Chapter IX: Louis XIV. and Colbert

Alteration of political ideals in the middle of the century--Seventeenth-century kingship--Character of Louis XIV.--His government--The organisation of France under him--The training of Colbert--Nicholas Fouquet--Colbert becomes minister of finance--His financial reforms--The principles of his financial policy--Advantages and dangers of his system--Character of Colbert--The choice before Louis in 1671 between commercial and military supremacy--Preference of military supremacy.

[Sidenote: =Altered political ideals, 1660.=]

The eighteen months which followed the peace of the Pyrenees form the turning-point of the seventeenth century. Up to that time the ideas and the policy which sprang from the controversies of the sixteenth century had made themselves felt, albeit but dimly. As long as the battle between the Church and Puritanism was being waged in England, as long as Spain with her uncompromising Catholicism was still in the front rank of European states, as long as Sweden, strong in the traditions of Gustavus Adolphus, was still the first power in the north, it was impossible to say that the interest of religious questions had quite ceased to be the dominant interest in European politics. But the years 1660 and 1661 saw a great change, not so much in the motives and ambitions which really actuated nations, as in the men who were called upon to express them in politics. From the peace of the Pyrenees, Spain retired from the arena of politics into a sleep of decay and decline, and ceased to be of importance in the affairs of Europe, until the ill-omened day when were seen gathering round her carcase the eagles of the world prepared for deadly strife. From the Restoration in May 1660, England wholly surrendered any claim to be thought to be guided by moral ideals in her policy at home or abroad, and offered herself to the highest bidder, under the guidance of a king whose sole thought was for his own personal comfort. The peace of Oliva, and the death of Charles X. left Frederick William of Brandenburg the foremost figure in northern Europe, and consecrated by the rewards of success the policy of pure selfishness in its most shameless form. History often has to note how among the contests inspired by religion, liberty and patriotism, there is much of selfish intrigue and personal ambition; how in the most sacred causes the dictates of humanity and of justice are not unfrequently forgotten; and it may well be said, that the spectacle of a Charles II. bartering away his country’s honour to gain for himself immunity from trouble, or of a Frederick William cynically breaking faith with the ally of yesterday because he could obtain more from the ally of to-day, is only more repulsive, because less hypocritical, than the ambition of an Elizabeth or a Philip II., which attempted to conceal itself under nobler ideals. But after all, taking men at their worst, which is always the most untrue of estimates, it is something in international politics, where self-interest must necessarily play so large a part, that its working should be concealed as much as possible, even from those who are actuated by it. Moral conventions are necessary where an agreed standard of moral principle is impossible, and bad faith is as reprehensible in diplomacy as the employment of savages is in war. Those who use them may gain the battle, but at the cost of civilisation.

[Sidenote: =Personal power and territorial aggrandisement, the motives of policy.=]

The monarchs and statesmen who were succeeding to the responsibilities of government in the middle of the seventeenth century found themselves in a very different position from that which their fathers had inherited. No longer were there great ideals around them to take captive their imaginations and absorb their energies. No longer were there obvious difficulties of home government to conquer or avoid. There were no struggling nationalities like that of Holland to protect, no overgrown dominating tyranny like that of Spain to oppose, no turbulent territorial baronage to crush, or be crushed by, the Crown. These questions had worked themselves out in the earlier part of the century and had left a blank behind them. A young king, who took up the reins of government after the middle of the century, found an open map before him. [Sidenote: =Unique position of the Crown.=] His country was much exhausted by war, longing above everything for rest, ready to make any sacrifices for order. The nobles, thinned and impoverished by war, were not in a position to dispute his authority. The army, well organised and obedient, gave him a power over the lives and property of his subjects, wholly unknown to former generations. A highly developed system of diplomacy enabled him to conduct negotiations secretly with all the important states of Europe, while as yet the comity of nations had established no general moral standard to which diplomatists were expected to conform. Under these circumstances it was only natural that the ambition of sovereigns should impel them to try and make their own power supreme at home, and to enlarge the boundaries of their territories abroad. Absolute power and territorial aggrandisement become the main objects of European kings. The nation is identified with the king; the larger and the richer the territory he rules, the greater his glory and circumstance. Before that all things give way. Differences of speech, differences of race, differences of religion, differences of government, count for nothing, and whole peoples are tossed about from one ruler to another like counters at the table of the diplomatists, not in cynicism but in sheer unconcern. Wrapped up in the supreme importance of gaining for their respective masters one district or one town the more, politicians have become wholly oblivious of everything else; until from the sheer necessity of having some principle to which to appeal, they eventually evolved the doctrine of the balance of power, which, when pushed to its logical development in the succeeding century, meant little else than that, if one European state managed to steal something, all the other states had the right of stealing something too. In the nineteenth century, the cause of oppressed nationalities has most powerfully influenced the map of Europe. It is the glory and the boast of the greater powers to have assisted in the unification of Italy, or the liberation of the Christian states of the Balkan Peninsula. At the end of the seventeenth century it was quite otherwise. To establish beyond all question the authority of the crown, to maintain a powerful and perfectly equipped army, to astonish the world by the splendour of the court, to push ever further and further away the frontiers of the nation, to extend a lordly protection, little short of vassalage, to weaker countries,--such were the objects of a patriot king, such the rewards of successful statesmanship. The nation was focussed and crystallised into the person of the king. It worked, fought, lived, conquered for him alone. In his glory it saw its own reflected, it recognised him as its representative and its champion, it surrendered its independence to him ungrudgingly, and in his success it reaped its reward. The rights of peoples were not so much set aside, as not even thought of, for everything was absorbed in the personality of the king.

