Mons, without attacking them, occupied Binche in passing, and stopped only at Charleroi. CastelRodrigo had believed himself unable to hold this. key of Brabant;
he had ordered the new fortifications, which he himself had commenced two years before, to be mined, then evacuated the place.
The French vanguard entered it June 2.
The young officers exclaimed that it was necessary to march
straight to Brussels and overthrow at a blow the Spanish government of the Netherlands; but Turenne observed to the King that
Castel-Rodrigo would not fail to accumulate in his capital all the
defensive resources which he possessed, and that the French infantry, "composed in great part of raw soldiers, might be repulsed
or destroyed by a siege of long duration."  The army was employed, therefore, for a fortnight, in building up the ramparts of
Charleroi, in order to make it a stronghold in the heart of Belgium;
then was turned from the Sambre towards the Scheldt; it seized
Ath on the way, then, from the 17th to the 21st of June, invested
Tournay. Marshal d'Aumont joined the King and Turenne before
Tournay, with his small army corps, which had taken Bergues,
June 6, and Furnes, June 12. On the 24th, the people of Tour1 (Euvres de Louis XIV. t. II. p. 800.




280                      LOUIS XIV.                       1667.
nay, seeing the besiegers masters of the counterscarp, revolted,
obliged their feeble garrison to withdraw within the citadel, and
capitulated in consideration of the preservation of their privileges.
The citadel surrendered the next day. The King made his entry
into Tournay amidst the acclamations of this ancient city, which,
fallen formerly by conquest under foreign dominion, had forgotten
neither its origin nor its old French affection. Nothing could be
more popular in France than the recovery of Tournay. The discovery of the tomb of Childeric (Hilderik), the father of the great
Clovis, had recently revived the national traditions concerning this
cradle of the empire of the Franks.1
Tournay taken, they fell back on Douai. The King and Turenne, not having to face an adversary that could keep the field,
operated at leisure, and preferred to brilliant strokes, to bold dashes,
those substantial conquests of frontiers which immediately became a
part of the body of the State and were scarcely ever lost again.
The trenches were opened before Douai, July 3, and the attack
was carried on with extreme vigor. Vauban, who had revealed, in
the last years of the preceding war, talents of the first order in the
conduct of sieges, directed the works. The Spaniards had not had
time at Douai, any more than at Tournay, to reinforce the garrison; the citizens of Douai showed themselves at first much more
disposed to resist than those of Tournay had been; but their warlike disposition moderated when they saw the French, at the end
of three days, in a position to assault the body of the town. The
town and Fort Scarp, which covered it on the north, surrendered
July 6.
A few days after, Marshal d'Aumont invested Courtrai (July
14). The town capitulated on the 16th, and the citadel on the
18th. The King, meanwhile, brought the Queen to Douai, Orchies,
and Tournay, to show her to her new subjects: all the beauties of
the court accompanied Maria Theresa; the magnificence and gallantry of Versailles were displayed in the midst of war before the
wonder-struck Flemings. The inhabitants of Douai effaced the
memory of their resistance by the brilliant welcome which they
gave the Queen.
The interval was short: Louis rejoined the army, which, master
of the course of the Lys through Courtrai, descended the Scheldt
and attacked Audenarde. This city, overpowered by formidable
1 The precious remains, found in this tomb, in 1655, had passed into the hands of
the Elector of Mayence, who did homage for them to Louis XIV. in 1665. See
(Euvres de Louis XIV. t. V.; Lettres particulieres, p. 307.




1667.           CONQUESTS IN FLANDERS.                   281
artillery, surrendered in two days (July 31). The capture of Audenarde was designed to pave the way for that of Dendermonde, a
place much more important by its position between Ghent, Brussels,
and Antwerp; but the royal vanguard did not reach Dendermonde
soon enough to prevent Count de Marsin, sent from Brussels by Castel-Rodrigo, from throwing himself into the city with eighteen hundred men, and inundating the neighborhood by opening the sluices.
This was the same Marsin who had been the favorite lieutenant of
the great Conde, and who, excluded from the amnesty of 1659 by
Mazarin, had remained in the service of Spain. Turenne counselled the King not to persist in this siege, which might have consumed the rest of the campaign. August 5, the army decamped
and turned its back on Ghent and Brussels. Cries began to be
raised against this retreat; they ceased when the army paused
before Lille (July 8-10).
The siege of the great Walloon city was a much more brilliant
enterprise than the attack on Dendermonde, and Louis XIV.
claims, in his Memoirs, the honor of having personally conceived
it.l Lille contained eighteen hundred infantry and a thousand
picked cavalry, two thousand curlins, a provincial militia almost as
warlike as the regular troops, and, if the relations of the times are
to be believed, fifteen thousand inhabitants capable of bearing arms.2
Count de Brouai, the governor of Lille, spared nothing to raise the
municipal spirit and to awaken the popular attachment in favor of
the heir of the ancient dukes of Burgundy. He ordered the portrait of the little king, Carlos II., to be carried through the streets,
and demanded a new oath from the citizens, who swore in a body
to die rather than capitulate. A wooden horse was placed before
the town hall, with a truss of hay and an inscription in bad verse,
declaring that the horse would eat the hay before the town surrendered.
The besiegers were not dismayed by this factitious enthusiasm,
and commenced a double line of contravallation and circumvallation. The governor had sent to entreat the King to choose the
best house in the neighborhood for his residence, and to inform him
of it, that he might forbid firing upon the royal quarters. Louis
thanked Brouai for this courtesy, but declared that his quarters
were his whole camp.
Deeds answered to words; the King passed the nights in bivouac,
1 UEuvres de Louis XIV. t. II. p. 431.
2 The population of the city has varied little since, the walls not having been
extended, but a dense population has accumulated in the suburbs.
VOL. I.       36




282                     LOUIS XIV.                       1667.
and the greater part of the days in the trenches, ready to repulse the
sorties in person. One day, when visiting the trenches, he pushed
on to a place greatly exposed to the fire of the besieged; the courtiers pressed him to retire; he hesitated. The old Duke de Charost, one of his captains of the guard, drew near him and whispered, " Sire, the wine is drawn, it must be drunk." Louis finished
his walk without hastening his steps, and was pleased with Charost
for having preferred his honor to his life.1
The King's presence animated the troops to endure the privations
caused by the inexperience of Louvois, who had ill arranged the commissary department, and by the servants that the courtiers brought
in their train, a parasitical crowd that contributed to exhaust the
provisions destined for the army. Turenne, exceedingly paternal
towards the soldiers, but rude enough with the generals and the
ministers, addressed an admonition to the young Secretary of War,
which left lasting rancor in the heart of Louvois and of his father,
Le Tellier.2
The lines were finished, however, August 18; Marshal d'Aumont covered the siege and observed the movements of the Spaniards, who were collecting troops at Alost and Ypres to disturb the
siege. The 18th, at evening, the trenches were opened. The
21st, a battery of twenty-four guns of large calibre dismounted
nearly all the cannon which defended the Gate of Fives and the
vicinity. The 23d, the Marquis de Cr4qui arrived from the banks
of the Moselle with his little army corps. As nothing was stirring
on the side of Germany, it had been thought possible to unite all
the active forces to insure the success of the enterprise. On the
night of the 25th-26th, the counterscarp was carried and twentytwo 24-pounders were mounted there. On the night of the 26th27th, two half-moons were taken, and the mine was connected
with the body of the place.
For several days, terror had reigned in the city, and the 22d,
the bourgeois, belying the bravadoes which had been suggested to
them, had signified to the governor that they would capitulate if
they were not succored by the 27th. The artisans had responded
with excessive coldness to the exhortations of the Spanish leaders,
and armed themselves, to the number of eight thousand, slowly
and with ill grace.  On the same night that the French gained the
foot of the rampart, the people repaired tumultuously to the town
1 Mem. de Choisi, ap. Collect Michaud, 3d ser. t. VI.
2 Analyse de la campagne de 1667, by General de Grimoard, in (Euvres de Louis
XiV. t. III. p. 74.




1667.               TAKING OF LILLE.                    283
hall, and exacted the communication of the letters by which the
governor of the Netherlands promised aid to the governor of Lille.
The aid was not promised till September 10. The people would
listen no longer, and caused the fire of the ramparts to cease immediately. The governor deemed it impossible to suppress this
movement; he sent deputies to the King to offer to surrender in
four days in default of aid; the King demanded that he should
surrender the same day. At evening, one of the gates of the city
was delivered to the French; the next morning, August 28, the
garrison marched out with the honors of war, and the King made
his entry into Lille.
All Walloon Flanders had again become French at the price of
less effort and bloodshed than it had cost, in the Middle Ages, to
force one of its places. It was because there was encountered no
great interest, no great idea, which could lead the people to refuse
to return to the bosom of the mother-country. Such are the only
good and legitimate conquests,- those which fall into the hand of
the conqueror like ripe fruit, - those which may indeed transgress
the political laws forged by men, but which are in conformity with
the laws of Providence, and which realize, far from violating the
principle of nationalities.
Count de Marsin, Commander-General of the Spanish troops,
had been at Ypres, since August 25, with twelve thousand men,
two thirds of which were cavalry; he had neither time nor strength
to attempt to save Lille. The King and Turenne, from the 27th,
conceived the hope of cutting off his retreat to Ghent and Brussels.
Lieutenant-General Cr6qui, whose cavalry had been posted on the
Lys, between Lille and Ypres, was ordered to repair rapidly between the canal of Bruges and that of the Sas-de-Ghent. August
28, the whole army followed Cr6qui's corps. Marsin, on learning
of the loss of Lille, had sent what little infantry he had to Dixmude,
Nieuwpoort, and Ostend, and had set out himself at full speed, with
eight thousand cavalry, for Ghent by the way of Bruges. August
31, at daybreak, he encountered the French vanguard barring his
way to Ghent. Apprised that the main body of the royal army
was not far off, he sought to fall back on Bruges. He had not
time: charged with irresistible impetuosity, he was broken, overwhelmed, put to rout completely; part of his squadrons were pursued to the sea-shore, on the territory of Dutch Flanders; the rest
were chased to the gates of Bruges; two thousand cavalry were
killed, taken, or dispersed.
September 1, the whole French army was found assembled be



284                      LOUIS XIV.                       1667.
fore the walls of Ghent. Several generals urged the King to profit
by the defeat of Marsin to attack this great city; but the army was
greatly fatigued by so much labor and marching, and especially by
the bad weather; heavy rains had begun during the siege of Lille
and had not yet ceased; the infantry was much diminished by garrisoning the new conquests, and it was not certain that the cities
of the Flemish tongue would yield as easily as those of the French
tongue, although the example of Dunkirk augured well in this
respect. Political considerations acted also on the mind of the
King; Louis still desired to be circumspect towards Holland, and,
above all, to mature vast secret projects which might, to a certain
point, restrain his arms. He resolved to attempt nothing more of
importance this year, and only to fortify himself in the positions
taken. September 2, he set out for Saint-Germain, leaving the
army to Turenne.
The Marshal-General was obliged, however, to undertake another
enterprise after the King's departure. The Governor of the Netherlands having thrown a garrison into Alost, in order to cover
Brussels and to harass the French garrisons, Turenne, September
11, assaulted Alost by main force, compelled it to capitulate the
next day, and razed the fortifications. Being "unable, on account
of the bad weather, to establish himself on the canal from Brussels
to Antwerp, he occupied the cities and burghs of the Dender until
the end of October, then distributed the army again into winterquarters, November 1.1
The invasion of Belgium had excited lively agitation in all the
European cabinets, and the evolutions of diplomacy had been
neither less active nor less complicated during this short campaign
than the marches and countermarches of strategy.
The Spanish government, at the first news of the attack, had
resigned itself to the abandonment of its vain pretensions to Portugal, to concentrate its efforts for the defence of the Netherlands.
It was somewhat late! It was impossible to increase the taxes on
Spain or on the Italian possessions; as to the annual tribute from
America, that sole resource of Castilian distress, the galleons were
not expected till the end of the year. " It was attempted to save
the monarchy by subscription." 2 The appeal was not heard. The
nation cared little for those Netherlands, those foreign possessions,
1 The Campagne royale s-annees 1667-1668; Paris, 1668, 18mo. Pellisson, Histoire de Louis XIV. t. II. 1. V. (Euvres de Louis XIV. t. II. pp. 296-814; t. III.
pp. 31-87.
2 Mignet, Succession d'Espagne, t. II. pp. 121-137.




1667.                   STATE OF SPAIN.                         285
which had ruined it. Little care remained to it for itself. Scarcely
any one paid or subscribed. The government was reduced to
the necessity of effecting a new retrenchment on government
stocks, that is, of becoming three fourths bankrupt.
Overwhelmed by her impotence, Spain, on hurling her declaration of war at a rival who pretended to take away her provinces
without breaking the peace (July 14), called all Europe to her
aid. Every one negotiated, but no one was found with the means
or will to help her. She hastened to sign a commercial treaty
with England; 1 Charles Stuart none the less refused her permission to levy soldiers in his states. She invoked the Emperor and
the Empire in behalf of the Circle of Burgundy.  Louis XIV. had
been before her with the Germanic Diet; the King of France had
promised not to abstract from the dependency of the Empire the
places that he might take in the Circle of Burgundy, which comprised Franche-Comt6 and Belgium, with the exception of Flanders, and he had required the Diet, on its part, to observe the treaty
of Westphalia, by preventing the despatch of German troops to
the aid of Spain; the same communication had been addressed to
the Emperor. Leopold, timid and moreover inactive, could only
engage the Diet to offer its mediation; the Diet was unwilling to
guarantee to Spain the Circle of Burgundy. Leopold, on his own
account, did not stir; he had not twenty thousand soldiers on foot;
and he dared not even raise recruits on his own lands for fear of
offending the King.2
The Governor of the Netherlands turned to the North; he endeavored to gain over the Elector of Brandenburg, and through him
the princes of Lower Saxony. The Protestant princes of Northern
Germany, as well as Sweden, were dissatisfied with the too little
disguised patronage which Louis XIV. accorded the Catholic interests in the Empire, and with his continual intervention in Germanic affairs; the project of establishing a French prince on the
throne of Poland greatly disquieted them.  In the interval the
death of the adroit Queen of Poland, the principal supporter of
1 This treaty accorded to the English the same rights as to the Dutch, particularly the right of third flag between Spain and the East Indies. See Dumont, t.
VII. p. 27.
2 The details on this subject, in the negotiations between France and Austria, are
exceedingly piquant.  " The King," wrote the minister Lionne, jestingly, to the
ambassador Gremonville, -- "the King thinks you the most audacious minister on
earth (and in this his Majesty gives you the greatest praise that you could desire)
to have taken it into your head to hinder, by your persuasions and threats, an
emperor, the successor of all the Caesars, from daring to raise recruits for his own
troops." See Mignet, t. II. p. 248.




286                      LOUIS XIV.                       1.667.
this project, rendered its success more than doubtful.  Louis XIV.
deemed it necessary to renounce it, and offered the German princes to support the nomination of one of their number, the Duke
of Neuburg, should King John Casimir persist in the idea of abdicating.'  The Elector of Brandenburg then appeared to approach the King, but without much sincerity, and continued to
negotiate at the same time at Paris and at Brussels, contenting
himself however with remaining an observer and standing on the
reserve.
The Governor of the Netherlands had been still more importunate with Holland, which hastened to ask the King on what conditions he would consent to treat with Spain. Louis made no haste
to answer. The ambassador Van Beuninghen then assured him,
that, if he would be content with a portion of the Netherlands
remote from the Dutch frontiers, the United Provinces would join
him in forcing the Spaniards to yield. This was what the King
had proposed the year before. Louis replied from his camp before
Douai (July 4), that he would be content with Franche-Comte,
Luxemburg, Cambrdsis, Saint-Omer, Aire, Bergues, Charleroi,
Tournay, and Douai. The Dutch protested. De Witt declared
to the French ambassador that he could not support the pretensions
of the King, unless he would moderate them and would engage,
in case of the death of the King of Spain, to resume the ancient
project of erecting the rest of Belgium into a republic, the part
of Holland excepted, or to divide all Belgium, if the first plan
failed.  Louis deferred replying positively.
During this time the negotiations of Breda, between Holland
and her allies on one hand, and England on the other, approached
their conclusion. The difficulties were not without magnitude on
the part of England. De Witt settled them by a brilliant stroke.
He knew that the English, thanks to the bad administration of
Charles II., had little naval force. He despatched De Ruyter and
his brother, Cornelius De Witt, with seventy ships and frigates
and sixteen fire-ships, directly to the Thames, the passes of which
he had sounded in person the year before (June 4, 1667).
The Dutch possessed themselves of Sheerness, forced an entrance
into the river Medway, captured or burned a great number of
1 He abdicated, in fact, September 16, 1668, and retired to France, where he was
given the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Pres. He had for a successor, not the Duke
of Neuburg, but Michael Wiesnowicski, a poor and obscure nobleman elected by
the spirit of faction on account of his very nothingness, and whose reign was
shameful and ruinous to Poland.




1667.            ENGLAND AND HOLLAND.                     287
ships of war, destroyed or carried off the naval magazines, ascended the Thames as far as Gravesend, and remained masters for
several weeks of the mouth of the great British river.
England bent under this blow, so humiliating to her pride;
peace was signed July 31. It comprised three different instruments. By the first, France and England mutually restored what
they had taken from each other in America.1 By the second,
England and Holland agreed to keep each what it had taken
of colonies, stations, ships, and merchandise; the English preserved the best part of the Dutch possessions of North America,
that is, New York and New Jersey; the Dutch kept the island
of Pooloroon, in the Moluccas, and Surinam. The question of
the flag was regulated on the same terms as in the treaty with
Cromwell, the Dutch obligating themselves to salute the English
flag, from fleet to fleet in British waters, and implicitly reserving
equality elsewhere. A third treaty reconciled England and Denmark.
It seemed as if the United Provinces might have derived more
profit from their glorious success; but De Witt and his friends had
deemed it their duty no longer to resist the cries of commerce,
which demanded peace on the seas, and had themselves hastened to
bring matters to a close with England in order to be able to turn
their attention wholly to Belgium. It was besides a great victory
for their party not to have accorded to the House of Stuart the
reestablishment of the House of Nassau.  The preceding year,
after the naval reverse of the month of August, the Orange party
had agitated zealously, and De Witt, to deprive his adversaries of
an instrument that threatened ere long to become a formidable
chief, had been obliged himself to cause the adoption of the young
Prince of Orange, William III., by the Province of Holland, as
the child of the State, and to take charge of his political education.
Strengthened now by the glorious manner in which he had terminated the war, he succeeded in causing it to be decreed, by the
States of Holland, that the stadtholdership should never be reistablished in that province, and that if it were in any other, it
should be incompatible with the office of Captain-General of the
United Provinces (August 15). The young prince was required
to swear to this decree, like all the functionaries of the republic,
and he was suffered to hope that at this price he would be intro1 Besides Nova-Scotia, named in the treaty, the English restored Cayenne, which
they had just seized at the moment of negotiation. See the documents in Dumont,
t. VII. p. 44, et seq.




288                     LOUIS XIV.                       1667.
duced into the council of state at twenty, and would be made
Captain-General at twenty-two.1
Immediately after the peace, England offered her mediation to
France and Spain. The new Pope, Clement IX. (Julio Rospigliosi), elected June 20, in the place of Alexander VII., had
made a similar offer, and Sweden likewise. The Diet of Ratisbon
had stopped the sending of ambassadors to the belligerent courts.
Louis XIV. rejected none of these propositions, and showed a conciliatory disposition. He offered to the United Provinces and the
Emperor the speedy end of his journey to the Netherlands as a
proof of his moderation, and, September 29, informed the Dutch
ambassador that he accepted the new propositions drawn up by John
De Witt; that is, the eventual engagement in case of the death of
the King of Spain, and, as to the present, the alternative between
the cession of the places which he had conquered and the cession
of Luxemburg, Cambrdsis, Aire, and Saint-Omer. The King only
added, in the latter case, Douai, Bergues, and Furnes; Charleroi
was to be dismantled. These pretensions, lessened whilst the conquests were increased, were very modest. It was understood that
Spain was to recognize the King of Portugal, and to accept before
the end of March, 1668; otherwise, Holland was to unite with
the King against her.  Louis granted a three-months' truce to
the Governor of the Catholic Netherlands (October-December,
1667).2
All the European cabinets, a single one excepted, were ignorant
of the secret of the young conqueror's moderation. It was the
very greatness of his ambition that rendered him moderate. Belgium and Franche-Comt4, which would have sufficed France, did
not suffice him! Seeing the crown of Spain on the head of a frail
child continually trembling on the brink of the grave, he thought of
securing half the Spanish monarchy. The little Carlos II. dead,
there remained no legitimate heirs of Philip IV. but the Queen
of France and the Empress, her younger sister, married in 1666.
Louis XIV., in the beginning of 1667, had proposed to the Emperor to regulate in advance between them the eventual partition
of the great inheritance. Leopold refused at first, but feebly, with
no other motive than the fear of offending the Court of Spain, if
any knowledge of the affair should reach it; he felt the impossibility of maintaining in principle, to his wife's profit, the renunciation
1 Mignet, Succession d'Espagne, t. I. p. 485. Pellisson, t. III. 1. vIII. La Neuville
(Ad. Baillet), Histoire de Hollande, t. III. p. 306.
2 (Euvres de Louis XI V. t. II. p. 437, et seq. Mignet, t. II. p. 492.




1668.          TREATY WITH THE EMPEROR.                    289
of the Queen of France; this amicable overture contributed to prevent him from putting himself in a condition to interfere in Belgium. Louis, on his side, affected to desire to please the Emperor
by not pushing his advantages to the utmost. After the King's
return to Saint-Germain, the resident of the Emperor in France
insinuated that the negotiation might be renewed (October 8,
1667). The advances of the Austrian agent were warmly welcomed, and negotiations were reopened and conducted at Vienna,
with extraordinary dexterity and vigor, by the French ambassador
Gr6monville.l  The superiority of French diplomatists of this century over the greater part of foreign diplomatists is very striking;
they excel not only in talent, but above all in moral strength: with
foreigners, private interest, in the grossest and most shameless
form, unceasingly compromises or betrays the interests of the
State intrusted to the political agent; among Frenchmen, the
personality of the agent is ardently identified with the work undertaken, and his devotion to the State and the Prince is without
reserve; their glory is his glory, and he looks for his reward from
them alone. Happy France if the admirable school of politicians
and warriors that she possessed had been employed only to serve
a truly national system!
January 19, 1668, a secret treaty was signed at Vienna between
the King and the Emperor; Louis renewed in this the promise
that he had made to the Dutch, as to his present satisfaction. If
Spain should not grant this satisfaction before March 15, the Emperor was interdicted to succor the Catholic Netherlands; he reserved the right to succor the other Spanish possessions without
breaking with the King. If the King of Spain died without children, and the Emperor and the King or their heirs survived him,
the King or his assigns were to have Belgium, Franche-Comt6,
Navarre, Rosas in Catalonia, the penal colonies of Africa (Oran,
Melilla, Ceuta, etc.), the Two Sicilies, and the Philippines; the
Emperor was to have Spain, Navarre and Rosas excepted, with
Milanais, the penal colonies of Tuscany, the Balearic Islands, Sardinia, the Canaries, and all the West Indies. The treaty was to
be valid as long as the King of Spain, Carlos II., had not a child
six years old.2
These were, doubtless, brilliant hopes: admitting that the Spanish succession should follow the ordinary laws of inheritance, it
1 This negotiation is indeed a classic model for the instruction of diplomatists;
it is fully elaborated in Mignet, t. II. pp. 330-440.
2 See Mignet, t. II. p. 441, et seq.
VOL. I.            37




290                    LOUIS XIV.                      1668.
seemed natural that Louis XIV. should claim his share, in order to
prevent the House of Austria from regaining its former preponderance by uniting all its power on a single head, yet it was a first
deviation from true French policy. Better would have been, in the
present Belgium, even incomplete, and Franche-Comt6, than the
hope of half of an empire hypothecated on the death of another
and on uncertainty. Better would it have been, in the future, to
renounce an arbitrary aggrandizement, and, instead of disposing of
Spain without her consent, to urge her, should the case occur, to
exclude foreigners, to replace her extinct dynasty by some illegitimate branch, or by some grandee of Castile, a thought which
was entertained beyond the Pyrenees. We cannot however con-.
sider it an excessive crime in Louis XIV. to have acted as he did;
this was too far from the order of dynastic ideas in which he found
himself involved; but unhappily the secret treaty of partition was
not yet, as we shall see, the goal of his ambition.
The treaty was followed by an important concession from the
King to the Emperor. Louis postponed until May 15 the delay
fixed for Spain to accept his conditions, and promised Leopold not
to increase his immediate pretensions, whatever might be, until
that date, the events of the campaign which was about to open.
Another negotiation, no less important and destined to produce
more immediate results, had made its way into Holland simultaneously with the treaty of Vienna.
Immediately after the peace concluded with England, Holland,
again become mistress of her movements, had manifested in a very
evident manner an unfriendly disposition towards France, which
did not only proceed from the Belgian invasion, but also and above
all from the new tariff which Colbert had just laid on foreign merchandise.  She had maintained forty vessels afloat, and decreed
the levy of twenty-five thousand soldiers; and the ambassador,
Van Beuninghen, had talked openly to Lionne of a defensive coalition against France, if the King did not moderate his exactions.
Louis in fact, as we have seen, moderated them, since he almost
completely accepted the bases laid down by John De Witt. He was
astonished and angry that his acceptance was not eagerly welcomed
by Holland, and that she pretended to impose on him, besides, the
renunciation of his wife to the succession of Spain (October,
1667). De Witt did not always direct at his will the regencies
of the Dutch cities, a power more real in fact than the StatesGeneral in this federative government, and he himself moreover
was not immovable in the system of the French alliance. During




1667.         NEGOTIATIONS WITH ENGLAND.                   291
the campaign of Flanders the governor of the Catholic Netherlands having offered the United Provinces to give them in pledge
Bruges, Ostend, and other places, on condition of a considerable
loan, and an aid of troops that should be reputed disbanded from
the service of Holland, the affair had failed, not through the refusal of John De Witt, but only because the Spanish governor had
not insisted, on seeing the French pause, after the capture of Lille.
De Witt, nevertheless, strove to calm the King, and to find some
medium between French pretensions and Dutch suspicions; but
the question was soon put on different grounds by the intervention
of English diplomacy.
Louis XIV., immediately after the peace of Breda, had sent an
ambassador to London commissioned to propose to Charles II. an
offensive alliance against Spain, and to offer him as baits the promise of a commercial treaty, the abandonment of Spanish America
to the English arms, assistance, if necessary, against his rebellious
subjects; finally, subsidies and even the cession of a maritime place
in Flanders, if he would consent that Belgium should become
French (September, 1667).1   This transpired before the great
negotiation of partition was reopened with the Emperor.
Charles II., always reduced to expedients, was personally inclined to unite with Louis XIV., whose liberality he appreciated;
but around him, in his parliament, in his council itself, the old
jealousy of France predominated.  Charles did not accept; he
only offered to sell to Louis the prolongation of his neutrality for a
second year; then made overtures in his turn, not against Spain,
but against Holland. He was animated with lively resentment
against the Dutch republicans who had formerly treated him with
so little respect during his exile, and the affront which he had just
received by the invasion of the Thames had incensed him against
John De Witt (December, 1667).2 He had in reality resolved on
nothing.
Louis XIV., despite his grievances, would not consent to break
with Holland, so long as she had not violated the compact of 1662.
Charles II. had not even waited for Louis's reply to turn again
to Holland; he had kept up a double negotiation with France
and the United Provinces, without perhaps really knowing himself
which of the two he would deceive. The Dutch agents in England,
1 Lionne had advised the King to offer Ostend and Nieuwpoort, which is surprising on the part of so able a politician. See Mignet, t. II. p. 505.
2 See the curious details given in the leinoires de Gourville; ap. Collect. Michaud, 8d ser. t. V. p. 544.




292                     LOUIS XIV.                     1668.
since the peace, had unceasingly urged Charles to join Holland to
interpose between France and Spain, and Charles had answered
their importunities by despatching to the Hague, in December, a
diplomatist exceedingly hostile to the French interests, Sir William
Temple, who went so far as to propose to John De Witt an offensive alliance between England and Holland for the protection of
Belgium. De Witt appeared little disposed to so extreme a measure, and more inclined to a defensive alliance, Temple went to
London to obtain full powers, returned with them in the beginning
of January, and engaged in the conferences the ambassador from
Sweden in Holland. January 23, 1668, a treaty was signed at the
Hague between the English ambassador and the seven commissioners of secret affairs, presided over by the Grand Pensionary of
Holland. England and Holland agreed in this to demand of the
King of France: 1st, to pledge himself to peace with Spain, provided that she ceded to him the places which he had conquered, or
the equivalent already demanded by him; 2d, to grant a truce to
the Catholic Netherlands till the end of May. England and Holland engaged to secure to the King of France the aforesaid satisfaction. In consideration of this engagement, they were to dispose
the King of France to bear arms no longer against the Netherlands,
and to leave to them the care of obliging Spain to yield. The peace
which was to be concluded between France and Spain was to be
guaranteed both by England and the United Provinces, and by the
Emperor and all the other neighboring kings and princes, with a
pledge of a general expedition against the one of the two parties
which-should infringe upon the peace.
The agreements had been skilfully drawn up by De Witt;
Louis XIV. had no reason to complain; at least in this sense, that
they granted him all he had asked, and that they no longer demanded the renunciation of the Queen; but at the same time they
entangled him in such a manner as to interdict to him any new
enterprise, at least as long as the King of Spain should live.
By secret articles, England and Holland agreed to make war on
Louis XIV. if he should retract, and assumed to compel him to
make peace without Portugal, in case Spain should insist on this
point.
The same day, the ambassador of Sweden in Holland acceded
to the Anglo-Batavian alliance; a grave fact, which seemed to
unsettle the bases of European policy, founded forty years before
on the union of France and Sweden.l
1 Mignet, t. II. pp. 495-557. tEuvres de Louis XIV. t. II. pp. 326, 360, 437, et seq..
La Neuville, t. III. p. 315.




1668.               FRANCHE-COMTE.                      293
The news of the treaty of the Hague found Louis XIV. ready
to mount his horse to return to the field. The Governor of the
Catholic Netherlands had cared little for the new truce solicited
for him by the mediating powers, and had pretended that the winter would give him this truce in spite of the French. Louis XIV.
prepared an overwhelming answer to this bravado.  Without
knowing yet what had passed at the Hague, he had just addressed
to the Pope, the King of England, the German princes, and Sweden, the same promise as to the Emperor; namely, the promise not
to increase his pretensions, whatever might be the success of his
arms; but he was by no means disposed to leave to others the care
of constraining Spain. Only he prepared, this time, to deal his
blows elsewhere than in Belgium, still less through circumspection'
towards Holland and the German princes of the Rhine than the
hope of a more brilliant and above all more rapid success. The
ministers, who desired to counterbalance the influence of Turenne
by recalling on the stage the great Cond6, kept in the background
since his return from exile, had contributed to suggest to the King
a project which made Cond6, in some sort, his obligatory lieutenant. The attack on Franche-Comt6 had therefore been resolved
on, and the preparations had been confided to Cond6, as governor
of Burgundy.
Franche-Comt6, as we have had occasion to point out more than
once in this history, was in quite an exceptional position among
the Spanish provinces. The Spanish government treated Belgium
much more circumspectly than Milan or Naples, Franche-Comt6
much more than Belgium. The position of Franche-Comt6, completely separated from the rest of the monarchy and enclosed within
foreign territory, had compelled this government to concede everything to it in order that it might have nothing to gain from a
change of state. Spain possessed it less than she prevented France
from possessing it; the inhabitants, instead of money and soldiers,
furnished little to the Spanish government but diplomatic agents,
functions for which they displayed an especial vocation.1  The
authority of the Governor-General of the Netherlands, under
whose jurisdiction they were, was almost nominal among them;
the real power, limited moreover by municipal liberties, was
shared, or rather contended for, between the governor of the
province, taken from among the Comtois noblemen, and the parlia1 The gratuity of the States of the province to the Catholic king did not exceed
200,000 livres for three years. See Pellisson, Histoire de Louis X/V. t. II. p. 261.
Indeed, the salt works yielded largely.




294                     LOUIS XIV.                     1668.
ment of Dole, which did on a small scale what the parliament of
Paris had sought to do on a large one —administered. The parliamentary oligarchy had gained a continually increasing preponderance both over the governor and the Triennial Estates of the
province. Scarcely any regular troops, except the slender garrisons at Dole, Gray, Besan;on, and in a few mountain forts; behind
these few soldiers from eight to nine thousand bourgeois militia and
a few hundred gentlemen of the arriare-ban, - such were the defensive resources. The state of the places had been reconnoitred a
little in advance: Prince de Cond6 apprised the King that fourteen
thousand men and ten siege guns would be sufficient, provided the
attack took place unexpectedly. Louis left to the Prince the whole
conduct of the affair. Cond6 amused the governor and Comtois
parliament with the hope that the King would consent to the renewal of their ancient neutrality, in consideration of a large sum
of money, as was practised in the preceding war. Other artifices
diverted the attention of the Swiss, who regarded Franche-Comt6
almost with the same eye as the Dutch regarded Belgium, and
who, the year before, had nearly promised to send an army to the
assistance of the people of Franche-Comt6 in case of invasion.
During this time, from eighteen thousand to twenty thousand soldiers defiled towards Burgundy, from different sides and on different pretexts; munitions of war and provisions were accumulated
with little noise. The Marquis d'Yenne, governor of FrancheComt6, and the parliament of Dole, preserved their incredible
security until the eve of the invasion.
Suddenly, February 2, the King set out from Saint-Germain at
ffull speed with all the militant portion of his court, travelled eighty
leagues in five days through mist and sleet, and reached Dijon on
the 7th. Cond6 had not waited for him. Informed that the governor and parliament of Franche-Comt6, at last shaking off their
torpor, had convoked the militia and arriere-ban for the 8th, and
sent to implore assistance in Switzerland, Cond6 had assumed the
offensive on the 3d with what troops he had at hand. The French
troops crossed the frontier, accompanied with a proclamation summoning the inhabitants to submit to the King as their lawful sovereign. From the 3d to the 4th, a detachment, setting out from
Auxonne, occupied the posts of Pesmes-sur-l'Oignon and Rochefort-sur-le-Doubs, in order to intercept communication between
Gray, Dole, and Besangon; another corps, setting out from Chalons,
took possession of Bletterans, Poligny, and Arbois, places without
defence; the province was thus cut in two, and the assembling of




1668.           CAPITULATION  OF BESAN9ON.                       295
the militia rendered impossible. The 5th, Cond6 entered Comt6
in person by Auxonne, despatched the Duke de Luxembourg'
against Salins, and marched straight to Besangon, leaving Dole
hemmed in by a few posts. Though Dole was the capital of the
province, Besangon was its most important town by its population
and by its site, which makes it the key of the Jura. Cond6, all
his detachments distributed through the country, had not two
thousand men with him when he summoned this great city to surrender on the evening of February 6.
The situation of Besan~on was as peculiar among the towns of
Franche-Comt6 as was the situation of Franche-Comt6 among the
Spanish possessions. Besan(on, a free and imperial city, had never
submitted to the suzerainty of the Counts of Burgundy; it had
preserved until recently, on one hand, very democratic municipal
institutions;2 on the other, full independence towards the governors and parliament of Dole, recognizing the King of Spain heir
of the Counts of Burgundy, only as a protector voluntarily chosen.3
This state of things, however, had been modified within a few
years, the Emperor and the Germanic Diet having, in 1651, transferred to the Catholic king the right of sovereignty over Besan9on,
as an indemnity for the losses suffered by Spain in the Thirty
Years' War; and the city, after a long resistance, had finally consented to this change, provided its independence de facto was not
affected.
Besangon sought to lay claim to neutrality, by arguing its ancient
title of imperial city. Cond6 replied that it had lost it, which was
true, and summoned it to recognize the King of France on the
same conditions on which it had recognized the King of Spain;
otherwise, an assault would be made the same night on the beautiful quarter Outre-Doubs.  The city was ill fortified; those formidable rocks, which were one day to be its strength, were its
1. This was the Count de Montmorenci-Bouteville, who had been Cond's companion in exile; he had married the heiress of the Dukes de Luxembourg-Pinei, and
the King had authorized him to revive the title, which he was destined to render
illustrious by great military renown.
2 The seven bannieres or parishes appointed annually, without any condition of
eligibility, twenty-eight councillors, who chose in turn fourteen governors; the latter
decided trifling affairs by themselves alone, and important ones with the twentyeight. In extraordinary cases, reference was made to a general assembly of citizens. This maintenance of communal democracy was remarkable, the greater
part of the imperial cities having turned to oligarchy.
3 The rights of the protector consisted in giving a president to the fourteen governors for judicial affairs, and in appointing the commandant of a hundred soldiers
who guarded the ramparts.




296                     LOUIS XIV.                      1668.
weakness, not being enclosed within the defences of the place.
The partisans of France insinuated that, if the French were received amicably, the King might transfer to Besangon the parliament of Dole, the object of Bisontin jealousy. In short, they
capitulated, contenting themselves with adding to the conditions
laid down by Cond6 that the King should leave to Besangon the
holy winding-sheet, a relic celebrated in local tradition, and should
not introduce liberty of conscience into the city. The Spaniards,
who had been unable to establish their political supremacy in
Besangon, had infiltrated it with their religious fanaticism, and
Besangon had accepted the Inquisition, rejected by all the subjects
of Spain.
Salins and its forts, so difficult of approach, surrendered the same
day, after a few volleys of artillery. The most evident revenue
derived from Franche-Comte by the Catholic king proceeded from
the rich salt springs which had given their name to this city, and
belonged almost entirely to the domain of the crown.
The King and Cond6 rejoined each other, February 9, before
Dole, with the main body of the French forces. This capital of
Comt6 was neither completely provisioned nor garrisoned. Nevertheless, proud of the siege which it had formerly sustained against
the father himself of the great Condd, and counting on its walls,
fortified with strong bastions by Charles V., it appeared resolved
not to follow the example of its rival Besangon. The first summons was not heeded.  The place had scarcely any outworks;
during the night of the lO0th-l1th, the besiegers pushed straight to
the counterscarp, lodged themselves there in full force, and opened
the trenches. The next day, Count de Gramont, brother of the
Marshal, a man of shrewd and subtile mind, under an air of goodnature, introduced himself into the place by a true comedy stratagem, officiously put himself in communication with the parliament
and municipal council, and exhausted all his Gascon wit to persuade them to surrender. The picture which he drew of the
horrors of a city taken by assault did not seem to move them overmuch; but when he threatened them with seeing their parliament
and all their privileges transferred to Besangon, the Dolese melted.
On the 13th, the place was surrendered on condition of the maintenance of all the privileges. The 14th, the King made his entry,
and swore to maintain the franchises of the city and the province
as Count Palatine of Burgundy. The parliament of Dole launched
a decree against the rebels who should refuse to submit to the Most
Christian King.




1668.         FRANCHE-COMTt CONQUERED.                  297
The 15th, Gray was invested, and the King marched thither the
16th. He was informed on the way that a hundred and twenty
soldiers of the garrison of Salins had secured the capitulation of
the impregnable fort Joux, in which the governor of FrancheComtd, the Marquis d'Yenne, had shut himself up with four or five
hundred men. All the small towns and mountain strongholds were
subjected without striking a blow. The governor of Comt6 came
to the King before Gray, and received from him the brevet of
lieutenant-general with the continuance of the pensions which he
received from the King of Spain. The Marquis d'Yenne was
accompanied by the envoy whom Comte had sent to Switzerland
to ask assistance, and who, instead of accomplishing his mission,
hastened to range himself on the side of fortune. This was a certain Abbe de Vatteville, brother of that Spanish ambassador to
London, who had raised the question of precedence against France
with so much zeal and so little success. This Abb6, one of the
most singular personages of the epoch, had been, first, colonel in
Spain, then Carthusian at Paris, then Mussulman at Constantinople; absolved by the Pope and the Catholic king for his apostasy
and for two or three murders, he had reentered the Church, and
aspired to the grand deanery of the chapter of Besangon, a dignity
which was a species of coadjutorship of the archbishopric.  He
purchased the King's protection by a signal service.  Drawing
with him the Marquis d'Yenne, he entered Gray and determined
the citizens to capitulate, in spite of the commandant of the place
(February 18-19). The neighboring cities immediately sent their
keys to the King.
All Franche-Comt6 was subjected in a fortnight! The great
Conde had gloriously repaired the evil that he had done before to
France, as Louis XIV. knew so well how to tell him, by giving
him both Burgundies, at last reunited, to govern.1
The lack of resistance, there still more than in Flanders, had,
much better than manifestoes, legitimized the invasion, and attested
that there existed no more obstacles within to the territorial unity
of ancient Gaul.
These obstacles were without: among jealous neighbors, who
desired that France should remain smaller than Gaul; they were
also in the secret ambition of the King of France, whom Gaul did
not satisfy, and who sacrificed the present to proud dreams of the
future.
1 See the interesting relation of this campaign in the Histoire de Louis XIV., by
Pellisson, t. II.. VI.; t. III. 1.  II.
VOL. I.        38




298                       LOUIS XIV.                          1668.
On his return from  Franche-Comt4, Louis XIV. received the
official communication of the treaty of the Hague through two
ambassadors extraordinary of England and Holland, Van Beuninghen and Trevor (March 5); the King of Sweden had not yet ratified the treaty, and his ratification did not take place till May 5.
The astounding conquest of a great province in a fortnight had
intoxicated the youth who surrounded the King. They exclaimed
that it was necessary to break off negotiations, and to finish in a
campaign the work so well begun. The question of war was
warmly discussed around the King between the generals and the
ministers.1 The partisans of war represented the flourishing state
of the army, which, in a few weeks, would be in a condition to
invade, by a triple irruption, what remained to Spain of Belgium.
Neither England, nor Sweden, nor the German princes, nor Holland herself, in spite of all the stir that she made, was ready to
succor effectively the governor of the Netherlands. All Belgium
would be won at a stroke, and afterwards it would not be easy to
regain it.
All this was true; but it was too late to put a question settled in
advance. The engagements which the King had contracted with
the mediating powers, in view of his secret bargain with the Emperor, were too solemn for him to be able to violate them without
placing himself, in some sort, outside the law of nations.
Louis maintained, therefore, the alternative which he had offered
to Spain, but without accepting the conditions which the confederates of the Hague sought to impose on him. One of the difficulties between them and him had been just removed by the defection of Portugal, which, in the sequel of a palace revolution, had
treated with Spain, without France, through the mediation of
England (February 13, 1668).2 Louis had no occasion, therefore,
to occupy himself longer with Portugal; Spain had herself made
the sacrifice which he demanded in this respect, by signing a peace
with the House of Braganza after twenty-eight years' strife. There
remained the condition of no longer carrying the war into the
1 It is not correct, as has been everywhere repeated, that all the generals were on
one side, and all the politicians on the other; for Turenne, the year before, had
declared himself in favor of a compromise, although he was ignorant of the negotiations pending between the King and the Emperor. See (Euvres de Louis XIV.
t. II. p. 443.
2 The King Alphonso VI., a sort of furious madman, had been deposed and
imprisoned by a universal conspiracy of his subjects, headed by his wife and his
brother, who obtained a dispensation from the Pope to marry each other, under the
pretext of the impotence of Alphonso; although the latter, it is said, had natural
children.




1668.         TREATY OF AIX-LA-CHAPELLE.                299
Netherlands, and of resigning them to the Confederates, if Spain
did not accord satisfaction. Louis unequivocally refused this point;
but he consented to a new truce till the end of May, and a congress was opened at Aix-la-Chapelle. This was little else than an
act of courtesy towards the new Pope, Clement IX., a pontiff as.well disposed to France as his predecessor had been hostile, and
towards the German princes of the Rhine; "the nuncio was a
phantom of an arbiter among phantoms of plenipotentiaries." 1 All
was settled, not at Aix-la-Chapelle, but at Saint-Germain, between
France, England, and Holland. The governor of the Catholic
Netherlands, invested with full powers by Spain, and warmly
pressed by England and Holland, had signified that he would accept the first condition of the alternative presented by the King of
France; Castel-Rodrigo still hoped that Louis would retract, and
that the Confederates of the Hague would then intervene in favor
of Spain. The conclusion of a preliminary treaty, signed at Saint
Germain, April 15, taught him that Louis was sincere. Louis, by
this treaty, declared himself satisfied with the places conquered in
the campaign of 1667, provided that Spain should ratify the peace
before May 31.  England and Holland pledged themselves to
turn their arms against Spain in case of refusal; Louis reserved
the right, in this event, of attacking Belgium, a number of places
bordering on the United Provinces excepted.
Spain resigned herself; the definitive treaty was signed at Aixla-Chapelle, May 2.  Spain ceded to France, on the Samnbre,
Charleroi, on the Dender, Ath, and between these two places,
Binche, which connected them with each other; on the Scheldt
and the Scarpe, Douai, Tournay, and Audenarde; on the Lys
and the Deule, Lille, Armentieres, and Courtrai; near the sea,
Bergues and Fumes. France was thus established in the heart of
Belgium, clasping, as in a vice, Cambrai, Valenciennes, and Mons
on one side, Saint-Omer, Aire, and Ypres on the other, and able
to push forward in a moment to the gates of Bruges, Ghent, and
Antwerp. It was through a despairing policy that Castel-Rodrigo
had preferred this course to the cession of Luxembourg or of
Franche-Comt6, and a few places lost amidst French garrisons, such
as Saint-Omer and Cambrai. The less the remains of Belgium
could be henceforth defended by Spain, the more he thought to
oblige the powers jealous of France to defend these remains.2
It was stipulated, by the treaty, that the parties should preserve
1 Voltaire, Siecle de Louis XIV. c. 9.
2 Dumont, Corps diplomatique, t. VII. p. 88.




300                       LOUIS XIV.                        1668.
their respective rights and pretensions,- a most important clause,
by which Louis XIV. implicitly maintained the invalidity of the
queen's renunciation.
The French therefore once more surrendered Franche-Comt6,
so easily conquered, but they left it in such a condition that Spain
would have great difficulty to prevent them from retaking it whenever it should seem good to them. They left Gray, Dole, and
several mountain fortresses dismantled, a good understanding
established with part of the leading men of the province, and the
conviction in the minds of the people that it was impossible sooner
or later to escape French rule.
Louis XIV., while he demolished the ramparts of the places
which he was obliged to surrender, strongly fortified those which
he had gained. Thousands of workmen labored incessantly for
several years on tile whole frontier of France and Brabant. Ath,
the central post in Belgium, was surrounded by nine large bastions.
New walls, a citadel, and three forts, rendered Dunkirk almost
impregnable. Douai was protected by outworks. Citadels were
erected at Arras, that conquest of Richelieu which had paved the
way for the conquests of Louis XIV. at Tournay and Lille. The
citadel of Lille, by the greatness of its proportions and the skilful
contrivance of its means of defence, has remained the very type
of the art of fortification.1
The engineer who labored to render these cities impregnable
was the same who had contributed most to take them. It was that
Vauban who had changed the system of sieges and, in great part,
the general system of war, by the invention of ricochet firing,
a kind of firing which in a few hours batters down small places,
before capable of arresting a large army for whole weeks.2 Having thus secured the fall of small places, he now strengthened the
defence of large ones by another invention, that of flank fortifications, the ultimate consequence of the discovery of gunpowder.
The principal end of the defence, during antiquity and the Middle
Ages, had been to present the greatest possible obstacles to scaling
by the elevation of the towers and ramparts; now it was to present at once the greatest thickness and least surface possible to the
shot. Already the bastions, the curtains, the half-moons of the
1 Pellisson, Histoire de Louis XIV. t. III. p. 85.
2 Ricochet firing takes the bastions obliquely instead of in front. In a few hours,
the angles of the bastions give way, and assault is rendered practicable. But this
firing is only possible against small places. In large ones, the line of prolongation
of the works taking the direction of the neighboring works, and not on the field, the
besieger cannot take a flank position.




1668.             VAUBAN AND COLBERT.                       801
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had diminished greatly in height,
in comparison with the donjons of former times, and the use of earthworks had commenced. Vauban went further, and put the fortifications almost on a level with the ground.  The principles of the
defence of places did not change from the time of this great man
to the modifications proposed by the illustrious Carnot.1
It was not only by military works that Louis XIV. and his ministers strove definitively to secure to France her new conquests,
but also by the enlightened protection which was accorded to the
interests of the conquered peoples. It had been impossible to prevent a few manufacturers of cloths, terrified by the tumult of arms,
from carrying their industry to England, but everything was done
to hinder the manufactures of Lille, Tournay, Courtrai, and Ath,
which exported large quantities of merchandise to Spain for that
country and for the West Indies, from declining under the new
rule. Colbert took excellent measures that the tranfsit of the merchandise exported from French and even Spanish Flanders, by sea
to Spain and by land to Italy, should be effected through France.
Not only was this transit declared free, but the minister aided the
undertakers of French transportation, by counsels, information, and
premiums, to supplant foreigners. The merchandise of French
Flanders, destined for the consumption of France, was subjected
only to the tariff of 1664, while foreigners and provinces " treated
as foreign countries" 2 were subjected to the tariff of 1667.
The population, somewhat difficult to manage, but laborious,
energetic, and frank, speedily appreciated the wisdom and integrity of the great minister. It is related that, when a French
intendant was installed in Flanders, " the first time he appeared
in the public square an honest citizen clapped him on the shoulder;' Sir,' said he,' don't finesse with us.' The advice appeared good
to M. de Souzi; he followed it, and did as he liked." 3
This intendant, Pelletier de Souzi, was one of the most distinguished agents of Colbert.
A superior court of justice, under the title of Sovereign Council,
was established at Tournay by edict of November 25, 1668; the
King erected it into a parliament in 1686.
Nothing was neglected that Flanders might become as French
as the oldest provinces of France.
1 It is curious to observe, that, at this epoch, so glorious to French engineers,
engineering was not yet made a special arm of the service. Vauban had a position
in the French Guards. The first special artillery corps was organized meanwhile
under the title of The Regiment of Fusileers, afterwards, Royal Artillery.
2 See Vol. II.
8 Forbonnais, Histoire des finances de France, t. 1. pp. 367, 411-415, 437-440.




302                        LOUIS XIV.                          1668.
SECTION II. -- PROJECTS AGAINST HOLLAND.
1668-1672.
THE first period of the diplomatic and military history of Louis
XIV. closes with the treaty that terminated the War of the Queen's.Rights: this war was only an additional step in the path of the
national policy traced out by the predecessors of the Great King.
A new era is about to open, in which we shall no longer recognize the past maxims but exceptionally, and in which Louis XIV.
is about to throw aside the compass which guided the ship of France
with so much safety, to follow no other guides than his passion and
his fortune.
The last events had finally annihilated the ancient French sympathy for Holland, greatly shaken since the Dutch defection of
1648. The resentment against this unfaithful ally, lively in the
active and militant part of the nation, had reached the point of
exasperation in the household of the King, who was not ignorant
of the secret clauses of the treaty of the Hague. Louis, who had
laid down his arms much less before the Confederates of the Hague
than before the future succession of Spain, bore malice towards
Holland, not so much for having really arrested his steps as for
having boasted of it. Pride turned the head of this little republic,
which vaunted of having overthrown the Spanish Colossus, saved
Denmark from the blows of Sweden, conquered, or at least counterbalanced, England, set bounds to the conquests of France, and
drawn within her hands three fourths of European commerce
and navigation.l  John De Witt himself did not enjoy his glory
with sufficient modesty. It was much worse around him. The
"Holland Gazette " was inexhaustible in triumphant hyperboles.
Medals, the haughty devices of which the Roman republic might
have claimed, were struck to teach posterity the greatness of Holland. Such was that which bore the inscription which has remained famous: 
Assertis legibus, emendatis sacris, adjutis, defensis, conciliatis regibus, vindicata marium libertate, pace egregia virtute armorum partq, stabilita orbis Europaei quiete, numisma hoc Status Fcederati Belgii cudi fecerunt. CIDIDCLXVIII.2
1 Money abounded to such a degree in Holland, that capital stood at three per
cent., while Colbert, who had put the legal interest at five per cent. in France,
could not maintain it thus as soon as there was a serious war.
2 For laws saved, for religion purified, for kings succored, defended, reconciled,
for seas affianchised, for a glorious peace conquered by force of arms, for the
repose of Europe strengthened, the States of the United Provinces have caused
this medal to be struck.




1668.                  DUTCH MEDALS.                       303
It must, however, be admitted, that of all the powers to which
this device alluded, France had the least cause to complain, and
that the revendication of the liberty of the seas well merited some
indulgence for the rest.
Much has been said, indeed, of another medal which would
have been an insulting allusion to the device of Louis XIV. It
represented, it is said, Joshua stopping the sun, with the inscription, In conspectu mea stetit sol.  The new  Joshua could have
been no other than the Amsterdam burgomaster, Van Beuninghen,
ambassador to France, who had notified tile King of the treaty of
the Hague. It is more than doubtful whether this medal ever
existed. Be it as it may, Van Beuninghen, as soon as he knew
that he was accused of it, vindicated himself from such an extravagance to the King. Louis accepted his explanations, and the official historiographer of the King, Pellisson, expressly acknowledges
that the Dutch ambassador was not " the author of the device."
Exaggerated importance has therefore been attached to this incident. The only truth in it is that Van Beuninghen, by the
rigidity of his manners, very different from the conciliating demeanor of John De Witt, had often repelled the King and
Colbert.'
Wounded self-love was far from being the only motive that
urged Louis XIV. against Holland. Louis was convinced that it
was necessary to overthrow Holland to possess Belgium, and that,
consequently, it was necessary to appear momentarily to forget the
end in order to be able to rid himself of the obstacle.2 He could,
therefore, strictly speaking, fancy that he still pursued the old
plans, and that he only changed the means of French policy; but
passion would speedily make him take the means for the end.
This passion, born of diplomatic grievances, was fed and envenomed by the antagonism offered by the institutions, the principles,
the creeds of the French and Dutch governments; it was not only
the unfaithful ally, it was the republican and Protestant nation, it
was the centre of political and religious liberty 3 that Louis hated
with increasing hatred, in proportion as his monarchy became systematized more clearly in his brain.
Dating from the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, the ruin of Holland
1 Mignet, t. III. p. 589; Pellisson, t. III. p. 61.
2 Mignet, t. III. p. 665.
8 Arminian tolerance had prevailed over Gomarist fanaticism, and no Christian
country had as yet accorded to ideas so free an expansion, although Gomarism still
succeeded at times in raising up storms against the philosophers.




304                         LOUIS XIV.                     1670-1672.
became, therefore, the fixed idea of the King.  The commercial
war, so well conducted by Colbert with his tariffs and differential
duties, was no longer enough; it was a war of invasion and conquest that Louis meditated, and there is no reason to doubt that
this idea belonged to him alone. Only it is evident that Louvois
and his father Le Tellier did not fail to applaud and urge on projects which must increase the importance of the ministry of war.
As to Lionne, more eminent in intellect than in character, he tractably served the idea of the King, perhaps with tile hope of moderating it at the decisive moment.   Colbert himself could not
escape this necessity, although a direct and territorial attack against
Holland would naturally compromise all his arrangements and
policy. He followed the movement which he could not openly
oppose without destroying himself; he even made his brother the
principal agent of the King's external diplomacy, doubtless also
with the concealed thought of striving to modify the disposition
of the King and preventing the struggle from proceeding to the
last extremity, which was impossible.l
It would be unjust to lay on Colbert's memory the responsibility
of errors which he had not the power to spare France. From
about 16G7, we see that beneficent preponderance which made
the comptroller-general almost a prime minister, weaken, then
disappear. The pride of supreme authority rendered Louis more
and more suspicious, and the fear, not of being, - he did not believe it possible, —but of appearing to be governed, beset him
unceasingly. Louis was inclined to counterbalance, by a young
minister whom he claimed to have formed,2 the statesman whom
he had received ripe from the hands of Mazarin. Letters have
been preserved, dated April 24-26, 1671, in which Louis rudely
rebukes Colbert for his pretensions to domineer over his fellows,
and gives him to understand that he must confine himself within
his special functions. He softens this reprimand by a few friendly
words, and assures Colbert that he values his services; "but," he
1 M. P. Clement, in his Histoire de Colbert (p. 335), concludes from letters in which
this minister expresses indignation against Holland, that Colbert had urged the war.
The deduction does not appear to us sufficiently established. It was with other
weapons that Colbert had commenced and would have continued to fight; at all
events, if he had been master, it is certain that he would have done everything to
prevent a quarrel with Holland from becoming a European war. M. Joubleau goes
so far as to pretend that the war with Holland was only a war of tariffs. Louis XIV.
was certainly impelled by quite different motives!
2 Louvois, born in January, 1641, was but two years and some months younger
than the King. He united the Superintendence of Posts to the Ministry of War
in 1668.




1668.          LOUIS XIV. AND CHARLES II.                305
adds, " it is necessary to render them as I desire, and to believe
that I do everything for the best." 1
It was necessary to believe in the infallibility of the monarch,
or to renounce serving France! Louis once engaged in a new
policy, Colbert was to confine himself to seeking the means least
onerous to the country to satisfy the exigencies of the King.
" All that the efforts of ambition and human prudence could do
to lay the foundation for the destruction of a nation, Louis XIV.
did." 2 Diplomatic strategy was displayed on a vast scale in order
to isolate and hem in Holland. Louis, who had been unable to
make Europe accept the conquest of Belgium by France, hoped to
induce Europe to see without trembling the fall of Holland!
To dissuade the Emperor and the German princes from joining
the Triple Alliance formed by England, Holland, and Sweden,
and to dissolve the Triple Alliance itself by turning England and
Sweden against Holland, - such was the plan pursued with prodigious perseverance and ability by Louis XIV. and his agents.
The knotty point of the question was above all at London.
Louis desired, at any cost, the English alliance against the Dutch,
but he hesitated about the manner of entering into a negotiation
which demanded so much secrecy. Charles II. anticipated him,
by causing him to be assured of his desire to be closely allied to
him, and this immediately after the signature of the treaty of
April 15 (April 23, 1668). The English monarch insinuated to
the King of France that he had been drawn into the Triple Alliance in his own defence by the Dutch, while in reality it was
from the English ambassador that the propositions most hostile to
France in the negotiation of the Hague had emanated. Charles
II. hated the Dutch as much as did Louis XIV., only with the
inferiority of consistency and energy comporting with his nature.
If we are to believe the Memoirs of Gourville,3 the treaty of the
Hague was, in the idea of the King of England, but a vast snare
spread for John de Witt, and Charles II. had foreseen and counted
on taking advantage of the rancor of Louis XIV. against the head
of the Dutch republic.
Be this as it may, Louis, who confided little in the English ministers, advanced with circumspection towards the object of his most
ardent desires, and attempted to lead the negotiation into some
1 Documents historiques, etc., published by M. Champollion-Figeac, t. II. p. 519, in
the Recueil des Documents inedits, etc.
2 Voltaire, Siecle de Louis XIV. c. 10.
3 Collect. Michaud, third series, t. V. p. 544.
VOL. I.          39




306                     LOUIS XIV.                     1668.
other direction than that of official diplomacy; at the same time
that he dispatched to London, as ambassador, Colbert de Croissi,
brother of the comptroller-general, he employed as intermediate
agent his own sister-in-law, the sister of Charles II., the charming
and witty Duchess of Orleans, who had retained much influence
over Charles (July, 1668).
The great statesman who directed Holland could not, however,
conceal the formidable resentments which menaced his country.
De Witt endeavored to disarm Louis XIV. by all sorts of advances.
He prevented Spain from being received into the Triple Alliance;
he proposed to France to join with Holland to force the English
to renounce the pretended sovereignty of their flag on the Channel. He offered Louis to cause Holland to recognize his rights to
the succession of Spain, provided that Belgium should be erected
into a republic on the opening of the succession (May, 1668). All
was rejected, while maintaining, notwithstanding, some show of
negotiation to amuse the Dutch. De Witt, responding to the
secret thoughts of the King, strove to demonstrate to Louis that
Belgium would be worth more to France, as to Holland, independent, than shared with the English, but Louis was determined to
listen to nothing. The secret of the King's soul escapes in a despatch from the minister Lionne to the ambassador of France in
Holland, on the occasion of the attempts of John de Witt to regulate the contingencies of the succession of Spain between the King
and the Emperor: -" It does not belong to merchants, who are
themselves usurpers, sovereignly to decide the interests of the two
greatest monarchs of Christendom." 1
Louis XIV. is found entire in this outburst of royal pride repeated by his minister. The Dutch were in his eyes only merchants, the usurpers of their own liberty conquered from their
legitimate master, Philip II.!
Matters, however, were not advancing rapidly at London.
Charles II., after going in advance of Louis XIV., seemed disposed to draw back. Shrewd and sagacious, but skeptical, careless, easily discouraged, as much disgusted with business as L )uis
was with love, Charles was drawn in contrary directions by two
ministers, Buckingham, favorable to the French alliance, and Arlington, who inclined to Holland. Arlington, more laborious and
adroit, had gained some advantage over his rival, and, at the moment when the French ambassador, Colbert de Croissi, reached
England, he had just dispatched to the Hague Sir William
1 Mignet, t. III. pp. 37, 583, 601.




1668.          LOUIS XIV. AND CHARLES II.                 307
Temple, the negotiator of the Triple Alliance, charged to rivet this
compact and to strive to draw into it the Emperor, the Empire,
and Switzerland. Croissi found, as to a project against Holland,
only evasive words from the King and opposition from Arlington.
Louis XIV. continued, however, to negotiate a commercial treaty
ardently desired by England, in order to follow this negotiation by
another, —for instance, a commercial and maritime alliance in
both Indies against the Dutch. Charles II. makes some exceedingly characteristic reflections on this subject in a letter to his
sister, the Duchess of Orleans:" My disposition is still the same," writes he, "but there are
two impediments to a perfect union.  The first is the great care
which France is now taking to create a commerce and to be an
imposing maritime power.  This is so great a cause for suspicion
with us, who can possess importance only by our commerce and
our naval forces, that every step which France takes in this path
will perpetuate the jealousy between the two nations; it will be a
great obstacle to the establishment of wholly amicable relations." 1
The financial distress of Charles II. brought him back to Louis
XIV., from whom he hoped to draw large sums. Parliament was
becoming less liberal; the annual revenue of the English king,
when there were no extraordinary subsidies, did not exceed
~1,030,000 (13,390,000 francs, or a little more than twenty-six
millions of the present time); the net revenue of the King of
France exceeded, at this moment, sixty million francs (one hundred and twenty millions of the present time), and his gross
revenue one hundred million francs; the treasure of Louis XIV.
was therefore the El Dorado towards which were extended the
eager hands of all the needy princes of Europe.
The Duke of Buckingham, affecting great zeal for Louis XIV.,
insinuated to him that he ought to send Madame Henrietta (the
Duchess of Orleans) to England, to gain over Charles II. Louis
could not immediately follow this advice, but did not forget it.
Buckingham professed greatly to desire the French alliance; but
one of the conditions which he did not fear to enounce was the
suspension of the maritime armaments of France (NovemberDecember, 1668).
Thus the jealous idea of the great English politicians, of Elizabeth and Cromwell, was found again faithfully in the feeble Stuarts and their frivolous ministers; an invariable idea that belonged
not to such or such a government, but to a whole people. France,
1 Mignet, t. III. p. 50, Letter of the 2d of September, 1668.




308                      LOUIS XIV.                     1669.
according to this idea, which has reigned on the other side of the
Channel for centuries, - France can be the friend of England only
when she turns her back on her two seas, and leaves her roads and
harbors empty.
Louis XIV. was not disposed to buy British friendship at such a
price; but he should have understood that France, whose interests
and ideas are so complex, and who cannot, like her rival, fix her
eyes exclusively and continually upon the ocean, had the greatest
interest in maintaining on her coasts, to aid her in counterbalancing
this nation of sailors, a small nation exclusively devoted to navigation like the Dutch; that she might indeed reduce Holland, but
not destroy it without madness.
Nothing turned Louis from his implacable design. He rejected
the arrogant pretension of the English, but continued the negotiations. He employed singular means to act on the mind of
Charles II., who had little belief in religion, but much in the occult sciences; he sent him an astrologer in the capacity of diplomatic agent.  Unfortunately the drawer of horoscopes spoiled
everything by predictions on the wrong side. Scenes took place
that were truly laughable.1
Incidents more serious, which took place in the private life of
the House of Stuart, better served the plans of Louis XIV. The
Duke James of York, who associated lax morals with devout tendencies, had been carried away by the Catholic reaction, like his
former general Turenne, and had declared to the King his brother
that he should return to the Roman Church. Charles replied that
he had the same intention, and that he designed to lead England
back to Catholicism, but that he judged it necessary to secure the
support of the King of France before engaging in this great enterprise (January 25, 1669.)
What was, at bottom, the idea of Charles II.? It was not an
easy thing to penetrate a mind so versatile and so insincere. It is
not certain indeed that Charles had any other end than to obtain as
much money from Louis XIV. as possible, then to decide according to circumstances.  Charles and his ministers were equal as
regarded morality. It was Arlington, not Buckingham, whom the
King of England took as his confidant, and Arlington, the friend
of Holland, the champion of Protestant alliances, veering about
with cynical facility, became the agent of the great intrigue which
threatened Protestantism, and which, enveloped in the profoundest mystery, was hidden for some time even from the French
1 Mignet, t. III. p. 72, et seq.




1669-1670.     LOUIS XIV. AND CHARLES II.              309
ambassador, and conducted by the medium of Madame, Henrietta.
The confidence of the Catholic projects of Charles II. was welcomed by Louis XIV: with a mixture of satisfaction and anxiety.
They involved a complication which might compromise the enterprise of Holland. Louis greatly desired that the war against the
Dutch should be entered upon by France and England before
Charles declared himself Catholic, a declaration which could not
fail to throw England into confusion and to arouse all the Protestant States.
In December, 1669, Charles II. addressed to the King of France
the plan of a treaty. Charles demanded that Louis should give
him ~200,000 before his conversion was declared, and should
secure to him besides a relief of men and money in case of rebellion. The treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle should be maintained. Should
the Spanish succession open, Louis should secure to Charles Minorca and Ostend, and should aid him to seize upon Spanish
America, in consideration of which Charles should assist Louis, at
the expense of France, in the prosecution of his rights.  They
should attack Holland and Hamburg in common. France should
pay during this war an annual subsidy of ~800,000 to England,
which should have, for its share of the conquests, the island of
Walcheren, Sluys, and Cadsand.  This war should be entered
upon when Louis XIV. desired, provided that Charles II., after
his declaration of Catholicism, should be at peace at home.1
Charles II. comported himself like a covetous mercenary, who
sets a high price on his services in order to fall. He indeed abated
greatly his monstrous pecuniary exactions; he renounced the attack on Hamburg, which had never given France any cause of
complaint, and consented that the advantages which he would
claim when the succession of Spain should open should not be fixed
at present; but Louis in his turn made very grave concessions.
A warm debate was entered into upon the question of knowing
who should command the united fleets of France and England.
Charles II. was inflexible on this point. " It is the custom of the
English," said he, "to command at sea." And he told the French
ambassador plainly, that, were he willing to yield, his subjects
would not obey him. It was agreed that the English should furnish fifty vessels, and the French only thirty; that the Duke of
York, or, in his absence, the officer bearing the admiral's flag of
England, should command the united fleets, the Vice-Admiral of
1 Mignet, t. III. p. 117.




310                      LOUIS XIV.                       1670.
France commanding in the second place, and having the precedence over the English Vice-Admiral. The absence of the Admiral of France would thus reserve the right on the question of precedence; 1 but the point in fact was yielded.'
Louis admitted much more dangerous pretensions. He consented
to promise the English Walcheren, Sluys, and Cadsand, and even,
a little later, the islands of Goree and Voorn; that is, the mouths
of the Scheldt and Meuse!.... Twenty years of warfare should
have been endured to hinder England from taking what was flung
in her face!
These negotiations have been wrongly judged. It has been
often repeated that Charles sold England to Louis XIV. This is
true only of the internal policy; Charles in fact plotted the political and religious subjugation of England with the concurrence of
a foreign power; but as to external interests, he did not sell them,
for the greater share in the profit of the ruin of the Dutch was to
revert to the English.
Louis XIV. counted, doubtless, that it would be with Walcheren
and the rest as with Dunkirk, and that some means would be found
of eluding the engagements made; but it is not justifiable to calculate on such chances. Colbert and Lionne must have suffered in
being the instruments of such a policy, although Lionne was a man
of action more than of principle!
In the spring of 1670 the bases of the compact were fixed, but
some difficulties retarded the signature, when Louis, with all his
court and household, with magnificent military paraphernalia, went
to visit his new subjects of Flanders and the works of Vauban.
The 24th of May, Madame Henrietta suddenly quitted the court
at Lille and embarked at Dunkirk for Dover, where her brother
Charles IT. awaited her. The proximity to the English coasts was
the motive assigned for this visit agreed upon for several months.
Henrietta determined Charles to sign the treaty without further
delay (June 1). The English monarch gave his sister reason to
hope that he would consent that the attack on Holland should precede his declaration of Catholicism.  This was what Louis XIV.
wished most.  The treaty, notwithstanding, far from  binding
Charles in this respect, established that, after Charles should have
made the said declaration, Louis might choose the moment for the
1 Mignet, t. III. pp. 141-160. The question of the flag was still obstinately debated.
The English desired equality in the Mediterranean, and supremacy in British waters; the French desired equality in all waters. See a letter of Colbert of July
21, 1669; ap. P. Clement, Histoire de Colbert, p. 317.




1670.              MADAME HENRIETTA.                    311
attack on Holland. Louis was to give Charles two million francs,
payable three and six months after the exchange of ratifications,
and to assist him with six thousand infantry at his expense, should
his return to Catholicism excite disturbances. Charles was to furnish Louis against Holland at least four thousand infantry. Louis
was to reinforce the English fleet with thirty vessels of at least
forty guns, and to pay Charles a subsidy of three millions annually
during the war. England was to have Walcheren, &c. They
were to come to an agreement with respect to the interests of the
Prince of Orange.1
Madame Henrietta set out on her return from Dover June 12,
carrying with her a travelling companion who, it is said, had not
been useless to the success of the royal ambassadress, and who was
not long in returning to England never more to quit it; this was
the beautiful Mademoiselle de Kerhouil, who had inspired the inflammable Charles II. with a sudden passion, and who asked nothing better than to become the Montespan of the King of England.
Charles created her Duchess of Portsmouth. Louis gratified her,
in acknowledgment of her diplomatic services, with a fine estate
revertible to the one of the natural sons of Charles'whom that
prince should designate.2
An unforeseen catastrophe burst like a thunder-clap upon the
two royal families who had just sealed the compact of Dover.
The household of the brother of Louis XIV. had long been
troubled by domestic storms. The charming and brilliant Henrietta, so adored by the court, so esteemed by the King, who confided
to her the most secret springs of his policy, inspired her husband
only with antipathy, an effeminate, capricious prince, as mediocre in
mind as in heart, whose puerile and eccentric habits aroused suspicions of shameful inclinations. Dissatisfied with his brother, who,
through firmly fixed principles of conduct, refused him all provincial government, jealous of his wife, less on account of the
homage which she received than of the credit which she possessed
and which he did not share, Monsieur was abandoned to unworthy
creatures who unceasingly excited him against Henrietta.  The
King had recently interfered in these family quarrels by imprisoning, then exiling the Chevalier de Lorraine, the favorite of Monsieur, who had raised a desperate clamor on this account. Subsequently, the King had had great difficulty in obliging his brother
to let Madame Henrietta go to Dover.
She returned triumphant; she reappeared for a moment at
1 Mignet, t. III. p. 187.  2 (Euvres de Louis XIV. t. VI. p. 458.




3812                        LOUIS XIV,.                           1670.
Saint-Germain, where the court was again installed; June 24, her
husband carried her to Saint-Cloud.1 She had scarcely reached
there when she complained of pains in the stomach and the side;
she remained for a few days in a languishing condition; the 29th,
after drinking a glass of chiccory-water, she was seized with an
extremely violent pain in the side; she took her bed; the next
morning, before daybreak, she was dead. During her deathstruggle she had repeated several times that she was poisoned.
An outburst of terrible suspicions ensued against her husband
and his creatures. The King caused the body to be opened by the
most celebrated physicians and surgeons of Paris, who agreed in
maintaining that the death was natural, and that there was even
reason to be astonished that the princess had lived so long with the
liver and lungs so seriously affected. The question, however, has
remained to our days controverted among historians; the physicians are accused of having consulted science less than policy in
their reports, and if we are to believe Saint-Simon, Louis XIV.
secretly wrung the confession of the crime from one of the accomplices, his brother's steward, but thought it incumbent on him not
to avenge the crime, for fear of scandal.  This would be probable
only if Monsieur had been the author of the crime; now, according to the account of Saint-Simon himself, Monsieur was innocent,
and the only criminals were the Chevalier de Lorraine and some
familiars or servants of the prince. What reason for circumspection then had Louis XIV. in this case? The very natural and
evidently sincere relation of Madame de La Fayette, the friend of
the princess and witness of her last moments, appears favorable to
the idea of the natural death of Henrietta. The symptoms described by Madame de La Fayette prove that Henrietta's constitution was completely ruined, and agree with the organic lesions
pointed out by the physicians. There was probably no other
poison than the continual imprudence and bad regimen by which
the princess accelerated her end.2
1 Saint-Cloud had been given by Louis XIV. to his brother. The buildings were
erected by Hardouin-Mansart; the gardens designed by Lenostre.
2 Histoire de madame Henriette d'Angleterre, par Madame de La Fayette, avec pieces
az la suite, ap. Collect. Michaud, third series, t. VIII. p. 204, et seq. Relation, du mnedecin
Bourdelot, ap. Poncet de La Grave; Mmnoires pour servir a l'Histoire de France,
t. II. p. 411.  Saint- Simon, Minoires, edit de 1829; t. III. pp. 177-181; t. XII.
p. 141. Le sentiment de Vallot (physician of the King) sur les causes de la mort de
Madame; Manuscrit a la Bibliothlzque de 1'Arsenal.  Lettre inedite de Bossuet; ap.
Bibliothequle de l'Ecole des Chartes, second series, 1845, t. I. p. 174. The authenticity
of this letter, which drew conclusions against the poisoning, is contested by M.
Walckenair; Memoires sur madame de S&vignd, t. III. p. 223.




1670.              DEATH OF MADAME.                     313
The news of this tragic event at first excited lively agitation in
England; cries of vengeance were heard around Charles II.; the
English people, always faithful to their ancient hatred, asked only
to arraign the French. The real sorrow expressed by Louis XIV.
and the reports of the physicians, sent from Paris, calmed Charles
II. and his court. That which had been knotted was not ravelled.
Other hands took up the thread of intrigue that had escaped the
faltering fingers of Henrietta; the death of the sister of kings did
not arrest the course of plots that conspired the death of a people,
and the sublime funeral oration pronounced by Bossuet over the
tomb of Madame was still echoing in hearts, when already the
place of Madame was occupied, if not filled, by the new sister-inlaw whom the policy of Louis XIV. had sought in Germany.
This was the daughter of the Elector Palatine, that rude, original
and satirical Princess Palatine from whom was to spring the modern House of Orleans (November 16, 1671).
There was nothing more to settle between the two kings but the
moment of attack. Charles, as he had suffered the unfortunate
Henrietta to hope, consented not to declare his conversion to
Catholicism until after the war, and Louis consented to give in
advance the two millions promised to facilitate this declaration.
Each thus had what he desired. It is very improbable that Charles
ever intended to begin with conversion; religious zeal did not
close his eyes, like those of his brother of York, to the greatness
of the peril. Louis had at first wished to begin the war in the
spring of 1671; but the negotiations which he was carrying on
in Germany and elsewhere, simultaneously with those in England,
did not terminate as quickly as he had hoped, and he himself proposed to Charles II. to put off the attack on Holland for a year.
A second treaty was signed, December 31, 1670, between the ambassador Colbert de Croissi and those of the ministers of Charles
II., Buckingham and others, who were not in the secret of the
return to Catholicism; this compact, which concerned only the
war with Holland, was to be published when hostilities broke out.
French diplomacy labored throughout Europe with the same
perseverance to extend the net designed to seize Holland.
It had little success at first with Sweden, who feared to lose
a large sum due her from Spain, and guaranteed by England and
Holland, and who, through fear of French preponderance, was
inclined to approach Austria. The treaties of commerce and of
alliance concluded by France with Denmark, the ancient adversary
of Sweden, and the continual intervention of Louis XIV. in the
VOL. I.        40




814                      LOUIS XIV.                     1670.
affairs of Lower Germany, kept up some discontent at Stockholm.
The project of an alliance between Sweden and the Emperor was
even fixed upon in July, 1668, and it was not the King of Sweden, but the Emperor, who failed to ratify it, thanks to the skilful
manoeuvres of the French ambassador at Vienna.
Louis held Leopold by the secret compact; Leopold, however,
showed at times a return of distrust. There was a singular debate
between them relative to the places recently taken by Louis XIV.
from Spain, and several of which, those of Hainault, were dependent on the Empire. Louis claimed to maintain these places on the
matriculation of the Empire, and it was the Emperor that refused.
This was because Leopold was unwilling at any price to see the
King of France introduce himself into the Germanic Diet as Prince
of the Empire, and suspected Louis of aspiring to cause himself to
be elected King of the Romans (July, 1668).
Louis strove to dispel the Emperor's suspicions by friendly conduct. He broke off the good understanding formed several years
before with the Hungarian malcontents, and applauded the cruel
punishment which freed Leopold from their conspiracies.l  He
showed himself likewise resolved not to meddle in the troubles
excited in Spain by Don Juan of Austria, the natural son of Philip
IV., who had formerly commanded the Spanish armies in Flanders
with very little success, and who was now disputing the government of Spain with the regent and the Jesuit Nithard. Louis
endeavored, nevertheless, amicably to negotiate with the court of
Spain the immediate exchange of Belgium for Roussillon, Cerdagne, a part of French Navarre, and a large sum of money. It
was a serious thing, and quite contrary to true principles, thus to
offer the cession of countries once reunited to the national territory and comprised within the natural frontiers. Spain did not
consent.
In the beginning of 1669, the young King of Spain was so ill that
the realization of the eventual treaty was believed very near at
Paris and Vienna. Don Carlos II. recovered, however, and his
recovery was followed by a palace revolution. Don Juan, sustained
by the little public opinion that remained, expelled the confessorminister, and obtained the vice-royalty of Aragon; but he only
knew how to dislocate the ruling power, not to reorganize it; Spain
gained nothing by the change.
1 Four of the principal nobles of Hungary and Sclavonia, three of whom had
gone by invitation to commit themselves to the clemency of the Emperor, were
decapitated and their domains confiscated in 1671.




