Louis XIV

Richard Wilkinson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781138945463
• eBook ISBN: 9781351663472
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

Louis XIV ruled France for more than half a century and is typically remembered for his absolutism, his patronage of the arts and his lavish lifestyle – culminating in the building of Versailles. This original and lively biography focuses on Louis's personal life while keeping the needs of the history student at the forefront, featuring analysis of Louis's wider significance in history and the surrounding historiography. This book balances the undeniable cultural achievements of the reign against the realities of Louis's egotism and argues that, when viewed critically, Louis's rule (1643–1715) personified the disadvantages of absolute monarchy, and inexorably led to social and political blunders, resulting in the suffering of millions. Richard Wilkinson demonstrates that while Louis excelled as a self-publicist, he fell far short of being a great monarch.

This second edition includes an up-to-date and accessible biography, further sections on the women at Louis's court, France in an international context and new material looking at Louis's involvement in ballet. This book is essential reading for all history students and those with a general interest in one of history's most colourful rulers.

1 Introduction

Vignette: the sun has got his hat on

It is a spring afternoon at Versailles in 1683. Against the gorgeous backdrop of his newly completed palace, the Sun King, having spent the morning with his councillors, is now coming out to play. As his portraits testify, Louis XIV is the picture of health, expensively dressed in plumed hat, greatcoat, cravat, and buckled riding boots. He exudes confidence and self-satisfied good humour as he swaggers into his gardens, twirling his moustache and swinging his cane. Although only five feet four inches, he compensates for his lack of height not merely by his high heels and enormous wig, but through sheer presence and magnetic personality – like another powerful little man, David Lloyd George, who looked ‘eight feet tall’, according to a susceptible female observer. Where is Louis going? Possibly to hunt the deer, scuttling away into the greenwood that initially attracted Louis to his beloved Versailles. Possibly to shoot partridges, for he is a crack shot. Possibly to stroll round his estate, admiring the fountains and lakes, the flower beds that he has designed and in which he delights, but not forgetting the vegetable gardens where he can display his considerable expertise.

Louis is not alone. Far from it. An immense crowd of courtiers, noblemen, ecclesiastics, lackeys and courtesans surround their king, jostling and shoving to get near him, running ahead in order to take up an advantageous position where they hope to be noticed, even better to be addressed however briefly by the monarch, possibly clutching a petition to thrust into his hand. Primo Visconti, the Italian man-of-affairs, described the scene like this: ‘It is a wonderful sight to see the king surrounded by courtiers, valets and so forth, all in a melee of confusion, running and chattering noisily around him. It reminds me of a queen-bee, when she goes out into the fields with her swarm.’¹

Questions immediately come to mind. Was this what the king wanted? Why did this swarming crowd shove and jostle? Was there no danger of untoward approaches to the king – even assassination? After all both his grandfather Henri IV and his predecessor Henri III had been stabbed to death. These questions will be addressed in the pages ahead.

For now, suffice it to say that Louis was a supremely sociable man who loved to be the centre of attention. He had no objection to crowds provided they were there on his terms. As for his swarming acolytes, they too were there because they wanted to be. Part of Louis’s skill was to make it worthwhile for his subjects to associate with him. ‘Sire,’ exclaimed the marquis de Vardes, ‘when one is away from you, one is not only wretched, one is ridiculous.’ And assassination? Never out of the question, for Henri IV had been the best-loved king in French history – yet he had fallen victim to the seventeenth-century equivalent of a suicide bomber. Louis was not in fact a risk taker. His soldiers were never far away at Versailles. Furthermore, that jostling crowd would all be familiar to the Sun King and his minders.

Not that assassination seemed likely in 1683, when Louis was in his pomp, recently hailed by the city fathers of Paris as ‘Louis the Great’ after the successful Dutch War, admired and respected throughout Europe as the personification of monarchical professionalism. Why should anyone want to kill him? Not only France but Europe looked to the Sun King for leadership. His effulgence blazed brilliantly, not only politically but in the social and cultural spheres as well. Louis the Great? He was Louis the Greatest!