[Sidenote: =Louis XIV. the type of seventeenth century kingship.=]

Of this type of kingship Louis XIV. is always looked upon as the representative if not the founder. Its founder he certainly was not, for his was not the mind to found anything. There is nothing original, no initiative, about Louis XIV. He can use, he cannot produce. The productive power seems wholly wanting in him. He is essentially a barren man, singularly skilful in making use of the material with which he is provided, but unable to add to it. It has often been pointed out how he inherited everything which has made him great, and left nothing great behind him. Condé and Turenne, Lionne and Servien, Colbert, Corneille, and Racine were the products of the age of Richelieu and Mazarin, and only utilised by Louis, while Villeroy and Tallard and Boileau were the work of his own hands. [Sidenote: =Louis a man of second-rate abilities.=] The statement requires some modification, but the principle which underlies it is true. Nearly everything which was great in France at the time of his accession to power Louis had the ability to use. For the most part what became great in France during his reign was not trained by him, and indeed in the case of Port Royal attained its greatness in spite of him, and what was directly trained by him was not great. The reason is not far to seek. It is the vice of an absolutely centralised monarchy, where the king is all in all, that it cannot in the nature of things tolerate any one greater than the king. The ministers are servants, and no servant can be greater than his master. [Sidenote: =His determination to admit of no rival.=] Even in the Prussian monarchy of to-day there is no room for a Bismarck, still less could one have been permitted to exist at the court of Louis XIV. An absolute monarch sets the standard of his ministers, if he absorbs the whole state into himself as did Louis, and does not merely let things govern themselves as is the fashion among Oriental despots. From the time of the death of Mazarin, Louis determined he would never have another prime minister. He himself, like Napoleon after him, would be the head and motive power of the whole of the governmental and social machinery. He kept his word with singular patience and pertinacity, and working harder probably than any sovereign had worked, since the days of Philip II., never permitted a minister, not even Louvois, to rise above the merest departmental independence. The result was inevitable. A commonplace man himself, without insight, without originality, without independence of mind, he could not inspire genius, and could not tolerate it if he found it. He wanted diligence and accuracy, not genius and statesmanship, clerks not ministers of state, and he got what he wanted. It is significant that in all departments of administration except one, when he had used up the men whom Richelieu and Mazarin had left to him, he found no others to take their places. In diplomacy alone France remained unrivalled to the end of the century, the one department of which Louis himself was complete master, and in the conduct of which he was thoroughly competent to take the lead.

[Sidenote: =His great kingly qualities.=]

