the archduke left the town, and withdrew into Catalonia; Stahrenberg
followed him on the 22d of November, harassed on his march by the Spanish
guerrillas rising everywhere upon his route; every straggler, every
wounded man, was infallibly murdered by the peasants; Stanhope, who
commanded the rearguard, found himself invested by Vendome in the town of
Brihuega; the Spaniards scarcely gave the artillery time to open a
breach, the town was taken by assault, and the English made prisoners.
Stahrenberg retraced his steps; on the 10th of December fighting began
near Villaviciosa; the advantage was for a long time undecided and
disputed; night came; the Austrian general spiked his guns and retreated
by forced marches; the Spaniards bivouacked on the battle-field, the king
slept on a bed made of the enemy's flags; the allies had taken refuge in
Catalonia; Spain had won back her independence and her king.  There was
great joy at Versailles, greater than in the kingdom; the sole aspiration
was for peace.

An unexpected assistance was at hand.  Queen Anne, wearied with the
cupidity and haughtiness of the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough, had
given them notice to quit; the friends of the duke had shared his fall,
and the Tories succeeded the Whigs in power.  The chancellor of the
exchequer, Harley, soon afterwards Earl of Oxford, and the secretary of
state, St. John, who became Lord Bolingbroke, were inclined to peace.
Advances were made to France.  A French priest, Abbe Gautier, living in
obscurity in England, arrived in Paris during January, 1711; he went to
see M. de Torcy at Versailles.  "Do you want peace?"  said he.  "I have
come to bring you the means of treating for it, and concluding
independently of the Hollanders, unworthy of the king's kindnesses and of
the honor he has so often done them of applying to them to pacificate
Europe."  "To ask just then one of his Majesty's ministers if he desired
peace," says Torcy, "was to ask a sick man suffering from a long and
dangerous disease if he wants to be cured."  Negotiations were secretly
opened with the English cabinet.  The Emperor Joseph had just died (April
17, 1711).  He left none but daughters.  From that moment Archduke
Charles inherited the domains of the house of Austria, and aspired to the
imperial crown; by giving him Spain, Europe re-established the monarchy
of Charles V.; she saw the dangers into which she was being drawn by the
resentments or short-sighted ambition of the triumvirate; she fell back
upon the wise projects of William III.  Holland had abandoned them; to
England fell the honor of making them triumphant.  She has often made war
upon the Continent with indomitable obstinacy and perseverance; but at
bottom and by the very force of circumstances England remains, as regards
the affairs of Europe, an essentially pacific power.  War brings her no
advantage; she cannot pretend to any territorial aggrandizement in
Europe; it is the equilibrium between the continental powers that makes
her strength, and her first interest was always to maintain it.

The campaign of 1711 was everywhere insignificant.  Negotiations were
still going on with England, secretly and through subordinate agents:
Manager, member of the Board of Trade, for France; and, for England, the
poet Prior, strongly attached to Harley.  On the 29th of January, 1712,
the general conferences were opened at Utrecht.  The French had been
anxious to avoid the Hague, dreading the obstinacy of Heinsius in favor
of his former proposals.  Preliminary points were already settled with
England; enormous advantages were secured in America to English commerce,
to which was ceded Newfoundland and all that France still possessed in
Acadia; the general proposals had been accepted by Queen Anne and her
ministers.  In vain had the Hollanders and Prince Eugene made great
efforts to modify them; St. John had dryly remarked that England had
borne the greatest part in the burden of the war, and it was but just
that she should direct the negotiations for peace.  For five years past
the United Provinces, exhausted by the length of hostilities, had
constantly been defaulters in their engagements; it was proved to Prince
Eugene that the imperial army had not been increased by two regiments in
consequence of the war the emperor's ambassador, M. de Galas, displayed
impertinence: he was forbidden to come to the court; in spite of the
reserve imposed upon the English ministers by the strife of parties in a
free country, their desire for peace was evident.  The queen had just
ordered the creation of new peers in order to secure a majority of the
upper house in favor of a pacific policy.

[Illustration: The Grand Dauphin----505]

The bolts of Heaven were falling one after another upon the royal family
of France.  On the 14th of April, 1711, Louis XIV. had lost by small-pox
his son, the grand dauphin, a mediocre and submissive creature, ever the
most humble subject of the king, at just fifty years of age.  His eldest
son, the Duke of Burgundy, devout, austere, and capable, the hope of good
men and the terror of intriguers, had taken the rank of dauphin, and was
seriously commencing his apprenticeship in government, when he was
carried off on the 18th of February, 1712, by spotted fever (_rougeole
pourpree_), six days after his wife, the charming Mary Adelaide of Savoy,
the idol of the whole court, supremely beloved by the king, and by Madame
de Maintenon, who had brought her up; their son, the Duke of Brittany,
four years old, died on the 8th of March; a child in the cradle, weakly
and ill, the little Duke of Anjou, remained the only shoot of the elder
branch of the Bourbons.  Dismay seized upon all France; poison was spoken
of; the Duke of Orleans was accused; it was necessary to have a post
mortem examination; only the hand of God had left its traces.  Europe in
its turn was excited.  If the little Duke of Anjou were to die, the crown
of France reverted to Philip V.  The Hollanders and the ambassadors of
the Emperor Charles VI. recently crowned at Frankfurt, insisted on the
necessity of a formal renunciation.  In accord with the English
ministers, Louis XIV. wrote to his grandson,--

