The Wars of Louis XIV 1667-1714

John A. Lynn

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781317899501
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Histoire de la France

Warfare dominated the long reign of the `Sun-king', Louis XIV. For forty years from 1672, France was continuously at war and had one of the largest armies seen in the West since the fall of imperial Rome. The campaigns secured little territory, but almost bankrupted the country and the consequences for the French monarchy were dramatic - contributing to its eventual downfall. John Lynn examines the wars for evidence of a coherent strategic policy; he explores the operational logistics of the campaigns; and considers their significance for France's diplomatic, political, mililtary, administrative and institutional This is the first modern, comprehensive study in any language, and offers a vivid insight into 17th and 18th century statesmanship and warfare - reaching a climax with the defeat of France by Marlborough at Blenheim.

1 PROLOGUE: INTERNATIONAL AND INTERNAL CONFLICT, 1495–1661

War dominated the days of the Sun King, and throughout his long life the great king knew war like a malevolent brother. When, as a young boy of four, Louis came to the throne in 1643, France had been at war for eight years; it would continue so until 1659. Both physically and spiritually, Louis was conceived in war. Even though this was the longest conflict of Louis's reign, historians do not include it among the ‘wars of Louis XIV, for it was initiated by his father, Louis XIII, and directed by the two great first ministers, Cardinal Richelieu and Cardinal Mazarin. Louis only served his apprenticeship during this earlier conflict, and would not come into his own until after the death of Mazarin. Then as an adult, Louis engaged in five declared wars, two of them minor affairs – the War of Devolution (1667–68) and the War of the Reunions (1683–84) – and three of them major struggles – the Dutch War (1672–78), the Nine Years War (1688–97), and the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–14) -but his use of military force extended even beyond these conflicts.

Our drama begins when Louis personally took control of the French state, but to understand the challenges that faced him and his measures of triumph and tragedy in meeting them, we must first turn to the history of Europe and France itself long before Louis seized the reins of power. The past was, indeed, prologue for the great monarch.

EVENTS AND STRUGGLES, 1495–1661

The preceding hundred and sixty years bequeathed to Louis international and internal realities that provided context and cause for his use of armed force, for his wars. Great power conflict, religious turmoil, local revolt, and aristocratic independence all threatened the monarchy before the personal reign of Louis XIV, and he would have to confront every one of them himself, although not in the same manner as did his predecessors.

The long series of wars that pitted the French against the Habsburgs, a traditional conflict that continued through the reign of Louis XIV, can be traced back to the French invasion of Italy in 1495. After the insertion of French armies there, the Spanish sought to deny the peninsula to the Valois. Spain posed the greatest international threat to France throughout this period. Spain dominated the sixteenth century and continued to wield unmatched power well into the seventeenth. In contrast, Germany, loosely united as the Holy Roman Empire, but split religiously and politically, provided the French with allies as well as enemies. The Habsburg Holy Roman Emperor exercised more or less power as time passed, but by the mid-seventeenth century the empire was too weakened by the Thirty Years War to endanger France. This would not be a permanent situation, because the Austrian Habsburgs would grow in power considerably by the end of the century as they drove back the Ottoman Turks in the Balkans. Although the English fought against the French during the first half of the sixteenth century, the growing power of Spain eventually focused their energies on this common enemy. The Dutch Netherlands, or more properly the United Provinces, emerged as an important maritime power in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, fought first the Spanish and then the English, but remained allies of the French well into the 1660s, for the French repeatedly aided them as a way of undermining the Spanish.

With seemingly invincible armies and formidable fleets Spain conquered and held an empire that encompassed continents, as the riches of the New World poured into its coffers. Even if Philip II (1556–98) knew frustration – his armadas failed in their goals, and he was unable to bring the rebellious Dutch to heel – he remained a world monarch of unequalled power and wealth. His successors continued to pose such a threat to France that Spanish power preoccupied Bourbon monarchs until the Treaty of the Pyrenees recognized French victory over their long-time rivals.