But in spite of his deficiencies in the higher qualities of statesmanship, not Aristides better deserved his title of the Just, than did Louis XIV. that of _le Grand Monarque_. It was essentially as a king that Louis was great. No sovereign of modern days has had the kingly gifts in such rich profusion. Dignity without awkwardness, courtesy without familiarity, gallantry without coarseness, a winning manner, ready tact, chivalrous bearing, refined mind, and modest demeanour, made the young king at once the pride of the French court and the boast of the French nation. But something more than this was required to make him the pattern and type of European kingship. It was not merely that his social insight brought instinctively to his lips the word which, within the bounds of good breeding, would prove most pleasing or most effective to those whom he wished to impress, or that his knowledge of character taught him almost intuitively the best mode of approaching those whom he wished to win. It was not only that his elaborate and punctual care for the etiquette and ceremonial of the court could not fail to affect the mind with a sense of the perfection of regal state, and attract it by a polished order of courtly magnificence. [Sidenote: =His theory of kingship.=] Versailles was not the first court in Europe to be distinguished by the splendour of its ceremonial, and the refinement of its manners, but Louis XIV. was the first great sovereign in Europe who made the perfection of his court an essential part of his system of policy. When the Popes had ceased to be the common fathers of Western Christendom, they applied themselves to make the seat of their power the centre of the wider realm of art. Rome deposed from the throne of universal faith was to be recompensed by the sceptre of universal culture. So when France was assuming the headship of Europe, and was preparing to strike for the dominion of the civilised world, her court was to be the epitome, the representation of the world’s greatness. Mirrored there in a tiny but radiant sphere was to be found all which makes humanity noble and life beautiful. Intellect and birth, genius and beauty, culture and statesmanship, art and devotion, all were to be there marshalled in an admirable perfection of order, but shining one and all with a reflected light, illuminated by the rays of the king, their sun. Not unthinkingly did Louis adopt the sun as his type. According to his theory of government he was the centre, the life-giving principle of the system in which he ruled. All that was young and beautiful in France sprang into life at his bidding, and withered into decay when he averted his face, all that was powerful drew its vigour from his favour, while from less privileged lands the kings of the earth, like the Magi of old, drawn by the light of his compelling rays, were to come from the ends of the world to find under his protecting care the pattern of life and the home of faith.

[Sidenote: =Truth of Thackeray’s caricature.=]

Sarcasm comes easy to the lips when dealing with a theory such as this. Men cannot stop the course of the winds of heaven by building houses of cards, and no artificial arrangements of a court can conceal national weakness or physical decay. The sturdy English pencil of Thackeray has drawn out the hollowness of this theory of seventeenth century kingship in the bitter sarcasm of the well-known sketches of _Louis le Roi_ in his later years. In the first appears the real _Louis_, insignificant, decrepit, bald, and old, shaking and feeble with age, a living corpse rather than a man. Opposite to him stands _le Roi_--the flowing peruke curled and oiled, the royal robes bedecked with ribbons, flashing with jewels, the tailor-made divinity that doth hedge a king, standing ready for the monarch’s use on its skeleton frame. Lastly we see the human atom and its gorgeous artificial covering united in _Louis le Roi_, and are bidden to reflect how much of the _Grand Monarque_ is the work of the tailor and the wigmaker, and how little of God. The argument is true, the sarcasm is just. Where the splendour of a court is part of the system of government, represents and enforces the national dignity, sets the fashion to foreign ambition, is the living embodiment of the power and genius of the state, king and courtiers must not grow old. Queen Elizabeth, encouraging protestations of love at the age of seventy, and Louis XIV. attempting artificially to conceal the advance of years, are spectacles offensive because unnaturally theatrical. [Sidenote: =The French court at the head of civilisation.=] But their loathsomeness never struck contemporaries as it does us. Louis XIV. never lost the respect of Europe or the love of his subjects. His kingliness was a fact which had so impressed itself upon Europe, as both the cause and effect of the greatness of France and the success of his policy, that men became insensible to the physical incongruity. And they were right. From the court of Louis flowed out influences far more potent than those which followed the feet of his soldiers or the coaches of his diplomatists. Versailles set the fashion to the civilised world. French manners, French dress, French speech, French art, French literature, French preaching, French science became the property and the models of civilised Europe. For a hundred years in every department of life, from the turning of a couplet to the drilling of recruits, from the composition of a panegyric to the design of a card-table, everything is ruled by the French instinct of order, cramped by the French love of artificial completeness, refined by the French genius for finish, illuminated by the justness of French taste. There are few kings to whom it has been given to dictate to civilisation for a century the principles by which she is to live.

The secret of the wonderful success of Louis XIV. in all those departments of life and of government which he understood lay in the close personal attention which he gave to the matter in hand. His genius certainly lay in his infinite