"You will be told what England proposes, that you should renounce your
birthright, retaining the monarchy of Spain and the Indies, or renounce
the monarchy of Spain, retaining your rights to the succession in France,
and receiving in exchange for the crown of Spain the kingdoms of Sicily
and Naples, the states of the Duke of Savoy, Montferrat, and the Mantuan,
the said Duke of Savoy succeeding you in Spain; I confess to you that,
notwithstanding the disproportion in the dominions, I have been sensibly
affected by the thought that you would continue to reign, that I might
still regard you as my successor, sure, if the dauphin lives, of a regent
accustomed to command, capable of maintaining order in my kingdom and
stifling its cabals.  If this child were to die, as his weakly complexion
gives too much reason to suppose, you would enjoy the succession to me
following the order of your birth, and I should have the consolation of
leaving to my people a virtuous king, capable of commanding them, and one
who, on succeeding me, would unite to the crown states so considerable as
Naples, Savoy, Piedmont, and Montferrat.  If gratitude and affection
towards your subjects are to you pressing reasons for remaining with
them, I may say that you owe me the same sentiments; you owe them to your
own house, to your own country, before Spain.  All that I can do for you
is to leave you once more the choice, the necessity for concluding peace
becoming every day more urgent."

The choice of Philip V. was made; he had already written to his
grandfather to say that he would renounce all his rights of succession
to the throne of France rather than give up the crown of Spain.  This
decision was solemnly enregistered by the Cortes.  The English required
that the Dukes of Berry and Orleans should, likewise make renunciation of
their rights to the crown of Spain.  Negotiations began again, but war
began again at the same time as the negotiations.

The king had given Villars the command of the army of Flanders.  The
marshal went to Marly to receive his last orders.  "You see my plight,
marshal," said Louis XIV.  "There are few examples of what is my fate--to
lose in the same week a grandson, a grandson's wife and their son, all of
very great promise and very tenderly beloved.  God is punishing me; I
have well deserved it.  But suspend we my griefs at my own domestic woes,
and look we to what may be done to prevent those of the kingdom.  If
anything were to happen to the army you command, what would be your idea
of the course I should adopt as regards my person?"  The marshal
hesitated.  The king resumed: "This is what I think; you shall tell me
your opinion afterwards.  I know the courtiers' line of argument; they
nearly all wish me to retire to Blois, and not wait for the enemy's army
to approach Paris, as it might do if mine were beaten.  For my part, I am
aware that armies so considerable are never defeated to such an extent as
to prevent the greater part of mine from retiring upon the Somme.  I know
that river; it is very difficult to cross; there are forts, too, which
could be made strong.  I should count upon getting to Peronne or St.
Quentin, and there massing all the troops I had, making a last effort
with you, and falling together or saving the kingdom; I will never
consent to let the enemy approach my capital.  [_Memoires de Villars,
t. ii.  p. 362.]"

God was to spare Louis XIV. that crowning disaster reserved for other
times; in spite of all his defaults and the culpable errors of his life
and reign, Providence had given this old man, overwhelmed by so many
reverses and sorrows, a truly royal soul, and that regard for his own
greatness which set him higher as a king than he would have been as a
man.  "He had too proud a soul to descend lower than his misfortunes had
brought him," says Montesquieu, "and he well knew that courage may right
a crown and that infamy never does."  On the 25th of May, the king
secretly informed his plenipotentiaries as well as his generals that the
English were proposing to him a suspension of hostilities; and he added,
"It is no longer a time for flattering the pride of the Hollanders, but,
whilst we treat with them in good faith, it must be with the dignity that
becomes me."  "A style different from that of the conferences at the
Hague and Gertruydenberg," is the remark made by M. de Torcy.  That which
the king's pride refused to the ill will of the Hollanders he granted to
the good will of England.  The day of the commencement of the armistice
Dunkerque was put as guarantee into the hands of the English, who
recalled their native regiments from the army of Prince Eugene; the king
complained that they left him the auxiliary troops; the English ministers
proposed to prolong the truce, promising to treat separately with France
if the allies refused assent to the peace.  The news received by Louis
XIV. gave him assurance of better conditions than any one had dared to
hope for.

Villars had not been able to prevent Prince Eugene from becoming master
of Quesnoy on the 3d of July; the imperialists were already making
preparations to invade France; in their army the causeway which connected
Marchiennes with Landrecies was called the Paris road.  The marshal
resolved to relieve Landrecies, and, having had bridges thrown over the
Scheldt, he, on the 23d of July, 1712, crossed the river between Bouchain
and Denain; the latter little place was defended by the Duke of
Albemarle, son of General Monk, with seventeen battalions of auxiliary
troops in the pay of the allies; Lieutenant General Albergotti, an
experienced soldier, considered the undertaking perilous.  "Go and lie
down for an hour or two, M. d'Albergotti," said Villars; "to-morrow by
three in the morning you shall know whether the enemy's intrenchments are
as strong as you suppose."  Prince Eugene was coming up by forced marches
to relieve Denain, by falling on the rearguard of the French army.  It
was proposed to Villars to make fascines to fill up the fosses of Denain.
"Do you suppose," said he, pointing to the enemy's army in the distance,
"that those gentry will give us the time?  Our fascines shall be the
bodies of the first of our men who fall in the fosse."