.1670.             LORRAINE OCCUPIED.                   315
Louis pressed the Emperor to unite with him more closely, laying
stress on the idea that Don Juan might aspire to the crown if Don
Carlos should die. Louis proposed a second treaty, no longer secret
but patent, by which the Emperor and the King should declare that
they had regulated together in advance the succession of Spain, the
King ceding his rights to the Emperor over Spain and Milan, the
Emperor his rights to the King over Belgium and Franche-Comt6;
the rest of the succession being referred in appearance to the
mediation of the Pope. The Emperor rejected this audacious offer,
as well as the proposition to promise in advance a share to England
in the succession; but at the same time he avoided entering the
Triple Alliance, as he was urgently and angrily pressed to do by
Spain and several German princes. He did not appear averse to
letting Louis act as he pleased against Holland, and went so far as
to insinuate a demand for subsidies (May, 1670). The Emperor
himself, after so many princes and kings, extended a supplicating
hand to the King of France.'
Louis eluded the advances of this illustrious mercenary, who
would have exacted too high pay, and extricated himself from them
by a service of another kind: that is, by favoring the marriage of
a sister of Leopold with the new King of Poland, Michael Wiesnowicki, an ally who, personally, was not fitted to do much honor to
the House of Austria!
The Dutch, notwithstanding, saw the storm arise, although it
was still sought to close their eyes by semblances of negotiations.
Van Beuninghen went uselessly to London. Other agents had a
little more success with the princes of the Rhine. The Elector of
Mayence allied himself to the Dutch, and, in concert with the old
Duke of Lorraine, urged the Emperor to cooperate in the formation
of an army corps of observation between the Rhine, the Sarre, and
the Meuse, in order to guarantee the peace of Lower Germany.
The Dutch entreated to be received into the body of the Empire.
The incorrigible Duke of Lorraine set about levying troops and
fortifying his places, contrary to the treaties which Lound him to
France. Louis XIV. cut short these intrigues by suddenly precipitating Marshal de Cr6qui with twenty-five thousand men on
Lorraine. The Duke was nearly surprised in his palace at Nancy,
and fled into the Vosges, then to Germany. E]pinal and ChatS,
the ramparts of which he had restored, were taken in a few days;
a number of Frenchmen, who had not quitted the service of the
Duke at the sight of the royal standards, were hung as traitors.
1 Mignet, t. III. p. 460.




316                     LOUIS XIV.                 1670-1671.
The ducal archives were carried to Metz, and the French troops
established themselves permanently in Lorraine and Barrois (September, 1670).
No one stirred on the Rhine.  The Diet of Ratisbon was
moved by the complaints of the fugitive prince; but Louis XIV.
peremptorily rejected the intervention of the Emperor and the
Empire in this matter; he declared that Lorraine belonged to him
legitimately by treaties and by right of conquest, and that if he
restored it, later and in consideration of guaranties, to some one of
the princes of the ducal house, it would be by a pure impulse of
good-will (November-December, 1670).
This incident produced a little coolness for some time between
Vienna and Paris. Louis, nevertheless, finally attained his end
with the Emperor. Leopold, absorbed by the constantly reviving
troubles of Hungary, engaged formally, while guaranteeing to
Spain the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, not to aid the Dutch against
France (November 1, 1671).
French diplomacy strove to obtain the same neutrality, if not
active cooperation, from all the princes of Germany. It did not
succeed with respect to the Elector of Brandenburg; this prince
showed great deference for Louis XIV.; by a treaty of December
31, 1669, he had engaged not to enter the Triple Alliance, to aid
in the renewal of the Alliance of the Rhine, to support the rights
of the King over Belgium, etc.; but nothing could be drawn from
him regarding Holland; he saw in the ruin of this republic too
great a peril for Protestantism and Germany, and he wisely reserved his liberty of action, while conciliating Louis XIV. as long
as possible.
The Elector of Bavaria, on the contrary, gave himself without
reserve to the King of France. Not only did he promise not to
enter the Triple Alliance and to labor to renew the Alliance of
the Rhine, but, Louis having obligated himself to sustain the Bavarian pretensions over certain provinces of Austria, if the Emperor
should die without children, and to marry the Dauphin to the
daughter of the Elector, the latter promised his vote to Louis for
the imperial crown (February 17, 1670).1
The suspicions of Leopold were therefore well founded! The
ill health of the Emperor had made Louis think that the imperial
crown and the crown of Spain might indeed become vacant within
a short interval, and he was paving the way for both inheritances.
Confiding in his iron frame, inaccessible to the physical sufferings
1 Mignet, t. III. p. 286.




1671.            SWEDEN AND GERMANY.                   317
which discolor and abridge human life, he counted on long surviving
all the kings of Europe and extending from tomb to tomb the vast
dominion of which he dreamed. Unlimited vistas opened to his
mind; France was effaced in universal monarchy; the idea of
Charles V. dethroned the idea of Henri IV. and Richelieu!
This was the future. The affair of Holland was the present,
and the majority of the French negotiators were wholly absorbed
in it. They skilfully took advantage of the resentment of the
princes of Lower Germany against the Dutch, who had long since
taken from them divers plces to fortify themselves on the Rhine.
The Duke of Neuburg and two of the Brunswicks, the Dukes of
Zell and Wolfenbiittel, refused, notwithstanding, to ally themselves
to the King; but the third Brunswick, the Duke of Hanover,
accorded to France the exclusive right to levy soldiers on his territory (July 10, 1671). The Elector of Cologne, Bishop of Liege,
not only accorded enlistment on and transit over his states, but a
bridge over the Rhine and magazines (July 11). The Bishop of
Miinster secretly promised the opening of his states and resources
to the French, as the forerunner of an offensive alliance (July
28). Osnabriick treated on the same footing as Hanover (October 23).
Louis XIV. and France had sustained a great loss amidst these
negotiations. The man who held all the threads thereof in his
experienced hand, the first diplomatist of Europe, Lionne, had died,
undermined by domestic sorrows, but above all worn out by labor
and pleasure, which he had always engaged in with equal ardor
(September 1, 1671). The negotiator of the immortal treaties of
Westphalia and the Pyrenees, and the Alliance of the Rhine,
should have died before having paved the way for the fatal war
with Holland. Perhaps it would have been more rapid and differently terminated if he had lived!
The ambassador of France in Sweden, Arnaud de Pomponne,
nephew of the celebrated Antoine Arnaud, was chosen to replace
Lionne in foreign affairs. Louvois acted meanwhile; his favor was
increasing.
Negotiations had been resumed with Sweden, and, this time, the
chances appeared better. The grand chancellor, La Gardie, of
French origin, inclined towards France and acted powerfully on the
senate; he wished, however, that France and England should moderate their resentment against Holland, and wisely represented to
the French ambassador that it was desirable that this republic
"should relax the species of usurpation which it had established




318                     LOUIS XIV.                     1672.
over the majority of other nations in commerce, but it was not to
the general interest that it should be destroyed." 1
Pomponne had not powers sufficient to grant the large subsidies
demanded by Sweden, and could not conclude before quitting Stockholm in order to return to take possession of his ministry. Stockholm was, during the whole winter, the scene of a warm diplomatic
contest. Holland, Spain, Brandenburg, Saxony, acted in harmony
against France. The electors of Saxony and Brandenburg talked
to the Swedish government of a league for the defence of Protestantism. Men began to say that the King of France was about
to resume in Europe the role of the House of Austria. The gold
of Louis XIV. nevertheless prevailed with a poor and covetous
government. By a treaty signed April 14, 1672, Sweden pledged
herself for three years to France, and promised to oppose, by a
diversion on the side of Pomerania, the German princes who might
wish to succor Holland. Louis promised the Swedes 400,000
crowns in ready money, and 600,000 crowns annually during the
war; he guaranteed the maintenance of peace between Sweden and
Denmark, and bound himself not to admit Denmark into the alliance against Holland.2
The Elector of Cologne and the Bishop of Munster, in January,
1672, had strengthened their bonds with France; the Elector had
engaged to cooperate against Holland with seventeen or eighteen
thousand soldiers, in consideration of a subsidy of 8000 crowns
monthly, and to receive a French garrison into Neuss, in consideration of 400,000 livres. The Bishop engaged to unite his troops to
those of the Elector. A share was promised both in the future
conquests.
Thy United Provinces were not only surrounded by dangers from
without; danger was in their own bosom. France and England
fomented the Orange party there as a dissolvent. The Prince of
Orange, young William, attained the age of manhood, and his faction grew with him. A moment dazzled by the glory of John
De Witt, in 1667, it revived in proportion as the perils of the
republic increased. In May, 1670, it was strong enough to oblige
De Witt and his friends to suffer the prince to enter the council of
state. Louis XIV. congratulated William, and considered as a
success for himself the first step taken in political life by the man
who was to be one day his most terrible enemy!
De Witt, who had been so long attached to France, and who,
even when he labored against the policy of Louis XIV., had always
1 Mignet, t. III. p. 330.           2 Ibid. p. 864.




1670-1672.          WAR OF TARIFFS.                     319
aimed at a compromise, felt that he did not merit such implacable
resentment, and could not yet believe that Louis was inflexible. He
strove to renew his connection with France. He retarded, for more
than three years, reprisals against the French tariff of 1667, and
only suffered them to be decreed when he had lost all hope of obtaining commercial concessions. The United Provinces, in November, 1670, prohibited French brandies, and laid heavy duties on
silks, salts, etc.; wines alone were treated better, because the Dutch
could not dispense with them. France replied by new rigors: the
duty on herrings and on groceries imported from Holland was increased, and the exportation of brandies in Dutch ships was prohibited (January, 1671).'
The King of England, a few months after, recalled his ambassador from the Hague (June-July, 1671). The captain of the yacht
dispatched to Holland for the family of the ambassador was ordered
to compel the whole Dutch fleet, which was cruising in the channel,
to lower its flags. Charles II., in emitting this extravagant pretension, wished only for a refusal, which would furnish him a pretext
for a rupture. He made no delay in proroguing his parliament till
October, 1672, in order to have his hands wholly free.
Holland knocked at every door to obtain promises of aid. At the
end of 1671, she was as yet sure only of Spain. In September,
the governor of the Catholic Netherlands, Count Monterey, the
successor of Castel-Rodrigo, had manifested the disposition of his
court by prohibiting the importation of brandies and manufactured
products from France into Belgium. This was during the interregnurn in foreign affairs, in which Louvois administered. The
violent Louvois impelled the King to threaten instead of negotiating.  The fear inspired by the threats of Louis, instead of
restraining Spain, drew her into the Dutch alliance; a defensive
compact was signed at the Hague between Spain and the United
Provinces (December 17, 1671). Weak support that of an ally
incapable of defending herself!
In Germany, many princes wished Holland well; but the Elector of Brandenburg alone appeared disposed to succor her; yet it
might be doubted whether he would dare come in collision with
France.
France and England employed the whole winter in preparations
for aggression, Holland in preparations for defence.
However violent was the passion with which Louis XIV. pursued Holland, France had other external interests which impera1 Mignet, t. III. pp. 624-704.




820                     LOUIS XIV.                     1669.
tively claimed their share in the anxieties of the King and his ministers. During this same winter of 1671-1672, Louis had to make
an important decision in another quarrel.
The affairs of the Levant had undergone divers revolutions since
the expeditions of Jijeli and Hungary. Colbert had persuaded the
King to reopen relations with the Porte, in the interest of commerce, and the son of the former ambassador, De La Haie, had
been sent back to Constantinople at the close of 1665. Colbert
had broad views in resuming connections with the Ottoman empire: he caused free commercial transit between France and India
through Egypt to be demanded of the Divan. This would have
been to reopen the highway closed by Mussulman barbarism, and
to restore to the Mediterranean its rank as the commercial centre
of the world. The Porte refused. It refused also to deprive the
Genoese of the right to trade in Turkey under their own flag, a
right which they had obtained through the intercession of England after having vainly demanded it through the intercession of
France.
Relations became again acrimonious, and France avenged herself by furnishing, at the prayer of Pope Clement IX., important
aid to the Venetians, who still continued to maintain the interminable siege of Candia. The Turks had once more resumed this
siege in 1667. In 1668, the Duke de La Feuillade, that original
courtier, rendered famous by his idolatrous devotion to Louis XIV.,
and the species of romantic heroism which ennobled flattery in him,
led at his own expense to Candia, for two months, five or six hundred officers who had just been reorganized after the peace of Aixla-Chapelle, and who were joined by a few hundred noblemen
volunteers. This choice troop covered itself with glory, and greatly
retarded the progress of the Turks. The following year, a body
of six thousand men of the best French troops was sent by the
King under the banner of the Pope, Louis not yet wishing to declare war against the Ottoman empire. The Duke de Navailles
commanded this little army, and the Duke de Beaufort escorted it
with a powerful squadron.  The French, scarcely disembarked,
attempted a furious sortie; the lines of the besiegers were forced
and their works invaded; but the French were badly seconded by
the Venetians, and the explosion of several barrels of powder threw
their ranks suddenly in confusion; the troops, who had heard much
of the mines dug by the Turks about the place, fancied that the
ground was mined beneath their feet, and broke, while the Turks
rallied; the victory begun was changed into a bloody rout. Beau



1669.               SIEGE OF CANDIA.                     321
fort, who had left his vessels to take part in the conflict, like an
adventurer more than an admiral, disappeared in the m16e; he
was found neither among the prisoners nor the dead, and it was
never known what became of him (June 24, 1669).
The French navy did not lose much by this. Beaufort had only
the courage of a soldier, and his obstinacy and bad temper had
more than once endangered the fate of expeditions intrusted to him.
He had no successor in the superintendence of navigation, an office
which he had inherited from his father, the Duke de Vendame.
The remnant of the auxiliary troops redeemed their honor by
prolonging the resistance of Candia two months; but the fortifications were ruined, the forces and constancy of the Venetians were
exhausted, provisions were lacking. The Duke de Navailles did
not deem it his duty uselessly to sacrifice what soldiers remained
to him; he reembarked, and the Venetian leaders accepted an honorable capitulation, in the form of a long truce which accorded to
their republic some indemnity in Dalmatia for the loss of Candia
(September 5, 1669.) 
The conquest of the ancient isle of Crete had cost the Turks
twenty-five years' effort: it was in great part the assistance of
French volunteers which had enabled Venice to resist so long. It
is calculated that Venice, during these twenty-five years, had
recruited in France fifty thousand auxiliaries; it was a French
Protestant, Saint-Andr6-Montbrun, who had directed the defence
of Candia. Had the aid consumed in detail been given at once,
Candia would have been saved.
Although the enterprise of the French had not succeeded, the
Divan conceived some anxiety with respect to the hostility expressed by France, and the Sultan - a thing wholly unheard ofdispatched to the King an agent charged with a letter, in which
he expressed a desire to reestablish the former friendship (December, 1669). Colbert urged Louis XIV. to welcome these advances,
to send a new ambassador better known and more influential than
De La Haie, and to found a commercial company for the Levant,2
and a school of French dragomnans at Constantinople. The Marquis de Nointel set out with orders to renew the demand for free
transit by Egypt and the Red Sea; he was to claim, besides, the
restitution of the Holy Sepulchre to the Latins (the Greeks had
taken possession of it), the rights of sole protector of the Oriental
1 Pellisson, Hlistoire de Louis XIV. t. III. 1. vinI. Mim. du Marquis de Ville;
Amsterdam, 1670, 1671, 18mo,
2 See ante, p. 113.
VOL. I.       41




822                      LOUIS XIV.                  1671-1672.
Catholics for the King of France, and the ancient French supremacy
over all Christians who had no ambassador at the Porte.
Nointel entered the Bosphorus with four men-of-war in battlearray, and saluted the seraglio only when the Sultan-mother
( Valid) demanded the salute in her own name. The persistent
haughtiness of Nointel was no more successful than the alternations of passion and weakness displayed by the elder and younger
De La Haie. The Divan offered to renew the former capitulations
and refused all else.
Louis XIV., irritated, assembled at Marseilles all the merchants
who carried on the trade of the Levant, joining to them the persons known as having studied these countries, and asked them
whether they thought that France could, without serious damage
to herself, openly attack the Ottoman empire.  The answer was
in the affirmative. The assembly was of the opinion that Turkey
could not sustain a maritime war and would be forced to capitulate.
All France was moved at the report of an Eastern war; the old
spirit of the crusades awoke under a new form; lettered France
urged the King to deliver from the barbarians, no longer Palestine,
but another Holy Land, the country of Homer and Sophocles.
About Louis XIV. the means of attack were seriously examined,
such as the occupation of the principal islands of the Archipelago,
especially those inhabited by Greek Catholics devoted to France
(Naxos, Tino, etc.), and the rousing of Syria to insurrection. It
was known, through the numerous political, religious, and commercial emissaries that France maintained in the East, that it would be
easy to rouse the tribes of Lebanon, the Catholic Maronites, and
even that strange people, the Druses, who, without -being at heart
either Christian or Mussulman, still looked towards the West,
whence they pretended to derive their origin, and had preserved,
as is believed, in their secret rites, the mysterious tradition of the
Templars.1
But how reconcile this great enterprise with the war with Holland?  Would that the one could have averted the other! This
was, for a moment, tile hope of Europe, and this hope became a
great idea in a man of genius.
There was then in Germany a young man who, at twenty-five,
had penetrated to the depths of all departments of human knowl1 Lavallee, Des Relations de la France avec l'Orient; ap. the Revue inddpendante of
November 25, 1843. France took good care not to take sides injudiciously between
the Druses and the Maronites; she protected them equally and maintained relations
with the Grand Emir of Lebanon, who commanded the two united races.




61671-1672.           LEIBNITZ AND EGYPT.                        323
edge, seized with a strong grasp the philosophic tie that unites them,
and attempted to renew several of the principal sciences, such as
the method of judicial instruction by the introduction of philosophy
into law, and philosophy itself by an attempt at reconciliation between Aristotle and the moderns, that is, between Aristotle and
Descartes.  The universal mind of WILLIAM  LEIBNITZ 1 interested
itself equally in all that belongs to the province of humanity, and
embraced everything, from metaphysics to history and philology,2
from mathematics and physics to diplomacy and religious controversy.
WTithl a genius for external activity as well as for meditation, he
liked to mix with the affairs of the world as much as Descartes had
liked to abstract himself from them; with a genius for conciliation
and compromise, he sought no longer to efface the past in order to
create everything anew, but synthetically to unite the past and the
present by discovering their necessary relation in the continued
progress of ideas and things; this conciliating idea which he had
interposed in the metaphysical conflict of the seventeenth century
against antiquity, he would have gladly carried into the political
world.
A German and devoted to his country, but attracted to France
by the natural affinities of his mind, so firm, so lucid, and so acute,
antipathetic moreover to the House of Austria, which he regarded
as the irreconcilable enemy of liberty,3 Leibnitz witnessed with
sadness the approach of a war that was about to shake Europe, to
overthrow all international relations, and to reopen to Christian
peoples an era of calamities. For some years already, a sort of
political Utopia had besieged his mind; it seemed to him that
Europe, instead of rending itself, should direct its activity towards
the East; this idea grew clearer, became defined, and assumed a
form so glorious for France, so salutary for Christendom, that he
dared hope, by merely placing it before the eyes of Louis XIV.,
to dispel the gathering storm. He opened it to the Baron Boineburg, minister of the Elector of Mayence, and, through this minister, to his prince. Both were so much struck by it, that the
Elector hastened to send Leibnitz to Paris. The Elector, who had
1 Born at Leipsic, June 28, 1646.
2 It is to him, a foreigner, that we are indebted for having been set right with
respect to our national origin! He was the first openly to lay down the principle
of Celtic studies. " To form," he says, " an exact idea of the ancient dialects of
Gaul and the isle of Britain, it is necessary to study the Breton, Gallic, Scotch, and
Irish languages, which are the remains of them."
3 " The policy of the House of Hapsburg is a perpetual conspiracy against the
rights and liberties of peoples." - LEIBNITZ.




324                            LOUIS XIV.                             1672.
been so long at the head of the French party in Germany, and
who had separated from  it through fear of the encroachments of
Louis XIV., ardently desired to avert the war from  the banks of
the Rhine.
Leibnitz, on reaching  France  early in 1672, presented to the
King a first address couched in very general terms, the receipt of
which was acknowledged by M. de Pomponne, February 12. A
second memorial was then addressed by Leibnitz to Louis XIV.1
This enters at once on the subject; the design which he proposes
to the King, " the vastest that can be conceived and the easiest to
execute," is the conquest of Egypt, of all the countries of the
globe the best situated for acquiring the empire of the seas, the
link between Asia and Africa, the granary of the East, the entrep6t of the treasures of Europe and India.  "The Porte," he says,
" cannot succor Egypt in time; by land, it is too far; by sea, the
naval forces of the  Turks are almost nothing.   The janizaries
of Egypt have become better merchants than soldiers; even in
Turkey, janizaries and spahis, the principal force of the empire,
have been systematically weakened by the present vizier, Achmet
Kiouprougli. The old ramparts of the Egyptian towns are not in
a condition to sustain a regular siege. The Turkish armies, moreover, can be retained in Europe, by a diversion from Poland and
even from  Austria; temptations are not wanting to excite these
two powers against the Ottomans (Poland had just resumed war
with the Turks).   There is no risk to run on the voyage; France
has no armed enemy in the Mediterranean. Italy, even Spain,
1 We have no doubt that this Memorial is the letter discovered and published in
1840 by M. de Hoffmanns. This document not existing among the archives of foreign
affairs, M. Guhrauer had no knowledge of it when he drew up his Memorial on the
project of Leibnitz; he had reason to believe, therefore, that Leibnitz had adhered,
before Louis XIV., to the vague outlines of the first address, and had kept back the
Latin notes which, after his death, were preserved in the library of Hanover, then
transferred to Paris in 1803, and finally published by M. Guhrauer in 1839 at Hamburg and in 1841 at Paris; the Latin notes are evidently the materials of the French
Memorial addressed to Louis XIV., and it is to this Memorial that M. de Pomponne
alludes as follows in his despatch to M. Boineburg, June 21, 1672: "I say nothing
to you of the projects of a Holy War; you know that they have ceased to be in
vogue since the days of St. Louis."  See le'moire sur le projet d'expcdition en Egypte,
presentie en 1672'z Louis XIV. par Leibniz, by G. E. Guhrauer, ap. Memoires de
l'Acadenie des sciences morales et politiques; Recueil des savants -trangers, 1841, pp. 679767.  Rapport de M. Miqnet, sur ce Menoire; ap. Meinoires de l'Acadylnie, etc.; 2d
series, t. II. 1839, p. LXVIII-LXXXIII. Kur,nainz in der epoche von 1672, von D.
G. E. Guhrauer, Hamburg, 1839. Me'moire de Leibniz's Louis XIV. etc., published
by M. de Hoffimanns; Paris, Garnot, 1840. Projet de conquete de l'Egypte, propose~
par Leibniz, translated by A. Vallet de Viriville, ap. Revue indipendante du ler mtars,
1?-2. (This is the translation of the Latin notes, preceded by judicious reflections.)




1672.              PROJECT OF LEIBNITZ.                    325
will favor it. On the other side of Egypt will be encountered the
Portuguese colonies, which will extend a helping hand to the
French to obtain their protection against the Dutch in India.
" The conquest of Egypt, that Holland of the East, is infinitely
easier than that of the United Provinces. France needs peace in
the West, war at a distance.  War with Holland will probably
ruin the new Indian companies, the colonies and commerce recently revived by France, and will augment the burdens of the
people while diminishing their resources.  The Batavians will
retire into their maritime towns, stand there on the defensive in
perfect safety, and assume the offensive on the sea with great
chances of success. France loses all her influence in Europe if she
does not obtain a complete victory over them, and endangers this
influence itself by victory.  In Egypt, on the contrary, a repulse,
moreover almost impossible, will be of no great consequence, and
victory will give the dominion of the seas, the commerce of the
East and of India, the preponderance in Christendom, and even
the empire of the East on the ruins of the Ottoman power. The
possession of Egypt opens the way to conquests worthy of Alexander; the extreme weakness of the Orientals is no longer a secret.
Whoever has Egypt will have all the coasts and islands of the Indian Ocean. It is in Egypt that Holland will be conquered; it is
there that she will be despoiled of what alone renders her prosperous: the treasures of the East. She will be struck without being
able to ward off the blow. Should she wish to oppose the designs
of France on Egypt, she would be overwhelmed with the universal
hatred of Christians; attacked at home, on the contrary, not only
could she ward off the aggression, but she could avenge herself for
it, sustained by universal public opinion, which suspects the views
of France of ambition.
"There is no room to hesitate, therefore, if the King wishes to
become the admiration and arbiter of the world; he must feign to
menace the Morea or Constantinople, and fall like lightning on
Egypt." 1
Such is the substance of this memorial, which a historian statesman calls "one of the finest monuments of political reason and
eloquence." It was the genius itself of civilization and humanity
summoning France to the East by the voice of the greatest man to
whom Germany had given birth!...
1 Thiers, Histoire de la Revolutionfrangaise, t. X. c. 1. M. Thiers could not then
have known of the Memorial published since by M. Hoffmanns; but he doubtless
was acquainted with the Latin notes deposited by Monge, in 1815, in the Bibliotheque de l'lnstitut.




826                       LOUIS XIV.                        1672.
Three times, since the end of those crusades, so long misunderstood, the same apparition has manifested itself to powerfil heads
of nations and has beckoned them  to follow.  Twice at least it
would have spared immense calamities to Europe, if they would or
could have followed it to the end.  The first time, it was Ximenes
who perceived it; that celebrated minister of Ferdinand and Isabella undertook to combine the crowns of Spain, Portugal, and
England to conquer Egypt at their common cost; the fatal accession of the Austrian dynasty in Spain overthrew this design, and
turned Spain from the East to precipitate her on Europe. The
second time, we have just narrated. How different would have
been the destinies of our country and of the world if Louis XIV.,
instead of rousing Europe against France by madly pursuing the
unjust destruction of a nationality, had founded an Oriental empire,
which his glorious navy - it was soon to give proof! - would have
been as capable of preserving as of conquering!
The third time, it was to Bonaparte that the idea was destined
to appear, but too late!....  The naval power of France, undermined by fatal circumstances, was no longer in a condition to sustain the brilliant beginning of such an enterprise!
False glory prevailed therefore over true glory; passion over
interest and over reason. The project of Leibnitz was noticed, but
cast aside among the possibilities of the future,1 and the King
decided to renew his connection with Turkey and to break with
Holland. Nointel was ordered to resume negotiations at Constantinople.
The States-General of the United Provinces had essayed a last
effort with Louis XIV.  They had addressed to the King of
France, December 10, 1671, the most submissive letter that they
could write without baseness. They could not believe, they said,
on recalling the kindness of the predecessors of the King to their
State, that Louis would turn his arms against his most ancient and
most faithful allies. They protested that they had departed in
nothing from the treaty of 1662, at least voluntarily, and offered
to redress at the earliest moment the infractions which they might
have inadvertently committed, as in all things to give the satisfaction to his Majesty which he could reasonably claim.
1 Leibnitz passed nearly three years at Paris, in intimate relations with Malebranche, Huyghens, and all the scholars and philosophers of France. He was offered
a chair in the Academy of Sciences and other advantages if he would consent to
become a Catholic; he refused. See his eulogy by Fontenelle, and the correspondence of Leibnitz and Malebranche, published by M. Cousin in his Fragments de
philosophie cart esienne.




1672.          CONCESSIONS OF HOLLAND.                  327
The ambassador, Van Groot, son of the illustrious Grotius, went
so far as to tell the King that he had only to command the United
Provinces to disarm and they would obey; " an action which would
better make known the greatness of His Majesty than the happiest
success of war."
Louis replied that he had levied troops to defend himself against
the evil designs of the United Provinces; that he intended to have
still more towards spring, and that he should make use of them in
the manner which he should deem best suited to the good of his
State and his glory (January 4, 1672).
The written reply that he dispatched to the States-General was
only a commentary on these threatening words. He disputed to
the States, not without some reason, the title of faithful allies which
they assumed, and went so far as to reproach them, not only with
their diplomatic intrigues against France, but with the innovations
which they had made in commerce, - that is, their very natural
reprisals.
"When our armament," said he, lastly, " shall be in the condition in which we have projected to put it, we promise ourselves
that God will bless the success of the just resolutions which we
shall take. This is the reply that it pleases us to make to your
letter, although it was written less for us than to excite against our
interests the princes in the courts in which it was made public before it was possible for us to have received it" (January 6).1
During this time an English agent arrived at the Hague, charged
with an arrogant ultimatum, summoning Holland to acknowledge
the right of the crown of England to the sovereignty of the British
seas, and to order its fleets to lower their flags to the smallest
English man-of-war (January, 1672).
France was about to make war to impose on the United Provinces the maritime sovereignty of England!
The Dutch advanced from concession to concession. Charles
II. had recently demanded that they should restore to his nephew
the office of captain-general and admiral of the United Provinces,
an appanage of the Nassaus from William the Taciturn to William
II. The province of Holland, after the other six, bent at length;
De Witt himself resigned, and William III. was provisionally
elected captain-general for the year, with a pledge to elect him for
life as soon as he was twenty-two; that is, in the ensuing November (January-February). The United Provinces yielded also on
1 Mignet, t. III. pp. 657-661.




328                     LOUIS XIV.                      1672.
the question of the flag. Charles II. replied only by stating new
exigences; for instance, the exclusive right of fishery in the British waters (February).
The States-General, sorry to have humiliated themselves in
vain, ordered seventy-five large vessels, twenty-four frigates, and
twenty-four fire-ships to be fitted out (February 25).
A public treaty had just been signed between France and England (February 12); this was only the reproduction of the secret
treaty of December 31, 1670, with the exception that Charles II.
was released, for the current year, from the obligation of sending
at his expense a corps of infantry to the French army. Louis
XIV. had already paid Charles II. the two millions relative to the
catholicity of the English king, and seven hundred and fifty thousand livres subsidy.
The English, according to their custom, attacked without a
declaration of war.  March 23, an English squadron assailed,
off the Isle of Wight, a Dutch merchant fleet, richly laden,
which was returning from Smyrna under the escort of a few
men-of-war. The English had the shame of the treason without
the profit.  The Dutch defended themselves so well, that the
aggressors, in two days' combat, which cost them great losses,
were able to capture only four merchant-ships and a single manof-war.
The declaration of war of Charles II. was published March 29,
six days after the battle. The 25th, a declaration of tolerance
had appeared in favor of the Protestant dissenters, to whom the
public exercise of their religion was restored in the three kingdoms; the Catholics had permission to assemble in private houses.
This was a first step towards the abolition of the laws hostile to
Catholicism, and an attempt to bring the Protestant dissenters to
ally their interests to those of the Catholics against the intolerance
of the Episcopal Anglicanism which was dominant in the English
Parliament. Charles II., while agreeing with Louis XIV. to postpone his public return to Catholicism, had wished to prove to the
King of France that this project was nevertheless serious, and to
calm somewhat the impatient zeal of his brother, the Duke of
York, who was irritated at all delay.
The declaration of war of Louis XIV. was issued April 6.
Louis was capable indeed of making an unjust war through passion,
but not of commencing it, like Charles II., by dishonorable means.
He at least observed the law of nations.




1672.                  ]FOREIGN WAR.                        329
No grievance, moreover, is defined in his manifesto.  He speaks
vaguely therein of his dissatisfaction and of his glory interested in
no longer disguising the indignation caused him by the mode of
action of the States-General.1
Louis XIV. set out from Saint-Germain April 28, to put himself at the head of his army.
1 Mignet, t. III. p. 710.
VOL. I.        42




CHAPTER V.
LOUIS XIV. (CONTINUED.)
WAR WITH HOLLAND. -Financial Preparations of Colbert. Invasion of Holland.
Taking of the Cities of the Rhine. Crossing of the Rhine. Conquest of the
Provinces of Gelderland, Overyssel, and Utrecht. Dismay of Holland. The
Occasion lost of taking Amsterdam. Patriotic Devotion of the Dutch. The
breaking of the Dikes submerges Holland and arrests the Invasion. The naval
Battle of Solebay prevents a Franco-English Descent in Zealand. The StatesGeneral offer Louis XIV. the Cession of Maestricht, Dutch Brabant, and Dutch
Flanders. Fatal Refusal of the King, urged on by Louvois. Reestablishment
of the Stadtholdership for the Benefit of the Prince of Orange. Massacre of
the Brothers De Witt.  The Emperor, Spain, and the Elector of Brandenburg declare themselves in Favor of Holland. Turenne prevents the Junction
of the Imperialists with the Prince of Orange. Disastrous Financial Expedients imposed on Colbert. Taking of Maestricht by the King and Vauban.
Taking of Treves. Maritime Reverses. Junction of the Imperialists and the
Dutch. Louis XIV. evacuates Holland and seizes Franche-Comte. England
makes Peace with Holland. The Germanic Diet declares against France.
Battle of Seneffe. Misery of the People. Disturbances in Guienne and Brittany. Revolt of Messina against Spain.  Brilliant Campaign of Turenne in
the Palatinate and Alsace. German Invasion repulsed. Turenne resumes the
Offensive beyond the Rhine. Death of Turenne.
1672-1675.
WAR WITH HOLLAND.
1672-1675.
LoUIS XIV. had combined everything to render his blows rapid,
overwhelming, irresistible. The financial preparations had been
calculated on as vast a scale as the military preparations. Colbert
had been forced to put himself in a position to raise for the campaign a fund of forty-five million francs.1 At the first glance at
the means employed to provide for such expenses, we perceive
that it is not only improbable, but impossible that Colbert desired
this war. His whole financial system, to which he clung with
1 See Pellisson, Lettres historiques, t. I. p. 176, and the plan of expenditure for
1672, in Forbonnais, t. I. p. 472. Of the forty-five millions, the marine afloat represented seven.




1672.                     FINANCES.                        331
such legitimate ardor, was shaken, almost overthrown by the first
cannon-ball.  The equilibrium reestablished by heroic efforts had
begun to totter from  the first preparations for loans, and had
only been sustained in 1671 by an increase of taxes as carefully
managed as possible. To open the campaign of 1672, more was
needed. Some of the expedients to which Colbert had recourse
at first were in accordance with his principles. For instance, he
reduced the number of the treasurers of France to fourteen per
generality: he reduced to one thousand and twenty-three the nineteen hundred and eighty-four officers of salt depots; the salaries
of the officers suppressed were added to those of the officers retained, on condition that the latter should pay the King at the rate
of six and a quarter per cent. on the capital value. This capital
was divided between the officers suppressed and the State, which
had more than five million francs for its share. The mails, badly
administered, yielded almost nothing to the State; the French
mails profited only the clerks and partisans; the product of foreign
mails had been abandoned by Louis XIV. to Louvois, who had
the superintendence of the postal department. Colbert caused this
gratuity to be withdrawn from his young rival, which did not contribute to render their relations more friendly, and farmed the mails
and public vehicles for nine hundred thousand livres per year. At
least five millions were derived from investigations concerning the
free fiefs or noble lands held by plebeians, who owed, every twenty
years, one year's income to the King. In times of need, the socalled definitive exemption from the duty of free fief was sold to
the plebeian possessors, then these sales were subsequently recalled:
a tax based on a bad foundation.
These resources were very insufficient, and were not even immediately productive. Colbert was forced to resign himself to derogate from his system. He who had so largely redeemed the public
domain was obliged to begin again to alienate it. He at least laid
the alienations on what were called the small domains, consisting
of farms, fee-farms, manors, mills, small feudal estates of the
crown, which were of little advantage to the State; nine hundred
thousand livres of rentes were thus alienated repeatedly for ten
millions, which was a tolerably good price, on account of the little
confidence inspired by sales of the crown property, always liable to
be annulled. Colbert with regret restored hereditary transmission
to divers categories of public officers that had lost it, to royal secretaries, to attorneys, etc., and confirmed it to those that had retained it, which was also worth some millions. To obtain ready




832                     LOUIS XIV.                      1672.
money, he could not dispense with appealing to that greedy class
which he had so rudely prosecuted, to those farmers of the revenues of whom he would have gladly rid France forever. He was
obliged, in turn, to submit to their onerous conditions.
He strove to put off the necessity of increasing the villain taxes,
and preferred to double the tax of consumption on brandies, and to
suppress the exemption from duty on wines at wholesale possessed
by a number of cities and burghs. He chose rather to expose himself to the outcries of the people of large cities, than to strike the
poor peasant, who did not even know how to raise his voice to
complain. With the exemptions of cities, he suppressed those of
ecclesiastics, as to the free entry of their vintages and the commodities destined for their use. An unfortunate measure in which
he persisted, despite the representations of the lieutenant of police,
rendered him very unpopular in the most restless quarters of Paris:
this was the sale of the materials of the cloth and linen markets,
and of all the shops, stalls, and places belonging to the King within
the new walls of the capital (the walls of 1368). A multitude of
interests established by the tolerance of the authority were violently assailed, and the market-people retained a bitter rancor (May,
1672).'
Colbert would have gladly, at all costs, avoided loans, the expedient of selfishness or improvidence, which devours the future for
the sake of the present.2 He preferred having recourse'to resources more unpopular, even more radically evil, but involving
fewer consequences, to entering that facile path which ends in
ruin. Gourville, one of the financiers lately prosecuted by the
Board of Justice, maintains, in his Memoirs, that Colbert went so
far as to cause an edict to be rendered decreeing the penalty of
death against whoever should lend money to the King. No trace
is found of this improbable ordinance. Be it as it may, when the
principle of the loan was proposed in the council, Colbert met it
with obstinate resistance, and pretended that the public would not
respond to the appeal. The first president, de Lamoignon, whom
the King esteemed and sometimes consulted, warmly sustained
the loan as easy and less onerous to the people than an increase of
taxes; supported by Louvois, he prevailed. " You have triumphed,"
said Colbert to Lamoignon on quitting the conference; " you think
that you have done a good deed! Well! do not I know as well
as you that the King could find money to borrow? — but I took
1 Bailli, t. I. p. 470. Forbonnais, t. I. p. 475.
2 We do not speak of loans employed in works which increase the public wealth;
these may be good and wise operations.




1672.        MILITARY STRENGTH OF FRANCE.                   333
care not to tell him so. Here is the way of loans open! What
means will there be henceforth of checking the King in his expenditure? After loans, we shall need taxes to pay them, and if
the loans have no bounds, no more will the taxes." 1
A declaration of February, 1672, raised to five and a quarter
per cent. the interest on loans made the King.
The principle admitted, Colbert reserved the right to attenuate
its results by the greatest possible reserve in the amount and by
wise dispositions in the mode of the loans.
Whilst Colbert, sighing, was preparing the aliment of the war,
Turenne and Louvois had rivalled each other in vigor and activity
in forging its thunderbolts. Louvois had himself hastened to organize the halting-places of the army, the magazines of Champagne, of
Hainault, of the District of Liege, of the Electorate of Cologne.
Six thousand Frenchmen were stationed during the winter on the
territories of the Bavarian prince who commanded the two ecclesiastical principalities of Cologne and Liege, and who had given to
the detachment, as their stronghold, the city of Nuys, or Neuss,
situated near the Rhine, opposite Diisseldorf. Not only vast quantities of munitions of war and provisions, purchased in great part
in Holland itself to disarm it in advance, but also eighty pieces of
cannon awaited the French army, half at Liege, half at Kaiserswerth on the Rhine, just below Neuss. Pontoon trains, formed
of copper boats, had been invented by Martinet, inspector-general
of infantry, to cross the innumerable streams of the United Provinces.2 Louis XIV., it is said, had on foot a hundred and fiftyfive thousand soldiers, which were about to be increased to a hundred and seventy-six thousand by a new levy. These figures seem
exaggerated; it is certain that the active army, the garrisons deducted, numbered about eighty-five thousand men, one fourth cavalry, extlusive of the King's household, the strength of which was
seven thousand choice combatants, and of the corps of German
auxiliaries levied by the Elector of Cologne and the bellicose
Bishop of Miinster.3
The French war squadron was composed of thirty vessels of
from thirty-eight to seventy-eight guns, and eight fire-ships, fitted
out at Rochefort and Brest, and destined to join the English fleet,
which was to be from fifty to sixty large vessels.
1 Recueil des arr~tegs de M. le premier president de Lamoignon, t. I. p. 39.
2 Desormeaux, Vie de Conde, t. IV. p. 298.
3 Stats du mareclhal de Turenne, in the (Euvres de Louis XIV. t. III. pp. 116-122.
Quinci, Histoire militaire de Louis X1V. t. I. p. 312.




334                      LOUIS XIV.                        1672.
However imposing were these naval forces, Holland could, without over-temerity, hope to sustain the shock; the genius of De
Ruyter protected her on the waves; on the continent, on the contrary, all her forebodings were sinister! Her army, weak in numbers, weaker in quality, was but the shadow of the ancient and
renowned troops of Maurice and'Frederick Henry.  Since the
peace of Westphalia, and the death of the Stadtholder William
III., the army, the support of the Stadtholder party, had been
systematically suffered to decline in favor of the marine, in which
the republicans prevailed. The grades had been given to the sons,
relatives, and prot6gds of the burgomasters and city councillors,
who made of them absolute sinecures; military spirit and discipline had disappeared. This was the greatest fault with which John
De Witt and his party could be reproached; they had believed the
republic sheltered from all danger on the land-side, and had forgotten that a people that wishes to maintain its position in the
world must be always ready to resist everywhere.1
John De Witt made energetic but tardy efforts to repair this
error; he demanded the levy of seventy thousand men in the
United Provinces and abroad; he proposed to the States to seize
the offensive during the winter and to capture Neuss and carry off
the magazines formed by the French in the Electorate of Cologne,
before the Franco-German troops should be in force to oppose
them. The delays of the States, the quarrels of the Orange and
republican parties, rendered this bold project impossible. Thirty
thousand men were raised in the Seven Provinces, but too late for
the recruits to have time to become accustomed to arms. The
young Prince of Orange was appointed, as has been said, CaptainGeneral for the campaign; his powers were made subordinate to
those of the deputies of the States in the army; but John de Witt
did not succeed in putting in the field, in the province of Iolland,
under the pretext of the defence of her coasts, a special corps
which would have been independent of the captain-general.2
As to the aid from without expected by Holland, it was very
little in proportion to the greatness and imminence of the peril.
Spain was friendly; she took laborers here and there from her
depopulated fields to transform into soldiers, and sent to Flanders the few veteran troops that remained to her. The Elector of
Brandenburg, although he had several places to reclaim from the
1 Mdm. de Gourville, p. 552. Basnage, Annales des Provinces-Unies, t. II. p. 168.
La Neuville, Histoire de Hollande, t. IV. 1. xIII. c. 2.
2 Basnage, t. II. p. 197. La Hode, listoire de Louis XIV. t. III. p. 400.




1672.               RESPECTIVE FORCES.                    335
Dutch, like the Elector of Cologne and the Bishop of Miinster, had
resisted the suggestions of Louis XIV., who offered him the restitution of the fortified towns occupied in the Duchy of Cleves by
the United Provinces since the beginning of the Thirty Years'
War; but Dutch diplomacy, fearing to put itself at the discretion of the Elector, itself protracted a negotiation which it was so
important for it to hasten, and it was not until April 26 that a
treaty was signed by which the Elector promised to lead twenty
thousand men to the assistance of the Dutch, half at his expense,
half at theirs; the ratifications again were not exchanged until
more than two months after.l
While the States of Holland deliberated, the King of France
acted; a first army corps, composed of the troops of Cologne and
Miinster, and a few French and Swiss regiments, was already in
position on the Lower Rhine, under the orders of the Duke de
Luxembourg. A second detachment, commanded by LieutenantGeneral Chamilli,2 was stationed on the Central Meuse, in the district of Liege. Lastly, the grand army, divided into two corps,
was formed on the Sambre and the Upper Meuse, under Turenne
and Cond6. The King arrived at Charleroi, May 5, with his military household, his brother the Duke of Orleans, and the ministers
of war and of foreign affairs. He drew up with his own hand, the
moment they were about to march, several orders of the day and
regulations, which attested the exactness of his mind even to
minutiae, and his understanding of the smallest details of war.
Turenne moved in advance with a strong column; the King followed with the rest of the troops assembled on the Sambre, traversed without hostilities the county of Namur, a Spanish possession,
and gained the Meuse at Vis6, between Liege and Maestricht,
May 17. Turenne, on the 15th, had carried Maesyck, a place
situated' a few leagues below Maestricht, the inhabitants of which
had refused to open their gates to the French, although the electorbishop of Liege, their prince, was the ally of the King.
The second army corps had marched by the Ardennes and the
right bank of the Meuse, under the conduct of the Prince de
Cond6, and rejoined the King at Vis6. Louis XIV. held there a
great council of war. There were two courses to take: to besiege
1 Mignet, t. II. p. 679. Basnage, t. II. p. 201.
2 The command had been at first given to Marshal de Crequi; but the Marshals
de Crdqui, d'Humibres, and de Bellefonds having refused to take the watchword
from Turenne, that is, to recognize the supremacy of the marshal-general over
the other marshals, the King suspended them, until they should submit. See
(Euvres de Louis XIV. t. III. p. 124.




336                     LOUIS XIV.                     1672.
Maestricht, the stronghold of the Dutch on the Meuse, and not to
pass on until after having taken possession of this important position; or to hem in Maestricht by a few fortified posts, and push on
by the Lower Rhine, to the heart of Holland. The roles of the
two great captains of France seemed inverted; the audacious Condd
proposed to pause before Maestricht; the prudent Turenne counselled the bold resolution to go forward. The Dutch had expected
to see the storm burst over Maestricht, and this city had a numerous
garrison, commanded by an officer of merit, and reinforced quite
lately by Spanish auxiliaries; it was to be feared that the siege
would consume a great part of the campaign and give Holland full
time to put herself strongly on the defensive; Maestricht fallen,
the United Provinces were in nowise encroached upon.
The King decided in favor of the advice of Turenne; he left
Chamilli at Maesyck, with a strong division, to cut off the communications of Maestricht with Holland, crossed the Meuse at Vis6,
May 24, and moved to the Rhine. From the 1st to the 2d of June,
four places on the Rhine were assailed at once by the French
columns, reinforced by the troops of Cologne and Miinster; these
were the German towns of Wesel, Burick, Orsoy, and Rheinburg,
which Holland withheld, the first three from the Elector of Brandenburg, Duke of Cleves, and the other from the Elector of Cologne. These places had become the vanguards of the United Provinces.
The news of the arrival of the French on the Rhine, and the
attack on the Rhenish towns, caused extreme agitation in Holland,
and embittered still more the discords which were fermenting in
the states and cities. A warm discussion had taken place between
John De Witt and the Prince of Orange on the plan of defence.
The youthful William, who displayed, from the first step in his
career, the firm and cool penetration of a veteran warrior and politician, had proposed to abandon the second-rate places in order to
concentrate the resistance on a few decisive points. De Witt had
maintained that all the places should be defended. He remembered the part which the towns of the Lower Rhine and the Seven
Provinces had played in former wars, and hoped that each town
would arrest the French for a time; Europe, nevertheless, would
tremble at the noise of the struggle. De Witt had caused his
opinion to prevail in the States-General.
These illusions were dissipated by thunderbolts. The four places
besieged were carried in four days (June 3-7). A riot of women
determined the rendition of Wesel, a large German city, the inhab



1672.            CROSSING OF THE RHINE.                   337
itants of which did not mean to sacrifice themselves for the United
Provinces; the feeble garrison neither could nor would constrain
them to this. At Rheinburg, the second commandant, gained over
or intimidated, persuaded the other officers, and forced the governor to capitulate without waiting for a shot. Burick, the smallest
of the four towns, was the only one that seriously attempted defence; but the French batteries soon gained the day. The garrisons, which did not exceed four thousand men for the four towns,
were held as prisoners, except that of Rheinburg. June 9, the
King crossed the Rhine at Wesel, while Turenne and Cond6 took
Rees and Emmerich.
The French vanguard appeared before the point of Betaw, the
renowned island of the Batavi, which the Rhine forms by dividing
into two branches, the Waal and the Leck, a little way below Emmerich.l
To penetrate into the heart of the United Provinces, there was
still a stream to cross. In moving to the right of the Rhine, they
had turned the Waal, a deep river edged with numerous fortresses;
there remained either the Leck or the Yssel, which connects the
Leck with the Zuyder-Zee by the Drusus Canal. The Leck protected the island of Betaw; the Yssel covered the district of
Wehlau and the province of Utrecht. The States-General had
erected behind the Yssel a species of bulwark, extending from
Arnhem to Ziitphen; a most expensive and useless kind of labor,
since it is never possible to man sufficiently lines of such extent.
The Prince of Orange was posted there with an army of twentyfive thousand men; it was all that the States had been able to
-put in the field, the garrisons having absorbed the rest of their
forces.
The King, by the advice of Cond6 and Turenne, resolved to
force the passage of the Leck, and to invade the island of Betaw.
The Leck, or southern branch of the Rhine, is very broad, but not
so deep as the Waal, which carries off most of the waters of the
Great Rhine; the dry and warm spring of 1672 had also greatly
reduced the ordinary volume of water. The point of Betaw was
defended by Fort Schenck, a place of much renown in past wars.
It was decided to cross lower down, opposite a tower called Tol
Huys or the Toll-House. The Prince of Orange, encamped near
1 (Euvres de Louis XIV. t. III. pp. 133-193. Pellisson, Lettres historiques, t. I.
pp. 63-133. Alnm. du conmte de Guiche, t. II. pp. 313-333. Histoire dle Turenne, t. I.
p. 441. Basnage, t. II. p. 203. Recueil de Lettres pour servir a l'histoire militaire de
Louis XIV. 1740, t. L pp. 25-46.
VOL. I.        43




388                      LOUIS XIV.                      1'672.
Arnhem, at the point of junction of the Leck and the new Yssel,
or the Drusus Canal, kept watch at once over both rivers; apprised
that the French were sounding the Leck at different points, he dispatched a body of troops to guard the crossings of the river, but the
commander, a French deserter named Montbas, aiming probably
to obtain his pardon of Louis XIV., abandoned his post and sent
his soldiers to Nimeguen, under pretext of securing that city.
Orange, at the news of this desertion, hastened to dispatch the
German General Wiirtz with eleven or twelve hundred soldiers,
which were to be followed the next day by six thousand more with
artillery.
This reinforcement had not time to rejoin Wiirtz. The same
evening that Wiirtz reached Tol-Huys, Louis XIV. hastened with
his household troops to the camp of Cond6, established before. Emmerich (June 11). The King and the Prince moved, by a night
march, in front of Tol Huys. Conde had designed to throw a pontoon bridge across the Leck, but the trains had not yet arrived, and at
any moment the enemy might become strong enough to render the
success of the enterprise more than doubtful. Some countrymen
had pointed out a ford; on the morning of June 12, Count de
Guiche,l one of the lieutenants-general of Cond6, renowned for his
heroic and gallant adventures, reconnoitred the crossing, at the
risk of drowning, assured the King and the Prince that the cavalry could cross, -and was among the first to spring into the river
four times as broad as the Seine at Pont-Neuf. All the cavalry,
animated by the presence of the King, followed without hesitation.
The fire of the enemy was no longer the greatest peril; the ford,
besides being imperfect, since it was necessary to swim twenty or
thirty paces in the middle of the river, was quite narrow, and the
horsemen who stepped aside were carried away by the current.
The mass of horses breaking the force of the stream, the head of the
column notwithstanding gained the opposite bank without much
difficulty. Wiirtz attempted to thrust back into the river the first
platoons that touched the shore; but the French cannon, planted
(,n the opposite bank, and the constantly increasing number of
assailants, forced him to quit the place. The crossing would have
been achieved with no other accident than the loss of a general
officer and thirty horsemen killed or drowned, had not a few young
noblemen been the victims of their blind impetuosity. Cond6 had
1 Exiled because of the notoriety of his passion for Madame Henrietta, he had in
turn served the Poles against the Turks, and the Dutch against the English, and
had saved the life of Admiral de Ruyter in a naval battle.




1672.              CROSSING  OF THE RHINE.                      339
just crossed the river in a boat with his son, the Duke d'Enghien,
and his nephew, the Duke de Longueville. The young men,
scarcely remounted, put themselves at the head of a few volunteers
and galloped straight to Wiirtz, who had withdrawn to a field int.ersected by hedges and palisades, and which Count de Guiche
was preparing to turn. Cond6, unable to restrain them, followed,
and, putting a bold face on the matter, summoned the enemies in
his own voice to lay down their arms. The Dutch hesitated, when
the Duke de Longueville, his head still full of the fumes of a nocturnal banquet, fired a pistol, crying, " Kill! kill!"  The enemies
replied by a discharge which struck Longueville stone-dead, and
killed or wounded most of his companions. Cond6 himself had his
wrist broken by a ball.
An instant after, the squadrons of Count de Guiche fell on the
handful of Dutch, flank and rear, broke them, and dispersed them
among the hedges and ditches.
The young Duke de Longueville, who passed for the fruit of the
amours of Madame de Longueville and La Rochefoucauld, was
snatched by this catastrophe from a lofty destiny. At this very
moment, a courier from Poland was on his way with the news
that a powerful party was preparing to transfer to his brow the
crown which Michael Wiesnowicki had shown himself unworthy to
wear.1
Such was the crossing of the Rhine, immortalized by poetry, by the
fine arts, by all the voices of renown.2 The France of Louis XIV.
desired to see in it a second example of that glorious crossing of the
Granicus, reproduced, meanwhile, by the pencil of Lebrun. Later,
men maliciously observed that Louis had not imitated Alexander
in everything, and derided the prudent monarch who
"Complained of his greatness which chained him to the shore."
An ill-founded reproach; for the King of France would have assuredly been greatly to blame, had he plunged into the water,
1 (Euvres de Louis XIV. t. III. p. 193. Pellisson, Lettres historiques, t. I. p. 133.
Pellisson accompanied the King as historiographer. His letters are addressed to
Mademoiselle de Scuderi. MAinoires du comte de Guiche, t. II. p. 325. Basnage,
Annales des Provinces-Unies, t. II. p. 218.  Mern. de M. de -, ap. Collect. Michaud,
3d series, t. VII. p. 607.
2 See the allegories versified by Boileau in his epistle, sculptured by the brothers
Anguier on the Porte Saint-Denis, and painted at Versailles by Lebrun. See above
all the living reality of the deed in the beautiful picture of Van der Meulen at the
Louvre. Van der Meulen, the painter of the battles and sieges of Louis XIV., an
artist full of vigor and truth, is, in art, the historian of the Great King, as Lebrun
sought to be his epic poet.




340                     LOUIS XIV.                      1672.
like a musketeer, to go in person to dislodge an outpost of the
enemy.
In fact, the crossing of the Rhine was, in the judgment of the
greatest general of modern times, only a military operation of a
secondary order.l
The illusion of contemporaries concerning the action in itself is
explained by the results of the action. This skirmish had the consequences of a great victory. The pontoon bridge having been laid
during the day, nearly the whole army corps of Conde was found
united at evening on the island of Betaw; the King sent Turenne
to take command in the place of the wounded Cond6. The next
day, Turenne marched on Arnhem and the camp of the Prince of
Orange. Count de Guiche, at the head of the vanguard, routed,
between Huissen and Arnhem, the corps which had been destined
to sustain Wiirtz. Orange, fearing that Turenne would recross
to the right bank of the Leck in order to take up his position in the
rear, while the other corps of the French army attacked him in
front, evacuated his line on the Yssel by night, sent reinforcements
to a few places, and fell back on Utrecht with thirteen thousand
Dutch and a few Spanish auxiliaries.
Terror spread throughout the republic; the civil and military
leaders rivalled each other in weakness and discouragement; the
towns sent their keys to the first French scouts that were seen in the
distance. Utrecht, where the Catholics were numerous and calling
for invasion, refused to receive the troops of the Prince of Orange,
and to sacrifice its beautiful suburbs, a sacrifice which, besides,
would have been useless, for there would not have been time to
erect fortifications on the ruins that would have been made. The
dismay was so great in Amsterdam itself that the Jews of that city
sent to offer the Prince de Cond6 two millions to preserve them
from pillage.2 Terror gave birth, by reaction, to a gigantic design:
to abandon the Dutch soil to invasion and the sea, and to transport
the republic to the end of the universe, the new Batavia of the
Sunda Islands; it was calculated that all the ships of the Seven
Provinces united could convey fifty thousand families to the
Indian Ocean.
It was first attempted to obtain peace, or rather pardon, from
Louis XIV.  John De Witt, already suffering from a terrible blow
in the fall of the four Rhenish towns, had been overwhelmed anew
by the news of the invasion of Betaw. He saw his country divided
1 Napoleon, in his Memoirs (t. V. p. 129), calls it a " fourth-rate operation."
2 Mdm. de Gourville, ap. Collect. Michaud, 3d series, t. V. p. 565.




1672.              HOLLAND INVADED.                     341
between the loss of national independence by foreign conquest, and
the loss of liberty by an Orange military dictatorship, which, probably, would not even save her independence. He placed his last
hope in the magnanimity of the conqueror, and thought that Louis
XIV., satisfied with having insured his glory and displayed his formidable power, would not persist in consummating the ruin of the
ancient allies of France. He persuaded the States-General to send
a deputation to the King to supplicate him to declare " the conditions on which he would be pleased to grant peace " (June 15).
Another deputation was sent to the King of England.
The moment was decisive. While the United Provinces were
deliberating, the French were acting-but after what plan?  It
appears that Cond6 and Turenne counselled the King not to repeat,
in an inverse direction, the error of the Dutch; that is, to raze the
secondary places which he had taken, to preserve only the most
important positions, and to push into the heart of Holland with the
mass of the army. Cond6 added, it is said, the advice instantly to
precipitate six thousand cavalry on Amsterdam, and Turenne made
the mistake of not believing in the success of this dash, which, in
the first moment of surprise and dismay, would have almost inevitably succeeded. Louvois combated both the especial advice of the
Prince and the advice of the two great generals together, and gave
his opinion that they should take and keep all the places around
them possible. The King decided in favor of Louvois, and thus
gave the measure of his strategic capacity. Louis, an admirable
administrator, was never more than a mediocre warrior; he was
perfectly acquainted with the mechanism of an army, but never
rose to the great conceptions of the military art.l
The correspondence of the times makes no allusion to these
debates; it was believed in the army that, if the King did not
march forward immediately, it was through lack of provisions, the
stores having been unable to follow the rapid and unhoped-for
progress of the royal conquests.2 This would have been a bad excuse; the immense herds carried off in Betaw and the rest of
Gelderland, could well supply for a few days the lack of bread.
Be it as it may, Turenne, June 13-16, occupied himself in taking
Arnhem  and Fort Knotzemburg, opposite Nimeguen, and the
King, returning to Emmerich to put himself at the head of the
army corps which Turenne had formerly commanded under him,
moved on Doesburg, which he besieged, while the Franco-German
1 Hist. de Cond', by Coste. Hist. de Turenne, t. I. p. 462.
2 Pellisson, Lettres hist. t. I. pp. 181-190.




342                    LOUIS XIV.                      1672.
troops, led by the Bishop of Minster and the Duke de Luxembourg, attacked Deventer, after having carried some other places on
their way. The 16th, at evening, Turenne came to confer with
tile King on the banks of the Yssel. The next day, he returned
to lay siege to the famous Fort Schenck, which surrendered on
the 19th. Scarcely more than the trouble of mounting the cannon
was needed to make fortresses capitulate which had formerly resisted for entire seasons, and about which was born, as it were, the
art of sieges, in the times of the Maurices and the FrederickHenries. The French soldiers were indignant at the pusillanimity
of their adversaries.  They maltreated the vanquished by word
and gesture as men unworthy to bear arms. From the 17th to
the 18th, Louis XIV. had received from Count d'Estrades, Governor of Wesel, a letter of the highest importance. D'Estrades,
who of all Frenchmen best knew Holland, where he had long
been ambassador, urged the King to seize Utrecht with the greatest haste, and to send a body of troops at full speed to take possession of Muyden, where are the dikes of Amsterdam. Muyden
taken, Amsterdam was at the discretion of the King, and the republic of the United Provinces existed no longer.1
The letter seems to have made an impression, for, during the day
of the 18th, the Marquis de Rochefort, lieuternant-general, received
orders to ford the Yssel and move forward with four thousand cavalry; he took but eighteen hundred and left the rest behind, for
lack of sufficient rations. The 19th, at two in the afternoon, he
entered Amersfort, in the province of Utrecht. The mere rumor of the approach of this cavalry caused the Prince of Orange
to withdraw from the gates of Utrecht to the recesses of Holland.
Rochefort should have hastened to Muyden; strange to say, he
had no precise instructions on the subject. On the morning of the
20th he made a reconnoissance of Utrecht, which at this very moment was sending deputies to the King, and contented himself
with dispatching on the road to Amsterdam a party of one hundred
and fifty troopers and dragoons. The little troop advanced into
the province of Holland and entered Naarden by one gate while
the garrison fled by the other. The body of the detachment
halted at Naarden; but four troopers pushed on two leagues farther and reached the gate of Muyden. There was not a soldier in
the place; the inhabitants, believing the French army already
upon them, opened to these advance couriers. Four soldiers were
for an instant masters of the fate of Holland!
1 Ambassades du comte d'Estrades, de 1687 a 1662, p. 141; Amsterdam, 1718. This
letter is interpolated between documents belonging to other epochs.




.1672.              HOLLAND INVADED.                    343
The inhabitants, on recovering from their first alarm, and seeing
that the troopers were not supported, intoxicated them and thrust
them outside the walls.
A few moments after, the French detachment hastened from
Naarden; but it was too late; a body of troops, sent from Amsterdam, had just occupied the fortress.
Muyden, situated on the Zuyder-Zee, two hours' distance from
Amsterdam, at the junction of a number of rivers and canals, not
only held the key of the principal dikes by which Amsterdam could
surround herself with a protecting inundation; it also held the key
to the harbor of this great city, all the ships which went from the
North Sea to Amsterdam by the Zuyder-Zee being obliged to pass
under the guns of Muyden.
Muyden saved and its dikes open, Amsterdam had time to
breathe, and remained free to break off her communications by
land and to maintain them by sea.
Neither Turenne nor Cond6 had participated in the instructions
given to Rochefort; are we to believe that Louvois did not wish
Amsterdam to be taken, lest the war should end too quickly?
All suppositions are allowable towards this monster of selfishness.1
While the United Provinces were a prey to so terrible an invasion on the side of the continent, other perils had menaced them
on the side of the sea. The King of England also desired his
share of conquests and above all of booty, and the unhappy republic was hemmed in on all sides.
The French fleet, commanded by Vice-Admiral d'Estrdes, who
numbered among his seconds the aged Duquesne and the youthful
Tourville, had quitted, May 11, the road of Bertheaume, in front
of Brest, to join the Duke of York and the English fleet in the
waters of the Isle of Wight. The Dutch, on their side, had
speedily equipped their naval forces; the shameful weakness of the
army was not to be expected from this illustrious navy. De Ruyter and the worthy brother of John De Witt, Cornelius De Witt,
who represented the States-General in the naval army, attempted
to forestall the enemy and to attack the English before the junction.
Accidents by sea caused this project to fail; the French and English fleets effected a junction, May 17.  The Dutch retired to
their coasts. The allies did not think proper to follow them, on
account of the sand-banks, and returned to the coast of Suffolk, in
the road called Southwold Bay, or Sole Bay, to complete their
stores. They were then to go to anchor at Dogger-Bank, to await
1 Lettres Milit. t. I. pp. 48-219. Pellisson, Lettres hist. t. I. pp. 172-179.




344                     LOUIS XIV.                     1672.
here the rich merchant fleet of the Dutch East India Company,
or to effect a descent on Zealand.
De Ruyter prevented them. He suddenly set sail again and
surprised the allies in Southwold Bay (June 7). Had it not been
for a French frigate on vedette, the allies would have been lost.
A large part of the crews and the long-boats were on land and
unable to rejoin them in time, which compensated for the apparent
superiority of the allies. The Anglo-French fleet numbered eightythree vessels, twenty light frigates and thirty fire-ships, the whole
carrying, it is said, more than thirty-four thousand men and six
thousand guns; a little less than a third were French. The Dutch
had over eighty ships and frigates and thirty fire-ships.
The two fleets were divided each into three squadrons. The
French squadron, posted more in the offing than the two English
squadrons, tacked to the southward and deviated from the line of
battle, contrary to the signals of the Duke of York, which caused
it to be believed, not without some probability, that D'Estr6es had
orders to spare himself as much as possible and to let the English
encounter the principal shock. In point of fact, nevertheless, as
one of the three divisions of the enemy, the Zealand squadron,
followed the French in their movement, each had, so to say, its
proportionate share in the struggle. The French and the Zealanders cannonaded each other heavily all day, but without coming
to boarding. The battle was much more furious between the other
four squadrons, which fought quite near land in a narrow space.
The lines were broken; the m1l6e was fearful; several vessels
were taken and retaken by boarding; thee Dutch Vice-Admiral,
Van Ghent, was killed; the English Vice.Admiral, Lord Sandwich, was ingulfed with his burning ship i the Duke of York,
borne down by the terrible De Ruyter, barely escaped the same
fate as his lieutenant, and changed his vessel twice. The representative of the States-General, Cornelius De Witt, suffering and
unable to stand, remained seated, during the whole combat, on the
poop of the Dutch flag-ship, under the hail of iron and lead that
whistled incessantly around him.
Night came on before the victory was decided; but the losses of
the allies were much greater than those of the Dutch: the English had lost six vessels and the French two; the Dutch only three.
The Dutch artillery, admirably handled by De Ruyter, had shown
marked superiority.
The next morning, the two fleets, having been rallied and put in
order, found themselves again face to face, but did not renew the




1672.              BATTLE OF SOLE BAY.                     345
battle. Each accused the other of having avoided the collision.
June 9, the Dutch retired to the coast of Zealand, the allies to the
English coast.1
This day did more than increase the glory of the Dutch navy
or than offer a brilliant contrast to the continental humiliations of
the United Provinces; wholly indecisive as it remained, it averted
the possibility of a descent, which would have consummated the
destruction of the republic.
The situation of the United Provinces was nevertheless still very
dark. Almost all Gelderland, including the whole of Geldric Betaw,
was in the hands of the French; Overyssel was in the hands of the
Franco-Germans, who encroached upon the province of Groningen; the whole province of Utrecht had submitted in a few days
to the vanguard of Rochefort, reinforced by a few troops; Holland
was encroached upon by the occupation of Naarden and by the
submission of Woerden, Oudewater, and Ysselstein, which closely
environed the Hague, Leyden, and Rotterdam. The Prince of
Orange covered the principal Dutch cities as well as he could with
his little army, divided into five corps; but he was not in a posture
to resist a serious attack of the French army, and the resource of
inundation was not even a certain success so long as the rivers
and canals were low, unless, instead of opening only the dikes
which restrained the fresh water, the dikes of the sea were pierced,
the last expedient of despair.2 Each day, fatal news reached the
Hague and Amsterdam. A corps detached by Turenne had just
invaded the island of Bommel, formed by the Waal and the Meuse
before reuniting; it had carried the forts which commanded the
entrance of the island on the east and cut off from Holland the
important place of Nimeguen, which Turenne was beginning to besiege in person. The King, reinforced by seven thousand English
in his pay, brought him by the Duke of Monmouth, natural son of
Charles II., had, thanks to Vauban, forced Doesburg to capitulate
in four days (June 17-21); four thousand men had surrendered
themselves prisoners of war, -a success purchased by the death
of Inspector-General Martinet, the able organizer of French infantry.
The States-General awaited with anguish the reply of Louis
XIV. to the deputies sent from the Hague.  The envoys of the
1 Vie de Ruyter, t. II. pp. 25-42. Vie de Tromp, p. 452. Mem. dc due d'York.
Letters and relations in E. Sue, Hist. de la marine ftan~caise, t. II. pp. 141-249, second
edition. Min. du Marquis de Villette, published by M. Monmerque for the Societe
de l'Hist. de France, p. 4.
2 Pellisson, Lettres hist. t. I. p. 190. Basnage, t. II. p. 287.
VOL. I.           44




846                     LOUIS XIV.                      1672.
United Provinces joined the King, June 22, at Keppel, near Doesburg. They were not even admitted to the presence of Louis
XIV., who refused to explain himself concerning his pretensions,
and it was the Minister of War, instead of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, who signified to them in the King's behalf that he
would hold no conference with them if they did not make clearly
specified offers and bring full powers. One of the deputies, De
Groot, returned in haste to demand precise instructions from the
Hague.
June 14, a declaration of the King promised to the towns of
Holland which should surrender voluntarily, the maintenance of
all their privileges and franchises, and the free exercise of their
religion. As to " those who shall endeavor to resist His Majesty's
forces, by the inundation of their dikes or otherwise, they shall be
punished with the utmost severity..... And when the ice shall
open the passage on all sides, His Majesty will give no quarter
to the inhabitants of the said towns, but will order their goods to
be pillaged and their houses to be burned." 1
The pitiless soul of Louvois was revealed in this language, more
worthy of Attila than of Louis XIV. Since the ascendency of
this sinister man had increased in the councils of the King, the
genius of barbarism had began to dispute the heart and mind of
Louis with the genius of civilization. Louvois seemed, by the side
of Louis XIV., one of those infernal spirits that spy out the evil
inclinations of the soul to foment them, until they invade the
whole soul, and destroy it. He violently urged Louis down the
declivity to which the Great King was drawn by his idolatry for
himself.  Brute force, the only principle of Louvois, and the
divine right of Louis, ended in the same result: Louis came to
punish as sacrilege no longer only the rebellion of the subject, but
the resistance of the foreigner.
June 22, Ziitphen surrendered to Monsieur, the King's brother.
The garrison of three or four thousand men remained prisoners.
The whole course of the Yssel was thus secured to the French.
The King marched towards Utrecht, while Turenne pursued the
siege of Nimeguen.
The events of the war were, however, no longer the only ones
that merited the attention of history. The internal movements of
the Dutch cities still free from the foreign yoke were of a nature
soon to react on the war itself. The nobility and the upper burghers were still plunged in stupor; but the people, always prompter
1 Basnage, Annales des Provinces-. Unies, t. II. p. 234.




1672.            OFFERS OF THE DUTCH.                   347
to rise than the higher classes, passed from fear to rage, seized by
that species of burning fever which brings to desperate situations
health or death, - formidable crises in which the multitude, drunk
with terror and anger, begin by seeking nigh at hand some great
expiatory victim to immolate on the altar of public safety! The
victim, here, was but too well designated! The man who had
been so long the successful guide of the republic, the object of
national admiration and gratitude, had become the aim of all hatreds. The former sympathies of John De Witt for the French
alliance, his long circumspection towards France, the counsels of
compromise which he still gave, - now that it was necessary to think
no longer but of defence till death, - finally, the cowardice of the
governors and garrisons, who surrendered without contest, all were
imputed to him as crime and treason. Religious fanaticism united
with political passions to crush him; the Gomarist ministers, like
so many unchained furies, stormed against him in all their pulpits.
They abhorred in him the ancient ally of France still less than
the pupil of Descartes and the friend of Spinoza; the successors of
the executioners of Barneweldt thirsted for the blood of John De
Witt, and breathed their rage into the people and what remained
of the army. The heroic Cornelius De Witt, who had just shared
the glory and perils of De Ruyter, they also accused of treason!
June 21, a double attempt at assassination took place, at the
Hague and at Dordrecht, on the brothers John and Cornelius;
John De Witt received four wounds, none of which was mortal.
One of the assassins was arrested and executed. The three others
took refuge in the army of the Prince of Orange, where they found
a sure asylum from the pursuit of the States-General.
Meanwhile, De Groot returned from the King to demand
from the States full powers to negotiate (June 25). Violent debates ensued at first in the Provincial States of Holland. The
Corps of Notables, following the advice set forth by De Groot,
desired that they should sacrifice a part of the republic, to save the
rest, and should make large offers to Louis XIV. The deputies of
the cities, for the most part, embraced the same resolution; a few
declared themselves without powers; the representatives of Amsterdam  energetically opposed these timid counsels.  They adjourned until the next evening, that the deputies might have time
to consult their cities. The majority of the council of Amsterdam
appeared at first disposed to falter when its deputies had reported
to it the deliberation of the States; but a few of the city councillors, sustained by the threatening attitude of the people, forced




348                    LOUIS XIV.                      1672.
their colleagues to be courageous through fear. The fine gardens,
the country seats which surrounded the city and embarrassed the
defence, were destroyed; all the sluices that had remained closed
were opened; the dikes were broken; the rich fields of the suburbs were abandoned to the waves which eternally threaten this
country lower than the sea, and the men-of-war ranged themselves
in the plain like floating bastions round the city.
June 26, at evening, the deputies of Amsterdam and five other
cities of North Holland had not made their appearance among the
Provincial States. The majority proceeded, and gave full powers
to De Groot, although, by the terms of the federative constitution,
unanimity of suffrage was required in like case.
The debate commenced again, the 27th, in the States-General.
Zealand, saved by the naval battle of Sole Bay, voted for resistance. Utrecht and Overyssel, the territory of which was invaded,
abstained from voting; Friesland did likewise. The representatives of Groningen were absent, and protested shortly after against
the negotiations. Holland and Gelderland, or rather Holland alone,
since Gelderland, which was in the hands of the enemy, was no
longer really qualified to vote, - Holland accorded full powers in
the name of the Seven Provinces; the registrar of the States-General refused his signature.
De Groot again departed; the 28th, he rejoined his colleagues
who had remained with the King and the royal army on the march
from Yssel on Utrecht. The same day, the plenipotentiaries of
the United Provinces presented their propositions to De Louvois
and De Pomponne.
These propositions were the offer of Maestricht and its dependencies, and of all Dutch Brabant and Dutch Flanders, with ten
millions' indemnity for the costs of the war; the States offered to
France the cession of all they had formerly taken from the Spaniards outside the Seven Provinces. France would have had for
her northern frontier the Lower Meuse and the Western Scheldt,
with its outlet into the North Sea; she would have held Maestricht,
Stevensweert, Bois-le-Duc, Breda, Willemstad, Bergen-op-Zoom,
Hulst, Sluys, and Cadsand. Belgium, separated from Holland and
surrounded by French possessions, would have been wholly at the
discretion of France; and Holland, weakened without being destroyed, powerless to meddle henceforth with the affairs of the
continent, would have subsisted as a maritime power which France
might have probably turned at need against England. The most
daring hopes of the great French politicians would have been real



-1672.          PRETENSIONS OF THE KING.                  349
ized and surpassed, and the dangerous war with Holland, stopped
in time, would have been justified by this magnificent result.
The irregularity of the powers brought back by De Groot was
the only rational objection; but, in fact, it cannot be doubted that
the opponents, whether provinces or cities, would have consented.
The leader of the military party, the Prince of Orange himself,
not daring to count on the perseverance of the people, had just
asked permission of the States-General to negotiate for his patrimonial and seigniorial interests with the King.
It was unhappily decreed that this war, the work of passion much
more than of policy, should retain the fatal character of its origin.
Of the two heirs of the idea of Richelieu, Colbert was far away 1
and Lionne no longer existed. Had Lionne been living, he would
have reminded Louis XIV. of the traditions of three generations
of great men; he would have supplicated him on his knees to accept
the offer of the Dutch, to crown the edifice of national greatness.
But he was no more, and his successor, the upright and modest
Arnaud de Pomponne, if he had his views, had not his authority.
Pomponne urged the King to accept. Louvois opposed it, - Louvois, powerful as an administrator through surprising special faculties, doubtful as regarded the comprehension of great warfare, a
cipher in politics, to which he brought no other system than a blind
and savage violence. Louis, who had repulsed Colbert with so
much jealousy in his special functions, suffered Louvois to invade
the place of Colbert; he had closed his ear to his good angel; he
listened to the demon who inflamed, who incessantly superexcited
his wrath and pride. This was the answer suggested to the King
by Louvois: —
Louis accepts the cession of Dutch Brabant and Dutch Flanders,
exclusive of Sluys and Cadsand, in exchange for which he demands
Delfzyl, with the twenty surrounding parishes. Delfzyl, the chief
town of the province of Groningen, commands the gulf formed by
the mouth of the Ems. Louis, having promised Sluys and Cadsand
to England, and not wishing to deliver them, asks Delfzyl in order
to induce Charles II. to accept it in exchange.  He is willing to
see the English on the Ems, but he is not willing, and indeed with
reason, to establish them on the Scheldt.
Nothing can be better thus far; but let us proceed: —
1 He wrote, July 8, a letter to the King on the advantages to be procured to
French commerce, whether the King conquered Holland, or treated with her. See
FE. Joubleau, t. II. p. 421. Colbert attempted to derive profit from this war; this
does not prove that he desired it, as M. Joubleau would have it.




350                     LOUIS XIV.                      1672.
Instead of Maestricht and its dependencies, Louis desires Nimeguen, Geldric Betaw, and the island of Bommel, with all the
fortresses depending on them; that is, the Leck for a frontier instead of the Lower Meuse; he desires the very heart of Batavia;
that is, he prefers what injures Holland to what would be of use
to France, Maestricht being more advantageous to France than all
Batavia.
He also exacts the town of Grave, on the Meuse, and the county
of Meurs, near the Rhine, domains of the Prince of Orange, the
States-General remaining charged with indemnifying the prince at
their expense. The States shall cede to the King their rights or
pretensions over the German places which the King has taken from
them, and shall restore to Count d'Ost-Frise Emden, and the fortresses which they withhold from him.
If these conditions do not suit the States, the King is willing to
offer, as an alternative, to keep all his conquests, including those
which he may still make before the acceptance of the treaty by
the States, which shall cede to him, besides Maestricht and its
dependencies, Bois-le-Duc and its mayoralty for himself, and the
county of Meurs for the Elector of Cologne.  The King shall
restore the German places, dismantled, to the princes on whom
they are dependent. The States shall cede to the Bishop of Miinster four places in the county of Ziitphen.
Whichever may be the alternative accepted, the prohibitions and
new duties laid by the States on French merchandise since 1662
shall be revoked, without reciprocity. Within three months, a commercial treaty with regulations shall be made for the French and
Dutch Companies of the East and the West Indies. " The subjects
of His Majesty shall go and come freely from all the provinces and
towns ceded in'all the provinces of the States-General, without
being subject to the payment of any duty or imposition, or search
of their merchandise, baggage, munitions of war, etc.
"In future there shall be, through all the United Provinces,
public exercise of the Catholic religion; in all places in which
there is more than one church, one shall be given to the Catholics;
they shall be permitted to build one where there is none. A reasonable stipend shall be accorded by the States-General or by each
province to the cure or priest in each of the said churches. The
States shall restore to the Order of Malta the commanderies which
have belonged to this Order in the United Provinces.
"The States shall pay the King twenty millions' indemnity.
"In acknowledgment of the peace which His Majesty is pleased




.1672.           REVOLUTION IN HOLLAND.                  351
to accord to them, the States shall present to him every year, by
an ambassador extraordinary, a gold medal declaring that they
hold of His Majesty the preservation of the same liberty which the
kings, his predecessors, have aided them to acquire.
" Although His Majesty declares himself contented with the preceding conditions, on condition that they shall be accepted within
ten days, the said conditions nevertheless shall be of no effect, and
His Majesty shall make no treaty of peace or truce, unless the
King of England and the princes of the Empire, the King's allies,
are satisfied by the States."'
This was nothing less than the annihilation of political and territorial independence, the ruin of commerce, and the overthrow of
the Protestant constitution of the United Provinces, by the equality
imposed between Protestants and Catholics by the same King of
France who, at home, did not content himself with strengthening
the inequality between these two religions, but daily wrested from
the Protestants some shred of their civil and religious rights.
De Groot, in consternation, returned to the Hague, bearing with
him this overwhelming reply, without daring to decide on anything
with his colleagues.
He found Holland in open revolution. The example of Amsterdam, the inflammatory preaching of the Calvinist preachers, the
intrigues of the partisans of the Prince of Orange, the forced retreat of the brothers De Witt, who, one sick, the other wounded,
could no longer direct their party, had brought about an almost
general outbreak. In two or three days, June 28-30, all the towns
of Holland were roused to insurrection against the burgher patriciate that formed their regencies (municipal councils); the municipal magistrates were constrained, the bayonet at their throat, to
sign the revocation of the edict which had abolished the stadtholdership in perpetuity, and the Prince of Orange was tumultuously proclaimed stadtholder from city to city.
It was in the interval of these proceedings that De Groot returned to the Hague and communicated to the States the revolting
demands of the conqueror. The deputies of a few of the towns
in which revolution was at this moment breaking out, such as Leyden, Delft, and Dordrecht, were in favor of submitting to a foreign
power rather than of yielding to the popular movement; but the
other representatives of the cities and the body of the nobility were
carried away by the patriotic impulse of the deputy from Amster1 Mignet, t. IV. pp. 31-35. Basnage, t. II. pp. 245-248. Pellisson, Lettres hist.
t. I. p, 254.