[Sidenote: =Louis’s attention to business.=]

capacity for taking trouble. [Sidenote: =Louis’s attention to business.=] Even in his earlier years, when his court was the gayest in Europe, not only would he listen to all the despatches of his ambassadors and personally dictate the answers, but he actually kept up a private correspondence with the more favoured of the envoys on matters of which he did not wish the foreign office to have cognisance. Of important negotiations, especially those in connection with the great treaties of his reign, he took entire management himself, and frequently wrote his directions to his representatives with his own hand. He was equally punctilious about the smaller questions of etiquette which occupied so much of the time and thought of ambassadors in the seventeenth century. The order of an ambassador’s entry, the rules by which he is to be guided in the decisive matters of covering and uncovering, giving or denying the ‘_pas_,’ the supreme necessity of trying to get in front of the Spanish ambassador, if it could possibly be managed, are all laid down and commented upon by Louis with the utmost sense of their importance. Nothing was too great, nothing too small, for his personal care. The negotiations for a partition treaty, the arrangements for a fête at Marli, the design for the fortifications of Lille, the rebuke to be administered to a malapert courtier or a forgetful servant were alike the subject of careful consideration. ‘I have almost been obliged to wait’ is a phrase which has become proverbial.

[Sidenote: =Organisation the characteristic of his government.=]

This minute attention to detail on the part of the Crown in a nation gifted like the French with a genius for completeness produced a corresponding thoroughness of treatment in every branch of the administration. Organisation was the order of the day. During the years of Louis’s greatness, before the constant strain of the over-ambitious wars had broken everything down, organisation is the note of his government. The great ministers are organisers not statesmen. They are at the very antipodes of genius to Richelieu. And they are organisers, not in the sense in which Sully was an organiser, merely the rooter-out of patent abuses, but in the far higher sense in which Charles Montague was an organiser, one who laid down true principles of administration and constructed the machinery necessary for carrying them out. Lionne organised the French foreign office and diplomatic service, Colbert the internal administration of France, Louvois the war office, on principles which became the acknowledged principles of foreign, home, and military administration among all countries for more than a century, some of which will remain acknowledged principles for all time. It was this which enabled France to take full advantage of her centralisation, which enabled her to bear the extraordinary strain of unsuccessful war in the way she did, which gave her such advantages in dealing with a huge unorganised mass like the Empire, which left her even after all her losses at the end of the reign of Louis XIV. stronger than she had been at the beginning. To the ministers who planned and carried it out belong justly the honours of the achievement, but it would never have been carried out at all had it not been for the master who inspired them.

[Sidenote: =Training of Colbert in the household of Mazarin.=]

Colbert had served his apprenticeship in the household of Mazarin. Early in life the cardinal had noticed his singular capacity for business, and had taken him into his service from that of Le Tellier, and intrusted him with the care of his household. The suggestions which Colbert made from time to time to his master about the conduct of his business soon showed Mazarin that he had in his new servant not merely an accurate clerk, but a financial organiser, and gradually he placed in his hands the whole management of his private affairs. The cardinal was at once frugal and extravagant, avaricious and luxurious, and it was the duty of Colbert to buy the best of everything in the cheapest market, and to surround his master with comforts, while he doubled and trebled his fortune. It was no easy task, for the cardinal was very particular. Shirts for Mazarin’s own use, the trousseaux of his nieces, carpets for his palace, his wedding gift to the young queen, all had to receive Colbert’s personal attention; while he was more particularly responsible for the investments and commercial undertakings by means of which the cardinal amassed his huge fortune. Colbert was thoroughly fitted for the work he had to do. Gifted with a keen eye for business, great shrewdness in his estimate of men, and unlimited patience in his attention to details, unhampered by scruples, stimulated but not led away by ambition, he unhesitatingly set himself to satisfy his master’s avarice. He used the powers of the state to give the cardinal’s merchandise priority in the markets, and to relieve it from the overwhelming burden of the dues which pressed so hardly upon all other merchants. Under his guidance the state itself as it were went into business for the benefit of the prime minister, with the result that only seven years after the end of the _Fronde_ the cardinal died worth £2,000,000 of money, and bequeathed on his deathbed the architect of his fortune to the young king and to France as his most precious possession.

[Sidenote: =Nicholas Fouquet.=]