"There was not an instant, not a minute to lose," says the marshal in his
Memoires.  "I made my infantry march on four lines in the most beautiful
order; as I entered the intrenchment at the head of the troops, I had not
gone twenty paces when the Duke of Albemarle and six or seven of the
emperor's lieutenant generals were at my horse's feet.  I begged them to
excuse me if present matters did not permit me to show them all the
politeness I ought, but that the first of all was to provide for the
safety of their persons."  The enemy thought of nothing but flight; the
bridges over the Scheldt broke down under the multitude of vehicles and
horses; nearly all the defenders of Denain were taken or killed.  Prince
Eugene could not cross the river, watched as it was by French troops; he
did not succeed in saving Marchiennes, which the Count of Broglie, had
been ordered to invest in the very middle of the action in front of
Denain; the imperialists raised the siege of Landrecies, but without
daring to attack Villars, re-enforced by a few garrisons; the marshal
immediately invested Douai; on the 27th of August, the emperor's troops
who were defending one of the forts demanded a capitulation; the officers
who went out asked for a delay of four days, so as to receive orders from
Prince Eugene; the marshal, who was in the trenches, called his
grenadiers.  "This is my council on such occasions," said he to the
astonished imperialists.  "My friends, these captains demand four days'
time to receive orders from their general; what do you think?"  "Leave it
to us, marshal," replied the grenadiers; "in a quarter of an hour we will
slit their windpipes."  "Gentlemen," said I to the officers, "they will
do as they have said; so take your own course."  The garrison surrendered
at discretion.  Douai capitulated on the 8th of September; Le Quesnoy was
taken on the 4th of October, and Bouchain on the 18th; Prince Eugene had
not been able to attempt anything; he fell back under the walls of
Brussels.  On the Rhine, on the Alps, in Spain, the French and Spanish
armies had held the enemy in check.  The French plenipotentiaries at
Utrecht had recovered their courage.  "We put on the face the Hollanders
had at Gertruydenberg, and they put on ours," wrote Cardinal de Polignac
from Utrecht: "it is a complete turning of the tables."  "Gentlemen,
peace will be treated for amongst you, for you and without you," was the
remark made to the Hollanders.  Hereditary adversary of the Van Witts and
their party, Heinsius had pursued the policy of William III. without the
foresight and lofty views of William Ill.; he had not seen his way in
1709 to shaking off the yoke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene in order to
take the initiative in a peace necessary for Europe; in 1712 he submitted
to the will of Harley and St. John, thus losing the advantages of the
powerful mediatorial position which the United Provinces had owed to the
eminent men successively intrusted with their government.  Henceforth
Holland remained a free and prosperous country, respected and worthy of
her independence, but her political influence and importance in Europe
were at an end.  Under God's hand great men make great destinies and
great positions for their country as well as for themselves.

The battle of Denain and its happy consequences hastened the conclusion
of the negotiations; the German princes themselves began to split up;
the King of Prussia, Frederic William I., who had recently succeeded his
father, was the first to escape from the emperor's yoke.  Lord
Bolingbroke put the finishing stroke at Versailles to the conditions of a
general peace; the month of April was the extreme limit fixed by England
for her allies; on the 11th peace was signed between France, England, the
United Provinces, Portugal, the King of Prussia, and the Duke of Savoy.
Louis XIV. recovered Lijle, Aire, Bethune, and St. Venant; he
strengthened with a few places the barrier of the Hollanders; he likewise
granted to the Duke of Savoy a barrier on the Italian slope of the Alps;
he recognized Queen Anne, at the same time exiling from France the
Pretender James III., whom he had but lately proclaimed with so much
flourish of trumpets, and he razed the fortifications of Dunkerque.
England kept Gibraltar and Minorca; Sicily was assigned to the Duke of
Savoy.  France recognized the King of Prussia.  The peace was an
honorable and an unexpected one, after so many disasters the King of
Spain held out for some time; he wanted to set up an independent
principality for the Princess des Ursins, _camerera mayor_ to the queen
his wife, an able, courageous, and clever intriguer, all-powerful at
court, who had done good service to the interests of France; he could not
obtain any dismemberment of the United Provinces; and at last Philip V.
in his turn signed.  The emperor and the empire alone remained aloof from
the general peace.  War recommenced in Germany and on the Rhine.  Villars
carried Spires and Kaiserlautern.  He laid siege to Landau.  His
lieutenants were uneasy.  "Gentlemen," said Villars, "I have heard the
Prince of Conde say that the enemy should be feared at a distance and
despised at close quarters."  Landau capitulated on the 20th of August;
on the 30th of September Villars entered Friburg; the citadel surrendered
on the 13th of November; the imperialists began to make pacific
overtures; the two generals, Villars and Prince Eugene, were charged with
the negotiations.