852                     LOUIS XIV.                      1672.
dam. The States-General postponed the answer which was demanded within ten days; which was equivalent to a refusal; while,
everywhere about them, the people of the towns sacrificed to the
national defence the fertile fields of Holland by raising the sluices
and breaking the dikes.  The rural population encumbered the
cities; part of the cattle perished, surprised in this vast confusion by the violent irruption of the sea.  The sacrifice was
immense, but it saved Holland by rendering it inaccessible till
freezing weather.
On the night of July 2-3, the Provincial States of Holland abrogated in turn the perpetual edict against the stadtholdership; the
6th, they proclaimed William III., of Nassau, stadtholder, captaingeneral, and admiral for life, reserving, however, to the towns the
choice of their magistrates. The province of Zealand, which had
always been the hot-bed of Orangeism, had already done the same,
and the States-General, July 8, recognized William in the capacity
of stadtholder of five provinces: the last two provinces, Friesland
and Groningen, had their separate stadtholder, whom they had
always preserved, and who was a Nassau of another branch. The
States referred the negotiations to the stadtholder and the deputies
accredited to him in the army.1
A young man without youth, pale and sickly, feeble in body but
sustained by his nervous energy, a stranger to the faults as well as
to the generous qualities of his age, as prudent and dissembling at
twenty-two as if he had passed a long life in the labyrinths of diplomacy, yet loving the excitement of danger as a gambler the
excitement of play, insensible to external pomp and to the arts of
wit and imagination, concealing under an icy exterior the flame
within, a sure friend and an implacable enemy, inflexible in his
ambition, immovable in his designs, as skilful a calculator in operating on human lives as on abstract figures, destitute of enthusiasm
and brilliancy, but never drawing back, pausing, or wearying,
"needing neither hope to undertake nor success to persevere,"2
such was the gloomy and obstinate adversary that Holland opposed
to the brilliant King of France.
The new stadtholder was inaugurated under sad auspices. The
French were continuing their conquests.  Grave, an important
position on the Meuse, had just been occupied without resistance,
July 5; Nimeguen capitulated on the 9th, before Turenne, after
three weeks of bombardment and of regular siege; it was the only
place which had been at all seriously defended; four thousand sol1 Basnage, t. II. pp. 249, 251, 284, 289.  2 Mignet, t. IV. p. 75.




1672.        LOUIS, CHARLES, AND WILLIAM.              353
diers remained prisoners there. The French had taken, in six
weeks, four hundred pieces of artillery.
Holland had been strongly encouraged to resistance by the promises of Spanish agents, who announced the speedy declaration of
Spain and the Empire against France; she also founded lively hopes
on the family ties which united the Prince of Orange to the Houses
of Stuart and Brandenburg; she reckoned that the accession of
William to authority would soften Charles II. and rekindle the
zeal of the Great Elector. The welcome given by the King of
England to the envoys of the United Provinces had not, however,
been encouraging; he kept them immured at Hampton Court to
prevent them from communicating with influential men of the
Presbyterian party and the city of London.  Despite these evil
presages, when Holland knew that Charles had sent to the scene
of war his two chief ministers, Buckingham and Arlington, she
flattered herself that the English ministers would bring back the
King of France to moderation and render peace possible, or, if not,
would separate from Louis. Buckingham and Arlington, on reaching the Hague early in July, were greeted by acclamations which
the instructions with which they were charged little deserved.
They went to confer with the Prince of Orange at his camp at
Bodegraven, between Leyden and the French outposts, and found
him resolved to yield nothing more than Maestricht and the towns
of the Rhine. They proceeded thence to the camp of Louis XIV.,
at Zeist, near Utrecht (July 6).
Louis had remained since June 30 at this post, without having
attempted in time to disperse the small bodies of troops distributed
over some decisive points by the Prince of Orange. Now it was
too late; the inundation arrested the royal army, which, master of
all the dry land, saw the Dutch cities rising in the distance like
islands amidst the waves.
The English ministers, far from favoring the Dutch, indorsed
the demands of Louis XIV., on condition that the latter should
ratify the pretensions of Charles II. An attempt was made to
gain the Prince of Orange himself. Three English agents went,
with the consent of Louis XIV., to offer to'William the hereditary sovereignty of the wrecks of the republic. William replied
coldly that they came twenty-four hours too late; that he had
taken the oath as stadtholder the evening before to the StatesGeneral (July 11). The Prince of Orange carried his ambition
higher than the tempters thought; he wished to command the
entire Netherlands, and not to pick up from the mire a shred
VOL. I.            45




354                     LOUIS XIV.                     1672.
of his country, flung to his avidity by the disdainful hand of the
conqueror.
On the 8th of July, Louis XIV., recognizing the impossibility
of penetrating further into the province of Holland till freezing
weather, had resolved to recross the Rhine and the Meuse. He
decamped from Zeist on the 10th, after intrusting to the Duke de
Luxembourg the government of the province of Utrecht with a
small army corps, and installing a Catholic archbishop in the cathedral of Utrecht. He crossed the Leck at Arnhem, the Waal at
Nimeguen, the Meuse at Grave, and threatened Bois-le-Duc. July
16, he signed, with the plenipotentiaries of Charles II., the reciprocal engagement to make no peace or truce except by common
accord, and not to depart from the conditions fixed in common.
These were, for England, the imposition on the Dutch of the sovereignty of the flag in all British waters even to their coasts; an
annual rent for the herring fishery on the British coasts; a regulation for the East Indian commerce in favor of England; an indemnity of one million pounds sterling; the delivery of Sluys and the
islands of Cadsand, Walcheren, Goree, and Voorn, as a guaranty;
lastly, the sovereignty or hereditary stadtholdership of the rest of
the republic for the Prince of Orange, whom they persisted in protecting despite himself.1
Notice of this new treaty was addressed to the Prince of Orange
and to the States. The answer was not long in coming. July
21, the States, in accordance with the stadtholder, declared that
they would never accept conditions "so hard and insupportable,"
and that they would await the success which it should please God
to give them.
Holland and Zealand had, meanwhile, been exposed to a new
peril. Inaccessible by land, they were not so by sea. The continental disasters and internal commotions of the republic had not
permitted them to repair, with the usual facility, the losses experienced by the navy in the battle of Sole Bay; the Anglo-French
fleet, on the contrary, had been repaired and reinforced at leisure;
it set sail again, July 8, and soon appeared in sight of the coasts of
Zealand. It numbered one hundred and sixty sail; De Ruyter
had but half as many to oppose to them, all told, ships, frigates, and
fire-ships. He did not suffer himself to be drawn out to sea, but
contented himself with covering the mouths of the Scheldt and
Meuse. The allies did not attack him, but set sail northward
and prepared to effect a descent on Texel. Masters of Texel, the
1 Mignet, t. IV. p. 48.




1672.               HOLLAND SAVED.                      355
most important of the islands which form a barrier between the
German Ocean and the Zuyder-Zee, the allies would have held
the Zuyder-Zee and Amsterdam in a state of blockade, and destroyed the commerce of Holland. They waited for the flood-tide
to disembark; but the ebb, this day, lasted twelve hours instead
of six, in consequence of the violent and variable winds which had
driven from the open sea into the Zuyder-Zee, and which were
now driving back from the Zuyder-Zee into the sea a prodigious
volume of water (July 14). Unexplained circumstances prevented
the renewal of the attempt to land the next day; a four days'
storm then battered and dispersed the allied fleet; the' elements
this time battled for the cause of justice.1
The sea was completely favorable to the United Provinces; the
rich East India merchant fleet escaped the allies, and arrived safe
and sound in port.
The departure of Louis XIV. apprised Holland that her enemies
were resigned to let her breathe a few months. The King had
entertained the thought of besieging Bois-le-Duc; the places of
Dutch Brabant had followed the example of Holland, and opened
their sluices; but the fresh water being very low everywhere, and
the Brabancon towns not having the resource of the sea, the obstacle did not appear insurmountable. The heavy rains which suddenly succeeded a long drought came to the aid of Bois-le-Duc.
The King contented himself with taking, through Turenne, Fort
Crevecoeur, which commands the communications of Bois-le-Duc
with the island of Bommel, then the town of Bommel which commands the whole island (July 19-22), and set out for Saint-Germain, July 26, passing through the territories of Liege. Turenne
retained command of the army, reduced to a very slender effective
force by the garrisons with which the conquered country had been
covered. Louis XIV. had ordered that nothing more should be
undertaken.2
This species of truce, necessarily accorded to Holland, did not
appease the passions aroused among the people against the pretended accomplices of the French invasion. Powerful and implacable interests skilfully kept up the fermentation easily fomented
in these masses crowded within the walls of large cities by the
waves, and tortured by want and fever. The weakness testified
by the friends of De Witt, or at least by the majority among them,
in the presence of the conqueror, was destined to be fatal to the
1 Vie de Ruyter, t. II. p. 63. Basnage, Annal., t. II. pp. 262-264.
2 (Euvres de Louis XIV. t. III. P. p221-241. Hist. de Turenne, t. I. p. 465.




356                     LOUIS XIV.                     1672.
two brothers. Parties do not change their demeanor in a day, and
the burgher patriciate of the United Provinces, accustomed to
count on alliance, or at least peace with France, could not at once
recover from the stroke which had crushed its policy; it expiated
also at this moment the aristocratic spirit which had separated it
firom the masses. The De Witts, notwithstanding, might yet have
risen again, had public opinion been left time to become calmed
and enlightened. The Orange party hastened to strike a decisive
blow.  July 24, on the denunciation of a convicted criminal,
Cornelius De Witt, who was, of the two brothers, the man of
boldness and execution, was arrested as being accused of having
plotted the death of the Prince of Orange, and nothing was spared
to give credit to this absurd and odious calumny. The hero of
Holland, De Ruyter, offered his noble security to screen the magistrate who had shared his perils and glory; he succeeded only in endangering his own popularity. John de Witt resigned into the hands
of the States-General his functions of Grand Pensionary (August
4). Nothing could disarm the fury of the Orangeists. The Supreme Court of Holland, reduced to three judges by the retirement or absence of the rest, ordered Cornelius de Witt to be put
to the rack to force him to confess his crime. As intrepid in tortures as on the deck of De Ruyter's ship, Cornelius recited amidst
the torments the celebrated ode of Horace" Justum et tenacern propositi virum."
The judges, dismayed at his courage, dared not consummate the
judicial assassination imposed on them; they declared Cornelius
shorn of his charges and dignities, and perpetually exiled.
This was not enough for the pitiless persecutors of the De Witts;
the two brothers, like Grotius formerly, might in safety have
awaited better times. The Orangeists, seeing the arm of the law
broken in their hands, invoked treachery and force together to
strike both victims at once. John was informed that Cornelius,
about to be set at liberty, wished to speak with him in prison.
" Ah, brother! " exclaimed Cornelius, on seeing him enter, " why
are you here? " - " What! did you not send for me? "- "No."
"Then," returned John, with calmness, " we are lost! "
It was their enemies, indeed, who had drawn John into the snare.
At this very moment the denouncer of Cornelius was rushing
through the streets of the Hague, calling the people to arms to
prevent the two traitors from escaping their punishment.  John
attempted to go out; the keepers themselves barred the way. Ere
long, the prison was besieged by a furious horde. The States of




i672.           MURDER OF THE DE WITTS.                       357
Holland wrote to the Prince of Orange, who was at the camp at
Alfen, to demand troops. The Prince sent none. The little garrison of the Hague restrained the insurgents during the greater part
of the day; but at four o'clock the intimidated magistrates had
the cowardice to withdraw it. The prison was immediately forced
by the burgher-militia itself; the two brothers were dragged out
bleeding, and were massacred a few paces from the door.  "Down
with the perpetual edict! " 1 cried one of the assassins, felling John
de Witt with a pistol-shot. This speech told clearly enough whence
came the blow. The two corpses, horribly mutilated, were suspended to the public gallows, in the presence of the Gomarist pastor, Simonides (Simonson), who presided, like a priest of Moloch,
at these scenes of horror (August 20).
Thus ended one of the greatest statesmen of the seventeenth
century, through having confided too much in the reason of men
without taking sufficient account of their passions, - a fatal error
in a politician! The relentless war waged by Louis XIV. on the
United Provinces had brought about the mad reaction under which
John de Witt succumbed. Louis was to repent of his cruel vengeance on the obstacles thrown by De Witt in the way of his
designs; he was to gain nothing but the substitution in Holland
of an irreconcilable foe for a doubtful ally, and of the English for
the French party.
The States of Holland required the stadtholder to prosecute
the murderers; the burghers of the Hague, in a body, protested
against all prosecution. The stadtholder caused an amnesty to be
granted. The assassins were not only unpunished, but rewarded:
the denouncer of Cornelius de Witt had a place and a pension;
the principal leader of the riot was appointed bailiff of the Hague.
The States, deliberating under bayonets, accorded to the stadtholder the right to depose and replace the magistrates of the
towns. All the friends of the two brothers, who occupied the
regencies of the cities, fled or were removed; they were treated
as accomplices of the officers who had ill defended the besieged
places, several'of whom were decapitated or hung. William had
been unwilling to pick up the sovereignty of Holland from the
mire; he picked up the dictatorship from blood.2
1 The edict against the stadtholdership.
2 Basnage, t. II. p. 320. See, in Mignet, t. IV. p. 71, a fine passage concerning
the end of the De Witts. William always defended himself from the charge of
having ordered the death of the De Witts; but he and his friends had done all that
was necessary to render the catastrophe inevitable. See a curious passage in the
Memoirs of Gourville. Gourville, a man of original and daring mind, skilled in




3858                      LOUIS XIV.                         1672.
Of this power, acquired by means so fatal, he made at least an
energetic use. The arms which had just stricken down order and
liberty so cruelly knew how to defend the national independence.
William of Nassau was found equal to his position, as Louis XIV.,
at the same age, was found equal to his; he profited actively by
the respite assured him by the inundation to prepare means of
defence within and available diversions without. A gross fault of
Louvois greatly aided the stadtholder to reorganize the Dutch
army. The French had in their hands nearly twenty-five thousand
prisoners; Turenne and Conde had advised the King to send them
to work on the Languedoc Canal; Louvois, through bravado and
contempt of the enemy, caused them to be restored at four crowns
per head.1
The month of August passed with no other military event than
the raising of the siege of Groningen by the troops of Cologne and
Miinster, who had taken Coevorden, and devastated all of that
country. The courageous and successful resistance of Groningen
appeared to mark the limit to Holland of a series of shameful
reverses. Great revolutions, however, were shaping themselves,
and all Europe was in uproar.
The thunderbolts hurled by Louis XIV. had at first stunned the
whole world; it was believed that Holland would be annihilated
before any one had time to move. When the invasion was beheld
incomplete and suspended, the adversaries of France regained hope.
One cabinet alone, that of the Vatican, had learned with joy of the
successes of Louis XIV.: Pope Clement IX., in a brief, August 23,
congratulated the King. on having overthrown a power " elevated
on the ruins of a legitimate power (that of Philip II.), and prejudicial to the interests of royalty." 2 Almost everywhere else, without distinction of political or religious principles, there were, in different degrees, anxiety, irritation, and terror.  Spain strove to stir
up Europe in favor of her former rebellious subjects who had recently protected her and whom she wished to defend in turn; yet
she herself hesitated to quit the part of the mere auxiliary of the
Dutch for that of the declared enemy of France. The Elector of
making his most audacious familiarities accepted by the great, questioned the
stadtholder one day on this point.  "He answered that he could assure me in
perfect truth that he had given no orders to kill him,.... but that having learned
of his death without having contributed to it, he had ever since felt somewhat
relieved by it." - Collect. Michaud, 3d series, t. IV. p. 575.
1 Hist. de Turenne, t. I. p. 462. Desormeaux, Hist. de Conde, t. IV.
2 E. Sue, Hist. de la marine frangaise, t. II. p. 291, ap. les archives des affaires
etrangeres.




1672.          REACTION AGAINST LOUIS.                 359
Brandenburg seconded the Spanish diplomacy with the greatest
energy. It has been seen that this prince had signed a defensive
treaty with Holland, April 26; nevertheless, he was unwilling to
risk engaging alone- against the colossal power of the King of
France, and some difficulties in the ratification of his treaty served
him as a pretext for not acting at once by arms. He acted at least
by negotiations at Vienna and in the whole Empire, with as much
vigor as perseverance. The Austrian government, as weak in its
international relations as it was knavish and cruel in Hungary,
showed itself at first very uncertain; Leopold and his ministers
had imagined that every Dutch place would check the French as
it had formerly checked the Spanish. Now they had wholly lost
their bearings, and knew no longer whether to observe or break
their secret engagements with Louis XIV. The gold of France,
which knew the way to the Imperial council, and the passionate
exhortations of Spain and Brandenburg, alternately turned the
scale.
Austrian tradition prevailed. A defensive compact was signed
at Berlin, June 22, between the Elector of Brandenburg and a
minister of the Emperor. The avowed end of the treaty was to
maintain the peace and the statu quo of the Empire by a decennial
alliance, into which most of the German princes and the King of
Denmark should be brought. By secret articles, the two contracting parties engaged to assemble without delay each twelve thousand
soldiers.  This was violating the engagement of neutrality concluded with Louis XIV. in November, 1671, since the statu quo
of the Empire comprised the occupation of the towns of the Lower
Rhine by the Dutch; it was also breaking implicitly the great
eventual treaty of January, 1668, to which Louis XIV. had made
such important sacrifices.
At this very moment (June 25) Louis wrote to Leopold that he
was occupying but momentarily the places of the Empire taken from
the United Provinces; Leopold notwithstanding ratified, July 13,
the treaty of July 23, at the same time that he protested his good
intentions to the King. The Elector of Brandenburg sent word to
the new stadtholder not to yield, for he was about to be succored.
The stadtholder and the States-General rejected in part, as has
been seen, the pretensions of France and England (July 22), and,
three days after, an Imperial agent, Baron de l'Isola, a diplomatic
adventurer, famous for his passionate pamphlets and indefatigable
intrigues against France, signed with the States-General a new
treaty which bound Leopold, not only to maintain the statu quo of




360                    LOUIS XIV.                     1672.
the Empire, but to join his troops and those of Brandenburg to the
Dutch army in defence of the'United Provinces, in consideration
of a heavy subsidy paid by the republic.
Louis XIV. demanded explanations of the Elector of Brandenburg concerning the armaments that he was making in Westphalia
and Lower Saxony (July 24). The Elector replied evasively.
The King formally promised the Germanic Diet not to keep the
places of the Empire which he was occupying (August 8), and signified to the Emperor and Brandenburg, that, if they persisted in
arming in the vicinity of Miinster and Cologne, he should send
M. de Turenne beyond the Rhine to the aid of his allies.
The last of August, the Elector of Brandenburg and Count de
Montecuculi, the Emperor's general, put themselves each at the
head of an army corps. Louis dispatched orders, on his side, to
Turenne to cross the Rhine, both to protect the German allies and
to bar the way to Holland to the enemies; he imparted to the Diet
the motives of this determination. Turenne could only assemble
from fifteen to sixteen thousand soldiers, leaving the places garrisoned, and two small army corps to the Dukes de Luxembourg and
de Duras, stationed the one at Utrecht, the other on the Meuse at
Maesyck.  This was an evident condemnation of the system of
dissemination suggested to the King by Louvois. Turenne crossed
the Rhine at Wesel, September 10, and, reinforced by a few troops
from Cologne and Miinster, moved between the Lippe and the
Ruhr, avoiding being the first to engage in hostilities. During this
time, Conde, cured of his wound, set out for Alsace, where he
formed an army of eighteen thousand men with the garrisons of
Alsace and Lorraine, and prepared to repulse the diversions which
might be attempted against these two provinces.
Brandenburg and Montecuculi had effected their junction, September 12, and found themselves at the head, not of twenty-four
thousand men, as the treaty of June 23 announced, but of more
than forty thousand. Their forces were almost double those of
Turenne. They showed on this account no more decision or activity. This was not through lack of energy in the Great Elector or
of military science in the Austrian general; but the court of Vienna
had relapsed into its uncertainty; Hungary was beginning again' to
revolt in consequence of the violence done to its political constitution and the renewed persecutions against the Protestants; the
Turks, again seized with a conquering ardor, were invading Southern Poland, and the Emperor, hesitating to endanger himself on the
side of the Rhine, had forbidden Montecuculi to attack the French.




1672.         WILLIAM AND LUXEMBOURG.                  361
The Austro-Brandenburghers were first led from Lower Saxony
through Thuringia towards the Rhenish electorates, in order to
cross the Rhine at Coblentz, which they counted on inducing
the Elector of Treves to deliver to them. Turenne foiled this
project by moving to Nassau, on the Lahn. The two allies fell
back to Friedberg, and remained there three weeks in inaction.
At length the Emperor decided to ratify the treaty of the Hague
(October 17), and the Austro-Brandenburg army, reinforced by
the old Duke of Lorraine with a few thousand adventurers, again
put itself in motion to endeavor to cross the Rhine and join the
Prince of Orange. Turenne fell back on the left bank of the
river and prevented the enemy from crossing at Coblentz, then at
Mayence. The Electors of Treves and Mayence, and the Palatine, dared not declare themselves in favor of the Imperialists or
surrender the bridges of the Rhine. The allied generals ascended
the Rhine by forced marches to Strasburg, with the hope that this
Imperial city- would permit them to cross; but Cond6 was guarding
Alsace; warned by the couriers of Turenne, he sent boats loaded
with fireworks under the Strasburg bridge and blew it up. Brandenburg and Montecuculi returned to Mayence, and finally succeeded in crossing on a pontoon bridge near that city (November
23). They took the road to Treves to gain the valley of the Meuse
and the district of Liege, where the Great Elector had promised
to meet the Prince of Orange. Turenne hastened to meet them,
stopped them at the entrance of the Ardennes, near Wittlich and
Prum, and prevented them from debouching from the basin of the
Moselle into that of the Meuse.
The stadtholder, notwithstanding, had made great efforts to put
himself in a position to join his allies. After the departure of
Turenne for Germany, he had at first resumed the offensive against
Luxembourg, on the confines of the provinces of Holland and
Utrecht. He had failed in turn before Naarden and Woerden;
Luxembourg had forced him to raise the siege of the latter place,
after an infuriated conflict (October 12). Considerable reinforcements soon arrived to restore to him the possibility of new enterprises. The cabinet of Madrid, impelled by the governor of Belgium, Monterey, had'furnished ten thousand auxiliaries to William.
This assistance, added to the German and Swiss levies, had raised
the active army of the United Provinces to thirty-four thousand
fighting-men. William advanced through Dutch Brabant towards
the district of Liege, and drove back to the other side of the Meuse
the French corps-of Duras, too weak to oppose him; but just as
VOL. I.          46




362                     LOUIS XIV.                     1672.
he was preparing to penetrate into the Ardennes, he learned of the
retreat of the Austro-Brandenburghers. The Great Elector had
vainly proposed to the Austrian general to force the passage; Montecuculi was forbidden to give battle. The German army, harassed
by fatigue and sickness, and unable to maintain itself in a difficult
and ruined country, recrossed the Rhine the middle of December.
This was a cruel disappointment to William, who had hoped that
a mass of eighty thousand men was about to throw itself between
France and her new conquests, and to deliver the United Provinces
at a single stroke. He attempted to indemnify himself by a bold
dash. He rapidly reascended the Meuse, traversed the Spanish
territory of Namur, and laid siege to Charleroi, " the gate by which
France communicated with her garrisons on the Meuse and the
Rhine." l Master of this gate, he hoped to force back the war
into France itself (December 15).
The agitation was great at Saint-Germain when news was received of this audacious attack. Louis, angry and almost humiliated at having to defend himself, took with extreme celerity the
measures necessary to rescue or retake Charleroi. He made preparations to march in person to Hainault. This was unnecessary;
the governor of Charleroi, Du Montal, absent on the day of the
investment, had heroically traversed the enemy's quarters with a
handful of troopers and reentered his place, and defended it with
valor worthy of such a beginning; the siege apparatus, promised to
the stadtholder by the Spaniards, did not arrive; cold weather had
just set in and made William fear that Holland would encounter
danger in his absence; he raised the siege, December 22, and
returned with no other advantage than having cruelly sacked and
dismantled Binch6.
Before the stadtholder could regain Holland, the active and
intrepid Luxembourg endeavored to profit by his absence. December 28, Luxembourg set out from Woerden with eight thousand choice infantry and marched straight to the Hague to capture
or disperse the States-General. Holland, which was just before
a sea, was no longer but a plain of ice. Happily for it, a thaw
commenced the very day of the departure of Luxembourg. The
French general nevertheless pushed on to Bodegraven and Swammerdam; but the thaw increased; the Prince of Orange was
returning with rapid strides, and might surprise the little French
army on the narrow dikes, in the midst of the renewed inundation.
Luxembourg was forced to resign himself to effect a retreat already
1 Mignet, t. IV. p. 124.




1672-1673.    RELENTLESSNESS OF LOUVOIS.                863
become exceedingly perilous. The cowardice or incapacity of a
Dutch officer, who abandoned a position easy to defend with a
handful of men against an army, probably saved the French
column, which regained Woerden and Utrecht without loss (December 31).
The weakness of the column dispatched would not probably
have permitted a complete success. Nevertheless, it is doubtful
whether the Prince of Orange, who reached Alfen on the 30th,
would have succeeded in saving the Hague, had it not been for the
thaw.1
This expedition was unhappily disgraced by deplorable excesses.
The soldiers revenged themselves for their disappointment on the
inoffensive inhabitants: they were not content with burning, by
the order of Luxembourg, the burghs of Bodegraven and Swammerdam; they committed cruelties which the friends of the Prince
of Orange did not fail to magnify by a thousand frightful details in
order to exasperate Holland. The French soldiers had done nothing but execute to the letter the threats contained in the odious
royal declaration of June 24. This was the beginning of a series
of acts of savage violence dictated to the armies by a minister who
had erected inhumanity into a system, and would renew the horrors
of the Thirty Years' War amid the softening of manners and the
progress of civilization. Thanks to Louvois, the French name
would soon be detested by the peoples that adopted the manners
and arts of France! 2
At this very moment the conquered provinces and towns were
overwhelmed with exactions and brutally ruined, without any
regard to sworn capitulations.  Colbert, Pomponne, the generals,
even the intendants interceded in vain for the unhappy inhabitants; Louvois prevailed, and offended pride made Louis XIV.,
naturally humane and just, accept the joint responsibility of the
acts of his pitiless minister.8
The reverses of the Prince of Orange were compensated for,
meanwhile, by the recapture of Coevorden by favor of the ice
(December 30). The provinces of Groningen and Friesland were
thus wholly rid of invasion. The Bishop of Miinster and the Elector of Cologne, attacked on their own territory, could not defend
their conquests in Holland. The Austro-Brandenburg army, after
1 Basnage, t. II. p. 340. La Neuville, t. IV. pp. 242-251. La Hode, t. III. p. 440.
Lettres milit. t. II. p. 1.
2 Lettres milit. t. I. pp. 124-368. Basnage, t. II. p. 3847.
a Ibid.




864                     LOUIS XIV.                     16 73.
recrossing the Rhine, had fallen back on them and ravaged their
domains. Turenne marched to their aid by the way of Wesel.
Louvois sent him orders, in the King's name, not to cross the Rhine,
but to bring his troops into winter-quarters on the Upper Rhine.
Turenne judged, that, if he obeyed, the two German princes would
submit to the Emperor and abandon the French alliance. He took
it on himself to cross over and show himself on the right bank, to
reassure the allies. Louis XIV., enlightened by his remonstrances,
approved his course, and Turenne, moving forward, no longer contented himself with protecting the allies. The great army of the
enemy was so far destroyed that scarcely more than twenty thousand able-bodied men remained to it; the little army of Turenne,
on the contrary, had been so well managed by this great general,
"the father of the soldier," that it was almost intact. Turenne
chased the enemy, not only from the territories of Cologne and
Miinster, but from the counties of Mark and Ravensperg, the Westphalian domains of the Elector of Brandenburg. The Walloon,
Bournonville, who had replaced Montecuculi, who had fallen ill,
in the command of the Imperial troops, like him refused battle.
The enemies fell back in disorder beyond the Weser. The Austrians and the Brandenburghers, unable to take up their quarters
in Lower Saxony, whose Brunswick princes maintained an armed
neutrality, retired, the former to Franconia, the latter to Halberstadt, and the French remained complete masters of Westphalia
(March 1, 1673).1
The Elector of Brandenburg had been utterly foiled in his projects. Discouraged, angry with the court of Vienna, which had
failed in its engagements towards Louis XIV. without doing anything serious for the adversaries of Louis, discontented with Spain,
which had not determined openly to declare war against France,
hoping for no immediate aid from the other German princes, who
had negotiated much and done nothing, he demanded peace. It
was accorded instantly, and on the most advantageous conditions, -
an act of sound policy by which Louis XIV. began to strive to repair
the errors of the previous year. The Elector withdrew from the
Dutch Alliance, and promised to hold his troops beyond the Weser.
Louis engaged to restore to the Elector all the places which he had
taken from him, either directly, or indirectly by taking them from
the Dutch; he only retained Wesel and Rees until peace should
1 Hist. de Turenne, t. I. p. 472.  Lettres milit. t. 1. La Hode, Hist. de Louis XIV.
t. III. p. 490.




1673.            DEJECTION OF COLBERT.                  365
be made with the United Provinces. He accorded to the Elector
a gratuity of 800,000 livres (April 10, 1673).1
The general situation appeared very favorable to Louis XIV. in
the spring of 1673. The effort attempted to rouse the body of
Germany in favor of Holland had failed, although Sweden had not
kept her promises and had effected no diversion against the Elector
of Brandenburg. Several princes of the Empire were even engaged with Louis XIV.; the Duke of Hanover had promised to join
France and Sweden, if Sweden should declare herself; the Elector
of Bavaria and his kinsman the Duke of Neuberg and Jiilich were
wholly inclined towards France. In England, the parliament, first
prorogued till October 8, 1672, then till February, 1673, had just
opened. Charles II. had manifested the most hostile sentiments
towards the United Provinces, consequently the most favorable
towards the French alliance; and his chancellor, Shaftesbury, had
opened with a fulminating harangue, in which he declared that the
new Carthage must be destroyed: Delenda est Carthago! Parliament, the opposition of which had been so much dreaded, granted
a subsidy of ~1,260,000 for the war. The internal sufferings of
Holland, even more than the menaces from without, seemed destined to force her to capitulate.  Part of the Netherland territory was ruined by foreign occupation, the rest by inundation, which
was again found, in 1673 as in 1672, the only effective protection.
Deplorable resource, which destroyed not only the fertility of the
soil, but the health and life of the people, decimated by the miasma
of a damp and feverish atmosphere!
Louis XIV. was prepared energetically to sustain his advantages;
he had under his banners ninety-six thousand infantry and twentyeight thousand cavalry or dragoons, a light corps, equally adapted
to fight on foot or on horseback, and of which great use was beginning to be made.2  He had secured financial means still much
more considerable: for the second campaign than for the first, by
weighing, it is true, very heavily on France. The position of Colbert, forced to find money at any cost, became more and more
painful. One of the most thrilling episodes of his struggle with
Louvois is recounted with touching simplicity in the Memoirs of
his clerk, Charles Perrault.
" The war raging more fiercely than ever, some gave the King
to understand (apparently Le Tellier and Louvois) that, to sustain
it with success, it was necessary to assign an extraordinary fund,
for wars, of sixty millions annually," -that is, to increase from
1 Mignet, t. IV. p. 154.    2 Lettres milit. t. I. p. 145.




366                     LOUIS XIV.                       1673.
twenty-six to twenty-seven millions the war-funmd, which had been,
in 1672, forty-five millions, thirty-three for what was called extraordinary expenses, and twelve for the fleet, for ammunition
bread, and some other articles reckoned separately.1
Colbert exclaimed with dismay, and said that he believed it impossible to provide for this monstrous increase of expenditure.
"As you like," returned the King; "there is a man here who
will undertake to supply it if you are not willing to do so."
Colbert shut himself up a long time at home without returning
to the King, " busied in turning over his papers, without any one's
knowing what he was doing or of what he was thinking." Of
what he was thinking, we can easily comprehend. Grievous struggles rent his great soul. Should he accept, should he make himself the instrument of the oppression of the people, he who had
been their benefactor? If he refused, would his enemies be contented with his downfall? He knew Louvois, the worthy son of
that Le Tellier " who never pardoned ";2 who knew whether his
enemies, sole masters thenceforth of the mind of the King, would
not endeavor to treat him as he had treated Fouquet?  He might
sacrifice himself, but France, - into what hands was he about to
abandon her? If he remained, he would render the present evils
less intolerable than any other could do, and at least he would have
the future in store. This war would not be eternal, and with peace
he would resume his work; he would reconstruct the economical
edifice which he had raised and which he was obliged to demolish!...
He remained; but these days of internal conflict had furrowed
his face with lines which were never to be effaced. Hitherto, his
clerk had seen him set to work with an open countenance, and
" rubbing his hands for joy"; easy of access, prompt in dispatch,
he made business a pastime; thenceforth he became gloomy, hesitating, and hard to please; he seated himself at his desk sighing
and with an anxious brow.3
The fiscal measures to which Colbert resigned himself to lend
his ministry were preceded by a royal declaration, February 24,
1673, enjoining the parliaments purely and simply to register the
decrees which should be presented to them, without preliminary
1 See Statement of Expenditure in Forbonnais, t. I. p. 472. The total expenditure
was eighty-one millions in 1672, and one hundred and seven and a half millions in
1673.
2 Lettre de Turenne, ap. (Euvres de Louis XIV. t. III. p. 424.
8 Mdm. de Charles Perrault.




1673.                    FINANCES.                         36T
remonstrance, but to present remonstrances afterwards to the King,
if they saw fit. This was, in point of fact, the annihilation of the
right of remonstrance, for it was too evident that observations presented after registration and promulgation of edicts would be of
no effect. The parliaments thus lost all share in the legislation, -
and, during all the rest of the reign of Louis XIV., the registration of edicts became a thing of mere form. This suppression of
the little control that subsisted over the royal or ministerial wishes
was an incontestable evil in every point of view. It was breaking
a useful instrument which it was necessary only to restrain within
certain bounds; the absolute power injured itself by depriving
itself of leisure to reflect on its own acts.1
From this time a multitude of extraordinary transactions, destined
to supply the insufficiency of the regular revenue, were seen to
follow each other. The aids and salt-taxes were alienated on a large
scale, as well as various royal duties. Suppressed offices were reestablished; new ones were created in great numbers in the higher
and lower judiciary and in the finances; the superior courts were
augmented by new members; the Chatelet de Paris was doubled;
certain petty offices, monopolies between the merchant and the consumer, recalled the times of Mazarin and the Fronde.  Such were
the privileged venders of fish, poultry, eggs, etc. The renewal of
the annual fee, the guaranty of hereditability and vendibility, was
also sold to officers of the superior court, with increase of salaries.
Exemption from villain taxes was sold to the lower officers. All
these affairs passed through the hands of the farmers of the revenue,
with a commission of one sixth of the product, and sometimes more.
About twenty-five millions per annum were thus made, which would
have almost covered the surplus expense exacted by the King, had
it not been for the commissions, and had not the regular revenue
varied during this time. But the consumption diminishing by the
straitened circumstances of the people, and the extraordinary transactions bearing in part upon alienations of revenues, it was necessary
to make up the deficit by increased taxation; the villain tax was
raised from a little more than thirty-three millions to forty or fortyone millions; salt was raised thirty sous per minot; the tax on exchange was made equal to the tax on sale.  Colbert, lastly, could
not dispense with having recourse to the loans so much dreaded by
his prudence; 900,000 livres of rentes on the HIotel de Ville were
created in different emissions, but on very disadvantageous conditions, despite the inconsiderable amount of the issues.  The
1 Anc. Loisfranc., t. XIX. p. 70. (Euvres de daAguesseau, t. XIV. pp. 146-155.




868                       LOUIS XIV.                        1673.
farmers of the revenue, the large capitalists, were not content with
five and a quarter per cent. interest, as fixed by the ordinance
of February, 1672; they must have six and a quarter, or even
seven and one seventh per cent. Colbert vainly authorized foreigners to acquire rentes and to dispose of them like Frenchmen.
Foreign money did not come in. Colbert next appealed directly to
the public, to the small capitalists, by a happy conception: he established a bureau of loans, where private individuals could place their
money at five per cent., with power to withdraw it at will. The
success attested the confidence inspired by the minister; Colbert
thus had always, while the war lasted, fourteen or fifteen millions
of floating capital at his disposal.
He endeavored to lighten the blows which he was forced to deal
to agriculture, by diminishing the export duties on wines and brandies, by granting to the Southern provinces liberty to export their
grain by the payment of the tariff (twenty-two francs per muid
for wheat), and to the Northern provinces the same liberty, with
the remission of three fourths of the tariff, that they might feed the
armies that were warring in the Netherlands and on the Rhine.
The producers and the marine were alike favored by the suppression
of all export duties on merchandise exported by French ships for
the American and African colonies; and the passports granted to
Flemish and other ships of hostile countries to export French
commodities, in consideration of a duty of three francs per ton,
specially favored producers.1
Colbert, if no longer free to do good according to his wishes,
could at least bear testimony to himself that he had circumscribed
the evil as much as possible.
The sound sense of Louis XIV. was not so far blinded by passion that he had felt no impression from the remonstrances of Colbert.  While forcing the action of his minister of finances, and
while suffering his minister of war pitilessly to levy contributions
on the conquered provinces, Louis was no longer determined to
refuse all compromise acceptable to Holland. His diplomatic relations were not equally reassuring at all points.  If the English
Parliament had consented to vote money to continue the war
against the United Provinces, by way of compensation, it reacted
with extreme violence against the Catholic tendencies of the Stuarts;
and the Presbyterians themselves joined with the Episcopalians to
1 Forbonnais, Recherches sur les finances, t. I. pp. 476, 480, 483, 486 et seq. Bailli,
Hist. financiere de la Fr-ance, t. I. pp. 462, 464, 470. P. Clement, list. de Colbert, pp. 344,
846.




1673.              LONDON AND VIENNA.                    369
force Charles II. to revoke the Toleration Act which he had rendered
unconstitutionally in the absence of the Houses; they chose rather
to renounce the benefit of this edict than to suffer the Papists to
profit by it. Parliament went further, and asked the King to dismiss from all civil or military employment whoever should not take
the oath of supremacy, - that is, recognize the King as the head of
the Church; it proposed special measures against the Papists, which
did not reach the Protestant Dissenters. Charles was given to understand that the subsidy voted would be annulled in case of refusal. Arlington, who now betrayed the French alliance and the
Catholic party, as he had formerly betrayed the Reformation and
Holland, urged the King to consent. Charles yielded, thinking,
perhaps, that his brother would change conscience with the same
facility as himself (February-March, 1673). It was not so. The
Duke of York ostentatiously resigned his offices. The great projects of Catholic restoration, so complaisantly displayed by Charles
II. before his ally, the King of France, thus vanished at the first
menace of public opinion; traces of them remained only in the obstinate soul of the Duke of York, who was one day to break where
his brother had bent.
It was to be feared that, if Parliament should attack the French
alliance as it had attacked Popery, Charles would not resist much
more energetically, and the prorogation of Parliament (April,
1673) assured Louis of England but for one campaign.
It was probable, on the other hand, that the Court of Vienna
would not remain in the ridiculous position in which it had been
placed, the year before, by a contest entered upon in the council
of the Emperor by the partisans of the war and the Minister, Lobkowitz, who desired peace with France in order to subjugate Hungary at leisure. The destruction of the Brandenburg alliance, by
showing the danger to Holland and Belgium more pressing than
ever, furnished new weapons with Leopold to the party which no
longer desired a war which was not war, and the downfall of Lobkowitz was imminent. Able and ardent publicists continued to
excite the mind of Germany against the projects of universal monarchy ascribed to Louis XIV., and the imprudent adulation of
certain French writers seconded but too well the adversaries of
France.'
The attitude of Sweden was also to be taken into serious consideration. The Swedish government, instead of interfering in
1 A book was published in France under the title, Les Droitd du roi stur l'Emnpire.
See La Hode, Hist. de Louis XIV. t. III. p. 312.
VOL. I.         47




370                     LOUIS XIV.                     1673.
Germany, had contented itself with offering its mediation. The
too rapid successes of Louis XIV. had by no means satisfied the
Swedes, who thought, with much sagacity, that the ruin of Holland
would end in rendering the English masters of the sea. Louis
had accepted the Swedish mediation before the close of 1672, and
Cologne had been designated as the place of a congress. Louis
signed, April 18, 1673, the instructions of his plenipotentiaries.
He ordered them to treat only of the affairs of Holland, and to
waive the demands of the Empire on Lorraine, and on certain questions relative to Alsace and Trois-Evech6s. He authorized them
to treat, provided that Holland ceded Maestricht and its dependencies, Grave and the district of Kuick, Bois-le-Duc and its mayoralty, the forts of Crevecceur, Voorn and Saint-Andr6, the barony
of Breda, Nimeguen and its territory, with the provision of razing
Nimeguen if the States-General razed Forts Knotzemburg and
Schenck; the States-General were to invest with Bergen-op-Zoom
the Count d'Auvergne, the descendant of Charles IX., who had
claims on this marquisate.1
This was no more than the Dutch had offered in 1672, since, if
Louis demanded Nimeguen and some important fortresses between
the Meuse and the Waal, he gave up Dutch Flanders and the
mouth of the Scheldt; but it was much more than Holland was
now disposed to concede.
In case the United Provinces should refuse to suffer themselves to
be thus completely separated from the Spanish Netherlands by the
French possessions, Louis consented that the places which he demanded should be ceded to Spain, which should give France, in
exchange, places of equal value on the Belgian frontier. He reduced to six millions the indemnity for the costs of the war; but
reserved the right of supporting the pretensions of Charles II. and
the other allies of France, and the revendications of divers German
princes, and demanded the free exercise of the Catholic religion
in the United Provinces, with the maintenance of the advantages which he had accorded to Catholics in the conquered countries.
The English pretensions comprised, among other exorbitant requirements, the reestablishment of the hereditary stadtholdership in
the House of Nassau, and the delivery of several ports of Zealand or
of Holland as a "guaranty." Louis found himself obliged, therefore,
to demand for his ally what he would have been grieved to obtain;
Sweden, which represented at this moment the true interests of
Mignet, t. IV. p. 139.




1673.             MAESTRICHT INVESTED.                  371
Europe, extricated him from embarrassment by protesting that it
would never suffer England to acquire positions in Holland or Zealand which would render her absolute mistress of the sea, and would
utterly ruin the United Provinces.1
The whole position imposed on Louis XIV. the necessity of
vigorously pushing his advantages, and of endeavoring to conquer
decisive results in this campaign. He was ready; his adversaries
were not. He refused, therefore, with reason, the suspension of
arms demanded of him during the negotiations; the congress was
also as slow to assemble as the armies were prompt to act.
The plan of campaign of Louis XIV., advised by Turenne, was
well conceived. Conde was sent, in April, to Holland, with an inconsiderable force; the inundation would have scarcely permitted
him to make use of a large one, and, after an unsuccessful attempt
on Muyden, he was obliged to limit himself to retaining the conquests of 1672, a part little adapted to his ardent genius. The
gout, which tormented him, contributed besides to arrest his enterprises. Turenne, reinforced, remained in Brandenburg Westphalia until the full ratification of the treaty of Louis XIV. with
the Great Elector; he quitted it towards the end of June, and
established himself at Wetzlar, on the Lahn, in order to observe
the Imperial army, which was again forming in Bohemia, and to
intercept its way to the Rhine. The two great generals had thus
only a defensive mission. Louis XIV. had reserved to himself the
brilliant part of the operations; he meant to be free from leadingstrings as General as well as King, and no longer desired lieutenants
too illustrious. " You know," wrote he to Louvois, " that I must
henceforth be alone in commanding an army." 2 Happily, he had
Vauban with him, and a war of sieges was in question. All the
preparations were perfectly arranged by Louvois, who had acquired
a truly marvellous talent for moving men and material from the recesses of his closet, and insuring the junction of different corps at
given times and places, with all necessary means of subsistence and
action.
About the middle of May, twenty thousand infantry and twelve
thousand cavalry were assembled by the King before Courtrai, and
a train of siege artillery was sent against Audenarde. Fear spread
through the Spanish Netherlands; the governor, Monterey, by
seconding the attack of the Dutch on Charleroi, had exceeded
the rights of a defensive alliance and provoked the arms of the
King of France. May 24, the French army crossed the Lys at
1 Mignet, t. IV. p. 614.     2 (Euvres de Louis XZV.




872                       LOUIS XIV.                        1673.
Deynze, and encamped before the gates of Ghent, where it was
joined by its artillery. It threatened at once Ghent and Dutch
Flanders; then, suddenly turning on Brussels, it made a brief halt as
if wishing to besiege the capital, and, passing on, did not stop again
till it reached Maestricht, which was invested at the same time, on
both banks of the Meuse, by the vanguard of the King and by seven
thousand men from the army of Germany, sent from beyond the
Rhine by Turenne (June 5-7).  This manoeuvre, so skilfully contrived and executed with such precision, despite the great distance
which separated the two French armies, met with full success;
the Spaniards, deceived by the movements of the King, had hastened to distribute their troops in the principal Belgian towns, and
could throw no aid into Maestricht, reduced to its usual garrison.
This garrison, nevertheless, was more than six thousand soldiers
strong, without the burgher militia, and was commanded by a brave
officer of French extraction, named Fariaux; but it had to deal
with Vauban! The siege-works were admirably conducted by this
great engineer after a new plan, the honor of which Louis XIV.
naively enough attributes to himself in an account in his handwriting. The King, with the bulk of the army, arrived June 10; the
trenches were opened from the 17th-18th on the left bank of the
Jaar; several lines were made communicating with each other by
other lines parallel with the ramparts of the place, and so broad as
to render the sorties of the besieged almost impossible, -the troops
charged with guarding the trenches being enabled to deploy a formidable front, instead of being huddled, as before, in narrow boyaus.
Strongholds, in the trenches themselves, finally insured the circulation and rallying of the troops.' The army was again reinforced
by troops sent by Turenne and Cond6, and by a large number of
guns drawn from the magazines of Maesyck, Wesel, and Charleroi.
More than forty thousand men and fifty-eight battering cannon,
directed by Vauban, were an irresistible force. During the nights
of June 24, 27, and 29, several outworks were successively
carried by assault, despite the desperate efforts of the besieged,
who fought much better than the Dutch garrisons had yet done.
The governor, seeing the French lodged in the very fosse of the
place, capitulated, the 30th, and obtained permission to retire to
Bois-le-Duc with his garrison.
1 Voltaire (Siicle de Louis XIV. chap. 11) ascribes the invention of parallels to
Italian engineers in the service of the Turks, during the siege of Candia. The man
who was to renew the genius and virtues of Vauban, after celebrating them, Carnot,
refers all the honor of them to his illustrious predecessor. Eloqe de Vauban, by M.
Carnot; Dijon, 1784. According to Pellisson, the Turks, in fact, were the first to
use them.




1673.        THE IMPERIAL CITIES SUBJECTED.                   373
This was the most useful conquest that Louis XIV. could have
made at this moment, no place being so well situated to influence
the fate of the war.  Maestricht connected Charleroi with Wesel
and the garrisons of Holland, and commanded the principal communications between Belgium and Germany. The difficulties,
however, had not been great enough to justify the intoxication with
which this success inspired the Great King, nor the admiration
which ministers and courtiers, beginning with Colbert, thought
themselves obliged to testify to him.1
The King, after putting Maestricht again in a condition of defence, restored to Turenne a part of his detachments, dispatched
another corps to Flanders, sent Condd to Brabant,2 in order that he
might place himself between the Spaniards and the Dutch, then,
with the rest of his forces, marched to Lorraine to sustain Turenne
if necessary, and to cover Lorraine and Alsace. Communication
was insured with the army of Germany by two pontoon bridges
thrown across the Rhine at Andernach and Philippsburg. Louis
XIV. made his troops construct some fortifications at Nancy,3 then
detached Lieutenant-General Rochefort against Treves, the elector
of which had declared himself against France by giving up to the
officers of the Emperor, Coblentz and Ehrenbreitstein. While
Rochefort attacked Treves, Louis moved into Alsace, where the ten
Imperial cities objected to receive the French troops, and claimed
to maintain ancient liberties incompatible both with the spirit of the
monarchy and the necessities of the war. The King claimed, on
his part, in the capacity of protector of the ten cities, to have the
right to introduce his soldiers into them whenever he saw fit. In
these debates on the interpretation of the rights transferred to the
crown of France by the treaty of Westphalia, the right of the
stronger, or, rather, the force of circumstances, was destined to
prevail. Louvois, preceding the King, went to prepare the Imperial cities, by intimidation, to submit. Colmar, the most important
of these cities, was also the most refractory. Stratagem was employed to prevent bloodshed.  Colnar was apprised that the King
wished to visit it. The inhabitants dared not refuse to receive the
1 See the letter of Colbert, ap. (Euvres de Louis X1IV. t. III. p. 412. The King
caused Colbert to send his painter to paint the siege.
2 This recall prevented Condd from seeing the renowned Spinoza, whom he had
summoned to him at Utrecht, and who arrived after his departure. Conde, despite
his conversion, was always very curious about heterodox philosophy. See Basnage,
t. II. p. 409.
3 It was at Nancy that Louis XIV. assumed the voluminous peruke, so celebrated in the history of French costume. He had hitherto worn only a few locks of
false hair. See Pellisson, Lettres historiques, t. I. p. 395.




374                     LOUIS XIV.                     1678.
King's guards. When the French and Swiss guards were in battlearray in the city, notice was given to the citizens that they were
about to carry their artillery to Breisach, and raze their walls
(August 28). It was too late to resist. Sch6lestadt and the other
cities bowed their heads. The whole ten were dismantled, in order
to avoid the expense of garrisons, and to prevent the enemy from
establishing himself there in case of invasion.1
The King returned to Lorraine, where he received good news
from Treves. This great city, invested, August 30, by Rochefort
and Vauban, had scarcely any garrison. The citizens defended
themselves vigorously enough for a few days; but they soon lost
courage, and surrendered, September 8; the French were thus
masters of the course of the Moselle, though the Imperialists held
the mouth.
These advantages seemed of a nature to render Louis XIV.
more inflexible in his pretensions and more averse to peace. It
was not wholly so. The congress of Cologne had opened at the
end of June.  The English plenipotentiaries yielded first to the
opposition of the Swedish mediators, on the question of the places
of Zealand and Holland. Louis XIV., on his side, made some
concessions, and renounced Nimeguen and the marquisate of Bergen-op-Zoom  (the middle of August).  The Dutch, in turn,
showed great pride, and scornfully rejected the conditions of Louis
and his allies, softened as they were.
The events of the maritime war explained in part this haughty
attitude of the Dutch republic and the prince who ruled it.
The English and French fleets had rejoined each other anew,
May 26, on the coast of England. Charles II., feeling that his
parliament would not be long in breaking loose from him, in affairs
without as in affairs within, had resolved to make, this year, a desperate effort against the United Provinces; and Prince Rupert,
Duke of Cumberland, who commanded the combined fleet in the
Duke of York's place, had received orders to go in search of the
enemy, even to the banks which protected the Netherland coasts.
The United Provinces had not less actively prepared for the
struggle. The maritime population, exasperated by the declamations of the Chancellor of England against the New Carthage, had
put all their resources at the disposal of the admiralties; the citizens who had capital lent it to the republic at the lowest rate of
interest; the rest carried their plate and jewels to the mint. The
United Provinces had thus succeeded, in the midst of their distress,
1 (Euvres de Louis XLV. t. III. pp. 596-401. Pellisson, Lettres, t. I.




1673.               NAVAL WARFARE.                      375
in equipping seventy-two men-of-war, exclusive of light vessels
and fire-ships, and the Prince of Orange, silencing his private feelings before the public safety, on which his own greatness, moreover, depended, had maintained at the head of the naval army the
friend of the De Witts, the great De Ruyter.
The Franco-English fleet, of about ninety ships, the smallest of
which carried fifty guns, and a great number of light vessels and
fire-ships, attacked, June 7, the Dutch, anchored in sight of the
island of Walcheren. De Ruyter did not remain at anchor between the banks, but went proudly to meet the aggressors. The
F1 inch, who formed nearly one third of the combined fleet, were
in the centre of the line under their Vice-Admiral D'Estr6es,l
and had to deal with De Ruyter in person. They showed themselves worthy of this illustrious adversary, and sustained the shock,
not without great loss, but without disadvantage, except that their
fire-ships, ill directed, were almost all uselessly consumed. The
day ended without either of the parties having obtained decisive
success. The superiority of the Dutch artillery had counterbalanced the superiority of numbers.
A few days after (June 14), De Ruyter resumed the offensive
and attacked the allies who had remained at anchor near by.
They cannonaded each other fiercely for some hours. The next
day the allies tacked about towards England, to refit their damaged ships and repair the losses of their crews.
They were not discouraged. They set sail again towards the
end of July, while eight thousand English soldiers, commanded by
Schomberg, the conqueror of the Spaniards in Portugal, embarked
on transports and awaited at Yarmouth the success of a new naval
battle to attempt a descent. The allies passed before the coasts
of Zealand, just as De Ruyter quitted the banks to go to meet
them. They set sail for the Texel; De Ruyter followed them.
The conflict recommenced, August 21, and lasted through a long
day. They fought so near the coast that the people gathered on
the downs along the shore could follow the phases of the combat
which was deciding their destiny.
The three squadrons, of which each fleet was composed, diverged
greatly from each other during the battle. The English squadron of
Vice-Admiral Spragge was exceedingly maltreated by the Amsterdam squadron, commanded by Van Tromp. Spragge was drowned
while attempting to quit his sinking ship. The Admiral, Prince
Rupert, repaired to the aid of the squadron in peril, and was fol1 The flag-ship, La Reine, carried 104 guns.




376                     LOUIS XIV.                      1673.
lowed by the squadron of Admiral De Ruyter and by a portion of
the Zealand squadron, which had had to fight the French. The
English admiral complained afterwards that the French had suffered the Zealanders to pass, and had not afterwards come at his
signal to assist him against De Ruyter. At evening he ordered a
retreat, and the French, who were but feebly engaged, withdrew
after the English. It appears, through contradictory accounts, that
Louis XIV. had ordered Vice-Admiral D'Estrees to spare his
fleet more than in June, when, posted in the centre of battle, it
had sustained the principal shock.'
Be this as it may, the end of the expedition was utterly foiled;
Holland was henceforth regarded as unassailable by sea, and the
unfriendly disposition of the English people and parliament towards
France would be no longer counterbalanced by the hope of conquests which would flatter the national passions.
The maritime war had not remained concentrated in the North
Sea; it was fiercely waged in the Atlantic Ocean and even in the
Eastern seas; the United Provinces again obtained advantages in
these distant parts.  In December, 1662, the English governor
of Barbadoes had conquered from the Dutch the island of Tobago;
the Dutch had taken from the English, then again lost, the island
of St. Helena. More successful in North America, the Dutch recovered New York, which had been New Amsterdam, and captured
the English fishing-fleet at Newfoundland. They also retook New
Holland, which had fallen into the power of the English. The
French of the West Indies failed in an attack against the island
of Curacoa (March, 1673).
An able and enterprising officer, named De La Haie, had been
sent in 1670 to the East Indies by Louis XIV., with the title of
Viceroy of the French settlements.  De La Haie founded, in
1672, a fort at Trincomalee, on the coast of Ceylon, an excellent
position to command the Indian Ocean; but this post, isolated
amidst the Dutch settlements, could not maintain itself, and was
taken by the enemy while La Haie was occupied in establishing
himself on the coast of Coromandel, at St. Thomas, an ancient
Portuguese colony overrun by the Mussulmnans of the Carnatic
since the decline of Portugal.  The Moguls, expelled by the
French, returned in force, besieged them in St. Thomas, and called
the Dutch to their aid. De La Haie obstinately defended his con1 Vie de Ruyter, t. II. pp. 70-157. Vie de Tromp, pp. 466-502. Eug. Sue, Marine
franqaise, t. II. 1. v. ch. 1. Basnage, t. II. pp. 410-425. Mein. du Marquis de Villette, p. 12. La Neuville, Histoire de Hollande, t. IV. pp. 267-298.




1673.                   COALITION.                       377
quest; but, for lack of assistance, he was finally obliged to accept
an honorable capitulation (September, 1674).1
An important diplomatic victory encouraged the Dutch not less
than their glorious maritime defence. The Emperor had been
wholly drawn over by Chancellor Hocher and Count Schwartzenberg, the leaders of the party opposed to France and to the Prime
Minister, Lobkowitz, and it was now the Court of Vienlla that
urged forward the Court of Madrid. Spain, if she still hesitated
to declare war, did not hesitate to provoke it in all ways; the persons and property of Frenchmen were exposed in her territory to
acts of the most savage violence; she refused all reparation for the
attack on Charleroi; she sold, to raise money, all the judicial offices
of her Italian provinces, where vendibility had not hitherto existed,
and she furnished as large subsidies as she could to the Emperor and the Governor of Belgium. Meanwhile Leopold, or
rather his council, passing from weakness to arrogance, had pretended to impose on Louis XIV. conditions unacceptable to a
conqueror, such as the immediate evacuation of all that was dependent on the Empire, indemnities to the princes whose domains
had been overrun by the war, the restitution of Lorraine, guaranties for the privileges of the Alsatian towns and the feudatories of
Trois-Evechgs, an armistice until the general peace, &c. (the
middle of July). A  few weeks after, the Imperial army being'ready, the Court of Vienna broke forth by a declaration addressed
to the Diet of Ratisbon on the dangers "to which the German nation and the Empire are exposed on the part of foreigners." The
Emperor invited all the electors, princes, and States of the Empire
to join their forces to his against the common enemy (August 28).
August 30, a triple treaty was signed at the Hague between
Holland on one part, the Emperor, Spain, and the Duke of Lorraine on the other. The Emperor obligated himself immediately
to march thirty thousand men to the Rhine, in consideration of a
subsidy paid by the United Provinces, who were, on their side, to
put in the field twenty thousand fighting-men. Spain and Holland
mutually promised, first, an aid of eight thousand men, then all
their respective forces, should it become necessary; they engaged
not to treat separately; Spain promised to assist Holland to recover all that she had lost, and Holland obligated herself to
reestablish Spain in the limits of the treaty of the Pyrenees, or
to cede to her Maestricht. The Emperor, Spain, and Holland
1 Histoire gidnrale des voyages, t. VIII. p. 626. La Neuville, t. IV. p. 337. Basnage, t. II.
VOL. I.       48




378                    LOUIS XIV.                    1673.
obligated themselves to put an army of eighteen thousand men at
the disposal of the Duke of Lorraine, and to reestablish him in his
States.1
September 18, the French ambassador, Gremonville, was dismissed from Vienna. All his diplomatic genius had been unable
to prevail against the force of the situation.
At the moment when hostilities were recommencing in Germany
between Turenne and Montecuculi, Louis XIV. offered to Holland, through the channel of the Swedish mediators, conditions
much less disadvantageous than he had done a month before. He
demanded no longer but, 1st, Maestricht, or Namur and Mons in
exchange; 2d, Aire, Saint-Omer, and Cambrai; 3, Ypres, Cassel,
and Bailleul, or Franche-Comte, or Luxemburg, or Grave and
half the mayoralty of Bois-le-Duc; Spain being indemnified by
Holland for what it ceded to her (the middle of September).2
These propositions were rejected.
Military successes began to justify the firmness of the Dutch.
While Conde moved from Brabant into Flanders to protect the
French frontier and hold the Spaniards in check, the Prince of
Orange had assumed the defensive, and, deceiving Luxembourg,
who still commanded at Utrecht, by feigned attacks on Bommel
and Grave, he had suddenly thrown himself on Naarden with the
bulk of his army (September 6). This place was somewhat weak;
but two thousand five hundred good troops, who defended it,
ought, it would seem, to have held it long enough to enable Luxembourg to succor it. Nevertheless, on the sixth day of the siege,
the counterscarp having been carried by storm, the governor lost
courage and capitulated. Amsterdam, delivered from this dangerous neighborhood, uttered a cry of joy which resounded throughout the United Provinces. This was the first advantage which
the young stadtholder had won personally, and the first which the
Dutch had obtained on land over the French. The King thought
it incumbent on him to make an example to prevent these capitulations after the Dutch fashion: the unhappy governor was ignominiously degraded; his sword was broken over his shoulders by
the executioner; he was killed a few months after fighting as a
volunteer among the common soldiers.
A fortnight after the loss of Naarden, Louis XIV. made new
offers to the congress of Cologne; he reduced his pretensions to
Aire, Saint-Omer, Ypres, Bailleul, Cassel, and Cambrai. Maes1 Mignet,_t. IV. part v. sect. 2.
2 Mignet, t. IV. p. 166.




1673.         AUSTRO-BATAVIAN JUNCTION.               379
tricht was to be dismantled. The Dutch plenipotentiaries replied
that they could no longer treat without their allies, including the
Duke of Lorraine. Louis could measure more and more clearly
the full extent of the mistake which he had made in 1672.
The Imperial army, assembled in Bohemia, had begun its march
before the end of August, after a review by the Emperor, who
had just made a solemn vow to Our Lady of Zell (Maria-Zell),
and who harangued the troops, crucifix in hand, as if a crusade
were in question. The Emperor's general, Montecuculi, advanced
through the Upper Palatinate and Franconia, where reinforcements from the Elector of Saxony and the Duke of Lorraine
increased his army to thirty-five or forty thousand men. Turenne,
with very inferior forces, advanced along the Main to meet the
enemy, to prevent him from gaining the Rhine, and to try to determine the Elector of Bavaria to take up arms in favor of France.
The Bavarian remained immovable; but the Elector of Mayence
and the Palatine, contrary to the Emperor's hopes, also preserved
neutrality; the Elector of Brandenburg did not decide to transgress his recent treaty with France; and the Diet of Ratisbon, to
which Louis XIV. had not ceased to address amicable explanations
of all his movements, shrunk from the proposition made by Leopold
to join the troops of the Empire to those of the Emperor. Sweden,
the Electors of Bavaria and Cologne, and the Dukes of Neuburg
-aid Hanover, had warmly dissuaded the Diet from joining the
Court of Vienna.
Turenne, seeing that Montecuculi did not attack, crossed the
Main and the Tauber, and offered battle to the enemy near Rothenburg. Montecuculi avoided the collision, and withdrew to an advantageous post on the left bank of the Main, between Ochsenfurt
and Wiirzburg. They held each other in check there for two
weeks; the principal crossings of the Main, between Wiirzburg
and Frankfort,.were in the power of the French; the Bishop of
Wiirzburg had promised Turenne to remain neutral. He broke
his word, and delivered his bridge to Montecuculi, who crossed the
Main, and descended the right bank towards Mayence. Thanks to
the defection of the Bishop of Wiirzburg, the Imperialists were
thus enabled to reach the Rhine and cross it on a pontoon bridge
at Weissenau, near Mayence (October 20). Montecuculi feigned
to threaten Alsace. Turenne, who had remained on the left of
the Main, crossed the Neckar, and regained the Rhine at Philippsburg, so as to cover Alsace. Montecuculi then concentrated his
troops, embarked his infantry on the Rhine, ordered his cavalry to




380                    LOUIS XIV.                      1673.
recross to the right bank, and descended rapidly to Coblentz, and
thence to Bonn, where he joined the Prince of Orange. The
stadtholder, after having been reinforced by a Spanish corps in
Brabant, had proceeded towards the Rhine, through the territories
of Jiilich and Cologne, where he had committed cruel ravages.
The Austro-Batavian junction, which had failed in 1672, succeeded in this manner in 1673; and the two armies united laid
siege to Bonn, an important place of the Electorate of Cologne,
which had, through Louvois' fault, but a very slender FrancoGerman garrison (November 3). Turenne, on one hand, and on
the other, Luxembourg and the French corps of the Meuse, did
everything possible to succor the place in time; but the garrison,
despite its bravery, was forced to capitulate, November 12, before
Turenne had crossed the Moselle. This vexatious event abandoned to the discretion of the enemy the states of Cologne and
Miinster, save a few places occupied by French garrisons, and
secured free communication to the Imperialists with Belgium and
Holland. The campaign on the Rhine thus ended to the disadvantage of France. The enemy took up his quarters along the
Rhine, and Turenne was forced to fall back and take up his on the
line of the Sarre.
Fortune seemed to waver; the enemies of France everywhere
took courage. The Germanic body began to incline to the side of
Austria; the English Parliament, assembled at the close of October, broke forth against the French alliance. The Duke of York
had just married his second wife, by proxy, an Italian Catholic,
the Princess of Modena, daughter of a prince of the House of
Este and a niece of Mazarin. Louis XIV. was the author of this
marriage, and had endowed the bride as if she were a princess of
the blood of France, - a grave error on the part of Louis, which
involved the French government in the most perilous course towards England! It was to placard an intervention in British
affairs which the English had been able before only to suspect, and
gratuitously to provoke the Protestant passions of this nation at
the moment when these passions were wrought to the highest
pitch by their recent triumph over the inclinations of Charles II.
The Commons demanded the annulment of the marriage of York;
as the King resisted their demand, they resolved to grant no more
subsidies for the war, unless the Dutch absolutely refused a reasonable peace, and solemnly protested against the alliance of Louis
XIV. (November 14).  Charles II. employed his habitual resource; he prorogued Parliament two months; but this was




1673-1674.        HOLLAND EVACUATED.                   381
only a brief respite, and the defection of England was henceforth
inevitable.1
As to Spain, war, which had existed in fact for a year past, had
been declared on both sides in October, in consequence of new hostilities committed against the French frontier by the governor of
the Catholic Netherlands. The governor, Monterey, had overcome the final hesitations of the cabinet of Madrid, and presumptuously announced at his court that he would soon restore the
frontier of the treaty of the Pyrenees.
Louis XIV. embraced with a firm glance the whole position,
and, well advised by Turenne, clearly took his resolution.  He
understood the extreme difficulty of preserving his conquests, and
the facility moreover of making others more profitable, while defending his own frontier. To evacuate Holland, to indemnify himself at the expense of Spain, and to endeavor to treat separately
with Holland while continuing the war against the House of Austria,- such was the new plan adopted; an excellent plan, the
very wisdom of which condemned so much the more severely the
war with Holland.
It is something however to know how to pause in error and to
retrieve a fault; for this, one must have a soul of vigorous elasticity. Geniuses far superior to Louis XIV. have not known
how to do so; he knew how, many a time, and this is one of his
titles to the esteem of posterity.
Before the loss of Bonn, the impossibility of guarding all the
places conquered, and the necessity of concentrating the troops, had
been already recognized by the King; Woerden, Bornmel, Crevecoeur, had been evacuated early in November. Ufrecht and its
whole province were abandoned towards the end of the month,
after having been forced to redeem themselves from pillage and fire
by heavy ransoms. The places of the Zuyder-Zee were evacuated
in the course of December by the French and the troops of Miinster. The Duke de Luxembourg threw into Grave a part of the
garrisons withdrawn from all these posts, and brought back the rest
to Maestricht, while nothing was done to stop them by the corps of
the enemy stationed on each side of the Meuse. The Prince of
Orange and the governor of Belgium sought to repair this negligence, and, informed that Luxembourg would continue his route
from Maestricht to Charleroi, they hastened to bar the way to him.
Luxembourg manoeuvred so well that he succeeded in concealing
his march from the enemy, who would have overwhelmed him by
1 Mignet, t. IV. pp. 222-231. Lingard, t. XII. ch. 4.




882                     LOUIS XIV.                     1674.
numbers, in joining Schomberg, sent from Charleroi to meet him,
and in regaining the French frontier intact (the middle of January,
1674).
The Prince of Orange was not on this account less triumphantly
welcomed on his return to the Hague. Holland, at last emerging
from the waters which had been for two years her refuge, was
intoxicated by her affranchisement. William had all the profit
of it. February 2, he was proclaimed Stadtholder and hereditary
Captain-General of Holland and Zealand. This was the overthrow
of the government under which Holland had founded and maintained her nationality with glory; it was the transformation of the
republic into a species of constitutional monarchy. This revolution, long called for by English policy, drew Holland to England
as much as it estranged her from France. A blindly systematic
hatred of republican institutions could alone mislead Louis XIV. in
this respect.
The province of Utrecht, then the provinces of Gelderland and
Overyssel, followed the example of Holland and Zealand. The
evacuation of the United Provinces was wholly finished by spring.
" The triumphal arch of the Porte Saint-Denis and the other monuments of conquest were scarcely completed, when the conquest was
already abandoned." I The French kept only Grave and Maestricht. The Marshals d'Humieres and De Bellefonds brought back
all the rest of the troops on the Meuse, and the Rhenish places
which had been taken from the Electors of Brandenburg and Cologne were restored to them early in May. Louis even restored
Fort Schenck to the officers of Brandenburg, hoping, by this
friendly conduct, to induce the Elector to observe his engagements
with France.
During this great retreat, the offensive was assumed again at
several points. Louis, informed that the Elector Palatine was disposed to side with the Emperor and to deliver up to the Imperialists Germersheim, a place situated on the Rhine between Landau
and Philippsburg, caused this position to be suddenly seized by
a French detachment (February 27-March 1). Another small
corps, commanded by the Duke de Navailles, which had entered
Franche-Comt6 a fortnight before, had forced several chateaux and
assailed Gray. This place, demolished by the French in 1668, had
been subsequently fortified indifferently with a few earthworks, and
1 Voltaire, Siecle de Louis XIV. c. 11. The Porte Saint-Denis was built before
the war with Holland; but it was consecrated to the triumphs of 1672 by the basreliefs and inscriptions with which it was ornamented.




1674.          FRANCHE-COMTE. ENGLAND.                 383
contained two thousand men, soldiers and militia. Navailles had
scarcely three or four thousand, but all choice men. Gray capitulated, February 28. Vesoul and Lons - le - Saulnier surrendered
almost without resistance.  These first successes determined the
King's plan of campaign.  Louis resolved to conquer FrancheComt6 in person; while Turenne covered Alsace and Lorraine,
Schomberg went to defend Roussillon, and Condd labored to
strengthen the French positions on the Meuse, by sweeping the
enemy from the environs of Liege and Maestricht. On the ocean,
the defensive was preserved.
It was necessary to hasten to prevent coalition. Everything was
threatening without.
Louis had made some efforts to calm public opinion in England,
after braving it by the marriage of the Duke of York. He had
sent a Protestant ambassador, Ruvigni, in the place and by the advice of Colbert de Croissi. Ruvigni succeeded neither in bringing
back the English public, nor in inspiring Charles, whom dearth and
fear impelled to concessions, with energy. Charles was without
money; the eight millions received from France in three years had
been consumed with many other millions voted by Parliament, and
the suspension of payment by the exchequer was not calculated to
procure new resources for this prince, devoid of order and faith.
Charles began to negotiate separately with Holland through the
medium of Spain. At the reopening of the Houses, January 17,
he offered to communicate to Parliament the treaty of December,
1670, between Louis XIV. and himself, in order to divert the suspicions which were entertained of the mysterious treaty signed
with Madame Henrietta six months before. The House of Commons took no notice of this offer and impeached the ministers,
Buckingham and Arlington. Charles, terrified, communicated to
Parliament the propositions of the Dutch, and, so to say, put peace
within its reach (February 2). He rescued his ministers at the
expense of his authority, and piteously excused himself to Louis
XIV. on the score of the violence done him by the Lower House.
Louis accepted his protestations, unable to do better.  Charles
promised to leave Louis the English troops which had served
him since 1672 at the expense of France, and to join Sweden
as a mediator.  Peace was signed at London, February 19,
between England and the United Provinces. The States-General recognized the absolute supremacy of the English flag from
Cape Finisterre in Gallicia to Van Stuten in Norway. They
paid eight hundred thousand crowns indemnity for the war, but




884                     LOUIS XIV.                     1674.
were subjected to no tribute for the right of fishing in British
waters.
The rupture of the French alliance did not suffice the opposition party in the House of Commons; a little appeased towards the
ministers, who had made it great concessions, this party continued
to pursue the Duke of York, and the motion to forbid all Catholics
to approach the King and Parliament within five miles, without
excepting the King's brother, was rejected by a majority of but
two votes. The Catholicism of James Stuart, the heir of Charles
II., who had no legitimate son, was a bugbear to England even
more than the Protestantism of Henri of Bourbon had been, under
Henri III., a bugbear to France. Charles II. once more prorogued
his Parliament, from March 4 to November 20, without having
obtained a subsidy as the price of his condescension. The efforts
which Louis XIV. had made to prevent England from abandoning
him, he would be doubtless forced to renew to prevent her from
uniting with his enemies.
The adversaries of France obtained an almost complete success
in Germany.
The conferences of Cologne were prolonged without result during the greater part of the winter; the allies wished to negotiate
only a general peace, which should regulate what concerned Lorraine, the Imperial towns of Alsace, and the German feudatories of
Trois-Evech6s. Louis XIV. refused to unite these questions with
that of Holland. The Court of Vienna, become as violent as it
had been uncertain and timid, breathed nothing longer but war,
and dreamed of the overthrow of the treaty of Westphalia and the
recovery of Alsace. It cut short the negotiations by an audacious
violation of the right of nations. The Elector of Cologne, a weak
and compliant prince, was governed by his minister, Wilhelm von
Fiirstenberg, the pensioner of Louis XIV. and wholly devoted to
France. Fiirstenberg had the character of plenipotentiary of the
Elector at the congress, and the city of Cologne had been neutralized
during the conferences. Fiirstenberg should have therefore been
as safe in Cologne as the foreign plenipotentiaries. February 14, at
evening, he was arrested for treason by Austrian officers, taken from
the city and carried prisoner to Bonn, then to Vienna. A few days
after, a cart laden with silver, destined for the French garrison of
Neuss, was seized by the Imperialists in Cologne.
The consequences of these grave incidents showed how far the
spirit of Germany was changed: Germany rose, not against the
violators of international law, but in their favor.




I6'74.            GERMANY DECLARED.                    385
Louis XIV., strongly sustained by the Swedish mediators, demanded a marked satisfaction, did not obtain it, and ordered his
ambassadors to quit Cologne. The conference was definitively
broken off, April 16. April 22, the Bishop of Miinster, who,
unable to count longer on the assistance of the French, had already
approached the Emperor in secret, pledged himself to sustain by
arms the decisions which might be made by the Diet of Ratisbon, and surrendered all that he still withheld from the Dutch.
March 10, the Electors of Treves and Mayence had concluded an
offensive compact with the Emperor. The Elector Palatine did
the same on the same day,- he, the heir of a House that should
have been, it would seem, the eternal enemy of Austria. As early
as January 26, Denmark, seeing Sweden incline towards France,
had thrown herself on the side of the Emperor, and had promised
him nine thousand soldiers; this number was afterwards increased
to fifteen thousand, April 24, two of the Dukes of BrunswickLiineburg promised thirteen thousand auxiliaries to Leopold, in
consideration of subsidies. May 11, the Elector of Cologne, deprived of the counsellor who thought and acted for him, treated
with the United Provinces, and restored to them the places which
he had taken from them. He acted like the King of England; in
abandoning France, he at least left her the soldiers which he had
furnished her.  May 28, the Germanic Diet finally pronounced
against France, and declared that the war of the Emperor was a
war of the Empire. The great work of French policy was destroyed; Austria had resumed, thanks to the excesses of Louis
XIV., the supremacy and the direction of Germany against France.
The Elector of Brandenburg was not slow in following the
movement to which he had lately given the first impulse. There
was none longer in the Empire, but the Elector of Bavaria and the
Dukes of Hanover and of Wiirtemberg, that was not engaged
against France.
In breaking off the general conference, Louis XIV. had attempted to engage Holland in a separate negotiation, but the
wounds which he had given her were still too green, the gratitude
towards the allies too fresh, and the Prince of Orange had too
much interest in continuing the war.1
This war Louis was in a position to sustain. At this very moment he carried it vigorously into his enemies' territory.
At the first news of the entrance of the French into FrancheComt4, the Emperor and Spain had striven to persuade the Swiss
1 Mignet, t. IV. pp. 301-303.
VOL. I.       49




386                     LOUIS XIV.                     1674.
to defend this province. Louis, on his side, as he says himself in
his Memoirs, spared neither address nor money to lull the cantons
to sleep. The Swiss made propositions of neutrality for the two
Burgundies; the King feigned to enter warmly into this idea and
slackened hostilities for a few weeks, which he employed in preparations. The Imperial government shuffled and manoeuvred.
What it desired was not Burgundian neutrality, but war, with
the Swiss for allies. Louis, delighted with the unskilfulness and
temerity of his enemies, broke off the negotiations and abruptly
set out for Burgundy; the Swiss, dissatisfied with the Emperor
and calmed by the promises and gifts of the King, did not stir, and
even engaged to refuse passage to the Imperial troops.
Louis arrived, May 2, before Besangon, invested, since April 25,
by the Duke d'Enghien. The royal army did not exceed eight thousand infantry and five or six thousand cavalry; yet the King sent
Luxembourg, with a detachment, to take Ornans, Pontarlier, and
Baume. The weather was frightful; icy rains prolonged the winter indefinitely and rendered the siege-works very difficult and
laborious; the provisions and forage came only from day to day.
The inhabitants, who heard the complaints of the neighboring
provinces and dreaded the absolute government and heavy taxes
of France, showed themselves hostile; the peasants harassed the
army and embarrassed communications. The Spanish government
had endeavored not to be taken a second time unawares. Besancon
and the other places were well provisioned, repaired as well as possible, and defended by few, but tolerably good troops. Count de
Vaudemont, son of the old Duke of Lorraine, had thrown himself
into Besangon. The circumstances were less favorable therefore
than in 1668; but the presence of Vauban compensated for everything. Vauban opened the trenches against the part of the city
which, built on the north of the Doubs, is not encircled in the
bend of the river, and hoisted, with cranes and iron chains, forty
cannon on the rocks of Chaudanne and Brdgille, which command
the whole city and tower above the rock of the citadel.' Before such
a system of attack, Besanvon was inevitably doomed to succumb.
The bad weather retarded its fall only a few days. The counterscarp
of the quarter beyond the Doubs having been carried on the night
of May 13-14, the city capitulated on the 14th, stipulating the
preservation of its privileges; the governor, Count de Vaudemont,
and the garrison withdrew to the citadel. The batteries of Brdgille
and Chaudanne soon shattered part of the defences of this fortress,
1 Chaudanne and Bregille now for.n part of the defences of Besangon.