When Mazarin died the finances of the country were under the control of Nicholas Fouquet, the brother of the Abbé Fouquet, who had for some years been the head of Mazarin’s secret police. Nicholas Fouquet was a man of great ability and vaulting ambition. Seeing corruption all around him he quickly yielded to the prevailing vice, and used his double position of Superintendant of the Finances and Procureur-General to collect a large fortune. But unlike Mazarin there was no stain of avarice about Fouquet. He was the prey of large schemes of ambition, the dispenser of a magnificence more than royal. By a lavish use of his ill-gotten wealth he became the owner of colonial settlements, the patron of art and literature, the builder of the most magnificent palace in France, the centre and head of a social côterie which might at any moment become a political danger. But if Fouquet had many friends at court he had many enemies in the country. His splendour and success made men jealous of him, his reckless mismanagement made the business class distrust him, the increase of the debt made all the _bourgeois_ hate him, his unblushing corruption gave his enemies the whip-hand over him, and when it was known that the king would not support him a cabal was formed with Colbert at its head to ruin him. There was no difficulty in proving charges of peculation and mismanagement, the question was entirely whether his faction at court was strong enough to save him. The ladies were on his side, but the king, either because he was jealous of his political power and thought him dangerous to the Crown, or because he was jealous of his personal influence with Mdlle. de la Vallière, who at that moment exercised unlimited sway over Louis’s susceptible heart, determined on his destruction. [Sidenote: =Condemnation of Fouquet, 1661.=] He was induced to sell his office of Procureur-General, which carried with it the privilege of being tried only by the Parlement, and then was suddenly arrested only a few days after he had entertained Louis and his court with regal magnificence at his sumptuous palace of Vaux. A special commission was formed in order to try him. For three years the tedious trial spun out its weary length. At last he was found guilty of crime against the state and banished. Louis’s jealousy and Colbert’s hate were not to be appeased so easily. By a stretch of royal power almost unprecedented Louis substituted a sentence of perpetual imprisonment for that of banishment, and men have darkly whispered since, that even that severe punishment did not exhaust the royal vengeance, and that the Iron Mask so well known to French romance concealed the features of the brilliant Superintendant of Finance who had dared to raise his eyes to the mistress of the king!

[Sidenote: =Colbert appointed to succeed him.=]

The disgrace of Nicholas Fouquet placed the whole internal administration of France in the hands of Colbert, and he entered at once with zeal on the business of its reorganisation. The finances demanded his first attention. Under the mismanagement of Richelieu Mazarin and Fouquet all the evils which Sully had suppressed had again reappeared. The tax-gatherers and the financiers made large fortunes, while the treasury received but a small percentage of the vast sums wrung from the people. The expenses of the state were defrayed from day to day by the sale of offices, by the creation of offices for the purpose of sale, and by loans raised at ruinous interest. [Sidenote: =Financial mismanagement.=] There was no check upon peculation, no system of accounts, no thought of economy. France, like a happy-go-lucky spendthrift in the hands of the Jews, was drifting aimlessly into bankruptcy without even having money at command. Colbert determined on severe measures. His experience in Mazarin’s household had taught him how fortunes are made, and what sort of consideration was due to those who became rich by lending money to the state. [Sidenote: =Remedial measures of Colbert.=] At one stroke he repudiated the worst of the loans raised by Fouquet, and diminished the interest payable on those which he acknowledged. Having thus reduced the burden of the debt to reasonable proportions he proceeded to deal with the collection of the taxes. He remitted the longstanding arrears of _taille_, forced the tax-gatherers to render accounts, took proceedings against the worst of the peculators, and made them disgorge their stolen gains. Order was restored in the administration as if by magic. Every penny of expense was carefully considered, duly authorised, and properly accounted for. Intendants were again appointed to superintend the farmers of revenue, the _taille_ was reassessed, the claims for exemption inquired into, the receipt-books duly audited and checked. By these means he procured sufficient money to pay the interest on the debt, and the expenses of the government without increasing the taxes. In 1662, only a year after he became Controller General, he was able to show a surplus of 45,000,000 of francs without having increased the financial burdens on a single honest man.

But Colbert was not content with merely restoring order in the financial administration. It was not sufficient in his eyes merely to take care that the receipts should exceed the expenditure, and that opportunities for peculation should be reduced to a minimum. [Sidenote: =Principles of his financial policy.=] He was one of the first of ministers to realise how intimately the greatness and prosperity of a nation are bound up with a good financial system, to trace the wonderful effect in developing the national wealth and promoting the national happiness, produced by a system of taxation which carefully adjusts the financial burden to the shoulders of those best able to bear it. Ministers of finance before Colbert’s time had looked upon taxation solely from the point of view of the government, had taxed those things upon which it was most easy to levy taxes, and had levied the taxes in the way which ensured to the government a certain income with very little trouble, quite regardless of the effect of the system upon the tax-payer. Colbert on the contrary saw that the secret of a good revenue lay not in the ease with which the tax was collected, but in the ease with which it was paid. The interest of the government and of the tax-payer were identical not antagonistic, and the more the government could consult the convenience of the tax-payer, the more the tax-payer would be able to afford for the convenience of government. A good finance minister therefore would not content himself with restoring order in the collection of taxes, and economy in the disbursements of the treasury, but must apply himself to far greater and more difficult problems, must study how to increase the resources of the country to their utmost capacity, and how to adjust the necessary taxation so as to interfere as little as possible with their development.