[Illustration: Marshal Villars and Prince Eugene----512]

"I arrived at Rastadt on the 26th of November in the afternoon," writes
Villars in his Memoires, "and the Prince of Savoy half an hour after me.
The moment I knew he was in the court-yard, I went to the top of the
steps to meet him, apologizing to him on the ground that a lame man could
not go down; we embraced with the feelings of an old and true friendship
which long wars and various engagements had not altered."  The two
plenipotentiaries were headstrong in their discussions.  "If we begin war
again," said Villars, "where will you find money?"  "It is true that we
haven't any," rejoined the prince; "but there is still some in the
empire."  "Poor states of the empire!" I exclaimed; "your advice is not
asked about beginning the dance; yet you must of course follow the
leaders."  Peace was at last signed on the 6th of March, 1714: France
kept Landau and Fort Louis; she restored Spires, Brisach, and Friburg.
The emperor refused to recognize Philip V., but he accepted the status
quo; the crown of Spain remained definitively with the house of Bourbon;
it had cost men and millions enough; for an instant the very foundations
of order in Europe had seemed to be upset; the old French monarchy had
been threatened; it had recovered of itself and by its own resources,
sustaining single-handed the struggle which was pulling down all Europe
in coalition against it; it had obtained conditions which restored its
frontiers to the limits of the peace of Ryswick; but it was exhausted,
gasping, at wits' end for men and money; absolute power had obtained from
national pride the last possible efforts, but it had played itself out in
the struggle; the confidence of the country was shaken; it had been seen
what dangers the will of a single man had made the nation incur; the
tempest was already gathering within men's souls.  The habit of respect,
the memory of past glories, the personal majesty of Louis XIV. still kept
up about the aged king the deceitful appearances of uncontested power and
sovereign authority; the long decadence of his great-grandson's reign was
destined to complete its ruin.

"I loved war too much," was Louis XIV.'s confession on his death bed.
He had loved it madly and exclusively; but this fatal passion, which had
ruined and corrupted France, had not at any rate remained infructuous.
Louis XIV. had the good fortune to profit by the efforts of his
predecessors as well as of his own servants: Richelieu and Mazarin, Conde
and Turenne, Luxembourg, Catinat, Vauban, Villars, and Louvois, all
toiled at the same work; under his reign France was intoxicated with
excess of the pride of conquest, but she did not lose all its fruits; she
witnessed the conclusion of five peaces, mostly glorious, the last sadly
honorable; all tended to consolidate the unity and power of the kingdom;
it is to the treaties of the Pyrenees, of Westphalia, of Nimeguen, of
Ryswick, and of Utrecht, all signed with the name of Louis XIV., that
France owed Roussillon, Artois, Alsace, Flanders, and Franche-Comte.  Her
glory has more than once cost her dear; it has never been worth so much
and such solid increment to her territory.





CHAPTER XLVI.----LOUIS XIV. AND HOME ADMINISTRATION.

It is King Louis XIV.'s distinction and heavy, burden in the eyes of
history that it is, impossible to tell of anything in his reign without
constantly recurring to himself.  He had two ministers of the higher
order, Colbert and Louvois; several of good capacity, such as Seignelay
and Torcy; others incompetent, like Chamillard; he remained as much
master of the administrators of the first rank as if they had been
insignificant clerks; the home government of France, from 1661 to 1715,
is summed up in the king's relations with his ministers.

"I resolved from the first not to have any premier minister," says Louis
XIV. in his Memoires, "and not to leave to another the functions of king
whilst I had nothing but the title.  But, on the contrary, I made up my
mind to share the execution of my orders amongst several persons, in
order to concentrate their authority in my own alone.  I might have cast
my eyes upon people of higher consideration than those I selected, but
they seemed to me competent to execute, under me, the matters with which
I purposed to intrust them.  I did not think it was to my interest to
look for men of higher standing, because, as I wanted above all things to
establish my own reputation, it was important that the public should
know, from the rank of those of whom I made use, that I had no intention
of sharing my authority with them, and that they themselves, knowing what
they were, should not conceive higher hopes than I wished to give them."

It has been said already that the court governed France in the reign of
Louis XIV.; and what was, in fact, the court?  The men who lived about
the king, depending on, his favor, the source or arbiter of their
fortunes.  The great lords served in the army, with lustre, when they
bore the name of Conde, Turenne, or Luxembourg; but they never had any
place amongst the king's confidential servants.  "Luck, in spite of us,
has as much to do as wisdom--and more--with the choice of our ministers,"
he says in his Memoires, "and, in respect of what wisdom may have to do
therewith, genius is far more effectual than counsel."  It was their
genius which made the fortunes and the power of Louis XIV.'s two great
ministers, Colbert and Louvois.

In advance, and on the faith of Cardinal Mazarin, the king knew the worth
of Colbert.  "I had all possible confidence in him," says he, "because I
knew that he had a great deal of application, intelligence, and probity."
Rough, reserved, taciturn, indefatigable in work, passionately devoted to
the cause of order, public welfare, and the peaceable aggrandizement of
France, Colbert, on becoming the comptroller of finance in 1661, brought
to the service of the state superior views, consummate experience, and
indomitable perseverance.  The position of affairs required no fewer
virtues.  "Disorder reigned everywhere," says the king; "on casting over
the various portions of my kingdom not eyes of indifference, but the eyes
of a master, I was sensibly affected not to see a single one which did
not deserve and did not press to be taken in hand.  The destitution of
the lower orders was extreme, and the finances, which give movement and
activity to all this great framework of the monarchy, were entirely
exhausted and in such plight that there was scarcely any resource to be
seen; the affluent, to be seen only amongst official people, on the one
hand cloaked all their malversations by divers kinds of artifices, and
uncloaked them on the other by their insolent and audacious extravagance,
as if they were afraid to leave me in ignorance of them."