1674.    SECOND CONQUEST OF FRANCHE-COMTI.              387
built of dry stone and without earthworks. The outworks and the
fortified church of Saint-Etienne were carried by storm.  The
citadel surrendered May 22.
From Besanjon, the King turned to Dole (May 26), and attacked the city on a side where the new fortifications, undertaken
by the Spaniards since 1668, were not finished. The governor
and garrison defended themselves honorably, but could not prevent
the besiegers from seizing the covert-way and breaching one of the
bastions by the explosion of a mine. The capitulation took place
June 6. The King had refused to guarantee to the Dolese the
maintenance of their parliament; but, some time after, he spontaneously reinstalled this sovereign court, which deeply touched the
people of Dole, and begun, says Pellisson, to render them French.
Louis set out on his return, June 19, for Fontainebleau, leaving to
the Dukes de Duras and de La Feuillade the care of finishing his
work. La Feuillade opened the trench before Salins, June 14, carried, on the 21st, the two forts which cover this town, and entered
the place on the 22d. Duras took the almost inaccessible forts of
Joux and Sainte-Anne.  Another general officer, Marquis de
Renel, completed the subjugation of the province by the taking of
Lure, Luxeuil, and Faucogney (July 1-4).1
The second conquest of Franche-Comt6 had cost a little more
trouble than the first; but it was definitive. The two Burgundies
were no more to be separated, and France was never again to lose
her frontier of the Jura. The Jura, conquered by Louis XIV.,
secured to France the Rhine, conquered by Richelieu. The triumphal arch of the Porte Saint-Martin was consecrated to the
memory of this conquest, as the arch of the Porte Saint-Denis had
been to celebrate less enduring successes.
The allies had not been ready in time to oppose the progress of
Louis XIV.; the Duke of Lorraine, at the head of a cavalry
corps, had indeed made a few attempts; but Turenne had caused
him to be refused passage in turn by the Duke of Wiirtemberg
and the town of Basel, and had not permitted him to enter Alsace
or to approach Franche-Comt6.
The allies, from the beginning of the year, had projected a general attack against France. They had debated among themselves
the design of introducing two great armies, one from Belgium
into Champagne, the other from Germany into Alsace and Lorraine; the Spaniards were to invade Roussillon; lastly, the Dutch
1 (Euvres de Louis XIV. t. III. p. 459. Pellisson, Lettres, t. II. p. 119. Lettres
militaires, t. II.




388                    LOUIS XIV.                      1674.
fleet was to threaten the coasts of France and attempt some enterprise there. The tardiness of the Germanic Diet to declare
itself, which it did not do, as we have seen, till the end of May,
had retarded the formation of the first army, the vanguard of
which the Duke of Lorraine had put in the field. The second
army, which had taken Bonn and reduced Cologne and Miinster to
submit, no longer had Montecuculi, who had fallen sick, at its head,
and was not ready till very late to enter again on the campaign.
These masses, composed of troops of different nations, commanded
by leaders independent of each other, drawing their means of
recruital and revictualling from diverse and distant points, were
slow and heavy to move. The allies were anticipated, in the North
as in the East, although with much less important results. The
Imperialists had hoped to intercept the rear-guard of the garrisons
of Holland, which Marshal de Bellefonds was bringing back to
Maestricht; but Cond6, although cruelly tormented by the gout,
hastened from Hainault to the Meuse with twelve or fifteen thousand men, and forced back the enemy to Limburg. The French
took possession of Dalem, Navagne, and Argenteau, small places
occupied by the allies between Maestricht and Liege (May, 1674).
After thus consolidating the position of the French at Maestricht, Cond4 fell back on Hainault and threatened Mons, but without deciding to besiege it; he feared to wear out his army by a
siege, and besides he did not receive promptly enough the reinforcements of cavalry and artillery which he needed. It was not
till June or July that he found himself at the head of more than
thirty-five thousand men; but then the allies had more than fifty
thousand and were resuming the offensive. They had had difficulty
in agreeing on their operations. Each one saw only his immediate
interest: the Imperialists wished not to diverge from the Meuse,
so as to favor the invasion projected by the other German army in
Alsace and Lorraine. The Spaniards wished to retake Charleroi.
The Dutch were divided between the desire to recover Grave and
Maestricht and the passion of the stadtholder to signalize himself
by an irruption on France. Seditious movements and desertions
among the troops of Miinster and Cologne, who served only with
regret against the French, also somewhat retarded the march of
the Imperialists.  Count de Souches, a French adventurer who
had replaced Montecuculi in the command of the Imperial troops,
finally crossed the Meuse at Namur with twenty thousand men, at
the close of July, and joined, near Nivelle, twenty-five thousand
Dutch and a few thousand Spaniards, united under the command




16T74.            BATTLE OF SENEFFE.                   389
of the Prince of Orange. The descendant of William the Taciturn had received the powers of generalissimo of the Catholic King,
the heir of Philip II.: strange vicissitudes in human affairs!
Cond6 had established himself in a strong position at some dis.
tance from Charleroi, between the brook Pidton and the Sambre.
From  there he covered French Hainault and Champagne, and
obliged the enemy to expose himself to attack, should he march
towards Flanders or Picardy. After detaching ten thousand men
to blockade Grave, the allies, still superior to the French, strove
to draw Cond6 from his camp. They were unsuccessful, and perceived the impossibility of undertaking anything against Charleroi.
Then, with an imprudence inexcusable in the presence of such an
adversary, instead of falling: back on Nivelle, they defiled in the
direction of Mons, by a flank-march executed in sight of the French
camp, in a covered and uneven country, where the different corps
could assist each other only with great difficulty (August 11).
Cond6 uttered a cry of joy, when,; from the top, of the chateau
of Van-der-Beck, he saw the enemy commence this movement.
He crossed the Pi6ton immediately with his army. The enemy's
vanguard, composed of Imperialists, was already far in advance.
The main body of cavalry was massed as the rear-guard, and a
corps of infantry occupied the village of Seneffe, to protect the
march of the army. Conde charged in person at the head of the
King's household, which Louis had sent him fromn Franche-Comt6,
and overthrew the enemy's cavalry, while the French infantry and
the dragoons, who had dismounted, carried the village by assault.
The enemy's rear-guard fell back, routed, on the main body, which,
under the orders of the Prince of Orange, had faced about on a
height above the priory of Saint-Nicolas-des-Bois.  Orchards
inclosed by strong fences and quickset hedges protected the entrance to the priory. The enemy rallied there;' but ere long,
shaken by a vigorous attack of the infantry and dragoons, he was
routed anew, infantry on cavalry, by Conde and the formidable
troopers of the King's household. The allies, driven from the valley, again attempted to make a stand about the priory, half-way up
the height where the main body had come to the assistance of the
rear-guard. After an obstinate and bloody resistance, they were
broken for the third time, forced in disorder to the top of the
plateau, and thence pursued to the village of Fay. All their baggage was taken, with more than a hundred flags and standards,
and four cannon or mortars; a large number of prisoners remained
in the hands of the French.




390                       LOUIS XIV.                      1674.
The battle was lost to the allies, but a part of their forces had
not fought, and their young general had not lost his presence of
mind in the disaster; with a coolness worthy of a general who had
grown gray in the harness, William halted his flying masses at the
excellent post of Fay, where the tardy return of the vanguard
restored courage to the two other vanquished corps. Fay was protected on one side by a ravine, on the other by a marsh and a
wood; above, a height commanded all the avenues of the village.
William planted cannon on this hill, and, in concert with Count de
Souches, marshalled the allied army anew.
Turenne, in the place of Cond6, would have doubtless feared to
compromise his victory by seeking to complete it and uselessly to
sacrifice thousands of men; but Cond6, intoxicated by battle, and
seized again with the heroic fury of Rocroy and Freiburg, reckoned
the lives of others and his own life as nothing; he halted his cavalry
a whole hour under the murderous fire of the enemy's artillery,
until his infantry had rejoined him; then recommenced his impetuous charges; but, this time, the allies did not give way. Battalions, squadrons, were mowed down and overthrown; others immediately took their place; the enemy's cannon were taken and
retaken; the Prince of Orange was near being killed or taken
prisoner, and Cond6 had three horses killed under him. Despite
the unheard-of efforts of the French, the position could neither be
turned nor carried in front. The action, commenced at two o'clock,
lasted till midnight; after sunset, they continued to fight as long
as the moon gave any light. The weapons fell at last from the
hands of both armies, exhausted and bathed in blood. Seven or
eight thousand of the French and eight or ten thousand of the
enemy, dead or wounded, strewed this frightful field of carnage.
The French had, as the wages of their costly and imperfect victory, the trains and standards which they had conquered, and
three thousand five hundred prisoners, among them several German princes. The Spanish general, the Marquis d'Assentar, was
killed.
The next morning, at daybreak, the allies repaired to Mons, and
the French returned to their camp on the PiSton.1
Both sides remained for some time immovable.  The two armies, cruelly mutilated, needed equally to repose and reorganize.
The allies were still less harmonious than before the battle. The
1 Lettres militaires, t. II. pp. 50-82. Pellisson, Lettres historiques, t. II. pp. 138,
166,198, 203. La Neuville, t. IV. p. 351. Basnage, t. II. Mem. de La Fare, ap.
Collect. Michaud, third series, t. VIII. p. 274. Mom. de Chavagnac.




1674.                SIEGE OF GRAVE.                    391
Prince of Orange complained loudly of the Spaniards, who had furnished him only five or six thousand men, instead of putting in the
field the troops massed in the places of Belgium. Louis XIV.
attempted to take advantage of this discontent and to induce Orange
to negotiate separately; but the youthful stadtholder dreamed only
of war. The Spaniards determined to appease him by drawing from
the garrisons all their available troops, and the allied army found itself again fifty thousand strong and ready for action. The Spaniards
obtained permission to attack Audenarde, a French outpost which
was a perpetual threat to Ghent and Brussels. Audenarde was
invested, September 15; the garrison consisted of but two thousand men; but the environs were inundated by the Scheldt, and
Vauban had thrown himself into the place. The allies opened the
trenches on the 17th, on the only assailable side. A first assault
was warmly repulsed. The besieged counted on prompt assistance,
and their hope was not deceived. Cond6 had hastily reinforced his
army from the garrisons of French Flanders, and appeared, on the
20th, in sight of the enemy's lines. The Prince of Orange and
the Governor of Belgium, Monterey, wished to go to meet Cond6
and offer battle again, but Count de Souches refused to run this
terrible risk.  To await the French in quarters far apart and
separated by the inundation was to expose themselves to certain
defeat. They were forced therefore to raise the siege and retire
to Ghent during the night, abandoning part of the munitions and
baggage.
The three great corps of the allied army soon separated on bad
terms. The Spaniards reentered their garrisons, the Dutch rejoined the detached corps which was besieging Grave, and the Imperialists returned to the Meuse. Lieutenant-General Chamilli had
been valiantly defending Grave with four thousand picked men, since
the end of July, against a Dutch division reinforced by troops from
Brandenburg. The Great Elector, without heeding the advances
of Louis XIV., had definitively broken his treaty with France and
entered into a compact with the allies, July 1. In vain had redhot shot and bombs been poured upon the town; Chamilli and
his valiant comrades held their ground amidst the ruins, and their
furious sorties, the countermines and chambers which they exploded unceasingly, inflicted enormous losses on the enemy. During the first fortnight of October, the Prince of Orange concentrated around Grave almost all the forces of Holland. The besieged again repulsed several assaults with great carnage. Their
resources however began to be exhausted; they were reduced one




392                     LOUIS XIV.                     1674.
half, and could hope for no assistance; Cond6 had already been
obliged to put his army into winter-quarters, the King having taken
away most of his cavalry and part of his infantry to reinforce
Turenne, then engaged in a decisive struggle in Alsace.  The
King himself sent orders to Chamilli to capitulate, to save the two
thousand brave men that remained to him. Chamilli marched out
of Grave, October 28, with arms and baggage, carrying away
twenty-four pieces of cannon. The Dutch found in Grave the best
part of the artillery which had been taken from all their other
places. This success cost them, it is said, nearly eight thousand
men.1
The Imperialists, in the course of November, took Huy and
Dinant, Liege towns, the inhabitants of which had voluntarily received small French garrisons; the course of the Meuse, between
Liege and the frontier of France, was thus occupied by the enemy,
who terminated the campaign with some advantage in the Netherlands; this advantage, dearly bought and trifling in comparison
with the hopes conceived, made no inroads upon the French
power. The news which came from all other points, moreover,
gave the allies no cause for rejoicing.
Turenne had commenced on the Rhine, towards the end of
spring, a series of admirable operations which embraced nine
whole months.
He had been charged, first, to intercept the succor destined for
Franche-Comt4, invaded by the King, then to protect Alsace and
Lorraine against the Austro-Germanic forces. He did not wait for
the attack of the Germans. The Duke of Lorraine, losing the
hope of penetrating into Franche-Comt6, had returned from Rheinfelden to join the Imperial General Caprara at Kehl (the end of
- May); a new Austrian corps, under the Duke de Bournonville,
would soon arrive from Bohemia, and, the Diet having issued its
declaration against France, the contingents of the Circles would be
set on foot in a few weeks. Turenne thought it incumbent on him
not to suffer this storm to gather. Following, from the other side
of the Rhine, the movements of the Duke of Lorraine, he had
returned from the environs of Basel to the gates of Strasburg, and
had, by his dreaded presence, prevented Strasburg from granting
passage to Lorraine and Caprara, who had then moved back to the
Neckar; he rejected the plans of Louvois, who intended to recall
him  to Metz or Treves to cover the Moselle. He crossed the
Rhine, June 14, at Philippsburg, and hastened straightway to the
1 Pellisson, Lettres historiques, t. II. p. 191. La Neuville, t. IV. p. 174.




1674'.         SINSHEIM. THE PALATINATE.                  393
enemy. He encountered the Imperialists on the 16th, near Sinsheim. They had a large corps of cavalry, seven thousand horsemen, accompanied by only two thousand infantry, and without
artillery.  Turenne had five thousand cavalry, from three to four
thousand infantry, and six cannon. The enemy was advantageously
posted on a plateau, having on the right the little town of Sinsheim
and a fortified abbey; on the left, escarpments difficult to climb; on
the front, the two branches of the little river Elsatz, a tributary
of the Neckar. Attack was perilous; but retreat still more so.
Turenne did not hesitate.  The dragoons and infantry, hurled
vigorously, dislodged the enemy's infantry from the vineyards,
from the gardens, from the suburbs, then from the town, the gate
of which was battered down by the cannon. The fortified abbey,
the key of the position, was carried in the twinkling of an eye.
This abbey commanded the only defile by which it was possible
to mount the plateau where the enemy's cavalry were marshalled.
The French army debouched on the plateau. Before it was fully
in order, it had to. sustain the shock of a formidable body of cavalry,
at the head of which charged four thousand cuirassiers of the Emperor.l The first French squadrons were broken; but Turenne
had thrown among them platoons of musketry, the fire of which,
supported by that of six pieces of cannon, arrested the enemy.
The French army finally deployed, the cavalry in the centre, the
infantry on the flanks,- an unusual order which indicated the nature of the field of battle.
A second charge of the Imperialists was equally repulsed; at
the third, the enemy's cavalry broke; the generals ordered a
retreat, which soon changed into a rout through the neighboring
forests. The Imperialists did not stop until beyond the Neckar.
They had lost two thousand five hundred men, exclusive of those
who deserted in the flight; the French, nearly half the number.
Having crushed this first nucleus of the German army, Turenne
returned and received a considerable reinforcement on this side of
the Rhine, then crossed the river a second time at Philippsburg,
July 3, and moved again to the Neckar. The Duke of Lorraine
and de Caprara, reinforced by Bournonville and by the Elector
Palatine, had returned and taken up their position between Ladenburg and Mannheim. At the approach of their terrible adversary,
1 The use of defensive arms decreased more and more; in the beginning of this
century, the horseman in casque and cuirass, without traces, tasses, and cuishes,
was still only a light-horseman; now there was the cuirassier, the man heavily armed,
and at least three fourths of the cavalry had neither casque nor cuirass. The casque
was not long in disappearing entirely.
VOL. I.          50




894                     LOUIS XIV.                     1674.
they retired precipitately to the north of the Main, abandoning the
Palatinate to the discretion of the French. This unhappy country
cruelly expiated the defection of its prince, who had turned against
France so soon after contracting a family alliance with Louis XIV.
Turenne ordered his troops to consume and waste cattle, forage,
and harvests, so that the enemy's army, when it returned in force,
as he foresaw it would do, could find nothing whereon to subsist on
the banks of the Neckar or to besiege Philippsburg. It was carrying the rights of war very far to starve a whole country in order to
reach an enemy through an inoffensive population; but no one had
then thought of contesting the extent of these rigorous rights. The
desperate peasants avenged themselves on the isolated soldiers they
were able to seize; they tore a number in pieces. Some English
companies, in the service of France, having encountered the mutilated corpses of their comrades by the wayside, scoured the whole
country, torch in hand, and burned twenty-seven burghs and villages. The Elector Palatine, who, from the top of the towers of
Heidelberg, had seen the horizon red with the flames which were
devouring the habitations of his unfortunate subjects, sent a cartel
to Turenne in a letter full of eloquent anger. Turenne replied,
with simplicity and moderation, that the fire had been kindled
without his orders. He had in fact arrested the conflagration and
punished some of the incendiaries. The reproaches of the Elector
wrought no change, however, in his plan. After employing the
month of May in laying waste the trans-Rhenish Palatinate, he
recrossed to the left bank and treated the cis-Rhenish Palatinate
in the like manner during the month of August.1
The enemy's army, intrenched on the right bank of the Main,
between Frankfort and Mayence, had been gradually swelled by the
quotas of the Circles and of the princes of the Empire. The Elector of Saxony, the Dukes of Brunswick, the four electors of the
Rhine, Hesse, Miinster, had responded to the Emperor's appeal.
When the Imperial generals had thirty-five thousand fighting-men
under their orders, they began their march without waiting for the
Elector of Brandenburg, who promised to bring a large army corps
in person. They crossed the Rhine at Mayence, September 1;
and advanced between Speyer and Philippsburg.
At this news, the agitation was great in the court of France.
Men fancied that they saw the Germans already at Nancy and
Metz. The King, at the instigation of Louvois, ordered Turenne
to quit the position which he had taken between Landau and
1 Histoire de Turenne, t. II. pp. 1-20. Lettres militaires, t. II. p. 359.




1674.             TURENNE IN ALSACE.                  395
Weissenburg, and recross the Vosges to cover Lorraine. This was
to abandon Alsace without resistance, and, with Alsace, Philippsburg and Breisach, those two tetes-de-pont which secured to France
the entrance to Upper Germany: it was to reopen to the enemies,
through Alsace, Franche-Comt6, scarcely subjugated, and to yield
to them without combat all the fruits of a great victory. This time
again Turenne resisted, and this time again Louis had the good
sense to yield; he merely sent to the Meuse part of the noble
arriere-ban which he had just convoked, and Turenne kept his post.
Turenne had but twenty-two thousand men against thirty-five
thousand; but chief and soldier, in the French army, knew how
far to count on each other: it was not so with this medley of combined troops, serving for the first time together, under half a dozen
generals on indifferent terms. Turenne held the enemies more than
a fortnight in check without their daring to attempt to force the entrance to Alsace or to besiege Philippsburg. They were dying of
hunger in a ravaged country. They changed their plans: September 21, they recrossed the Rhine on a pontoon bridge, and defiled
rapidly along the right bank towards Strasburg. Their agents had
adroitly wrought on the inhabitants of this city to persuade them to
violate a neutrality maintained during all the-great wars of the century: they forcibly represented to the free burghers of Strasburg the
fate of the other Imperial cities of Alsace, disarmed and despoiled of
their privileges, and the peril which would menace their municipal
republic in turn, should the ambitious and absolute King of France
triumph over the Empire. The magistrates hesitated to provoke
the resentment of the French; the multitude rose, took possession
of the bridge, half a league from the city, and promised to deliver
it up to the Imperialists.  Turenne had dispatched a few light
troops at full speed to seize the fort which protected the extremity
of the bridge on the left bank. The commander of this detachment suffered himself to be amused by negotiation with the people
of Strasburg; meanwhile, the Imperialists crossed and occupied the
fort. Strasburg opened its gates to them (September 24-25).
This was worth to them the gaining of a battle! The advantages of their position were thenceforth immense; they had on
their side numbers, the possession of the first city of the province,
and the favor of the people, who regretted their municipal independence, clung to the Empire through habits and memories, and
were not yet attached to France by their interests, the customhouse lines separating them  from  the kingdom.  Lastly, the
Elector of Brandenburg was on the march to join the confed



396                     LOUIS XIV.                     1674.
erates with a new army, as strong by itself alone as that of the
French.
Turenne, arriving before Strasburg at the moment that the enemy entered it, had posted himself two leagues north of the city,
between the Ill and the little river Suvel, while the Germans
pitched their camp south of the Bruche, placing themselves between
the French camp and Upper Alsace, a fertile country, of which they
secured the free disposal. Turenne, on the contrary, in the position
which he had been forced to take to cover Saverne and Haguenau,
had in his rear only a country already exhausted by his own troops.
It seemed as if the great general had nothing more to do than to
effect the retreat which he had refused three weeks before.
He did not retire! He could not keep the defensive; he attacked! After giving his army, lately afflicted with the dysentery,
some repose, he recrossed the Suvel in the night of October 2-3,
and marched straight to the enemies to offer battle before they should
be reinforced by Brandenburg. The allied generals, far from thinking themselves exposed to an attack on the part of adversaries so
inferior in numbers, had not guarded the bridges of the Bruche;
Turenne crossed this little river on the following night, and, October 4, at daybreak, found himself in line of battle in sight of the
enemies who had hastened from their quarters and deployed behind
the village of Ensisheim. The struggle commenced for the posses —
sion of a little wood which separated the French right wing from
the German left wing. The French dragoons seized it first. The
enemies' infantry advanced to expel them. The French infantry
supported the dragoons.  Among the colonels of the regiments
engaged in this action is remarked the name of Churchill, who
commanded one of the English corps left by Charles II. in the
service of France: this young man, who was learning war under
Turenne, was to profit but too well by the lessons of such a
master: Churchill became the renowned Duke of Marlborough!
The combat grew more and more infuriate around the wood and
in the wood itself; the French repulsed the enemies' foot, and took
eight guns which supported them; but the masses of the German
infantry were continually renewed and increased. The cavalry of
the French right wing, led by Turenne in person, bore down vigorously to support his infantry, and the enemies were finally driven
from the wood to a ravine which the French could not cross. Men.
and horses plunged mid-thigh into the mire. They paused, and
maintained themselves with admirable firmness in the conquered
post, under the double fire that they were receiving, in front, from




1674.             BATTLE OF ENSISHEIM.                    897
the other side of the ravine, in flank, from the village of Ensisheim.
It had been necessary to weaken the centre greatly in order to
sustain the combat on the right wing: the enemies attempted to
profit by their numerical superiority; the Emperor's cuirassiers,
who formed the right wing of the enemy, moved in a mass to fall,on the left and centre of the French; the Duke de Bournonville,
general-in-chief, charged in front with a division; Count Caprara,
with another column, turned the French left and took it in rear.
The remnant of infantry in the centre formed in a square, and presented so bold a face that Bournonville's cuirassiers paused at thirty
paces distant without daring to charge. The other column of the
enemy also passed by the infantry without attacking it, fell on the
first squadrons of the French left, and broke them. The second
rank of the French cavalry supported the first, which rallied, and
a general charge broke in turn the Emperor's cuirassiers and forced
them back beyond Ensisheim on their shattered, terrified, and almost
broken infantry. Fatigue and night arrested the victory. The
Germans recrossed the Ill in disorder, abandoning some of their
artillery in the mud, and retired between the Ill and the Rhine,
under the cannon of Strasburg.1
This sanguinary affair, which had cost the enemy three or four
thousand men and the French two thousand, only gained Turenne
a few days, for the Elector of Brandenburg was approaching and
about to restore to the confederates a vast superiority; but these
few days were a great deal: reinforcements were also on the march
to join the French army; half the arriere-ban of the kingdom had
been convoked to supply the insufficiency of the regular troops, and
six thousand noble cavaliers were advancing from the Meuse to the
Vosges, under the conduct of Marshal de Crdqui.2 Large corps
from the army of Flanders were about to follow the same route.
Turenne could not keep the position which he had wrested from
the enemy without endangering his communications.  He turned
back to Achenheim, on the north of the Bruche, then, two leagues
further on, to Marlenheim, on the Mutzig; this post covered
Saverne, secured communications with Lorraine, and permitted
him  to succor Haguenau, which connected Philippsburg with
France.
The Elector of Brandenburg joined the allies, October 14, with
1 Lettres militaires, t. II. pp. 360-379. Histoire de Turenne, t. II. pp. 10-35.
2 The king gave some assistance to the arriere-ban, " without detracting in conse.
quence" from the obligation of the nobles to serve at their own expense.




898                     LOUIS XIV.                     1674.
twenty-two thousand soldiers, both of his own troops and those of
the Circles of Swabia and Franconia and recruits from the Palatinate
and Liineburg. He had marched slowly, perhaps through hesitation
to leave his own states, threatened by a Swedish invasion.
The nextday, the confederates began their march and approached
the camp of Turenne; they numbered over fifty thousand men
and seventy-two guns; Turenne had this very day received the
arrieire-ban, which increased his forces to about twenty-five thousand
men with thirty-seven guns. It was not until the 18th that the
enemies seemed disposed to attack him. Turenne did not think it
incumbent on him to await them at Marlenheim; he commenced
his retreat by night, and continued it the next day in such good
order, by favor of the accidents of the ground, intersected by
numerous streams, that the enemies dared not assail him closely.
He halted in the rear of the Zorn, between Dettwiller and Hochfelden, protecting, on the one hand, Saverne, on the other, Haguenau. The allies relapsed into their uncertainty, and left him full
leisure to fortify himself on the line of the Zorn. The generals
of the Emperor had instructions, according to custom, which forbade
them any hazardous course: the Great Elector, and, above all, the
Duke of Lorraine, who saw with anguish his chances of restoration
diminish with every day lost, insisted in vain that they should arm
themselves with resolution.  The first detachments of the army
of Flanders began, notwithstanding, to appear, October 30, and the
rest followed from day to day. There were not less than eighty
squadrons and twenty battalions on the march, - making eighteen
thousand men.
The enemies, who had not resolved to assume the offensive when
they were more than double in numbers, thought of it no longer
when the forces became less unequal; lacking provisions, they fell
back on their old camp, south of the Bruche, and intrenched themselves there (November 20). Turenne, whose cavalry suffered
greatly from insufficiency of forage, which it was necessary to bring
from beyond the Vosges, moved, on his side, a little more to the
north, to the Moter, sent back the arriere-ban to Trois-Evechds,
then, at the close of November, after having well supplied Saverne
and Haguenau, he wheeled round towards the Vosges and returned
to Lorraine. The enemies, seeing that he had gone, spread in full
security throughout Upper Alsace, and took up their winter-quarters there. The voluntary retreat of Turenne had roused their
hopes; they counted on invading Lorraine and Franche-Comt6 in
the ensuing spring. These two provinces stretched out their arms




1674.           OPERATIONS OF TURENNE.                  399
to them. Lorraine, strange to say, still loved her old duke, despite
all the evils which he had drawn upon her; doubtless, the double
military and fiscal oppression which she endured had a large share
in her regrets. Already, Duke Charles IV. had thrown detachments among the mountains as far as Remiremont and Epinal.
Meanwhile, the allies blockaded Breisach.
The astonishment was great at court and among the public; it
was inconceivable that Turenne, after refusing to evacuate Alsace
when he was weak, should have abandoned it when he was strong.
The King and the ministers knew the secret of a movement
which the public could not comprehend. To those who doubted
him, Turenne was about to reply by thunderbolts.
Returning to Lorraine by Lixheim and Lorckheim, he gathered
up in passing the last regiments arrived from Flanders, to whom
he had sent orders to remain on this side of the Vosges; he divided his army into several corps, and assigned them as a general
rendezvous, Belfort, at the southwestern extremity of Sundgau.1
The whole range of the Vosges was in question, no longer to be
crossed at a single point, but to be traversed throughout its whole
length, among snows, precipices, and swollen torrents. It was necessary to be Turenne to obtain such efforts from the soldier. After
traversing Lorraine from one end to the other, and expelling the
parties sent by Duke Charles, the French columns found themselves
assembled intact at Belfort, December 27. The vanguard had
already, several days before, taken up its position before this little
town.
At the rumor that the French were debouching into Alsace by
the plain which separates the last pass of the Vosges from the
first plateaus of the Jura, an extraordinary agitation spread among
the enemies scattered throughout Upper Alsace and Sundgau. The
absence of single direction, the necessity of conferences among the
generals, prevented them from concentrating with the celerity indispensable to them. The Imperialists and Lorraine troops, who
occupied Sundgau, evacuated all the part of the canton west of
the Ill, and their various corps fell back confusedly on Altkirch,
Miilhausen, and Ensisheim, in order to rejoin the Elector of Brandenburg and the rest of the confederates around Colmar.
Turenne did not leave them time to rally. He marched straight
to Miilhausen, in order to cut in two the line of retreat followed
by the Imperialists. December 29, he forded the Ill with his cavalry and burst on the Imperial and Lorraine cavalry, massed in
1 Alsace was divided into three parts: Lower Alsace, Upper Alsace, and Sundgau, or the Southern canton.




400                     LOUIS XIV.                     1675.
the plain of Milhausen. The enemy, weakened by an epidemic,:stunned and demoralized by the terror of the name of Turenne,
was utterly put to rout after a few charges. Part of the Imperial squadrons fled towards Basel; many of the cavalry were taken;
the rest, by favor of the darkness, gained Ensisheim, where the
infantry and baggage had already arrived in great part. A great
number of prisoners were picked up the next day between Miilhausen and Ensisheim by the French parties. A regiment of
infantry was taken entire.
The bulk of the Imperialists escaped from the rout of Miilhausen was gathered together near Colmar by the Elector of Brandenburg. The allied generals assembled their forces, still superior
to those of Turenne, in the plain of Colmar; they had at their
left, Colmar, the Ill, and two small rivers which empty therein;
at their right, the little town of Turkheim and the river Fecht;
their front was covered by another arm of the Fecht, behind which
they hastily erected a few earthworks provided with artillery.
Turenne, having again marshalled his troops, wearied with marching and fighting, arrived, January 5, 1675, in sight of the enemy.
He knew the ground, and all his movements were planned in advance. An attack on the centre of the position would have been
rash. He first slowly pushed forward his right wing towards the
suburbs of Colmar, as if wishing to direct his efforts against this
city; the enemy hastened to reinforce himself on this side; meanwhile, the French left wing debouched by the defiles of Gregorienthal, opposite Turkheim, in order to cross the arm of the Fecht
near the place where it diverges from the river, and to turn the
allies. The latter, perceiving then the true plan of Turenne,
marched a strong division at double-quick speed to arrest the
French left. The French battalions crossed the arm of the Fecht
under the fire of the musketry and cannon; the death of Lieutenant-General Foucault, killed at the head of the left wing, did not
check the ardor of the French infantry. The enemy's column
beat a retreat towards the main body of the army, abandoning
Turkheim and the bank of the Fecht: the attack had commenced
late; night came on; the victorious wing halted by order of Turenne, but a strong detachment went to post itself on a height
beyond Turkheim, to descend again, the next morning, on the
enemy's rear.
The next morning there was no longer an enemy in the plain.
The allied generals had decamped precipitately during the night,
abandoning two thousand five hundred sick and wounded in Col



1675.               GLORY OF TURENNE.                     401
mar. The Electress of Brandenburg and her little court, who had
followed the allied army, had quitted Colmar the night before.
Turenne had foreseen and paved the way for this retreat, which
secured, the evacuation of Alsace without new bloodshed. The
allies halted three days near Schblestadt, between the Ill and the
mountains, till their baggage and artillery were out of the neighboring defiles; then, the 9th, they proceeded to Strasburg by Benfeld. Turenne entered Schdlestadt in their rear. January 11,
the allies began to recross the Rhine. A few days after, the city
of Strasburg, to which Turenne had sent an offer to forget the
past, asked and obtained the renewal of its neutrality, on condition
of no more giving transit to the enemy by the bridge over the
Rhine. " There was no longer an enemy in Alsace that was not
a prisoner." 1
Thus ended this celebrated campaign, the most glorious, perhaps,
presented in the military history of ancient France. None offers
higher instruction in the study of the great art of war; none
demonstrates so learnedly that sublime mathematics which takes
for the elements of its combinations, not abstract figures, but intelligent and impassioned beings, and which, calling the moral powers
to its aid, learns to conquer matter and numbers by patient energy,
by the trust of man in man, and by contempt of death.
The genius of Turenne did not cease to grow at the epoch of
life when other men, far from acquiring new strength, feel their
active forces gradually diminishing. It was not only experience
that grew in him, but daring and fire. By an unexampled phenomenon, he seemed to become younger and more ardent in proportion as years accumulated on his head, as if his blood were heated
anew by the frost of age.
France was not ungrateful. Turenne, after assuring himself of
the entire retreat of his enemies, had set out for court, where
Louis XIV. recalled him. Alsace and Lorraine, which were still
ill affected towards their new masters, and which had been sacrificed to the hard necessities of defensive warfare, saw the victor
pass in gloomy silence; but as soon as Turenne had set foot in the
old French provinces, his march was a continual triumph from the
Meuse to Paris. The people of Champagne and the Isle of France
hastened, from ten leagues around, to salute on his way the hero
who had rescued them from invasion. At Paris the enthusiasm
was inexpressible.
1 Pellisson, Lettres historiques, t. II. p. 233. Lettres militaires, t. III. pp. 99,112, 114,
164. Histoire de Turenne, t. II. pp. 545-554.
VOL. I.       51




402                     LOUIS XIV.                     1674.
Turenne received the popular homage with his habitual modesty
and simplicity. " His air is a little more bashful," says Pellisson,
" than it used to be."' He did not carry moderation so far, however, as to neglect the advantage which his brilliant success gave
him over Louvois, who had so much thwarted his plans. Welcomed
with open arms by the King, he warmly attacked with Louis the
pretensions of the minister to dictate to generals from the recesses
of his cabinet. The King obliged Louvois to make a sort of apology
to Turenne and to request his friendship. If Cond6, who had also
had reason to complain of the minister, had not suffered himself to
be disarmed by the submission of the aged Le Tellier, and had
seconded Turenne with the King, the position of Louvois might
have been greatly endangered.
Turenne obtained, at least for the next campaign, the fullest independence.2
During the course of the year 1674, while the land-forces so
happily assumed the offensive in Franche-Comt6, then sustained
the defensive so gloriously in Belgium and on the Rhine, Louis
XIV., abandoned by England, had not thought his navy in a condition to sustain on the ocean another collision with the Dutch
navy; he had deemed it proper to abandon the Atlantic to his
enemies, and to confine himself to holding the Mediterranean and
defending the threatened coasts and colonies. He had therefore
fitted out this year but one squadron of twenty-two ships in the
Mediterranean, under the command of the Marquis de Vivonne,
general of the galleys, the brother of Madame de Montespan.
The momentary abandonment of the Atlantic corresponded besides
to the evacuation of the United Provinces. On sea, as on land,
Louis released the Dutch to turn against their auxiliaries, the
Spaniards.
The Dutch, on their part, had put to sea a fleet of sixty-~ix ships
and frigates, exclusive of fire-ships and smaller vessels, under the
orders of their great De Ruyter, and founded high hopes on the
separation of France and England. The fleet carried numerous
troops for disembarkation. Once entered into the Channel, it
divided into two squadrons (June 8, 1674); the weaker, under
De Ruyter, set sail for the West Indies; the other, under Van
Tromp, remained a few days at anchor on the coast of England,
observing Normandy, and waiting, to act, for secret advices from
France.
1 Pellisson, Lettres historiques, t. II. p. 242.
2 Histoire de Turenne, t. II. pp. 555-557.




1674.                  PLOT OF ROHAN.                        403
The allies knew that there existed in the kingdom much suffering
and discontent, and believed themselves justified in counting on a
new Fronde, thanks to the plots which they fomented in different
parts of France. A personage of the highest importance, the Chevalier de Rohan, " the best-made man of his time and the one with
the noblest mien," 1 but swallowed up in debt and vice, had projected, together with an unemployed officer, named La Tr6aumont,
to stir up a revolt in Normandy, and to deliver Quilleboeuf or Honfleur to the Dutch. The conspirators were put in connection with
the States-General through the medium of an old master of a Dutch
boarding-school established at Paris, Van den Enden, who had been,
it is said, the teacher of Spinoza, and professed his doctrines. The
States-General had promised Rohan a hundred thousand crowns.
Another plot had been woven in the north. A certain Sardan,
ex-receiver of villain taxes, who had disappeared with his funds, had
presented himself at the Hague as the delegate of the provinces of
Guienne, Languedoc, Dauphiny, and Provence, and had announced
that these four provinces were ready to rise to recover their lost
liberties and even to erect themselves into a federative republic;
he had signed a treaty with the Prince of Orange in the name of
the confederates (April 21), and was not long in signing a second
with the cabinet of Madrid, to which he promised first to rouse to
revolt CUvennes and Vivarais, then to surprise a port of Guienne,
all accompanied by large demands for money, which was the
principal end (July 23).2 Lastly, a third conspiracy, less chimerical, agitated Roussillon.
Nothing stirred, however, in Normandy, at the approach of the
Dutch. Van Tromp directed his course towards the coast of Brittany. The governor of the province, the Duke de Chaulnes, levied
in a body the noble arrirre-ban and the peasants of Cornouailles
and L6onnais, and the enemy found the narrow entrance to Brest
so well fortified and the neighboring coast so well guarded that
he dared not undertake anything on the Breton mainland. He
attempted only a descent on Belle-Isle; but the garrison of the
castle, reinforced by the nobility and the countrymen of the sub1 Mem. du marquis de La Fare, ap. collect. Michaud, 8d series, t. VIII. p. 279.
2 The treaty with Spain is in Dumont, Corps diplomatique, t. VII. p. 277. This
document is curious enough. The grievances alleged by Sardan against the King
of France are the insupportable weight of the taxes, the suppression of the Provincial Estates of Dauphiny and Guienne, the annulment of those of Languedoc and
Provence, the destruction of the authority of the parliaments, etc.; religion is not
in question, although Sardan was a Protestant. See also Lettres militaires, t. IV.
p. 248,




404                       LOUIS XIV.                        1674.
urbs, defended itself bravely and obliged the Dutch to reembark
(June 27-July 2). Van Tromp succeeded better against the
island of Noirmoutiers, which he invaded before sufficient forces
could be transported thither (July 4). He occupied this island about
three weeks, took or destroyed a few French vessels in the neighborhood, but recognized the impossibility of effecting a descent
either in Poitou or Guienne. The whole coast was lined with
militia, and the inhabitants nowhere showed themselves disposed
to receive the foreigners as liberators, as had been promised by a
few adventurers.
Van Tromp evacuated Noirmoutiers and set sail for the Mediterranean. The regent of Spain summoned him thither urgently;
but the Dutch government was not long in recalling him to the
Atlantic, and he reappeared on the coast of Normandy in November, hoping, doubtless, that the plot of Rohan and La Tr6aumont
would end finally in some result.
The affair had been already for some weeks divulged. La
Tr6aumont, a man of rare energy, had suffered himself to be killed
rather than be arrested by the body-guards. Rohan and his other
accomplices had been taken; Rohan, a Chevalier de Prdaux, and
his mistress, a certain Marchioness de Villars, whom the memoirs
of the times make a sort of Brinvilliers, were decapitated. Professor Van den Enden, who was a plebeian, was hung; aristocratic
distinctions still subsisted before the executioner (November 27).
This conspiracy had never had any real chance of success; the
clandestine writings and placards scattered by the conspirators in
Rouen and the environs had not roused a single village.'
Van Tromp brought back his fleet to Holland at the beginning
of December, after a most unfruitful expedition.
De Ruyter had been still less fortunate in an attack on the
French West Indies.  He had effected, July 20, a descent on
Martinique, in the bay of Fort-Royal; but the French were on
their guard; the ships bringing their broadsides to bear on the bay,
the fort which protected it, and the militia posted on the neighboring lieights, presented so furious a resistance that the Dutch
troops were forced to regain their ships, after losing the greater part
of their officers and their choicest soldiers. The season was unfavorable; the West Indian hurricanes threatened the fleet. De
1 Vie de Ruyter, t. II. pp. 158-163. Vie de Tromp, pp. 504-515. Mem. de La Fare,
p. 279. Pellisson, Lettres historiques, pp. 129-136. Lettres militaires, t. II. p. 168.
La Neuville, Histoire de Hollande, t. IV. p. 390. atuvres de Louis XIY. t. III. p. 4.
Medm. de Grammont, ap. Basnage, t. II. p. 558.




1674.            ROUSSILLON. MESSINA.                   405
Ruyter returned to Europe without attempting to repair his disaster.l
The maritime armament of the United Provinces had thus remained without effect; it was not the same with the private armaments, and the privateers, especially those of Zealand, had made
terrible depredations at the expense of French commerce. They
had captured twenty millions' worth in two years from our merchant-shipping and that of England.2  The French privateers, indeed, fully retaliated on the Dutch marine.
The Spaniards, unexpectedly, were the only ones of the allies
who had obtained a slight success in the general attack against
France, owing to wholly local circumstances. Of all the plots
brewed this year, the only one at all serious was that of Roussillon.
The absolute rggime of Louis XIV., aggravated by the necessities
of war, had alienated those people in part who had given themselves so cordially to France thirty years before. Many noblemen
had listened to the instigations of the Spanish agents, and projected
to restore to their former master Perpignan and Villefranche; happily, the intrigue was revealed by a young girl to a French officer,
her lover, and the greater part of the conspirators were arrested
or fled. The Spaniards, rnevertheless, attempted the projected
attack. There were scarcely any troops in the province except raw
recruits and militia.  The Spaniards, in June, debouched into
Roussillon by the defile of Pertuis, under the orders of the Duke
San Germano. Count Schomberg, who commanded on this frontier, hastened to meet them; Lieutenant-General Le Bret, the
creature of Louvois, had obtained some advantages the year before
in this province, and looked with jealousy upon the superior whom
the King had just given him; wishing to deprive Schomberg of the
honor of a success, he rashly attacked the vanguard, and was defeated near Saint-Jean-de-Pages.  Schomberg could only arrest
the rout and direct the retreat. The Spaniards fell on Fort Bellegarde, which commands the communications between Roussillon
and Lampourdan; they carried it, and sought to push on further;
but Schomberg, at the head of the Languedoc militia, arrested them
on the bank of the Tech, and defeated Duke San Germano near
Fort Bains. The Spaniards could not renew their efforts; news
had reached them from Messina which compelled the cabinet of
Madrid to embark for Sicily all the troops at its disposal, and to
remain thenceforth on the defensive on the side of the Pyrenees.3
1 Vie de Ruyter, t. II. p. 160.
2 Mignet, t. IV. p. 311. Lettres militaires, t. II. p. 434.
8 Basnage, t. II. p. 546.




406                     LOUIS XIV.                      1674.
While the Spaniards were striving to recover Roussillon, they
were threatened with the loss of the queen of the Mediterranean
islands, that beautiful Sicily which was wasting slowly in their
hands.
At the time of the revolt of Palermo, which had preceded the
revolt of Naples under Masaniello, Messina, through the spirit of
jealousy of Palerino, its eternal rival, had remained faithful to
Spain, which had rendered it for some time the object of the favors
of the Escurial. The Spanish government had granted it, in 1663,
the monopoly of the exportation of silks. The other ports of Sicily,
Palermo especially, loudly protested; after long debates in the
councils of the Catholic King, the monopoly was withdrawn from
Messina (1664), and the Regent of Spain, irritated at the haughtiness with which the Messinese envoys had maintained the interests
of their city, even withdrew from Messina the honorary precedence
which it had claimed hitherto over the other Sicilian cities, and
even over Palermo. Messina protested. Several years passed,
however, without serious disturbances; but the disaffection continued to increase; the nobility and upper bourgeoisie, who governed this aristocratic municipality, unceasingly opposed the viceroys and other representatives of Spain. A Spanish agent, the
Captain-General (stradico) Luis de Hojo, who was next in authority in the island after the viceroy, essayed a plan as adroit as perfidious to frustrate the Messinese opposition. He gained the affection
of the common people by his affected charity and devotion, and
turned them against the higher classes. He carried Macchiavellianism so far as to give rise, by his manceuvres, to an artificial dearth
in Messina, in order to render the senate of the city responsible for
it. He succeeded thus in rousing the poor against the rich, and
committed such excesses that the Prince de Ligne, Viceroy of Sicily,
was terrified and caused his removal.
Counsels of violence were not long, however, in prevailing in the
Spanish cabinet. The viceroy, a benevolent and moderate man,
resigned his powers, and a crisis became inevitable. A movement
broke out first at Trapani, and was suppressed; but, July 7, 1674,
after the procession of the Madonna della Lettera, Messina, exasperated by a wilful insult directed against its jurats or senators by
the new captain-general, de Hojo's successor, rose with irresistible
impetuosity. The trades' companies, at last enlightened concerning
the intrigues of the Spanish agents, united with the higher classes;
the senate declared the old and new captains-general enemies of
the country; Captain-General Crispano was besieged in his palace,




1674-1675.       THE FRENCH IN SICILY.                  407
the Marquis de Bayona, who exercised the viceroyalty pro tem.,
having hastened by sea from Palermo with loud menaces, was met
with volleys of cannon when he attempted to enter the port. Four
of the five fortified posts held by the Spaniards in the city were
wrested from them by force. Compromise was no longer possible
with the Spanish government. Messina resolved to invoke the
protection of the King of France, and its deputies were sent to
the ambassador of France at Rome, and to Admiral Vivonne on the
~vast of Catalonia.
The Spaniards had not five thousand soldiers of their nation in
Sicily when the insurrection broke out; but Governor Bayona
summoned soldiers and ships from Naples, and armed the Sicilians
themselves against a Sicilian rebellion; he convoked the ban of
the nobility, and levied the peasants to coerce the insurgent city.
Messina was beginning to be threatened, when a small French
squadron appeared, detached from the fleet of Vivonne, under the
orders of Chevalier de Valbelle (September 27). Louis XIV.
had hastened to seize the new chance that fortune offered him, and
had comprehended the full worth of the possession of the Straits
of Messina. Valbelle aided the Messinese to expel the Spaniards
from the last post which they occupied in the city at the entrance
of the harbor; then, lacking provisions and land-forces, to operate
against the Spaniards without, he departed in order to urge the
King to act more effectively.
The cabinet of Madrid, notwithstanding, renouncing its undertaking at Roussillon, sent to Sicily in the autumn all its available
navy and troops on the coast of Catalonia. Messina soon found
itself in serious peril; it repulsed the first attacks by open force,
but it could not guarantee itself from a blockade which reduced it
to severe distress.
Louis XIV. did not abandofi it. January 1, 1675, the squadron
of Valbelle reappeared in sight of the Faro. Valbelle brought
Lieutenant-General Vallavoire, commander of a small corps of
land-forces, and charged with instructions from  the King and
the minister of foreign affairs. The minister, Pomponne, had
recommended to Vallavoire to leave to the Messinese people
"strongly inclined to a republic, the hope of remaining wholly
independent," unless Messina should be inclined of itself to give
itself either to France, or to a prince whom Louis XIV. should
offer it as king.
The Spaniards were pressing the city by land and sea; they had
retaken the Faro and several forts, and their fleet, twenty-two ships




408                     LOUIS XIV.                 1674-1675.
and nineteen galleys strong, was cruising at the entrance of the
Straits. Valbelle had but six ships and three fire-ships. He attempted the passage. The enemy's fleet, stupefied by his incredible audacity, dared not attack him. He entered the port in triumph (January 3). The troops that were besieging the city by
land withdrew a few leagues. Vallavoire had not the forces necessary to extend into the interior of Sicily and seek resources there-:
the provisions brought by Valbelle were soon exhausted, and the
famine was raging anew, when Admiral Vivonne arrived at last in
turn from Toulon, with eight men-of-war and a large convoy of
supplies, and Duquesne as lieutenant (February 11). The fleet
of Spain, which had returned to the entrance of the Straits, seeing
itself taken between the squadrons of Vivonne and Valbelle, fled
shamefully, despite its great numerical superiority, and left a vessel
of forty-four guns in the hands of the French.  The Admiral,
La Cueva, is accused of having suffered himself to be corrupted
for money by the agents of Louis XIV.
The Spanish navy could no longer be said to be numbered
among the marines of Europe.
Vivonne effected his disembarkation with thirty-five hundred soldiers, amidst the acclamations of the people. A few weeks after
he was solemnly inaugurated Viceroy of Sicily (April 28). The
senate and people of Messina, fearing that France would not protect them energetically enough if they claimed to preserve their
independence, decided to do full homage to Louis XIV. as their
sovereign.1
Louis XIV. was prepared to act everywhere with energy in the
spring of 1675.
He had made some new attempts before to negotiate, no longer
with all his adversaries collectively, the Cologne conference having
failed, but separately with the Dutch. The conquest of Holland
having proved a failure, he would have gladly made peace with
the Dutch while continuing the war against the House of Austria,
that is, have returned to the old French policy. What a condemnation of his policy by himself!  He had already caused overtur(s to be made to the United Provinces by Sweden, his ally,
and had made them himself to the Prince of Orange, who showed
himself not at all disposed to separate from his allies. The people,
in Holland, were weary of a war which enriched only a few privateers and burdened all the rest of the citizens: the States-Gen1 E. Sue, Histoire de la marine franfaise, t. II. liv. v. chap. 2-8. Mim. du marquis
de Villette, pp. 17-23.




1674-1675.       INTRIGUES OF WILLIAM.                  409
eral accepted, in November, 1674, the mediation of the King of
England; but William of Nassau, who thought only of growing
by war, far from desiring peace through the mediation of Charles
II., hoped to draw England into the coalition.
After the campaign of 1674, William formed the project of
crossing the sea to compel Charles to action by means of Parliament, in the heart of which he had concocted formidable intrigues. Charles II. averted the blow by his customary expedient;
that is, by proroguing Parliament for six months, dismissed his
ministers, Buckingham and Arlington, whom he trusted no longer,
and strove to bring back Orange to a peaceful policy by offering
him the hand of his niece, Mary, daughter of the Duke of York,
an alliance which he had already long projected. The Catholic
James of York was strongly averse to this design, and would have
been glad to marry his daughter in France; the French ambassador; Ruvigni, had predicted to him  that "such a son-in-law
would inevitably be his ruin," - words which the event showed
prophetic. The Prince of Orange was already the idol of England.l The selfish Charles II., caring little for the future, provided that he insured his present tranquillity, persisted; but the
Prince of Orange did not welcome this overture with all the
eagerness which Charles thought himself entitled to expect. William feared that a snare was laid to rob him of his popularity in
Great Britain by appearing to associate him with the policy of the
Stuarts, and the negotiation had no immediate result (NovemberDecember, 1674).
At this very moment, William was pursuing in the United
Provinces a plan which manifested the full extent of his ambition.
The stadtholdership, increased by the exorbitant right of appointing the magistrates of the cities, no longer satisfied him, and he
dreamed of obtaining with 4clat from his fellow-citizens that sovereignty which he had refused, mutilated and debased, from the
hands of their adversaries.  He had induced the States-General
to confer on him the power of reorganizing, as he chose, the provinces of Gelderland and Utrecht, after their evacuation by the
French.  He took advantage of this to cause the States of the
first of these provinces to decree to him the titles of Duke of Gelderland and Count of Ziitphen. William consulted the other
provinces to know whether he should accept; he hoped that they
would answer affirmatively, and would follow by degrees the example of Gelderland. Utrecht, crushed by the conquest which
1 Derpche de Ruvigni a Louis XIV. of April 23, 1674; ap. Mignet, IV. 323.
VOL. I.         52




410                     LOUIS XIV.                     1675.
she had endured, was fully disposed to accept a master; but Holland and Zealand rebelled against the audacious pretensions of the
stadtholder; the Zealand sailors, lately so devoted to the Nassaus,
showed the most threatening disposition. William was prudent
enough not to persist, and refused the duchy of Gelderland'
(February, 1675).
Although the stadtholder had receded in time, his authority
suffered by this check, and the republican party rose from the
debasement in which it had remained subsequently to the death of
the De Witts. The chances of peace with France increased;
notwithstanding, the republican party itself, while wishing for
peace, did not yet desire the necessary conditions, — that is, the
conditions acceptable to Louis XIV.
In the preceding September, the States-General had removed
the prohibition of French wines and brandies, a prohibition as
injurious to them as to the French, and had proposed to Louis
XIV. the reestablishment of commerce between the two States,
with a truce on the sea. The King had consented to the maritime
truce, but not to the reestablishment of commerce before peace;
it would have been taking away from Holland the greatest interest
she had in peace.
William strove to indemnify himself in England for the reverse
which he had experienced in Holland. Spring come, Charles II.
dared not again prorogue his Parliament; the urgent entreaties
and pecuniary offers of Louis XIV. were vain. The English
Parliament reopened April 23. Charles endeavored to turn the
political passions towards religious questions at home. He strove
to satisfy the Tory and Episcopal party, which ruled in Parliament, by rigorous measures both against the Papists and the Nonconformists or Protestant Dissenters, whose position he had alleviated in 1672. But Parliament appeared insensible to these concessions, and none the less followed the current of public opinion,
which, in accordance with the intrigues of William, urged it
against France. The House of Commons demanded of the King
the recall of the English corps that remained in the service of
Louis XIV., and that had recently distinguished itself under Turenne (May 1). The maritime establishment of France, considerably augmented since the previous year, excited the jealousy of
the English to the highest pitch; the French navy exceeded the
English navy: it numbered at this moment ninety-four men-ofwar, England only eighty-seven: Holland had as many as one
1 Mignet, t. IV. pp. 327-329; Basnage, t. II. pp. 664-579.




1675.             ENGLAND AND SWEDEN.                    411
hundred and thirty-four.1 It was to be feared that the House of
Commons would go further and demand war with France. Louis
XIV. felt too well what weight England would cast into the balance, should she join the coalition; he knew that one of the liveliest anxieties of England was the fear of seeing the coasts of
Flanders in the possession of the French; he strove to calm the
English by apprising Charles II. that it was not his intention,
during this campaign, to carry his arms into maritime Flanders,
but only into the valley of the Meuse. The declaration of the
King of France concerning his plan of campaign permitted Charles
II. to defend himself, though with great difficulty, against the warparty, and a quarrel between the House of Lords and that of Commons furnished him the means of gaining a few months more by a
new prorogation of Parliament.
During this time, Louis XIV. acted. Thanks to the superiority
of his finances and administration, thanks, above all, to the superiority of a concentrated force over forces more considerable in bulk,
but diverse and heterogeneous, France had been able everywhere
to reassume the offensive in the spring of 1675.2
Roussillon was swept of the enemy in the course of the summer.
Schomberg, after crossing and attacking Gerona without being able
to take it, fell back on Bellegarde and retook this fortress, which
commanded the entrance of Catalonia (July 27, 1675).
At the other extremity of the theatre of this vast war, Sweden
had at last determined to keep her word, and to effect an important diversion in favor of France. In 1672, Sweden had remained
immovable, despite her engagements. In 1673, she had pleaded,
to avoid acting, the peace reestablished between Louis XIV. and
the Elector of Brandenburg, and had offered her mediation to the
belligerent powers. The able negotiations of the French ambassador Feuquieres, and, above all, the money of Louis XIV., at
last won the cabinet of Stockholm. By a treaty of April, 1674,
Louis had raised to nine hundred thousand crowns the annual
subsidy which he paid to Sweden, provided that she should send
twenty-two thousand soldiers to Germany. The Swedes again
passed the summer in inaction. By a second compact of September 27, King Charles XI. obligated himself to attack the Elector
of Brandenburg and the Dukes of Liineburg-Zell and WolfenI In 1677, the French marine numbered one hundred and sixty-five ships and
frigates, carrying 8628 guns; every vessel armed with more than twenty guns
was called a ship. Mignet, t. IV. p. 433.
2 Louis XIV. kept in his pay, this year, twenty-two thousand Swiss.




412                     LOUIS XIV.                     1675.
biittel, as having infringed upon the treaty of Westphalia. January 15, 1675, the Swedes invaded Brandenburg, at the very
moment when the Great Elector evacuated Alsace before the victorious arms of Turenne. March 9, a treaty of alliance was
signed between the King of Sweden and the Dukes of Bavaria
and Hanover to maintain by arms the treaty of Westphalia. These
two dukes were the only partisans that France had retained or
won among the princes of Germany.'
Louis XIV. had made but a trifling concession to the English in
not this year attacking the coasts of Flanders. The best means
to subdue the Catholic Netherlands was to cut off from them the
assistance of Germany, by occupying the Central Meuse, a plan
commenced by the taking of Maestricht in 1673, and which had
been suspended to conquer Franche-Comt6 in 1674. Louis resolved
to march in person in this direction with Cond6, while Turenne
should continue to operate on the Rhine against the Imperialists,
abandoned by the Elector of Brandenburg, who had been obliged
to hasten to the assistance of his States invaded by the Swedes.
The town and province of Liege were pledged to neutrality,
since the Elector of Cologne, Bishop of Liege, had abandoned the
interests of France. The occupation of Huy and Dinant by the
Imperialists had infringed on this neutrality, and, now, the two
belligerent parties equally coveted the capital of the province, shut
in between the Imperial garrisons of Huy and Dinant and the
French garrisons of Maestricht and Maesyck. The French prevailed. The commander of the citadel of Liege surrendered the
place to Count d'Estrades, governor of Maestricht, and introduced
therein fifteen hundred French (March 27). Maesyck was evacuated and razed to concentrate the forces on the Central Meuse.
Louis XIV. did not enter the field immediately, either because
the army was not ready, or because the troubles excited at this moment throughout the West of France by the new taxes caused him
uneasiness. It was not until the middle of May that he put himself at the head of his troops and moved through the valley of the
Sambre towards Huy, while a corps under the orders of Cr6qui took
possession of Dinant (May 18-29). Huy was carried in turn
(June 1-6). June 10, Limburg was invested: Cond6 directed
the siege, which the King covered in person. The Prince of
Orange, who had advanced as far as Louvain, dared not attack the
King, and had not time to reinforce himself. Limburg opened its
gates, June 22. Louis had attained his immediate end: he was
1 Mignet, t. IV. pp. 334-341. Lettres des Feuquieres, t. III. passzm.




1675.             SEDITION OF BORDEAUX.                   413
master of the central course of the Meuse, and possessed beyond
the river a very important outpost, Limburg; the enemy held nothing longer on the Central Meuse but Namur and Charlemont,
surrounded on all sides by French garrisons. Louis did not think
it incumbent on him to push his enterprises in Belgium further this
year. To insure the operations commenced by Turenne in Germany, it was necessary that a part of the royal forces should go to
defend the vast space which separates the Central Rhine from the
Central Meuse, and which the Moselle divides into two almost
equal parts.  The internal troubles, which continued, moreover
recalled the King to Paris, and the weather, which was very rainy,
was unfavorable to sieges. Louis therefore sent Crdqui towards
the Moselle and the Sarre, with a small army corps, to restrain the
Dukes of Lorraine and Liineburg, who were arming on the Rhine,
left the command of the rest of his troops to Cond6 to oppose the
Prince of Orange, and set out, July 17, to return to Versailles.
A violent agitation had been prolonged for several months in the
West and Southwest of France. The disturbances which internal
conspiracies and foreign instigations had not succeeded in exciting
the preceding year, had broken out in the spring of 1675, not in
Normandy and Languedoc, as Rohan and Sardan had promised,
but in Brittany and Guienne. The weight and vexatious character
of several new taxes were the cause of these. Colbert, to.his profound regret, had seen himself obliged to increase the tax on salt
thirty sous per minot in August, 1674; then he had instituted the
monopoly of tobacco, a more legitimate tax, although at first very
ill received (September, 1674).1 Recourse had also been had,
almost from the beginning of the war, to less justifiable resources:
the stamp-tax, already created by Mazarin, then suppressed, had
been reestablished; he deplorably increased the expenses of legal
proceedings, by forcing the lawyers to put on each page of stamped
paper a fixed number of lines; at the same time a stamp-tax had
been imposed on pewter vessels, the people's plate. In 1674, these
two taxes had been, on the popular complaint, the one transformed,
the other abolished. The States of Brittany had testified their
gratitude to the King, for this concession and some others, by doubling by a gratuity the contribution which they were about to vote,
1 It is curious to consider the small beginning of this tax, the product of which
has since become so enormous; it yielded at first only 600,000 livres; twenty years
after it produced 1,600,000. Madame de Montespan had persuaded the King to give
her the revenue. Colbert had the courage to cause it to be withdrawn from her,
although he knew what it would cost him to brave this haughty and vindictive
woman.




414                      LOUIS XIV.                       1675.
and which was thus increased to 5,200,000 livres. At the beginning of 1675, the stamp and pewter taxes were established anew.
The people were exasperated.
March 28, at Bordeaux,1 when the officers of the farmers of the
revenues attempted to stamp the pewter vessels among the merchants, the people rose, crying, " Long live the King, and down
with the taxes! " sacked the public bureau and several houses of
the finance officers, and threw into the river all the stamped plate
found. A few of the rioters having been arrested, the next day
the riot began again more terrible than before; the multitude massacred a councillor of parliament, seized several others, and compelled the governor and parliament to release the imprisoned insurgents. The parliament, by a decree rendered under bayonets,
suppressed, as far as the city was concerned, the two new taxes
and various other duties odious to the Bordelais. The governor
of Guienne, Marshal d'Albret, promised to obtain an amnesty from
the King. Louis XIV., incredible as it may seem, accorded the
amnesty and ratified the decree of the parliament of Bordeaux.
For Louis thus to humiliate the royal authority before the riot, the
situation must have appeared really grave to him, and he must have
wished to suppress the revolt at all costs at the moment when the
campaign was about to open. Louis remembered the parliament
of Ormea.
The fermentation was not appeased, maintained as it was by the
fear that the pardon was not sincere and by the intrigues of foreign
instruments. Conspiring agents set out from Bordeaux for Holland with a promptness which seemed to prove that the Bordeaux
revolt had been instigated by secret intrigues; April 8, they were
already at the Hague, where they solicited the Prince of Orange
and the States-General to send a fleet to the Gironde.  The
Dutch, deceived the year before by Rohan and Sardan, hesitated
to attempt the enterprise on the faith of adventurers who could not
verify the title which they assumed of delegates from Bordeaux.
It is certain, however, that a portion of the population were exceedingly ill disposed; they held "very insolent language concerning the ancient dominion of the English," so wrote the intendant
of Guienne to Colbert.  The Protestants, numerous in Guienne
and justly discontented with the increasing annoyances which they
were made to endure, gave rise to serious uneasiness. The lawyers
1 Before the stamp-affair, the new regulations of Colbert concerning wardenships
and freedoms of trade corporations had been very ill received at Bordeaux, and had
greatly embittered the artisans. See F. Joubleau, Histoire de Colbert, t. I. p. 317.




1675.         TROUBLES IN THE PROVINCES.                  415
and the merchants were not less discontented than the common
people. P6rigord, Bearn, other cantons of Guienne and Gascony,
became turbulent, after the example of Bordeaux, and threatened
the fiscal agents.l Poitou and Maine showed in turn some disposition to stir; the King employed concessions towards Poitiers,
rigor towards Mans.
Three weeks after the sedition of Bordeaux, the bureaus of
stamped paper and of tobacco were sacked at Rennes, with the
same cry as at Bordeaux, " Long live the King, and no taxes! "
(April 18). Some were killed on both sides. -The magistrates of
Nantes suspended the collection of the new duties, in order to avoid
a similar insurrection. The parliament of Rennes, irritated at the
want of faith to which Brittany was subjected, made no efforts to
calm the public mind. The peasants revolted in turn, especially
in Cornouailles; thousands of Low Breton peasants scoured the
province, pursuing with fury the fiscal agents and the noblemen
who armed themselves after the order of Duke de Chaulnes, governor of Brittany. The governor, meanwhile,,was assailed by the
people of Rennes and obliged to quit the city. Many chateaux
were pillaged or burned; men of quality were hung, their swords at
their side, from the tops of steeples. The spirit of the old Jacqueries readily revived among the violent inhabitants of Lower
Brittany. The priests themselves were no longer respected when
they urged the rural population to submit.  These unfortunates
said that " the exactions and ill-treatment of their seigniors, who
made them work continually on their lands, having no more consideration for them than horses, - all this, joined with the establishment of the salt-tax and the issue of the edict concerning
tobacco, with which it was impossible for them to dispense, had
brought matters to such a pass that they could not help throwing
off the yoke." 2
We see that neither the wise ordinances of Colbert, nor the
severe examples of the Great Days of Auvergne, had been able to
put an end to the excesses of feudalism. The Revolution of 1789
was needed to extirpate this poisonous plant, which monarchy had
only pruned and trimmed.
Louis XIV. had been patient until his return from the Netherlands, and his pride must have suffered cruelly from so much conciliation towards sedition. He indemnified himself but too well.
1 Lettres militaires, III. pp. 396, 439, 440, 447. P. Clement, Hist. de Colbert, p. 365.
2 Letter of the Duke de Chaulnes to Colbert, of July 13, 1675, ap. P. Clement,
list. de Colbert, p. 371. Lettres milit. IV. pp. 251, 253, 264. Basnage, II. p. 604.




416                       LOUIS XIV.                        1675.
The month of August arrived; when he saw that the troubles did
not swell to organized insurrection and civil war, and that the
naval forces of Holland, which were preparing to assist the Danes
against the Swedes and the Spaniards of Sicily against the French,
did not appear on our coasts, his wrath finally overflowed. Two
new riots, which occurred at Bordeaux in the latter part of August,
were suppressed and punished by sanguinary executions. The
Bordeaux people suffered themselves to be disarmed without serious resistance. After the recapture of Bellegarde, six or seven
thousand soldiers from the army of Roussillon were sent to Bordeaux and quartered in the city (November), where they committed such disorders that the best families deserted Bordeaux, and
commerce was for a long time ruined.  The parliament, which
nevertheless had shown no ill-will, was exiled to Condom, and the
walls of Bordeaux were partly levelled.
Brittany was still more harshly treated: a reinforcement of five
or six thousand soldiers was introduced there during August. The
insurgents nowhere made a stand against the troops. The Low
Breton peasants, as soon as they saw the soldiers in the distance,
fell on their knees, crying, " Have mercy on us! " The towns and
country were none the less desolated by numerous cruel punishments; nothing but gallows and wheels were encountered along
the highways.  At Rennes, all the inhabitants of an important
street were banished without distinction, and it was forbidden to
give them refuge. " Women in labor, old men and children, were
seen wandering, weeping, from the city, destitute of food, without'
knowing whither to go or where to lay their heads." 1
The parliament of Rennes was transferred for some time to
Vannes, and new troops came to complete the military occupation
of the province, while the States of Brittany voted a new grant
of three millions to the King under the impression of the public
terror.
Movements of the same kind, but less prolonged, had taken
place in the course of the year at Toulouse, Limoges, Nevers.
Everywhere the people suffered, if they did not everywhere rebel.
May 29, 1675, the governor of Dauphiny, Lesdiguieres, wrote to
Colbert that commerce had completely ceased in his province, and
that the greater part of the inhabitants had lived during the winter
1 Lettres militaires, t. IV. pp, 269-280. Madame de Sevigne, letter of October 80,
1675. Madame de Sdvigne expresses herself on these sad events with a levity
which shows how far inferior the seventeenth century was in sentiments of humanity to the centuries which have succeeded it. P. Clement, Histoire de Colbert,
pp. 367-373.




1675.         TURENNE AND MONTECUCULI.                  417
on nothing but bread made of acorns and roots; that they would
soon be seen eating the grass in the meadows and the bark from
trees!1.. A few months after, the English philosopher Locke,
travelling in Languedoc, learned from the people of the country
that the rents of lands had decreased one half since the beginning
of the war.  The wretched and ruinous aspect of the Poitevin
cottages struck him no less, and even the chateaux of the petty
nobility presented to him an aspect of discomfort and poverty.2
This was not what Colbert had dreamed of for France!
The noise of military events stifled the complaints of all these
unfortunates, and posterity has wellnigh forgotten these popular
outbreaks and sorrows to remember only the last exploits of that
great man, who terminated, during this campaign, his forever
glorious career.
Turenne set out from Paris to return to the Rhine, at the same
time that the King set out for the banks of the Meuse (May 11).
He found the enemy, exceptionally, in motion as soon as he. The
Imperialists, though they had no longer, as the year before, masses
of auxiliaries ill agreed among themselves, had, by way of compensation, Montecuculi at their head. Their army had been reorganized in Swabia, and to reinforce it, the greater part of the Imperial
troops had been brought thither that had wintered on the Meuse,
which facilitated the operations of Louis XIV. on the banks of this
river.  Montecuculi, who had twenty-five thousand men, and
Turenne, who had twenty thousand, designed, each on his side, to
carry the war on the enemy's territory. Montecuculi urged the
city of Strasburg once more to grant passage to the troops of the
Emperor and the Empire. The people of Strasburg, according to
custom, agitated in favor of the Germanic cause; the magistrates
hesitated; the arrival of Turenne at Benfeld (May 22) decided
them  to keep the promise which they had given the January before. The bridge across the Rhine was not delivered up to Montecuculi, who was four leagues north of Strasburg.
The Austrian general then descended along the right bank of
the Rhine, as if to move on Philippsburg (May 25). Turenne
pitched his camp at Achenheim, a league and a half from Strasburg (May 27), pushed forward with the vanguard to Haguenau,
and waited. Montecuculi crossed the Rhine at Speyer, sent out
parties towards Lower Alsace, and threatened Philippsburg. The
place was in a good state of defence. As to Lower Alsace, it was
1 P. Clement, p. 279.
2 The Life of John Locke, with Extract from his Correspondence, 2 vols. 8vo. 1830.
VOL. I.            53




418                     LOUIS XIV.                      1675.
not easy to penetrate it in front. Turenne did not stir. Montecuculi had had no other aim than to draw his rival in the direction
of the Palatinate, in order to return by forced marches to Strasburg and make a new attempt upon the city. Turenne did not
allow himself to be duped. While the Austrian general, seeing
his plan divined, recrossed the river at Speyer, the French general
threw a pontoon bridge across the Rhine at Ottenheim, five leagues
above Strasburg. There were, in truth, five bridges instead of one,
the Rhine being divided at this point into five arms by wooded and
marshy islands, across which it was necessary to cut roads for the
artillery and baggage. Thanks to the zeal of the soldiers, this rude
labor was finished in four days.  June 7-8, the army crossed the
great river, and Turenne anticipated Montecuculi by seizing the
post of Willstedt, near the confluence of the Kinzig and the Rhine,
thus cutting off the communications of the enemy with Strasburg.
Swabia, instead of Alsace, became the theatre of the war. It was
a first victory.
Ortnau, the canton of Swabia where the two armies found themselves, presents the aspect of an open country interspersed with
forests, shut in between the Rhine and the heights of the Black
Forest, and intersected by numerous small streams which descend
from the mountains to the river. Montecuculi encamped at Offenburg, at the entrance of the Black Mountains, the little river
Kinzig separating the two armies (June 13). Henceforth neither
of the two great generals lost sight of the other. Like two valiant
athletes struggling foot to foot without either being able to overthrow the other, Turenne and Montecuculi manceuvred for six
weeks in the space of a few square leagues without succeeding in
forcing each other to quit the place.  These admirable operations
will be an eternal object of study for military men. Montecuculi
was somewhat superior in numerical force, and especially in artillery. Turenne made amends for his inferiority by the advantage
which his vigor and physical activity gave him over a rival worn
out with infirmities and often obliged to rely on the eye and judgment of others.1
Montecuculi, advancing from the Kinzig to the Schutter and
threatening the bridge at Ottenheim, strove to force Turenne to
abandon the post of Willstedt (June 18). Turenne did not abandon
Willstedt; but, seeing that the space to be guarded between Ottenheim and Willstedt was too extended, he moved his pontoon bridge
1 Folard, Comment. sur Polybe, t. Ier, p. 255. Feuquieres, Mdm. milit. Napoleon,
Metm. t. V. pp. 155-181.




1675.             DEATH OF TURENNE.                    419
from Ottenheim down to Altenheim and thus narrowed his quarters
two leagues (June 22-24). Montecuculi did not succeed in debouching from the mountains into the valley of the Rhine; he fell
back on Offenburg, then made a movement as if to approach Strasburg (June 27). Turenne crossed the Kinzig and moved in front
of Willstedt; that is, between Strasburg and the enemy. Montecuculi, a few days after, again turned aside two or three leagues to
gain the bank of the Rhine and establish himself at the confluence
of the Renchen with the great river. Turenne encamped opposite
him, the Renchen between the two (July 4-5).
They remained for some time facing each other. Montecuculi
had ordered a pontoon bridge and a quantity of flour to be in
readiness at Strasburg; he did not succeed in bringing them
down the Rhine, Turenne having barricaded the different branches
of the river by stockades, batteries on the islands, and armed boats.
Notwithstanding, of the two armies, the French at this moment
experienced the greater want. The rains were continual, and the
roads impassable; forage was lacking. At last, July 15 and the
following days, the sun having reappeared and dried the ground a
little, Turenne seized a ford of the Renchen which was unguarded
by the enemy, occupied a few posts along the stream, and prepared
to turn the camp of the Imperialists. Montecuculi attempted to
prevent him: seeing the French quarters some little distance
apart, he planned a general attack on them on the night of July
23-24; but Turenne on his side was in motion; the Imperial
corps destined to attack the French right encountered Turenne
in person and was repulsed. The other columns of the enemy
did not engage in the conflict. The column of the centre, charged
to assail the ford of the Renchen and to give the signal of general
attack by a volley of artillery, had lost its way among the woods
and marshes.
The next day, Turenne, who remained master of both banks of
the Renchen, took possession of the village of Gamshurst, commanding the crossing of another small river, the Lichtenau, in the
rear of the Imperial camp. Montecuculi, wellnigh closed in between the French and the Rhine, decamped the same night, and
fell back into the mountains. Turenne, after having assembled all
his forces at Gamshurst, reascended the Lichtenau, the morning
of the 27th, and sought to enter the mountains by the defile of
Sasbach.  Montecuculi had just arrived there, and occupied a
church which overlooked the entrance of this gorge.  Turenne
deemed it impossible to carry the post, but descried another defile




420                       LOUIS XIV.                        1675.
farther off which enabled him to turn the enemy's left. The
moment of decisive action appeared to have come. Turenne, so
averse to all bravado, could not help exclaiming, it is said, " I have
them! they can no longer escape me! "
The movements of the enemy, in fact, denoted lively anxiety;
his baggage and rear-guard were seen from  afar disappearing
among the firs in the direction of Wiirtemberg. The least harm
that could happen to Montecuculi was to be forced back beyond
the Black Mountains and to abandon the valley of the Rhine to
the French.
Meanwhile, Turenne, making his last arrangements for the
attack, went to reconnoitre the movements of the Imperialists and
to visit the batteries just placed by his commander of artillery,
Saint-Hilaire. As Saint-Hilaire was pointing out to him an Austrian column on the march, a shot, fired from an opposite height,1
carried off the outstretched arm of Saint-Hilaire and struck the
left side of Turenne.  The great man fell with his face on the
saddle-bow, without proffering a word, without uttering a cry.
He was dead!
Dead at sixty-four, at the moment of crowning his career by a
last victory.
Saint-Hilaire had fallen, bleeding and mutilated, by the side of
his general. His son flung himself, weeping, on his body. " Do
not weep for me," said the dying father, " but for this great man.
Poor army, what will become of thee! "
A foreign deserter having run to bear the fatal news to Montecuculi, the Austrian general was at first seized with a transport of
joy; but soon, inspired with a nobler feeling, - "A man is dead,"
said he, "who did honor to mankind." 2
The immediate consequences of this catastrophe attested the
greatness of the loss which France had just experienced.  The
first cry of the soldiers was, " Our father is dead; we are lost! "
the next, "We will avenge our father!"  The two lieutenantgenerals who had commanded undir Turenne, de Lorges and de
Vaubrun, not acting in concert, dared not profit by this thirst for
vengeance, and renounced the offensive. Montecuculi remained
immovable. At the end of two days, the French generals fell
back to the camp on the Renchen. Montecuculi then marched
1 According to Basnage, Prince Hermann of Baden recognized Turenne and gave
orders to fire on him. Basnage, t. II. p. 618.
2 Lettres militaires, t. III. pp. 114-143, 164-225. Pellisson, Lettres historiques, t. II.
pp. 258-390. Sdvigne, t. II. p. 264; III. p. 18, edition of 1786. Mem. de S. H(Saint-Hilaire), t. Ier, pp. 186-208. Histoire de Turenne, t. II. pp. 559-686.




1675.            OBSEQUIES OF TURENNE.                  421
rapidly on Willstedt, to cut off the French army from its bridge at
Altenheim. Lorges and Vaubrun, happily, were informed of this
movement in time, and marched parallel with the enemy; the
French vanguard secured the post of Willstedt; the magazines
which were found there were burned, the army recrossed the
Kinzig and prepared to recross the Schutter to encamp at the
tete-de-pont at Altenheim, between the Schutter and the Rhine.
Scarcely had the vanguard crossed the Schutter, when the Imperial army, which had followed on the track of the French, fell
on the rear-guard, broke it, drove it beyond the stream, and
crossed after it the two bridges of the Schutter. The French
army seemed lost. The Marquis de Vaubrun, who had been
guilty of the mistake of weakening the army by sending a large
detachment beyond the Rhine with the baggage, unknown to Lorges, bound his leg, shattered by a recent wound, to his saddle-bow,
rushed into the enemy's ranks, and met his death. Count de Lorges, Turenne's nephew, was more fortunate in a new charge; the
army saved itself by prodigies of desperate valor; the veterans
of Turenne returned to the combat with such fury that the Imperialists were forced back with great carnage beyond the little
stream, abandoning a few guns (August 1).
The loss of the French, in this bloody affair, was about three
thousand men; that of the Imperialists amounted to four or five
thousand.
They continued to cannonade each other during the rest of the
day and the two days following.  In the night of August 3-4,
according to orders from court, Count de Lorges recrossed the
Rhine without opposition and reintered Alsace. The bloody battle
of Altenheim had been of no value to the French except in enabling them to effect their retreat.
Arrived on the left bank of the Rhine, the army was forced to
part with the body of its general, which it had brought with it,
and to which it willingly still attributed its safety. Here ensued
one of the most touching scenes preserved in military annals;
Madame de S6vigne has devoted to it one of her immortal pages,
in which we fancy that we still hear the echoes of " those lamentable
cries of a whole army." 1
The people, especially at Paris and in the Northern and Eastern
provinces, shared profoundly in the grief of the soldiers. During
the whole course of the monarchy of the Bourbons, there was
1 Madame de Sevigne, t. III. p. 52. Lettres militaires, t. III. pp. 219-232. Mlldm. de
Saint-Hilaire, t. Ier, pp. 207-222.




