Chapter XIX: “l’état, C’est Moi” (3)

The marquise de Montespan, although she no longer had an open rival, none the less did not possess the heart tired of her and of her complaints. When men are no longer in their youth they almost all have need of the society of an agreeable woman. Above all the weight of affairs makes this consolation necessary. The new favourite, Madame de Maintenon, who felt the secret power she was gaining every day, bore herself with that art so natural to women and which is never displeasing to men. She wrote one day to Madame de Frontenac, her cousin, in whom she placed an entire confidence: “I always send him away dissatisfied but never discouraged.” During this time, when her favour was increasing and Madame de Montespan was nearing her fall, these two rivals saw each other every day, now with a secret bitterness, now with a passing confidence which the necessity of speaking to each other and the weariness of constraint sometimes put into their interviews. They agreed to write, each from her point of view, memoirs of all that happened at court. The work never went very far. Madame de Montespan took pleasure in reading selections from these memoirs to her friends, in the last years of her life. The pious devotion which was joined to all these secret intrigues further strengthened the favour of Madame de Maintenon and weakened that of Madame de Montespan. The king reproached himself for his attachment to a married woman and felt this scruple still more since he had begun to feel no more love for her. This embarrassing situation continued until 1685, a year made memorable by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Very different scenes were to be seen at that time--on one side the despair and flight of a part of the nation, on the other new fêtes at Versailles; Trianon and Marly built; nature in all these places forced with delights, and gardens in which every art was exhausted. The marriage of the grandson of the Great Condé with Mademoiselle de Nantes, daughter of the king and Madame de Montespan, was the last triumph of this mistress who began to retire from court.

_The Retirement of Montespan_

[Sidenote: [1685-1707 A.D.]]

The king afterwards gave in marriage two other children he had had by her: Mademoiselle de Blois to the duke de Chartres, and the duke du Maine to Louise Benédicte de Bourbon, granddaughter of the Great Condé and sister of Monsieur le Duc,[124] a princess celebrated for her wit and liking for the arts.

Before the celebration of the marriage of Monsieur le Duc with Mademoiselle de Nantes, the marquis de Seignelay in honour of that event gave the king a fête worthy of that monarch in the gardens of Sceaux, which had been planted by Le Nôtre with as much taste as those of Versailles. The idyll of Peace composed by Racine was performed on that occasion. At Versailles there was a new tournament and after the marriage the king displayed a singular magnificence, for which Cardinal Mazarin had given the first idea in 1656.

Four booths were put up in the salon at Marly, filled with the richest and most select products of the industry of Parisian workmen. These four booths were at the same time so many splendid decorations representing the four seasons of the year. Madame de Montespan presided over one with Monseigneur. Her rival, Madame de Maintenon, was in another with the duke du Maine. The newly married couple each had charge of one: Monsieur le Duc with Madame de Thiange; and Madame la Duchesse, whom propriety did not permit to have one with a man on account of her extreme youth, was with the duchess de Chevreuse. The so-called gentlemen and ladies _du voyage_ drew lots for the jewels with which the booths were decorated. The king then made presents to the whole court in a manner worthy of a king. Cardinal Mazarin’s lottery was less ingenious and less brilliant. These lotteries had been formerly put into fashion by the Roman emperors, but not one of them ever relieved its magnificence with so much gallantry.

After the marriage of her daughter Madame de Montespan did not again appear at court. She lived a very dignified life at Paris. She had a large income, but it was a life annuity, and the king always paid her a pension of 1,000 gold louis a month. She went every year to take the waters at Bourbon, and there married off the girls of the neighbourhood, whom she endowed. She was no longer at the age when the imagination, affected by lively impressions, sends one to the Carmelites. She died at Bourbon in 1707.

One year after the marriage of Mademoiselle de Nantes with Monsieur le Duc, the prince of Condé died at Fontainebleau, at the age of sixty-six, of an illness which was hastened by his desire to go to see Madame la Duchesse, who had smallpox.