The punishment of the tax-collectors (_traitants_), prosecuted at the
same time as superintendent Fouquet, the arbitrary redemption of rentes
(_annuities_) on the city of Paris or on certain branches of the taxes,
did not suffice to alleviate the extreme suffering of the people.  The
talliages from which the nobility and the clergy were nearly everywhere
exempt pressed upon the people with the most cruel inequality.  "The poor
are reduced to eating grass and roots in our meadows like cattle," said a
letter from Blaisois those who can find dead carcasses devour them, and,
unless God have pity upon them, they will soon be eating one another."
Normandy, generally so prosperous, was reduced to the uttermost distress.
"The great number of poor has exhausted charity and the power of those
who were accustomed to relieve them," says a letter to Colbert from the
superintendent of Caen.  "In 1662 the town was obliged to throw open the
doors of the great hospital, having no longer any means of furnishing
subsistence to those who were in it.  I can assure you that there are
persons in this town who have gone for whole days without anything to
eat.  The country, which ought to supply bread for the towns, is crying
for mercy's sake to be supplied therewith itself."  The peasants, wasted
with hunger, could no longer till their fields; their cattle had been
seized for taxes.  Colbert proposed to the king to remit the arrears of
talliages, and devoted all his efforts to reducing them, whilst
regulating their collection.  His desire was to arrive at the
establishment everywhere of real talliages, on landed property, &c.,
instead of personal talliages, variable imposts, depending upon the
supposed means or social position of the inhabitants.  He was only very
partially successful, without, however, allowing himself to be repelled
by the difficulties presented by differences of legislation and customs
in the provinces.  "Perhaps," he wrote to the superintendent of Aix, in
1681, "on getting to the bottom of the matter and considering it in
detail, you will not discover in it all the impossibilities you have
pictured to yourself."  Colbert died without having completed his work;
the talliages, however, had been reduced by eight millions of livres
within the first two years of his administration.  "All the imposts of
the kingdom," he writes, in 1662, to the superintendent of Tours, who is
complaining of the destitution of the people, "are, as regards the
talliages, but about thirty-seven millions, and, for forty or fifty years
past, they have always been between forty and fifty millions, except
after the peace, when his Majesty reduced them to thirty-two,
thirty-three, and thirty-four millions."

Peace was of short duration in the reign of Louis XIV., and often so
precarious that it did not permit of disarmament.  At the very period
when the able minister was trying to make the people feel the importance
of the diminution in the talliages, he wrote to the king, "I entreat your
Majesty to read these few lines attentively.  I confess to your Majesty
that the last time you were graciously pleased to speak to me about the
state of the finances, my respect, the boundless desire I have always had
to please you and serve you to your satisfaction, without making any
difficulty or causing any hitch, and still more your natural eloquence
which succeeds in bringing conviction of whatever you please, deprived me
of courage to insist and dwell somewhat upon the condition of your
finances, for the which I see no other remedy but increase of receipts
and decrease of expenses; wherefore, though this is no concern at all of
mine, I merely entreat your Majesty to permit me to say that in war as
well as in peace you have never consulted your finances for the purpose
of determining your expenditure, which is a thing so extraordinary that
assuredly there is no example thereof.  For the past twenty years during
which I have had the honor of serving your Majesty, though the receipts
have greatly increased, you would find that the expenses have much
exceeded the receipts, which might perhaps induce you to moderate and
retrench such as are excessive.  I am aware, Sir, that the figure I
present herein is not an agreeable one; but in your Majesty's service
there are different functions; some entail nothing but agreeables whereof
the expenses are the foundation; that with which your Majesty honors me
entails this misfortune, that it can with difficulty produce anything
agreeable, since the proposals for expenses have no limit; but one must
console one's self by constantly laboring to do one's best."

Louis XIV. did not "moderate or retrench his expenses."

Colbert labored to increase the receipts; the new imposts excited
insurrections in Angoumois, in Guyenne, in Brittany.  Bordeaux rose in
1695 with shouts of "_Hurrah! for the king without gabel_."  Marshal
d'Albret ventured into the streets in the district of St. Michel; he was
accosted by one of the ringleaders.  "Well, my friend," said the marshal,
"with whom is thy business?  Dost wish to speak to me?"  "Yes," replied
the townsman, "I am deputed by the people of St. Michel to tell you that
they are good servants of the king, but that they do not mean to have any
gabel, or marks on pewter or tobacco, or stamped papers, or _yreffe
d'arbitrage_ (arbitration-clerk's fee)."  It was not until a year
afterwards that the taxes could be established in Gascony; troops had to
be sent to Rennes to impose the stamp-tax upon the Bretons.  "Soldiers
are more likely to be wanted in Lower Brittany than in any other spot,"
said a letter to Colbert from the lieutenant general, M. de Lavardin; "it
is a rough and wild country, which breeds inhabitants who resemble it.
They understand French but slightly, and reason not much better.  The
Parliament is at the back of all this."  Riots were frequent, and were
put down with great severity.  "The poor Low-Bretons collect by forty or
fifty in the fields," writes Madame de Sevigne on the 24th of September,
1675: "as soon as they see soldiers, they throw themselves on their
knees, saying, Mea culpa! all the French they know..  .  ."