422                        LOUIS XIV.                         1675.
never a glory so national as that of Turenne, or a death so much
regretted. The people whom the great man had lately preserved
from invasion,1 and through whose territory his inanimate remains
now passed, improvised funeral honors to him more touching than
the pomp which awaited him at Saint-Denis, and eulogies more
eloquent in their simplicity than the brilliant orations of the sacred
desk. From the Rhine to Paris, the corpse of Turenne journeyed
slowly between two lines of people in tears. At Paris and the
court, the consternation was such that each one seemed to have
lost his dearest relative or friend. Through the whole year, there
was not a public discourse delivered in the parliaments, the academies, the universities, that was not full of the thought and the
image of the great dead. The King showed, by his words and
actions, that he felt the immensity of his loss; he wished to render
to the remains of the hero honors as extraordinary as his services,
and similar to those which Du Guesclin had formerly received: he
decided that Turenne should be buried at Saint-Denis in a new
chapel destined for the sepulture of the Bourbons. While awaiting
the construction of this edifice, the body was deposited and a
monument erected in the chapel of Saint-Eustache, at Saint-Denis.2
Modern France has transferred the remains and tomb of Turenne
beneath the military dome of the Invalides.
1 We remember the anecdote related by Madame de Sevign6, t. III. p. 43, concerning the farmer of Champagne who wished to cancel his lease, because now
that Turenne was dead, the enemy was about to enter Elrance.
2 See the funeral orations on Turenne, by Flechier and Mascaron, his eulogy by
Saint-Evremont, the letters of Madame de Sevigne, and the letters of the King to
the abbe and monks of Saint-Denis, in the ilistoire de Turenne, t. II. Preuves,
9, i1. v.




CHAPTER VI.
LOUIS XIV. (CONTINUED.)
WAR WITH HOLLAND, continuation and end. -Repulse of Konsaarbriick and Loss of
Treves. Naval Victories of the French over the Spaniards and Dutch in the
Waters of Sicily. Glory of Duquesne. Taking of Conde, Bouchain, and Aire.
Loss of Philippsburg.  Reverses of the Swedish Allies of France. Bavaria
rallies to the Support of France and Sweden. Taking of Valenciennes and
Cambrai. Victory of Cassel. Taking of Saint-Omer. Victory of Kochersberg. Taking of Freiburg in Brisgau. Maritime Successes against the Dutch.
Taking of Ghent and Ypres. Peace of Nimeguen with Holland. Commercial
Concessions to the Dutch. Battle of Saint-Denis after the Signature of Peace.
Louis XIV. restores to Spain Ghent, with Charleroi and several other Places
acquired in 1667. Spain cedes to France Franche-Comtd, Valenciennes, Cambrai, Saint-Omer, Ypres, and other Towns of West Flanders and Hainault. The
Emperor and the Germanic Diet sign the Peace after new Reverses. Philippsburg restored to France in Exchange for Freiburg. The Elector of Brandenburg and the King of Denmark restore to Sweden what they had taken from
her. General Pacification.
1675-1679.
WAR WITH HOLLAND.
1675-1679.
Louis XIV. had hastened to provide, as far as possible, for the
consequences of the catastrophe of Salsbach. On the day after the
fatal news, he had, on Louvois' proposition, created seven marshals:
de Luxembourg, D'Estrades, de Navailles, de Duras, de La Feuillade, de Rochefort, and de Schomberg, to whom  Madame de Montespan immediately caused her brother Vivonne, then general of
the galleys and viceroy of Sicily, to be added. The wits called
these eight marshals the change for Turenne; nevertheless, three
among them, Luxembourg, Schomberg, and D'Estrades, were men
of the highest capacity, the first two as military leaders, the third
as a diplomatist.1  Schomberg was the last Huguenot that attained
1 The two least commendable were Vivonne, brother of the mistress of the King,
and Rochefort, husband of the mistress of Louvois. Madame de Sevigne insinuates
that Louvois instigated this creation only in order to be able to give the baton to
Rochefort.




424                     LOUIS XIV.                     1675.
this high dignity; it needed all the lustre of his merit to obtain
such a derogation from the resolve made to keep the reformers out
of office.
The rival pretensions of Turenne's two lieutenants had been
near causing the destruction of the army of the Rhine. The King
decreed that, thenceforth, the general-in-chief wanting, the lieutenants should no longer command in rotation, but that the command
should belong to thedelder in service.
One of the new marshals, Luxembourg, was placed at the head
of the army of the Netherlands, while Cond6 received orders to
replace Turenne. He alone was worthy to do so in the opinion of
the army and of Europe. Strasburg, delivered from the fear with
which Turenne inspired it, had given passage to Montecuculi, and
the Imperialists had crossed the Rhine, August 7. The French
army, encamped between the Rhine and the Ill, above Strasburg,
covered Upper Alsace, but Lower Alsace was wholly exposed to
the enemy, and Montecuculi already threatened Haguenau.
Before Cond6 had rejoined the army of the Rhine, the news of
a second calamity was received at court.
Marshal de Cr6qui, after the taking of Limburg, had been sent
with a small army to the Moselle and the Sarre to cover Treves
and Lorraine. Two of the princes of Brunswick, Duke George
William of Liineburg-Zell and his brother, Bishop (Protestant administrator) of Osnabriick, had slowly reassembled, between the
Rhine and the Meuse, twenty thousand men of the German quotas,
joined by the old Duke Charles, of Lorraine, with the little body
of adventurers always attached to his errant fortune. These three
princes, on seeing themselves in force, marched by both banks of
the Moselle on Treves and prepared to besiege it, at the urgent
entreaty of the Elector dispossessed by the French. Cr6qui, with
fifteen thousand men at most, hastened to pitch his tents at the
confluence of the Moselle and the Sarre, at Taverney, near Konsaarbriick. The allied princes judged that the siege would be
impossil;le in face of an adversary thus posted, and took a bold and
decisive resolution: in the night of August 10-11, they assembled
on the right bank of the Moselle and pushed, the next morning,
straight to the French camp.
The Sarre covered the head of this camp; but the crossing was
imperfectly guarded, and a great part of the French troops, already
very scanty, had gone in search of forage. This presumptuous
confidence was severely chastised. The enemy crossed the Sarre
almost without obstacle; the French army scarcely had time to




1675.           CONDE AND MONTECUCULI.                  425
form in line; borne down by greatly superior forces, charged at
once in front and in flank, it was utterly put to rout: the cavalry
fled; the infantry was overwhelmed or dispersed through the
woods; the cannon and baggage were taken.
Whilst the greater part of the fugitives gained Thionville and
Metz, Cr6qui, resolved to perish or to repair his error, had thrown
himself almost alone into Treves, which the conquerors were not
long in pressing closely.  He elevated the morale of the garrison, four thousand strong, and, for three weeks, repulsed every
attack and conducted murderous sorties with the energy of despair.
At last, the besiegers having breached the body of the place (September 1), the garrison became discouraged: a sort of conspiracy
was plotted against the marshal; it would no longer aid in defending a new intrenchment which he had erected behind the breach,
and capitulated without him. He refused to sign the capitulation,
and was taken in the cathedral whither he had withdrawn (September 6). The Germans ill observed this dishonorable capitulation, and Louis XIV., on his side, punished its authors severely.
Several officers were degraded as cowards; a few, decapitated as
traitors. Whole companies were decimated.
One of the conquerors of Konsaarbriick but a short time survived the recapture of Treves. Duke Charles of Lorraine would
have been glad, after the battle, to have advanced into the heart of
his duchy, instead of returning to the siege of Treves. This, the
Brunswicks were unwilling to do. They thought, with reason, that
Treves should be taken rather than Metz or Nancy. Charles was
therefore obliged to remain in their camp. He fell ill there and
terminated, September 17, his eccentric and troubled career. A
prince without States, often a general without an army, he had led
almost without intermission, since his first dethronement by Cardinal de Richelieu, that is, for more than forty years, the life of a
condottiere of the Middle Ages. He bequeathed his pretensions to
his nephew Charles V., who inherited his talents and misfortunes
without his vices.
The generals of Louis XIV. had had time, during the siege of
Treves, to put Lorraine and Trois-Evech6s in a state of defence.
The Brunswicks had attempted nothing serious in this direction;
but they might have given Montecuculi an overwhelming superiority over Cond6, had they led their troops into Alsace. They did
not do so; the fear that their brother, the Duke of Hanover, would
effect a diversion against their domains in favor of the Swedes and
the French, as he was pledged to do, determined them to return
VOL. I.          54




426                    LOUIS XIV.                     1675.
northward, leaving part of their troops between the Lower Rhine
and the Lower Meuse to aid the Dutch.
Montecuculi, with the Brunswicks, had still a very considerable
numerical advantage over the French army of the Rhine. He had
been reinforced by the troops of the Rhenish Circles and had entered upon the siege of Haguenau (August 18-20). Cond6, who
had scarcely reached the French camp, at Chatenois, between
Schelestadt and Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines, marched to the assistance
of Haguenau. Montecuculi raised the siege, and went to meet the
prince. Cond6 skilfully maintained a running fight. The circumspect Montecuculi sought battle; the impetuous Conde refused it
and made war in Turenne's style on the battle-fields of Turenne.
He maintained himself, during the remainder of the season, in the
well-chosen position of Chatenois. Montecuculi, unable either to
penetrate into Upper Alsace, or to force back the French beyond
the Vosges, changed his plans. After a feigned attack upon Saverne, he moved upon the confines of Alsace and the Palatinate,
fortified Lauterbourg, and threw a bridge there over the Rhine, in
order to cut off the communications of the French army with
Philippsburg. After having thus paved the way for the siege of
Philippsburg the following year, he recrossed the Rhine and put
his troops in winter-quarters the beginning of November. Conde
did the same.
This was the last campaign of these two illustrious generals.
This year terminated the career of the three greatest captains of
Europe, by the death of Turenne and the retirement of his two
rivals in glory, to whom the sufferings of the gout thenceforth
interdicted the fatigues of war. The great Cond6 lived still some
years, solacing the tedium of his infirmities and forced inaction by
the enjoyment of letters and of the most brilliant and charming
society that ever existed.
After the King and Cond6 had quitted the army of the Netherlands, nothing important was done between the Meuse and the sea.
Luxembourg, with inferior forces, had held in check the Prince of
Orange who, always ill-seconded by the Spaniards, had been able
to undertake nothing.
On the whole, the material results of the campaign were nearly
balanced between the two parties, apart from the irreparable loss
of Turenne; but the moral effect was not satisfactory to France.
It was so long since France had lost a battle! The youth, observes
Madame de S6vign6, had never heard of a defeat.
The results would have been much worse, had it not been for




1675.          REVERSES OF THE SWEDES.                  427
the diversion effected by the Swedes in the North. France owed
much gratitude to the Swedes for this service, which cost them dear.
They lost indeed in this war the ascendency which'they had had
so long over the Germans and the Danes. Their discipline was
relaxed; their great captains had grown old and had no successors.
After ravaging Brandenburgian Pomerania and the marches of
Brandenburg for a few months, they had been beaten and thrust
back on their territories by the Great Elector (June-August).
Denmark, the princes of Brunswick, the Duke of Hanover excepted, and the Bishop of Miinster, united against them with the
Elector of Brandenburg. Almost all of Swedish Pomerania, the
greater part of the duchies of Bremen and Verden, and the majority of the places occupied by the Swedes in Mecklenburg, fell into
the power of the confederates (October-December). The Dutch
had sent a squadron to the assistance of the Danes, and aided them
to guarantee the Danish islands against the Swedish fleet. The
Duke of Hanover, seeing that the Swedes were worsted, dared not
take up arms in their favor and remained neutral. Neither did
the Elector of Bavaria move.
The war spread now through the whole extent of Europe, from
the Scandinavian Alps to the foot of Etna, and from the Ocean
and the North Sea to the Black Sea, for an infuriated struggle between the Turks and the Poles, a struggle foreign to the war with
Holland, completed the conflagration of the continent.
The sea had been the theatre of nothing important in 1675; but
important events were preparing for the year after. The French
strengthened themselves more and more in the Mediterranean.
The Dutch prepared to go there in search of them. The United
Provinces, fatigued, involved in debt, suffering cruelly in their
commerce, exhausted by the necessity of paying the Emperor and
all the German princes, allies even more covetous than needy,'
could no longer fit out the enormous fleets which they had at first
opposed to the combined forces of France and England; nevertheless, they had put themselves in a position to unfurl their flag at
once in the Baltic and the Mediterranean, and, a little later, in the
Caribbean Sea. The entreaties of Spain decided them to send at
her expense a squadron to Sicily, instead of attempting to profit by
the troubles of Guienne and Brittany to attempt some enterprise
on the coasts of France. De Ruyter set out in August, 1675, with
eighteen ships and four fire-ships, a force which this great man,
1 They had besides to suffer, in November, 1675, a terrible inundation, which
not only ravaged their territory, but maritime Flanders. See Basnage, t. II. p. 649.




4238. LOUIS XIV,                      1675.
who followed with an anxious eye the progress of the French navy,
had declared insufficient for the end proposed. The auxiliaries
furnished him by the Spanish navy were of little account in his
sight. The winds did not permit him to reach Cadiz before the
end of September.
During tIhis time, the French maintained themselves in Messina
and made some progress in Sicily, a progress much less however
than it should have been, considering the friendly disposition of the
country and the indifferent resources of the Spaniards. Two obstacles fettered the conquest of Sicily: the one was the ill-will
of Louvois towards a maritime expedition which would serve the
glory of his rival, Colbert; Louvois could not endure to be constrained to place his troops, as he called them, at the disposal of
the Minister of the Marine; the other obstacle was the character
of the Viceroy Vivonne, a true Epicurean, brave and intelligent,
but indolent and careless to such a point that he remained four
months without writing to the King! Vivonne, by his levity and
license, clashed with the habits of the serious, jealous, and formal
people whom he had to govern; he wounded their interests by
abandoning his authority to favorites of low degree, who created
odious monopolies of. commodities and merchandise; lastly he did
not do nearly as much as he might have done even with the insufficient means parsimoniously doled out to him by the jealousy of
Louvois. He caused the failure, by his negligence, of an attack
on Melazzo, the success of which would have put Messina quite at
its ease (June 1675). He had for lieutenants the first mariners
of France, the Duquesnes, the Tourvilles, and he did not take the
trouble to profit by them. He decided at last, by their entreaties,
to endeavor to make amends for the attack on Melazzo by assailing
Agosta, which commands the southeast of Sicily and was the
magazine of the Spaniards on this coast. A descent was made,
and Agosta, ill fortified and ill defended, was carried by a coup de
main, thanks to the energy of Tourville (August 17). The inhabitants, after the example of Messina, hastened to form themselves into a military organization to second the French.
Louis XIV., a few weeks after, issued a declaration, announcing
that he had received Messina under his protection through generosity rather than interest, Although the Messinese had given
themselves to him unconditionally, he neither wished to subject
them, he said, nor the rest of Sicily, to foreign laws; but his design was to give them for a sovereign a prince of his blood, who
would reestablish, with the aid of France, that kingdom of Sicily,




1675-1676.     DE RUYTER AND DUQUESNE.                    429
the name of which had been so great in Italy and throughout the
world (October 15).1 This was excellent policy; but such a declaration should have been seconded by the dispatch of ten thousand soldiers. On the contrary, the fleet, by order of Vivonne,
returned in great part to Toulon, for fear of consuming the provisions of Messina and Agosta, and also to hasten the new assistance demanded (September-October).
Happily, De Ruyter was retained two whole months on the coast
of Spain, in consequence of the intestine quarrels of the Spanish
government. The regent wished to rid herself of her rival, Don
Juan of Austria, by sending him with De Ruyter to Sicily; Don
Juan, who awaited the approaching majority of the young King,
his nephew, to endeavor to supplant the mother with the son,
would not and did not go. De Ruyter was unable to reach the
coast of Sicily until the latter part of December, vwhile Duquesne,2
finally raised to a command worthy of his genius, returned on his
side to Messina, with twenty ships and six fire-ships fitted out at
Toulon.
De Ruyter, unable to enter the Straits of Messina because of
contrary winds, cruised between the Faro and the Archipelago of
Lipari, in order to bar the way to the French.  January 7, 1676,
the two fleets found themselves face to face in the waters of Stromboli and Salini. De Ruyter bore westward to endeavor to rally to
his aid a Spanish squadron which was setting out at this moment
from Palermo; he had as yet been rejoined by only one Spanish
ship and nine galleys, and his vessels were for the. most part weaker
than those of France both in men and guns.  Duquesne followed
him closely, and, favored by the wind, attacked him the next day
off the island of Alicuri. The collision was sustained on both sides
with equal vigor and ability. They fought from ten in the morning until night without decisive advantage; almost all the vessels
engaged were greatly injured; none was lost; the French lost
three fire-ships; the Dutch had a ship sunk and their rear-admiral killed.
The day after the battle, January 9, De Ruyter was reinforced,
between Alicuri and Palermo, by nine Spanish ships. By way
of compensation, Duquesne, January 10, effected a junction, near
1 Dumont, Corps dip7omatique, t. VII. p. 516.
2 He had been lieutenant-general of the naval forces since 1667, but he had not
yet had chief command of a French fleet; the lieutenants-general had over them
only the Vice-Admiral of the West, who was Count d'Estrdes, and the General
of the Galleys, acting as Vice-Admiral of the Levant, who was Vivonne.
Next to the lieutenants-general came the commodores.




430                     LOUIS XIV.                     1676.
Stromboli, with Lieutenant-General d'Alhneiras, who had come
from Messina with eight ships which had been left in that port
during autumn. Duquesne deemed it rash to enter on an engagement in the dangerous Straits of Messina, between Scylla and
Charybdis, in the presence of such an adversary as De Ruyter; he
preferred to sail round Sicily and gain Messina by the south, which
he executed without opposition. He thus attained his end, and the
advantage might be said to remain with the greatest mariner of his
age. The noble De Ruyter rendered full justice to his rival; his
report to the States-General is full of chivalrous admiration of
Duquesne and of the French.
The Spaniards sought to indemnify themselves by fomenting a
conspiracy in Messina, where the gallantries of the French and the
monopoly exercised over provisions by the domestics of Vivonne,
had made many malcontents. The plot was discovered, and the
Spanish troops, who had reckoned on surprising the city, were themselves surprised and repulsed with loss (February 13). Six weeks
after, an open attack by land and sea was still more unsuccessful:
their galleys, sustained by De Ruyter, had only time to fly before
the French ships, and their troops, as well as the Sicilian militia on
their part, were completely defeated by the garrison and the Messinese (March 27).
A more terrible collision was approaching. New convoys were
expected at Messina, both from Toulon and from Tunis, which
were to come by the south of Sicily. The French'fleet set sail to
meet them. De Ruyter and the Spanish admiral, La Cerda, meanwhile, threatened Agosta. April 22, the two fleets encountered
each other between Catania and Agosta. The French had thirty
ships and eight fire-ships; the Dutch, seventeen ships and four
fire-ships; the Spaniards, twelve ships and nine galleys. The Spanish admiral claimed to hold the centre as chief of the allied fleet;
De Ruyter, commanding only an auxiliary squadron, had had orders
to recognize this supremacy. He was therefore obliged to separate
his squadron to let the Spaniards place themselves in the centre.
He took the vanguard with ten ships, and, working to windward,
bore down at full sail on the French. Neither side stopped till
within musket-shot. The French vanguard, only eight ships strong,
was soon reinforced by a part of the centre. The Spaniards contented themselves with cannonading Duquesne almost beyond reach,
and thus preventing the Dutch rear-guard from succoring De Ruyter. It was the most furious conflict ever witnessed in these waters.
The commander of the French vanguard, D'Almeiras, was killed in




1676.             DEATH OF DE RUYTER.                   431
the beginning of the action, with the captains of the two vessels
nearest him. He was promptly avenged. A ball threw De Ruyter
from the poop to the deck of his ship: he was picked up bleeding
and mutilated, with the fore-part of his left foot carried away and
his right leg shattered. Heroically subduing pain, he did not cease
to encourage his men as long as the fire lasted.
The Spanish galleys rescued several Dutch ships ready to sink,
and towed them to Syracuse. Towards the end of the day, the
French and Dutch rear-guards at length succeeded in engaging
each other closely, without the Spanish admiral's deciding to do
the same against the centre of Duquesne. Night separated the
two combatants. The allies retired into the harbor of Syracuse.
Duquesne proceeded thither and offered battle anew, April 29.
They remained immovable. On the same day, the great De Ruyter
expired-on board his ship, mutilated like himself.
The two fleets then went to repair their injuries: the French to
Messina, the Hispano-Batavian to Palermo, the latter after laboriously making the tour of Sicily. The French did not long leave
their enemies to breathe. The allied fleet entered Palermo, May
15; the 31st, the French fleet appeared in sight of this capital.
Vivonne, somewhat aroused by the glory of Duquesne, had taken
the chief command, and twenty-five galleys, that had arrived from
Provence, had increased the number of the ships to thirty-eight,
besides nine fire-ships.  Captain Tourville who, then thirty-four
years of age, united to all the fire of early youth the profoundest
knowledge of naval affairs, was commissioned to reconnoitre the
position of the enemies, and gave a plan of attack which Vivonne
had at least the good sense to adopt.
At the approach of the French, the allies, issuing from behind
the mole of Palermo, had deployed in line, at the entrance of the
road, twenty-seven ships, nineteen galleys, and four fire-ships. On
the morning of June 2, nine French ships under Vice-Admiral
Preuilli, supported by seven galleys and carrying with them five
fire-ships, advanced towards the right wing of the enemy, endured
the fire without answering till within cable's length, then opened a
terrible fire and launched three of their fire-ships.  The ships
assailed endeavored to run aground on the coast: they had not
time; in a few moments, three ships, two Spanish and one Dutch,
were in flames. The French then attacked the whole line. The
last two fire-ships of the vanguard started to grapple with the Spanish flag-ship: the Admiral, Don Diego d'Ibarra, leaped overboard
with all his crew. The Dutch Vice-Admiral, Haen, had his head




432                         LOUIS XIV.                          1676.
carried off by a ball, on the deck of the vessel where the body of
De Ruyter was reposing.1 All the enemy's vessels, struck with terror, ran aground between the city and the mole. The four fire-ships
which remained to the French, hurled on this crowded and confused
mass, made fearful ravages. Two Dutch ships and a brig, a Spanish ship, and two galleys, one the royal galley of Spain, blew up
and covered Palermo with burning ruins, balls, and grenades.
Thanks to Spanish negligence, the ramparts of the city and the
citadel of Palermo were not even provided with artillery that might
have protected the fleet in port: the people were obliged to go to
the Viceroy's palace in search of cannon to plant on the ramparts!
The French fleet did not attempt to carry Palermo by a coup-demain; it had not soldiers enough to land to subdue this great exasperated city. Vivonne might have at least attempted to complete
the destruction of the allied squadrons by transforming his transports into fire-ships; the advice was given him, but he was unwilling,
he said, to endanger his victory. He set sail again for Messina,
whence he sent Duquesne to Toulon in search of the troops that
he urgently demanded of Louis XIV. Duquesne was unable to
return until the middle of August; he brought only three or four
thousand soldiers instead of the eight thousand that Vivonne had
asked for. The ill-will of Louvois was incorrigible. This reinforcement, insufficient to complete the conquest of Sicily, was at
least sufficient to make some inroads on the coast. The remainder
of the allied fleet, no longer esteeming itself in safety in the Sicilian
ports, had taken refuge at Naples. The French fleet effected descents along the eastern coast of the island. The bad weather
caused the failure of an enterprise against Syracuse; but they succeeded in taking possession of Taornina, Scaletta, and some other
posts, and Messina, rid of the proximity of the Spaniards, had no
longer to fear for its subsistence (September-November, 1676).2
These conquests responded feebly to the maritime successes of
which they were the fruit, - successes which crowned the labors
1 The ship however was neither burned nor sunk, but bore back to Holland the
remains of the great mariner. Louis XIV. ordered that if the ship should pass in
sight of the French ports, it should not only be respected, but military honors should
be rendered to the body of De Ruyter. Basnage, t. II. p. 687.
2 E. Sue, Histoire de la marine firangaise, t. III. liv. vI. chap. 1-6. Vie de Ruyter,
t. II. p. 164 et seq. Memn. of the Marquis de Villette, p. 23. Villette is hostile to
Duquesne, but his testimony is not of much weight; he was a brave soldier, but an
ignorant sailor. Colbert himself had been unjustly prejudiced against Duquesne
before this glorious campaign. Compare his letter to Seignelai, July 11, 1675, in
which he speaks of Duquesne as inferior to De Ruyter (ap. Joubleau, t. II. p. 420),
with his letter of congratulation written to Duquesne after the victory.




1676.      TAKING OF CONDE AND BOUCHAIN.              433
of Colbert and redoubled the jealousy of Louvois. The first French
navy, that which Richelieu had created, had had to conquer only
the fallen navy of Spain. The navy of Colbert had just coped with
the first mariners of the world and come off victorious from the
contest. The moral effect was immense in Europe.
The war on land was less brilliant, this year, than the war
by sea, although the events were not without. importance. Louis
XIV., as usual, was ready before his enemies. He abandoned,
after dismantling, the citadels of Liege and Huy, and some other
Liege fortresses. This was taking a step backwards, after laboring
with such vigor to take possession of the whole of the Central
Meuse; but Louis deemed it necessary to concentrate, ind difficult
to guard so many remote places; he had resolved to make conquests
on the frontier which would be less easily lost. He sent Luxembourg to Alsace, Navailles to Roussillon, and attacked in person,
with large forces, the places on the Upper Scheldt which the treaty
of 1667 had left to Spain while France established herself on the
Central Scheldt.
April 17, 1676, the town of Cond6 was invested by Cr6qui,
redeemed from his captivity, and D'Humieres. The 21st, Louis
reached the camp from Versailles. Vauban directed the siege,
again improving upon the method which he had employed against
Maestricht in 1673; his formidable batteries overwhelmed the
place, which he deprived, by galliots and fliating batteries, of the
protection of artificial inundations of the Scheldt; the outworks
were carried during the night of April 25-26. The governor
surrendered the next day at discretion. The King preserved the
town from pillage.
Cond6 taken, the King detached his brother and Cr6qui with
fifteen thousand men against Bouchain, and protected the operations
with the main body of the army. The Prince of Orange, arrived
at the environs of Mons with the Hispano-Batavian army too late
to succor Cond6, attempted to disturb the siege of Bouchain; he
succeeded in crossing the Scheldt below Cond6 by night, and moved
on Valenciennes. The King, foreseeing this movement, had also
crossed the Scheldt the day before and encamped at Denain, a
place destined later to a glorious renown. On the morning of May
10, the French army began to move before the enemy had had
time to deploy. The Prince of Orange had been guilty of grave
imprudence, and his position was exceedingly critical. He was shut
in between the Scheldt and the forests of Saint-Amand, behind
which flows the Scarpe; intersected and uneven ground obstructed
VOL. I.           55




434                     LOUIS XIV.                    1676.
his deploying, and, in case of defeat, he would have had no other
resource than to throw himself into Valenciennes. Defeat would
have been almost certain, had the French, formed first and already
outflanking the enemy on the left, attacked immediately. They
had at once the advantage of numbers (forty-eight thousand men
against thirty-five or forty thousand) and the advantage of position.
Louis XIV. appeared at first to comprehend this and to be inclined
for battle; but Louvois warmly opposed the hazarding of the King's
person, and maintained that it would be honor enough for the royal
arms to take Bouchain in the presence of the enemy. The Marshals
Schomberg and Cr6qui, fearing the responsibility of so terrible a
risk, spoke in the same way as the Minister. Count de Lorges,
shortly before created marshal, vainly entreated the King to permit
him to engage in action at the head of the body-guards. La Feuillade, it is said, threw himself at the feet of Louis to conjure him
not to expose the whole State with his sacred head. Louis resolved
to await the enemy.
It was not the fault of the Prince of Orange that Louis, who
had been unwilling to attack, was not forced to defend himself.
Scarcely were the allies in line, when William desired to lead them
to battle. Duke Villa-Hermosa, governor of the Catholic Netherlands, formally opposed it. The allies intrenched themselves in
their camp, and the French did the same.
The loss of this day prejudiced the military reputation of Louis
XIV. His enemies went so far as to accuse him of lacking courage. This was misjudging him: Louis was timid only through
pride. A reverse endured in person would have been worse to
him than death. The possibility of such a reverse, however improbable, was enough to prevent him from exposing himself to the
least risk. For this reason he liked no other warfare than that of
sieges, —a game in which one does not run the terrible risks of
battles, and plays almost with a certainty of winning, when he has
a Louvois to insure resources and a Vauban to use them. Louis
more than once expressed his regret at having let this great opportunity escape him: he could nevertheless justify himself in his own
eyes by the thought that he had attained his end, since Bouchain
capitulated the next day.
The taking of Bouchain and Cond6 was of importance only because they closely hemmed in the two far more important places of
Valenciennes and Cambrai. Louis XIV. did not think himself able
to attack either of these cities in the face of a hostile army; he
passed nearly two months in foraging Flanders and Brabant without




1676.               TAKING OF AIRE.                    435
undertaking anything, then set out from the frontier for Saint-Germain, July 4, after sending reinforcements to the army of the Rhine
and detaching ten or twelve thousand men with Cr6qui on the Meuse.
The rest of the army of Flanders remained under the command of
Schomberg.
The departure of the King and the weakening of the army of
Flanders encouraged the Prince of Orange to attempt a great
stroke. After manceuvring adroitly enough to divert the attention
of the French, he invested Maestricht, July 7. This renowned
stronghold was the terror of all the Spanish, German, and Dutch
provinces about it; its garrison laid under contribution all the level
country to the Waal; its recovery would have restored to William
the irresistible popularity, the absolute power which he had had in
1672. The garrison consisted of five or six thousand men; but
the governor, Marshal d'Estrades, was absent; the King had sent
him as plenipotentiary to Nimeguen, where general negotiations
were recommencing at this moment. The absence of d'Estrades
had contributed to determine the attack; the commander meanwhile
was a cavalry officer, named Calvo, who had had no experience in
sieges; Calvo, fortunately, had good lieutenants, and showed for
his own part what good sense and a noble heart can do in default
of knowledge; he was the brother-in-law of the celebrated Catalan
chief, Josd Margarita, and, like him, had been expatriated for not
returning under the Castilian dominion. The forces of the besiegers were considerable; the Dutch, reinforced by English volunteers in their pay, pressed Maestricht on the left of the Meuse;
a corps sent by the princes of Lower Germany besieged, on the
other bank, the fortified suburb of Wyk; the Spaniards, under
Villa-Hermosa, covered the siege on the side of Brabant. At the
court of France, it was believed at first that Maestricht was lost,
and less was thought of assisting it than of making amends by
some diversion; fifteen thousand men, detached from the army of
Flanders and the garrisons of Artois, under the command of Marshal d'Humieres, moved on Aire, one of the two Artesian places
which remained to the Spaniards (July 19-21). Vauban conducted
the siege, in the presence of Louvois. The outworks were speedily
carried. The citizens, terrified by the bombs which rained on their
town, and seeing the assault near, forced the governor to capitulate
(July 31). Five days of open trenches had sufficed. Aire had
formerly cost six weeks' trenching under Richelieu.
This would have been but a trifling compensation for Maestricht;
but the intrepid garrison of this town was not disposed to follow




436                     LOUIS XIV.                     1676.
the example of the defenders of Aire; seconded by the majority
of the inhabitants, who preferred French Catholics to Dutch Protestants, it opposed a furious resistance to the besiegers. It was the
bloodiest siege witnessed in the war. The trenches were opened
July 19; the firing commenced on the 20th; from the 30th the
assaults succeeded each other almost continually for a whole month.
Every outwork was disputed inch by inch, taken and retaken, watered with blood, blown up by the mines made by the besieged.l
The besiegers carried a few remote works only at the price of enormous sacrifices. The Prince of Orange lost the Rhinegrave, his
principal lieutenant, and he himself received a wound.
The news of this heroic defence fired the army of Flanders with
emulation. Schomberg, strengthened by a part of the troops that
had taken Aire, advanced to Tongres, although the King had advised him to run no risk. Villa-Hermosa could do nothing to check
him, and fell back on the camp of the Prince of Orange. The
allies had experienced such losses both by the sword of the besieged and by sickness, that William deemed it impossible to defend
his lines against the succoring army. After a last assault, which
failed, he hastened to raise the siege (August 29), and retired by
Saint-Trond to Brabant, after embarking on the Meuse his heavy
artillery, stores, and wounded. The Meuse was low; the boats
ran aground, and were all taken by the French; there were fortyeight cannon and six thousand muskets.
William, with the energetic obstinacy which characterized him,
designed to avenge his honor by resuming the offensive, and attempted to cut off Schomberg from return; he seized a defile called
Cinq-Etoiles, which commanded the road; Schomberg did not
attack this too formidable post in front; he turned it by an ably
executed flank-march, and regained Charleroi.
The unsuccessful issue of the siege of Maestricht greatly discouraged the Dutch, already so grievously wounded by the death
of De Ruyter; there was a unanimous outcry among them against
the Spaniards, who neither knew how to defend themselves nor to
aid their defenders, and who had allowed De Ruyter to perish and
William to fail. The United Provinces, and above all the province
of Holland, bent beneath the burden of the war; the States-General had ninety thousand soldiers in pay, without counting the sub1 "Whenever Calvo saw the enemy seize a work,' As an officer of cavalry,' said
he,' I understand nothing of the defence of a place. I only think that when something is lost, it must be taken again. March on."' (Euvres de Louis XIV. t. IV.
p. 28.




1676.             LOSS OF PHILIPPSBURG.                   437
sidies to the Emperor and to the German princes; the war cost
them fifty millions a year, only ten millions less than Louis XIV.
Spain did not even defray the expenses of the fatal expedition which
had cost them De Ruyter.  The obstinate William was almost the
only man in Holland who did not lose courage and who did not
sigh for the close of hostilities.1
The allies, in truth, had been more successful in Germany than
in the Netherlands.
According to the plans of Montecuculi and the cabinet of Vienna,
they had been blockading Philippsburg since winter. In the spring,
Marshal de Rochefort was ordered to revictual the place; but in
this he employed little address and activity. The new titular Duke
of Lorraine, Charles V., who had succeeded Montecuculi in command, barred the way to the Marshal, who, it is pretended, died
of chagrin. Duke Charles, with the greater part of his troops,
next threatened Lower Alsace, in order to mislead Marshal de
Luxembourg, who had from forty to fifty thousand men under his
command. After a few skirmishes, the Duke of Lorraine moved
rapidly on Strasburg, which once more violated its neutrality.  He
embarked there his siege-trains, which he had prepared at leisure,
for Philippsburg, with the main body of his infantry, and marched,
with the rest of his troops, to fortify himself on the Lauter, an excellent position chosen by Montecucufi.
Meanwhile, Philippsburg was invested, the fort on the left bank
of the Rhine having first fallen into the power of the Germans
(May-June). The place, almost surrounded by vast marshes, was
very strong, and the garrison quite as intrepid as that of Maestricht.
Governor du Fay disputed the approaches with extreme vigor, and
it was not until August 2 that the besiegers, fortified by numerous
quotas from the Circles and rejoined by the Duke of Lorraine,
carried a portion of the counterscarp after strewing it with their
corpses.' Luxembourg attempted to succor the brave garrison. He
advanced near the camp of the Germans, and launched an infernal
machine against the pontoon bridge which they had on the Rhine
and which connected their quarters.  The machine failed in
effect, and Luxembourg found the enemy's camp too well fortified
to be able to attack it. He projected a diversion against Freiburg
in Brisgau.  The Duke of Lorraine succeeded again in anticipat1 On the campaign of the Netherlands, see (Euvres de Louis XIV. t. IV. p. 23 et
seq. Basnage, t. II. pp. 673-700. La Hode, t. IV. pp. 48-58. La Neuville, Histoire
de Hollande, t. IV. pp. 430-473. Mem. de La Fare, ap. Collect. Michaud, 3d series, t.
III. p. 284. Pellisson, Lettres historiques, t. III. pp. 1-156.




438                    LOUIS XIV.                      1676.
ing him by throwing assistance into Freiburg. The defenders of
Philippsburg, although no longer hoping to be succored, again repulsed several assaults; but their powder failed. They were forced
to resign themselves to accept an honorable capitulation and to
depart, with arms and baggage, from the renowned fortress which,
for thirty-two years, had been to France the key to the heart of
Germany (September 17). The Electorates of the Rhine could
at last breathe freely.
Luxembourg succeeded only in preventing the Duke of Lorraine
from penetrating afterwards into Alsace. This first trial of an
important command had been unfavorable to him; he had carried
into his camp habits of pleasure incompatible with the duties of a
commander-in-chief. Crdqui and he were soon gloriously to redeem
their faults.
In the North, the Swedes had continued to be unsuccessful.
They had suffered new losses in Germany, and Admiral Van
Tromp, at the head of the combined fleet of Holland and Denmark,
had won over them a great naval battle, in which they had lost
ten men-of-war,' one of one hundred and thirty-four guns, the largest ship ever seen (June 11). The Danes took possession of the
island of Gothland, then effected a descent in Scania. The reverses of the Swedes were finally checked by a battle gained by
their young King Charles XI. over the King of Denmark near
Lunden (October 14). King Christian reembarked for Copenhagen.
Diplomacy did not cease to act amid the tumult of arms, but
thus far without much fruit.  The general negotiation at Cologne
having failed, Louis had vainly attempted a separate negotiation
with Holland. The general negotiation commenced again, through
the mediation of the King of England. Nimeguen was designated
as the place of conference, and Louis XIV. appointed plenipotentiaries in October, 1675. It is evident, from the instructions which
he gave them, that he was disposed to make some commercial concessions to the United Provinces. The strong representations of
Colbert concerning the fearful disproportion which existed between
receipts and expenses, and concerning the sufferings of the people,
had moved Louis in some measure, and, as a pledge of his disposition for peace, he had placed at the head of the French embassy
Croissi, Colbert's brother.
The King of England, however, had again entered the pay of
the King of France, and had broken up his parliament for fifteen
months (December, 1675-February, 1677), in consideration of




1677.            TREATY OF COMMERCE.                    439
one hundred thousand pounds sterling. February 26, 1676, he had
concluded a new secret treaty with Louis XIV., written by the two
monarchs themselves, without the intervention of their ministers,
and by which each engaged not to treat with Holland or with any
one without the other.
As to the Congress of Nimeguen, the preliminaries were so
much protracted that it seemed impossible to expect any great
result from it. The Emperor and Spain, at heart, did not desire
peace, and madly pursued the vain hope of wearying France and
recovering what they had lost.
Louis XIV. addressed Holland anew. Louis secretly offered
the Prince of Orange to give him the sovereignty of the town of
Maestricht which he had been unable to take, with the duchy of
Limburg, if he would consent to arrange a separate peace. Louis
announced to the States-General at the same- time that he would
not refuse the exchange of places adapted to form a barrier before
Ghent and Brussels (October, 1676). These offers were certainly
seductive.  The States-General welcomed the advances of the
King, and threatened to stop all subsidies to the allies, if the latter
refused a reasonable peace. The Prince of Orange was greatly
shaken; nevertheless, after passing the whole winter in negotiation, a point of honor, or rather the very greatness of his ambition, prevented him from accepting: the soul of the coalition, he
found more glory in being the adversary than the ally, and consequently the subaltern of Louis XIV. (end of February, 1677).
The English parliament reopened, at this very moment, with a
hostile disposition towards France. Louis attempted to disarm it
by subscribing to a treaty of commerce and navigation greatly
desired by England (February 24). This treaty stipulated that
the French and the English should trade freely, without disturbing
each other, with every country that should be at peace with their
respective governments,- munitions of war, that is, arms, powder,
and housings, alone excepted. A man-of-war visiting a merchantman should remain at a reasonable distance, and send its
long-boat to the ship visited with two or three men only, who
should confine themselves to examining the ship's papers. If the
merchantman were freighted for a hostile port, it should show,
besides, the manifest of the cargo. If it abandoned on the spot
the contraband of war of which it was the bearer, it should be
suffered to continue its route; otherwise, it should be taken into
a port to be tried by the Maritime Court. The vessel itself and
the lawful merchandise should not be confiscated.




440                     LOUIS XIV.                      1677.
French or English merchandise found on enemies' vessels might
be confiscated, but not enemies' merchandise found on French or
English vessels.1
These were excellent principles of maritime law; but it must
be observed that, the French being then at war and the English at
peace, the latter had an exclusive interest in the application of
these liberal maxims. The English were at that time carrying on all
the intermediate trade so long monopolized by Holland, and, if the
military successes of France endangered the general interests of
their policy, the war had not therefore been less favorable to their
material interests.
Another concession at least as grave appears to have been made
to the English, besides those mentioned in the treaty: the abolition
of the tariff of 1667 and the reestablishment of that of 1664. Colbert must indeed have struggled long before resigning himself to
this sacrifice. After having overthrown his financial system, the
war with Holland encroached upon his commercial system.2
These advances to Holland and England were far from being
signs of discouragement on the part of Louis XIV.; the obstinacy
of the House of Austria, on the contrary, had taught him the necessity of striking quicker and harder than ever. Louvois prepared
for him the meafis, and, this year, he did not wait for spring to
open the campaign. In February, numerous French troops were set
in motion between the Sambre and the sea. There remained to the
Spaniards, on this frontier, three important places enclosed within
the French conquests: these were, Cambrai, Valenciennes, and
Saint-Omer. Louis had resolved to direct his blows against these.
February 28, while a French column, under the command of
D'Humieres, feigned to wish to besiege Mons, another corps, under
Marshal de Luxembourg, invested Valenciennes. D'Humieres rejoined Luxembourg before Valenciennes, and the King, suddenly
quitting Saint-Germain, where he was believed to be fully occupied with the frtes of the Carnival, reached the camp March
4. Louis established his quarters on the heights of Famars, and
Vauban induced him to decide that the attack should be made on
the other bank of the Scheldt, on the side of Anzin, the side which
was best fortified, but most accessible and least protected by the
inundations of the Scheldt.
The measures had been so well taken that the enemy was unable to send any reinforcement to the garrison, which consisted of
about three thousand men. Exemption from taxes for twelve
1 Dumont, t. VII. p. 326.     2 Forbonnais, t. I. p. 571.




1677.          TAKING OF VALENCIENNES.                  441
years was promised the citizens to induce them to second the garrison. There were besides in the town a few provincial militia.
The formidable batteries of Vauban soon dismounted in part the
artillery of the place and kindled numerous conflagrations. The
presence and encouragement of the King animated the besiegers
with incredible ardor; the soldiers labored in the trenches, plunged
to the waist in icy water. After the faubourg of Notre-Dame,
opposite the height of Anzin, had been carried, Vauban persuaded
the King to decide, despite Louvois and despite the marshals, that
the attack on the outworks should take place in the daytime; this
was contrary to custom; but Vauban saw few advantages for the
besieger in the confusion of nocturnal assaults, and guaranteed
that there would be more chance of surprising the enemy by day
than by night.
During the whole night of March 16-17, the besieged were harassed by a continual fire; morning having come, hearing nothing
more, they believed the attack deferred until the ensuing night,
and relaxed their surveillance. Suddenly, at a signal given by the
cannon, three companies of the King's household troops, the
black and the white grenadiers, and musketeers,l dismounting,
issued impetuously from the trenches and rushed to the assault,
supported by a battalion of French guards and by other infantry.
In a moment they were masters of the counterscarp, and an irresistible panic swept before them the defenders of the place. Between the covered way and the walls of the town extended a formidable mass of works of different forms, interlaced in each other
and separated by fosses and by the arms of the Scheldt. Musketders and grenadiers followed the flying enemy from rampart to
rampart, from drawbridge to drawbridge, and mingled everywhere
pell-mell with the fugitives. Fifty of them thus reached a paste
of walls which preceded the fosse of the town, a fosse formed by
the main arm of the Scheldt; they crossed a large arcade which
communicated from the paste to the rampart of the town, forced a
wicket, lowered a last drawbridge, and found themselves in Valenciennes.
As intelligent as they had been audacious, they paused on seeing
a large body of cavalry hasten from the interior of the town; they
seized the first houses, barricaded the first street, and held the
enemy in awe until Marshal de Luxembourg arrived with assistance. Terror spread throughout the place; the magistrates and
principal officers, without consulting the sick and wounded gov1 So called from the color of their horses, for their uniforms were red.
VOL. I.        56




442                    LOUIS XIV.                      1677.
ernor, caused a parley to be sounded; the town sent deputies to the
King to implore his protection, and the garrison surrendered themselves prisoners of war.
Never had fortified town been carried in this manner. Louis
XIV. believed himself dreaming when he witnessed the arrival of
the deputies from Valenciennes who came to commit themselves to
his clemency. He enjoined the troops to conduct themselves in
Valenciennes as in one of the good cities of the kingdom, and confirmed the greater part of the municipal privileges, but imposed
as a ransom on the town the payment of the cost of construction
of a great citadel.  The ransom was heavy; with some other
charges which were added to it, it amounted to three millions; the
inhabitants, nevertheless, esteemed themselves happy to be saved
from sacking and pillage. Military manners were becoming softened,
and princes and generals began to comprehend that it was not to
their honor to permit the unbridling, in the cities which they captured, of a horrible Bacchanal of murder, rape, and devastation.
Louis XIV. did not slumber on his laurels. Scarcely had
he given orders to repair the breaches of Valenciennes, when he
detached Luxembourg against Cambrai and D'Humieres against
Saint-Omer. He rejoined Luxembourg in person, March 22,
while his brother, the Duke of Orleans, went to take command
before Saint-Omer. These two sieges, undertaken at once, were
great and daring. The enemy had reassembled his forces during
the siege of Valenciennes; the governor of Belgium had implored aid
from the Prince of Orange; and Don Juan of Austria, having become
master of the Spanish government by a palace revolution which
had overthrown the ex-regent, his rival, had hastened to appease
the Dutch by guaranteeing to them the payment of the debts contracted towards them by Spain; William persuaded Holland to
make another effort in behalf of Flanders, and it could not be
doubted that the allies, warned by the startling fall of Valenciennes, would strive to be more successful before Saint-Omer or
Cambrai.
The King sheltered his operations, therefore, by double lines of
circumvallation and contravallation.  The Picard peasants hastened in crowds to lend a hand to these works against Cambrai, the
garrison of which had been their scourge. They offered to serve
not only as pioneers but also as soldiers.  The trenches were
opened, March 28. The garrison, much stronger than that of Valenciennes, defended itself but feebly; Vauban's artillery produced its
accustomed effect. April 4, the governor and inhabitants asked




1677.               TAKING OF CAMBRAI.                        443
to capitulate; the King accorded to the clergy and citizens the preservation of their privileges; the capitulation was arranged principally by the churchmen, omnipotent in this town of piety and fraternities. One of the articles, as lately at Arras and Besangon,
stipulated the interdiction of liberty of conscience in Cambrai.1
The Spanish governor withdrew to the citadel with his troops and
those of the citizens to whom the French dominion was repugnant
(April 5).
The prompt surrender of the town of Cambrai had the happiest
consequences: the King having no longer to deal but with the
citadel, was enabled to send reinforcements to his brother, who was
in the greatest need of them, and who was about to find himself
engaged in a decisive struggle.
The siege of Saint-Omer had not been so rapid as that of Cambrai; the besiegers were less numerous, and the place, protected
by the marshes of the Aa,2 was much less accessible. It was not
until the night of April 7-8 that a fort was taken, which defended
the approach to the town, between the marshes and the citadel.
The next morning, the greatest part of the army quitted the lines
and took the road to Cassel; the guarding of the camp was left to
a few troops, reinforced by the Boulonnais militia, dispatched at
full speed. The Duke of Orleans had been informed of the approach of the Prince of Orange, who was advancing by Ypres and
Poperinghe to the aid of Saint-Omer.
The French took up their position a league and a half from
Cassel, on the stream Peene, between the heights of Aplinghen
and Balenbergh; they cut off from the enemy the road to SaintOmer.  In the afternoon of the 10th, the enemy's army appeared
on the other side of the stream. It would have been greatly to the
advantage of the Prince of Orange, who had thirty thousand men,
to have commenced the attack on the spot, but the necessity of
throwing bridges across the little river made him lose the rest of
the day. During the night, Marshal de Luxembourg rejoined the
Duke of Orleans with a strong detachment from the royal army.
The numerical equilibrium was thus nearly reestablished between
1 See capitulation accorded by His Most Christian Majesty to the provost, dean
and chapter of the metropolitan, prelates and other chapters and communities composing'the clergy of the town, city, and duchy of Cambrai, province and county of
Cambresis, and to the mayor, aldermen, peasants, and inhabitants of the said town,
&c.; ap. Basnage, t. II. p. 804.
2 The term marsh is improper. See the pleasant description given by Pellisson
of those innumerable little channels interspersed with green islands, many of which
were floating. - Lettres historiques, t. III. p. 265.




444                     LOUIS XIV.                      1677.
the two armies. The Duke of Orleans had endangered his left
wing by posting it beyond an arm of the Peene. Luxembourg
immediately repaired this imprudence and brought back all the
troops on this side of the water.
On the morning of April 11, the Prince of Orange crossed the
first arm of the stream and occupied, on its right, the abbey of
Peene, situated beyond the point where the two arms meet. The
difficulties of the ground prevented him from debouching at this
place, and the French, impetuously seizing the offensive, did not
give him leisure to seek another passage. Luxembourg, at the
head of the left wing, retook the abbey of Peene, and, after a sanguinary struggle, forced back the enemy's right across the water;
D'Humieres, with the French right, turned the left of the Dutch,
despite the little stream and the hedges which protected them, and
overthrew the cavalry and infantry on each other. In the centre,
the first line of the French, after forcing the passage of the stream,
was for a moment thrown in disorder by the cavalry of the Prince
of Orange; but the Duke of Orleans charged bravely at the head
of the second line, had a horse killed under him, and received
several musket-shots in his cuirass, and repulsed William; the
enemy's centre, outflanked and seeing both its wings broken,
yielded in turn; despite the energetic efforts of the Prince of
Orange, the rout was complete.  Three thousand killed,. four
thousand prisoners, all the artillery, all the baggage, more than
sixty flags or standards, were the trophies of this victory, disputed
but brilliant. The French had two thousand killed. Luxenmbourg,
with a few squadrons, pursued the enemy as far as Poperinghe,
and would have taken several thousand more, had it pleased the
Duke of Orleans to send him reinforcements.
Be this as it may, the disaster was great enough to disable the
Prince of Orange from disturbing thenceforth the operations of the
two French army corps. The King affected great joy at the glory
gained by his brother, but he never again intrusted him with the
chief command.  He knew how to hide, but not to stifle the
regret which he felt at seeing Monsieur conquer the Prince of Orange, an honor which he himself had suffered to escape the year
before. It was, besides, contrary to his policy to place his brother
in a position too prominently to attract the public attention. The
Duke of Orleans, capable of a courageous impulse, but habitually
absorbed in indolence and vice, did not complain, and appeared not
to esteem himself unfortunate in being discharged from the cares
of command.




1677.              CASSEL. SAINT-OMER.                    445
Louis permitted him, of course, to reap the immediate fruits of
his victory.  The victorious army returned before Saint-Omer.
The garrison capitulated, April 20; the citizens — a thing seldom seen —sought to oppose it. The people of Saint-Omer, as
formerly those of Arras, were exceedingly Anti-French. The old
hatred of Armagnacs and Burgundians, that hatred of hostile
brothers, had left traces of centuries standing, in the Walloon
province,which had been kept up by frequent border hostilities, but
which were effaced with extreme rapidity after the conquest. The
astonishment soon was that there had been hatred so long between
men of the same tongue and the same blood.
The citadel of Cambrai had surrendered to the King three days
before (April 17).  The greater part of the citizens who had
retired to it had not been long in deserting and returning to the
town, for fear, say the contemporary historians, of leaving the
French with their wives. They pointed out the position of the
magazines of the citadel; these magazines were crushed by bombshells, and the governor, seeing the breach open in several places,
resigned himself to accept an honorable capitulation.
The capture of Valenciennes, Cambrai, and Saint-Omer filled
up the gaps which had been left in the French frontier by the
treaties of the Pyrenees and Aix-la-Chapelle. Thenceforth, our
armies had no more to fear from diversions in their rear while
they were operating in the heart of the Netherlands, and our
Northern provinces were delivered from continual ravages.  This
triple conquest, also heightened by the gaining of a battle, had
been completed in less than two months in a very unfavorable
season, before the time when the armies usually took the field.1
Louis XIV. did not pursue this brilliant opening of a campaign
which was to him alone a fruitful campaign. The fatigue of the
army was not the true reason. The necessity of facing the Germans, who were preparing for a new effort between the Moselle
and the Rhine, but above all the hostile disposition of England,
obliged Louis to suspend his progress in the Netherlands.
Despite the commercial concessions made to England, Parliament, reassembled February 25, had begun by demanding the
recall of the English soldiers still serving under France, proposing
to declare those who did not return guilty of treason, and by offer1 (Euvres de Louis XITV. t. IV. pp. 100-122. Pellisson, Lettres historiques, t. III. pp.
157-256. Basnage, t. II. pp. 801-811. Quinci, Histoire militaire de Louis le Grand,
t. I., 1st series, p. 525. La Hode, t. IV. p. 90. Guerres de Hollande, 3d part, 1689;
The Hague.




446                     LOUIS XIV.                      1677.
ing the King ~600,000 to equip thirty first-class men-of-war. At
the news of the taking of Valenciennes, both Houses presented an
address to the King, asking him to succor Flanders (March 26).
Charles II. replied evasively. The Houses insisted, and explicitly
offered him subsidies for a war against France.  "For such a
war," exclaimed the orators of the House of Commons, " Englishmen will give to their last garment! "1  The successes which followed envenomed still more the bitter jealousy of the English
people. Charles II., nevertheless, continued to shuffle, and his
only significant act was to expel from his states the ambassador of
Spain, who incited his subjects to do violence to him. Charles II.
entreated Louis XIV. to come to his aid by pacific demonstrations.
Louis replied by the proposition of a general truce with the statu
quo (April 23), then by the proposition of a truce for the Netherlands alone (May 8), and consented, meanwhile, to make no new
conquests in Belgium. He returned to Versailles at the end of
May.
The moderation of Louis furnished to Charles a certain power
of resistance against the warlike party, which showed itself, moreover, inconsistent enough, at least in appearance; this party, while
urging the King to war, appeared indisposed to furnish him means
to prepare for it and retracted its first offers. There were strange
mysteries in the English Parliament, which was scarcely less corrupt than the court of Charles II., and a certain leader of the
Opposition, celebrated for his declamations against France, received
money from Louis XIV. for causing subsidies to be refused to
Charles II. Louis did not wish Charles to be able to dispense
with French gold. The majority of the English Opposition had
however quite a different motive —the fear that Charles would
divert to some other use the money voted for war. The House
of Commons ended by flatly refusing all subsidies for war to
Charles, until war should be declared, and by asking him to treat
with the United Provinces and the other powers for the preservation
of the Netherlands. Charles styled this request a usurpation on
his prerogative, and adjourned Parliament until July 26; then,
Louis having consented to raise the pension which he gave him
from ~100,000 to ~200,000, he prorogued the adjournment till
December and promised to renew it till May, 1678.
England was thus held, all this year again, outside the coalition,
retaining the part of mediator. The allies, deceived in their hopes
in this respect, no less persisted in prolonging a struggle of which
1 Mignet, t. IV. p. 446.




1677.            OPERATIONS OF CRtQUI.                 447
Holland bore almost all the cost. The court of Vienna, which had
resumed its power in Germany by favor of the war, the Great
Elector, the King of Denmark, the princes of Lower Germany,
who had shared the spoils of Sweden, were in perfect harmony
in this respect with the Prince of Orange. Austria and the majority of its allies had also shown all the ill-will possible towards the
negotiations of Nimeguen.  Their plenipotentiaries had delayed
their coming so long, that the French envoys were several times
near withdrawing, and, when the first propositions had been exchanged, March 5, the allies had manifested pretensions so unreasonable, that the negotiations had continued almost only for form.
The allies claimed to keep all that they had conquered from Sweden, and to recover all that France had conquered from them, with
pecuniary indemnities.1
It was for arms to decide. We have seen how Louis XIV. commenced the campaign. The allies, who had made vast preparations in Germany to profit by the taking of Philippsburg and to
complete the expulsion of the Swedes from the Empire, flattered
themselves that they would speedily compensate for Louis' successes.
Their operations had been entered upon on the Rhine during the
sieges of Saint-Omer and Cambrai. While the King of Denmark
and the Elector of Brandenburg acted against the Swedes, the
princes of Brunswick and the Bishop of MUinster had promised to
carry assistance to the Prince of Orange, and the great Germanic
army; the Imperial army, which remained under the command of
the new Duke of Lorraine, had begun to invade Alsace and Lorraine. This army numbered not less than sixty thousand fightingmen, to whom the French could at first oppose but twenty-five
thousand, their principal forces being concentrated in Flanders.
The situation in the East was therefore the same as in 1674; it
seemed even still more difficult, all the enemy's forces being united
under a single leader at the opening of operations. In the place
of Turenne was Cr6qui, the vanquished of KonsaarbrUck and
Treves!
The event proved that the King and Louvois had well chosen
the successor of Turenne. The great Condd, lately, on learning
of the defeat of Cr6qui, had said that " his misfortune would render him a great general." Crdqui justified the prognostic.
Cr6qui adopted a plan of defence exceedingly cruel to the unfortunate inhabitants of the provinces which were destined to become
1 Mignet, t. IV. p. 423.




448                     LOUIS XIV.                     1677.
the scene of the struggle. Unable to defend Lower Alsace, opened
by the loss of Philippsburg and the occupation of the posts of the
Lauter, he utterly destroyed it; he dismantled Saverne and
Haguenau, and demolished and burned all the villages; the peasants were forced to take refuge, like wild beasts, in the forests and
mountains. A multitude of women and children perished of want.
The duchy of Deux-Ponts, which was to revert by succession to the
King of Sweden, suffered the same fate, as well as the whole valley
of the Sarre. The condition of these countries -a bleeding prey
which France and the Empire tore incessantly from each other —
was truly terrible. At the price of these calamities, Crequi prevented the enemy from establishing himself in Lower Alsace,
and planting his base of operations on the Vosges and the Sarre
to recover Lorraine, the end ardently pursued by the pretender
who led the Imperialists. Duke Charles of Lorraine had inscribed
on his standards, Aut nunc aut nunquam, - (Now or never!)
Duke Charles, leaving behind him his troops of the Circles, commissioned to annoy Breisach and Lower Alsace, crossed the Rhine
at Strasburg, April 13, marched on the Sarre, and carried Sarrebriick and some other small posts preserved by the French on this
river. In the beginning of June, strongly reinforced, he pushed
to the heart of Lorraine, and, passing between the Sarre and the
Moselle, he threatened Marsal, which Crdqui covered, then moved
on Nomeny, to cross the Seille there.  Cr6qui rapidly fell back on
the heights of Morville, an advantageous post, whence he covered
Nancy and Pont-a-Mousson; he received there a first detachment
from the army of Flanders, where the King's household troops
were found. Duke Charles made an attempt to dislodge him; but
after a cannonade, in which the Germans were badly used, the
Duke, seeing that the accidents of the ground annulled his numerical superiority, avoided a close engagement (June 15).  The
French had in their rear a fertile country, respected by the war,
which insured their subsistence. The Imperialists were obliged to
procure their provisions from Treves, and their convoys, always
annoyed, often captured by parties from the French army or from
the garrisons of Metz and Thionville, reached them only at the price
ofbloody conflicts. Though the inhabitants of the duchy of Lorraine were friendly to them, the Messine peasants, on the contrary,
slew all their marauders. Duke Charles redescended the Seille to
the gates of Metz, without being able to attack this important place
in the presence of Crequi, or to force Cr6qui to accept battle. The
French had the advantage in almost all. the skirmishes.




1677.        CREQUI AND DUKE CHARLES V.                449
Meanwhile, Duke Charles received orders from the Emperor to
join the Prince of Orange, who loudly demanded this junction,
and who threatened to yield to the wishes of the Dutch and to
treat separately if he were not aided to avenge Cassel.
The Duke crossed the Moselle, July 14, at Remich, between
Sieck and Treves. Cr4qui crossed at Thionville. The Duke proceeded towards the Meuse, passing through Luxemburg. Cr4qui
followed him closely. The Imperialists reached the Meuse at Mouzon, a small French town which was not defended; but Crdqui
established himself the same day a league from Mouzon (August 2),
then crossed the Meuse and barred the way to the enemy. Duke
Charles dared neither to cross the river nor to involve himself in
the uneven and woody country which extends along the left bank.
Marshal de Schomberg had arrived on the Meuse with a new detachment from the army of the Netherlands. The frontier garrisons, thus reinforced, cut off supplies from the enemy; Duke
Charles soon saw himself compelled to beat a retreat, under pain
of seeing his army die of hunger (the middle of August). He
was forced to abandon a large number of sick, and slowly to bring
back to the Moselle, and thence to Philippsburg, his enfeebled and
discouraged troops.
Cr6qui did not pursue him to the end of his retreat; while the
enemy returned to the Palatinate, the French general descended into
Alsace by Lixheim and Liitzelstein. Two small French and German army corps, of ten thousand men each, had held each other for
some time in check between Basel and Huningue.  Cr4qui sent
word to the French corps, commanded by Lieutenant-General Montclar,'to cross the Rhine at Breisach to protect on the other bank
the construction of a pontoon bridge at Rheinau. The Prince of
Saxe-Eisenach, who commanded the German corps, had already
recrossed the Rhine; warned of Crdqui's approach, he threw the
greater part of his infantry into Freiburg and Offenburg, and
strove to join the Duke of Lorraine with the rest of his troops.
He had not time. Cr4qui had already crossed the Rhine at Rheinau with the choicest part of his cavalry and had put himself at
the head of-the corps of Montclar. Eisenach, charged on the way,
had no other resource than to gain the bridge at Kehl and throw
himself upon one of the islands of the Rhine, between Kehl and
Strasburg. The Strasburghers, believing that fortune would declare itself in favor of the French, dared give neither aid nor passage to the fugitive prince, and contented themselves with intervening to arrange a capitulation. Cr6qui wished at first to hold
VOL. I.          57




450                      LOUIS XIV.                       1677.
the whole corps as prisoners of war; but, on the news that the
Duke of Lorraine was hastening to their assistance, he consented
to allow Eisenach and his soldiers to retire to Rastadt, with a promise not to serve again during the year (September 24).
After this successful dash in Swabia, Crdqui returned to Alsace
by the bridge of Rheinau, which he destroyed behind him. The
Duke of Lorraine returned thither almost immediately by Strasburg (October 1-3). The men of Strasburg, seeing the general
of the Emperor at the head of a still numerous and somewhat
refreshed army, followed their inclination according to custom.
Crdqui took up his position near Kochersberg, between Strasburg and Saverne. Duke Charles marched straight to him, and,
October 7, in the sequel of a foraging skirmish, the French and the
German cavalry engaged almost entire.  The French had the
advantage. Crequi, notwithstanding, did not suffer himself to be
persuaded to change his plans or to give battle. They remained
for some days face to face in this ravaged country, where the
armies found no resources.  Although the Germans rested on
Strasburg, whence they obtained at least some assistance, they
were the first to lose courage.  The Duke of Lorraine retired,
with mourning in his heart for all his hopes; the alternative set by
his device was resolved: he was never to recover the inheritance
of his fathers.
As soon as the Duke had manifested the intention of putting his
army in winter-quarters, Crdqui appeared to make preparations to
do the same: he encamped at Molsheim on the Bruche, sent back
a detachment of his troops to the other side of the Vosges, and distributed the rest about him, drawing them towards Upper Alsace.
The Duke of Lorraine then dispersed his troops without suspicion
through the Palatinate, and established himself at Worms. Scarcely
was the enemy gone, when Cr!qui rose and united his quarters,
recalled the troops detached to Lorraine, hastened straight to Breisach, crossed the Rhine with his army on the bridge of Breisach,
and on a pontoon bridge prepared below this town, and marched on
Freiburg.  The cavalry of the vanguard had already invested
Freiburg; the whole army was assembled, November 9, about the
place. The necessary munitions and artillery had been long since
prepared at Breisach.. Cr6qui had his whole campaign in his mind
before the beginning of spring, as is attested by the admirable memorial addressed by him to the King, March 14.1
1 (Euvres de Louis XIV. t. IV. pp. 107-115. Basnage, t. VI. p. 813. Quinci, t. I.
p. 544 (this military history is very confused and extremely mediocre). M,6n. de




1677.     REPULSE OF THE PRINCE OF ORANGE.              451
The siege of Freiburg was as vigorously conducted as it had been
ably prepared. The governor defended himself badly: he surrendered the city and chateau on November 16, and marched out on
the 17th, while the Duke of Lorraine was hastening to his aid.
The loss of Philippsburg was retrieved. The possession of Freiburg was not as advantageous as that of Philippsburg for acting
offensively against central Germany; but it was excellent for diverting the war from Alsace and fixing it in Austrian Swabia. The
conquest of the capital of Brisgau terminated the admirable operations by which Cr6qui had raised himself to the rank of the greatest
captains. There was but one cry throughout France: " Turenne
woluld not have done better!"  Cr6qui had revived, by a skilful
imitation, the great method of Turenne, who retrenched at hazard
all that could be retrenched, and who multiplied, so to say, a little
army, by economizing its sweat and blood.
The Imperialists would have been exposed to still graver reverses,
if the hope which the French had founded on Bavaria had been
realized. The Elector of Bavaria had raised twenty thousand men
and threatened to employ them against whomsoever should refuse
peace and the reestablishment of the treaty of Westphalia. He
did not yet determine to intervene against the Emperor; his army
served, nevertheless, to disquiet Leopold, and to paralyze in part
the movements of Austria.
On whatever side Louis XIV. turned his eyes, he encountered
nought but subjects of triumph. No campaign had been so completely successful for the French arms.
On his departure from Flanders, Louis had left to Marshal de
Luxembourg the command between the Scheldt and the Meuse,
with an army corps greatly reduced by the detachments sent to the
Meuse and the Rhine, and the garrisons of the newly conquered
places. The victory of Cassel, due principally to Luxembourg, had
won him this honor. Marshal d'Humieres had the command of a
detached corps between the Scheldt and the sea.
The Prince of Orange, almost always unsuccessful, never discouraged, had reorganized his army routed at Cassel; the quotas
sent him by the princes of Lower Germany, and his junction with
the Spaniards, had rendered him much stronger than before. Towards the end of July, after vainly attempting to draw Luxembourg
into a battle, he feigned to threaten Maestricht, diverted the attention of the French general in this direction, then moved rapidly on
Saint-Hilaire, t. I. p. 260. Vie de Charles V. duc de Lorraine, p. 165; Amsterdam,
1698. La Hode, t. IV. p. 105. Limiers, Hlistoire de Louis X1 V. t. III. p. 462.




452                     LOUIS XIV.                     1677.
Charleroi and invested it (August 6). He had made a rendezvous with the Duke of Lorraine before this town. Luxembourg
had not forces sufficient to compel him to raise the siege. At the
news, Louvois came like a thunder-clap from Versailles to Lille;
all the garrisons on the northern frontier were ordered to march
instantly to the camp of Luxembourg, near Ath. In twenty-four
hours, Luxembourg saw himself at the head of forty thousand men;
he crossed the Sambre at Bussiere and established himself in a post
which commanded the whole country between Sambre-et-Meuse,
while Marshal d'Humieres, with his detached corps, intercepted
the road from Brussels to Charleroi.
{The Spaniards, according to custom, had nothing ready. In a
few days, the Prince of Orange found himself without resources.
It was necessary to fight or retire. The Spanish generals wished
to attack Luxembourg; this time, it was William who opposed it,
deeming the position of the French impregnable. William prudently abandoned an enterprise lightly undertaken (August 12).
It was the second time that he had failed before Charleroi. An
English nobleman made a piquant remark on the subject: that
William could boast that there was no general who, at his age, had
raised more sieges and lost more battles than he.'
The Prince of Orange retired before Luxembourg at the same
moment that the Duke of Lorraine gave over joining him, and
retired before Crdqui.
Luxembourg thus repaired on the Sambre the failures of his campaign on the Rhine, and Louvois was justified in having urgently
recommended Cr6qui and Luxembourg to the King as the two generals best fitted to replace Turenne and Cond6. A third alone
might have protested; this was Schomberg, whose Protestantism
brought him little in favor. The Prince of Orange attempted nothing
more during the rest of the season, and the troops went early into
winter-quarters on this frontier. In the beginning of December,
a French army corps suddenly took the field again, under command
of D'Humieres, and invested the little town of Saint-Guislain, on
the Haine, between Cond6 and Mons. December 11, the town
surrendered. The year was thus happily closed, in the words of
the device of one of those medals which the Great King ordered
struck for each of his successes.
On the side of the Pyrenees, the war, insignificant in 1676, had
been more vigorous this year. The Spanish government had exhausted its last resources to put an end to the ravages of the French
1 Memoires histomiques et chronologiques, ap. La Hode, t. IV. p. 1038.




1676-1677.         BATTLE OF TOBAGO.                   453
in Lampourdan and Cerdagne. Count de Monterey, at the head
of fifteen or sixteen thousand men, as well regular soldiers as Miquelets and nobles of Aragon and Catalonia, had marched against
Marshal de Navailles, who had but eight thousand. Navailles fell
back towards Roussillon. The enemy pursued him. He wheeled
about at the entrance of the defile of Bagnols and repulsed the
Spaniards after a combat which mowed down the flower of their
army (July, 1677).
The French arms had been victorious on sea as on land.. The
enemy dared no longer dispute the Mediterranean to the French
squadrons, and it was on the Atlantic that the battles had been
fought.
In 1676, while De Ruyter was dying gloriously in Sicily, and
Van Tromp was defeating the Swedes in the Baltic, the Prince of
Orange had sent'Vice-Admiral Binckes, with twelve ships, to
attack the French colonies of the West Indies and South America.
Binckes, arriving on the coast of Guiana in the spring of 1676,
easily captured Cayenne, defended by a.feeble garrison, established
colonies there and on the rivers Aprouague and Oyapok, then fortified Tobago, to make it the centre of the Dutch settlements in
these waters. He sailed thence to the Windward Islands, and
ravaged the French settlements of St. Domingo and MarieGalante.
This aggression did not long remain unpunished. Vice-Admiral
d'Estrges requested of the King eight ships of from thirty to fifty
guns, and undertook to equip and maintain them at his expense, in
consideration of half the prizes. This sort of intermediate expedition between the royal marine and the privateer marine was quite
frequent, but on a smaller scale.  D'Estr6es set out from Brest
for Cayenne, October 6, 1676, effected his descent in the bay of
Miret, December 18, and, December 21, took the fort of Cayenne
by storm. He then set sail for Martinique, reinforced himself with
some colonial militia, and proceeded towards Tobago. He found
Admiral Binckes at anchor in the harbor with ten ships and a few
smaller vessels.  The squadron of the enemy and the fort of
Tobago protected each other mutually, and water-batteries completed their system of defence.
Nothing arrested D'Estrdes. A double attack was attempted by
the ships against the squadron of the enemy, and by the landforces against the fort (March 3, 1677).  The French ships
audaciously entered this port, which it was impossible to quit without being towed out; it was throwing away all chances but victory




454                       LOUIS XIV.                        1677.
or death. The terrible combat which ensued between these two
squadrons huddled in a narrow space recalls the battle of Palermo,
except that here the victory was as furiously disputed as dearly
purchased and incomplete. Five Dutch men-of-war, one the rearadmiral's, three transports, and two light frigates, were burned or
sunk. Two vessels, one the flag-ship, were stranded. The colonists
of Tobago, not thinking that the French would have the hardiihood
to penetrate into the harbor, had put their wives and children on
board the transports. All these unfortunates perished in the flames
or the waves. The flag-ship of D'Estr6es sunk with the Dutch
ship which it had attacked; D'Estrdes, wounded, escaped with
great difficulty in a long-boat.  Another French ship was burned;
two were stranded. The four ships remaining, slowly quitted the
harbor under the cannon of the fort and the coast-batteries. The
land-attack against the port had failed after a bloody combat.l
D'Estr6es returned to France, while the governor of Cayenne
destroyed the new Dutch settlements at the south of the island, on
the coast of Guiana, and took Fort Orange which protected them.
October 1, D'Estrdes set out again from Brest with eight ships
and as many light frigates; he set sail for the west coast of Africa,
took possession of the islands of Arguin and Goree, of the stations
of Rufisque, Portudal, and Joal, in short, of all that the Dutch possessed north and south of Senegal. After taking these posts in a
few weeks, he returned to the West Indies, and, during the night
of December 6-7, renewed his descent on the island of Tobago.
The approaches, this time, were better conducted. The 12th, he
commenced to bombard the fort. The third shell blew up the
powder-magazine with Admiral Binckes, who was on land, his
whole staff and two hundred and fifty soldiers. The rest of the
garrison, stupefied, made no defence.  With the fortress were
taken the ships that were in the harbor. These were the flag-ship
of Binckes, raised and repaired after the battle of March 3, a
French vessel left in the hands of the enemy, and two smaller vessels.2
The French derived no advantage from this bloody conquest.
They contented themselves with having wrested Tobago from the
Dutch; they did not settle there.3
1 E. Sue, Histoire de la marine, t. III. ch. 7. There is an observation to be made
in the relations of this combat, important to the history of maritime discipline. We
see that the captains did not think themselves obliged, as now, to quit their burning
or wrecked vessels after all the crew.
2 E. Sue, t. III. ch. 7. Basnage, t. II. p. 831.
8 The naval knowledge of D'Estrees, who had entered the navy late, was not on




1677.           REVERSES OF THE SWEDES.                     455
Fortune, propitious to the French in the Atlantic, had remained
unfavorable to their allies in the Baltic,.where the Swedes had
scarcely felt the influence of the fortunate star of Louis XIV.
June 11, they had been defeated by the Danes in sight of Rostock, and their flag-ship taken with five vessels. June 11, a new
disaster occurred at the southern outlet of the Sound. The Danes
and the Norwegians, superior in maritime experience, and better
commanded, took or destroyed seven Swedish ships; three others
were captured or burned by the Dutch squadron of Van Tromp,
which reached the Sound at the close of the battle.
On land, the Swedes were more fortunate: the King of Denmark, Christian V., who had effected a new descent on Scania,
failed in the siege of Malmi and was defeated by the King of
Sweden, Charles XI., at Landskrona (July 24). Notwithstanding,
the Swedes did not succeed in wholly expelling the Danes fiom
Scania, and they experienced divers reverses on the frontier of
Norway (July-September). The Danes ravaged the island of
Oland and the coast of Smaland, and invaded the island of Riigen.
Lastly, the Swedes lost the mouth of the Oder by the fall of
Stettin, surrendered  to thE-lector of Brandenburg after six
months' obstinate resistance (July-October). Nothing was left
them in Pomerania but Greifswalde and Stralsund.
Such had been, in the aggregate, the vast campaign of 1677,
which had detached a new shred from Belgium, humiliated Spain
more deeply, convicted the Emperor and the Empire of powerlessness in their attempts to encroach on France, and inflicted painful
efforts and cruel losses for nothing on Holland, giving as sole compensation to the allies a few successes in the North, which profited
only Denmark and Brandenburg.
Holland was at the end of sacrifices; the Prince of Orange was
assailed at once by the reproaches of his countrymen, who accused
him of immolating his country to his obstinate pride, and by the
recriminations of the Spaniards and Germans, who attributed the
reverses of the allies to his pretended military incapacity. The
United Provinces saw their intermediate commerce, the basis of
their prosperity, transferred to the hands of the English, and their
direct commerce ruined by the French privateers, the constantly
a par with his courage. In May, 1678, his incapacity and obstinacy occasioned a
great disaster. The squadron which he was conducting to the attack on Curagoa
was shipwrecked on the reefs of Aves. Six ships and several smaller vessels were
lost. The crews were saved by the filibusters of the island of Tortugas, who, amnestied in 1671, had been, through the whole war, formidable auxiliaries to the royal
marine. See E. Sue, t. III. ch. 8. Basnage, t. II. p. 901.




456                     LOUIS XIV.                      1677.
increasing audacity of which was signalized by unheard-of exploits.1 The party that wished to treat separately with France
grew stronger every day. In the spring, when it was seen that
the general negotiations had ended in nothing, thanks to the unreasonable pretensions of the allies, the opening of separate negotiations had taken place at Nimeguen, between the French and Dutch
plenipotentiaries. They were renewed eagerly, in proportion as
the reverses of the coalition diminished the ascendency of the
Prince of Orange.  The able Marshal d'Estrdes, who was one
of the three French ambassadors, spared nothing to urge the
Dutch cities to overrule the stadtholder. The Dutch plenipotentiary
Beverning demanded a treaty of commerce and the guaranty of
a barrier of fortified towns in the Catholic Netherlands.  The
treaty of commerce was to be based on the abolition of the tariffs of
1664 and 1667. Louis XIV. could not accept this basis; he replied
at first that he did not intend to alienate his sovereignty with respect
to tariffs. After much hesitation, he offered, however, a reduction
of one half on the tariff of 1667; this was a large concession and
a heavy blow to the commercial system of Colbert; but it was
impossible to refuse to Holland a concession analogous to that
which had just been made to England (October, 1667).
It was too late. The refusals and delays of the King had been
turned to advantage by the Prince of Orange; the States-General,
doubting that Louis sincerely desired peace, had authorized William to go to negotiate in person with the King of England, and
promised the Spaniards to assist them anew in Sicily.
William meditated a great stroke. He hoped to retrieve, by
diplomacy, his military reverses. He had bitterly repented of the
mistake that he had made three years before, in refusing the hand
of the niece of Charles II., and, in 1676, he had attempted, unsuccessfully, to renew the marriage. He hoped to be more fortunate
this year, Charles II. having himself invited him to England to
bring him over to his pacific views (October, 1677).
Between the frivolous Charles II. and the obstinate William, the
former would not be the one to lead the latter. William, in fact, soon
obtained the hand of the Princess Mary, without conditions; that
is, without having taken any pledge for peace. Charles persuaded
himself that this marriage would restore to him the affection of
England and dissipate the popular prejudices aroused by the Catholicism of the Duke of York. It was sacrificing, according to his
1 Especially those of St. Malo and Dunkirk. From this epoch dates the renown
of Jean Bart, born at Dunkirk in 1660.