[Sidenote: =Character of his protective system.=]

In the answer to these two questions lies the whole secret of scientific finance. Colbert was the first finance minister to attempt to give a scientific answer to them, that is, an answer based upon reasoned principle. The reasoned principles adopted by Colbert have been in the main the principles acted upon by most civilised countries from this day to our own. They are principles which underlie the economical system known as Protection, and are the application of the theory of national sovereignty to economical subjects. The seventeenth century, as we have seen, was essentially governed in all political thought by the theory of the solidarity of nations under their kings. All Europe was coalescing into territorial entities under their respective sovereigns. Every such territorial entity guarded itself off from its neighbours by the acquisition of natural frontiers, and by the equipment of a professional army, and emphasised its individuality by its concentration under its king and by the representation of its king and his interests diplomatically at other courts. The idea of a Europe united through the Christian brotherhood of man had passed away. The idea of a Europe united through the cosmopolitan brotherhood of man had not yet come. Between those two theories of brotherhood, men were content to relapse practically into a condition of enmity, and were engaged in building barriers against their neighbours, in developing their own strength as much as possible, and in preventing their neighbours from developing theirs. The same principles governed men’s conduct in economics as in politics. Economic independence was considered just as important for a nation as political independence. To be as strong and resourceful as possible within the territorial limits of the kingdom, to be as independent as possible outside those limits were the recognised objects of every statesman. In the eyes of Colbert it was just as necessary for France that she should not depend upon the foreigner for her bread, as that she should not owe him allegiance for her land. He would have thought it as reckless a piece of criminal folly to derive the food-supply of the nation from certain rivals and possible enemies, as to intrust to them the defence of the frontier.

[Sidenote: =Encouragement of home trade and manufactures.=]

Following out these principles Colbert set before himself two great objects, to promote within the limits of France itself the production of wealth by all the means in the power of the government, and to prevent the foreigner by the imposition of hostile tariffs from underselling the home producer in any of the commodities necessary to the national well-being. He endeavoured to abolish the provincial customs and local dues which impeded the free circulation of trade from French province to province, and actually succeeded in abolishing them over three-fourths of the country, in spite of the most strenuous local opposition. He improved roads and developed the canals which had been begun by Sully into a great system of water communication. Of this system the celebrated canal of Languedoc, between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, which has done so much to promote the prosperity of France, was the most striking example. For more than a century it remained without a rival. When at last other nations began to realise the importance of quick and easy communication, French roads and canals became the models upon which they worked, French engineering talent the authority to which they appealed, and the Suez Canal in the present day derives its ancestry from the canal of Languedoc and the genius of Colbert. He encouraged manufactures of all sorts. Under his care French lace, glass, tapestries, silks, and brocades, became the most celebrated in the world. He introduced a more scientific system of dealing with the state forests, promoted large breeding establishments for horses, encouraged the formation of industrial and commercial companies, assisted the founding of colonies, and protected the infant colonial trade by the formation of an efficient navy. At the same time he relieved the peasantry from the heaviest of the fiscal burdens which oppressed them by reducing the _taille_ nearly a half, and recouping the treasury by imposing indirect taxes, principally upon articles of luxury which were paid by the consumer. He helped the manufacturer by removing the export duties on articles manufactured at home, while he imposed heavy import duties on similar articles imported from abroad. [Sidenote: =Prohibition of corn exportation.=] There was, however, one serious exception to this policy. So fearful was he lest France should ever become dependent on other nations for her bread, that he absolutely refused to allow corn to be exported under any circumstances. The surplus corn produced by the rich corn fields of France over and above the wants of the nation would if freely exported have formed one of the most lucrative sources of the national wealth, for France in the seventeenth century was the corn-growing country of Europe, but Colbert deliberately deprived himself of this source of revenue, and kept the French agriculturist poor, in order to make food cheap and ensure a large surplus of corn in the country.

