LOUIS xiv. 



LOUIS XIV. 



treasurers, and tho*e which we leave in the hands of our subjects for 

 the purposes of trade, are all alike under our care. Tou must be con- 

 vinced that king! are abaolute lords, anil have the full and eutird 

 disposal of all property, whether in the posaesaion of the clergy or of 

 laymen, and may use it at all time* as wise eoonomuta. Likewise the 

 lives of their subject* are their own property, and they ought to be 

 careful and sparing of them. . . . Ho who has given king* to men 

 has ordered them to be respected as his lieutenants, reserving to 

 himself alone the right of examining their conduct It is his will 

 that whoever ia born a subject should obey without discrimination 



or reservation The essential defect of the monarchy of 



England is that the prince cannot raise men or money without 

 the parliament, nor keep the parliament assembled without lessening 

 thereby his own authority." ( CEuvres de Louis XIV.,' vol. ii., Paris, 

 1816.) 



Louis XIV. completed the work begun by Richelieu : he changed 

 France from a feudal monarchy into an absolute one. Ximenes, 

 Charles V., and Philip II. had effected the same change in Spain ; but 

 they had the clergy and the Inquisition to support and share their 

 power, and the absolutism of Spain stood longer than that of France. 

 Louis enticed the high nobility from their rural mansions, attracted 

 them to court, employed them about his per.-ou, gave them pensions 

 or placed them in bis regular army, and completely broke down their 

 former spirit of independence. With regard to the church, he distri- 

 buted its temporalities to his favourites, both clerical and lay, bestowed 

 livings and pensions and abbacies in commendam on courtly abbes, 

 and thus rendered the clergy docile and subservient to the crown. 

 He had several disputes with the court of Rome, in which he treated 

 the pope with great asperity : twice he braved the pontiff, through 

 his ambassador, in the middle of Home [ALEXANDER VII; INNO- 

 CENT XI.]; twice he seized upon Avignon, and twice he obliged the 

 papal court to make him humble apologies. In his old age he became 

 very devout, intolerant, and superstitious, and yet he mistrusted the 

 papal court, and withstood its encroachments. 



After the death of Mazariu, Louis admitted no more ecclesiastics 

 into his council. The spirit of jealousy of the Qallican church made 

 it less dependent on Rome and more subservient to the crown ; and 

 the hostility of the magistracy against the clergy furnished the king 

 with an arm always ready to check any mutinous disposition in the 

 clerical body. 



The parliaments were also subdued, like the nobility and clergy, by 

 the absolute will of Louis. Wheu only seventeen years of age, in 

 1655, the parliament of Paris having made some remonstrances 

 against au edict of the- king concerning the coinage, he rode from 

 Viucennes to Paris, entered the hall of the parliament, booted as he 

 was, holding his whip in his hand, and, addressing the firat president, 

 told him that the meetings of that body had produced calamities 

 enough, and that he ordered them to cease discussing his edicts. 

 " And you, Mr. President," said he, " I forbid you to allow it." In 

 1657 Louis issued an edict forbidding the parliament of Paris from 

 making any remonstrances concerning the royal edicts before re- 

 gistering them, and not until eight days after it hod obediently 

 registered them, after which the parliament might address him written 

 remonstrances. From that time and to the end of his reign the parlia- 

 ment offered little or no impediment to the royal authority; it 

 withdrew itself from state affairs, and confined itself to its judicial 

 functions. 



Having destroyed all opposition from the only orders which enjoyed 

 any consideration in the state, Louis took care to make it known to 

 the tiers <Stat, or commons, that it was not for its advantage that he 

 had humble! the privileged classes. In fact, he did not consider the 

 tiers e'tat as forming a class, but as an ignoble crowd of roturiers who 

 were doomed to work for him and to obey his mandates, and from 

 amongst whom he deigned from time to time to select some indivi- 

 duals as objects of his favour. In his celebrated edict of 1679, con- 

 cerning duels, he speaks with the most insulting contempt of all 

 persons " of ignoble birth " who are " insolent enough " to call out 

 gentlemen to fight; and in case of death or serious wounds resulting 

 therefrom, he sentences them to be strangled and their goods con- 

 fiscated, and awards the same penalties to those gentlemen who shall 

 presume to fight against " unworthy persons and for abject causes." 

 ThU law, most offensive to the great mass of the French people, was 

 confirmed after Louis's death by the edict of February 1723, and 

 continued in vigour till the fall of the old monarchy. 



Louis established that system of centralisation in the administration 

 which has been followed and rendered more complete by the various 

 governments that have succeeded each other till our own days, and 

 which renders France the most compact power in Europe : and in which 

 the action of the executive residing at Paris is felt at every step by 

 every individual in the moat remote corners of the kingdom. He nt 

 the same time began the first labours for a regular system of legisla- 

 tion, by issuing separate ordonnances for civil and criminal process, for 

 commercial matters, for the woods and forests, and for the marine, and 

 which with all their imperfections formed the basis of distinct codes. 

 The education of Lonis had been rery imperfect, and ho was himself 

 in great measure uninformed ; but he encouraged science and litera- 

 ture, for which he was rewarded by numerous flatteries. His reign 

 was a brillinnt epoch of learning in France. With regard to the arts 



he had more pomp than taste ; he felt a prido in conquering obstacles, 

 as the millions he lavished on Versailles, in a most unfavourable local ity , 

 amply testify. 