1677-1678.       ENGLAND AND HOLLAND.                      457
custom, the future to the present, and his family to his person.
The nuptials were celebrated November 15, to the great joy of
the English people and the lively chagrin of Louis XIV.1
A few days after, Charles II., ruled by William, proposed to
Louis, as mediator, unacceptable conditions of peace. Louis was
to keep only Franche-Comte, Aire, Saint-Omer, and Cambrai, and
to restore all the rest of his recent conquests, besides Charleroi,
Ath, Tournay, Audenarde, Courtrai, and Lorraine, and to renounce Philippsburg. Louis refused, but offered a year's truce
between the Meuse and the sea. Charles II., forfeiting his secret
engagements, convoked his Parliament, January 25, 1678, which
he had promised not to convoke until April. He excused himself to Louis XIV., by declaring that he was forced to do so by the
imminence of a universal insurrection. Louis proposed a general
truce, and made a few concessions on the conditions of peace (the
end of December). Charles II. replied by a hostile proceeding.
January 10, 1678, a treaty of alliance was signed at- the IIague,
between England and the United Provinces. The two contracting
parties were to employ themselves in establishing peace, on nearly
the same conditions that Louis had recently refused, as regarded
Holland, Spain, and Lorraine. The conditions relative to the Emperor and the Empire were not fixed. For Sweden, there was to
be a provisional armistice; England and Holland were to act in
concert, in case France or Spain refused this arrangement.2  By a
subsidiary treaty, the alliance was to be offensive and defensive.
Charles II. engaged to defend Holland with thirty thousand men,
on condition that she should not make peace without him.
Charles II. recalled the English corps that remained in the service of France, commenced armaments on land and sea, and demanded of Spain Ostend as a depot. He had, indeed, retarded the
opening of Parliament a fortnight; but, February 7, he opened it
by a harangue in which he presented war as a necessary consequence of the compact with Holland, and demanded means to equip
ninety ships and from thirty to forty thousand soldiers.a The
Prince of Orange had thus won a diplomatic victory which amply
compensated for his defeats. This revolution, long hoped for by the
enemies of France, was about to revive the half-dismayed coalition.
1 According to Saint-Simon (Mem., t. II. p. 43), the mutual aversion of Louis and
William originated in the disdainful refusal of the latter to espouse Mademoiselle
de Blois, daughter of Louis and Mademoiselle de La Vallieire. The fact of this
refusal is confirmed, it is said, by a diplomatic document, the original of which is
unknown to us.
2 Dumont, t. VII. p. 341.               M ignet, t. IV. p. 546.
VOL. I.             58




458                     LOUIS XIV.                      1678.
Louis XIV. clearly saw the situation, and took his course with
great intelligence and vigor, if not, as we. shall see, with great generosity and humanity.
His political and commercial concessions, his military operations,
twice suspended in Flanders, had not succeeded in disarming English malevolence. Thenceforth, if he did not renounce secret means
with Charles II. and influential members of Parliament, he renounced acting on the public opinion of England, and concentrated
his diplomatic action upon the public opinion of the Dutch nation.
As to his military action against Belgium, far from moderating it
as he had done twice to appease the English, he precipitated it in
order to bring the Dutch over to peace by terror, assured as he
was that the English were not in a position to intervene seriously
in the continental war.
As to maritime war, it was different. The English had at this
moment, before Algiers, a fleet which they were preparing to reinforce, and which could in a few weeks effect its junction with a
strong Dutch squadron, fitted out for Sicily. Louis had seen only
a diversion in the Sicilian war, which had languished during the
year 1677. He judged it too difficult to maintain himself in this
island against the coalition of the two great maritime powers, and
believed it in his power to deal Spain nearer and surer blows. The
abandonment of Messina was resolved upon. Vivonne had already
asked for his recall. La Feuillade was dispatched from Toulon
with the fleet of Duquesne, under the pretence of replacing Vivonne, but, in reality, to bring back the French garrisons.
The story of this evacuation is a painful one. Louis, desiring
at any cost to see his fleet and troops at Toulon before the Dutch
and English should be able to unite to intercept it, had enjoined
the profoundest secrecy on La Feuillade. The latter caused himself to be proclaimed viceroy with great pomp at Messina, February 28, embarked the troops, March 13, under the pretence of an
expedition against Palermo, then, once at sea, informed the Messinese jurats of the departure of the French. Nothing can express
the consternation of this unhappy city, abandoned to the vengeance
of masters who had never pardoned. La Feuillade accorded but
twenty-four hours to the senators or jurats and their families to
embark. A few hundred Messinese families were received by
favor on board the French ships, amidst the lamentable cries and
imprecations of thousands of unfortunates who vainly implored to
partake the sad favor of exile. Some, repulsed from the French
long-boats, threw themselves voluntarily into the waves!




1678.               SICILY EVACUATED.                      459
La Feuillade withdrew the garrisons from Agosta and the other
places on the coast, and returned to France after sailing round
Sicily. The greater part of the troops brought back were sent to
Roussillon. Meanwhile, the Spanish viceroy returned to Messina
without resistance, preceded by the promise of a general amnesty.
This promise was kept as usual. The viceroy permitted the Spanish soldiery to abandon themselves to all kinds of excesses, and
put to death one after another all the citizens who inspired him
with distrust. The despair of the Messinese was such that they
conceived the thought of giving themselves to the Turks.1
Although the duties of Louis XIV. towards the Messinese were
not so rigorous as if he had been the instigator of their revolt, the
abandonment of a people whom he had solemnly shielded with his
protection answered ill to the ostentatious generosity which he paraded; if it was a politic act, it certainly was not a magnanimous one.
In a military respect, the evacuation of Sicily was amply compensated for. The general plan of the campaign was excellent. Louis
had put Crequi in a condition to sustain in the spring, on the Rhine,
his glorious successes of the preceding campaign, and Navailles to
make a serious attempt against Catalonia; but the great blows, the
decisive blows, he was to deal himself in Flanders.
A letter of instructions addressed by Louvois to Marshal d'Humieres, February 4, a true masterpiece of the kind, details in
advance, day by day, all the movements to be executed in the
course of the month by the various French corps, from the Rhine
to the sea, to mislead the enemy concerning the real design of the
King. Everything passed as Louvois had foretold. Never, under
this great administrator, was a body of troops delayed twenty-four
hours by lack of supplies or of munitions, with such mathematical
precision were the services insured and the movements calculated.2
This year, instead of lulling the enemy, as had been done in the
preceding campaigns, the French had harassed him with alarms
during the whole winter. The greater part of the Dutch troops
had thus been attracted to oi'retained in Belgium, that they might
destroy the level country and consume the forage in advance, so
that at the moment of action, the Spanish storehouses should be
empty; as for the French storehouses, they were always fill. February 7, the King set out from Saint-Germain for Lorraine with the
1 E. Sue, Histoire de la Marine, t. III. ch. vI. p. 9. Basnage, t. II. p. 878. La
Hode, t. IV. p. 178. Saint-Hilaire (Men. t. I. p. 288) estimates the number of
Messinese who embarked on the fleet at seven thousand, which seems exaggerated.
2 (Euvres de Louis XI V. t. IV. p. 123.




460                    LOUIS XIV.                      1678.
queen and all the court, and advanced as far as Metz. The rumor
ran that he was about to besiege Strasburg or Philippsburg. At
the close of February, Luxemburg, Namur, Mons, and Ypres
were invested at once; cannon resounded from one end of Belgium to the other; the communications were cut off; the generals
of the enemy knew not where to attack or whither to carry assistance. Louis, however, had set out again from Metz, February 25;
arrived at Stenay the 27th, he mounted his horse, and did not stop
unltil at the gates of Ghent, March 4. The siege of Ghent had
been planned in the preceding December.1
Ghent had been invested, March 1, by Marshal d'Humieres,
joined by the greater part of the troops that had threatened Namur, Mons, and Ypres. More than forty thousand soldiers and
seven thousand pioneers fixed their quarters about this great city;
a large corps, besides, was posted at Audenarde, to cover the siege.
The manceuvres of the King had succeeded; Villa-Hermosa had
sent a part of the garrison of Ghent to Ypres, and there remained
but five hundred soldiers in the capital of Flanders. The powerful
burghers of Ghent, who had raised entire armies, had formerly no
need of foreign aid; but the times were much changed, and the
great Flemish city much fallen. The people of Ghent, however,
could still put on foot twenty thousand men.
In the night of March 5-6, Vauban opened the trenches between the Lys and the Scheldt, on the side of Fort Sceau. The
fort was abandoned without resistance. The 6th, the French cannon commenced to batter the city. In the night of the 8th-9th,
after a bombardment which set fire to several points and threw the
town in disorder, an assault was made on the two half-moons of
the Courtrai gate. These works were carried. Little more was
needed for the French, in pursuing the fugitives, to have entered
Ghent in the same manner as Valenciennes. The next day, the
high sheriff and aldermen of Ghent compelled the Spanish governor
to capitulate. Many of the burghers, indignant at seeing the home
of the Arteveldes surrender in a fe#days like the most plebeian
city, broke their muskets in anger. But why should Ghent be sacrificed? - the point in question was only a change of masters.
Governor Pardo withdrew to the citadel with a handful of soldiers. He surrendered, on the 11th, that renowned castle built
by Charles V. to hold the city in check. The city and citadel of
Ghent had not cost the French army forty men.
1 See a letter from Louvois to the intendant of Flanders, ap. Lettres militaires,
t. IV. p. 811.




1678.         CAPTURE OF GHENT AND YPRES.                     461
Louis was not satisfied with this brilliant and easy conquest.
After threatening Bruges, he fell back on Ypres (March 13-15).
The garrison consisted of three thousand men.  The citadel was
attacked before the town. The trenches were opened on the 18th
against the citadel, the 23d against the town. The batteries had
been playing since the 19th.  In the night of the 24th-25th, the
counterscarps of the town and citadel were carried in a double and
most sanguinary attack. The next day, the governor, seeing a
breach open in the body of the place, capitulated. The enemy
had made no attempt to succor Ghent or Ypres.
Louis committed the army to Marshal de Luxembourg, with
orders to suffer it to repose a few weeks, and returned, March
26, to Saint-Germain.1
Ypres iectified and'strengthened the French frontier between
the Lys and the sea; Ghent isolated Bruges and Ostend, the last
wrecks" of Spanish Flanders, from  Antwerp and Brussels, and
placed French outposts at the entrance of Dutch Flanders.
Louis has left a narrative of his rapid expedition, which breathes
an enthusiasm for himself wholly extraordinary; betome his own
flatterer, he leaves his courtiers nothing more to find, in point of
hyperbole, and, if there is,any cause for astonishment, it is that in
the midst of such intoxication he preserved so much good sense
and so sound a mind in the conduct of his affairs. Nature must
indeed have endowed him with a solid judgment.2
The effect of his new conquests was such as Louis had foreseen:
dismay in Holland, anger in England.
Before the siege of Ghent, the English Parliament had opened,
in reply to the address of the crown, by praying Charles II. not to
treat with France until after having reduced her to the limits of
the treaty of the Pyrenees, and to break off all commerce with
her. This violent address had united in a common vote the systematic adversaries of France, the opponents through personal
ambition and the men who, more anxious about English liberty
than the progress of Louis XIV., feared to put an army at the dis1 (Euvres de Louis XI V. t. IV. pp. 123-159. Basnage, t. II. p. 180. Lettres militaires, t. IV. pp. 312-348. La Hode, t. IV. p. 150. Quinci, t. I. p. 581.
2 "I own that I felt some pleasure in having done already whatever appeared
possible;: in having besieged places on which the greatest captains of our age had
not dared fix their eyes, or before which they had been unsuccessful. The first
impulse which made me think that I could succeed in war was the jealousy which'I felt, as soon as I had any knowledge, of those who were most esteemed and
doubtless most capable. I studied to imitate them; I aspired to surpass them, and
I have at least been happy enough to succeed in enterprises which had appeared to
them impossible." (Euvres de Louis XIV. t. IV. p. 145.




462                     LOUIS XIV.                 1   1678.
posal of Charles II., and feigned to urge him to war only to turn
him from it by the very exorbitance of their demands. Charles, in
fact, while insisting on obtaining a large subsidy for war, protested
against pretensions which would render all compromise impossible.
The subsidy for war was voted (February 16).  Soon after,
Charles, terrified by the agitation which the news of the siege of
Ghent excited in England, dispatched a few troops to Ostend and
Bruges. He had addressed meanwhile to Louis XIV. propositions
more reasonable than those of the preceding autumn; but Louis
did not intend to lose all the fruit of his expedition, and wished
now to keep Ypres: this was a new difficulty; Charles determined
to raise soldiers and to interdict French merchandise for three
years (end of March). The parliamentary opposition urged him
vehemently to declare war. I-e adjourned Parliament twice from
one fortnight to another to gain time.
Holland was in a very different mood. The Republican party,
uneasy at the great marriage which opened so many new chances
to the ambition of the Prince of Orange, labored ardently to reconcile the United Provinces to France and to revive, as far as possible, the policy of the unfortunate John De Witt. Louis XIV. had
assured them of his good-will towards their internal liberty. The
Republicans succeeded in turning the States-General from ratifying
the offensive treaty negotiated by William with England. The
discovery of a secret article by which the Dutch would have been
bound to assist Charles II. against his rebellious subjects secured
the triumph of William's adversaries. The States-General signed
only a defensive treaty (end of March). The cities, Amsterdam
at the head, urgently demanded that a direct and separate negotiation should be reopened with the King of France. The States,
while soldiers were being levied in England, reduced their army
one third (April 7).
Louis, however, although he expected much more from this
separate negotiation than from the general negotiation, sent his
ultimatum for a general peace at once to the congress of Nimeguen
and the King of England, who had not yet formally renounced the
title of Mediator (April 9). This was, 1st, satisfaction for the
King of Sweden and the Duke of Holstein-Gottorp, his ally; 2d,
the liberation of the Prince of Fiirstenberg, arrested at Cologne
in violation of the law of nations, and his reinstatement as well as
that of his brother, the Prince-Bishop of Strasburg, in all their
possessions and honors; 3d, the entire reestablishment of the treaty
of Westphalia, the Emperor having the choice of restoring Phil



1678.           PROPOSITIONS OF LOUIS.                  463'ippsburg or of ceding Freiburg; 4th, the formation of the barrier, so much desired by the Dutch, by the restitution to Spain of
Charleroi, Limburg, Binche, Ath, Audenarde, Courtrai, Ghent, and
Saint-Guislain, this last place razed; Spain ceding Franche-Comte,
Valenciennes, Bouchain, Conde, Cambrai, Aire, Saint- Omer,
Ypres, Werwick, Warneton, Poperinghe, Bailleul, Cassel, Maubeuge, and Bavai, - all places and provinces already in the possession of France; and, moreover, Charlemont, or Dinant, which
Spain was to obtain in exchange for the bishopric of Liege; 5th,
the restitution of Maestricht and its dependencies to the United
Provinces, with the treaty of commerce on the conditions guaranteed in October, 1677: the States-General were bound by a separate treaty to cede Maestricht to Spain; 6th, the reestablishment
of the Duke of Lorraine in his estates, either on the conditions of
the treaty of the Pyrenees, or in consideration of the exchange of
Nancy, which should be left to the King, for Toul, the King having besides the strategic routes necessary for the communication of
his places with each other; Longwy was to be ceded to the King
for one of the provostships of Trois-Evech6s.1
Louis gave the allies only till May 10 to accept these conditions,
ably combined, and expressing an entire system of external policy.
Louis offered, in fact, to surrender: 1st, those of his conquests of
1667 which placed the great Belgian towns at his discretion; 2d,
one of the great cities, Ghent, which had just fallen into his power.
He kept the former and recent conquests which completed the natural frontier of the east, and made France an artificial frontier on
the north by a strong line of fortified towns; and he restored to
Spain a frontier susceptible of defence for what remained to her in
Belgium. From the especial point of view of the conquest of the
Catholic Netherlands, it was falling- short of the treaty of 1668;
from the point of view of the national defence and territorial
aggrandizement, it was a notable advance: France was aggrandized at the same time that she gave to Europe a pledge of moderation by the abandonment of offensive positions.
In another respect well worthy of consideration, that of commerce, France retrograded.  She made to Holland, as she had
made to England, concessions which Colbert reputed very prejudicial.
The English agents at Nimeguen and the Hague, serving Parliament more than King Charles, labored, in concert with the
Prince of Orange, to cause the propositions of France to be re1 Mignet, t. IV. p. 550.




464                      LOUIS XIV.                     1678.
jected; the nobility of the United Provinces were for William and
the war; but the municipal councils, commerce, the people en
masse, imperatively demanded peace. The Dutch towns only entreated Louis to prolong the delay fixed for the allies. Louis, who
was preparing to take the field, offered a general truce for the
rest of the year.  The Spaniards and the Imperialists refused
(May 5-10).
In the night of May 3-4, a detachment from the garrison of
Maestricht surprised Leeuwen, a small fortified town surrounded
by streams and marshes, which defended the entrance of Brabant
on the side of Liege. May 12, Louis set out from Saint-Germain
to rejoin the army of Flanders. He offered the States-General to
engage thenceforth not to attack any place of the Netherlands, and
to maintain, whatever might ensue, the conditions proposed to
Spain for these provinces, provided the United Provinces would
promise to be neutral everywhere else.
The diplomatic chances became more and more favorable. The
inconstant Charles II. escaped the Prince of Orange and returned
to his old love, if not for Louis XIV., at least for the coffers of this
liberal monarch.  His excuse was the conduct of Parliament,
which, excited by intriguers, several of whom were in the pay of
Louis XIV., had taken a fancy to declare that the subsidies for the
war should not be paid until guaranties had been obtained against
the dangers with which the Papists were threatening England.
The Catholicism of the Duke of York, and his pretensions to command the army, still served as a bugbear. The English policy of
this time is strange indeed: it seems as if it could make neither
peace nor war. Charles II., seeing that Parliament cut off supplies from him, accepted the offer recently made him by Louis
XIV. of a renewal of subsidies, and, by a secret treaty of May 27,
pledged himself to neutrality in consideration of six millions in case
peace should not be concluded within two months. He promised
to disband, after these two months, all the newly levied troops, except three thousand men who should remain at Ostend, and three
thousand who should be sent to Scotland, and to prorogue his Parliament for four months at least after these two months. The
disbanding of the English troops was a satisfaction accorded to
the leaders of the opposition who had an understanding with
Louis XIV.1
May 31, a Dutclh ambassador had arrived at the camp of Louis
XIV., and the King had offered the States-General a separate truce
1 Mignet, t. IV. p. 678.




1678.                 NEGOTIATIONS.                      465
until August 12, that they might endeavor to persuade their allies
to peace; as to them, they accepted the King's conditions: William
had been forced to yield to the current.
Louis set out on his return to Versailles, June 2, and sent the
army, under command of Luxembourg, to encamp before Brussels.
Spain was disposed to follow the example of Holland and to resign
herself to submit to the conditions of her conqueror. The queenmother, hurled from power by a palace revolution, having been intimately allied with the cabinet of Vienna, her adversary and successor, Don Juan, was, on the contrary, on bad terms with Austria
and little disposed to sustain to the end the obstinacy of the Imperial cabinet. The overwhelming series of reverses which fell without intermission on Spain deeply discouraged her. A new blow
had just reached her, no longer in distant possessions, but on her
own soil. Marshal de Navailles had taken Puigcerda (May 28).i
The French, masters of Cerdagne, established on the Upper Segre,
could debouch when they liked into the interior of Catalonia. Don
Juan, losing all hope of arresting this torrent of misfortune, had
hastened to treat and even thought already of allying himself to
France to find a support in it against the Emperor; he entertained
the secret thought of marrying the young king, his nephew, not to
a daughter of Leopold, but to a niece of Louis XIV., the daughter
of the Duke of Orleans.
At the close of June, Holland and Spain were on the point of
signing peace at Nimeguen. Already, freedom of commerce and
navigation was reestablished, and the French army fell back from
Brussels to Mons. A grave incident suddenly was near overthrowing all these hopes of peace. Louis claimed that, at the
general pacification, Sweden should be reestablished in all her
possessions. Neither Spain nor Holland opposed it; but Louis,
foreseeing that he would be obliged to continue the war on this
account against the princes who had despoiled Sweden, signified
that he could not restore to Spain those places, which he was to
restore to her in the Netherlands, until after the Swedish question
had been resolved. These places, he said, were necessary to support the operations of his armies in the North,
This exigence, which made the execution of separate treaties
depend on a general peace, was contradictory to the policy followed
for some time past by Louis, and aroused a warm reaction against
him in Holland and England. The English Parliament, seeing
1 Meanwhile, three ships sent by Duquesne had entered the harbor of Barcelona
and burned a vessel of sixty guns.
VOL. I.       59




466                    LOUIS XIV.                      1678.
peace made, had voted the disbanding of the English troops.
Charles II., instigated by William, urged Parliament to consent
that the disbanding should be suspended, refused to ratify his secret
treaty of May 27 with Louis XIV., dispatched reinforcements to
the English garrisons of Ostend and Bruges, and sent Sir William
Temple to the Hague and to Nimeguen to negotiate anew an offensive compact with the States-General. Temple, one of the most
distinguished statesmen of the epoch, the author of interesting
diplomatic memoirs,1 was the systematic adversary of France.
Despite the opposition of the city of Amsterdam, as pacific now
as it had been bellicose in 1672, the States-General yielded to the
combined influence of the Prince of Orange and England. July
26, England and Holland engaged to make war on France, if
Louis did not declare, before August 11, the end of the truce
between France and Holland, that he would restore the Belgian
towns to Spain without waiting for the solution of the affairs of
Sweden. The same day, William put himself at the head of the
Dutch army, to repair to Mons, blockaded by Marshal de Luxembourg, and to succor this place at the expiration of the truce.
Louis XIV., after seeing his conditions accepted by those of his
adversaries with whom he desired peace, found himself on the point
of recommencing war against them, despite himself, for a foreign
interest. The Swedes themselves extricated him from embarrassment. The plenipotentiaries of Sweden at Nimeguen declared that
their master would be satisfied if the States-General would engage
no longer to assist their enemies, and would not find fault with
separate treaties made by France to lessen the number of the common enemies (July 26-27). Louis hastened to write to Nimeguen
that he would surrender the places " by the request of the Swedes"
(August 2).
An idle question of etiquette consumed some days more, Louis
demanding that the States-General should send him a special ambassador to sign the peace in a French town and not at Nimeguen.
There were also some difficulties, on certain points, between Sweden
and Holland, as between France and Spain, and the Dutch would
have been glad not to sign without the Spaniards, as the French
without the Swedes. Nevertheless, August 10 had arrived; there
was but one day more to the limit fixed by the allies and by Louis
himself, and the English ambassador, Sir William Temple, had
arrived at Nimeguen with the intention of obstructing the peace
1 See the Mem. de Sir William Temple, French translation, in the Collect. Michaud,
8d series, t. VIII.




1678.             PEACE OF NIMEGUEN.                    467
which his master ordered him to favor. Charles II., while concluding a bellicose treaty with Holland, had commissioned his plenipotentiary to suggest to the Swedes the pacific movement which
they had just made spontaneously, without waiting for his counsel.
On the night of August 10-11, the French and Dutch plenipotentiaries came to a decision. The PEACE OF NIMEGUEN was
signed. The signers of this renowned treaty were, for France,
Marshal d'Estrades, Colbert de Croissi, brother of the great Colbert,
and Coun't d'Avaux, son of the negotiator of the peace of Westphalia; for Holland, MM. de Beverning, d'Odyck, and de Haaren.
It was Beverning who brought over his colleagues.
France and Holland kept what was in their possession, except
Maestricht and its dependencies which were restored to Holland.
France therefore kept her conquests in Senegal and Guiana. This
was all the territory lost by Holland in the terrible war which had
almost annihilated her. The United Provinces pledged themselves
to neutrality in the war which might continue between France and
the other powers, and guaranteed the neutrality of Spain, after the
latter should have signed the peace. France included Sweden in
the treaty; Holland included in it Spain and the other allies who
should make peace within six weeks after the exchange of ratifications.
To the treaty of peace was annexed a treaty of commerce, concluded for twenty-five years. -The French and the Dutch were
assimilated to each other in both States in all that regarded the
freedom of commerce, the two governments being interdicted to
accord any special favor or monopoly to their respective subjects.
This was to interdict the premiums and privileges of which Colbert
made so much use. - The right of aubaine was abolished on both
sides. —In maritime questions, the broad and liberal principles
already established by the commercial treaty with England were
applied in what concerned freedom of commerce with third parties,
right of visit, and contraband of war. - The subjects of the respective powers were prohibited to take out letters of marque in States
hostile to either, under penalty of being treated as pirates. -Vessels were not to be built or munitions sold destined to respective
enemies.- In case of rupture, the subjects of both States were to
have nine months to sell or transport their property.
A separate article reserved the maintenance of the duty of fifty
sous per ton on Dutch ships as on those of other nations, but decreed that this duty should be levied on each ship but once during
the voyage, on leaving the ports of the kingdom and not on enter9




468                     LOUIS XIV.                      1678.
ing, Vessels exporting salt paid but half the duty. Holland, if
she wished, might establish an equal duty.
The revocation of the tariff of 1667 and the reestablishment of
the more moderate tariff of 1664 were accorded outside the treaty,
the King not wishing to alienate, by an authentic act, his sovereign
prerogative of imposing tariffs.1
On the whole, the treaty of commerce was to the advantage of
the more commercial of the two contracting nations, the one that
was the cheaper maritime broker. Holland found herself in a much
better position towards France than before the war.
The English ambassadors, who had acted much less as mediators
than as parties interested, refused to sign as guarantees, their mission having been, they said, to arrange a general and not a partial
peace.  The envoys of Denmark, of Brandenburg, of Miinster,
broke out in bitter complaints against the ingratitude of the Dutch.
The Prince of Orange, although he had been unable to prevent
the States-General from giving full powers to their ambassadors
for a separate peace, still flattered himself that some accident would
retard the signature and permit him to fight at the expiration of
the truce. A successful conflict might change everything, he
thought. Reinforced by eight or ten thousand English landed in
Flanders, and the Spaniards of Villa-Hermosa, he had approached
Mons, which, blockaded by French corps since winter, was reduced
to great distress. Montal, governor of Charleroi, commanded the
blockade, which Luxembourg protected with the main body of his
army. Luxembourg was encamped on the moor of Saint-Denis, a
league and a half northeast of Mons.. August 14, as he was dining tranquilly, having just received news of the peace by a courier
from Nimeguen, he was apprised that the enemy was attacking
his outposts. He instantly hastened to put the army in battle-array.
It was time. Scarcely had the Marshal mounted his horse, when
the Abbey of Saint-Denis, his headquarters, was assailed and carried by a strong column of dragoons and infantry. The Marshal's.
plate was pillaged by the Dutch. Another position a little way
from Saint-Denis, the village and chateau of Cateau, also fell into
the power of the enemy.  Saint-Denis and Cateau are situated
on the edge of a brook, which flows through a moor edged by a
double chain of heights, and empties, a little further on, into the
Haine.  The difficulties of the ground, seconding the obstinate
resistance of the French, did not permit the enemy to profit by
these first advantages which he owed to surprise, or to debouch
1 Dumont, t. VIL p. 350. Actes et Mmn. de la paix de Nlimegue, t. II. p. 651.




1678.             BATTLE OF SAINT-DENIS.'469
beyond the valley. A Dutch detachment, that attempted to cross
the Haine at Obourg to enter Mons, was repulsed with loss, and
Luxembourg soon resumed the offensive at all points. Saint-Denis
and Cateau were retaken after an infuriated struggle: night ended
the conflict.  Both armies had lost each four thousand men.
During the night, Luxembourg, fearing that William would succeed in throwing assistance into Mons, fell back on the quarters of
Montal in order to be nearer the besieged town.  The next day,
as Luxembourg was putting himself in a position to commence the
battle anew, the Prince of Orange sent him word that peace was
made between France and the United Provinces. A suspension of
arms was concluded for a few days; then both armies were informed that a truce had been signed, August 19, between France
and Spain. The armies withdrew each on its side.
There was a unanimous outcry in France against the bad faith
and inhumanity of the Prince of Orange, who had shed so much
blood for nothing, " with the peace," it was said, "in his pocket."
This outcry was repeated by many in Holland and elsewhere. It
appears certain, however, that William had not received official
despatches either from Nimeguen or the Hague; and, the day after
the battle, he wrote to the pensionary of Holland, Fagel, that he
could declare before God that he did not know of peace until that
very day, August 15, at noon. Gourville, however, in his recollections so full of curious revelations, affirms that the Prince admitted
to him, later, that he was not ignorant of the conclusion of the
treaty, although he was not yet officially informed of it. He said
"that he had thought that on this account M. de Luxembourg
would be off his guard, but that at least he should have a lesson
that would serve him another time, and that he had considered
that, if he should lose a few men, it would be of no consequence,
since it would be necessary to reorganize them directly."
This, said seriously, would be odious indeed; but the authority
of Gourville is not irrefragable.1
The obstinate William had not yet lost all hope of breaking the
scarcely concluded peace.  The treaty of the United Provinces
was closely allied to that of Spain: it was easy for William to in1 Relations of the Prince of Orange and of Luxeinbourg, in Basnage, t. II. p. 940.
(Euvres de Louis XIV. t. IV. p. 171. M1hem. de Sir W. Temple. Quinci, t. IV. p. 590.
La Hode, t. IV. p. 172. Mdm. de Gourville, ap. Coell. Michaud, 3d series, t. VIII'
p. 575. Some time before, a last maritime collision had taken place on the coast of
Spain. Commodore Chateau-Renault had attacked, with five French ships, twelve
Dutch ships, sunk four of them, and obliged the rest to take refuge in the harbor
of Cadiz.




470                     LOUIS XIV.                      1678.
duce the States-General to postpone the ratification until peace had
been signed with Spain. The principal conditions were fixed between Louis XIV. and the cabinet of Madrid; but a few points
remained at issue: the cession of Dinant and its dependencies,
which the Spaniards were to obtain of the Bishop of Liege and the
Empire for France; the limits of the castell]any of Ath; neutrality,
to which the Spaniards were unwilling to pledge themselves; the
refugees from Messina, whom the Spaniards would neither reinstate
in their country nor their possessions. The Prince of Orange,
seconded by the English and German agents, did his best to embitter these differences. The English ambassador, Hyde, apprised
the States-General that, if they did not ratify their treaty, his king
would unite with them against France. Charles II., terrified at
the new political storms which were gathering in England, recommenced his warlike bluster to avert the tempest.  The French
ambassadors, on their side, openly offered the republicans of Amsterdam and the States-General the support of Louis XIV. against
the ambition of the Prince of Orange and the designs of England.'
Neither Louis XIV. nor the prince who governed Spain at this
moment wished to renew the war. The Spaniards yielded on the
question of neutrality; a compromise was made concerning the
dependencies of Dinant; the French yielded the rest, even the
interests of the Messinese. The unhappy outlaws, who expected
their safety from the generosity of the Great King, were never more
to behold their country: they continued to drag out their misery
and to eat the bread of exile on the foreign soil which had received
them. This abandonment, less excusable than the abandonment
of Messina itself, was a blot on France. The repugnance which
Louis felt in his soul towards rebellious subjects contributed, doubtless, to render, him more yielding in this respect.
Peace was signed between France and Spain, September 17,
at Nimeguen. The conditions were, as for Holland, almost the
same which Louis had proposed, or rather imposed, in his letter of
April 9.  To the places restored to Spain were added the two
conquests subsequent to April 9, Leeuwen and Puigcerda.
September 19, the States-General ratified the treaty of their
plenipotentiaries with France.
As the Dutch had waited, to ratify their treaty, until that of the
Spaniards was signed, the Spaniards, to avoid the reproaches of
their allieswould have gladly waited until the Emperor had concluded peace. This was not Louis' design. After according to
1 Mignet, t. IV. p. 62.




1678.            CREQUI AND LORRAIhE.                   471
Spain delays which were prolonged until November 15, he enjoined his generals to return to the field and to threaten Brussels.
The cabinet of Madrid affected to yield only to necessity, and ratified the treaty December 15.
There remained the Emperor and the Empire, the princes of
Lower Germany and Denmark. If Germany had had little success when it was allied to Holland and Spain, and when the subsidies of wealthy Holland maintained its armies, what could it do
now alone against France? The government of Vienna, so difficult at first to draw into the conflict, had been since the most obstinate in the war; now, it began to comprehend, on one hand,
that its hopes were chimerical; on the other, that peace did not
impose great sacrifices, and that war might become very fatal to it.
The campaign of 1678 had not been more successful for the Imperialists than that of 1677, with this difference, wholly to their
disadvantage, that the war, this year, by reason of the preceding
successes of Cr6qui, had been constantly maintained on the territory of the Empire.
It had been carried on by large bodies of cavalry, as in the last
years of the Thirty Years' War. In May, the Duke of Lorraine
had taken the field with forty thousand men, more than half of
which were cavalry.  He threatened to enter Alsace by Altenheim, while the main body of his troops defiled to Freiburg, which
he hoped to retake. Cr6qui did not suffer himself to be deceived;
May 24, he crossed the Rhine at Breisach with twelve thousand
infantry and ten thousand cavalry and dragoons, and covered Freiburg. The Duke of Lorraine, ascending the right bank of the
Rhine, feigned to desire to cross the river, sometimes at Rheinfeld,
sometimes at Rheinau; then, posted himself between the French
army and Breisach. Crequi, resting on Freiburg and fed by the
storehouses of this town, did not quit his post or accept battle.
Lack of supplies compelled the Duke of Lorraine to fall back on
Offenburg (June 25).  Cr6qui proceeded towards the Forest
Cities of the Rhine and received, near Huningue, a reinforcement
of seven or eight thousand men from Flanders. Duke Charles,
fearing for the Forest Cities, retraced his steps and sent six or
eight thousand men in haste to Rheinfeld.  Two days after,
Cr6qui hastened to Rheinfeld with part of his army. The Imperialists were intrenched in front of the bridge of Rheinfeld; the
intrenchment, then the redoubt which covered the head of the
bridge, were carried by assault; the French, crossing the bridge,
would have entered the town pell-mell with the enemy, had not




472                    LOUIS XIV.                    1678.
the Governor of Rheinfeld shut the gate on the fugitives. Two or
three thousand Imperialists were killed, drowned, or made prisoners
(July 6). Rheinfeld, notwithstanding, was not taken. The governor having burned the part of the bridge which was of wood,
Cr6qui could only bombard the town from the other bank of the
Rhine. He attempted to seize the bridge of Sickingen; this little
town, situated on the right bank, was easily carried; but the inhabitants and the garrison, on flying, burned their bridge behind
them.
The Duke of Lorraine debouched, meanwhile, by the Black
Mountains, to save the two other Forest Cities, Laufenburg and
Waldshut. The French vanguard drove the Imperial vanguard
from a post which it had occupied between Sickingen and Laufenburg. Cr6qui, in his turn, asked no longer but to fight; but he
recognized the impossibility of forcing the Duke of Lorraine into
the defiles of the Black Forest. He deemed the moment come to
execute a project more advantageous than the conquest of the
Forest Cities. July 19, he rapidly descended the valley of the
Rhine in the direction of Offenburg, which was the magazine of
the Imperialists in the north of Swabia. Duke Charles followed
the movement of the French while -skirting the mountains, gained
the advance with a large body of cavalry, and Crdqui, on debouching into the valley of the Kinzig, found six thousand troopers
and dragoons between him and Offenburg. The French crossed
the little river Kinzig under the fire of the Imperialists, charged
the enemy, and put him to rout (July 23). The Duke of Lorraine succeeded, nevertheless, in saving Offenburg, into which he
threw the wrecks of his advance guard. The main body of his
army rejoined him there.
Cr6qui did not persist in attacking Offenburg, which was not his
real aim. He held the Duke of Lorraine in check, suddenly detached a strong division commanded by Lieutenant-General Montclar to Strasburg, and summoned the Strasburghers to deliver up
to him Fort Kehl and the bridge by which they had so many times
given passage to the enemy in violation of their neutrality. The
magistrates of Strasburg refused (July 25). The next day Kehl
was breached. The 28th, the grenadiers and dragoons of Montclar carried Kehl by storm, and pursued the remains of the garrison to Fort de l'Etoile, on the island of the Rhine which intersects
the bridge of Strasburg. Crdqui again summoned the Strasburghers
to deliver up to him the rest of their bridge; on their refusal, after
perceiving that Kehl would be too difficult to restore to a condition




1677-1678.          THE HUNGARIANS.                     473
of defence, he razed and burned it, as well as half the bridge which
he had taken (August 6); then recrossed the Rhine at Altenheim,
presented himself before Strasburg on the left bank, took possession
of the island of Ruprechtau, which is formed by the Ill and the
Rhine below Strasburg, and attacked the fort which connects the
city with the extremity of the bridge opposite Kehl. The Duke
of Lorraine succeeded in throwing a few troops by water into
Strasburg. Fort Ruprechtau, at the head of the bridge, and Fort
de l'Etoile, at the middle of the bridge and the river, were nevertheless evacuated by the enemy after twenty-four hours' bombardment, and all communication was cut off between the city and the
Rhine (August 11).
The Duke of Lorraine descended the Rhine and sought to throw
a bridge opposite Lauterburg, to come to the assistance of Strasburg. Scarcely load a German detachment crossed the river to
protect the laborers, when a large body of cavalry, dispatched by
Crequi, fell upon this detached corps, cut it in pieces or flung it into
the river, and burned the pontoons designed for the construction of
the bridge. Duke Charles descended as far as Philippsburg, and
crossed the Rhine there. Cr6qui having received from the King a
prohibition to undertake the siege of Strasburg, posted himself on
the Lauter, occupied Landau by means of his outposts, and completely paralyzed the enemy. The Duke of Lorraine, overwhelmed
with chagrin, went into winter-quarters, the beginning of October.
Cr6qui did the same, after razing the two forts of Strasburg, and
burning the remainder of the bridge.1
This long series of reverses humbled Austrian pride and disposed
the cabinet of Vienna to submit in turn to the necessity to which
the cabinet of Madrid had submitted. The Emperor had been
unable to reinforce the Duke of Lorraine in proportion as the King
reinforced Cr6qui; it was the troops of the Circles, more than the
Austrian troops, that had borne the weight of the war in Swabia,
for a very large part of the, resources of Austria were employed
elsewhere. Since the preceding year, a formidable diversion had
greatly weakened the Emperor and threatened the very heart of
his estates.
The Austrian government had labored unweariedly to destroy
political and religious liberty in Hungary: after causing several
of the Catholic magnates to perish by torture, and abolishing the
office of Palatine, which had been in Hungary very nearly what
1 (Euvres de Louis XIV., t. IV. p. 179. Basnage, t. II. p. 884. Quinci, t. IV.
p. 295. MClm. de Saint-Hilaire, t. I. p. 290.
VOL. I.       60




474                      LOUIS XIV.                  1677-1678.
that of justitia had been in Aragon -the aristocratic curb of
royalty, it had turned against the Protestants, had included all
the Reformed preachers in a body in a pretended conspiracy, and
had deported to Sicily all those whom it had been able to seize;
De Ruyter, then on the expedition which cost him his life, found
these unfortunates on the Spanish galleys, and obtained their deliverance from the Viceroy of Sicily.
These acts of violence caused, after incessant troubles, a terrible
insurrection, which united Catholics and Protestants. Louis XIV.,
who had abandoned the Hungarian malcontents at an epoch when
he hoped for the friendly neutrality of the Emperor, had not scrupled, this time, to foment the revolt by promises and money; he
had sent agents in 1674 and 1675; the Ottoman Porte did the
same; the Prince of Transylvania, at the instigation of France,
declared himself for the insurgents. Poland, which revived for a
moment, thanks to the military talents of its king, John Sobieski,
terminated by an honorable treaty with the Turks a war commenced by shameful reverses, under the imbecile predecessor of
Sobieski: Sobieski, married to a Frenchwoman (Mademoiselle
d'Arquien), and allied to the court of France, which had contributed to his election (in 16741), equally favored the Hungarians.
May 27, 1677, the ambassador of France in Poland signed a treaty
between France, the Prince of Transylvania, and the Hungarian
malcontents. Louis XIV. engaged, in case he should make peace
with the Emperor, to continue to the Hungarians an aid of one
hundred thousand crowns per year. Three thousand Poles, in
the pay of France, cutting their way through an Austrian corps,
rejoined the Magyar insurgents (October, 1677).
The war extended throughout Hungary. The Poles and Transylvanians furnished numerous reinforcements. The insurgents
had found a leader of superior daring and ability in a young Lutheran magnate, Count Emeric Tekeli. Master of almost all
Upper Hungary, Tekeli, after having defeated the Austrians,
flung parties into Moravia; an unfrocked monk, named Joseph,
who announced himself as the Joshua who was to free the people
of God, raised six thousand Protestants inflamed by his preaching,
and carried terror and devastation into Lower Austria to the gates
of Vienna (August-September, 1678).
Had it been possible to compel the disorderly levies of the
1 (Euvres de Louis XIV., t. V. p. 518. Sobieski had been elected by the influence
of France and Sweden, despite the opposition of the Emperor and the Great Elector
of Brandenburg, who favored the nomination of Prince Charles of Lorraine.




1678-1679.      PEACE WITH THE EMPIRE.                 475
Magyars to any discipline, and to retain them systematically under
the banners and in the fortified towns, Hungary would have been
lost to the Emperor.  Owing to the little order kept by their
adversaries, the Imperialists, reinforced, succeeded in maintaining
themselves at a few points and in sustaining the struggle, but
with such difficulty that it became impossible for the court of
Vienna to pursue the war at the same time on the Danube and
the Rhine.1
The Emperor endeavored to amuse the insurgents by insincere
negotiations, and treated with France in order to be free to unite
all his forces against Hungary. October 21, his plenipotentiaries
at Nimeguen declared that he consented to cede Freiburg, on condition of keeping Philippsburg. November 1-15, the Duke of
Neuburg, the Electors of Mayence and Treves, and the Elector
Palatine, who would have seen their States invaded in the spring
if the war had continued, prayed the States-General to cause them
to be included in their peace. The debate being prolonged on
divers articles, the ambassadors of France signified, December 2,
that, if peace were not concluded at the end of the year, their master would consider himself released from the offers which he had
made to the Emperor and the Empire.
This threat was not realized quite to the letter, and the year
1679 commenced before the conferences had terminated; but the
Imperialists and their allies obtained no modification in the conditions of France. A double treaty was signed, February 5, between the Emperor and the Empire on one part, France and
Sweden on the other. The entire reestablishment of the treaty of
Westphalia was the basis. Lorraine was to be restored to Duke
Charles V., in consideration of the exchange of Nancy and Longwy
for Toul and a prevostship in Trois-Evech6s, the King retaining,
besides, Marsal and four strategic highways through Lorraine. The
treaty was silent as to the ten Imperial cities of Alsace and the
feudatories of Trois-Evech6s. The Emperor consented that the
King of France should constrain the princes of Lower Germany
by arms to make satisfaction to Sweden, and should occupy a
chain of posts in the Rhenish provinces to insure the march of his
armies.2
Both treaties were ratified by Louis XIV. February 26; by the
King of Sweden, March 3; by the Germanic Diet, March 23; by
the Emperor, March 29.
1 Basnage, t. II. p. 891. Mignet, t. IV. p. 677 et seq.
2 Dumont, t. VII. p. 376.




476                     LOUIS XIV.                     1679.
The Duke of Lorraine, the Elector of Brandenburg, and the
King of Denmark, protested. The Duke of Lorraine preferred
never to return to the heritage of his fathers to returning thither
otherwise than as a sovereign prince. Louis XIV. accorded him
little, in reality, but the "useful domain," the revenue of his
duchy, and kept the effective sovereignty thereof by this neverending military occupation. Duke Charles refused, and passed
his life as a simple general in the service of the Emperor. The
Great Elector and the Danish monarch complained bitterly of the
Emperor's consent that they should be shorn of their conquests
from Sweden, which had forfeited its rights, they said, in the treaty
of Westphalia, and was the declared enemy of the Empire. The
princes of Brunswick and the Bishop of Miinster did not sustain
the two principal members of the Northern league. They made
their peace separately and restored almost all they had taken from
the Swedes between the Elbe and the Weser, in the duchies of
Bremen and Verden, in consideration of four hundred thousand
crowns given by Louis XIV. and one hundred thousand by Sweden (February 5-March 29).
The Elector of Brandenburg and the King of Denmark persisted in their resistance. Fortune had again been very favorable
to the Great Elector during the campaign of 1678; he had, the
second time, expelled the Swedes from the island of Riigen, then
completed the conquest of Pomerania by the capture of Stralsund
and Greifswalde (September-November). The thought of losing
the fruit of so many efforts exasperated his ambition.
Louis XIV., who had inflexibly sustained the interests of his
ally in the face of the still united coalition, was not disposed to
relax now that the coalition was dissolved. His plenipotentiaries
signified, February 28, that if, before the end of March, Christian
V. and Frederick William had not given satisfaction to Sweden,
Louis would make them defray the cost of the war. Christian and
Frederick refused, and the Elector claimed the assistance of Holland in virtue of his private treaties with her. The States-General
excused themselves from infringing on the peace of Nimeguen
(March 28). The Elector solicited a month's truce from Louis
XIV.
The territories possessed by the Elector beyond the Rhine, that
is, the duchy of Cleves, was already occupied by a French army
corps. May 1, this corps crossed the Rhine. A new suspension
of arms was accorded until May 19, on hard conditions: the
Elector was to deliver to the French Wesel and Lippstadt. The




1679.                  GENERAL PEACE.                        477
truce expired before the Elector resigned himself to yield.  At
the end of May, Marshal de Cr6qui crossed the Rhine with troops
accustomed to conquer under his orders. He drove the Brandenburg forces before him, took possession of all the Elector's possessions in Westphalia, and, June 30, forced the passage of the
Weser at Minden. He was preparing to march towards the Elbe
and Brandenburg, when he received news that peace had been
signed at Saint-Germain, June 29. The Elector had made so pressing an appeal to the generosity of Louis XIV., with such protestations of devotion in case of a favorable response, that the Great
King had suffered himself to become somewhat softened, at his
ally's and his own expense: Louis obliged Sweden to leave to
Frederick William the territories situated on the right of the Oder,
the cities of Damm and Gollnow excepted, on condition that the
sovereignty of the mouths of the Oder should remain exclusively
in the possession of Sweden.  Louis besides granted three hundred
thousand crowns to the Elector as an indemnity for his expenses,
and an expression of satisfaction at his return to the French alliance.l
The King of Denmark yielded last, after the French troops had
invaded his counties of Oldenburg and Delmenhorst. He treated
with France and Sweden, September 2 and 26. He restored
what remained to him of his conquests in Scania and on the Baltic.
Particular treaties of Sweden with Spain and the United Provinces
terminated the great work of the Peace of Nimeguen (AugustOctober, 1679).  The Emperor had raised some difficulties about
evacuating the places of the Empire occupied by Austrian troops
on the occasion of the war. Louis threatened. Leopold promised complete evacuation by August 10. At the opening of the
autumn of 1679, peace was reestablished throughout Europe, Hungary excepted.  The East, like the West, was silent.  Turkey,
Poland, and Muscovy had already, some time before, laid down
their arms.2
Holland, whose destruction had been the first end of the war,
did not lose a foot of ground in Europe; for she did not execute
1 Mignet, t. IV. p. 699.
2 The Pope's nuncio had figured strangely in the negotiations of Nimeguen.
The Pope had offered the Catholic powers his mediation, which had been accepted
without prejudice to that of the King of England, and the nuncio Bevilacqua had
presented himself in the heretical town of Nimeguen, with the consent of the StatesGeneral, but the Reformed plenipotentiaries had refused all relations with him, although he consented to appear only in the name of his temporal prince; he had no
official part therefore in the general negotiation.




478                      LOUIS XIV.                       1679.
the promise made to Spain, in 1673, to cede to it Maestricht. The
States-General objected that, having effected the surrender to Spain
of the places which were to form a barrier against France, they
were entitled to keep Maestricht by way of compensation. Spain
was not in a position to constrain them, and Louis XIV., well
pleased with the quarrel, took good care not to interfere. Upon
the whole, the peace of Nimeguen was made at the expense of
Spain and wholly outside of English mediation and influence, rendered void by the bad conduct of Charles II. It was made on
the conditions fixed by Louis in his letter of April 9, 1678. The
Academy of Inscriptions could say without hyperbole on its medals that Peace had been made according to the laws dictated by the
King (Pace in leges suas confectai). But it must be said that these
laws had been submitted to only because they were reasonable.
Louis, in fact, had repaired, imperfectly, doubtless, but as far as
possible, the mistakes of 1672, thanks to the superiority of the
French army and diplomacy; he had been recalled, at least momentarily, by the difficulties of the struggle and the aspect of the
reality, to the moderation and practical sense of which passion and
bad counsels had deprived him. France had given proof of immense
resources,l and her government had turned these resources to the
best possible advantage; France was so strong and so well organized, that this war with Holland, so contrary to her true policy,
had still turned to her aggrandizement; the peril now to her was
that her chief would believe those resources inexhaustible and act
accordingly. There was still time for Louis XIV. to restrain his
own inclinations and to maintain France at the sovereign height,
from which a great but only fault had not sufficed to cast her
down.
1 France had equipped 160,000 infantry, 70,000 cavalry, 10,000 dragoons, 60
ships, and 32 galleys. See Meom. de Saint-Hilaire, t. I. p. 313.




CHAPTER VI.
LOUIS XIV. (CONTINUED.)
END OF THE MINISTRY OF COLBERT. Efforts of Colbert to reestablish the Finances and to relieve the People. Colonies; Marine. Black Code; Cavelier de
la Salle; Discovery of Louisiana. Petit-Renau.  Ordinance concerning the
Marine. VAUBAN fortifies all the Frontiers and Coasts. Works of Toulon.
Chambers of Reannexation. Encroachments on the Empire. ANNEXATION OF
STRASBOURG TO FRANCE. Occupation of Casale. War against the Moors.
Bombardment of Algiers. Increasing Oppression of the Protestants. New
Struggles between Colbert and Louvois. MADAME DE MAINTENON. Quarrel
with the Court of Rome. DECLARATION OF 1682. New Edicts against the
Protestants. Troubles in the South. Death of Colbert.
1679-1683.
FRANCE reposed, seated on the trophies which had cost her
grievous efforts.  What use would the omnipotent monarch who
disposed of hbr destiny make of this victorious peace? - in what
direction would he guide the State?
France had not emerged unhurt from this infuriated struggle
against so many enemies.  We have related the testimony of the
popular sufferings and recounted the troubles to which they had
given rise. Like the agricultural classes, commerce, manufactures,
and the colonies had been smitten by the war, and the conditions
of peace, so advantageous to the territorial and military power of
France, were much less so to manufactures, the protective tariffs
having been lowered in favor of England and Holland. The establishments of Colbert languished, and the admirable order which
he had established in the finances was overthrown.
These evils were indeed far from irreparable. The foundations
laid by Colbert had remained standing, and the great minister was
about to devote the remainder of his life to the rebuilding of his edifice. The first period of his ministry had been wholly one of creation; the second, one of destruction, - of a destruction to which
he had seen himself forced to lend his hand; the third would be
one of reparation and reconstruction, if Louis XIV. would permit I




480                LOUIS XIV. AND  COLBERT.                     1679.
Colbert counted, with reason, on the prodigious moral and physical
elasticity of France. Let the burden of the country districts be
lightened anew; let the ruling power, less absorbed by military
interests, devote a part of its cares to commerce, to which peace
had just restored all its external outlets, let all equilibrium be
reistablished between regular expenditures and resources, and the
traces of public misery would be rapidly effaced!...
It is related that one day Colbert was surprised by one of his
friends, musing deeply before a window of his chateau of Sceaux; 1
he seemed absorbed in the contemplation of the beautiful, green
fields around. When he returned to himself, his guest asked the
subject of his meditations.  "In contemplating," he replied, " the
fertile fields before our eyes, I recall those which I have seen elsewhere; what a rich country is France!  If the enemies of the
King would let him enjoy peace, one might, in a few years, procure
for his people the competence promised them by the great Henri,
his ancestor..... Would that my projects might end successfully,
that abundance might reign in the kingdom, that all might be contented, and that, without office, without dignities, far from the court
and from business, the grass might grow before my door! " 2
But it was necessary that peace should be maintained for these
wishes to be realized; and the most formidable enemies of peace,
Colbert well knew, were not outside the kingdom; they were in
the council of the King and in Louis' own heart, in his ambitious
aims, -  some conformed to the destinies of France, others unregulated and fatal. The struggle between Colbert and Louvois was
unceasing: in war, Colbert had urged to peace; in peace, Louvois urged to war.3
Colbert opposed beneficent artifices to the passionate incitements
of his adversary.  He surrounded Louis with images of peace in
works of art; he carried him through the magnificences of art and
the sanctuaries of science;  he strove to persuade him that there
1 Colbert had purchased and rebuilt this chateau in 1670; Lenostre had designed
the gardens, and Puget's Hercules, now in the Luxembourg, was one of its chief
ornaments. The chateau of Sceaux has been destroyed since the revolution.
2 D'Auvigni, Vies des hommes illustres de la France, t. V. p. 576.
8 Louvois had obtained, in 1677, a notable advantage over his rival; at the death
of Chancellor d'Aligre, who had succeeded the aged Pierre Seguier, and who has a
marked place in history, Louvois' father, Le Tellier, was preferred to Colbert for
the dignity of Chancellor.
4 See the details given by d'Auvigni of the visit of Louis to the Cabinet of Pictures at the Louvre, to the Bibliotheque (which Colbert had caused to be transferred
from the rue Vivienne to the old hotel de Mazarin, where it is still the Cabinet of
Medals), to the Academy of Sciences, etc. Vies d&es hommes illustres, t. V. p. 366.




1678-1679.        PROJECTS OF COLBERT.                     481
was other greatness than that of victory. He hastened, however,
to begin his reparative work and profited by the present, with the
painful activity of a man who dared not count on the future.
He did not even wait for the end of the general war. In 1678,
as soon as peace was concluded with Holland, he made it his duty
at once to relieve the people and to disengage the public revenue
by the redemption of alienations and the reimbursement of a part
of the rentes. This seems contradictory, - diminishing the impost
whilst redeeming and reimbursing, operations that required great
resources! Credit would furnish him the means of resolving this
apparent contradiction. The reproach sometimes addressed to Colbert of not having recognized the power of credit, is quite as illfounded as that of having ruined agriculture. Colbert would have
avoided borrowing money during the war on unfavorable conditions, had he not been constrained to it by the King. Now that
peace and the good faith with which the ruling power had kept all
its financial engagements had raised credit, Colbert borrowed largely
on better conditions, - that is, he borrowed with one hand to pay
with the other at a large profit; all this third period of his administration hinged on credit.
In 1678, the salt-tax was diminished thirty sous per minot and
restored to the rate of 1672; the reduction of the villain taxes was
begun.  In May and June, 1679, two millions of rentes were
created on the Hotel de Ville, the first at six and a quarter, the
second at five and a quarter per cent. Public confidence rose not
only in France, but abroad, and foreign money came to Paris to seek
an investment deemed sure. In September, 1679, an edict fixed the
rate of interest throughout France at five and a quarter per cent.,
putting things again on the footing of 1672.1 Interest had advanced
much during the war. With the product of the loan, thirty-two
millions' worth of alienated public domains was redeemed. The
extraordinary transactions, alienations, loans, creations of offices,
etc., had amounted in six years to nearly one hundred and fifty millions, so as to supply the insufficiency of the taxes which, although
greatly increased, produced no more than before the war, on account of valueless bills, and, above all, of the diminution of consumption.  The expenditure, by the aid of extraordinary transactions, had exceeded one hundred and ten millions in 1677, the
impost producing less than eighty-one millions, of net revenue. Col1 Anciennes Loisfi'angaises, t. XIX. pp. 202-207. There is no exception but for the
merchants attending the Lyons fairs; they are authorized to demand a higher interest in credits given for merchandise.
VOL. I.          61




482             LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.                 1679.
bert attempted energetic measures. He persuaded the King to lower
the impost for 1679, from more than eighty millions to less than
seventy-five millions, and to fix the estimate of expenditure at
seventy-one millions. The continuance of the war in Germany
during a great part of the year, the expenses of Versailles, which
Louis could not resolve to reduce and to which those of Marly
were beginning to be added, the more useful expense of military
constructions, nullified this estimate; instead of seventy-one millions, ninety-two millions were expended, and it was necessary to
anticipate twenty-two millions on the revenue of 1680; this could
be done, thanks to the bureau of loans to which private individuals
brought their capital at five per cent., with the power of withdrawing it at pleasure, and which continued and increased in peace the
services which it had rendered in war.
Colbert was not discouraged: he continued to diminish the villain tax, reduced the aggregate of the impost for 1680 to seventythree millions, and continued to have recourse to credit; he succeeded in borrowing twenty millions at five per cent. Interest
had therefore returned to the rate which it had attained in the
most prosperous moments of his administration.  He counted,
to maintain interest at this rate, on an adroit monetary operation, which attracted precious metals from abroad into the kingdom. There were in circulation in France and the neighboring
countries many Spanish pistoles and gold crowns, depreciated by
their deficiency of weight. A decree of March 28, 1679, decried
the old French and foreign coin that was under weight, and ordered the holders to carry this specie to the mint, that it might
be newly coined of the weight and stamp fixed in 1640 and 1641.
The holders received the intrinsic value of the specie they brought,
without deduction for the duty for seigniorage or for manufacture.
This liberality caused the Spanish pieces, which lost more in commerce than they did in recoinage, to flow in a body into the mints.1
Traffic in bullion was at the same time declared free throughout
the kingdom.
In May and June, 1680, two regulations were promulgated on
salt-taxes and on aids. These regulations were only the confirmation and development of those of 1664 (the edict of the tariff) and
1668. Colbert, in 1668, had commenced a partial attack on the
compulsory salt-tax; he no longer felt himself sufficiently master
1 Anciennes LoisftanFaises, t. XIX. p. 198. The same regulation reduces to twelve
deniers the sous which had been hitherto worth fifteen. Forbonnais, t. I. p. 491;
Bailli, t. I. p. 449.




1680.                      FINANCES.                         483
of the position to carry this fiscal revolution to the end, and contented himself with simplifying the collection anew, with extinguishing by this means the greater part of the causes of prosecutions against tax-payers, with lightening the evil, in short, without
attempting. to pluck it up by the roots by the transformation of the
impost. It was the same with the aids. He united in one gqneral
revenue farm of aids the various duties on wine and other beverages, the duties on fresh and salt fish, on wood, on cattle, on the
stamping of metals, on the manufacture of paper, on stamps,
with half the dues of the towns, which the treasury had attributed
to itself, and put this kind of taxes on a footing which was destined
to subsist almost entirely until the Revolution. He thus continued
on the aids the work of simplification effected by the edict of 1664
on the five great revenue farms, but he did not correct the irregularity of the indirect tax among the different financial districts,
among the elections of the same district, among the towns of the
same election.. He still left subsisting many fetters to circulation
and exportation, and restrictions which weakened the happy results
of the maritime entrepots which he had founded.1 To undertake
a thorough reform, he would have needed to be master of the government and to have twenty years of peace before him. Colbert
was as far from the one as the other condition.
At the close of the year 1680, the financial state was anything
but reassuring. Of the seventy-three millions of taxes, but seventy millions had come in; the expenditure, fixed by the King at
seventy-eight millions, had risen to ninety millions, only two millions less than in 1679, although in the midst of peace. It was
necessary therefore to anticipate twenty millions from 1681, which,
with the twenty-two millions of anticipations made in 1679, thirteen
millions due on various objects, and fifteen millions on running
account at the bureau of loans, formed a floating debt of seventy
millions.
Colbert entreated the King to resolve on an important step, that
is, to reduce the expenditure to sixty-six or sixty-eight millions,
and even insinuated that it would be well to reduce it to sixty millions. It would soon be necessary, he said, to have recourse to new
loans. If this should go on long, public credit would be destroyed
anew. " But what is more important, is the very great misery of the
1 Anciennes Lois franfaises, t. XIX. pp. 239, 242, 251. Forbonnais, t. I. p. 498.
Monthion, Particularites sur les ministres des finances, art. Colbert, p. 25. The ordinance on aids is double, one for the Court of Aids at Paris, one for the Court of
Aids at Rouen.




484               LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.                1681-1682.
people; all the letters which come from the provinces speak of it,
whether from intendants, or receivers-general, or even from bishops."   And he insisted on still diminishing the villain tax five
or six millions.  The King appeared struck with these remonstrances, and made, on his side, a counter-estimate at sixty-two
millions, but postponing this radical reform, and fixing the expenditure for 1681 at seventy-four millions.'
If Louis had remained faithful to his estimate, it would have
been already a great victory for Colbert; but the expenditure still
amounted to eighty-four millions. Colbert, by prodigious efforts,
nevertheless improved the situation. From seventy millions, where
they stood in 1680, the receipts rose, in 1681, to 80,623,000 francs,
on account of the increase obtained on the leases of the revenue
farms. Although there was, as Colbert said, real misery, the increase of consumption indicated that the general condition of the
country was ameliorated.  In consequence of the redemption of
alienations, the crown lands, which had produced, in 1679, but
2,200,000 francs, produced, in 1681, 5,540,000 francs; two millions
of new rentes created at five per cent., seven millions of anticipations on revenue farms and salt-taxes, and twenty-four millions due
to the bureau of loans, furnished the means of reimbursing fifty
millions to the alienators and the creditors of the State, and of
reducing the floating debt below thirty-eight millions.2
An ordinance of July, 1681, on revenue farms, the form of their
adjudication, etc., completed the regulation of June, 1680, and
was followed by the establishment of an arbitrating committee,
composed of three merchants and three farmers-general, under the
presidency of a commissioner of the King, to decide the differences
between traders and the clerks of the revenue farmers. This institution, admirably conceived, was destined to be more efficacious
in the protection of commerce than all the regulations in the world.
1682 was a year of the boldest operations. Colbert was determined to complete at all costs the disengagement of the revenue
and the conversion of rentes. He was obliged to create five millions of rentes.  At the fifth million, the interest, from  five per
cent., rose to five and a quarter per cent.- Thus, as Colbert had
foreseen, credit began again to totter. But the conversion was ter1 Forbonnais, t. I. p. 528. Sismondi, Histoire des Franfais,; t. XXV. p. 887.
2 Anciennes Lois fi'an~aises, t. XIX. p. 274. Among the means employed to raise
money, there is one which is fatal to the ancient municipal liberties: the erection
of municipal magistracies into hereditary offices. The posts of the Hotel de Ville
submitted to this destiny in 1681. It was the death-blow to our ancient communes I




1682-1683.       TESTAMENT OF COLBERT.                   485
minated with a profit of 2,800,000 francs per annum to the State.
The rentes anterior to the administration of Colbert- rentes cried
down in public - were reimbursed at the rate of fifteen of capital to
one of interest; the rentes constituted during the war with Holland
were reimbursed on the basis of their constitution, as well as the two
millions created in 1679 at six and a quarter and five and a quarter
per cent. The consolidated debt was reduced to eight millions
per annum. More than ninety millions were reimbursed or converted in 1682.
But if Colbert had reimbursed ninety millions, the King had
spent one hundred millions! One hundred millions in time of
peace; for an expedition against Algiers cannot count as a serious
war! The expenditure, which, since the peace of Nimeguen had
decreased, although too slowly, thus increased at an exorbitant rate.1
Colbert was like a swimmer who exhausts himself in vain efforts
to reach the land, while every wave throws him farther back from
the shore.
He continued to struggle with increasing sadness, but with unflinching courage. The receipts which rose by peace, by commerce,
and by competition among the revenue farmers of the State, aided
him to fill up the chasm in part. The tax had produced eightyfive millions in 1682, and ought, according to the same progress,
to yield ninety millions in two years. Hoping no longer for the
radical reform of expenditure which he had asked, Colbert wished
at least to reduce in two years the villain tax four millions, and the
indirect tax two millions, which would put the tax at eighty-four
millions, then to let the tax rise again to ninety millions by the
progress of receipts, and to fix it at this amount during peace,
while preparing combinations which would give at least one hundred and ten millions in case of war. The King consented to the
diminution of the villain tax, which was found reduced, since
1678, from forty-one millions to thirty-five millions.
At the close of 1682, after the enormous loans which had exhausted the resource of credit, the floating debt due the bureau of
loans still exceeded twenty-nine millions, without counting seven
millions of anticipations on the revenue farms, and nearly sixteen
millions of anticipations of the receipts of 1683. It was impossible
longer to have recourse to the creations of rentes; the bureau of
loans was an excellent but limited resource, and Colbert himself
deemed it necessary to limit it to twenty millions for 1683, reim1 In these one hundred millions, the extraordinary expenses of war amount to
thirty-seven millions, the marine to nine millions, the buildings to six millions.




486               LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.                     1683.
bursing the surplus. To reestablish a balance, it would be necessary, for some years, to reduce the expenditures several millions
below the receipts, not to spend thirteen millions over and above
the latter, as had just been done 
Colbert did not cease to appeal to the King's reason and heart.
In the course of 1683, with a presentiment perhaps that he had not
much longer to- serve France, he drew up the plan of a memorial
to the King on the finances, which is his veritable testament.l  He
established in this the necessity of great modifications, in the export
and import duties, in the internal customs, such as the convoy of
Bordeaux, the customs of Lyons and Valence, etc. He would be
glad if the King would expend something "for the reistablishment
and increase of various kinds of commerce."  The system of adjudication to the highest bidder, applied to the revenue farms since
1661, no longer permitted leases to be obtained at a low price, by
purchasing the support of courtiers and placemen; but matters had
fallen into the opposite excess: the revenue farmers, in their competition, exceeded, in their offers, the real value of the farms, and
indemnified themselves by oppressing the people. The duties on
the revenue farms must be reduced. After summing up all that
had been done since 1661, he declared that, notwithstanding all
that had been done, it must be admitted that "the people were
heavily burdened," and that no more extraordinary transactions
could be made, since they all ended in a new tax or a new alienation of the revenue at a low price. He dared enounce his conclusions only under a timidly doubtful form.  "If His Majesty," says
he, " should resolve to lessen his expenditures, and should ask what
relief he might grant to his people, my sentiment would be, 1st,
to diminish the villain taxes and to reduce them, in three or four
years, to twenty-five millions; 2d, to lower the salt-tax one crown
per minot; 3d, to reestablish, if possible, the tariff of 1667; 4th, to
diminish the aid duties, and to render them everywhere equal and
uniform by suppressing all privileges (of localities and private individuals); 6th, to reduce the officers by degrees to the number
existing in 1600," in the time of Henri IV. and Sulli.2
This is what Colbert would have still been glad to do for the
1 The work published under the title Testament de Colbert, is apocryphal. The
pretended Political Testaments of Colbert and Louvois are nothing but imitations
of the authentic Testament of Richelieu.
2 Colbert also sets forth some other wishes, among which are remarked the abolition of the farming of tobacco and of that of stamped paper, as prejudicial to commerce. He did not see that the farming of tobacco, transformed into an excise duty,
would become one of the great bases of the public revenue, and one of the best
established, since the tax is voluntary. See the Memorial in Forbonnais, t. I. p. 664.




1678-1683.       COLONIES. PONDICHERRY.                  487
people with respect to finances; what he had done for the State,
may be summed up in a few lines. In 1661, he had found the gross
revenue eighty-two millions, the annual charges more than fifty millions, the net revenue, consequently, less than thirty-two millions,
from which it was necessary again to deduct nine millions interest
on advances of the revenue farmers; the expenditure amounting to
sixty millions, the annual deficit was thirty-seven millions. In 1683,
after having passed through a formidable war, the gross revenue had
attained nearly one hundred and thirteen millions; the charges being
reduced to twenty-six millions, the net revenue amounted to nearly
eighty-seven millions. Colbert had therefore increased the net revenue sixty-four millions, while lowering the villain tax and the salttax. The increase of the public wealth due to his cares, was the
principal cause of this great result.1
We have just seen, united in a single sketch, all that directly
concerns the finances during the four years which followed the
peace of Nimeguen. Colbert had labored, during this time, with
the same zeal, to restore commerce, the colonies, and the merchant
marine, as well as to strengthen that navy which had so gloriously
answered his expectation.
The manufactures already established were encouraged: new
ones were established; that of Louviers cloth, for instance, in 1681.
Experience had been unfavorable to great privileged companies for
the colonies. Despite the ability of Director Caron and the heroic
worth of De La Haie, the East India Company had not succeeded
in gaining a footing at Madagascar, and the Dutch had not permitted it to establish itself either at Ceylon or Saint-Thomas. It was
advancing towards destruction. Colbert attempted to revive it by
obtaining for it from the King the relinquishment of four millions
which it had received as a loan from the royal treasury. A superior
man, Director Baron, seconded the views of the Minister with more
energy than success: obliged to abandon during the war with Holland the greater part of the settlements founded by his predecessor
Caron (Bantam, in the island of Java, Rajpoor and Tellichery on
the coast of Malabar, Masulipatam on the coast of Coromandel, Bender-Abassi on the coast of Persia), he sought, on the occurrence of
peace, an indemnity in the foundation of Pondicherry, on the site
of a village ceded by the Rajah of Visapoor (1680). An ex-grocer
boy, become commander-in-chief of the French settlements in India,
the courageous and persevering Fran9ois Martin, realized at Pondicherry the idea of Baron, and his son-in-law Boureau des Landes
founded the station of Chandernagore in Bengal (1686). But the
1 Forbonnais, t. I. p. 6836




488             LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.             1678-1674.
beginning of these creations was humble and feeble. Colbert had
seen nothing in India which answered to the greatness of his efforts.
In 1682, he decided, by the request of the Company itself, to violate
the monopoly which it exercised; he authorized private individuals
to trade with India, making use of the Company's vessels. The
Portuguese, meanwhile, having been driven from Japan, in consequence of a reaction against the religious propaganda of the Jesuits,
Colbert would have gladly turned to the profit of French trade this
disaster to Portuguese commerce; he entreated the King to permit
Protestants to traffic with Japan. He supposed that the French
Protestants, not being of the religion of the Portuguese, would
excite less distrust among the Japanese. The King refused. He
had systematically excluded Protestants from all the colonies.1
The fate of the West India Company had been still worse than
that of the East India Company. Badly managed, grown torpid
in its privilege, onerous and odious to the colonists, it had neither
known how to second the governors nor the mariners of the King.
In 1669, either from negligence or from powerlessness, the opportunity had been lost to secure to France one of the finest countries
of America. It was projected to establish a colony in Ancient
French Florida, where we had had posts in the sixteenth century
which had been abandoned during the Religious Wars.  The English anticipated the French and took possession of the country, which
they called Carolina, from the name of their king, Charles II. The
war with England (1665-1666) had involved the Company in
debt; the war with Holland completed its ruin. In 1673, it sold,
for 5000 livres' rent, to a new association called the Senegal Company, formed by Colbert, the stations which it possessed on the
coast of Africa, from Cape Blanco to Gambia, with the privileges
thereto attached. In December, 1674, it liquidated its affairs entirely and resigned all its rights into the hands of the King, who
charged himself with all its debts, and aided it in completing the
reimbursement of its stockholders; this was again a burden of nearly
four millions on the treasury. At this price, the public domain
regained possession of all the American colonies. The colonies of
America and of the West Coast of Africa had then about forty-five
thousand inhabitants, and employed a hundred French ships, of from
fifty to three hundred tons.2 The vexations of the revenue farmers
to whom the American possessions were leased, and above all the
l D'Auvigni, Vies des liommes illustres, t. V. p. 341.
2 Anciennes Lois franlaises, t. XIX. p. 152. The port of Nantes alone fitted out
half these vessels. See L. Guerin, Hist. marit. de France, I. 565.




1675-1685.               THE  BLACK  CODE.                           489
prohibition to export raw sugar from the French West Indies to
foreign countries, a prohibition solicited by the French refiners, deprived the colonies and the marine of a part of the benefits of this
change. Colbert had not time to reconsider this prohibition, which
he would have doubtless revoked.'
We have scarcely the courage to regret this slackening of the
progress of the West Indies, when we remember the cost to humanity of the colonization of these islands, where cultivation was no
longer effected but by negro labor. After founding the Company
of Senegal, Colbert, in 1675, had obtained the grant to a private
individual of the privilege of the slave-trade on all the rest of the
West Coast of Africa, from Gambia to the Cape, in consideration
of the annual supply of eight hundred negroes to the West Indies:
this condition not having been fulfilled, the privilege was suppressed,
and the Company of Senegal was invested with all the African trade,
on engaging to furnish two thousand negroes annually (1678).2
We have said already that Colbert, who had found slave-labor
established in the colonies, and colonization based on the negro
slave-trade, attempted at least to reserve to the slaves a few of the
rights of human beings. The edict on the police of the American
islands, so well known under the name of the Black Code, was in
fact prepared under Colbert's ministry, although it was not issued
until after the death of this great man. Indeed, it is impossible to
peruse this law of slavery without anguish of heart and sometimes
an outburst of indignation: 3 the legislator cannot succeed in recon1 His correspondence expresses very liberal sentiments relative to the colonies.
He writes that freedom of trade to all the King's subjects alone can attract abundance
to the islands and make them devote themselves to navigation, and that it is not
well for the colonists to be at the discretion of clerks.
2 Forbonnais, t. I. pp. 497, 546.
3 Here are a few of the rigorous conditions. - Slaves can hold, receive, or acquire
nothing that is not their masters'. A slave who strikes his master in the face or
draws blood, shall be punished with death. In case of an assault committed by a
slave against a freeman, the most severe penalties are decreed, which may extend
to capital punishment. Theft attended with aggravating circumstances is punished
with personal penalties, and even with death, the case justifying it. Masters may
chain and whip their slaves who deserve it, but not put them to the torture or mutilate them, under penalty of criminal prosecution. A slave who shall remain a
fugitive for a month shall have his ears slit and shall be branded with a fleur de lis
on the shoulder; for the second escape, he shall be hamstrung; for the third, he
shall be punished with death!... The exercise of a natural right is punished
with death, therefore, in the French colonies, yet the man who has availed himself
of this right shall have not only life but liberty if he shall have touched the soil of
France. A monstrous contrast, which stamps with a fatal sign this colonial society,
born of a violation, of humanity, and destined to struggle and in part to be submerged in tempests.
VOL. I.           62




490              LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.              1669-1674.
ciling what are irreconcilable -slavery and humanity.  It must
however be acknowledged that the law here is infinitely above the
customs, and that this difference in favor of the Code of 1685 over
the society which it was designed to rule has subsisted to our days.'
We may judge of this by the following articles: - Slaves shall be
baptized and instructed in religion, under penalty of an arbitrary
fine imposed on their masters. Free men who shall have children
in concubinage with slaves, and masters who shall suffer it, shall be
condemned to 2000 livres' fine. A master who shall have children
by a slave shall be deprived both of the slave and the children,
unless he marries the mother, which shall render the children free and
legitimate.  Marriages of slaves shall be solemnized like those of free
persons. The consent of the master is necessary; but the master
has not the right to marry the slave against his will. Baptized
slaves shall be interred in the public cemetery. Slaves not fed
or clothed by their masters may complain to the attorney-general.
Infirm slaves shall be supported by their masters; otherwise, the
hospital shall receive and maintain them at the master's expense.
Masters and overseers who shall kill a slave under their power,
shall be prosecuted as criminals.  Te husband, the wife, and their
children under puberty cannot be seized or sold separately.2  Masters
twenty years old may free their slaves, without need of the advice
of their parents. Freedmen shall enjoy all the advantages of natural
free subjects.
Colbert, while giving his care to the West Indies, would have
also gladly derived advantage from the fruitful regions of Guiana,
that equinoctial France, where we had great pretensions and feeble
settlements. He had encouraged, in 1674, the Jesuits Gillet and
Bbchamel to attempt a great journey of discovery in the interior
of this country, where European had never penetrated.
The New France of the North, Canada, which had no need of
slave-labor, and the French population of which increased with a
slow but uninterrupted progress,3 attracted Colbert's attention no
less than the tropical colonies. The sea-fishery, the fur-traffic, and
the lumber-trade gave a high importance to the vast possessions
claimed by the French around the gulf and on the banks of the St.
Lawrence. The governors De Courcelles and De Frontenac (16711673), following the impulse of the active and able intendant
1 Written in 1847, a few months before the abolition of slavery in the French
colonies, thanks to the Revolution of 1848.
1 The United States are as yet behind this!
8 From 3418 colonists, in 1666, the colony had attained, in 1683, to 10,682.




1669-1682.     CAVELIER. THE MISSISSIPPI.                491
Talon, the second creator of the colony after Champlain, had
ascended the St. Lawrence to the immense lakes whence this
broad river issues, and which form, in the centre of Northern
America, a chain of interior seas; Frontenac had begun to labor
to secure to France the shores of these lakes by military posts, and,
according to his orders, a fort had been built on Lake Ontario by
the youthful Cavelier de la Salle, of Rouen, destined to be the
hero and martyr of the genius of discovery. At the same time,
travellers, laymen, and monks rushed in all directions towards this
unknown continent. In 1669, Cavelier de la Salle had gone in
quest of the route to China by the Ohio, which he believed ran
westward to the Pacific Ocean; abandoned by his companions, he
was only able to descend the river to its falls; but, in the following
years, proceeding to the northwest by the great lakes, he had unexpectedly discovered a great unknown river, the Mississippi, the
rival of the St. Lawrence (1670-1672).  In 1671, the Jesuit
Albanel and the Canadian colonist Saint-Simon penetrated by a
new road, the Saguenay River, to Hudson's Bay, which was disputed between the French and the English, and where other travellers had already preceded Albanel and Saint-Simon.' In 1673,
the Jesuit Marquette and the Canadian Joliet reached the Mississippi by the Wisconsin River two degrees farther south than
Cavelier de la Salle.2  It was attempted, by persistent efforts, to
deprive Cavelier of the honor of his discovery, and to prevent him
fi'om deriving the profit of it.  As intelligent as intrepid, as soon
as he perceived that the Mississippi ran southeast to the Gulf of
Mexico, he proposed to himself a new aim without abandoning the
old one, and projected to open to France a double road to the two
oceans. Colbert eagerly seized this idea, and resolved to found a
naval and military settlement in the Gulf of Mexico, which would
secure to France against Spain the free navigation of these seas
and the communication of Canada with the West Indies. Cavelier,
therefore, connected, by a chain of'posts, the basins of the St.
Lawrence and the Mississippi, sent from 1679 to 1680 the Recollet
Hennepin and another agent, Accault, to ascend the Mississippi to
its sources, and embarked on this river, February 2, 1682, abandoning himself to the current in a frail bark; April 9, he debouched
with the river into the Gulf of Mexico, took possession, in the
1 La Vallibre and the Jesuit D'Ablon, by land (1661-1662); and before them,
Bourdon, by sea (1656).
2 The priority of Cavelier over the Jesuit Marquette is proved by MSS. documents, and by a map made by his rivals themselves.