"The severities are abating," she adds on the 3d of November: "after the
hangings there will be no more hanging."  All these fresh imposts, which
had cost so much suffering and severity, brought in but two millions five
hundred thousand livres at Colbert's death.  The indirect taxes, which
were at that time called _fermes generales_ (farmings-general), amounted
to thirty-seven millions during the first two years of Colbert's
administration, and rose to sixty-four millions at the time of his death.
"I should be apprehensive of going too far, and that the prodigious
augmentations of the _fermes_ (farmings) would be very burdensome to the
people," wrote Louis XIV. in 1680.  The expenses of recovering the taxes,
which had but lately led to great abuses, were diminished by half.  "The
bailiffs generally, and especially those who are set over the recovery of
talliages, are such terrible brutes that, by way of exterminating a good
number of these, you could not do anything more worthy of you than
suppress those," wrote Colbert to the criminal magistrate of Orleans.
"I am at this moment promoting two suits against the collectors of
talliages, in which I expect at present to get ten thousand crowns'
damages, without counting another against an assessor's officer, who
wounded one Grimault, the which had one of his daughters killed before
his eyes, his wife, another of his daughters, and his female servant
wounded with swords and sticks, the writ of distrainment being executed
whilst the poor creature was being buried."  The bailiffs were
suppressed, and the king's justice was let loose not only against the
fiscal officers who abused their power, but also against tyrannical
nobles.  Masters of requests and members of the Parliament of Paris went
to Auvergne and Velay and held temporary courts of justice, which were
called _grands jours_.  Several lords were found guilty; Sieur de la
Mothe actually died upon the scaffold for having unjustly despoiled and
maltreated the people on his estates.  "He was not one of the worst,"
says Flechier, in his _Journal des Grands Jours d'Auvergne_.  The Duke of
Bouillon, governor of the province, had too long favored the guilty.
"I resolved," says the king in his _Memoires,_ "to prevent the people
from being subjected to thousands and thousands of tyrants, instead of
one lawful king, whose indulgence alone it is that causes all this
disorder."  The puissance of the provincial governors, already curtailed
by Richelieu, suffered from fresh attacks under Louis XIV.  Everywhere
the power passed into the hands of the superintendents, themselves
subjected in their turn to inspection by the masters of requests.
"Acting on the information I had that in many provinces the people were
plagued by certain folks who abused their title of governors in order to
make unjust requisitions," says the king in his _Memoires,_ "I posted men
in all quarters for the express purpose of keeping myself more surely
informed of such exactions, in order to punish them as they deserved."
Order was restored in all parts of France.  "The _Auvergnats,_" said a
letter to Colbert from President de Novion, "never knew so certainly that
they had a king as they do now."

"A useless banquet at a cost of a thousand crowns causes me incredible
pain," said Colbert to Louis XIV.,  and yet, when it is a question of
millions of gold for Poland, I would sell all my property, I would pawn
my wife and children, and I would go afoot all my life to provide for it
if necessary.  Your Majesty, if it please you, will forgive me this
little transport.  I begin to doubt whether the liberty I take is
agreeable to your Majesty; it has seemed to me that you were beginning to
prefer your pleasures and your diversions to everything else; at the very
time when your Majesty told me at St. Germain that the morsel must be
taken from one's mouth to provide for the increment of the naval
armament, you spent two hundred thousand livres down for a trip to
Versailles, to wit, thirteen thousand pistoles for your gambling expenses
and the queen's, and fifty thousand livres for extraordinary banquets;
you have likewise so intermingled our diversions, with the war on land
that it is difficult to separate the two, and, if your Majesty will be
graciously pleased to examine in detail the amount of useless expenditure
you have incurred, you will plainly see that, if it were all deducted,
you would not be reduced to your present necessity.  The right thing to
do, sir, is to grudge five sous for unnecessary things, and to throw
millions about when it is for your glory."