The French-Spanish confrontation began in Italy, where the French Valois monarchs tried to extend their control during a long series of wars, 1495–1559. Through most of this long struggle, the Spanish throne and that of the Holy Roman Empire in Germany were united in one monarch titled Carlos I as a Spanish king and Charles V as an emperor. Charles ruled an extensive domain unparalleled since the Roman empire. It was, in fact, too much for one man, so in 1556 he stepped down and split his vast holdings, giving Spain and its dependencies to his son Philip II, and the imperial title to his brother, Ferdinand I. The Spanish and German Habsburg lines would never again reunite, but their policies were often in accord, and the French saw them, and often fought them, as a single foe.

Of the two Habsburg branches, the Spanish was unquestionably the more powerful, and its holdings literally surrounded France on its land borders. The Pyrenees separated France and Spain to the south, while Spanish territory and influence in northern Italy made that a hostile border for the French as well. On the northeast the Spanish held the Low Countries, from Flanders on the French frontier to what would become the Dutch Netherlands in the north. Linking the Low Countries to Spanish supply bases in Italy ran the ‘Spanish Road’, a string of territories such as the free country of Burgundy, or Franche-Comté, that belonged to Spain, certain small German principalities under Spanish influence, and obliging or overawed provinces, including certain Swiss cantons. The Spanish Road would become crucial when troubles broke out in the north.

The greatest sixteenth-century challenge to Spanish power came not from France or England but from dissatisfied elements in the Low Countries. The revolt they launched began both in the southern and northern Netherlands, but for a variety of reasons flourished best in the north, in what would become the United Provinces. The fighting, which went on from 1568 to 1648, goes by several names: the Revolt of the Netherlands, the Eighty Years War, and the Dutch Revolt. Feeling threatened by Spain, the French acted in accord with the Dutch; while, wishing to paralyse France, the Spanish intervened in domestic French quarrels.

And it was a time of troubles in France, because the French tore at each other in a series of religious civil wars, 1562–98. These civil wars were, indeed, fought between Catholic and Protestant parties, but they also involved other dimensions. The monarchy and its forces played a difficult middle game in an attempt to keep from being overwhelmed by either extreme. With different factions mustering contending forces, this was an era of private armies created and led by great nobles, les grands, who wished to assert their own power in opposition to that of the monarch. So the Wars of Religion brought not only sectarian strife, but also an assertion of aristocratic independence. The Spanish were quick to fish in these troubled waters. For a long time their meddling was restricted to aiding the extreme Catholic faction against both the Protestants and, from time to time, the monarchy. More than anything else, Philip II wanted simply to neutralize France and so leave himself a free hand in his other struggles. However, when the Bourbon head of the Protestant cause, Henri of Navarre, came into line to succeed to the French throne with the death of Henri III (1574–89), the Catholic party refused to recognize him and the Spanish sent troops to defeat the Bourbon.

Henri IV (1589–1610) won over the Catholic majority by converting to Catholicism in 1593 and guaranteed toleration, security, and political power to the Protestant minority with the Edict of Nantes in 1598. That same year he concluded the Treaty of Vervins with Spain, ending a war that pitted Spain and the Catholic League against Henri for over decade. Thus, he brought peace to a France that had suffered nearly forty years of civil war. Henri IV did much to bind up France's wounds, even if they did not completely heal. Henri's victory was an additional setback to the Spanish, but they were still a force to be reckoned with. In 1610, as he was preparing to launch a new war against the Habsburgs, a Catholic fanatic assassinated the French king, and, thus, put an end to his work.

Henri's nine-year-old son became Louis XIII (1610–43), but while Louis remained a boy, real power passed into the hands of Henri's wife, Marie de Medici. Contentious great French lords troubled much of Louis's reign. They reasserted themselves while Marie served as regent by challenging her authority in petty rebellions and in threats of revolt that she quieted with bribes. In 1617, the young Louis XIII assumed power himself, but it did not end all turmoil. The armed risings, known as princes' wars, continued for some years. Armed resistance broke out sporadically into the 1630s. Gaston of Orléans, the brother of Louis XIII, played a conspicuous role fronting certain of these rebellious ventures, even heading a mercenary army invading France in 1632.