492             LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.                1687.
name of Louis XIV., of the rich countries at the side of and below
the river, and gave to the basin of the Mississippi the name of
Louisiana. From there he regained Quebec through a thousand
obstacles and dangers, raised, not by the jealousy of the Spaniards
or the English, but by that of his own countrymen, by dark, half
monastic, half mercantile intrigues. Accused of madness to Colbert, exposed to several attempts at poisoning, he was attacked
on his return and nearly slaughtered by the savages, according to
orders obtained by misrepresentation from a new governor, the
successor of de Frontenac. The origin of these atrocious plots
was the privilege granted to Cavelier to carry on the slave-trade
exclusively in the countries which he might discover, as an indemnity and reward.
New France extended thenceforth, at least nominally, from the
Gulf of St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico, enclosing between its
two great fluvial basins the English colonies.
The intrepid discoverer of Louisiana was not destined to have
the joy of planting French colonization there with his own hands.
He returned to France, and obtained of the King a few vessels
and two hundred men to reconnoitre by sea the mouth of the river
which he had discovered by land, to found a settlement there, and
to attempt to wrest from the Spaniards the mines of New Biscay;
but the jealousy of the captain of the ship charged to conduct him,
without knowing the secret of the enterprise, obliged him to land,
not at the entrance of the Mississippi, but at a bay now within the
boundaries of Texas (Bay of St. Bernard). Captain de Beaujeu,
after causing the failure of the expedition by his obstinacy, abandoned and veritably betrayed him; discord, the habitual follower
of want, arose among the colonists, and Cavelier, as he was striving to gain Canada by land, was massacred by some of his rebellious comrades (1687).
The project of the unfortunate Cavelier was realized, some years
after, by D'Iberville, who colonized Louisiana.
Maritime commerce developed more rapidly than colonization.
The fishery of the North, much more important to the merchantshipping even than the trade of tropical commodities, had resumed
its full prosperity since peace. Plaisance, on the southeast coast
of the island of Newfoundland, was the depot of the revictualling
and protection of French fishermen. France occupied in fact, in
these parts, only the southern coast of Newfoundland and the
peninsula of Nova Scotia; but all the islands of the Gulf of St.
Lawrence belonged to it nominally. The commercial impulse was




1681.                  PETIT-RENAU.                     498
such that the port of Saint-Malo alone, in 1681, sent to the codfishery sixty-five vessels, the smallest of which gauged one hundred
and fifty tons. Nantes usually sent thirty; Havre, more than one
hundred.l
We have said, elsewhere, that Colbert, in 1673, had caused a
census of sailors to be taken: the enumeration had given but
thirty-six thousand, exclusive of officers, cockswains, and cabinboys. A second census, in 1680, gave sixty thousand sailors, all
included; in 1685, there were nearly seventy-eight thousand.
Such figures have their eloquence.  Of this number, Provence
furnished but two thousand six hundred men, — a petty figure for a
country so favored by the sea. Languedoc numbered three thousand
two hundred; Picardy, two thousand six hundred and sixty-seven;
Brittany, seventeen thousand three hundred and forty-two,- a
strange development of maritime genius among a population so
much attached to the soil and so little disposed to travel by land!
In 1683, the navy numbered one hundred and seven ships of
from twenty-four to one hundred and twenty guns, twelve of
which were of the first class, that is, from seventy-six to one hundred and twenty guns; twenty-five light frigates of from six to
twenty-four guns; thirty-two galleys, etc.; in all, two hundred and
seventy-six vessels, including seventy-eight ships in the course of
construction.2
Maritime science improved as material strength increased. The
intendant-general of the West, Colbert du Terron, had pointed out
to the great Colbert the precocious genius of a very young Basque
engineer, Bernard Renau, surnamed Petit-Renau. This young
man, summoned to the council of naval constructions, which Colbert had formed after the peace of Nimeguen, procured the adoption, by the advice of Duquesne and Vauban, of a new model of a
ship, which rendered our ships-of-war, of majestic proportions, but
somewhat heavy, more slender and easier to manceuvre, suppressed
the quarter-decks and forecastles, species of fortresses which encumbered the extremities of the ship, and considerably diminished
the draught of water.
Petit-Renau not only improved naval construction; he insured
the continued progress of this great art by inducing Colbert to
found a public school of construction and a corps of naval engineers, which broke up the mysterious routine monopoly of sworn
master-carpenters and substituted science for empiricism. "Renau
1 L. Guerin, t. I. pp. 502, 565, 577.
2 La Martiniere, t. IV. p. 222. L. Guerin, t. I. p. 23. P. Clement, p. 379.




494              LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.                 1681,
was the first, perhaps, that comprehended the ship-of-war as destined to be, as it were, the imposing summary of all the physical
and mathematical knowledge which man has been permitted to
acquire." 1
The Minister who had created the French marine crowned his
monument by an admirable work.
Colbert, embracing by a glance all social relations, had well
understood what influence a good administration of justice has
upon the progress of public wealth. We have already described
the essential part that he had taken in the civil and criminal ordinances of 1667 and 1669, then how he had regulated the relations
and disputes of general commerce by the ordinance of commerce
in 1673. The wholly special interests and habits of ocean commerce demanded a separate constitution; the customs of the Middle
Ages, the ordinances of the sixteenth century, no longer sufficed
the new marine. For ten years Colbert had been laboring on a
maritime code through a commission, the most active members of
which were the Master of Requests, Le Vayer de Boutigni, and
Lambert d'Herbigni.  The ordinance concerning the marine appeared in August, 1681. This ordinance descends through every
grade of hierarchy, from the admiral to the carpenter and the
caulker, and dictates the duties of each. It is divided into five
books. The first concerns the admiralty officers and their jurisdiction.
The office of admiral was no longer but a most lucrative, princely
sinecure bestowed by the King on some one of his bastards, or,
as they were called more courteously, the legitimized princes of
France.  Notwithstanding, the admiral, who had no longer the
choice of any officer of war, finances, or administration, had still
the appointment of the officers of the maritime courts. All naval
affairs were under the jurisdiction of the admiralty judges, and
the parliaments intervened only in case of appeal. Title IX., Book
I., On CYonsuls, is very interesting.  The French traders and navigators are strongly organized in the seaports of the Levant; in
each seaport, they form a body called the nation; the deputies
elected by their assemblies, presided over by the consul, are called
the deputies of the nation.  Important duties are assigned to these
assemblies; everything is perfectly combined to sustain the honor
and interests of France in foreign countries.  In Book II., On
Seamen and Sea-going Ships, are remarked the guaranties of capacity exacted of captains, masters, and cockswains of vessels, and
1 E. Sue, Histoire de la Marine, t. III. pp. 395-398. L. Guerin, t. I. pp. 499, 507.
Thdorie navale, by B. Renau d'Eligagaray.




1681.                 MARITIME CODE.                       495
the prohibition to levy any initiation-fees on apprenticed sailors.
Book III. regulates maritime contracts. Security is granted to
sailors for their wages on the ship and its freight. No one can fit
out a ship-of-war without a commission from the admiral, or take a
commission from a foreign state to go on a cruise without the
King's permission, under penalty of being treated as a pirate. All
ships laden with effects belonging to the enemy are lawful prizes.
(We have seen that the treaties with England and Holland had
partially introduced more liberal principles in the relations with
these two nations.)  French merchandise, or that belonging to
allies, found on hostile ships, is a lawful prize. Any ship recaptured
twenty-four hours after its capture by the enemy belongs to those
who have recaptured it; if it has remained less than twenty-four
hours in the power of the enemy, it is restored to its owner, one
third of the value for salvage-money upon recapture excepted.
Rigorous precautions are taken to verify the legality of prizes.
The King shall grant letters of reprisal to his subjects wronged
by foreigners, when the State to which these foreigners belong
refuses justice to our ambassadors.  This is a relic of the right
of private warfare.  Book IV. concerns the police of the ports,
coasts, roads, and shores of the sea. The guard of the coasts is regulated by parishes subject to the naval watch; this is the special
police of maritime countries. The penalty of death is decreed
against whomsoever shall attempt the life and property of shipwrecked persons, against seigniors on the sea-shore who shall force
pilots to wreck vessels on coasts dependent on their fiefs, against
whomsoever shall attract vessels by false lights into dangerous places.
The terrible trade of the wreckers was not extinct in Lower Brittany.
Lords of fiefs who shall usurp from the inhabitants of the sea-shore
the grass called varec or sea-weed, or shall pretend to levy duties on
the cutting of sea-weed, shall be punished as extortioners. Book
V. treats of the fishery which is carried on in the sea. Sea-fishery
is declared free and common to all the King's subjects, with no
other condition than to use the nets and apparatus permitted by the
ordinance. It is forbidden to all lords of fiefs or commanders of
royal places to exact fishing-duties or to interpose obstacles to fishery, under penalty of a heavy fine, and of quadruple restitution for
lords, of removal for governors.'
We can cite here only a few characteristic provisions which can
give no idea of the whole, so wisely ordered, so precise, so exact,
so luminous. The ordinance on the marine has remained, like the
1 Anciennes Lois frangaises, t. XIX. pp. 283-366.




496             LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.                 1677.
ordinance on forests and waters, the masterpiece of its kind and
the basis of all future progress.' All nations admired and imitated
it, as they had imitated, in the Middle Ages, our ancient role of
O16ron, the starting-point of all modern maritime codes.
The son and coadjutor of Colbert, Seignelai, was destined to
complete the paternal work, a few years after, by adding the code
of the navy to that of the merchant marine.
It was also, at the same time, to develop ocean commerce and to
increase the military power of our navy, that vast works were
continued in the ports and on the coasts. These works formed a
part of the colossal whole of the fortification of the kingdom,
undertaken and executed by Vauban under the orders of the Ministers of War and of the Marine. This is the only operation in
which Colbert and Louvois, to a certain point, agreed; we shall see
moreover that this agreement was very imperfect. Louis XIV.
had resolved to secure his conquests forever to France and to make
an impregnable frontier, while insuring to himself formidable means
of attack against his neighbors. The whole plan of fortifications
intrusted to Vauban was the vastest work of the kind that ever
existed, and the greatest service perhaps rendered by Louis XIV.
to our country. This has been seen whenever France has been
threatened with invasion. The great walls of the Romans and the
Chinese were only the infancy of the art; the three hundred
places built or repaired and enlarged by Vauban, and supporting
each other reciprocally in a general system of defence, were its
perfection.
The peace of Nimeguen was the most fruitful epoch in this life
so prodigiously active. We have long seen, in our narration, this
great man appear as the very genius of sieges. To say, the town
is besieged by Vauban was to say, the town is taken. Thenceforth
to say, the town was fortified by Vauban would be to say, the town
is impregnable. This was a nobler fame and more in conformity
with the humane and generous spirit which he had already displayed in his efforts to spare the blood of the soldier.
We have indicated elsewhere how much the art of attacking
places was indebted to him; he did no less for the art of defending
them. He attempted to reestablish an equilibrium between the
attack and the defence by opposing, to the ravages of the ricochet
and the bomb, subterranean passages, arched traverses, sheltered
firing from casemates. He improved the system of artificial inundation, arranged gardens and pastures between the inundation and
1 Save that which relates to international right.




1677-1678.             VAUBAN. DUNKIRK.                         497
the place, for the subsistence of the inhabitants and the.garrison,
threw out works beyond the glacis, and constructed intrenched
camps under the most important places.  His principles have
entered the domain of military science; but what can never be
public property is the genius with which he applied them; that
art "of drawing from the earth itself and the waters a simple and
inexpensive system of defence, and that greater art of adapting
places to the nature of the ground, to that of the country, to the
routes by land and water, to the operations of armies, in a word,
of giving States frontiers." 1
Since the first war with Flanders, Vauban had commenced to
fortify the towns acquired or conquered by Louis XIV., and to
direct important works in the ports. Dunkirk, Lille, Tournay, &c.
were indebted to him for powerful defences; he had dug the canal
from Harfleur to Havre, since partly filled in, to cleanse the harbor
of Havre, and had given the plan of a new basin which would have
rendered this place better adapted to its twofold commercial and
military destination, Normandy having then no other port of war.2
This project was not executed. However, from 1677, appointed
commissioner-general of fortifications, Vauban had an authority
worthy of his genius, and could systematize his conceptions on an
immense scale. He finished, in 1678, the works of the place and
port of Dunkirk,3 cut away the sandbank which obstructed the entrance to the harbor, completed the basin, the two wooden piers
extending 2000 metres into the sea, and making the city an artificial out-port protected by formidable fortifications, the arsenal,
containing stocks and materials sufficient for the construction of
forty ships of war, and the canals of Bergues, Moere, and Fumes,
designed to prevent the filling up of the harbor with sand by the
power of the waters which continually washed their dikes. Vauban
calculated that this vigorous washing would wear away the harbor
sufficiently to render it accessible to large vessels. In ten years,
the harbor and outer port were in fact hollowed out fifteen feet.
From Dunkirk, Vauban repaired to the other extremity of
1 Allent, Histoire du corps du gdnie. In a memorial drawn up by the request of
Louvois, Vauban established the necessity of a special corps for siege works. Thus,
to him is due the corps of military engineers. He proposed divers innovations since
realized; among others, hollow shot for breaking up the earthworks of fortifications.
These are our Paixhan shot. See tloge de Vauban, by Carnot; Dijon, 1784.
2 Havre was the seat of the naval intendancy of Normandy. The military basin
called the King's Basin, completed in 1666, could receive only third-class vessels,that is, under sixty guns.
8 Dunkirk was the seat of the naval intendancy of Flanders and Picardy.
VOL. I.           63




498              LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.                  1680.
France, Toulon. It was there that he executed his most magnificent maritime works. Since Toulon, so well sheltered between its
double road and its gigantic wall of rocks, had become the centre
of all our navy in the Mediterranean, the city had been stifled in
its narrow walls, and the ships had crowded each other in the little
harbor of Henri IV. Vauban remade the city and harbor. New
walls, strongly fortified (they have now, for the second time, become too narrow) and protected by Forts 1'Eguillette and SaintLouis; a second harbor, called the New Floating -Dock, capable of
containing, not twenty-five or thirty vessels, like the basins of
Havre or Dunkirk, but a hundred men-of-war; an arsenal as large
as a whole city, and the magazines, workshops, and stocks of which
(the renowned ropewalk especially) I seem built for giants; two
smalf rivers, the mouths of which filled up the road with sand,
turned aside and led into the sea on the other side of the promontory which closes the road to the Levant; - such were these works
which would have sufficed, of themselves alone, to immortalize their
author.
After having put the works of Toulon, long since prepared, in
active service, Vauban crossed to Roussillon, added new works to
the ramparts of Perpignan, made this city a military centre for the
whole frontier, established a chain of forts at the principal points
which command the defiles of the Eastern Pyrenees, and constructed lastly, at the entrance of Cerdagne, the citadel of MontLouis, which at once covers the valley of the Tet and threatens that
of the Segre, securing to the French the entrance to Catalonia.
From the Pyrenees Vauban returned to the north. In 1680 he
built Fort Knocque, to assure the communications of Menin with
Ypres, and to cover Cassel; he rebuilt Fort Niewlai near Calais,
secured to this city the protection of artificial inundations, and presented a plan for restoring the sunken piers and the harbor almost
entirely filled up with sand. The King was unwilling to engage in
this expense, deeming Calais but a useless repetition of Dunkirk,
and sacrificed the ancient and patriotic city to his new acquisition.
Louis then made a great journey of inspection along the northern
frontier. He agreed with Colbert and Vauban on the necessity of
a military port in Picardy, ships-of-war having no refuge between
Dunkirk and Havre. Ambleteuse was chosen on account of its
position at the southern entrance of Pas-de-Calais. Unforeseen
difficulties in the conduits of fresh water necessary to cleanse the
port served, it is said, as a pretence to Louvois to cause the abandonment of an enterprise warmly patronized by his rival.
1 It is 640 metres long. The galleys date from 1682.




1680-1681.        FRONTIERS FORTIFIED.                  499
Vauban, moreover, did not less important and still more numerous
works for the ministry of war than for the ministry of the marine.
Maubeuge was fortified on the Sambre to replace Charleroi to some
degree; Charlemont, a place recently acquired, and which forms
the angle towards Namur, was carefully repaired. These two posts
completed the military line from the sea to the Meuse. Vauban
then turned his attention to the vast interval which forms, between
the Meuse and the Rhine, the most exposed of all our frontiers.
He fortified Verdun on the Meuse; Longwy, between the Meuse
and the Moselle; increased the defences of Thionville on the Moselle; threw in the distance, as an outpost on this river, the citadel
of Mont-Royal; erected on the Sarre a new city, which received
the name of Sarre-Louis; then, between the Sarre and the Rhine,
fortified Bitche, Phalsbourg, and Lichtenberg, on the Vosges,
Haguenau, in the plain of Alsace, lastly Landau, an advanced and
very important post, which covered Alsace and encroached on the
Palatinate. On reaching the Rhine, the line of fortification turned
southward; —Vauban fortified Sch6lestadt, in the valley of the
Rhine; Belfort, in the gorge between the chains of the Vosges and
the Jura; then built, on the site of an Alsacian village, the fortress
of Huningue, opposite Basel, at the point where the Rhine deviates
from our frontier to turn eastward, separating Switzerland from
Germany. Vauban next made a dash beyond the Rhine to add
new ramparts to Freiburg. From there, returning to continue the
defensive line of the kingdom, he recrossed the Jura, gave his
attention to Besaneon, and, enclosing in the defences of this city the
enormous rocks of Chaudanne and Br6gille, he made Besangon,
surrounded by a river and three mountains, one of the first places
of Europe.
Vauban did nothing on the southern frontier of Besangon.
France had nothing to fear from Switzerland or Savoy. He only
strengthened, beyond the Alps, the offensive position of Pignerol,
as he had strengthened Freiburg. He continued his tour of France
on the south, put the Western Pyrenees in a defensive position as
he had done the Eastern Pyrenees, protected Bayonne by a superb
citadel, made Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port a point of support in the
mountains, and built the fort of Andaye to command the mouth of
the Bidassoa. He improved at the same time the harbors of
Bayonne and Saint-Jean-de-Luz.l
The following year (1681), Vauban pursued the review of the
1 Of course, when we say that Vauban built, we mean that Vauban made the plans
and commenced the works. Many years were needed to finish all these.




500              LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.                  1681.
sea-coast, restored. the citadel of Saint-Martin-de-R6 and the ramparts of La Rochelle, ordered new works at Rochefort and Brest,
and protected their roads by forts. on the island of Aix, at the
mouth of the Charente, in the narrows of Brest, on the headlands
of Camaret and Bertheaume.  From Brest to Havre, France had
not, in the Channel, a single military post, for Saint-Malo, so justly
renowned, was only a port for privateers. Colbert and Vauban
were well aware of this insufficiency, and Colbert had cast his eyes
on La Hogue-Saint-Waast, a bay situated on the eastern side of
Cotentin, south of Barfieur. Unhappily, Colbert's idea was not
realized; Louvois thwarted this design, far more important than
that of Ambleteuse, and which would have averted from France so
great a reverse!
Vahban, meanwhile, had been recalled to the east of France by
an important event which rendered his genius necessary on the
Rhine. We shall ere long meet him again pursuing, with indefatigable zeal, his colossal work. Later, he will appear to us under
a different aspect. After the warrior, we shall appreciate the
economist, the politician; the same sentiment connects these two
parts of his noble life: warrior or politician, it is still the patriot
that rules in him; it is still the power or the happiness of France
that is the end of his thoughts as of his actions.
The fortifications cost largely,l despite the strict order and severe
economy employed by Louvois, - this justice must be done him!
Colbert was forced to resign himself to these expenses. Their
utility was too evident; in these were not the principal obstacles to
his reforms; from these did not arise the cares which daily left
deeper furrows upon his brow. The external policy on one hand,
the direction of religious affairs on the other, were the sources of
much livelier anxiety to Colbert!
The moderation testified by Louis in the treaty of Nimeguen
had not been sincere. If Louis had been moderate in the conditions of the treaty, it was because he reserved to himself the right
of extending these conditions by strangely arbitrary interpretations, and of pursuing in peace the conquests of war. It was not
only the natural complement of France that he attempted thus to
realize; he assigned in his mind no limit to the extension of his
power.  The secret treaties concluded a few months after the
peace of Nimeguen attest that Louis was more than ever absorbed
1 In 1682, the fortifications cost 9,227,000 francs. See Forbonnais, t. I. p. 553.
According to Pellisson, who had it from the King, 26,000,000 were employed from
1679 -to 1681. -Pellisson, Lettres- historiques, t. III. p. 347.




1679.              PROJECT OF EMPIRE.                   501
in the fatal dream of empire. It will be remembered, that, before
the war with Holland, the Elector of Bavaria had pledged his vote
to Louis in case of an election of a King of the Romans. In
October, 1679, a similar compact was signed with the Elector of
Brandenburg, who engaged, if the election of a King of the Romans or an Emperor took place, to vote and act only in favor of
the King of France, or, if there were too many difficulties, in
favor of the Dauphin. "His Most Christian Majesty," says the
treaty, "is more capable than any other, by his great and heroic
virtues and by his power, of reistablishing the Empire in its ancient
splendor, and of defending it against the always perilous neighborhood and enterprises of the Turk." The King promised the Elector a subsidy of one hundred thousand livres per annum for ten
years, and three hundred thousand crowns payable in two equal
instalments in two years.
This was the secret of the concessions which Louis XIV. had
compelled Sweden to make to the Elector of Brandenburg.
November 15, 1679, another analogous treaty was made with
the Elector of Saxony, in consideration of sixty thousand livres
payable in yearly instalments during four years, and ninety thousand livres ready money. Louis paid each one according to his
value.1
The plot which Louis was weaving became unravelled in some
measure, as always happens to those gigantic plans to which one
thinks to subject time. The first of the electors pledged to the
King of France, Ferdinand of Bavaria, had just died in the interval (May 25, 1679). Louis hoped to resume the connection with
the young son of this prince, and accomplished a promise long
since made to the House of Bavaria. December 30, the marriagecontract was signed between the Dauphin Louis of France, aged
eighteen, and the Princess Maria Anna Christina of Bavaria, sister
of the new Elector.  The preamble of the full powers given to
the ambassador of France in Bavaria, Colbert de Croissi, is characteristic. "Since God has so happily blessed the continual application which we have given to the good of our State.... the
only care that is left us for the happiness of our subjects is to give
ourselves successors who may, after our example, and moved by
the same love for our people, perpetuate in ages to come the felicity which they enjoy under our reign, and sustain with the same
glory the high degree of greatness and power to which we have
raised our crown." 2
1 These unpublished treaties are cited by Lemontey, (Euvres, t. V. p. 229.
2 Dumont, Corps diplomatique, t. VII. p. 451.




502             LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.                 1680.
This dithyrambic tone was substituted everywhere for the language of business.  Before the seventeenth century, the ruling
power, in its official acts, recounted, cited with a blending of naivete
and pedantry; under Richelieu, it argued and demonstrated; now,
it praised itself. A few months after, in 1680, the Municipal
Council of Paris solemnly decreed to the King the title of Louis
the Great, which, already employed at times on medals, became
thenceforth necessary in official language.
The negotiator of the Bavarian marriage, Colbert de Croissi,
was summoned immediately after to replace Arnaud de Pomponne
in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. An act of negligence, which
shocked the King, brought about the dismissal of Pomponne. This
minister, upright, well informed, but not brilliant, displeased Louis
by his circumspection and consideration towards foreign governments; Louis thought that the manners and style of his minister
did not sufficiently sustain the majesty of his crown.l Croissi may
have been less gentle than Pomponne, but was not certainly his
superior either in character or talent; he had none of his brother's
genius; and this family-success was not a political success for Colbert, Pomponne having been much more the ally of Colbert than
of Louvois.
Marriage had become one of the springs of the King's policy.
Another matrimonial alliance, much more important still, had been
concluded a few months before. We have already said that Don
Juan of Austria, the uncle, and lately the minister of the King of
Spain, thought to seek in France a support against his rival, the
King's mother, who was supported by the court of Vienna. Don
Juan had broken off the negotiation entered into by the queenmother to unite the Catholic King to a daughter of the Emperor,
and had demanded for Don Carlos one of the nieces of Louis XIV.,
Marie Louise of Orleans, daughter of the Duke of Orleans and his
first wife, Henrietta of England. We may judge of the eagerness
with which this proposition was received, which, it was reckoned,
was about to install the diplomatic preponderance of France at
Madrid. The contract was signed August 30, 1679, to the great
joy of Louis XIV., but to the still greater grief of the bride.
The poor young girl quitted with despair the paradise of Versailles
to bury herself in the tomb of the Escurial, by the side of that
strange husband who was but the shadow of a king and the shadow
of a man. For a whole month she saddened the court and wounded
the national susceptibilities of the Spanish envoys by the display of
her sorrow. She had a presentiment of her sad destiny. She had
1 cEuvres de Lemontey, t. V.; Monarchie de Louis XIV., p. 82.




1678.                  TITUS OATES.                     503
not yet set out, when already the interested protector' whom she
was to rejoin beyond the mountains had ceased to exist, and her
natural enemy, the queen-mother, had again seized the power,
which fell from the dying hands of Don Juan.2 Marie Louise
found on the foreign soil only enduring cares and implacable persecutions, terminated by a prolonged death-struggle, and perhaps by
a crime. She was one of the most touching victims of the hard
policy of dynasties.
The sacrifice moreover was useless: the young queen acquired
no influence at Madrid, and, the anti-French policy having regained
the ascendency with the queen-mother, a reconciliation was effected
between England and Spain through the mediation of the Prince
of Orange, the effects of which Louis XIV. combated with more
success at Windsor than at the Escurial.
The King of England had remained very cool towards the King
of France since the peace of Nimeguen, which Charles II. had
succeeded neither in aiding nor preventing, and Charles, moreover, had been thrust again under the yoke of his Parliament by
an incident which excited to the highest pitch the national passions
of the English.
An intriguer, sunk in debauchery and knavery, named Titus
Oates, who had been by turns Anglican clergyman and Jesuit, took
it into his head to denounce to the King's council a great Popish
conspiracy, designed to assassinate Charles II., to place the Duke
of York on the throne, and to exterminate Protestantism in England (August-September, 1678). Everything indicated that the
plot was wholly chimerical, as Charles II. thought; but the denouncer had calculated on the state of distrust and irritation which
disposed public opinion to believe the most incredible things. The
council could not dispense with ordering an investigation; the Parliamentary opposition seized upon it; several Catholic peers were
arrested, and the proposition to exclude Papists from both Houses
and from the King's presence was renewed. This time the bill
passed; the Lords excepting the Duke of York alone (December,
1678). Two thousand Catholics were imprisoned; all the Catholics of London were ordered to withdraw ten miles from Whitehall (the royal palace of London). All the Catholics of the three
kingdoms were disarmed and obliged to give security. Coleman,
secretary of the Duchess of York, who had been the correspondent
1 See the Lettres de madame de S'vignd, t. IV. pp. 317-321. Mem. de madame de
Villars.
2 Died September 17, 1679.




504             LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.                  1679.
of Father La Chaise, confessor of Louis XIV., and the salaried
agent of the French ambassadors at London, was condemned to
death, as well as many Jesuits, priests, and Popish laymen, the
greater part wholly innocent, the rest guilty only of a few intrigues. Lord-Treasurer Danby was impeached, on the denunciation of the very agent whom Charles II. had employed in his
pecuniary transactions with Louis XIV., Montague. Danby urged
the King no longer to prorogue, but to dissolve Parliament, which
had lasted since the Restoration, in order to convoke another
(January, 1679). The opposition, sustained, incited at once by
the son-in-law of the Duke of York, William of Nassau, and by
the natural son of Charles II., the Duke of Monmouth, won a
complete victory in the elections. Charles yielded, sent away his
brother, who retired to Brussels, and opened his council to the
leaders of the opposition. The Commons were not content with
the concessions of the King, and prepared a bill to declare the
Duke of York excluded from the succession to the throne. Between the second and third reading of the bill, Charles II. prorogued the new Parliament (May 27), then declared it dissolved.
The voters returned him the same majority.
The King again prorogued Parliament repeatedly, and strove to
recover his pension from France in order to dispense with English
subsidies; but Louis XIV. made too hard conditions, and they
could not agree (end of 1679).  The old Cavalier or Royalist
party, which began to receive the name of Tory, as the opposite
party took the name of Whig,l was revived however by the reaction of the Parliamentary excesses, and encouraged the King to
resist. Charles II. recalled the Duke of York to his court; but,
at the same time, in order to win back public opinion and to revenge himself on Louis XIV., he concluded with Spain, at the
instigation of the Prince of Orange, a defensive alliance for the
guaranty of the treaty of Nimeguen; the Emperor and all the
other princes and states were to be invited to join them (June
20, 1680).2 Soon after, as a sort of compromise, he again sent the
Duke of York, not abroad, but to Scotland (October, 1680).
Louis XIV. then played a triple game in diplomacy. He began
again to pay divers intriguers of the Parliamentary opposition, who
received money from France with as little scruple as Charles II.
1 The Catholic Irish robbers, since called White Boys, were styled Tories, and the
Scotch Puritans, Whigs. Both English parties first gave these names to each other
in derision, then accepted them by way of bravado.
2 Dumont, Corps diplomatique, t. VII. p. 2.




1681.                   ENGLAND.                       505
himself, and endeavored by their aid to prevent the treaty with
Spain from being supported by subsidies. At the same time he
offered assistance to the Duke of York to sustain his rights, and
renewed his pecuniary offers to Charles II.
The Lords, meanwhile, rejected the Bill of Exclusion voted by
the Commons against York. The Commons persisted and approached the Protestant Dissenters, whom the Anglican majority
had so long persecuted, but whose revolutionary opinions again
became a claim to the favor of Parliament. Charles II. vainly
allowed a Catholic peer, whose innocence was not doubtful in his
eyes, Lord Stafford, to be condemned and executed on the accusation of Oates. This disgraceful sacrifice did not turn the Commons from their purpose. Charles decided finally to sustain the
struggle.  He once more declared Parliament dissolved (January 28, 1681), and convoked a new one outside his restless
capital, at Oxford; then accepted the propositions of the King
of France. The treaty, concluded by the medium of the French
ambassador at London, Barillon, was so secret that not even its
conditions were written. It was a purely verbal compact. Louis
promised Charles two millions for the current year, and 500,000
crowns for the following two years. Charles promised to extricate
himself from the Spanish alliance and to paralyze the efforts of
Parliament in this respect (March 24, 1681).
Charles made a last effort to compound with the Commons. He
proposed to the new Parliament a Limitation Bill, by which James
of York would have preserved, in case of accession to the throne,
only the vain title of king, all the real power being withdrawn
from him on account of his religion, and the regency being conferred on his eldest daughter, the Princess of Orange. All the
great Catholic property-owners were to be banished from the kingdom, and their children retained to be reared in the established
religion.  This strange compromise would have preserved the
mystic principle of hereditary transmission, while completely sacrificing the fact. The Commons rejected it (April 5, 1681). The
next day, Charles II. broke up the parliament, with the resolution
never to assemble another, and to live on the property of the
crown, a few taxes still in force, and the French subsidy. He endeavored only to calm Protestant fanaticism by engaging to apply
the laws against the Papists in all their rigor.  The Catholic
Archbishop of Armagh was executed indeed a few weeks after.
Civil war had appeared for a moment imminent; it did not
break out. The Parliamentary opposition was not sustained by the
VOL. I.          64




506             LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.                  1680.
nation, and its violence turned against itself.  The royalist elements were still powerful; the recollections of the revolution terrified minds, and public, opinion reacted against the cruelties which
had followed Oates' denunciations; a monarchical reaction, superficial, but rapid and noisy, declared itself, and Charles II. was
himself astonished at the few obstacles he encountered in ruling
without a Parliament.'
The affairs of England thus turned very favorably for the policy
of Louis XIV.; Louis had no diversion to fear in this direction,
while he pursued his designs without regard to the Emperor, Spain,
or any one on the continent.
Before being sure of England, he had already treated Spain
rudely enough on a question relating to the execution of the treaty
of Nimeguen. The cabinet of Madrid had engaged to cede Charlemont to Louis, or to cause Dinant to be ceded to him instead by
the Bishop and Chapter of Liege. The Bishop of Liege having
refused to cede Dinant, Louis reclaimed Charlemont. The governor of Belgium uselessly asked for a delay to await orders from his
King. Two French cavalry corps entered Flanders and Luxemburg, and remained there until the place had been given up
(April, 1680). At the same time Louis enforced, with the greatest rigor, the precedence which Spain had acknowledged to France
in 1661.  Orders were given to every sea-captain to force the
Spanish sailors to be everywhere the first to salute and to lower
their flag before the flag of France (1680). But two guns were
fired for nine in exchanging salutes with the Dutch. The King
of Spain was forced to renounce the assumption of the title of
Count of Burgundy. Louis sustained his glory as acrimoniously
as his interest.2
A series of enterprises of a wholly new kind, along the whole
line of the northern frontier, revealed a plan energetically conceived and followed with a vigor arrested by nothing; these enterprises contributed greatly to rouse Europe against Louis XIV., yet
their success, by the substantial and lasting increase of strength
which it was destined to bring to France, proved that they proceeded from a thoroughly just idea and had a well-chosen end.
The Lorraine Trois-Evech4s, recovered by France from  the
Holy Roman Empire, had remained in an equivocal position, as to
public law, during nearly a century, between their old and new
1 Burnet, Revolutions in England. Macaulay, History of the Revolution of 1688. Flassan, Histoire de la diplomatie fianfaise, t. IV. pp. 7-25.
2 P. Clement, Histoire de Colbert, p. 380.




1651-1672.          ALSACE SUBJECTED.                     507
ties: the treaty of Westphalia had cut the knot by the formal
renunciation of the Empire to all rights over these countries; difficulties nevertheless still subsisted relative to the fiefs and dependencies of Trois-Evech6s possessed by members of the Empire.
Alsace, in its turn, from the treaty of Westphalia to the peace of
Nimeguen, had offered analogous and still greater difficulties, this
province of Teutonic tongue not having accepted the annexation
to France as easily as the Walloon province of Trois-Evech4s, and
the treaty of Westphalia presenting two contradictory clauses, one
of which ceded to France all the rights of the Emperor and the
Empire, and the other of which reserved the immediateness of the
lords and the ten cities of the prefecture of Alsace towards the
Empire.1 In truth, the special act of cession,.delivered to France
by the States of the Empire on the day of the signature of the
general treaty, accorded the cession full, entire, and without reservation; 2 but the immediate lords and the ten cities clung persistently to the clause of the general treaty which favored them,
and maintained, moreover, that the Empire had not the power to
cede them without their consent. In 1651, the lords of Lower
Alsace had refused to recognize the jurisdiction of the royal chainber and the grand-bailiff of France established at Breisach since
1649, and had declared themselves amenable only to the Imperial
chamber at Speyer.  The nobility of Upper Alsace, who were not
immediate and were dependent on archdukes, did not follow this
movement; but the ten cities of the prefecture of Alsace joined in
it. Louis XIV., at the epoch when he took the reins of government, employed himself in putting an end to thlis resistance. The
royal chamber at Breisach had been, in 1658, replaced by a sovereign council sitting at Ensisheim; Louis reduced the sovereign
council to a provincial council under the jurisdiction of the Parliament of Metz (1661). The ten cities and the lords were only the
more desirous of maintaining their relations with the chamber of
Speyer, and the cities were willing to take to the grand-bailiff or
landvogt of the King but a very limited oath. At last, on the complaints carried to the Germanic Diet by the ten Alsacian cities,
joined by the German feudatories of Trois-Evech6s, Louis, who
was then very conciliatory towards the Diet, consented to take for
arbiters the King of Sweden and some princes and towns of Germany (1665). The arbitration was protracted for more than six
years. In the beginning of 1672, the arbiters rendered an am1 See Vol. XII., Martin's Histoire de France.
2 Hallez-Claparede, Reunion de l'Alsace a la France, p. 243.




508              LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.              1673-1683
biguous decision which decided nothing and satisfied no one. War
with Holland broke out meanwhile and changed all the relations
of France with Germany. We have seen in the narration of
this war how Louis XIV. disarmed or took military occupation of
the ten cities and silenced all opposition. The direction of the
affairs of Alsace had been transferred, in 1673, from the Minister
of Foreign Affairs to the Minister of War, that is, to Louvois:
this tells everything. In the conferences of Nimeguen, the representatives of the Emperor and the Empire endeavored to return to
the immediateness, but the King would not listen to a renewal of
the arbitration, and declared all debate superfluous.  "Not only,"
said the French plenipotentiaries, " ought the King to exercise, as
in fact he does exercise, sovereign domain over the ten cities, but
he might also extend it over Strasburg, for the treaty of Miinster
furnishes to this city no special title guaranteeing its independence
better than that of the other cities." 1
It was the first time that Louis had disclosed this bold claim, resting on an inaccurate assertion. The Imperialists, terrified, yielded
as regarded the ten cities, and Alsace was not called in question in
the treaty of Nimeguen. Only the Imperialists protested, by a
separate act, against the conclusions which might be drawn from
this omission. The ten cities submitted and took to the King an
oath of fidelity, without reservation towards the Empire; their
submission was celebrated by a medal bearing the device: Alsatia
in provinciam reducta (1680).
The treaty of Nimeguen was followed by divers measures destined to win the Alsacian population. The sovereign council of
Alsace was reestablished with very advantageous conditions: such
as free courts; the establishment of a very low duty for the costs of
judicial acts; the interdiction of the mittimus, that is, the power
accorded to certain privileged persons to compel their adversary to
sue at Paris; the abolition of confiscation; the reduction of roadlabor to ten days per annum, with power to pay instead; the suppression of tolls in the interior of the province; the reduction of
import and export duties (1679-1683). The province, finally, was
treated very favorably as to taxes, and the royal power aided it as
far as possible to recover from the cruel sufferings inflicted on it by
the war.2 This wise policy bore its fruits, and Alsace, tranquillized,
gave no more cause of anxiety to the French government.
France was thenceforth complete mistress of the possessions
1 Hallez-Claparbde, Reunion de l'Alsace'a la France, p. 310.
2 Ibid. pp. XXXV-xxxviii.




1679-1680.    CHAMBERS OF REANNEXATION.                509
which had been ceded to her by the Empire; this was only the
first part of the work; the point in question now was, to complete
these possessions by joining to them their natural appendages which
the Empire had not alienated. The boundaries of Lower Alsace
and the Messin district were ill defined, encroached upon, entangled, on the Rhine, on the Sarre, and in the Vosges, by the fiefs
of a host of petty princes and German nobles. This could not be
called a frontier. Besides, in the very heart of Alsace, the great
city of Strasburg preserved its independence towards France and
its connection with the Empire. A pacific method was invented
to proceed to aggrandizements which it would seem could only be
demanded by arms; a pacific method, provided that France could
count on the weakness and irresolution of her neighbors; this was
to investigate and revendicate everything which, by any title and
at any epoch whatsoever, had been dependent on Alsace and TroisEveches. We may comprehend whither this would lead, thanks
to the complications of the feudal epoch; and it was not even designed to stop at the feudal system, but to go back to the times of
the Frankish kings!
Chambers of reannexation were therefore instituted, in 1679, in
the Parliament of Metz and in the sovereign council of Alsace,
with a mission which their title sufficiently indicated. January 2,
1680, the sovereign council of Alsace, assembled at Breisach, commissioned its attorney-general to summon to fealty and homage
the nobles of Lower Alsace, of the prefecture of Alsace, and of
the mandatel of Wissembourg.  The chamber of Metz did the
same as to the tenure of Trois-Eveches. Among the nobles summoned figured the Elector of Treves, for Oberstein, Falkenburg,
etc.; the Landgrave of Hesse, for divers fiefs; the Elector Palatine, for Seltz and the canton situated between the Lauter and the
Keich (Hagenbach, Germersheim, etc.); another prince palatine
for the county of Veldentz; the Bishop of Speyer, for a part of
his bishopric; the city of Strasburg, for the domains which it possessed beyond the Rhine (Wasselonne and Marlenheim); lastly,
the King of Sweden, for the duchy of Deux-Ponts or Zweibriicken,
a territory of considerable extent and of irregular form, which intersected the cis-Rhenish Palatinate. The corner of the Palatinate
which was revendicated between the Lauter and the Keich would
connect Landau, hitherto isolated in the midst of foreign territory,
with Lauterbourg and Wissembourg. The greater part of the
towns and villages of these cantons had depended formerly on the
1 Advowson.




510             LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.                 1680.
abbey of Wissembourg, "founded by King Dagobert," and could
not, it was said, be alienated therefrom, the Imperial constitutions
having proclaimed the property of the Church inalienable. This
would have seemed farcical, had there not been beneath these bad
reasons something serious and profound -the revendication of the
old Gallic soil by France.
By divers decrees rendered in March, August, and October,
1680, the sovereign council of Alsace adjudged to the King the
sovereignty of all the Alsacian seigniories. The nobles and inhabitants were summoned to swear fidelity to the King, and the nobles
were required to recognize the sovereign council as judge in last
resort.
The chamber of Metz acted on a still larger scale than the chamber of Breisach. April 12, 1680, it united to Trois-Evechbs more
than eighty fiefs, the Lorraine marquisate of Pont-a-Mousson, the
principality of Salm, the counties of Saarbriick and Veldentz, the
seigniories of Sarrebourg, Bitche, Homburg, etc.  The foundation of the new town of Sarre-Louis and the fortification of Bitche
consolidated this new frontier; and not only was the course of the
Sarre secured to France, but France, crossing the Sarre, encroached
deeply on the Palatinate and the Electorate of Treves, posted herself on the Nahe and the Blies, and threw, as an advance-guard,
on a peninsula of the Moselle, the fortress of Mont-Royal, halfway from Treves to Coblentz, on the territories of the county of
Veldentz.
The parliament of Franche-Comt4, newly French as it was,
zealously followed the example of the two neighboring courts.
There was also a frontier to round towards the Jura. A chamber
of reannexation, established at Besangon, declared that Montbdliard
was a fief of the Count of Burgundy (August 30, 1680). The Duke
of Wiirtemberg was required to swear allegiance to the King for
his county of Montbdliard.
The King of Sweden had addressed remonstrances to Louis XIV.
relative to the duchy of Deux-Ponts, but the royal council prescribed the overruling of all reclamations (July 24). The chamber of Metz therefore rendered a decree declaring that, if feudal
homage were not rendered within a given time, the duchy of DeuxPonts would be reannexed to the crown. Charles XI. refused,
either thus to degrade his royal dignity, or to sell his duchy. After
useless negotiations, the duchy was confiscated, and Louis XIV.
enfeoffed it to the prince palatine of Birkenfeld. It was desired
to make no distinctions in favor of any: this was a grave fault, and




1681.        REANNEXATION OF STRASBURG.                 511
we can scarcely believe that Louis XIV. did not judge the friendship of the King of Sweden preferable to the suzerainty of the
duchy of Deux-Ponts.
The city of Strasburg dared not refuse to take an oath of allegiance to the King, for its Alsacian domains, which none of the
emperors had obtained from it: it was the first blow dealt to its
independence. Strasburg and the majority of the nobles dependent on Alsace and Trois-Evech6s had submitted in order not to see
their territories seized; a few had waited for the cannon to deliver
up their chateaux; both carried their complaints to the Diet of
Ratisbon. The Diet, after warm remonstrances, proposed to the
King an arbitration (February 1681). Louis consented to open conferences at Frankfort and to suspend the operations of the chambers
of reannexation; but he protracted the matter, and did not send
representatives to Frankfort until September.  The concession,
besides, was not great; the chambers of reannexation, especially
that of Breisach, had almost terminated their office, and Louis did
not fail to continue the reannexations by other expedients; a striking proof of this soon appeared.
The acquisitions made were trifling compared with those which
remained to be made. He was not sure of the Rhine, not sure of
Alsace, so long as he had not Strasburg, the great city always ready
to throw upon the French bank of the river the armies of the Empire. France had long aimed at this conquest. As soon as she
possessed Metz, she had dreamed of Strasburg. The part which the
Rhenish city had played in the last war, its derisive and disloyal
neutrality, had changed these desires into a formal, immovable design.
Though the King and Louvois had prevented Cr6qui from besieging
the place during the war, it was because they counted on surprising
it after peace. This great enterprise was most ably manceuvred.
The last successes of the French army and the victorious peace of
Nimeguen had greatly depressed the Imperial party in Strasburg,
lately so restless; a French party was formed there, and nothing
was spared to swell it. All the remaining influence of the Chapter
and the Bishop Egon de Fiirstenberg, brother of Prince William,
and no less devoted than William to Louis XIV., all the Catholics,
in a word, formed the nucleus of the French party, and many
well-known Protestants rallied to it, by a sort of resignation to a
destiny which men began to feel inevitable. Gold and promises
aiding, the five councillors, the proctor, the secretary, and the treasurer, who formed the regency of the city, were gained over one
after another by the agents of Louvois. The Imperial troops had




512             LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.                 1681.
evacuated the city pursuant to the treaty of Nimeguen; the magistrates dismissed twelve hundred Swiss which the city had in its
pay; then, on the threatening demands of the French, they demolished anew Fort Kehl, which they had rebuilt since its destruction by Cr&qui. When the fruit seemed ripe, Louis stretched out
his hand to gather it. In the latter part of September, 1681, the
garrisons of Lorraine, Franche-Comt6, and Alsace put themselves
in motion on every side with the usual precision and celerity. In
the night of September 27-28, a French detachment surprised the
fort which protected the communications of Strasburg with the
Rhine. The 28th, thirty-five thousand men were found assembled
before the city; Baron de Montclar, who commanded this army,
informed the magistrates that, " the sovereign chamber of Breisach
having adjudged to the King the sovereignty of all Alsace, of which
Strasburg was a member, his Majesty desired that they should recognize him as their sovereign lord, and receive a garrison." He let
them know at the same time that, " if they came to terms amicably
and without delay, they might count on the preservation of their
rights and privileges; that, if they were obstinate, on the contrary,
the King had the means to bring them to their duty." He apprised
them that M. de Louvois would arrive the next day, the 29th, and
the King in six days.
The 29th, the magistrates wrote to the Emperor, that, too weak
to resist a power so terrible, and unable to hope for any aid, they
had only to receive the conditions which his Most Christian Majesty
might be pleased to prescribe to them. It was the adieu of Strasburg to the Germanic Empire. A deputation went to meet Louvois
at Illkirch: Louvois offered carte blanche as to the articles of capitulation, provided that the sovereignty of the crown of France was
formally enunciated therein. The resident of the Emperor attempted
to stir up the people; for twenty-four hours there was a faint show
of resistance; notwithstanding, the representatives of the trades,
after a little hesitation, referred everything to the magistrates, who
had had "the prudence to leave the cannon on the ramparts without powder, in order to take away from a few madmen the means
of beginning a game which would have ended badly for the city."
A little popular clamor, the last cry of the national independence,
did not prevent the signature of the capitulation (September 30).
The city, acknowledging the King as its sovereign lord, obtained
the confirmation of all its ecclesiastical and political privileges. Louvois exacted only the restitution of the Dome (the Cathedral) to
the Catholic worship, leaving the -famous. spire, the most lofty in



1681.     STRASBURG THE PROPERTY  OF FRANCE.                  513
Europe, at the disposal of the municipal corps. Free elections of
all kinds and civil and criminal jurisdiction were continued to the
city, save appeal to the sovereign council of Breisach in civil suits
exceeding 1000 livres.  The city retained all its imposts, revenues, and domains, and the bourgeoisie remained exempt from all
contribution to the King. Three days after, the capitulation was
ratified by Louis XIV., who received it on the way to Vitry-leFran9ois, and made his entry into Strasburg October 23.  Thus
was reunited to our country, without the cost of a drop of blood, that
illustrious city which had never been captured before being French,
and which has never been so since it has belonged to France.l
Vauban put it in good order. Summoned from the ports of the
West to the Rhine to direct the siege operations in case of resistance, he found the place surrendered and had only to occupy himself in putting it again in a state of defence. The citadel and new
wall of the city made Strasburg on the East what Lille was in the
North, — the bulwark of the whole frontier: Fort Kehl and the
fort on the island of the Rhine made it moreover a formidable tetede-pont against Germany, a second Breisach and a compensation for
Philippsburg. Strasburg preserved a useful monument of these
vast works, - the Bruche Canal, dug from Molshelm to Strasburg,
to transport to the fortifications materials from the Vosges. The
new work of Vauban was consecrated by a medal bearing the
device, Clausa Germanis Gallia (Gaul closed to the Germans).
The same day that the French flag was unfurled above the arrow
of Strasburg, another blow was struck in Italy, and the French
troops entered Casale.
During the first period of his government, Louis XIV. had
appeared absorbed by his projects of aggrandizement in the North
and East, and had seemed to give to Italy but secondary attention.
The Sicilian war had been only an unpremeditated accident, and
France had permitted Piedmont to cover Spanish Lombardy by its
neutrality. Louis, notwithstanding, dreamed of extending his power
on this side as on all others. He aspired to complete our natural
frontier on the southeast by the annexation of Savoy, and from this
1 On all matters pertaining to Alsace and Strasburg, see Reunion de l'Alsace a la
France, by Baron Hallez-Claparbde, ch. 9-12; 1844. -M. Hallez-Claparede is preparing a new special work on the reannexation of Strasburg. Documents inedits concernant l'Alsace et son gouvernement sous Louis XIV., published by M. Van-Huffel, pp.
126-133; 1840. Limiers, Histoire de Louis XIV. t. IV. p. 36 et seq. Larrei, Histoire
de Louis XIV. t. II. pp. 16-18.  Lettres pour servir h l'Histoire militaire de Louis
XIV. t. IV. pp. 449-474. Rfunion de Strasbourq ai la France; unpublished documents published by M. Coste; Strasbourg; Heltz.
VOL. I.         65




514             LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.                 1681.
point to overrun Italy, already encroached upon by the possession
of Pignerol. After the death of the Duke of Savoy, Charles
Emanuel II., in 1675, an able combination had been arranged for
this end. Louis had negotiated the marriage of the young duke,
Victor Amedeus II., with the heiress of Portugal. In case Victor
Amedeus should succeed to the throne of Portugal, Louis counted
on inducing him to cede Savoy and perhaps Piedmont to France.
The betrothal was already celebrated (March, 1681), and the young
duke, at the instigation of Louis, was about to set out for Lisbon,
whence Louis hoped to persuade him from ever returning, when
the Piedmontese nobles stirred up the people against this abandonment by their prince, and persuaded Victor Amedeus and his
mother, who governed under his name, to renounce this royal alliance.l Not to embroil himself with his formidable neighbor, Victor
Amedeus solicited the hand of the second daughter of the Duke
of Orleans, younger sister of the Queen of Spain, and espoused her
in 1684.
While this plot was thus broken up, another parallel enterprise
had full success. Louis aimed at again seizing the fortress of Casale,
which had played so important a part in the wars of Lombardy in
the time of Richelieu.  Casale and Montferrat belonged to Charles
IV. of Gonzague, Duke of Mantua: this prince had butone daughter and did not hope to transmit to her Montferrat, a male fief the
disposal of which the Emperor would not fail to claim in case of
vacancy; he moreover cared much more for his pleasures than his
sovereign rights. He attached little importance therefore to Casale,
and his necessities, constantly renewed by his expensive tastes, disposed him to listen to the offers of France. A certain Count Mattioli, who was at once the agent of his business and his debauchery,
at first conducted the negotiation. Louis XIV. offered a large sum
if he would receive a garrison into the citadel of Casale. Mattioli
played a double game and sold the secret of the intrigue to the
Spanish Governor of Milanais, while he sold his mediation to Louis
XIV. Be this as it may, the affair appeared foiled. Mattioli,
whose disloyalty was discovered, was lured to Pignerol, on French
territory, where an officer destined to a glorious xenown, Catinat,
seized his person and imprisoned him in tile fortress. He never
quitted the French prisons, and some have pretended to recognize
in this intriguer the celebrated Iron ilfask, which is very improbable.2
1 Victor Amedeus would have waited long for the crown of Portugal, for the
King, Don Pedro II., did not die until 1706.
2 See ante, p. 46. Histoire de l'homme au masque de fer, by M. Delort, 1825.




'1681.  CASALE OCCUPIED.  -515
This transpired in 1679. Two years after, the negotiation was
renewed and carried to a successful end, in consideration of 50,000
doubloons in ready money, and 600,000 livres annual pension to the
Duke of Mantua. A body of troops, commanded by Bouffiers and
Catinat, rapidly passed through Piedmont, with the consent of the
Regent of Savoy, and occupied the citadel of Casale September 30,
1681. The Duke of Mantua had sold only the citadel, but he was
soon compelled, willing or unwilling, to receive the King's troops
into the city and the ancient chateau of Casale.l
Louis invaded everywhere at once. The Spanish Netherlands
were encroached upon like cis-Rhenish Germany. The conqueror
had arranged a double means of action: on one hand, the chamber
of Metz and the old titles which it exhumed; on the other, the
interpretation of the treaty of: Nimeguen. He commenced by
the second means. Louis claimed that the towns and provinces
which he had occupied during the late war, and the restitution of
which had not been:specifically stipulated in the treaty, belonged
to him, although he had withdrawn his troops from-them at the
peace or even before. He therefore claimed the Ghentish territory
called the Burgraviate, or the Old Burg of Ghent, Bevern, and a
part of Quatre-M6tiers, Alost and its castellany, Grammont, Ninove, and Lessines. This was claiming the right of putting Ghent
and even Brussels in a state of permanent blockade. Spain, astounded, protested against these untenable pretensions. Louis was
pleased to acknowledge that he could not keep the said places without destroying communication between "the places obedient to the
Catholic King," and announced that he would willingly listen to
the propositions of exchange that might be made to him.2
This was what he wished to arrive at; he demanded the suburbs
of Ghent in order to gain possession of Luxemburg, a -possession
quite as important to France and less alarming to Holland and
England. The claims raised against Flanders were therefore only
a false attack; the real attack had been entered upon simultaneously
by the chamber of Metz. The chamber of reannexation, proceeding
towards Luxemburg as it had done towards the Electorate of
Treves and the Palatinate, had declared that the county of Chiny,
an appendage to Luxemburg, was under the jurisdiction of the
Bishopric of Metz. The Spaniards ceded Chiny, for fear of seeing
the French return to Flanders (July, 1681). The dependencies
of Chiny were then investigated, and this'obscure fief, the capital
- Lettres militaires, t. IV. pp. 475-532.
2 Prochs-verbal de la conference de Courtrai, 1681, p. 5.




516             LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.                1682.
town of which was only a hamlet, suddenly expanded to the gates
of Luxemburg, which it hemmed in on every side. The King of
Spain was summoned to render homage to the King of France for
a host of rere-fiefs. He protested, and the negotiations opened at
Courtrai were systematically protracted, the usual resource of the
weak. Louis blockaded Luxemburg, and laid the whole province
under a heavy ransom, to force the cabinet of Madrid to " do him
justice." In March, 1682, Marshal de Cr6qui came to take command of the troops. Everything announced that Luxemburg would
soon succumb by force or by famine, when suddenly Europe
learned that the blockade was raised, and that Louis had offered
Spain to refer the matter to the negotiation of the King of England. He did not wish, he said, to divide Christendom  at the
moment that it was threatened by the Turks, or to prevent Spain
from carrying assistance to the Emperor against the enemy of the
Christian name.1
This generosity was unexpected enough and was not destined to
continue long. The true motive of it was, as it appeared, to dispose Germany favorably towards a project much vaster and much
less rational than the acquisition of Luxemburg. This moderation
arose also from ambition. Be it as it may, Louis paused voluntarily
before the outcries of Europe, for none was in a position to dispute to him his prey.
No one yet armed himself, but every one talked, wrote, agitated,
from Stockholm to Madrid. The loss of Strasburg had fallen on
Germany like a thunderbolt: the Germanic body, a moment astounded, lifted up its head, shuddering; the King of Sweden was
wholly estranged by the conduct of Louis XIV.; the occupation
of Casale had carried dismay among the Italian States, who felt
the heavy hand of the conqueror weigh on them in turn; and Rome,
under Innocent XI., Austrian at heart, and engaged in serious
dissensions with Louis XIV., became a hot-bed of opposition to
France. Spain could do nothing for herself, and the Empire,
which could do more, was very slow and heavy to move; but the
formidable activity of the Prince of Orange endeavored to make
up for the powerlessness of the one, to excite the dilatoriness of
the other, and to draw on Holland in spite of herself, England in
spite of her King. The war of the pen preceded the war of the
sword; incessant appeals were addressed to European opinion by
indefatigable publicists; under all forms, historical dissertations,
1 Larrei, t. II. p. 30. Negociations du comnte d'Avaux, (ambassador in Holland,)
t. I. passim.




1681-1682.          PROJECTS OF EMPIRE.                     517
polemical treatises, pamphlets and pasquinades, was diffused the
terror of a new universal monarchy.  The designs of Louis XIV.
on the Imperial crown transpired on every side, and furnished irrefutable arguments to his adversaries, the same arguments which
France had formerly employed with so much success against the
House of Austria.  In July, 1681, a pretended plan of Imperial
capitulation was circulated through Germany, by which the Dauphin
was to be elected King of the Romans and presumptive successor
of Leopold. Louis XIV. was to restore to the Empire Lorraine,
Alsace, and Trois-Evech6s, and to charge himself with expelling
the Turks from Hungary. The greatness of France and the liberty of Germany were thus to be sacrificed at once to the greatness of the House of Bourbon. Be it as it may with respect to
these conditions, the project of inducing Germany to elect the King
or the Dauphin was not doubtful.1
The French writers did not reply to this polemic with their
former superiority; the ground was far more difficult to defend
than before, and the King, moreover, did not wish men of letters
to occupy themselves with his government, unless it were to admire
it at' a distance; publicists are not formed in this wise, and dithyrambics are not reasons. Diplomacy spared nothing to counterbalance these hostile manceuvres; it had itself become less able by
reason of being haughty; the humor of Louvois tinged everything.
Useless attempts were made to bring Holland to renew her ancient alliance with France. A policy more violent than firm had
been held towards the Prince of Orange. After the peace, he had
expressed to the King that " he desired the honor of being again
in his good graces." It was replied haughtily to these insincere
advances that " when he should show, by his conduct, that he really
had these sentiments, His Majesty would see what could be done." 2
Later, Louis, to punish the intrigues of William against him, razed
the walls of the town of Orange, treating William as he had treated
the Pope when he seized Avignon (August, 1682). William then
repeated what he had already said, that " the King should some day
know what it was to have outraged a prince of Orange." 3 It was
impossible to gain him again; he was exasperated while nothing
1 2lMmoires politiques by Dumont, t. I. p. 287. Limiers, t. IV. p. 104. De Nova
Mlonarchid non sperandd; Ratisbon, 1684. In this historico-political work, the opinion recently introduced of the Gallic origin of the Franks is refuted, and this
origin is claimed with reason for Germany.
2 D'Avaux, t. I. p. 10.
8 Ibid. p. 285.




'518           LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.           1681-1683.
serious was done to overthrow him, which would not perhaps have
been impossible by a bold stroke. England being paralyzed by its
King, and moreover not in a condition to act immediately, and Ger-.many being absorbed by the great war that was kindled between the
Emperor and the Turk, if a French army had suddenly presented
itself at the entrance of the United Provinces, announcing that it
came, not to subjugate the United Provinces, but to deliver them
from a chief who tyrannized over them within and endangered their
peace without, it is not certain that the revolution of 1672 would
not have been renewed in an inverse direction by the republican
party. Such was at least the opinion of the French ambassador
to the Hague, Count d'Avaux. From the summer of 1681, the
chances in favor of such an enterprise, which would have prevented
the formidable union of England and Holland, the end of the
Prince of Orange, were almost annihilated by the impression produced in Holland by the persecutions against the French Protestants. October 30, 1681, the United Provinces concluded with
Sweden a treaty of guaranty against all violations of the treaties
of Nimeguen and MUnster. The initiative had been taken by
Sweden. King Charles XI. replied in this manner to the seizure
of the duchy of Deux-Ponts. The Emperor acceded to the treaty
of guaranty February 28, 1682.
This first proceeding was not at first sustained by acts. William
could not determine the States-General to send to the aid of Luxemburg the eight thousand soldiers which they were bound to
furnish to Spain in case of the invasion of the Netherlands. Nevertheless, the voluntary raising of the blockade of Luxemburg did
not arrest the diplomatic progress of the coalition. Spain acceded
to it, May 2, 1682; divers treaties, conceived in the same meaning,
and to oppose "the unjust demands formed against the Empire and
against its members," were signed between the Emperor and the
Circles of Franconia and the Upper Rhine, the Bishop of Osnabriick, the King of Sweden, the Circles of Bavaria and Westphalia,
and the young Elector of Bavaria (June, 1682, March, 1683).
The brother-in-law of the Dauphin took part against France; this
was a new and poignant disaster to the matrimonial policy. On
February 6, and March 18, 1683, the' Emperor, Spain, Sweden,
and Holland concluded agreements of mutual assistance.'
It was still a long way from this to action. Fear or private
interests greatly restrained the German princes. The Elector of
Brandenburg, so influential in the north and west of the Empire,
1 Dumont, Corps diplomatique, t. VII. Part II. pp. 22, 60.




1682-1683.'DIPLOMATIC MOVEMENTS.                 519
had some grievances against the Emperor and did not follow the
movement; he had, on the contrary, in September, 1682, entered
into a compact with the King of Denmark and the Bishop of Miinster, designed to prevent the reopening of hostilities between France
and the Empire. Denmark had become reconciled with -France in
proportion as its rival, Sweden, had become alienated from it; it
had a secret treaty with Louis XIV., who accorded it a subsidy
and promised to defend divers claims of the Danish monarch and
to defend him if necessary against Sweden and Holland.
Louis continued to labor to calm Germany, and, on this point,
he returned apparently to a more prudent course of conduct. He
went so far as to offer to restore to the Empire all the annexations
effected by his tribunals,: together with Freiburg, on condition that
he should retain Strasburg and that Philippsburg should be razed.
This offer attested how far Louis appreciated the importance of
Strasburg. The Germanic Diet refused, and the negotiations of
Frankfort remained without result (September, 1681, December,
1682); but this refusal was only a protest, it was not war. On
one hand, the sinews of war were lacking; it had been easy to
organize a coalition on paper, but Holland, when the point in question was to make pecuniary engagements and to become again the
banker of the coalition, - Holland drew- back, and the Prince of Orange could gain nothing from her. On another side, the Emperor
was exposed to such perils on the Danube that he would have been
unable, without madness, to expose himself to war on the Rhine.
The Imperial arms experienced reverses after reverses from the
Hungarian insurgents, led by Tekeli. The Ottoman Porte, by a
resolve to which French diplomacy was not a stranger, had refused
to renew its truce with the Emperor; it had proclaimed Tekeli
Prince of Hungary under the suzerainty of the Sultan, and was
making immense preparations to assail the Emperor in Austria.
The adversaries of Louis found themselves therefore reduced to
impotence, and their resentment found vent provisionally in words
and writings. Louis was enabled to fortify himself at leisure in
the conquests of a peace as profitable as a successful war, and to
prepare for new invasions.
Parallel with these territorial acquisitions, more fruitful than
glorious, since they were without perils and without combats, brilliant expeditions sustained the ardor and increased the renown of
the French navy. By a strange contrast, it was in some sort
Colbert who waged war, while Louvois effected conquests without
drawing the sword. The French squadrons appeared at once in




520             LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.            1673-1681.
the Baltic, to prevent war by intimidating the Swedes, and in the
Mediterranean to wage it. After a few years' truce since the fall
of Candia, Christendom began again to struggle with the Mussulmans, and Louis XIV. played a double part in the conflict. He
contributed secretly to draw the arms of the Turks upon Austria
and Germany, in order to oblige Germany to throw itself upon his
aid, and he was fully resolved this time no longer to figure as a
mere auxiliary, as at the time of the battle of Saint Gothard, but
to impose himself as a savior, if recourse were had to him. Meanwhile he had an excellent means of making a parade of zeal for
Christianity, without breaking prematurely with the Porte, - to
attack with vigor the Moorish pirates, who unceasingly violated
all treaties, and inflicted on Christian nations constantly renewed
suffering and disgrace.
The Sultan had no right to complain of the punishment of his
insubordinate vessels, which continually infringed on his orders;
yet an incident of the war against the pirates was near embroiling
France and the Ottoman empire. In 1673, a commercial treaty
had terminated a misunderstanding of several years: France had
recovered her precedence and other privileges from the Porte, and
obtained the reduction of the export and import duties on merchandise from five per cent. to three per cent., as for the most favored
nations. Colbert had for a moment thought to obtain a concession
far more important, - the transit from India by Egypt, in consideration of a duty of two per cent. ad valorem between Suez and
Alexandria. The Sultan had at first consented; but the Imam of
Mecca and the Mufti opposed the opening of the Red Sea to the
ships of infidels, and English intrigues seconded Mussulman fanaticism. It was necessary to renounce this design, which would:
have almost given the pacific realization of the great project of
Leibnitz.1 France and the Ottoman empire had been nevertheless on tolerably good terms since 1673, when, in 1681, a squadron
of Tripolitan corsairs having carried off a French ship on the coast
of Provence, Duquesne, at the head of seven vessels, pursued the.
pirates into the waters of Greece. They took refuge in the: harbor
of Scio.  Duquesne summoned the Pacha of Scio to expel them.
The Pacha refused, and fired on the French squadron, when Duquesne cannonaded both the pirates and the town with such violence that the Pacha, terrified, asked for a truce, in order to refer
the matter to the Sultan (July 23, 1681). Duquesne converted the
1 Dumont, Corps diplomatique, t. VII. p. 233. Lavallee, Des relations de la France
avec l'Orient; ap. Revue independante of November 25, 1843.




1681-1682.     BOMBARDMENT OF ALGIERS..     521
attack into a blockade. At the news of this violation of the Ottoman territory, the Sultan Mahomet IV. fell into a rage, threatened
*the French,ambassador with the bowstring or the Seven Towers
if France did not make a striking reparation, and dispatched the
Captain-Pacha to Scio with thirty-two galleys. Duquesne allowed
the Turkish galleys to enter the harbor, then blockaded them with
the pirates, and declared that he would burn the whole if satisfaction were not had of the Tripolitans.
The Divan hesitated. War was about to recommence with the
Emperor; it was not the moment to kindle it against France.
The French ambassador Guilleragues made a concession: he
offered the Sultan in his own name, not in that of the King his
master, a present which might pass in the eyes of the Turks for a
species of reparation. The Divan, on its side, compelled the Tripolitans to give up the French vessel and slaves that they had captured. The regency of Tripoli solicited peace, and promised to
receive a French consul at Tripoli charged with watching over its
observance.
During this time another squadron, commanded by ChateauRenault, blockaded the coasts of Morocco, the men of Maghreb
having rivalled in depredations the vassals of Turkey. The powerful Emperor of Morocco, Muley Ismael, sent the governor of Tetuan to France to solicit peace of Louis XIV. The treaty was signed
at Saint-Germain, January 29, 1682, on advantageous conditions:
restitution of the French slaves, freedom  of trade, without other
duties than those paid by the inhabitants of Morocco themselves,
permission to establish consuls at Sale, Tetuan, and wherever the
King might wish, etc.l
Affairs did not terminate so amicably with Algiers. From this
piratical centre had proceeded the gravest offences. A captain of
the royal navy was held in slavery there, with many other Frenchmen. It was resolved to inflict a terrible punishment on the Algerines. The thought of conquering Algeria had more than once
presented itself to the King and Colbert, and they appreciated the
value of this conquest;2 the Jijeli expedition had been formerly
a first attempt. They did not, however, deem it incumbent on
them to embark in such an enterprise; a descent, a siege, would
have required too great preparations; they had recourse to another
1 Vie de Colbert, ap. Archives curieuses, 2d series, IX. 136. Flassan, IV. pp.
33-52. Eugene Sue, Marinefranlaise, III. p. 375. Dumont, t. VII. Part II. p. 18.
2 See the plan for the conquest of Algiers, inserted in the Archives curieuses de
l'Histoire de France, 2d series, t. X. p. 79..
VOL. I.           66




522             LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.            1682-1683.
means of attack. The regenerator of the art of naval construction, Petit-Renau, invented bomb-ketches expressly for the purpose, -a species of fire-ships designed to burn, not vessels, but
maritime towns.  It had not been thought possible hitherto to
employ mortars at sea. Petit-Renau built strong flat-bottomed
wooden vessels, and made mortar-beds on an elastic false deck.
It was thought that these strange craft would be unseaworthy.
Petit-Renau, with the audacity of genius, made the trial, from
Dunkirk to Havre, in a terrible winter storm.
July 23, 1682, Duquesne anchored before Algiers, with eleven
ships, fifteen galleys, five bomb-ketches, and Petit-Renau to guide
them. After five weeks' delay caused by bad weather, then by a
fire on one of the bomb-ketches, the thorough trial took place
during the night of August 30. The effect was terrible: a part
of the great mosque fell on the crowd that had taken refuge there.
During the night of September 3-4, the Algerines attempted to
capture the bomb-ketches moored at the entrance of their harbor; they were repulsed, and the bombardment continued. The
Dey wished to negotiate; the people, exasperated, prevented him.
The wind shifting to the northwest presaged the equinoctial storm;
Duquesne set sail again, September 12.
The expedition had not been decisive. It was begun anew.
June 18, 1683, Duquesne reappeared in the road of Algiers; he
had, this time, seven bomb-ketches instead of five. These instruments of extermination had been perfected in the interval. The
nights of June 26-27 witnessed the overthrow of a great number
of houses, several mosques, and the palace of the Dey. A thousand men perished in the harbor and the town. The Dey, Baba
Hassan, dispatched a French missionary, Father Levacher, to conjure Duquesne to suspend the fire, and sent back seven hundred
slaves of French birth or taken on French vessels, among whom
was Captain Beaujeu. The negotiations were prolonged for three
weeks, on account of the damages which Duquesne claimed to
impose on the enemy, when one of the Algerine chiefs, HadgiHussein, whom the Eranks called Mezzo Morto, stirred up the janizaries, massacred the Dey, and caused himself to be proclaimed in
his place (July 27). The bombardment was resumed with increasing violence. The bomb-ketches returned nightly to vomit
destruction on Algiers. The Algerines avenged themselves by
binding to the muzzles of their guns a number of Frenchmen who
remained in their hands. The mutilated remains of the courageous
missionary Levacher were thus hurled amidst the French fleet.




1684.              PEACE WITH ALGIERS.                     523
Every one knows the touching anecdote of the Chevalier de Choiseul, who, already bound to a gun, was saved by the devotion of a
Mussulman pirate, who had been his captive, and whom he had
treated generously. The fury of the Algerines drew upon them
redoubled calamities. The day was no longer left them to recover
from the horrors of the night.  The bombs rained almost without
intermission. The harbor was strewn with the wrecks of vessels.
The city was no longer but a heap of bloody ruins. The new Dey
was crippled by the bursting of a bomb.
The bomb-ketches had exhausted their ammunition. September
was approaching. Duquesne again departed; but a strong blockading force was kept up, during the whole winter, as a standing
threat of the return of the "infernal vessels."   The Algerines
finally bowed their head, and, April 25, 1684, peace was accorded
by Tourville, the commander of the blockade, to the Pacha,' Dey,
Divan, and troops of Algiers. The Algerines restored three hundred and twenty French slaves remaining in their power, and one
hundred and eighty other Christians claimed by the King; the
janizaries only which had been taken from them were restored;
they engaged to make no prizes within ten leagues of the coasts of
France, nor to assist the other Moorish corsairs at war with France;
to recognize the precedence of the flag of France over all other
flags, &c., &c.; lastly, they sent an embassy to carry their submission to Louis XIV.; they did not, however, pay the damages
which Duquesne had wished to exact of them. The settlements of
Bastion de France, Calle, and Cape Rose, were restored to a
French merchant, who was their proprietor, with the privilege of
the coral fishery.2
Such had been, as a whole, the external policy of Louis XIV.
during the first years that followed the peace of Nimeguen; it had
been signalized by brilliant successes, successes obtained by irregular and violent means, but nevertheless guided in the direction of
the true destinies of France. The external policy, if it excited dangerous resentments, if it blended with happy enterprises gigantic
and fatal dreams, at least effected great things and increased the
national power.
1 The Porte still kept a pacha in each of the regencies of Algiers and Tunis, but
his authority was little more than nominal. It was from Colbert that Tourville
held his powers, the Minister of the Marine having charge of all that concerned
the Levant and Barbary.
2 Dumont, t. VII. Part II. p. 75. Vie de Colbert, pp. 142-173. Mem. de Villette, p.
61. E. Sue, t. III. liv. vii. ch. 14. L. Guerin, Histoire maritime de la France, t. I.
pp. 609-519.




524              LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.             1643-1674.
The internal policy drew France into perils as great, and perils
without compensation. This policy, far from urging forward the
national destinies, thrust them back towards the past. The man
who personified in himself the knowledge of the true national interests, Colbert, felt the very heart of the country stung by new
calamities worse and less reparable than the evils of the most cruel
war.
We must here go back a little way in affairs.
Religious questions had regained for a few years constantly increasing political importance. Two great matters, one, however,
much graver than the other, and the gravest that could agitate
France, were combined at this moment: these were the struggle:
of monarchical Gallicanism against Rome and the work of the destruction of Protestantism.
To judge, with historic truth, of the fatal renewal of religious
persecutions under Louis XIV., we must first put aside two points
of view equally erroneous. The apologists of the Great King have
sought to seek an excuse for him in a pretended spirit of sedition
which was preserved among the Protestants; this is utterly false;
the Protestant masses, since the time of Richelieu, had not given
the government the least serious reason for complaint.1 The adversaries of Louis XIV., on the other side, have too often appeared
to imagine that this monarch, in renewing religious persecutions in
an enlightened age, put France under the ban of civilization and
outside European manners. This point of view is no truer than
the other. This was not the crime of Louis XIV. France was
not on the level of Europe, and Louis did not sink her beneath this
level; France was, in point of religious liberty, far above the level
of Europe, and Louis precipitated her from the height of this
superiority!
Let us cast our eyes, indeed, on the European nations in the
seventeenth century,- what do we see everywhere, if not religious
intolerance? In Spain, in Italy, in Austria, in Poland, Catholic
intolerance; in England, in Scandinavia, in Geneva, Protestant
intolerance! In Holland and the greater part of the Germanic
States, if no longer persecution as in the other states, at least inequality, interdiction of public offices to dissenters, obstacles to
worship, if not total prohibition; again, if the condition of Germany
was better with respect to tolerance than that of the rest of Europe,
it was to the treaty of Westphalia, that is to France, that it was due.
1 There are strange exaggerations on this subject in a memoir written by the.
Duke of Burgundy, and cited by the Duke de Noailles in his Histoire de madame de
~Maintenon.




1643-1674.        PROTESTANT AFFAIRS.                   525
Let us now cast our eyes again on France; — we find not only
mere tolerance, but equality of rights among individuals, without
distinction between Catholics and Protestants; not only liberty of
conscience, but liberty, save a few reservations, and almost equality
of both forms of worship; a social system until then unknown to
the Christian world, and for which France had not paid too dearly
by forty years of calamity.  " Now," says the preamble of the
Edict of Nantes, " that it pleases God to allow us to begin to taste
repose, we esteem that we can employ it no better than by providing that he may be adored and prayed to by all our subjects, and,
if it has not pleased him to permit this to be done as yet in the
same form, that it may be done at least in the same intention." For
the first time, in this immortal document, the different beliefs, instead of hurling anathemas at each other, embrace each other in
the same intention; it recognizes that they tend, by different paths,
to the same end, towards God, and that neither comes from hell!
Political philosophy had therefore made a first and happy effort in
France to separate questions of individual conscience from social
duty, to separate the citizen from the believer, that is to say, (for
it is important here clearly to define terms!) not to establish an
Atheistic law, which would be nonsense, but to separate the fundamental religious principles, the principles which result from the
nature of the human soul, and which are the social bond itself, from
the beliefs which should belong exclusively to the domain of individual liberty. The Edict of Nantes, in ceasing to consider the
Roman Catholic dogmas as the social bond, sought this bond in the
dogmas common to Catholicism and Protestantism; the domain of
liberty required more; it was only a first step, but this step was
immense.
It was from this social and philosophical superiority, given to
France by Henri IV. in realizing the maxims of L'Hospital, that
Louis XIV. was about to cast down our country. Our religious
laws, in the seventeenth century, were more advanced than our
manners; the masses had not yet cordially accepted this legislation of mutual tolerance, and the laws themselves had not clearly
enough enunciated the principle conquered. There was, even in
the preamble which we have just cited, a reservation very natural,
since the most enlightened minds did not yet comprehend that
complete unity of belief and worship is incompatible with the laws
of the human mind; but most deplorable conclusions were destined
to be drawn from this reservation. " It has not pleased God,"
says the preamble, "to permit men as yet to pray in the same




526               LOUIS XIV. AND  COLBERT.                1652-1661.
form." It was hoped, therefore, to return some day to this unity
of form. By the side of this wholly benevolent reservation, a
sinister reservation had been maintained in the formulas of the
monarchy; Henri IV. had not dared efface from  the coronation
rites the oath to exterminate heretics.  "The power of principles,"
we have said elsewhere, " cannot be prescribed. Principles maintained in forms are destined some day to return in facts!" 1
For many years, the peril was not manifest. The practical conduct of the government was excellent under Richelieu, although
the principles were less explicit than under Henri IV. Under
Mazarin there was no deviation, as long as the ministerial authority
was contested, and the Protestants were treated with much consideration during the Fronde; they even obtained, in May, 1652,
in reward for their "affection and fidelity," and in spite of the remonstrances of the assembly of the clergy,2 a declaration by which
all decrees of the royal councils and the sovereign courts which
might in any way prejudice the Edict of Nantes, or the other
edicts, decrees, regulations, &c., issued in their favor, seemed revoked. The government once strengthened, less circumspection
began to be shown them, and a disposition appeared to restrain
their liberties. In 1656, a new declaration annulled in part that
of 1652, under pretext of interpreting it, and charged two commissioners, one of each religion, to visit each province in order to take
cognizance of differences relative to the Edict of Nantes. Several
ordinances and decrees unfavorable to the Reformers succeeded each
other in the closing years of Mazarin.  In December, 1656, their
worship was interdicted in episcopal towns and in localities belonging to ecclesiastics; ministers were forbidden to preach elsewhere
than in their place of residence. In January, 1657, a decree in
council decided that the churches built by Protestant nobles should
be demolished when the fief should pass to a Catholic noble, and
that they could not be rebuilt if the estate were resold to a Protestant. A decree of May, 1659, forbade Reformers, where worship
was not authorized, to sing psalms, even in their apartments, so as
to be heard outside.3
The progress of monarchical power and unity turned against
1 See Vol. X., Martin's Histoire de France, p. 846.
2 " We do not ask your Majesty, Sire, to banish at present from your kingdom
that unhappy liberty of conscience which is destroying the true liberty of the children
of God, because we do not deem that this would be easy of execution, but we desire at least
that... if your authority cannot all at once stifle this evil it would enfeeble it and
cause it to perish by degrees." - Remontrance du cler.qe de France, etc., Paris, 1651.
8 Anciennes Loisfranfaises, t. XVII. pp. 335,: 339, 345, 369.




1661-1662.          RETROGRADE ACTS.                     527
them, though they had long since forgotten their old pretensions
to become a State within a State. The greatest share, however, in
these malevolent measures should be attributed, not to the initiative
of the government, but to the pressure exercised by the clergy on
the depositaries of the royal authority. The quinquennial assembly
of the clergy, too well seconded by the tribunals of all kinds,
waged an infuriated, indefatigable war on the liberties of the heretics; between the Protestant synod, which solicited money of the
King to support its pastors, and the assembly of the clergy, which
gave it to him, the chances were not equal; the Mazarin government, encumbered with debt and zealous for the interests of the
public treasury, purchased gratuities of the clergy at the expense
of the Huguenot liberties.
Mazarin, however, was too prudent and too much an enemy of
violence to go very far in this direction.; but he died, and the accession of Louis XIV. brought new principles, more elevated, more
systematic, but at the same time still more unfavorable to the Reformation. We have set forth elsewhere the views of Louis XIV.
on this subject, as he enunciated them himself in writing his Memoirs about 1670; he was then much opposed to the idea of persecuting the Reformers violently and of revoking the Edict of Nantes,
but fully decided to undermine the Reformation by refusing all
boons, all favors to obstinate Protestants, by lavishing his bounties
on converted Protestants, by restricting the privileges accorded to
the Reformed worship "within the narrowest bounds that justice
and propriety could permit." In theory, this fell far short of the
doctrines of Bossuet, who stigmatized as infidels "those who were
unwilling that the prince should employ rigor with respect to religion." 1 In practice, the bounds of justice and propriety receded
from day to day, and permitted almost everything except the absolute interdiction of worship.
During the first years of the government of Louis XIV., immense strides were taken in the opposite direction from Mazarin,
who had himself fallen behind Richelieu. Since the Edict of
Nantes, the Reformers had held national synods every three years.
In 1662, the triennial epoch arrived, the King did not authorize
them to reassemble, and they were given to understand that they
must henceforth content themselves with provincial synods. The
preceding year, the conferences had been already interdicted; that
is to say, the general assemblies and the special assemblies were at
once suppressed; leaving subsisting provisionally the intermediate
1 Politique de l'Ecriture sainte, 1. vII.