Louis XIV. hated the Protestants, not so much from religion-, 1 

 as because he considered them as rebellious subjects: he wanted uni- 

 formity in everything, in religion as well as politics. This led him to 

 that most unjust and disastrous measure, the revocation of the edict 

 of Nantes, in 1685, by which Protestantism was proscribed in France. 

 France lost thousands of its most industrious citizens, who repaired 

 to England, Switzerland, Holland, and Germany, carrying with them 

 their manufacturing skill, and all the efforts of Colbert to encourage 

 French industry were rendered abortive by that cruel and fanatical 

 act, of which the revolt of the Ct5 venues and the war of extermination 

 which followed were remote consequences. The persecution of the 

 Jansenists was another consequence of Louis's intolerance. 



The foreign wars of Louis XIV. proceeded in great measure from 

 the same ruling principles or prejudices of his mind. He disliked 

 the Dutch, whom he considered as mercantile plebeians, heretic 

 republicans, " a body formed of too many heads, which cannot bu 

 warmed by the fire of noble passions " (' Instructions pour le 

 Dauphin,' vol. ii, p. 201); and he carried his antipathy to the grave, 

 without having succeeded in subjecting that small nation, whosa 

 wealth excited enemies against him everywhere. It is impossible not 

 to be struck with the similarity of prejudices in two men, however 

 dissimilar in some respects, Napoleon I. and Louis XIV. The ha! 

 Napoleon against England, which he designated as a nation of shop- 

 keepers, was like that of Louis against the Dutch, aud it produced 

 similar results to his empire. The same determination of establi 

 uniformity in everything ; the same mania for a unity and sin_ 

 of power, which both mistook for strength; the same ambit i 

 making France the ruling nation of Europe under au absolute ruler, 

 were alike the dominant principles, or rather passions, of the ' legiti- 

 mate and most Christian king,' and of the plebeian 'child aud 

 champion of the Revolution.' Several of the plans aud schemes of 

 Louis XIV., relative to foreign conquests, were found iu the archives, 

 and were revived and acted upon by Bonaparte. 



The first war of Louis XIV. against the emperor Leopold, Holland, 

 and Spain, was ended by the treaty of Nyrnegen, 1678. Louis kept 

 the Franche Comtd and part of the Spanish Netherlands. Th-i war 

 broke out again iu 16S9, between Louis on one side, aud the Emp.ro, 

 Holland, and England on the other. Louis undertook to support 

 James II. in Ireland, but the battle of the Boyne and the capitula- 

 tion of Limerick put an end to the hopes of the Stuarts, aud James II. 

 passed the rest of his life in exile at St. Qermain-en-Laye, where he 

 died a pensioner of the French king. In Germany Louis XIV. caused 

 one of the most atrocious acts recorded in the history of modern 

 warfare. This was no less than the devastation of the Palatinate by 

 his commanders. A district of more than thirty English miles in 

 length, with the towns of Heidelberg, Mannheim, Speyer, Oppeuheiui, 

 Crutzenach, Frankenthal, Ingelheim, Bacbarach, Sinzheim, and others, 

 was ravaged, plundered, and burnt, iu cold blood, under the pre- 

 tence of forming a barrier between the French army and its enemies. 

 A cry of indignation resounded throughout all Europe at the disastrous 

 news. It was just about this time that James Stuart solicited, from 

 his exile at St. (Jerinain, the assistance of the emperor against William 

 of Orange, iu the name of legitimacy and the Catholic religion. 

 Leopold in his answer observed, " that there are no people who 

 injure so much the cause of religion aa the French themselves, who 

 on one side support the Turks, the enemies of all Christendom, to 

 the detriment of the empire; and on the othsr, have ravaged and 

 burnt innocent towns, which had surrendered by capitulations signed' 

 by the hand of the Dauphin : they have burnt the palaces of princes, 

 plundered the churches, carried away tha inhabitants as slave;, au 1 

 treated Catholics with a cruelty of which the Turks themselves would 

 be ashamed." (' Letter from the Emperor Leopold to James II., 9th 

 of April 16SU,' in the ' Mdmoires de Jacques II.,' vol. iv.) In 

 the unfortunate town of Heidelberg, which had been partly restored 

 by the inhabitants, was taken again by the French marshal De Lorges, 

 the women were violated, the churches set ou fire, and the inhabitants 

 iu general, 15,000 iu number, stripped of everything and driven away 

 from their homes. On these news a 'Te Deum ' was sung at I'.iri.i, 

 and a coin struck, which represented the town in flames, with the 

 inscription, " Rex dixit ct factum est ! " The treaty of Ryswick, in 

 1697, terminated the war, by which Louis gained nothing, acknow- 

 ledged William III. as king of Great Britain, and restored the Duke 

 of Lorraine to his dominions. 



The third war of Louis waa that of the Spanish succession. It 

 began in 1701 and lasted thirteen years, convulsed all Europe, and 

 was terminated at last by the peace of Utrecht in 1713. Louis suc- 

 ceeded in establishing a Bourbon dynasty in Spsin. but this was the 

 only advantage he gained; his armies had been repeatedly d> j ; 

 by Eugene and Marlborough, his best generals were dead, his treasury 

 was exhausted, his subjects were tired of war and of taxes, and he 

 himself was broken down in health and spirits, a mere shadow of 

 what he had been. He lingered about two years more, during which 

 he legitimated his numerous natural children; made his will, by 

 which he appointed his nephew, Philip, duke of Orleans, regent during 

 the minority of his greatigrandson mvl heir Louis XV.; fell ill in 