[Sidenote: =Condition of France after ten years of Colbert’s government, 1671.=]

The result of this policy, taken as a whole, was undoubtedly most beneficial to France, in spite of the exaggeration of Colbert’s protective measures. In the ten years, from 1661–71, during which time Colbert had a real control over the national finances, with the exception of the court expenses, not only was the debt largely reduced, peculation checked, and the taxation greatly lightened and better distributed, but new and fertilising streams of prosperity were tapped in the establishment of manufactures and the opening of means of communication which no misgovernment could again wholly close. By the year 1671, France had gained for herself under Louis XIV., through the abilities of Colbert, a position to which history does not afford any exact parallel. United and concentrated far more thoroughly than any other country, with the whole forces of the nation absolutely at the control of the king, defended on all sides except one by a clearly defined and well-fortified frontier, rich by the fertility of her soil and the industry and frugality of her people, she was now adding riches to riches by the establishment of manufactures and the promotion of commercial enterprise. Her colonies were springing up in every part of the globe, her navy was formidable enough to defend them from attack, her army second to none in discipline and reputation. Her people were prosperous, contented and obedient; her administrators just, careful and honest; her system of administration pure, and based upon principles which made the security and independence of the country the first consideration.

[Sidenote: =Dangers of the protective system.=]

On the other hand it did not require much foresight to see that a system of scientific finance which was based purely upon selfish principles could not fail to lead to international complications. If every nation of Europe were to construct for its own advantage a hostile system of tariffs against other nations, excuses for war would be endlessly multiplied. However self-sufficient a country may be there must be many articles of convenience, if not of necessity, for which it depends upon its neighbours. Let a nation increase its colonial empire as much as possible, and keep its trade wholly to itself by an elaborate code of navigation laws, even then international trade will not die nor foreign smuggling be stopped. Protective duties and prohibitive legislation have never yet succeeded in destroying the commercial dependence of one civilised nation upon another. Nations which wish to protect their own trade by tariffs can only do so by constructing a system which shall be injurious to that of their neighbours, and is sure to lead to smuggling and reprisals. In the sixteenth century trade adventurers looked after themselves, and it was rare for the home government to consider itself compromised by high-handed acts of piracy committed by its subjects on the other side of the world. But when it was the action of governments themselves which led to collisions between their subjects, they were bound in honour to defend their own system. Tariff reprisals were instituted, and claims made of a right to punish foreign smugglers, and search foreign ships for smuggled goods, which were certain before long to lead to war in downright earnest. It has often been said that the wars of the sixteenth century were wars of religion, but those of the eighteenth century wars of tariffs. The Dutch war of 1672 is adduced as the first great war of the latter class, which was the first great war waged in Europe since the adoption of a scientific system of protective duties by a first-class power. There is some exaggeration in this statement, but it is undoubtedly true that, from the date of the adoption of a protective system by France under the guidance of Colbert, there is not an important war waged in Europe for a century and a half in which considerations of tariffs and commerce do not play a large part; and it may well be doubted whether the national organisation of finance any more than the national organisation of defence, though steps along the path of civilisation, have proved movements towards the attainment of peace.

[Sidenote: =Contrast between Louis and Colbert.=]

By the time he had completed his first decade of personal rule the administrative talents of his ministers and his own gift for governing had indeed raised Louis to a pinnacle of glory and of reputation far exceeding all other sovereigns of his time. His court was the most splendid and the most polished in Europe. Round it were gathered the genius of Turenne, the brilliance of Condé, the dignity of Corneille, the wit of Molière, the finish of Boileau, the art of Racine. From Italy Bernini brought his solid if too dramatic talent for the embellishment of Paris, while the sweetness of Claude and the breadth of Le Brun were called upon to minister to the greatness of the greatest of European sovereigns. In sharp contrast to all this magnificence and grace stood the minister without whom it could not have existed. Dour, grim, and harsh, Colbert moved through the world without a friend, a man to whom ambition was life, and business pleasure. Scrupulously honest, severely conscientious, strictly just, painfully accurate, sincerely religious, he was wanting in humanity. He was absolutely without heart and without sympathy. A man of religion, he angered the clergy by trying to reduce the number of ‘religious’ because they did not make wealth; a man of the people, he offended the populace by reducing the number of holidays; a zealous Catholic, he displeased the orthodox by the favour he extended to the Huguenot craftsmen, while he made himself unpopular with the Huguenots because he deserted them in the hour of their need, when the king turned against them. A man of conscientious probity, he had no scruples in directing the judges to convict strong and powerful prisoners who were accused of crime, in order that the king’s galleys might be well manned, and even prevented galley slaves who had served their time from being set free if they were still useful for the king’s service. Less and more than human no wonder that men felt instinctively that he was their enemy, however great the blessings of good government which he had conferred upon them, and followed his coffin to the grave with execrations in 1683.