528              LOUrS XIV. AND COLBERT.            1661-1665.
degree, the provincial assemblies. The same decree had forbidden
ministers to salute persons in authority in a body; they were thus
deprived of the public character which had been acknowledged to
them (March 17, 1661).1  Another decree had forbidden Protestant noblemen to have in their houses any public token of the
exercise of their religion (March 24, 1661). The Reformed worship was prohibited in the greater part of the province of Gex,
under pretext that this province had been conquered from the
House of Savoy subsequently to the Edict of Nantes, and was not
comprised in it; as a favor, two "places of worship " were left the
Reformers of Gex; one of the two was Fernex (Ferney).  The
King granted the Catholics of Gex a respite of three years to pay
their debts to the Reformers who, more industrious and active, held
the greater part of the capital in the province (January, 1663).
It is difficult to imagine a stranger intervention of power in private
relations. This became a system. The importunities of the clergy
soon obtained from the King a decision of a more general character
and more formidable scope. The right to change religion follows
naturally from the liberty of conscience; nevertheless, the clergy
unceasingly solicited the material punishment of those whom they
styled apostates and backsliders; that is, of the Catholics who became Protestants, and the converted Protestants who returned to
their former belief. In the time of Richelieu, in 1638, the bishops
of Languedoc had urged their intendant to render provisional ordinances in this direction. Richelieu cut short this beginning of persecution, and sanctioned religious liberty by regulating the formalities with which a Catholic must comply to change his religion.
The clergy returned to the charge under Mazarin, who saw the
consequences of the ecclesiastical pretensions and resisted them.
Mazarin dead, the clergy renewed their entreaties with the young
King, and succeeded in great part. In April, 1663, a royal declaration forbade all Protestants who had become Catholics to return
to the so-called Reformed religion, and all priests or religionists to
embrace the Reformation; this was to take away from the Edict
of Nantes its principle and its foundation: thenceforth free choice
between the two principal forms of Christianity was no longer the
common right of Frenchmen. The magistracy, almost always in
harmony with the clergy when the Reformation was in question,
immediately fell upon the apostates and backsliders; the royal council was forced to interfere to forbid the giving to the declaration a
1 In 1664, they were forbidden to wear cassocks and robes with sleeves. Anciennes Loisfranpaises, t. XVII. p. 400; t. XVIII. p. 38.




1665.            RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION.                    529
retroactive effect, then to determine what penalty should be inflicted thenceforth on apostates and backsliders; the penalty decreed
was perpetual banishment (June, 1665).1
Thus recommenced religious persecution. The edict against
backsliders was one day to have far more terrible consequences than
Louis XIV. had foreseen.
The clergy pursued their victorious march. Their tactics were
to present a petition to a tribunal in some particular case; the decree, once rendered, if contrary to the Protestants, was not long
in being confirmed by a contradictory decree; then a general decree
was obtained in the matter; lastly, the general decree was transformed into a declaration of the King, a law of the State. Several very grave acts followed the edict against backsliders. A
decree in council, July 21, 1664, annulled all letters of mastership
granted by the King which did not specify that the grantee was of
the Catholic religion. This time, a retroactive effect was given to
this decree. The Reformers could no longer become master-workmen in the trades except "by way of masterpiece."  This first
blow dealt to their industry was only the application of the principle laid down by Louis - the exclusion of Reformers from all royal
favors. But the access to masterships by the usual way of " masterpiece" did not even remain open everywhere: for instance,
the linen-drapers of Paris were ordered to shut out from their community all Protestant women (August 21, 1665). At Rouen, in
all the trades, at Paris, in the corporation of mercers, but one Protestant was received to fifteen Catholics. In many places it was
endeavored to exclude them entirely, jealousy and cupidity according with fanaticism. After industry, the family was attacked; a
declaration of October 24, 1665, authorized Protestant children
to change their religion, despite their parents, from the age of fourteen for boys, of twelve for girls, and to quit their parents, requiring of them an annuity. Natural rights and the union of all Protestant families were given up to the discretion of devotees and
churchmen, who believed themselves permitted to do anything to
snatch the children of heretics from the devil. A decree in council, of the preceding May 12, had not less violated the family and
humanity by authorizing ecclesiastics to present themselves in the
houses of sick Protestants, and to demand of them, through a magistrate or a municipal officer, in what religion " they wished to die." 2
1 Histoire de l'6dit de Nantes, t. III. pp. 466-520. Rulhiere, Eclaircissements sur les
causes de la revocation de 1' fdit de Nantes, p. 36.
2 Histoire de l'efdit de Nantes, t. IV. pp. 19-22.
VOL. I.           67




530              LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.              1665-1666.
Another edict, of April 24, 1665, had considerably increased the
powers of the commissioners of the Edict of Nantes, established in
1656, while among these commissioners the Protestants ceased to
be on a footing of equality with the Catholics. A year after, April 2,
1666, a general regulation concerning the exercise of the so-called
Reformed religion was issued on the demand of the assembly of the
clergy; this is enough to tell what was its spirit. It had been preceded by restrictive measures against consistories, and was accompanied with a prohibition to Protestant private individuals to keep
academies (establishments of higher instruction) for the education
of the young nobility. Neither could Reformers open new colleges
without letters-patent, which were never accorded to them.  This
long series of vexations cast dismay among the Protestant population. While the provincial synods raised their plaintive voices on
all sides to the King, a considerable number of families quitted
France, and the Reformers began to learn that road to exile which
so many thousand Frenchmen were destined to follow.
It was in the most active, the most laborious portion of the bour.
geoisie that Protestantism was most firmly rooted; in proportion as
the disfavor of the ruling power rendered public functions less accessible to the Reformers, they had concentrated more in the industrial and commercial occupations, and the almost universal conversion of the Huguenot upper nobility had had few imitators among
this serious and rigid bourgeoisie.  Colbert deemed the future of
his institutions and the fortune of France endangered, should so
many useful men, the most solid props of his designs, be driven to
despair. He energetically employed in their defence that salutary
ascendency which Louis XIV. had not yet learned to shake off;
he appealed from sacerdotal and parliamentary passion to the interest of the State, the equity of the King.  He was seconded by
considerations of external policy. The Elector of Brandenburg
had addressed to the King respectful remonstrances in favor of the
French Reformers.  Louis, who at that time still treated the Protestant powers with circumspection, replied graciously to the Elector, assured him that he intended to maintain the Protestants " on
an equality with his other subjects," (September 6, 1666,) and
paused some time on the fatal declivity down which he was impelled.1 The zeal of the parliaments,2 the intendants, and the
l Histoire de l1'dit de Nantes, t. IV. p. 12.
2 It is to be remarked that the great parliament, the parliament of Paris, more
enlightened than the others, was less persecuting. The parliament of Rouen, on
the contrary, consoled itself by implacably pursuing the Huguenots, for being no
longer permitted to burn sorcerers.




1666-1674.       PERSECUTION ARRESTED.                    531
clergy was restrained: the thunder-claps of decrees and royal
declarations no longer followed each other unceasingly; the general regulation of 1666, on, or rather against the exercise of the
pretended Reformed worship, was even revoked by a declaration
of February 1, 1669, which forbade the constraining or inducing
of Protestant children to change religion; and, without restoring to
Protestants eligibility to masterships granted by royal letters, expressly confirmed their right to be received into all kinds of trades,
"'according to the usual forms of apprenticeships and masterpieces," only they could not be superior in numbers to Catholics in
the wardenships, "while the communities were reputed Catholic."
In Languedoc, however, by concession to the fiery zeal of the Provincial States swayed by the clergy, it was decreed that the Protestants, instead of one half, could form but one third of the corporations. They were still held eligible to municipal offices; they
regained freedom to print their reigious books without special permission from the magistrates. The King interdicted curds and
monks to present themselves in the houses of sick Protestants
unless they were summoned, and also redressed some other grievances.1
The Reformers fancied that they saw the opening of an era of
reparation and the return of the time of Henri'IV.  From 1666
to about 1674 they breathed under the protection of Colbert; they
took the decrees and edicts which at times still disquieted them for
the last rumbling of an expiring storm.
Notwithstanding, sundry hostile acts indicated, at intervals, that
if the system was softened, it was not wholly changed.  Local
measures of oppression were ratified by the royal council; for instance, the Reformers were excluded from the trade-corporations at
La Rochelle, under the pretext that this city had formerly lost its
privileges on account of its rebellion; BWarn was reduced to twenty
"' places of worship" from more than one hundred and twenty
which it had; other churches were suppressed in divers provinces.
A few weeks before the declaration of February 18, 1669, the
King had suppressed the Chambers of the Edict, instituted, conformably to the Edict of Nantes, in the parliaments of Paris and
Rouen, to judge cases in which the Reformers were concerned. In
fact, the Reformers had not great interest in them so long as there
was not a single councillor of their religion in these chambers, and
as the chambers of inquiry, to which they were now referred, had
each a Protestant councillor; but in principle everything that in1 Histoire de l'ddit de Nantes, t. IV. p. 110.




532              LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.             1669-1676.
fringed on the Edict of Nantes was a grave matter, Another meas-ure, which did not specially concern the Protestants, was destined
later, combined with the edict against backsliders, to become the
great machine of destruction with respect to them: this was the
edict of August, 1669, against emigration. This edict forbade,
under pain of confiscation of body and goods, not only enlistment
in the military or maritime service of foreign countries, but, in
general, settlement in foreign countries without intention of returning, by marriage, acquisition of real estate and transportation
of family and goods.l This was the absolute denial of the right
of expatriation, - an exceptional right which ethics can admit only
in rare cases and with severe restrictions, but which policy cannot
absolutely proscribe without committing a grave offence against
human personality.  We shall see what were the consequences of
the principle just laid down.
The return of the King to mere moderate conduct towards the
Reformers had been caused in part by the hope of a peaceful union
of the two religions. Louis clung, as we have already said, to the
idea which Richelieu had entertained, of gaining over the Protestant pastors by concessions on a few points of discipline and worship, and bringing back their flocks through them to the unity of
the Church. The controversial genius of Bossuet, and the golden
seductions of the court, were alike to participate in this work. It
was a pure delusion. A few private individuals suffered themselves to be won; but, the alarm once given, the body of pastors
resisted, and the project miscarried completely at the first serious
attempt in the provincial synod of the Ile-de-France held at Charenton in 1673.
From 1674, the oppressive edicts and decrees began to follow
each other anew: - November 6,- 1674, prohibition to ministers to
settle or preach outside their residence; - December 27, 1675April 15, 1676, prohibition to synods to give ministers to nobles of
fiefs which had not yet had any; —August 28, 1676, daughters
of Reformers, aged twelve and upwards, who had been received
into the House of the Propagation at Sedan, should not be forced
to see their parents until they had made their abjuration, lest the
parents might endeavor to shake their resolution "by tears or reproaches "; that is, the young Protestant girl, once drawn into a
convent, no matter by what means, was deprived of all communication with her family until she had changed her religion: this was
1 Anciennes Lois francaises, t. XVIII. p. 366. Rulhiere, p. 50. Histoire de'e'dit de
Nantes, t. IV. pp. 123-167.




1676-1679.       FUND FOR CONVERSIONS.                    533
practised everywhere as at Sedan; — July 23, 1677, prohibition to
the Reformers to suborn Catholics, under penalty of one thousand
livres' fine.'
We have seen that, in the plans of Louis XIV., set forth by
himself, this disfavor towards the obstinate, favor towards the docile,
were to concur in the same end. Louis was faithful to his designs.
In 1676 he founded a singular institution to accelerate the conversion of heretics. In 1618, Louis XIII. had assigned a fund to the
support of converted Protestants; the assemblies of the clergy had
also voted from thirty thousand to forty thousand livres annually for
ministers who might embrace Catholicism; a Calvinist minister, it
was said, who should abandon his functions to embrace the Catholic
faith, must not be left to starve on account of having abjured his
error; this was specious, and remained long within tolerably modest bounds. But in 1676, Louis XIV. devoted, no longer to conversions made, but to conversions to be made, the revenue of the abbeys
of Saint-Germain-des-Pres and Cluny, and one third of the stewardships, that is, one third of the revenue of the vacant benefices. The
convert Pellisson was commissioned to keep this fund and to superintend its distribution.  Pellisson distributed the money to the
bishops, with instructions how to employ it, and established a true
market of conscience among the lowest part of the Protestant
population. This was in the closing years of the war with Holland; the misery was great: in the poorest countries the rate for
conversions did not exceed, on the average, six livres per head.
The converts were required to accompany their receipt with a
formal abjuration. "The eloquence of Pellisson, less learned, but
far more persuasive than that of Bossuet," was not long in becoming proverbial.  Calvinism, already encroached upon among the
upper nobility, was thus attacked at the other extremity, among
the dregs of the people. This success, swollen by all sorts of surprises and frauds, deluded the King as to the facility of pushing
the enterprise further. Nevertheless, the great number who relapsed and returned to the chapels, after spending their six livres,
ought to have enlightened Louis as to the value of these conversions.  He saw in it only another nrotive for being still more
rigorous, and a declaration of March 13, 1679, added, to the banishment which punished backsliders, recantation and confiscation of
goods.2
It was during a jubilee and one of the King's paroxysms of de1 Anciennes Lois franqaises, t. XIX. pp. 150, 157, 163, 175.
2 Rulhibre, p. 100,




534             LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.            1666-1670.
votion that the fund for conversions had been established. In the
conduct of Louis XIV. towards the Reformers, by the side of the
spirit of despotic unity, there was also a share to be ascribed to
religious zeal. This share tended to increase more and more,
and the devotional spirit was destined to urge the King further
than the monarchical spirit, which might have been restrained to
a certain point, by political judgment.  The moral state of the
King and the war against the Reformation were thenceforth to
be closely allied. Louis thought to obtain pardon for his sins by
bringing back to the Church its strayed subjects, and the two ideas
of his own reform and of the extinction of heresy in his kingdom
were developed simultaneously within him. The internal history
of the court assumes new importance -at this epoch. During the
first period of the reign, the private life, the personal affections of
Louis XIV., had belonged rather to anecdotical than to general history. Louis had faithfully practised the precepts which he gives
his son in his Memoirs; namely, that a king, "if he cannot guarantee himself from the weaknesses common to the rest of mankind,
should at least, while abandoning his heart, remain master of his
mind," and absolutely separate his business from his pleasures.l
The modest La Valliere had not desired, the haughty Montespan
had not been able, to influence public affairs. For the iirst time
under this reign, a woman appears, who is about to become insensibly a political personage called to act. on the destinies of France,
and the nature of her relations with the King will be such that
Louis will not think himself derogating from his principles in
accepting an influence destined to be, later, exaggerated and transformed into absolute dominion by popular prejudice.
In 1666, Madame de Montespan, already high in favor with the
King, without being as yet his mistress, had recommended to his
kindness a young woman of a distinguished but poor family, whom
the comic poet Scarron had married through charity and had left
a widow in indigence. She was a converted Protestant, granddaughter of the brave and eloquent D'Aubign6, the friend of
Henri IV. A few years after, Madame de Montespan introduced
her prot6g6e to the intimacy of the King, by charging her with
secretly educating the children that she had given to Louis. Madame Scarron found means to cause herself to be entreated by
the King himself to accept this delicate office, which she wished to
hold directly "from the father and not from the mother" (1670).
The King, who at first had testified little sympathy for her and
1 (Euvres de Louis XIV., t. II. p. 291.




1672.               MADAME SCARRON.                     535
found her too prudish, was not long in taking a fancy to her.
There was a harmony of mind and manners between them which
was destined to increase with age, and her regular, gentle, and serious beauty, heightened by rare natural dignity, was essentially fitted
to please Louis. She loved consideration as he loved glory; like
him, reserved, circumspect, yet full of attraction and grace, she
had the same charm of conversation, and sustained this charm
longer by the resources of a richer imagination and a more varied
education. Like him, she had the individuality of vigorous and
self-seeking organizations, yet she was susceptible of lasting and
solid, if not ardent affections: she was at once less passionate and
more constant than the King, who was to be, in friendship as in
love, truly constant to her alone; but she had never known what
it was to sacrifice to her feelings either her interests or her repose;
contrary to Louis XIV., she was devoted in small things and
devoid of generosity in great ones. Like him, lastly, by nature
and not by hypocrisy, she was fond, above all, of order, conventionality, appearances,- a strange contrast to the hazardous intimacies which she had contracted at Scarron's, and which she had
the good taste not to break off abruptly;1 a prude, a devotee, and
a friend of Ninon, to whom she bore the happy resemblance that
the beauty of both miraculously defied years, she was not however
a false prude, and everything leads us to believe the imputations
of Saint-Simon and some other writers calumnious.  Her calm,
reflective, reasoning character, incapable of impulse and of illusion,
aided her to defend a virtue often besieged, and love of consideration preserved her as maternal love preserved Madame de S6vignd.
The King, who did not pique himself on fidelity towards the reigning mistress, courted Madame de Scarron as early as 1672, as is attested by a letter written by her to one of her female friends. " I
dismiss him," said she, " always despairing, never repulsed."  She
played a very singular game with him at that time: she spared nothing to render herself agreeable and necessary to him, and at the
same time kept him at a distance in the name of virtue and piety,
which gave her a right to blame more or less directly the adulterous
commerce of which the children whom she was rearing were the
issue. This was not wholly treason at first towards her benefactress,
for she frankly urged Madame de Montespan to cease to be the mistress of the King, to be no longer but his friend, remonstrating
with her that she would thus be more honored and more powerful
at court. The impetuous Montespan was wholly unfit for a part
1 A letter from her to Ninon, bearing date November, 1677, is still in existence.




536              LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.               1674-1675.
so skilful and complex; but Madame de Scarron had in some sort
set her conscience at rest, and labored thenceforth without scruple
to undermine the. favorite. The children of whom she had the
charge, at first concealed for a few years, were legitimized, installed at court, and "presented to the Queen," in 1674, with
their governess, whom the King soon created Marchioness de
Maintenon (1675).1
War was thenceforth declared between the two women who disputed the King with each other, the one defending the heart, the
other attacking the conscience - a strange preacher who lent to
Bossuet and Bourdaloue much more efficacious assistance than the
confessor of the King. It maybe imagined that the mission which
the new Marchioness imposed on herself was not without peril,
with a prince as susceptible as Louis XIV.; often, either that she
deemed herself too much exposed, or, on the contrary, that she was
vexed to see Montespan regain the sway, she pretended to be resolved to retire from court; but she always found means to cause,
herself to be ordered to remain by her confessor, -an austere personage who, in the best faith, always prescribed to her what she
wished to do.  We obtain a glimpse, in the correspondence of
Madame de Maintenon, of many scenes of high comedy; if this
had been only pantomime and falsehood, it would have been odious,
but the piquancy arose precisely from the sort of sincerity of the,
heroine.  Madame de Maintenon wished most sincerely to bring
back the King to the path of goodness and salvation, to take away
his mistress without replacing her.  Was it her fault if her fortune
was confounded with the cause of Heaven? Nothing equalled the,
ardor of her zeal; she was led by it to blame the weakness, not
only of Father La Chaise, but of Bossuet himself.  The Jesuit
La Chaise dared not refuse to administer the sacraments to the
King in a state of habitual sin; as to' Bossuet, certainly most incapable of this complaisant sacrilege, he had believed, in a moment
of disagreement, in the final rupture of the King and Madame de
Montespan, and, consulted by the King, he had admitted that the
converted sinner might live Christianly at court. The result was.
that M. de Condom (Bossuet) was taken for a dupe, that Louis
1 In 1680, they were authorized to bear the name of Bourbon. Concerning Madame de Maintenon, see her Lettres, editions of 1756, 1806, 1815, 1826,- all very
incorrect; her Entretiens a Saint-Cyr, cited by the Duke de Noailles, Histoire de
madame de Maintenon, t. I. p. 280; the iMemoires of her niece, Madame de Caylus;
the book of Roederer, de la Societgpolie en France; and M. Lavallee, Hist. de Saint- Cyr.
The pretended Memnoires de madame de Mlaintenon are a bad romance by La Beaumelle. A good edition of Madame de Maintenon's letters. has been promised us by
her historian, M. de Noailles.




X676-1680.       MADAME DE MAINTENON.                     537
and his mistress forgot their resolutions, for Madame de Montespan
had shared for a moment the remorse of the King, and that their
renewed intimacy again gave two children to the world (1676).1
Love, notwithstanding, declined, without profit as yet to virtue;
infidelities without importance were succeeded by a striking infidelity: Mademoiselle de Fontanges passed like a meteor over the.
horizon of favor (1679-1680). This ephemeral reign disappeared;
Montespan and Maintenon found each other again face to face, but
the latter strengthened by all that had weakened the former.
Louis, in 1680, was forty-two years old and was beginning to
weary of violent passions; the even temper of Maintenon rested
him from the storms in which he had been forced to live by the
haughty Montespan. The widow of Scarron had the gentleness
of La Vallidre, with a subtlety, a breadth, a buoyancy of mind
which this amiable woman had lacked. Louis would have rather
changed his mistress than have replaced a mistress by a friend; he
showed less ardor, however, for he went away now " always afflicted,
never despairing," no longer'" always despairing, never repulsed." 2
He lent a more and more favorable ear to pious admonitions, and
in his mind, as in the minds of those around him, the idea of reforming himself as to works, and that of reforming his subjects as
to faith, were not separated. A species of holy league pressed Louis
on these two points, as much as prudence permitted with respect to
a prince so jealous " of not being governed." This was composed
of Bossuet, whose rigorous theories we have set forth elsewhere;
the Archbishop of Paris, Harlai, a prelate of great talents and
irregular morals, who wished, by destroying Protestantism, to rehabilitate himself with the devotees; 3 and the confessor La Chaise,;
who, much more worldly and politic than fanatical, was nevertheless of necessity the persecutor of the Protestants, and wished no
longer to be forced to acts of complaisance towards his royal penitent, which so strongly compromised his character.  What share
had Madame de Maintenon in the common work? This share may
have been exaggerated, but we must not fall to-day into a contrary
excess; - at the epoch which we have reached, the influence of
Madame de Maintenant, as the courtiers wittily called her,4 was
very great; she exercised it for the conversion of the King; and
1 Lettres de madame de Afaintenon, ap. Noailles, t. I. p. 520. Souvenirs de madame de
Caylus.
2 Letter from Madame de Maintenon to Madame de Frontenac, 1680; ap. Noailles, t. II. pp. 6-6.
8 (Euvres de D'Aguesseau, t. XIII. p. 162.
4 Sevign', letter of September 18, 1680.
VOL. I.           68




538              LOUIS XIV. AND  COLBERT.                   1679.
the conversion of the King and the conversion of heretics were,
as we have said, two connected ideas. " The King," wrote Madame de Maintenon, October 28, 1679,1 —"  the King avows his
weaknesses; he acknowledges his faults..... He thinks seriously
of the conversion of heretics, and in a little while this will be
labored for in earnest."
All that had hitherto been done towards this end was therefore
trifling compared with that which was projected.  But by what
means were they to labor in earnest?
In 1679, the Secretary of State, Ph6lippeaux de ChAteauneuf,
an obscure and subaltern minister who had for his department the
affairs of the so-called Reformed religion, consulted, on the manner
of accelerating conversions, the men best acquainted with the
provinces where the Reformers were most numerous. Two memorials, written in answer to the questions of Chateauneuf, sum up
the two systems of conversion between which Catholic ofinion was
divided: one system was supported by the Jansenists and by all
who approached them  in ethics; the other, by the Jesuits.  The
first memorial was the work of the intendant of Lower Languedoc,
D'Aguesseau, that able and upright administrator who had so effectively seconded the reforms and creations of Colbert.2 D'Aguesseau, a rigid Christian, inclined to the sentiments of Port-Royal,
counselled above all the employment of moral authority. It was
necessary, according to him, to reform first the morals and the ignorance of the clergy, if it was wished to reform the faith of the
heretics; the resplendent lustre of the heads of the ecclesiastical
order, so brilliant in talents and virtues, cast an illusion over the
intellectual and moral inefficiency of the lower clergy in the western and southern provinces, those precisely where the Church had
opposed to it a great mass of Protestants directed by ministers
almost all well-informed, of good morals, and accustomed to speaking. If at Paris and Versailles the sacred desk rivalled in glory
the rostrums of Athens and Rome, in Languedoc and Poitou
there was scarcely a cure capable of commenting on the Gospel.3
D'Aguesseau wished therefore that the King should act on the
clergy chiefly by the medium of the bishops: to him, as to the
1 Rulhiere, p. 106. According to the Duke de Noailles, this letter is of 1680.
2 See ante, p. 63.
3 Two edicts of 1671 and 1673 had suppressed one of the greatest abuses of the
Church, by forbidding any ecclesiastic to resign his benefice with a reservation of a
pension, unless he had officiated in it fifteen years; the pension in this case could
not exceed one third of the revenue. Time was needed for this measure, destined
to relieve curates from their misery, to bear its fruits.




1679.          TWO PLANS OF CONVERSION.                   539
disciples of Port-Royal, as to all men of internal religion, the point
in question was to make Catholics by persuasion, not to make hypocrites by constraint.
D'Aguesseau, however, did not confine himself to this legitimate
proselytism; he counselled the exclusion of Protestants from public
functions and from participation in certain privileges, as suspected
by the State, and in order to excite them to reflect on their
course. As to him, in the district which he administered, he restricted as much as possible the freedom of worship, demolished
those chapels the possession of which was not fully established, and
considered the Protestant religion "as a citadel which we must
beware of attempting to take by storm, but which we should un-o
dermine, gaining ground upon it day by day, until it shall be insensibly reduced to so little that it will finally fall of itself." I
Such were the conclusions laid down by the moderate party,
already far distant from L'Hospital and Henri IV., and even from!
Richelieu, but in conformity with the principles professed by Louis
XIV. in the early years of his reign. The abolition of liberty of
worship appeared therein in prospective; only, liberty of conscience was sincerely reserved, its violation being incompatible with
the principles of internal religion.
The other system, set forth in the second memorial, required
prompter expedients, and urged the royal authority energetically
and directly to prosecute the destructioh of the external signs of
heresy; the internal conversion would come later, when it could.
At all events, the fathers who were constrained to become lipconverts would be damned as hypocrites instead of heretics; but the
children who had seen no other worship than the true one, would
in the end be good Catholics. " God makes use of all ways," wrote
Madame de Maintenon.2  The inviolable moral liberty of the human being, and his inalienable right to dispose of himself, once set
aside, it cannot be denied that the dogma of eternal punishment
gave to these maxims a certain logical force and led inevitably to
the treading under foot of all the rights of the individual, the family and society; it was in the name of charity itself that men exercised over others the salutary violence of the compelle intrare.
The violent party therefore, in wishing to bring back external unity
at all costs, appealed to fanaticism no less than to policy.
The memorial which we have cited dared not, however, yet
demand the immediate revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and only
1 (Euvres de D'Aguesseau, t. XIV. p. 36. Rulhiere, p. 109.
2 Noailles, Histoire de madame de Maintenon, t. I. p. 426.




540              LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.             1679-1680.
claimed new restrictions, new rigor, and the augmentation of the
revenue of the Jesuits, as an instrument of conversion.
The violent party had the ascendency with the King, and the
majority of the bishops entered into it more and more; the jesuitical spirit triumphed, in fact, at the moment when the ultramontane theory of Jesuitism was overthrown and denied by the
Jesuits themselves, who had transferred, in some sort, their obedience from the Pope to the King, as we shall see directly. Twentytwo chapels were demolished in the course of 1679; in July of
this year, a royal declaration suppressed the mixed courts 1 which
judged the suits of Reformers in the parliaments of Toulouse, Bordeaux, and Grenoble. The motive alleged for the suppression was,.
that "these exceptional tribunals had become useless, since for fifty
years no new troubles had arisen caused by the so-called Reformed
religion, and since the animosities between the subjects of the two
religions were extinct." Thus the very hand that smites the Reformers renders a shining testimony to their innocence, and Louis
XIV. confesses, with his own mouth, the absence of any grievance
against them.2 October 10, it was interdicted to Protestants to
hold any synod or conference without the permission of the King
and the presence of a royal commissioner; these commissioners
were thenceforth all Catholics. November 6: prohibition to all
lords of fiefs to settle Protestant officers (bailiffs, etc.) on their
estates.  February 20, 1680: prohibition to Protestants to exercise the profession of midwives.  June, 1680: prohibition to all
Catholics to apostatize under penalty of recantation, confiscation
of goods, and perpetual banishment. Ministers who should receive
them should be interdicted and their churches closed. This important declaration was the complement of the edicts against backsliders. July 11: Reformers were excluded from the crown-farms,,
as lessees, interested parties, or employ6s. August 17: prohibition to
receivers-general to treat for the recovery of villain taxes with any
Reformers, or to employ any clerks of that religion. Colbert had
struggled in vain to save the administration and clerks of finances:
their removal, like the suppression of the mixed courts, was among
the measures demanded by the second of the memorials of which
we have spoken. August 28: decree of the parliament of Paris
prescribing the removal of the Protestant officers in the lower
courts. November 16: three years' delay were accorded to converted Protestants for the payment of their debts. November 19:
1 In these courts, called mi-parties, in fact, but one third were Reformers.
2 Anciennes Lois franyaises, t. XIX. p. 305.




1680.                 PERSECUTION.                       541
reestablishment of the ordinance prescribing to magistrates to
interrogate sick Protestants concerning the faith in which they
wished to die. The same month: interdiction of mixed marriages;
children born of parents of different religions to be reputed illegitimate. During all the year 1680 the hammer of the demolishers
resounded on every side; the least infraction, the slightest pretext,
sufficed to throw down a chapel. The commissioners of the edict
and the intendants rivalled each other in the ardor for destruction.1
The King was recompensed for his zeal by the warm  thanks
of the assembly of the clergy, which congratulated itself, by the
organ of its general agent, on having seen nearly all of its demands accorded, its wishes anticipated, and its expectation surpassed. The clergy nevertheless drew up new: demands to continue the work.
The situation of the clergy was, at this moment, most complex
and extraordinary: the Gallican Church, scarcely pacified by the
species of compromise concluded, in 1669, between the Jansenists
and the royal and pontifical authority, found itself involved in a
double struggle between Ultramontanism and the Reformation;
the war which it sustained against Rome rendered it only more
bitter with respect to heretics; embroiled with the Pope, it wished
to be more catholic than he. It must be added, that in the war
on heresy it had had the initiative, and that in the war on papacy
it was, to speak truly, only an auxiliary; it was royalty that had
given the impulse.
The quarrel of Louis XIV. and the Holy See, which it is time
to set forth somewhat in detail, and which became envenomed
from day to day, had a double origin: one from pure theory, the
other from circumstance, but nevertheless bordering also on principles; these were the questions of ultramontanism and of "regale,"
or the right.of the crown to receive the revenues of vacant bishoprics and abbeys. In prosecuting the foundation of his monarchical
establishment, his work of absolute unity, Louis had encountered
at once in his path the Huguenot protest against this unity and the
Roman pretensions to another, vaster unity. He must inevitably
have come in collision with both obstacles; the infallibility of the
Pope, carrying with it an, at least, indirect supremacy over the
temporal power, is not logically compatible with absolute monarchy and the divine right of kings. Doubtless the existing power
of Rome no longer responded to its pretensions; but Louis was
1 Histoire de l'idit de Nantes, t. IV. liv. xvI.




542              LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.              1661-1674.
not contented with the present; he wished to found his empire in
theory as in facts; he attacked for their principles, not for their
acts, enfeebled Rome, and the submissive and faithful Protestants.
Colbert, through the spirit of national independence, encouraged
the King against the Pope, while he strove to soften him towards
the Protestants. Bossuet, the advocate of Gallican tradition, supported, directed, the anti-ultramontane movement, reserving to
himself the right to restrict it within certain limits. The Gallican
doctors took the field on every side. An incident of this theological war has remained celebrated. The Ultramontanes accused
their adversaries of having altered the meaning of the evangelical
text, to convert it into a weapon in favor of the independence of.he temporal power; it is certain that, from the time of the translation of the Bible by Father Amelote, - a translation published by
order of the assembly of the clergy in 1666, - an important passage
of the Gospel according to St. John was translated in a wholly
new manner. In chapter xviii. verse 36, Christ had been made
till then to say, "Now is my kingdom not from hence," 1 which permitted the vicar of Christ to pretend that this restriction had been
temporary, and that the time of the kingdom of Christ on earth
was come. Now, Father Amelote, and all the Gallican or Jansenist translators who have given versions contemporary or posterior
to his, such as the New Testament of Mons, the Bible of Saci,
etc., suppress the word now, and translate, " My kingdom is not
of this world," -thus absolutely deciding the distinction between
the temporal and spiritual powers. The Gallicans believed themselves authorized in this significant suppression by the fact that the
Greek viv, which had been translated as now, is far from having a
meaning as clearly determined as the Latin nune, to which it corresponds. The ultramontane translators and the Protestants remained
in unison on this point against the Gallicans. In other times, the
equivocal sense of this Greek particle might have caused rivers of
blood to flow.
In 1663, the Sorbonne had rendered a decision in favor of the
Gallican maxims. In 1674, the congregation of the Index having
censured at Rome theses sustained by the Sorbonne, and in conformity with the decision of 1663 against the infallibility of the Pope and
his superiority over the council, the same propositions, reinforced by
1 This is the whole of the verse: " Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this
world (I fpaa[i;eta       T Ot4 oi' erwv y 70v 6 Kic6ov r6vrov). If my kingdom were of this
world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews:
but now my kingdom is notfrom hence (vbv de6 j f3aa[teta' I j oicK arv E1vrei&eV)."




1673-41678. THE REGALE.  STRUGGLE AGAINST ROME.  543
other arguments on the independence of the temporal power and
the rights of the bishops not to be arbitrarily deposed by the Pope,
were revived, the year after, before the Sorbonne, by the Abb6 de
Noailles, Bossuet presiding at the head of the thesis.1
Hitherto it had been only a conflict of theologians; but the King
and the Pope were to be soon directly opposed to each other. The
King had exercised, from time immemorial, the right of "regale"
over the greater number of the dioceses of France; that is, he collected the revenues of the vacant bishoprics, and conferred the
benefices, which depended on them, until the new titularies had
registered their oath of fidelity in the court of exchequer. The
four great provinces of the south were exempt from this right; but
their exemption had been long contested in the parliament of Paris
and in the royal council. An edict of February 10, 1673, extended the "regale " to the whole kingdom.  This was at once a
new manifestation of the unitary spirit and a fiscal measure; the
King, moreover, designed to employ for the conversion of the Protestants the profits which he might derive from the edict. Almost
all the bishops of the south, after some opposition, yielded before a
new royal declaration of April, 1675, and registered their oaths.
Two Jansenist prelates, the bishops of Aleth and Pamiers, who had
lately figured actively in the debates on the formulary and the five
propositions,2 were the only ones that did not submit. The'King
made appointments to the benefices dependent on their bishoprics,
as if their episcopal chairs had been vacant. The two bishops excommunicated the beneficiaries. The latter appealed to the metropolitan archbishops, who declared the excommunications void.
Both bishops appealed from the metropolitans to the Pope.
The Pope then reigning was Innocent XI. (Odescalchi), elected
September 21, 1676. Innocent XI., obstinate and unlettered, but
pious and rigid, was ill-disposed towards the French policy, although
it had served his election, and almost favorable to the Jansenists,
whose severe ethics he esteemed.8 Satisfied to see the prelates of
this party have recourse to the Holy See, he warmly sustained the
two bishops, rescinded the ordinances of the metropolitans, and
addressed to the King two exceedingly virulent briefs against the
" sinister counsels of his ministers" (March-September, 1678).
Louis paid no attention to them.  A third brief, of extreme vio1 Lettre de Pellisson, ap. (Euvres de Louis XIFV., t. VI. p. 484.
2 Ibid, p. 144.
8 March 2, 1679, he condemned, at the instigation of Bossuet, sixty-five propositions extracted from the casuists of the company of Jesus by way of compensation;
indeed, he condemned the New Testament of Mons (September 2, 1679).




544             LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.            1679-1681.
lence, was launched December 29, 1679; the Pope threatened the
King to " use his authority," if Louis did not submit to his paternal
remonstrances. The assembly of the clergy, which met in 1680,
wrote to the King that it regarded this " extraordinary proceeding"
with sorrow, and expressly protested " against the vain enterprises
of the Holy See" (July 10, 1680). The Pope replied by condemning a book on the rights of bishops, written by a doctor of the
Sorbonne according to the order of the assembly of the clergy
(December 18, 1680).
The two bishops who had given rise to the debate had died
meanwhile, but their death had made no change in the question of
the "regale "; the vicars and chapter of one of the two dioceses,
that of Pamiers, sustained the contest with the same obstinacy, and
things had been carried so far that one of the grand vicars had been
exiled, the other condemned to death, by contumacy, as the author
of sedition. -The metropolitan had caused others to be elected in
their place by the beneficiaries supplied by the King. The Pope
addressed to the chapter of Pamiers, January 1, 1681, a brief
which overthrew all the maxims of the Gallican Church, and even
derogated from the council of Lateran. He excommunicated ipso
facto the grand vicars established at Pamiers by the metropolitan
(the Archbishop of Toulouse), their abettors, and the metropolitan
himself, and declared void the confessions and marriages made or
to be made before priests holding their powers from the grand
vicars intruding. The parliament of Paris reentered the lists in
turn with all the vehemence of old, and rendered a decree, March
31, " against a printed libel in the form of a brief by Pope Innocent XI.," —a brief by which this ppntiff smites with interdict " an
archbishop, his brother, who has received from God, and not from
his bulls, what the prelates of this kingdom take from Rome only
since the concordat- the powers attached to his character."  The
enlightenment of the persons threatened by this brief, adds the
parliament, "insures them against the thunders which the court
of Rome has vainly launched for centuries." 1 The Pope ordered
the French Jesuits to circulate and support his brief. The superiors
of the Jesuits of Paris were sent for by the parliament, and received a prohibition, in the name of the King, to execute this order.
They obeyed the King and parliament (June, 1681). Their brethren of Toulouse and Pamiers had set them the example, which was
followed by the other houses of France. By a strange reversal of
opinions and principles, the Jesuits were with royalty and the Jan1 Anciennes Loisfranfaises, t. XIX. p. 262.




1681.           STRUGGLE AGAINST ROME.                  545
senists with the Holy See. Louis XIV. seemed to have become the
Pope of the French Jesuits, on condition of urging France in their
ways; their power, in fact, thus rose to the surface in the wreck
of their theological doctrine.
Meanwhile the archbishops and bishops present at Paris, to the
number of forty-two, assembled on the invitation of the general
agents of the clergy, and demanded of the King, for the interests of
the crown as of the Church, a national council, or at least a general
assembly of the clergy (March-May, 1681). The King granted a
general assembly, to meet October 31, composed of two bishops and
two deputies of the second ecclesiastical order for each metropolitan.
The expectation was great and the public mind strongly agitated.
The feeling of national independence embodied in the monarchical
form was irritated at still meeting in the affairs of the kingdom the
ultramontane influence. Colbert dwelt strongly on this feeling, in
the hope of thus exciting a diversion on the Protestant question.
Many bishops showed themselves greatly incensed against Rome,
some through courtiership, others through the desire of elevating
the episcopal dignity, so long depressed by Roman primacy transformed into sovereignty.  Public opinion fermented; there was
talk of suppressing the annats, that onerous tribute paid by France
to Rome, of taking away from the Holy See the appointments to
benefices which it preserved in Brittany and elsewhere. It was
desired that the prelates of France should bear no longer, as a mark
of servitude, the title of " bishops by the permission of the Holy
See." A few went further: there were rumors of separation, of a
patriarchate.
It was in the midst of this agitation that the assembly convened.
It intrusted the opening sermon to Bossuet, recently transferred from
the bishopric of Condom to that of Meaux. Bossuet was, on this
solemn occasion, what he had been, what he was to be all his life
-the advocate of moderate opinions, the statesman of the- Church;
he placed himself and placed the assembly at an equal distance
from ultramontanism and firom schism. The sermon of September
9, 1681, is one of the finest monuments of his genius. If there
are difficulties which he does not surmount in it, it is because they
are insurmountable. In this discourse, as brilliant as able and carefully weighed, he strives to establish at once, by the same arguments and the same historical facts, the fallibility of the Pope and
the indefectibility of the Holy See; that is, the impossibility that
error should be established on the chair of St. Peter; a distinction,
it must be granted, somewhat subtle and obscure; he shows the
VOL. I.          69




546             LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.            1681-1682.
Gallican liberties found by the Gallican Church in the tradition of
the universal Church, and terminates by a warm sally against the
libertines (free-thinkers) who pursue the deceitful charm of novelty.
He had a presentiment that the combat of opinions would not be
long circumscribed among the Christian sects.
The affair of the " regale" was the first object deliberated upon
by the assembly. Antoine Arnaud strove to excite the bishops to
defend the privilege of the dioceses formerly exempt. This indefatigable polemist had been unable to preserve to the end the benefits of
the peace of religion. While his friend Nicole delighted in a repose
purchased by so many struggles, Arnaud, whose militant ardor did
not diminish with time, had embroiled himself anew with the royal
authority, and had retired to Belgium in 1679. There, he stirred
up Jansenism in favor of the Pope, as he had stirred it up so long
against the Pope. The conduct of Arnaud and the Jansenists,
although explicable by their maxims on the administration of the
Church, naturally caused the King extreme irritation; he would
see in them only a spirit of perpetual opposition; and a new storm
gathered thenceforth over Port Royal, which had imprudently separated from Gallicanism on this decisive occasion. The assembly
of the clergy, in fact, harmonized fully with the King on the question of the " regale "; it ratified the extension of the " regale " to
the whole kingdom; and Louis, on his side, by an edict of January,
1682, suppressed all in the "regale " that was -injurious and contrary to ecclesiastical discipline; that is, he renounced the right of
immediately conferring benefices which involved spiritual juriadiction, and only reserved to himself the right of presentation, providing
that the presentee, before being put in possession, must give proof of
the qualities requisite before the ecclesiastical authority: this was
the abolition of commendams in the exercise of the " regale."
The assembly stated to the Pope the motives of this compromise
in a respectful and firm letter, which Bossuet drew up in the name
of the Archbishop of Rheims,1 the president of the commission
(February 3, 1682).
The point of fact resolved, it passed to higher questions. The
moment was propitious to establish the Gallican maxims on a firm
basis, and to avenge the reverse which the theoretical independence of the crown had suffered formerly from the States-General
of 1614, thanks to the cowardice of the government of Maria
d'Medici. Colbert urged the King not to let such an occasion
escape, and prevailed over the Chancellor Le Tellier and his son,
1 Son of Chancellor Le Tellier, and brother of Louvois.




1682.              DECLARATION OF 1682.                  547
the Archbishop of Rheims, who feared to complicate the situation
still more, and who desired that Rome should be treated with consideration. Bossuet himself did not see without apprehension the
King ask of the assembly a decision on these matters, and was reassured only when he found himself alone charged with drawing
up the declaration of the sentiments of the Gallican Church, and,
consequently, master of the situation. The Archbishop of Paris,
Harlai, the Bishop of Tournay, Choiseul, and several other prelates,
would have gone much further than he against Rome. The Declaration of the Clergy of France concerning the Ecclesiastical Power
was adopted March 19, 1682. The clergy, after smiting with equal
reprobation those who strive to overthrow the Gallican liberties,
" based on the holy canons and on the tradition of the Fathers,"
and those who, "under the pretext of these liberties, attack the
primacy of St. Peter and his successors instituted by Jesus Christ,
and the obedience which is their due," declared: —
1st. That St. Peter and his successors, and the Church itself,
have received power from God only in spiritual things, and not in
political things (civilium), the Lord having said, " My kingdom is
not of this world;" that, consequently, kings and princes cannot
be deposed directly or indirectly, or their subjects released from the
oath of fidelity, by the authority of the heads of the Church; and
that this doctrine should be inviolably followed as in conformity
with the Word of God, the tradition of the Fathers, and the examples of the saints.
2d. That the full spiritual power of the Apostolic See and of the
successors of Peter is of such a nature, that the decrees of the
holy ecumenical council of Constance on the authority of general
councils, decrees approved by the Apostolic See, subsist at the same
time in their full force and virtue.
3d. That thus the use of the apostolic power should be regulated
according to the canons dictated by the Spirit of God; that the
rules, customs, and constitutions received in the kingdom and in
the Gallican Church should remain in force, and the bounds set by
our fathers continue immovable.
4th. That the sovereign pontiff has the principal part in questions of faith, and that his decrees regard all the Churches; but
that, nevertheless, his judgment is not irrevocable, so long as the
consent of the Church has not confirmed it.
"'These maxims shall be sent to all the Churches of France and
to their bishops." 
1 Bausset, Histoire de Bossuet, t. II. p. 172. The book of the Cardinal de Bausset




548              LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.                  1682.
The Declaration was deliberated upon by the thirty-four archbishops and bishops present, and subscribed, after them, by the
thirty-four deputies of the clergy.  A royal edict of March 23
gave the force of law to the Declaration, and enjoined all professors
to engage to teach it in the schools.
This act has remained one of the great events of ecclesiastical
history.  The Church of France did not content itself with returning to the maxims of the fifteenth century, as regarded the respective authority of the Pope and the councils, - maxims which it had
never formally abandoned; it recognized the modern theory of the
absolute independence of the temporal power, - a theory which the
whole Middle Ages had rejected, and according to which a heretical
or infidel king preserved his rights to the obedience of Catholic
subjects and could not be deposed by the Church.  Sixty-seven
years before, the clergy of France had risen against this doctrine
propounded by the Third Estate, and the crown had recoiled.l
The Pope, hitherto, had left the letter of the assembly on the
compromise relative to the "'regale" unanswered; at the news of
the Declaration he broke forth by a brief, in which he professed to
have no knowledge of the four articles decreed by the assembly, but
passionately reproached the French bishops for their servile fear of
the King and their abasement before temporal magistrates, capable
of " covering their name with everlasting opprobrium"; he ended
by rescinding and annulling all that they had decided concerning
the "regale" (April 11, 1682). This first thunder-clap seemed to
promise a still more violent storm against the four articles.
Bossuet drew up, in the name of the assembly, under the form
of a letter to the bishops and clergy of France, a protest as grave
and measured as the brief was declamatory; but the gravity detracted nothing from the energy.  The writer blames the evil
counsellors who have suggested to an " excellent Pope" exaggerations and excesses ill-becoming the dignity of so great a name.
"We blush," he exclaims, "for those who have not been ashamed
to inspire the Pope with such sentiments!... The brief is void
of itself, since the sovereign pontiff has been deceived as to the
facts."
This letter was not sent to the clergy. Before Bossuet was able
to cause it to be voted on, the assembly, after a suspension of some
was composed from the Me'moires and Journal of the Abbe Ledieu, Canon of Meaux,
which have just been published (1856) by the Abbe Guettee. It is well to refer to
the original work, for M. Bausset is not always a faithful interpreter.
1 See Vol. XI., Martin's Histoire de France.




1682.             DECLARATION OF 1682.                  549
weeks, was indefinitely prorogued by the King (July 28). It
never reassembled. This denouement astonished the public and
grieved the great man who had been the soul of the assembly, and
who did not judge the work finished. It was a falling back on
the part of the royal power, just before so ardent in urging the
bishops against the Pope. This sudden change was attributed to
the influence of Cardinal d'Estrdes, charg6 des affaires from France
to Rome, who had urgently entreated the King to content himself
with the successes obtained, and not to make or permit new steps
calculated to increase the irritation of the Holy Father. Le Tellier
and Father La Chaise supported D'Estr6es, secretly backed by the
Jesuits. The latter had suffered in silence what they could not prevent from being done against the Pope; but they saw themselves
menaced in turn: the assembly had created a commission, with
Bossuet as chairman, charged to examine the ethics of the casuists;
and Bossuet had already composed on this subject three treatises
on the important questions of usury,l probabilism, and the love of
God. The Jesuits parried the blow by obtaining by indirect means
the separation of the assembly, before Bossuet's propositions on
ethics could be converted into official decisions. The King, satisfied with having caused the absolute independence of his crown to
be recognized by the Gallican Church, and resolved to take no
notice of the papal brief in the consummated affair of the " regale," consented, therefore, to stop hostilities, and even suspended
the printing of the proceedings of the assembly.
The action of the Pope was awaited with anxiety. If he should
fulminate a sentence of condemnation against the four articles,
there would be schism. The Gallican Church could not submit.
It did not pretend to impose on other Churches the doctrines which
it had just stated, but it could not abandon them, or recognize
articles of faith outside the dogmas summed up by Bossuet, in the
Exposition of the Catholie tFaith, with the approbation of the Holy
See itself.
Innocent XI. had neither the audacity to rush into these terrible
extremities, nor the moderation to become reconciled with Louis
XIV. He did not launch his thunders against the Declaration of
the Gallican clergy; but he continued against the King and
Church of France a petty warfare, implacable. and without display,
by which Roman. obstinacy hoped to weary French impetuosity. He
encouraged, by all sorts of favors, the writings which swarmed in
1 On this question, as on many others, the Jesuits had abandoned tradition and
adapted themselves to the necessities of modern societies.




550             LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.                 1681.
Italy, in Spain, in Belgium, in Hungary, against the Gallican doctrine,1 and, what was much more grave, refused bulls to the ecclesiastics who had figured in the assembly of 1682 as deputies of the
clergy, when the King appointed them to bishoprics. Louis, then,
forbade all the other bishops appointed by him to receive the papal
bulls, that there might be no difference between the prelates whom
the crown called to the episcopate by virtue of the concordat.
This situation was prolonged to such a degree that one third of
the dioceses of France found themselves at length without bishops
canonically instituted. This occasioned no disturbance, however,
in the kingdom, the new bishops being, in proportion to their appointment, put in possession of the temporal power by the King,
and installed as spiritual administrators by the diocesan chapters.
The Protestants had gained nothing by the intestine quarrel of
Catholicism. The general assembly of the clergy, after the adoption of the four articles, had addressed to them a warning which
began by representing to them, in "tender and pathetic" language, the injustice of the reproaches cast by them on the Romall
commission, and inviting them paternally to return to the bosom
of their mother, but which ended by threatening them with "appalling and fatal calamities" if they persisted in their rebellion
and schism. This document was sent to all the intendants, with
orders to have it read in every consistory, in the presence of an
ecclesiastical commissioner delegated by the diocesan bishop, and
to demand an answer. The pastors contented themselves with
referring to their profession of faith and books. The Protestants
saw in this step only the prelude to an open and decisive attack on
the Edict of Nantes.
Everything was drifting, in fact, to a speedy catastrophe. From
his primitive system, by degrees perverted and falsified, Louis XIV.
was gliding, by a more and more rapid descent, to the violent destruction of liberty of worship and of conscience.
The court revolution which elevated Maintenon on the ruins
of Montespan was consummated. The King was converted, from
pleasure at least, for he was never converted from pride; he was
no more thenceforth to have a mistress, and Madame de Maintenon
had become more powerful by restoring Louis to his legitimate
spouse, the patient and characterless Maria Theresa, than any mistress could have become by taking anew the husband from the
wife.  The conversion of Louis was to be more fatal to France
I The university of Douai, a newly French city, protested in favor of the infallibility of the Pope, together with the Belgian university of Louvain.




1681.    MAINTENON, LOUVOIS, AND MONTESPAN.               551
than his irregularities, which had so little influence on public affairs!
Hitherto, though the aged Le Tellier had been in favor, with some
reservation, of the measures against heresy, his son, the formidable
Louvois, had remained a stranger to them; indifferent to the religious question, and exceedingly lax in his morals, Louvois had been
strongly opposed to the moral conversion, and had intrigued with
Montespan against Maintenon.1 When he saw her cause lost, he
fell back to the party of persecution with all the vehemence of his
character, and urged the King to make an end of the Protestants
as soon as possible, in order then to bring him back exclusively to
the ideas of war and conquest from which religious affairs diverted
him. He invented a means of drawing into his hands the enterprise of conversion, which seemed foreign to his department; this
was to employ the army in it, and to transform the soldiers into
missionaries. He suggested to the King to accord to new converts
exemption from the billeting of troops for two years, with some
favor in the apportionment of villain taxes (April 11, 1681). This
was the starting-point of a new system of conversion. We know
that there was no ministry of the interior properly called, and the
provinces were apportioned, although unequally, among the different ministers: Poitou and Limousin were under the jurisdiction of
Louvois; he ordered the intendants to throw upon the obstinate
heretics the burden of the new converts, and sent some companies
of cavalry into these provinces.  " The King," wrote he, "does
not consider that it will be necessary to billet all the troopers on
the Protestants; but if, according to a just apportionment, they
ought to support ten of them, you can give them twenty, and
billet them all on the richest of the Reformers.2 Louis still wished
to preserve some order and measure in injustice itself; but it was
the spirit of Louvois and not his that directed the execution. The
soldiers, encouraged by the intendants, the majority of the functionaries, and the fanatical Catholics of each locality, committed
brutalities and depredations which spread terror everywhere.
Thousands of Protestants were converted by fear; an infinite
number of others, especially among the maritime population of
Poitou and Aunis, collected all their resources and prepared to
quit France. The cry of their distress reached the King, and
Colbert obtained a last success in defending the interests of France
1 " The King admits.... that M. de Louvois is a more dangerous man than
the Prince of Orange, but a necessary man." Letter from Madame de Maintenon,
August 3, 1680; ap. Hist. de madame de Maintenon, by the Duke de Noailles, t. II.
p.8.
2 Rulhibre, p. 137.




552              LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.                    1681.
and of humanity. A decree in council, May 19, 1681, prohibited
" the acts of violence. committed in some places against the Reformers."  Marillac, intendant of Poitou, was removed, and conversion
by billeting was suspended throughout the kingdom.
This moment of hope passed like lightning: the party of persecution showed the King the pastors making use of the decree in
council to turn the Huguenots from abjuring, and the new converts
returning in throngs to the Protestant chapel, as soon as the hand
which smote heresy relaxed its grasp.  The Le Telliers, Father
La Chaise, the Archbishop of Paris, besieged Louis without relaxation. As to Madame de Maintenon, this is what she wrote August
24, 1681:" The King begins to think seriously of his salvation and that of
his subjects. If God preserves him to us, there will be no longer
but one religion in the kingdom. This is the feeling of M. de
Louvois, and I believe him more willingly upon the subject than
M. de Colbert, who thinks only of his finances and scarcely ever
of religion." 1
Thus the friend of the King was reconciled to Louvois, and
completely in unison at heart with him; as to the form, as to the
means of violence, she shrunk from them by her natural moderation, and approved them by a selfish policy. It had been told the
King that she was a Calvinist by birth; she feared to render herself suspected if she did not rival in zeal the persecutors of those
who had been her brethren in religion.2 The military expedients
of Louvois were not, however, recurred to at once; the abler but
slower warfare of decrees and ordinances was resumed. June 17,
1681, a royal ordinance enacted that the children of Reformers
might be converted despite their parents, no longer at the age of
twelve or fourteen, but at that of seven, as being, at this age, capable of reason and choice in the matter of their salvation! It was
the last blow dealt to the rights of the family. It sufficed thenceforth for a priest or a zealot to decoy a child to the threshold of a
church and make him say that the mass was more beautiful than
the sermon, for the child to be reputed converted and taken away
from its parents. July 4, a decree in council rescinded the decree
of May 19, " misinterpreted by the Reformed ministers."  July 9,
1 Rulhiere, p. 189.
2 " This forces me to approve things greatly opposed to my feelings." Lettres de
Maintenon, ap. Rulhiere, p. 140. There exists another letter still more unfavorable
to her memory; that of Oct. 22, 1681, in which she writes to her brother to " buy
an estate in Poitou, because they are about to be given away there, by reason of the
flight of the Huguenots!"




1681-1682.              EMIGRATION.                      553
the celebrated Protestant academy or college of Sedan was suppressed.
The Protestant emigration, which had commenced anew in the
spring, was resumed and continued on a large scale, despite the surveillance exercised, according to the orders of the King, on the
frontiers by land and sea. The Protestant States began to comprehend what advantages they would derive from the immense mistake
of the King of France; partly through sympathy, partly through
interest, they eagerly summoned the fugitives to their bosom.
Many parents having sent their children to England, to save them
from seduction, Charles II. took these unhappy creatures under his
protection and offered the French Reformers, who should settle in
England, all the privileges compatible with the English laws in
the exercise of their commerce or trades; he promised to have
them naturalized in a body at the first assembling of Parliament,
and far from imposing on them entry duties, ordered assistance to
be given them on their disembarkation (August 7). - The King of
Denmark made analogous offers to the Reformers, with the promise
of liberty of worship in those portions of his territories where every
other form of worship but the Lutheran was prohibited. September 24, the city of Amsterdam guaranteed to them the right of
citizenship and mastership, with loans of money to set up their business, and the assurance of the sale of their products; and ordered
a thousand houses to be built to lodge them.'
The French government strove to counterbalance by fear the
attraction exercised by these promises. An edict of May 18, 1682,
forbade Reformers, especially sailors and mechanics, to quit the
kingdom with their families, under penalty of the galleys for life
for the heads of families. This was at once to restrict and define
the edict of 1669 against expatriation, -an edict which had been
taken in earnest only towards Frenchmen who enlisted in foreign
armies and navies. To carry to a foreign power, if not to an
enemy, military services to which the country has claim, is a desertion which may become a capital crime; but to quit a country
where liberty has no longer an asylum even in the conscience,
where natural rights are annihilated, where the moral tie is broken
between the State and its members, is a right, an extreme and fatal
right, -the legitimate suicide of the citizen, which leaves nothing
subsisting but the man! To violate all rights and to pretend to
impose, by atrocious penalties, the observation of duties correlative
to these rights, is the furthest limit of tyranny. Louis XIV. had
1 Histoire de l'edit de Nantes, t. IV. liv. 16, 17.
VOL. I.         70




554             LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.            1682-1683.
reached it, while believing himself using only a salutary repression
and decreeing only comminatory measures I! This oppression, from
which one was not even permitted to escape by exile, was, at least
in principle, far more odious than that terrible expulsion of the
Moors which had formerly moved the iron soul of Richelieu with
indignation.
During the years 1682 and 1683, decrees and ordinances against
the Reformers followed each other like the strokes of a funeral
knell; there was nothing but interdictions of chapels, interdictions
of assemblies, closing of schools, expulsions of the families of Reformers from the different towns, while they were forcibly retained
in the kingdom. Proof by witnesses was admitted to establish the
fact of abjuration in default of a written act, and to condemn backsliders (June 8, 1682). Sales of real estate made by Reformers
who had emigrated the year before, were annulled with confiscation (July 14, 1682). The property bequeathed to the poor of
the so-called Reformed religion and to the consistories was annexed
to the hospitals (January 15, 1683). The Protestant officers of
the household of the King, or of that of the princes, were summoned to resign (March 4, 1683).
While the flock was retained by violence in the kingdom, every
occasion was seized to banish the pastors: that door of exile was
opened with eagerness to the ministers, which was closed to the
rest of the Reformers, that their exhortations might cease to counterbalance the words of the converters.
Hitherto the oppressed had opposed nothing but complaints to
the incessant blows that fell upon them. Their long patience at
last wearied. To replace the legal organization which the King
had taken from them, the most zealous among them formed in the
south a secret organization; a directory, composed of six members,
watched over the common interests in each province; sixteen of
these directors, delegated by Languedoc, Dauphiny, C6vennes, and
Vivarais, met at Toulouse, and decided that the believers should
assemble, June 27, 1683, in all the places where the exercise of
worship had been recently interdicted, and listen to the word of
God, without longer taking notice of the royal prohibitions. This.
decision was not received by all; the timid were opposed to it; the
churches of the principal towns, long accustomed to exercise a sort
of supremacy, did not recognize the authority of the new directors.
This opposition prevented the assemblies from taking place on the
day fixed with the imposing grandeur which the directors had
hoped; meetings succeeded each other, in the course of July, in




1683.                  RESISTANCE.                      555
different parts of CUvennes, Vivarais, and Dauphiny.  At the
noise of these movements of the Huguenots, the Catholics of the
suburbs fancied that they saw a renewal of the ancient religious
wars, and took up arms. The Reformers armed on their side to
defend themselves. The deputy-general of the Protestants, who
resided at court, Ruvigni, the provincial deputies, and the consistory of Charenton, terrified at the calamities which they foresaw,
hastened to disavow assemblies contrary to the ordinances, and conjured their brethren not to furnish to the enemies of their religion
this pretext for treating them as rebels. But blood had already
been spilt: after prolonged altercations between the Catholics and
the Protestants, a handful of Huguenots, who had taken refuge in
the forest of Saou, in Dauphiny, had been cut to pieces by a body
of troops, after a furious and bloody resistance. This little battle
was followed by a few executions. At the news, the Reformers of
Vivarais, who, by the mediation of the intendant, D'Aguesseau, had
submitted and obtained an amnesty, took up arms anew. Louvois
sharply reproached D'Aguesseau for having retarded, by his entreaties, the dispatch of troops to Languedoc; and the Duke de
Noailles, lieutenant-general of that province, was ordered to march
against the rebels. The Huguenot bands were dissipated without
serious defence; a minister was broken alive on the wheel. C6vennes, which had not armed itself, was not less harshly treated;
and stores of hatred and vengeance were treasured up thenceforth
among these sturdy mountaineers (August-October, 1683).1
For the time the movement had been easily stifled, and the King
was strengthened in the conviction that the reduction of the heretics would not cost much effort. He continued to demolish by
pieces what remained of the Edict of Nantes.
A great and melancholy event coincided with the troubles in the
south, and closed the period commenced by the peace of Nimeguen;
a period brief in years, but fruitful in brilliant deeds, in successes
which rendered the present illustrious, in enterprises which endangered the future.
While the crowd, and almost all the choice spirits with it, were
intoxicated with the gorgeous prosperity displayed by the government of the Great King, the man who had been the chief artisan
of this prosperity saw with prophetic eye the scourges destined to
destroy it spring up and increase; Colbert saw, without power to
arrest it, the France of Henri IV. and Richelieu float adrift, swept
towards unknown abysses, and died of regret at his powerlessness I
1 Histoire de l1'dit de Nantes, t. IV. liv. 19; t. V. liv. 20.




556             -LOUIS XIV. AND COLBERT.                    1683.
Without, France set in motion the most formidable forces, and
weighed down rival nations by the most imperious, the most overwhelming ascendency which she had ever possessed; but resentful
feelings were gathering on every side, and the reaction was soon to
break forth with an intensity equal to the force of the pressure
exercised: within, it was no longer for the good of the State that
absolute authority displayed itself by breaking down the last intrenchments of individual right; and the burdens of the people
were constantly increasing in the midst of peace, while the resources were diminishing by the ruin or emigration of a notable
part of the commercial, industrial, and maritime classes.
The health of Colbert, seriously affected repeatedly by excess
of labor and anxiety, had not ceased to decline since he had accompanied the King on his journey to the northern frontiers in 1680.
A violent malady had nearly carried him off at the close of this
journey, and he had been saved only by the use of a new remedy,
cinchona.' This malady may, not improbably, be attributed to a
warm scene which took place between the King and the minister.
Louis had been extremely satisfied with the rigid economy and
rapid execution obtained by Louvois in the fortifications of the
frontier-places. Louvois, by a happy imitation of the Romans, had
employed the army on these works. The King took occasion to
reproach Colbert harshly for the frighttful expenses of Versailles,
" where, nevertheless, scarcely anything was seen finished; " as if
it were possible to compare works as simple as the earthworks and
masonry of fortified places, executed in great part by soldiers with
very trifling pay, with the immense works of art so varied, so difficult, and necessarily so expensive exacted for the completion of
Versailles! Louis went so far as to accuse Colbert of having,
through negligence, permitted waste by his inferiors. Accustomed
to meet no resistance among men, he claimed to find no more among
things, and would have been glad to have had wonders created for
him without effort or expense.  He reproached Colbert for the
cost of Versailles, and at the same time impatiently rejected his
representations concerning the unmeasured extent of the works
ordered.2
We may comprehend how such a man must have felt, after twenty
1 See La Fontaine's Poem on Cinchona.
2 It was, it is said, the railing of the great court of Versailles that gave rise to
this scene. Mdm. de Ch. Perrault. J. Racine, t. VI., (Euvres diverses, p. 8335; 1808.
" M. Mansart," says Racine, " pretends that for three years M. Colbert was a burden to the King for the buildings, until the King said to him on one occasion,' Mansart, I am too much disgusted; I will think no more of building' (in 1683)."




1683.               DEATH  OF COLBERT.                      557
years of an administration forever glorious, to see himself treated
like a clerk by'the prince who owed him at least one half of his
renown.
Colbert was exposed to a system of intrigues and accusations
skilfully arranged by the Le Telliers.  They went so far as to
accuse him  of "pernicious designs,"' whether of sustaining the
Huguenots or of aspiring to the part of prime minister, we know
not. The King now seemed to restore him a share in his confidence, then submitted to these perfidious influences and relapsed into
his moodiness and rudeness. The ingratitude of the King slowly
undermined Colbert. It was not only the statesman in him that suffered at witnessing the ruin of his patriotic work, it was also the private man that felt himself deeply wounded in his affections. Colbert loved Louis. Louis XIV. had not been to him, as Louis XIII.
to Richelieu, only the necessary instrument of the good of the
State; he had long been in fact, in the common work, a co-worker
superior in power of rank and personal attraction, equal in intellect
and good will; he had been more than this in the feeling of Colbert as of all his illustrious contemporaries; he had been the ideal
itself of the head of the State. Colbert neither could nor would
comprehend that Louis would become more and more inferior to
him in patriotic devotion, inferior for the very reason that he was
King. The disenchantment was destined to be fatal to him.
In the course of the summer of 1683, Colbert was again attacked
with fever. A stone formed in his kidneys towards the end of
August; he took to his bed to rise no more. When Louis knew
him to be at the point of death, he was seized with regret, perhaps
remorse, and felt what an irreparable loss he was about to sustain.
Suffering himself at this moment, he wrote to Colbert to take care
of himself and to try to regain his health. Colbert refused to read
the letter, and added, it is said, " I wish to hear nothing more of
the King; let him leave me to die in peace at least! It is to the
King of kings that I have now to answer.... If I had done for
God what I have done for this man, I should be saved ten times
over, and now I know not what will become of me." 2
His master, Richelieu, who had a heavier responsibility to bear,
had died with more security.3
1 Lettres de madame de Mfaintenon, t. II. p. 388. Madame de Maintenon acknowledges that this was "a foolish speech."
2 Racine, t. VI., (Euvres diverses, p. 334. Lettres de madame de Maintenon, t. II.
p. 388. Monthion, Particularite's sur les ministres des finances, art. COLBERT.
8 All participation in absolute power is always heavy! None ever leaves it without a stain! The gravest reproaches that can be made to Colbert are the corrup



558                LOUIS XIV. AND  COLBERT.                       1683.
He expired, September 6, at the age of sixty-four, after receiving spiritual consolation from Bourdaloue.
The people were as ungrateful as the King had been. It was
necessary to convey the body of Colbert by night from his house in
the Rue-Neuve-des-Petits-Champs to the church Saint-Eustache,
for fear that the funeral procession would be insulted by the market-people.   The people of Paris saw  little in Colbert but the
author of the onerous and vexatious taxes established since the war
with Holland; and the people of France, in general, accustomed by
Colbert himself to ascribe to the King everything great and good
that the minister had suggested, imputed to the King the glory,
to the comptroller-general of finances the misery which this glory
had cost. The people could not suspect the internal struggles of
the council, and the enlightened part of the bourgeoisie who had
access to Colbert was alone in a position to appreciate him. It
must be admitted that great men have but two equitable judges:
God and posterity.
With Colbert ends the race of great ministers.  We shall encounter nothing more of the sort in the time which remains for us
to pass over to the end of ancient French society. A single man,
Turgot, in the closing days of the monarchy, will remind us of the
intentions and firm character of Colbert, with a wholly different system and a more speculative genius; but he will pass like a meteor.
We shall see the monarchy live some years longer on the foundations, the memory of the great statesmen who have raised it to
the highest summit of power, then descend again by degrees, towards the abyss, the declivity on which there is no pause!
tions exercised, by money, on the members of the Provincial States, to reduce them
to absolute submission to the crown, and the culpable means employed to increase
the force of the oared marine. Criminals were retained in the galleys after the
expiration of their punishment, - an iniquitous proceeding which Colbert did not
invent, but which he maintained; Turkish slaves were bought of the Italians and
kept at the oars instead of being exchanged for the French slaves held in Turkey
or Barbary. France even went so far as to buy Christian slaves (Russians or Poles)
from the Turks. The passion which Colbert had for the marine made him forget
everything. See t. I. of La correspondance administrative sous Louis XIV., published
by M. Depping, ap. Documents inedits, &c., &c., passinm, and the Introduction to t. II.
NOTE. We have forgotten, apropos to the Declaration of 1682, to mention a
remarkable fact: the resistance of the Sorbonne. The registration of the four
articles was imposed with great difficulty on the Faculty of Theology, and a number of doctors were expelled. See La correspondance administrative sous Louis XIV.,
t. IV. pp. 120-146. The procurator-general imputes, in his letters, the opposition
of these doctors to the fear of endangering their private interests by embroiling
themselves with the court of Rome; but it is probable that the article which establishdd the absolute independence of the temporal power with respect to the spiritual
power shocked many theologians who did not believe in the infallibility of the Pope.




APPENDIX.
L
WRETCHEDNESS IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.
WE have refuted, with incontestable facts and figures, the accusations
made against Colbert, who, according to Bois-Guillebert and his copyists,
caused France to descend from a state of previous prosperity; we shall
soon show by what causes France fell, after Colbert, into a distress for
which he is not at all responsible; but we have not dwelt sufficiently on
the frightful sufferings endured by the people during the greatest part of
the period prior to Colbert, - that is, the ministry of Mazarin, - sufferings of which Mazarin was not innocent, since his disorderly and wasteful
administration contributed to them, but for which his enemies, the heroes
and heroines of the princely Fronde, are much more culpable than he.
The Memoirs, in which numbers of these conceited personages have
delighted in pampering the memory of their absurd and criminal exploits,
afford but a glimpse of the tragedies which followed in the train of the
romance and comedy of the Fronde; other documents reveal them in all
their horror. A laborious and conscientious writer, M. Feillet, has communicated to us a series of documents of the highest interest, in which
we see Vincent de Paul and his disciples follow in the track of the
scourges which the princes, combined with foreign powers, let loose on
France, and combat them with efforts as admirable as insufficient. A
society, formed under the inspiration of Vincent de Paul, to succor the
inhabitants of the provinces desolated by foreign and civil war, published
monthly, from 1650 to 1655, accounts which it circulated through France
to solicit public charity. M. Feillet has extracted from these bulletins
of wretchedness, under the title, An unpublished Chapter of the Fronde, (see
the Revue de Paris, August 15, 1856,) a picture which can only be compared with the most sinister narratives of the desolation of France in the
fifteenth century, in the time of the English invasion and the great companies. We give a few extracts; — general terms always fall short of
the reality.
"September, 1650. About five hundred persons have died (at Guise)
since the siege: there are as many more sick and languishing, part of
whom have withdrawn into holes and caverns,... where they are aban



560                       APPENDIX.
doned by all aid... the greater part will die of hunger.... It is still
worse at Ribemont.... At Saint-Quentin,... La Fere, and Ham, the
condition is the same.
"October, 1650- January, 1651. Bazoche; Fismes; Brenne. Armies
are encamped at all these places.... The inhabitants have lived in the
forests and caverns, where some have been massacred, others smoked out
like foxes, and whole families thus suffocated. Those who remain are
dying of hunger, cold, and disease.
" The greater part of the inhabitants have died in the woods....
"January-February, 1651. Champagne; Picardy. No tongue can
tell, no pen can express, no ear dare listen to what we have seen....
Churches pillaged, famine and mortality almost universal; corpses without sepulture; those left... reduced to pick up from the fields a few
kernels of wheat or grass, germinated or half decayed; the bread they
make of these is like mud, and so unhealthy that the life they lead is living death. Scarcely is a dead horse thrown into the street, when it is
stripped of its flesh. At Heri, near Guise, a woman exhumed a dog that
had been buried three days, to satisfy her hunger..... The petty nobility,
like all the rest, are without bread, without money, without covering, and
reduced to lie on straw;... they dare not beg,... and whom would
they ask, since war has put equality everywhere - equality of wretch
edness!
"Spring and summer of 1651. For forty leagues around the country
is a desert... no more bread, no more dead animals, the herbs and roots
which the spring produces are the sole nourishment.... Despite the
great mortality, the poor do not decrease; those whom we thought rich
send their children to ask alms of us.
"Bazoche; Fismes: Laon, etc.  To so much misery are joined the
salt-excisemen, who take from the poor even their shirts and their earthen
pots..... Those are compelled to take salt (by the salt-tax) who have
not a morsel of lread, for now they eat nothing but frogs and snails....
"Saint-Quentin. Of four hundred and fifty sick, the inhabitants, unable longer to support them, have turned out two hundred, whom we have
seen dying by degrees stretched along the highways.
"Winter of 1651-1652.  Champagne; Picardy.  We see the poor
dying, eating earth, browsing grass, tearing their rags and swallowing
them.... We would not dare say it, if we had not seen it: they eat their
own arms and hands!
"1653-1654. At Laon, six hundred orphans under twelve years of
age have been found, in a state of shameful nudity.... At Attigny, there
is not a handful of straw on which to lie. Those of the inhabitants who
remain are dying of hunger or perishing in the prisons of Rocroy, where
they have been taken for the payment of taxes  "
The destitution of Lorraine exceeded, if possible, that of Champagne
and Picardy. The Ile de France on one hand, Guienne on the other,




APPENDIX.                          561
were scarcely less ravaged during several years. The extreme misery
did not cease until 1656, and reappeared several times, in the close of
Mlazarin's and the beginning of Colbert's administrations, by reason of
dearths, without the horrors of war, it is true.
Mr. Feillet has completed the " Narratives of the Missionaries of the
Society of Charity" by articles extracted from the Recueil de Thoisy,
Matieres ecclesiastiques, and by other documents from no less authentic
sources. We can only encourage him to pursue his sad but useful studies
on the history of popular sufferings.
II.
TARTUFE.
M. PAUL LACROIX (Bibliophile Jacob) communicates to us a very
curious document concerning Moliere and Tartufe; this is a panegyric of
Louis XIV., by Pierre Roulles, curd of Saint-Barthdlemi. en l'Ile, entitled
The glorious King of the World, or Louis XIV. the most glorious of all the
Kings of the: World; Moncornet; with privilege.  In this article, of
nauseating idolatry, the author makes a sort of review of the celebrated
men of the times; he attacks the Huguenot, Turenne, whose exploits he
comments on by saying, in the words of the Scripture, that "the children
of this generation are wiser than the children of light "; a little further
on, he passes to another personage whom he does not name. The King, he
says, has- done " a heroic and royal: deed, truly worthy of the greatness
of his heart and his piety, and of the respect which he has for God and
the Church, and which he renders willingly to the ministers employed in
their behalf to confer the graces necessary to salvation. A man, or rather
a demon clothed in flesh and arrayved like a man, and the most signal infidel and libertine that ever existed in past ages, had been impious and
abominable enough to bring forth from his diabolical mind a piece all
ready to be rendered public by placing it on the stage to the derision of
all the Church, and to the contempt of the most sacred character and the
most divine function, and to the contempt of what is most holy in the
Church, ordained by the Saviour for the sanctification of souls, with the
design- of rendering the use of it ridiculous, contemptible, odious. He
merited by this sacrilegious and impious crime exemplary and public
capital punishment, and even the stake, the precursor of the fire of hell,
to expiate a crime of such grievous high treason to divinity, which was
about to ruin the Catholic Church, by blaming and scoffing at its most
religious and holy practice, which is the conduct and direction of souls
and families by sage guides and pious conductors. But His Majesty,
after administering to him a severe reproach, animated by just anger, by
a trait of his ordinary-clemency, in which he imitates the essential gentleVOL. I.             71




562                        APPENDIX.
ness of God, has by indemnity remitted his insolence and pardoned his
demoniacal boldness in order to give him time to do public and solemn
penance for it all his life, and, with an end to arrest successfully the sight
and the sale of his impious and irreligious production, and of his licentious and libertine poetry, has ordered him, on pain of his life, to suppress
and tear it, to stifle and burn all of it that is done, and to do nothing in
the future so unworthy and infamous, or to bring anything to light so insuiting to God and outrageous to the Church, religion, the sacraments, the
officers most necessary to salvation, declaring publicly to him and to all
the earth that nothing could be said or done more disagreeable or odious to
him, or that would grieve his heart more deeply, than that which assails
the honor of God, the respect to the Church, the good of religion, the reverence due to the sacraments which are the channels of the grace which
Jesus Christ has merited for men by his death and crucifixion, by favor
of which it is transmitted and diffused in the souls of the faithful who are
sacredly directed and conducted. Could His Majesty do better against
impiety and this infidel than to testify to him so sage and pious a zeal,
and the execration of a crime so infernal?"
Nothing is known of this singular lucubration except through the copy
presented by the author to Louis XIV., the King, little flattered by such
homage, having caused the edition to be suppressed; it is a remarkable
specimen of the furious hatred which Moliere inspired; as to the fact ad!
vanced by the Cure of Saint-Barthelemi, it may be admitted that there is
some truth under his wild exaggerations, and his book comes to the sup-.
port of tokens which already led us to believe that MlIoliere had at first.
made Tartufe, not a lay devotee, but a priest, a State directdr of con'science. Louis XIV. obliged the poet to modify his plan, not on pain  f'
his life, but on pain of not being played.
III.
VERSAILLES.
WE have to rectify and complete what we have said (page 231) concerning the expenditure of Louis XIV. in buildings. A work published
in 1838, by M. Ossude, ex-secretary of the Archives of the Crown,
"The Age of Fine Arts and of Glory, or the Memory of Louis XIV. justified," completes the studies of M. Eckard and others. M. Ossude gives,
from the statistics of the treasury drawn up by Mallet, chief clerk of the
comptroller-general Desmaretz, and from  the memorials accepted annually by the Court of Exchequer, the aggregate expenditure for buildings and accessories from 1661 to 1715. Our approximate estimates, as
to the two periods of 1661-1664, and 1690-1715, were much too small:
in the first period, Louis XIV. expended 4,298,436 fr.; in the second,




APPENDIX.                        563
57,074,129 fr. The aggregate is 214,653,343 fr., not from 165,000,000
to 170,000,000, as we supposed. It is probable that these 214,000,000 fr.
represent to-day 800,000,000 or 900,000,000 in relative value. On the
contrary, we have estimated too high the special expenses of Versailles
and its appendages, from 1664 to 1690, by including therein a sum of
nearly 20,000,000 fr. employed, in great part, in the purchase of precious
stones and other objects foreign to Versailles.  The special expenses
of Versailles and its appendages from  1664 to 1690 do not amount to
80,000,000 fr.  Marly cost, in all, a little more than 12,500,000 fr.
MI. Ossude (p. 172) informs us of an interesting fact: namely, that the
gratuities or even pensions revertible to widows were accorded to the
workmen wounded or maimed on the royal works.