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LOUIS XIV. 



LOUIS XIV. 



938 



his father iu 1610, being only nine years of age, under the regency of 

 his mother. Iu October 1614, he was declared to be of age, aud in 

 the following year he married Anne, daughter of Philip III. of Spain. 

 Concino Concini, marshal d'Anore, a Florentine, the favourite minister 

 of the queen-dowager, had, by his insolence and his intrigues, excited 

 the jealousy of many of the high nobility, with the prince of CondcS at 

 their head, who left the court and began a civil war. Louis XIII., 

 who was impatient of the rule of his mother, and of the favourite, but 

 had not spirit enough to shake it off, consulted with a young courtier 

 called Luiues, and by his advice ordered Vitri, an officer of his body- 

 guard, to arrest the marshal. Vitri stopped him on the drawbridge 

 of the Louvre ; the marshal attempted to defend himself, upon which 

 Vitri killed him. The people of Paris made great rejoicings at his 

 death, dragged his body through the streets, cut it to pieces, and 

 threw into the river. The parliament of Paris declared him to have 

 been guilty of treason and sorcery, and on the same grounds sentenced 

 his wife, who was also a Florentine, named Galigai, to be beheaded, 

 and her body burned, a sentence which was executed on the 8th 

 July 1617. This trial and sentence are amongst the moat diagraceful 

 of the old French judicature. The queen-dowager was sent to Blois 

 under arrest. Luines now became the ruling favourite ; for Louis was 

 totally incapable of governing himself during the whole of his life. 

 Some years after the queen-dowager escaped from Blois, and beiug 

 supported by several nobles, the civil war broke out again; but 

 Armand dn Plessis, bishop of Lucon, known afterwards as Cardinal 

 de Richelieu, acted as mediator between the king and his mother, in 

 consequence of which he obtained a cardinal's hat, and in 1624 became 

 minister, and lastly prime minister, which he continued to be till his 

 death in 1642. Richelieu was certainly one of the greatest ministers 

 of France under the old monarchy ; fertile in resources, firm, sagacious, 

 and unscrupulous, he succeeded in humbling and weakening thj 

 feudal nobility, and thus paved the way for the absolute govern- 

 ment of Louis XIV. lie checked the ambition of the house of 

 Austria by assisting, first secretly and afterwards openly, the German 

 Protestant states and the Swedes, by which means France acquired a 

 considerable influence in the affairs of the Empire.* In 1628 Richelieu 

 took La Rochelle, the great stronghold of the Protestants of France, 

 which had often withstood the kingly forces under the former reigns. 

 The French armies took an important part in the Thirty Years' War ; 

 they acted on the Rhine in concert with the Swedes, whilst another 

 French army carried on the war in Italy against the Spaniards, a 

 third army was fighting in Flanders, and a fourth on the frontiers of 

 Catalonia. The French were generally successful : they took Koussillon 

 Alsace, the duchy of Bar, and other provinces. In December 1642, 

 Richelieu died at Paris, being fifty -eight years of age. H is great 

 object had been, during all his ministry, to render the government of 

 the king absolute, and he succeeded. Richelieu at the same time 

 patronised learning and the fine arts ; he established the royal press ; 

 he embellished Paris ; he was magnificent and high-minded : his 

 ambition was not a selfish or a vulgar one. Among his agents and 

 confidants there was a Capuchin, called Father Joseph, whom he 

 employed in the most secret and important affairs, and who seems to 

 have equalled his master iu abilities. 



Louis survived his minister only a few months ; he died in May 

 1643, leaving his son Louis XIV. a minor, under the regency of the 

 queen-mother. 



LOUIS XIV. succeeded his father in 1643, being then hardly five 

 jean old. His reign, including his minority, lasted seventy-two 

 jean, a long and important period, marked by many events and 

 vicissitudes all over Europe, in most of which Louis took an 

 active part. The history of such a reign requires volumes, and has 

 been written or adverted to and commented upon by numerous 

 historians who have treated of the age. But the best works for 

 making us acquainted with the character of Louis aud of his govern- 

 ment, and the condition of France under his reign, are the contempo- 

 rary memoirs of St. Simon, Dangeau, Louville, Noailles, Cardinal de 

 Hetz, Madame de Motteville, and others, and above all the writings of 

 Louis XIV. himself, especially his 'Instructions pour le Dauphin,' 