Colbert knew, in fact, how to "throw millions about" when it was for
endowing France with new manufactures and industries.  "One of the most
important works of peace," he used to say, "is the re-establishment of
every kind of trade in this kingdom, and to put it in a position to do
without having recourse to foreigners for the things necessary for the
use and comfort of the subjects."  "We have no need of anybody, and our
neighbors have need of us;" such was the maxim laid down in a document
of that date, which has often been attributed to Colbert, and which he
certainly put incessantly into practice.  The cloth manufactures were
dying out, they received encouragement; a Protestant Hollander, Van
Robais, attracted over to Abbeville by Colbert, there introduced the
making of fine cloths; at Beauvais and in the Gobelins establishment at
Paris, under the direction of the great painter Lebrun, the French
tapestries soon threw into the shade the reputation of the tapestries of
Flanders; Venice had to yield up her secrets and her workmen for the
glass manufactories of St. Gobain and Tourlaville.  The great lords and
ladies were obliged to give up the Venetian point with which their
dresses had been trimmed; the importation of it was forbidden, and lace
manufactories were everywhere established in France; there was even a
strike amongst the women at Alencon against the new lace which it was
desired to force them to make.  "There are more than eighty thousand
persons working at lace in Alencon, Seez, Argentan, Falaise, and the
circumjacent parishes," said a letter to Colbert from the superintendent
of Alencon, "and I can assure you, my lord, that it is manna and a
blessing from heaven over all this district, where even little children
of seven years of age find means of earning a livelihood; the little
shepherd-girls from the fields work, like the rest, at it; they say that
they will never be able to make such fine point as this, and that one
wants to take away their bread and their means of paying their talliage."
Point d'Alencon won the battle, and the making of lace spread all over
Normandy.  Manufactures of soap, tin, arms, silk, gave work to a
multitude of laborers; the home trade of France at the same time received
development; the bad state of the roads was "a dreadful hinderance to
traffic;" Colbert ordered them to be every where improved.  "The
superintendents have done wonders, and we are never tired of singing
their praises," writes, Madame de Sevigne to her daughter during one of
her trips; "it is quite extraordinary what beautiful roads there are;
there is not a single moment's stoppage; there are malls and walks
everywhere."  The magnificent canal of Languedoc, due to the generous
initiative of Riquet, united the Ocean to the Mediterranean; the canal of
Orleans completed the canal of Briare, commenced by Henry IV.  The inland
custom-houses which shackled the traffic between province and province
were suppressed at divers points; many provinces demurred to the
admission of this innovation, declaring that, to set their affairs right,
"there was need of nothing but order, order, order."  Colbert also wanted
order, but his views were higher and broader than those of Breton or
Gascon merchants; in spite of his desire to "put the kingdom in a
position to do without having recourse to foreigners for things necessary
for the use and comfort of the French," he had too lofty and too
judicious a mind to neglect the extension of trade; like Richelieu, he
was for founding great trading companies; he had five, for the East and
West Indies, the Levant, the North, and Africa; just as with Richelieu,
they were with difficulty established, and lasted but a little while;
it was necessary to levy subscriptions on the members of the sovereign
corporations; "M. de Bercy put down his name for a thousand livres," says
the journal of Oliver d'Ormesson.  "M. de Colbert laughed at him, and
said that it could not be for his pocket's sake; and the end of it was,
that he put down three thousand livres."  Colbert could not get over the
mortifying success of the company of the Dutch Indies.  "I cannot believe
that they pay forty per cent.," said he.  It was with the Dutch that he
most frequently had commercial difficulties.  The United Provinces
produced but little, and their merchant navy was exclusively engaged in
the business of transport; the charge of fifty sous per ton on
merchandise carried in foreign vessels caused so much ill humor amongst
the Hollanders that it was partly the origin of their rupture with France
and of the treaty of the Triple Alliance.  Colbert made great efforts to
develop the French navy, both the fighting and the merchant.  "The
sea-traffic of all the world," he wrote in 1669 to M. de Pomponne, then
ambassador to Holland, "is done with twenty thousand vessels or
thereabouts.  In the natural order of things, each nation should have its
own share thereof in proportion to its power, population, and seaboard.
The Hollanders have fifteen or sixteen thousand out of this number, and
the French perhaps four or five hundred at most.  The king is employing
all sorts of means which he thinks useful in order to approach a little
more nearly to the number his subjects ought naturally to have."
Colbert's efforts were not useless; at his death, the maritime trade of
France had developed itself, and French merchants were effectually
protected at sea by ships of war.  "It is necessary," said Colbert in his
instructions to Seignelay, "that my son should be as keenly alive to all
the disorders that may occur in trade, and all the losses that may be
incurred by every trader, as if they were his own."  In 1692 the royal
navy numbered a hundred and eighty-six vessels; a hundred and sixty
thousand sailors were down on the books; the works at the ports of
Toulon, Brest, and Rochefort were in full activity; Louis XIV. was in a
position to refuse the salute of the flag which the English had up to
that time exacted in the Channel from all nations.  "The king my brother
and those of whom he takes counsel do not quite know me yet," wrote the
king to his ambassador in London, "when they adopt towards me a tone of
haughtiness and a certain sturdiness which has a savor of menace.  I know
of no power under heaven that can make me move a step by that sort of
way; evil may come to me, of course, but no sensation of fear.  The King
of England and his chancellor may, of course, see pretty well what my
strength is, but they do not see my heart; I, who feel and know full well
both one and the other, desire that, for sole reply to so haughty a
declaration, they learn from your mouth that I neither seek nor ask for
any accommodation in the matter of the flag, because I shall know quite
well how to maintain my right whatever may happen.  I intend before long
to place my maritime forces on such a footing that the English shall
consider it a favor if it be my good pleasure then to listen to
modifications touching a right which is due to me more legitimately than
to them."  Duquesne and Tourville, Duguay-Trouin and John Bart, permitted
the king to make good on the seas such proud words.  From 1685 to 1712
the French fleets could everywhere hold their own against the allied
squadrons of England and Holland.

So many and such sustained efforts in all directions, so many vast
projects and of so great promise, suited the mind of Louis XIV. as well
as that of his minister.  "I tell you what I think," wrote Louis XIV. to
Colbert in 1674; "but, after all, I end as I began, by placing myself
entirely in your hands, being certain that you will do what is most
advantageous for my service."  Colbert's zeal for his master's service
merited this confidence.  "O," he exclaimed one day, "that I could render
this country happy, and that, far from the court, without favor, without
influence, the grass might grow in my very courts!"