About this book: the case for a second edition

This is a book about a man’s life. The man is Louis XIV, a remarkable individual and a remarkable king. While he dedicated himself to the task of ruling France for over half a century, this book is not a history of France though clearly Louis must be placed in his historical context. It is primarily concerned with a fascinating human being, who, like the rest of us, was a mixture of good and evil, acquainted with both success and failure. I shall pinpoint his mistakes as well as his successes, his defects as well as his qualities. ‘He who judges Louis XIV, judges himself.’² This may well be true. So be it! I shall not be deterred from assessing not only Louis’s achievements but also the man. Is this a valid objective for a serious work of history, especially now to be paid the compliment of a second edition? The publishers of the first edition of this book circulated it to various historians who were invited to comment. Several questioned whether ‘the debate on Louis XIV himself has changed sufficiently since 2007 to warrant a new edition of the book’. The more I think about this issue, the more I am convinced that this is indeed the case. This is because, for better or worse, Louis profoundly influenced his age, and for that reason debates among historians about him during the last decade or so must make a difference. As much as Stalin or Hitler, Mao or Churchill, Louis XIV determined the development of the world in which he lived. We shall see countless examples in the following pages of Louis XIV’s decisive influence. Because I believe this to be the case, a new edition of a biography of Louis XIV can be justified by his never-failing impact on France and Europe which changed from year to year So do modern perceptions.

Unlike some biographers who rate Louis as ‘a great king and a great man’, I reckon that he was flawed; ‘great’, maybe, in some respects, but far from ‘great’ in others. My chief objective, however, is not so much to judge Louis as to understand him, to understand his attitudes and aspirations and to identify the personal and political handicaps under which he operated. I shall try to get to know Louis XIV and to make him live, to establish what sort of a man he was, as well as what sort of a king.

This objective is surprisingly hard to achieve. My vignette chosen to introduce Louis to the reader highlights the problem. Always on show from dawn to dusk, always surrounded by crowds of people, the centre not only of French but of European scrutiny, described by innumerable contemporary diarists, journalists and official observers, Louis remains a distant figure. His own cousin’s son, the Duke of Berwick, and one of his most successful generals, who was frequently in the Sun King’s presence, remarked: ‘It must be acknowledged that no prince has ever been so little known as this one.’³ One of his victims allegedly wore an iron mask. Louis could rightly be described as ‘the man in the golden mask’, gold being the colour of Apollo, the sun god, with whom he deliberately identified himself. The essence of his professionalism was to give nothing away, not to divulge what lay behind the magnificent exterior. Did he ever let his guard down? Hardly ever, and then only to his nearest and dearest, who tended to be infuriatingly discreet.

This elusiveness makes the biographer’s job difficult if the attempt is made to depict the whole man. Indeed, some historians, it seems to me, have virtually given up in advance, contenting themselves with analysis of his public persona and his professional achievements only. Such an approach for me would be a cowardly evasion. I intend to get behind the golden mask if at all possible. This is my excuse – if excuse is needed – for concerning myself with Louis’s private life. This includes his sex life. Some historians tend to adopt a dismissive attitude to anyone who pries into Louis’s relationships with his wives and his mistresses on the grounds that the serious scholar should be above court tittle-tattle. But one knows a man by his friends, his enemies – and his lovers. Given that Louis is so very elusive, no avenue should be unexplored, and that, to my mind, includes the bedroom and the backstairs.

Like the rest of us, Louis was the product of heredity and environment. In his case there are problems with both when it comes to historical interpretation. These will be addressed in Chapter 2. If Louis came to the job with baggage, so did the country he was to govern. The French people form the subject-matter of Chapter 3. Chapter 4 shows the Sun King at work, Chapters 5 and 6 at leisure, including his private life. The fundamental stumbling block in Louis’s career was his foreign policy, which in practice meant war. However, he exacerbated his problems abroad by creating difficulties at home, especially with regard to religion. So the chapters on foreign policy – Chapters 7 and 9 – envelop a chapter on the Sun King’s religious aims, achievements and mistakes. Chapter 10 examines the impact of Louis’s reign on France. Lastly we witness the king’s harrowing and courageous death, a fit occasion for a final assessment of the ruler and the man, set against his time and his nation’s history. Louis’s contribution to the evolution of France can profitably be assessed here.

Louis XIV – for and against

Such a high-profile figure as Louis XIV has always provoked controversy. The final section of this introduction will survey the contrasting approaches both of contemporaries and historians to the Sun King’s personality, policies and achievements. This exercise will clarify the unavoidable issues of Louis’s life, which no biographer can reasonably ignore.⁴