_Madame de Maintenon_

Meanwhile, after the marriage of Madame la Duchesse, after the total eclipse of the mother, the victorious Madame de Maintenon achieved such an influence and inspired Louis XIV with so much tenderness and such scruples, that the king, by the advice of Père Lachaise, married her secretly in the month of January, 1686,[125] in the small chapel in the apartments occupied afterwards by the duke of Burgundy. There was no contract, no stipulation. The archbishop of Paris, Harlay de Chanvalon, pronounced the benediction, the confessor assisting. Montchevreuil and Bontemps, first valet de chambre, were the witnesses. Louis XIV was at the time in his forty-eighth year and the woman he espoused in her fifty-second. This sovereign, crowned with glory, desired to combine with the fatigues of governing the innocent joys of private life; this marriage bound him to nothing incompatible with his rank; it was always a problem to the court. Since Madame de Maintenon was really married, it respected her as the king’s choice, without treating her as queen.

(1635-1719)]

She was of an old family, granddaughter of Théodore Agrippa d’Aubigné, gentleman of the chamber to Henry IV. His father, Constant d’Aubigné, wishing to establish himself in business in the Carolinas, applied to the English government, and was thrown into the prison of the château Trompette, from which he escaped with the assistance of the daughter of the governor of the prison, a gentleman from Bordeaux named Cadillac. Constant d’Aubigné married his benefactress in 1627 and took her with him to the Carolinas. Returning with her to France after several years, both were imprisoned at Niort in Poitou, by order of the court. In this prison was born, in 1635, Françoise d’Aubigné, destined to know all the greatest hardships of life as well as the highest favours of fortune. Taken at the age of three to America (Martinique), brought back an orphan of twelve years, brought up with the greatest severity by Madame de Neuillant, mother of the duchess de Navailles her relative, she was only too glad to marry in 1651 Paul Scarron, who lived near her in the rue d’Enfer. Scarron came of an old family of parliament, distinguished by its important matrimonial alliances; but his profession of burlesque poet lowered him while making him popular. It was nevertheless a stroke of fortune for Mademoiselle d’Aubigné to marry this man, deformed in mind and body, and with very modest means. She abjured Calvinism, her own religion as well as that of her ancestors, before this marriage. Her beauty and wit soon made her distinguished. She was eagerly sought after by the best society of Paris, and this time of her youth was no doubt the happiest period of her life. After the death of her husband, in 1660, she was for a long time unable to obtain from the king a modest pension of 1,500 livres which Scarron had enjoyed. Finally, after several years, the king granted her one of two thousand, saying, “Madame, I have made you wait a long time, but you have so many friends that my only distinction could be in not being one of them.” Meanwhile it is proved, by the letters of Madame de Maintenon, that she owed to Madame de Montespan the slight assistance she received to relieve her poverty. It was remembered several years later, when it became necessary to bring up secretly the duke du Maine, son of the king by the marquise de Montespan, born in 1672. The duke du Maine was born with a deformed foot. The chief physician, D’Aquin, who was in the secret, decided that the child should be taken to the baths at Barèges. It was necessary to find a confidential person to be intrusted with this charge. The king suggested Madame Scarron. Louvois went secretly to Paris to propose this journey to her. From that time on she was in charge of the education of the duke du Maine--chosen for this duty by the king and not by Madame de Montespan, as has erroneously been said.

She wrote directly to the king; her letters pleased him greatly. This was the origin of her good fortune--her shrewdness did the rest. The king, who at first did not like her, passed from aversion to confidence and from confidence to love. The letters which we have of hers are of much greater importance than they would seem: they show that mixture of religion and gallantry, of dignity and weakness, which are often found in the human heart, and which certainly were in that of Louis XIV. Madame de Maintenon seemed to be filled at the same time with an ambition and a devoutness which never appeared to conflict. Her confessor, Gobelin, approved equally of both: he was spiritual guide as well as courtier; his penitent, having become ungrateful towards Madame de Montespan, always dissembled this feeling. Her confessor encouraged her in her aspirations. She called religion to the assistance of her waning charms to supplant her benefactress, now become her rival.