Louis appointed Armand du Plessis, Cardinal Richelieu, as his first minister in 1624, a post he held until his death in 1642. With Louis's constant support, Richelieu pursued a series of strong policies. Above all he wished to break the Habsburg encirclement of France, but first he had to deal with a resurgence of religious civil war in 1625. The height of this struggle was the siege of the Protestant seaport La Rochelle, 1627–28. A new peace settlement with the Protestants in 1629 preserved their religious rights but ended the political and military privileges granted them by the Edict of Nantes – privileges that had constituted the Protestant community as a state within the greater state of France. In his efforts to quell opposition to the crown, Richelieu also concluded that he must labour to humble les grands, but here his success was more limited, as aristocratic conspiracy and revolt continued to shake the monarchy.

Meanwhile, the Thirty Years War (1618–48) dominated the international arena, as the Germanies were submerged in turmoil that pitted the Catholic League and the emperor against their Protestant opponents. In 1621 fighting also broke out again in the Low Countries between Spain and the Dutch, and this struggle merged into the Thirty Years War. Richelieu wanted to aid the Dutch and the German Protestants, but did not believe France was ready to enter the war directly. After some efforts to block the Spanish Road, the French opted to back a proxy. King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden stood ready to commit himself to the Protestant cause in Germany, but lacked the resources. In 1630 the French supplied a subsidy to Gustavus, and he landed in northern Germany. His victories over imperial forces helped stall a Catholic and Habsburg juggernaut, but Gustavus was mortally wounded at the Battle of Lutzen in 1632. His lieutenants, however, continued to command Swedish forces ably until they suffered a terrible defeat at Nördlingen in 1634.

Richelieu then recognized that the French must enter the war directly in 1635, but neither he nor his king realized as they committed armies to battle that this war would last for twenty-five years. The war see-sawed back and forth. The French gained victories in 1635, but suffered a frightening invasion by Spanish forces in 1636. Then, in 1643, the young duke of Enghien won a crushing victory at Rocroi, where the French literally destroyed the Spanish forces that stood against them. This battle did not end the power of Spain, but it certainly put the lie to the reputation of Spanish infantry as invincible and demonstrated French military prowess. Soon Enghien assumed his father's title as Louis II, prince of Condé (1621–86), and became known as the Great Condé.

By Rocroi, however, much had changed. Richelieu died in 1642 and was succeeded as first minister by his protégé, the Italian-born cardinal Giulio Mazarini, better known as Jules Mazarin. Cardinal Mazarin held his new post until his own death in 1661. Three days before Rocroi, the sickly king also succumbed, and his young son, born in 1638, became Louis XIV. Just as in the case of his father some thirty years before, real power passed into the hands of the boy-king's mother, the regent Anne of Austria. Anne formed a political and personal attachment to Mazarin, who also served as the boy's protector, tutor, and surrogate father. Louis would learn the art of diplomacy from Mazarin, who skilfully guided French policy, although he endured continual challenges to his authority.

The need to raise more money to fight in the Thirty Years War drove the French monarchy to increase taxes dramatically. Claude Bullion, surintendant des finances, expected to levy 22,600,000 livres of direct taxes for 1634, but in 1635 this amount climbed to 36,200,000, and by 1643, direct levies had risen to 72,600,000 livres.¹ Such tax hikes precipitated a series of municipal and regional tax revolts. The most important of these was the rising of the Nu-Pied rebels in Normandy in 1639, but this was simply one of many insurgencies that caused the monarchy to make war on French rebels as well as foreign enemies.