Certainly, in the first part of Louis XIV’s reign, French contemporaries were favourably impressed by their king. And they said so, frequently and noisily. For instance the sonorous court preacher Bossuet, bishop of Meaux, advocated the divine right of kings in general and Louis in particular, and the subject’s duty to obey. Paul Pellisson, a devoted hack who helped Louis write his memoirs, concluded his panegyric like this: ‘If it had been possible for me, while dazzled by the brilliance of a great king, charmed by his virtues, and imbued with his goodness, I would have praised him a thousand times more.’ Dramatists, poets and analysts heaped incense on the king’s altar with a trowel. Historians disagree as to how much Louis liked to be flattered. This was to some extent government policy, reflecting the necessity of maintaining the king’s image – or his gloire, to use the contemporary term. ‘Nothing matters more than the maintenance of Your Majesty’s gloire’, according to Louis’s minister in charge of publicity, Jean-Baptiste Colbert. Nevertheless Louis was too intelligent and had too-developed a sense of the ridiculous to take all this flattery at face value. ‘I would praise you more if you praised me less’, Louis remarked to the dramatist Racine. Perhaps Louis liked praise, provided that it stopped short of flattery. It is a fine distinction. In truth, he received plenty of both.

On the other hand, towards the end of the reign when disaster devastated both the French economy and the French armies, French critics laid into the Sun King. Highly unflattering pamphlets circulated, alleging, for instance, that Louis was senile, dominated by his wife (whom he was sexually incapable of satisfying) and unable to prevent national meltdown. Two remarkable figures in particular damned Louis. First, Fénelon, the archbishop of Cambrai, blamed Louis for initiating the wars that ruined France and for having no concern for his people’s welfare. Second, the duc de Saint-Simon castigated the king for succumbing to flattery, appointing ministers whose only qualification was their obsequiousness, and leading his country into the abyss of bankruptcy and defeat. Others joined in, for instance Louis’s specialist in siege warfare, Marshal Sébastien Vauban, who pleaded for a more just system of taxation, in order to relieve the suffering peasantry, doomed by the expense of Louis’s wars, so heedlessly provoked. Interestingly Louis himself, on his deathbed, confessed to many of these charges.

During the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, writers continued to disagree about Louis XIV. Montesquieu and Saint-Pierre blamed him for the sufferings of the people. Voltaire, on the other hand, was devoted to the Sun King’s memory:

It seems to me that one can hardly view all his works and efforts without some sense of gratitude, nor without being stirred by the love for the public weal which inspired them. Let the reader picture for himself the condition today, and he will agree that Louis XIV did more good for his country than twenty of his predecessors.⁵

While Voltaire had a barely concealed agenda in praising Louis XIV – he enjoyed contrasting him with Louis XV – his familiarity with the world that Louis created must command respect.

Historians writing after the Revolution were, like the rest of us, influenced by the world they lived in, but perhaps especially so. François Guizot, for instance, labouring to preserve the July Monarchy, hailed Louis XIV as a great architect of the French bureaucratic state. Ernest Lavisse the democrat, on the other hand, felt that Louis was consumed with pride and arrogance, and that he betrayed France with his addiction to absolutism. Even in the military context, ‘he had the abilities of a good staff officer, but neither the mind of a general nor the heart of a soldier’. In the twentieth century Roland Mousnier saw Louis XIV as a revolutionary social leveller, bringing the aristocracy down to the bourgeoisie in preparation for the coming of social democracy. Mousnier likewise stressed Louis’s revolutionary creation of an administrative state. Pierre Goubert, on the other hand, is a distinguished example of the Annales school of French historians who emphasise social and economic factors severely limiting Louis’s freedom of manoeuvre. Against this background, did the king matter so very much? Goubert concludes that, in a negative way, Louis certainly did matter, if only because of his addiction to war in pursuit of his own gloire. Despite his determination not to judge the Sun King, Goubert is refreshingly critical, especially for a Frenchman.

A number of Anglo-American historians have developed Goubert’s approach by questioning the validity of the whole concept of absolutism.⁶ Led by Roger Mettam, these meticulous researchers into the histories of outlying provinces have demonstrated the extent to which Louis ruled through attracting the cooperation of the governing classes. Instead of dominating the aristocracy by replacing them with the intendants, as used to be believed, and imprisoning the nobility at Versailles, Louis exploited clientage and patronage by establishing a community of interests between the crown and local big-wigs. Similarly, far from bullying the local estates and the parlements, the crown did a deal with them, preserving the interests of the office-holders who had responded to Mazarin’s provocation by triggering the Fronde revolts that to...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of figures
• Acknowledgements
• Chronology
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The rising sun, 1638–61
• 3 The king and his subjects
• 4 The king at work
• 5 Culture with a purpose
• 6 Relations and friends
• 7 The world at his feet: foreign policy, 1661–84
• 8 Louis XIV and religion
• 9 Nemesis: foreign policy, 1684–1715
• 10 The Sun King and his people, 1684–1715
• 11 Conclusion
• Glossary
• Further reading
• Index