This strange mixture of love and scruple on the part of the king, of ambition and devoutness on the part of the new mistress, seemed to have lasted from 1681 to 1686, the date of their marriage. Her elevation was for her only a seclusion. Shut up in her apartments, which were on the same floor as those of the king, she limited herself to the society of two or three ladies, retiring like herself--she saw even them very rarely. The king came to her apartments every day after supper, and remained until midnight. There he worked with his ministers, while Madame de Maintenon read, or occupied herself with needlework; she never attempted to speak on affairs of state, seemed often to ignore them, putting far from her any appearance of intrigue or plotting; much more occupied in humouring him who governed than seeking to govern, in managing her income, and expending it with the greatest cautiousness.

Louis XIV in marrying Madame de Maintenon gained only an agreeable and submissive companion. The sole public distinction which testified to her secret elevation was, that during mass she occupied one of those small gilded stalls which were supposed to be only for the king and queen. Beyond that, no display, no grandeur. The devoutness with which she had inspired the king and which had led to her marriage, became gradually a true and profound sentiment, which age and ennui served to strengthen. She already posed at the court and before the king as a foundress by gathering together at Noisy several young girls of the nobility; and the king had already set apart the revenues of the abbey of St. Denis for that budding community. St. Cyr was built at the foot of the park of Versailles in 1686.

On the death of the king she retired for life to St. Cyr. What is surprising, is that the king left her almost nothing. He simply recommended her to the duke of Orleans. She asked for a pension of only 24,000 livres, which was scrupulously paid her, until her death on April 15th, 1719.[b]

Turning now from this survey of the court, let us examine the effect of Louis XIV’s policy on the nation at large.

EFFECT OF LOUIS XIV’S POLICY ON THE NATION

[Sidenote: [1661-1715 A.D.]]

Louis XIV’s reign falls into two parts, easy to distinguish, the one from the other; the first covers from 1661 to 1683, the second, and much the longer, from 1683 to 1715. In the first period, Louis XIV found four men of genius, who were also scrupulously honest men, to uphold and even direct him in everything concerning the internal government, diplomacy, warfare, and defence of the kingdom. In an equal degree Colbert, Lionne, Turenne, and Vauban exercised a salutary and fruitful influence over the king’s mind, never divorcing the welfare of the kingdom from that of the king, and seeking before all else the greatness or the security of the empire by adopting the best of the measures which had proved so successful under Henry IV, Richelieu, and Mazarin. The profound reverence which Colbert, more especially, had for the memory of Richelieu, whom he wished the king to take as his model, provoked Louis’ jests. “When any important matter was under discussion,” says a contemporary chronicle, “the late king would often exclaim, ‘Colbert there will tell us: Sire, the great Cardinal Richelieu.’ Which, however, did not prevent Colbert from pursuing his object, and moulding the king in Richelieu’s likeness.”

In the second period, Louis, prematurely aged, disillusioned, and ill, reduced to a stern performance of his duties as a man and a Christian by the froward influence of an obstinate and ambitious woman, drew inspiration from none but narrow ideals, applying the most fatal maxims to home government and foreign policy. He yielded to the advice of persons whom he had for long encouraged to flatter his prejudices, and who urged him along a path of bloody repressions. Louvois, Madame de Maintenon, Chamillard, and Villeroi were the real wielders of authority. They sacrificed the well-being of the kingdom to their own interest, which they sought to confound with the interests of the crown. They prepared the way for the ruin of the state by the most disastrous home measures, while they ruined the prestige of France abroad by changing the character of her policy.[m]