The Thirty Years War came to an end in 1648 with the Treaty of Westphalia, but while this brought peace to the Germanies, independence from Spain to the Dutch Netherlands, and independence from the German empire to the Swiss Confederation, it did not end the war between France and Spain, which continued for another eleven years. If anything, things got worse for the French monarchy, for while it was no longer necessary to maintain an army in Germany, a civil war known as the Fronde now shattered the internal peace of France from 1648 to 1653. In a sense the Fronde was the greatest of the tax revolts of the seventeenth century, because malcontents regarded payments imposed upon office-holders as one of their initial grievances; however, more was at stake. Expanded powers wielded by the monarchy and its provincial agents, intendants, came under attack; so the Fronde was also an assault on the growing authority of the monarchy at the expense of traditional institutions. In addition, the Fronde provided a new theatre for resistance by les grands, particularly the grandest of all – the ducs et pairs and others with particular power who enjoyed the highest standing at court. Actual fighting between royal and rebel forces ravaged much of France, the Parisian area being particularly hard hit.

The Spanish supplied aid and applied military pressure in conjunction with Frondeur rebels. Henri de la Tour d'Auvergne, viscount Turenne (1611–75), probably Louis's greatest marshal, at first joined the Frondeurs, but then came over to the king. The Great Condé, the other dominant soldier of his age, travelled just the opposite course, first defending the monarchy and then leading a rebel army. When the teenaged Louis, with the aid and guidance of Mazarin, finally reestablished the authority of his government in 1653, Condé offered his sword to the Spanish against Louis. Eventually, in 1658 at the Battle of the Dunes, Marshal Turenne at the head of a royal army defeated Condé, who led Spanish forces that day. The Treaty of the Pyrenees signed the next year finally brought an end to the horrendous war between France and Spain.

The Treaty of the Pyrenees recognized the new reality of Continental power: Spain had declined to second-rate status, while France now stood as Christian Europe's preeminent land power. Mazarin skilfully designed the treaty to recognize France's grandeur and to increase Bourbon claims to Spanish lands in the future. The Spanish king, Philip IV, handed over his daughter Marie Thérèse to be wife of the young Louis XIV. Although she renounced her claims to any claims on Spanish territory, contingent upon the paying of a considerable dowry, the French would eventually claim that her renunciation was void because the dowry went unpaid.

France poised at unquestioned greatness. Two years after this triumph, Mazarin died, and Louis, now twenty-two years old, believed himself capable of directing the state without a first minister. He proved himself correct and refused to vest any minister with such great power again. Louis's assertion of his own authority immediately after the death of Mazarin marked the start of the period known as the personal reign. The age of Louis XIV, and his wars, had begun.

THE STRATEGIC LEGACY OF MAZARIN

Twenty-five years of war, intensified by internal revolt, had sapped France, and it would be nearly a decade before the French embarked on war again. However, French victory over Spain and the consequent decline of that once great power left the way clear for Louis XIV to establish that Bourbon France stood alone in the first rank of European states.

Working from the premise that France required friends, the wise Mazarin created a network of alliances among German Protestant states and other principalities, such as Bavaria, that feared the Austrian Habsburgs. This put his Most Christian King, the king of France, in league with heretics, but French policy had to be guided by reason of state, not confessional bias, at least outside of France. Because smaller German states regarded the greater threat as a too-powerful emperor who might try to dominate Germany, France could pose as a defender of the liberties of the lesser states. During the negotiations that ended the Thirty Years War, Mazarin carefully respected his commitments to weaker allies, protecting their interests even when this prolonged the war.² While fighting still continued between France and Spain, Mazarin formed an alliance between neutral German states that became the League of the Rhine in 1658, thus breaking Habsburg encirclement. France viewed the League as a way of keeping Emperor Leopold from aiding the Spanish in the Netherlands, while the German states saw it as a way of keeping the emperor's troops from marching through their lands. In any case, it served the interests of all parties and also helped to shelter the French frontier. Mazarin was so clever in forging peace in 1659 that the historian Andrew Lossky claims, ‘It can be said that never did France enjoy such near-perfect security on its frontiers as in the last years of Mazarin's life’ – a security it had not experienced in the preceding three and...