[Illustration: Marly----525]

Louis XIV. was the victim of three passions which hampered and in the
long-run destroyed the accord between king and minister: that for war,
whetted and indulged by Louvois; that for kingly and courtly
extravagance; and that for building and costly fancies.  Colbert likewise
loved "buildments" (_les batiments_), as the phrase then was; he urged
the king to complete the Louvre, plans for which were requested of
Bernini, who went to Paris for the purpose; after two years' infructuous
feelers and compliments, the Italian returned to Rome, and the work was
intrusted to Perrault, whose plan for the beautiful colonnade still
existing had always pleased Colbert. The completion of the castle of
St. Germain, the works at Fontainebleau and at Chambord, the triumphal
arches of St. Denis and St. Martin, the laying out of the Tuileries, the
construction of the Observatory, and even that of the Palais des
Invalides, which was Louvois' idea, found the comptroller of the finances
well disposed, if not eager.


[Illustration: Colonnade of the Louvre  525a]

Versailles was a constant source of vexation to him.  "Your Majesty is
coming back from Versailles," he wrote to the king on the 28th of
September, 1685.  "I entreat that you will permit me to say two words
about the reflections I often make upon this subject, and forgive me, if
it please you, for my zeal.  That mansion appertains far more to your
Majesty's pleasure and diversion than to your glory; if you would be
graciously pleased to search all over Versailles for the five hundred
thousand crowns spent within two years, you would assuredly have a
difficulty in finding them.  If your Majesty thinks upon it, you will
reflect that it will appear forever in the accounts of the treasurers of
your buildments that, whilst you were expending such great sums on this
mansion, you neglected the Louvre, which is assuredly the most superb
palace in the world, and the most worthy of your Majesty's grandeur.  You
are aware that, in default of splendid deeds of arms, there is nothing
which denotes the grandeur and spirit of princes more plainly than
buildments do, and all posterity measures them by the ell
of those superb mansions which they have erected during their lives.
O, what pity it were that the greatest king and the most virtuous in that
true virtue which makes the greatest princes should be measured by the
ell of Versailles!  And, nevertheless, there is room to fear this
misfortune.  For my part, I confess to your Majesty that, notwithstanding
the repugnance you feel to increase the cash-orders [_comptants_], if I
could have foreseen that this expenditure would be so large, I should
have advised the employment of cash-orders, in order to hide the
knowledge thereof forever."  [The cash-orders (_ordonnances au comptant_)
did not indicate their object, and were not revised.  The king merely
wrote, Pay cash; I know the object of this expenditure (_Bon au comptant:
je sais l'objet de cette depense_).]

[Illustration: Versailles---526]

Colbert was mistaken in his fears for Louis XIV.'s glory; if the expenses
of Versailles surpassed his most gloomy apprehensions, the palace which
rose upon the site of Louis XIV.'s former hunting-box was worthy of the
king who had made it in his own image, and who managed to retain all his
court around him there, by the mere fact of his will and of his royal
presence.

Colbert was dead before Versailles was completed; the bills amounted then
to one hundred and sixteen millions; the castle of Marly, now destroyed,
cost more than four millions; money was everywhere becoming scarce; the
temper of the comptroller of finances went on getting worse.  "Whereas
formerly it had been noticed that he set to his work rubbing his hands
with joy," says his secretary Perrault, brother of the celebrated
architect, "he no longer worked but with an air of vexation, and even
with sighs.  From the good-natured and easy-going creature he had been,
he became difficult to deal with, and there was not so much business, by
a great deal, got through as in the early years of his administration."
"I do not mean to build any more, Mansard; I meet with too many
mortifications," the king would say to his favorite architect.  He still
went on building, however; but he quarrelled with Colbert over the cost
of the great railings of Versailles.  There's swindling here," said Louis
XIV.  "Sir," rejoined Colbert, "I flatter myself, at any rate, that that
word does not apply to me?"  "No," said the king; "but more attention
should have been shown.  If you want to know what economy is, go to
Flanders; you will see how little those fortifications of the conquered
places cost."

It was Vauban whose praise the king thus sang, and Vauban, devoted to
Louvois, had for a long time past been embroiled with Colbert.  The
minister felt himself beaten in the contest he had so long maintained
against Michael Le Tellier and his son.  In 1664, at the death of
Chancellor Seguier, Colbert had opposed the elevation of Le Tellier to
this office, "telling the king that, if he came in, he, Colbert, could
not serve his Majesty, as he would have him thwarting everything he
wanted to do."  On leaving the council, Le Tellier said to Brienne, "You
see what a tone M. Colbert takes up; he will have to be settled with."
The antagonism had been perpetuated between Colbert and Louvois; their
rivalry in the state had been augmented by the contrary dispositions of
the two ministers.  Both were passionately devoted to their work,
laborious, indefatigable, honest in money matters, and both of fierce
and domineering temper; but Louvois was more violent, more bold, less
scrupulous as to ways and means of attaining his end, cruel in the
exercise of his will and his wrath, less concerned about the sufferings
of the people, more exclusively absorbed by one fixed idea; both rendered
great service to the king, but Colbert performing for the prince and the
state only useful offices in the way of order, economy, wise and
far-sighted administration, courageous and steady opposition; Louvois
ever urging the king on according to his bent, as haughty and more
impassioned than he, entangling him and encouraging him in wars which
rendered his own services necessary, without pity for the woes he
entailed upon the nation.  It was the misfortune and the great fault of
Louis XIV. that he preferred the counsels of Louvois to those of Colbert,
and that he allowed all the functions so faithfully exercised by the
dying minister to drop into the hands of his enemy and rival.