The trouble was not only in the royal household; it also threatened to be in the state; for Louis, violating all laws civil and religious, placed the legitimated princes side by side with the princes of the blood. He forced the court to pay equal respect to both; and public morality received a blow from which it was slow to recover. The lessons in scandal which came from the throne were not lost, and the corruption, which was fermenting in spite of the apparent austerity of the last years, was to break out under the new reign without restraint and without shame. Those dukes of Orleans and Vendôme, given up to filthy debauches, that duke d’Antin surprised in a flagrant act of theft, and so many others who contrived at play to correct the chances of fortune; those princesses of the blood who at Marly within two steps of the king and Madame de Maintenon, send for such strange pastimes[126]--that court in fine which, according to Saint-Simon,[i] “sweated hypocrisy,” all shows, under a king who plays the devotee, when he is no longer able to do otherwise, that human morality, conscience, and dignity can never be violated with impunity. Already, even in the very heart of Versailles, a premonitory cry is heard. In face of these gilded lives La Bruyère writes: “The great have no soul; I would be of the people.” It was at Versailles that the French nobility ruined themselves. There official ennui led to secret debauches; the habit of receiving everything from the monarch led to the belief that all was due not to services but to servility.

One irrefutable witness of the wretchedness of this period has been left to us--the memorials which the king demanded of the intendants on the condition of their provinces in order that his grandson the duke of Burgundy might by studying them become acquainted with the affairs of the administration. At every page these distressing words recur, “War, mortality, the continual quartering and passage of the soldiers, the militia, the great prerogatives, the withdrawal of the Huguenots have ruined this country.” Bridges, roads were in a deplorable state and commerce was annihilated. The frontier provinces were further crushed by requisitions and the pillage of the soldiers who, receiving neither pay nor food, helped themselves. In the generality of Rouen, out of 700,000 inhabitants 650,000 had a bundle of straw for their beds. In certain provinces the peasant was returning to a state of savagery: living for the most part on herbs and roots like the beasts; and, wild as they were, he fled if one approached. “There is no nation more savage than these people,” the intendant of Bourges says of those under his administration; “sometimes troops of them are to be seen in the country, seated in a circle in the middle of a field and always far from the roads; if one approach the band immediately disperses.”[c]

We have seen Louis XIV at home; let us now turn to his relations with other countries.[a]

FOOTNOTES

[111] Table of the direct ancestors of Louis XIV for four generations, showing birthplace of each ancestor. It will be noted that Ferdinand I and Anna of Hungary appear twice in the fourth generation column. The actual number of persons, therefore, is twenty-eight instead of thirty.[a]

THIRD GENERATION FOURTH GENERATION

Anthony +-Charles, d. of Vendôme France
SECOND de Bourbon|
GENERATION +----------+
| France |
Henry IV| +-Françoise d’Alençon France
+--------+
FIRST | France | Jeanne +-Henry II, K. of Navarre France
GENERATION| | d’Albret |
| +----------+
Louis | France |
XIII | +-Marguerite d’Angoulême France
+-------+
|France | +-Cosmo I, G. D. of Tuscany Italy
| | Francesco |
| | I, Grand D.|
| | of Tuscany |
| | +----------+
| | Marie | Italy |
| |d’Medici| +-Leonora of Toledo Spain
| +--------+
| Italy | Joanna +-Emp. Ferdinand I Spain
| | Arch., D.|
| +----------+
| Austria |
Louis XIV| +-Anna of Hungary Hungary
France |
1688-1715| +-Charles V Spanish Netherlands
| Philip II |
| +----------+
| Philip | Spain |
| III | +-Isabella Portugal
| +--------+
| | Spain | Anne of +-Maximilian II Austria
| | | Austria |
| | +----------+
|Anne of| Austria |
|Austria| +-Maria (d. Emp. Ch. VI) Spain
+-------+
Spain | Charles, +-_Emp. Ferdinand I_ _Spain_
| D. Styria |
| +----------+
| | Austria |
|Margaret| +-_Anna of Hungary_ _Hungary_
+--------+
Austria | Maria of +-Albrecht V Bavaria
| Bavaria |
+----------+
Bavaria |
+-Anne (d. Emp. Ferdinand I) Austria