In that, however, they were grossly unjust. They were visiting upon him their dislike of the increased war taxation of which he was the mouthpiece not the author. [Sidenote: =The choice of policy before Louis, 1671.=] In the year 1671 France stood at the parting of the ways. On each side stretched far into the future a long vista of glory and prosperity, but she had to choose between them. Through the victories of Richelieu and of Mazarin, through the administration of Colbert, through the government of Louis, France stood at the head of the countries of Europe in absolute security, without a rival who wished to attack her, without an enemy whose attack she might justly fear. [Sidenote: =Commercial supremacy open to France.=] Entrenched within the borders of a frontier easily defensible by the genius of a Vauban, she might sit free from all possible danger until the floodgates of European warfare should reopen. Planting her colonies in America, in Africa, in Madagascar, and among the islands of the West, pushing out the operations of her trading companies to India and the Spice Islands of the East, enjoying a pre-eminence through treaty over all other European powers at the court of the Sultan and in the trade of the Levant, on the point of gaining an influence, hitherto unparallelled and undreamed of, over the vast expanse of the empire of China through her Jesuit missionaries, she had but to stretch forth her hand to seize the crown of colonial empire and of commercial supremacy, which was already threatening to fall from the head of the Dutch. In the middle of the seventeenth century she had no rivals to fear. The day of Spain and Portugal was over. Holland, though vigorous, capable and persevering, could not stand out for long against the pressure of her greater neighbours. She had gained her unique and glorious position through their weakness, she could not maintain herself against them in their strength. Already she was stricken to the knees by the English Navigation Act and the war of 1651, and had had to recognise in England an equal in naval power and a rival in commerce. But the day of England had not yet come. In the lucid intervals of a mad and despicable policy, Charles II. did something to encourage the American plantations, and to promote the operations of the East India Company, but it was quite certain that the power of the state would never be thrown into commercial or colonial competition with France, as long as Louis retained in his own hands the means of rendering the king independent of parliamentary control. It is moreover a significant fact that the most important and permanent part of the English colonial empire, which was built up in the eighteenth century, was not the result of colonial enterprise but of war. Canada, the West Indies, the Cape of Good Hope, India itself were the direct fruits of the long wars with France, which in their origin and essence sprang from the military and political ambition of Louis XIV. The rivalry with France, which beginning in 1690 did not end till 1815, which produced during that century and a quarter no less than seven distinct and prolonged contests between the two nations, which gained for England mainly at the expense of France a vast colonial empire, which lost for her her only considerable plantations, was primarily and in its essence a military and European rivalry. The wars were primarily and essentially wars to check the military and political ascendency of France over Europe, and to preserve the balance of power in Europe. They sprang from the policy adopted by Louis XIV. in 1672, when, no longer satisfied with pre-eminence in Europe, he deliberately struck for supremacy over Europe. They followed from the determination of William III. and the Whig party in England to prevent such a consummation at all costs. Had Louis turned his ambition into other directions, followed where the policy of Colbert pointed the way, thrown the energies of his government and the genius of his people into the path of colonial development and commercial supremacy, pushed his fleets and his armies along the savage tracks where the cupidity of his traders and the self-sacrifice of his missionaries had first marked the road, he would have had nothing to fear from the impotent stubbornness of the Dutch, or the venal indolence of England. And if a century or half a century later England had awoke from her trance and put forth her claims to dominion, a very different task would have awaited her. She would have found an established organised power to conquer, not a rival to outdo.

[Sidenote: =Preference of military supremacy by Louis.=]

But it was not to be. The traditions of France lay in the direction of military conquest not of commercial supremacy. With an army carefully trained and organised by Louvois, with generals at his command like Turenne, Condé and Vauban, with all the traditions of the French monarchy behind him, with all the longing for glory within him, which was the very atmosphere he breathed, with his intimate knowledge of European courts to assist him, what wonder is it that Louis determined on the course which seemed to combine the certainty of success with the maximum of glory? There was no nation in Europe that could resist him. A combination of nations was alone to be feared, and what combination could long resist the disintegrating effects of his diplomacy and their own selfishness? What league had ever been a military success? The resources of France seemed inexhaustible, her armies invincible, her genius irresistible. In the distance but not so very far removed from practical politics must come some day the great question of the succession to the crown of Spain. When that question was ripe for solution France must be in a position to solve it. Impelled alike by the foresight of a statesman, the ambition of a king, and the flattery of a court, Louis took the fatal step and plunged his country into a century and a half of incessant war. With singular ease he had made himself master of France, he now determined to be master of Europe too.