 which reveal his most secret thoughts. Cardinal Mazariu, an Italian 

 by birth and a pupil of Richelieu, but inferior to his master, was the 

 minister of the regency during the minority of Louis. He continued 

 the war against Spain and the emperor of Germany in conjunction 

 with the Swedes. Turenne, the marshal of Grammont, and the Duke 

 of Enghien, afterwards the great CondcS, distinguished themselves in 

 those wars. The treaties of Miinster and Osnabruck (1648) put an 

 end to the Thirty Years' War, and Mazarin had the satisfaction of 

 concluding this peace, called that of Westphalia, by which France 

 acquired Alsace, the Suntgau, and the seigniory of the bishoprics of 

 Metz, Toul, and Verdun. The same year however that the war in 

 Germany was terminated the civil war of La Fronde broke 'out in 

 France. The parliament of Paris and several of the high nobility 

 revolted against the authority of the cardinal. Louis, then ten years 

 of age, the queen-regent, and Mazarin, were obliged to leave the capital 

 in January 1649, and this humiliation seems to have made a deep 

 impression on the mind of Louis, and to have contributed to render 

 him mistrustful, arbitrary, and stern. After some fighting, peace was 

 made, and the court re-entered Paris in the month of August. This 

 was the lame year in which Charles I. was beheaded in England and 



the monarchy abolished. The prince of Coude", who had been the 

 means of appeasing the civil war, having given offence to the queen 

 and the cardinal, was arrested, and Tureune and other Froudeurs 

 began again the civil war iu the following year (1650). [CONDE, 

 Louis DE.J In 1651 the queen ordered the release of Conde ; Turenne 

 made his peace with the court, and Mazariu was exiled by a sentence 

 of the parliauent of Paris. Conde 1 however continued the war, and 

 being joined by the Duke of Orleans, took possession of Paris, which 

 the court had left again. In October, 1652, an arrangement took 

 place, the king re-entered Paris, Cond^ emigrated to join the 

 Spaniards, the Cardinal de Retz, one of. the chief actors in the dis- 

 turbances, was put in prison at Vincennes, and Mazarin himselt 

 returned to Paris in February 1653, and resumed the ministry. Iu 

 1654 Louis XIV. made his first campaign in Flanders against the 

 Spaniards. In the following year he concluded a treaty of alliance 

 with Cromwell against Spain. The war continued during that aud 

 the next year with various success ; Turenne commanded the French 

 troops, aud the prince of Condci fought on the side of the Spaniards 

 against his own country. 



In 1567 the Emperor Ferdinand III. died, and Mazarin intrigued to 

 prevent the election of his son Leopold, and to obtain the imperial 

 dignity for Louis XIV. He began by supporting, through his agents 

 at the Diet, the pretensions of the elector of Bavaria, and representing 

 and exaggerating the danger to the liberties of Germany which would 

 attend another election of au Austrian prince to the imperial throne. 

 It was soon found however that the elector of Bavaria was not likely 

 to be nominated, and Mazarin then intrigued separately with the 

 electors in favour of Louis. He bribed, by actual disbursements of 

 money and ample promises of territorial aggrandisement, the arch- 

 bishops electors of Treves and Cologne, as well as the elector-palatine, 

 and even the elector of Brandenburg. Had he succeeded in gaining 

 over the elector of Mayence, John Philip de Schcenbora, chancellor of 

 the empire, Louis XIV. would have succeeded. Louis himself repaired 

 to Metz, his army being cantoned iu that neighbourhood, as if to 

 support his pretensions. The cardinal; sent to the Diet at Frankfurt 

 the marshal of Grammout and M. de Lyonue to further his object. In 

 his instructions he empowered them to offer to the elector of Mayenca 

 300,000 livres, besides a revenue of 90,000 more for his relations, and, 

 if necessary, to send at ouce to Frankfurt the value of 1,200,000 livres 

 in plate and other valuable objects as a security. (' Instructions 

 aclressees de Stenay, le 29 Juillet, 1GJ7, par Mazarin, a Messrs, da 

 Grammout et de Lyoune,' quoted by Lemoutey among the ' Pieces 

 Justincatives ' of his ' Essai sur I'Etablissement Monarchique de 

 Louis XIV.') The elector of Mayenco however adjourned the election 

 to the following year, and wrote to Leopold of Austria, king of Hungary 

 and Bohemia, sou of Ferdinand, promising him his vote. The other 

 electors kept the money they had received from Mazariu, and turned 

 also in favour of Leopold, who was unanimously elected in 1658. 

 From that timo began the bitter animosity of Louis against Leopold, 

 which lasted half a century, and was the cause of three long and 

 bloody wars. 



Meantime the war with Spain was brought to a close in November 

 1659, by cardinal Mazarin, by the treaty of the Bidasoa, iu which the 

 marriage between the lufanta Maria Theresa, daughter of Philip IV. 

 of Spain, aod Louis XI V., was concluded. Spain gave up the Artois 

 and Roussillon, and stipulated for a free pardon to the Prince of 

 Condd. The new queen was married and made her entrance into 

 Paris the following year (1660). She brought with her half a million 

 of crowns as a dowry. She was extremely weak in her intellect and 

 childish in her habits, but harmless and good-natured. Louis XIV. 

 always behaved to her with considerate regard, but never felt any 

 affection towards her, aud he resorted to the society of a succession 

 of mistresses, of whom Mademoiselle de la Vallitro, Madame de Monies- 

 pan, and Madame de Mainteuon are the most kuown. 



In February 1661 Mazarin concluded at Vinceunea a third and last 

 treaty with Charles, duke of Lorraine, by which Strasburg, Phalsburg, 

 Stenai, aud other places were given up to France. Nine days after 

 this treaty Mazarin expired, at fifty-nine years of age, leaving a large 

 fortune to his nieces Mancini, and to his nephew, whom he made duke 

 of Nevers. 



With the death of Cardinal Mazarin began the real emancipation of 

 Louis XIV., who from that moment took the reins of the government 

 entirely into his hands. He dismissed and imprisoned Fouquet, the 

 superintendent or minister of finance, and had him tried on the charges 

 of peculation and treason by au extraordinary commission, which 

 condemned him to banishment ; but Louis aggravated the sentence by 

 shutting him up iu the castle of Pignerol, in the Alps, where he died 

 in J680. In appointing Colbert in the room of Fouquet, Louis made 

 a good choice, and much of the splendour of his reign is due to that 

 able minister. [COLBERT, JEAN BAPTISTE.] The ruling principle of 

 Louis XIV. was pure absolutism. The king, according to him, repre- 

 sented the whole nation ; all power, all authority, were vested in him. 

 " L'e'tat, c'est moi ! " was his well-known expression. This form of 

 government, he said, was the best suited to the character of the nation, 

 its habits, its tastes, its situation. In his written instructions to the 

 dauphin he tells him that " all which is found in the extent of our 

 dominions, of whatever nature it be, belongs to us. The monies in 

 our treasury, as well as those which are in charge of the receivers aud 