[112] There were in Louis XIV’s day three councils: (1) The supreme council, to which the king summoned the secretaries of state and sometimes the princes of the blood. It had the general direction of the governmental policy and important affairs. It judged appeals from the state council. (2) The state council, placed beneath the ministry but above the higher courts. It was the great administrative body of the realm, meeting four times a week, the chancellor presiding. On one day it read and discussed the reports of the provincial governors; on another it discussed financial questions; on another it listened to complaints on taxation; on another it adjudged differences between the courts. The state councillors were eighteen in number. (3) The grand council, which occupied itself with cases covering the bishoprics and the benefices at the king’s disposal. It judged the edicts of the sovereign courts and the conflicts between the parliament and the lower courts. Its decisions were executive throughout the whole kingdom, while the sentences of each parliament applied only to its own territory.

[113] [Voltaire is wrong here, says Martin:[d] “Fouquet had spent about nine millions” (almost eighteen nowadays and perhaps forty-five in relative value).]

[114] [Louis XIV had little love for Paris and created Versailles, or rather greatly enlarged the old château of Louis XIII, by making immense additions, and by constructing the fine façade on the park side which, with its extended wings, made it the most superb and vast abode in the world.[e]]

[115] [The above mentioned _régime des classes_.]

[116] [If the words were not uttered the thought was certainly present. Louis XIV is known to have written on one occasion, “The nation does not constitute a body in France; it resides entirely in the person of the king.”]

[117] [In 1680 the Paris _corps de ville_ solemnly conferred on the king the title of Louis the Great, which, hitherto used sometimes on medals, now became _de rigueur_ in official language.[d]]

[118] In 1669 the sister house of Port-Royal de Paris was placed under Jesuit management. It was to this house that Clement XI ordered the transference of the property of Port-Royal des Champs, the year before the buildings were destroyed. The aged sisters were dispersed.

[119] In 1694 a printer and a publisher were hanged for libel, by sentence of De la Reynie. Several persons were interrogated or died in the Bastille for the same reason. The author of the pamphlet against the archbishop of Rheims was imprisoned in an iron cage at Mont St. Michel.

[120] These were letters written by order of the king, countersigned by a secretary of state, and sealed with the king’s seal, by virtue of which the police arrested a citizen, and imprisoned him without trial, as long as it pleased the government, without his being seen or allowed to receive letters from anyone.

[121] [Anne of Austria died of cancer January 20th, 1666.]

[122] [Madame’s husband, Philip duke of Orleans, who had assumed that title on the death of Gaston in 1660, was a man of licentious habits, and although he distinguished himself in war, as we shall see, his effeminacy was of a most marked type. There is no doubt that Monsieur was most indifferent to his wife, and many historians, including Michelet,[l] believe that Louis XIV was the father of her children. Of these, two daughters arrived at maturity--Marie Louise, who married Charles II of Spain, and Anne Marie, who married Victor Amadeus of Savoy, afterwards king of Sardinia. Madame died 1670, under circumstances which will be related in the next chapter, and which were open to the suspicion of poison. The following year Monsieur married the princess palatine--Charlotte Elizabeth. She was the mother of the duke of Orleans, regent of the realm, and died in 1722.]

[123] [By this title was known the “grand dauphin” Louis, only child of Louis XIV and his queen, born in 1661. The dauphin married in 1680 the princess Marie Anne Christine Victoire of Bavaria.]

[124] [Louis de Bourbon-Condé, who was the father of Louis XV’s prime minister.]

[125] [The queen Maria Theresa had died July 30th, 1683, quite suddenly. She held so little place at court that the event was scarcely noticed.[e]]

[126] Monseigneur played late in the salon. On withdrawing to his own apartments he went up to the princesses (the duchesses de Chartres and de Bourbon) and found them smoking with pipes which they had sent for from the Swiss guardhouse. Monseigneur made them stop this diversion, but the smoke betrayed them. Next morning the king administered a rough rebuke.[i]

The duchess de la Ferté assembled her purveyors at her house and played a kind of lansquenet with them. She whispered in my ear, “I cheat them but they rob me.” _Mémoires_ of Madame de Staal.[o]