Louis XIV Read online

  Many who are subjects would be very poor rulers; it is far easier to obey a superior than to command one’s own self; and when we can do anything we want, it is difficult to want only what is right.

  Louis XIV

  Louis XIII meant to go, Queen Anne did not expect him: It took the prayers of a nun, the bad temper of an attendant, and a violent, freezing rainstorm to bring them together, but when he came, she set herself to please. They shared the same bed because there was no other; nine months later to the day, France celebrated the birth of a baby boy whom his contemporaries and posterity alike have called the Sun King.

  It was, many people said, a miracle, an act of God: After twenty-three years of unfruitful and increasingly bitter union, the king despised the queen and avoided her whenever possible. It was not only that Louis XIII vastly preferred the company of handsome young men, or that in the early days of their marriage Anne of Austria* had miscarried three times: Since then, she had joined the group at Court who fought the prime minister, the cardinal de Richelieu, on every issue; worse still, she had actually engaged in a traitorous correspondence with her brother, King Philip IV of Spain, in the midst of a raging war.

  Still, in spite of their hatred for each other, the king and queen both wanted an heir: As things stood, Louis XIII’s brother Gaston would inherit the throne and destroy all he had accomplished, and the queen dreaded being sent away in disgrace. Unfortunately, the birth of a dauphin (girls, in France, could not inherit the throne) was hardly possible as long as Louis and Anne abstained from all physical contact. And given the situation, the king was most unlikely ever to sleep with the queen again.

  When, on the afternoon of December 5, 1637, Louis XIII stopped in at the convent of the Visitandines in Paris, to see Louise de La Fayette, now a nun, and formerly his (chaste) love, he was on his way from Versailles, where he had a small hunting lodge, to Saint Maur, where he planned to spend the night, while the queen was settled at the Louvre for the winter. And since, in the 1630s, royal residences were largely empty shells

  furnished only when the king lived there, Louis XIII’s bed, linens, and other necessities preceded him to Saint Maur.

  As it was, the king found his conversation with Louise de La Fayette so absorbing that by the time he decided to leave, night had fallen, while a torrential rainstorm was in progress. In spite of this weather, he persisted in his earlier plan, but M. de Guitaut, the captain of the guard, suggested that he go to the Louvre instead. Of course, Louis XIII immediately pointed out that his apartment there was unfurnished, only to have M. de Guitaut suggest that he spend the night with the queen, adding that it would be inhuman on the king’s part to expect his escort to ride out to Saint Maur in a rainstorm.

  Instead, Louis decided to wait for a break in the weather. After a few moments, Guitaut repeated his suggestion. This time, the king answered that Anne of Austria, who had retained her Spanish habits, ate her suppers at an impossibly late hour. Daringly, Guitaut answered that the queen would, no doubt, change that to please him. This time, his master gave in. “He was forced to share the Queen’s bed,” Mme de Motteville, her faithful lady in waiting noted, “… so that it has been said that the encounter gave us our present King [Louis XIV]. When the Queen received this grace from Heaven, she badly needed it to save her from all the sufferings which seemed to await her [as the result of the correspondence].”1

  There can hardly be any doubt that the birth of the dauphin was the direct result of that unexpected encounter. Exactly nine months later to the day, the queen gave birth to the long-awaited heir to the throne, and because neither parent had any doubt that this arrival was the work of Providence, the baby was named Louis-Dieudonné, Louis, the Gift of God.

  The queen’s unexpected pregnancy naturally caused a great stir. Already on January 14, 1638, Bouvard, the king’s first physician, officially informed Richelieu of the event, thus causing the usually pessimistic cardinal immense pleasure. Still, there was much to worry about: Anne of Austria, after all, had a history of miscarriages, but by late April, it seemed, the worst was over; for the first time in some twenty years, Louis XIII actually paid attention to his wife. “The King, at the beginning of [the Queen’s] pregnancy, showed her how pleased he was, and was even tender with her,”2 Mme de Motteville reported; indeed, a new harmony now united old enemies: Richelieu, well aware that, as the dauphin’s mother, the queen would become a power in her own right, suddenly became obliging and amiable; while Anne, who was anxious not to be separated from her child, immediately started propitiating both the cardinal and the king. As for the latter, he gave up following his army to Picardy, where the front still was, to stay near his pregnant wife, and, of course, he was present at the birth itself. More, according to Alvise Contarini, the Venetian ambassador, he held Anne in his arms as she was giving birth.

  Of course, the baby might have turned out to be a girl after all, a fact about which no one seemed to worry, and medical complications were not unlikely since the queen was about to give birth for the first time at the age of thirty-eight, but all went well. “The joy His Majesty feels in being a father is extraordinary,” Contarini reported. “His Majesty went today four or five times to Monseigneur the Dauphin’s room to see him breastfeeding*… Monsieur† was stunned when Mme Péronne [the midwife] showed him that the Queen had given birth to a son”;3 as for the king, he insisted on taking the ambassador to the crib, there saying: “Here is a miraculous effect of the grace of our Lord, for that is how one must describe so beautiful a child born after my twenty-two years of marriage and my wife’s four unhappy miscarriages.”4

  The king had good reason to rejoice: the birth of an heir must, everyone agreed, put an end to the long series of conspiracies based on the status of Gaston, duc d’Orléans; that should have become truer still when, in 1640, the queen was delivered of a second boy, Philippe, but old habits die hard. The last and perhaps most spectacular anti-Richelieu plot of the reign ran its course in 1641-42 and ended, but only just, with the cardinal’s reaffirmed supremacy.

  It seemed fairly sure, however, that, as the dauphin grew up, the duc d’Orléans, that linchpin of every plot, would become increasingly less important; on the other hand, France, like England, had a solid tradition of conflict between the sovereign and his heir, something the ever-suspicious Louis XIII knew very well. “Monseigneur the little Dauphin was not even three before he apparently worried and annoyed [the King],” Mme de Motteville wrote. “One day, coming back from some hunting trip, the little prince saw [his father] wearing a nightcap; he began to cry because he was frightened as he was not used to seeing him like that. The King was as angry as if it had been a thing of much consequence; he complained to the Queen, accused her of teaching his son to feel aversion for him and threatened her very roughly with the removal of both children from her care.”5 This incident took place in 1641; with the Cinq-Mars conspiracy the following year, the king’s suspicion grew, and it took very fast footwork and many a humble protest of devotion to both king and cardinal before Anne could be sure of keeping her children. What that may have cost the proud Habsburg is not hard to imagine; still, she maintained her status: Keeping the two boys not only satisfied her very real maternal feelings, it also ensured that, should something happen to the king, she would be in a position of power.

  Those who banked on the king’s death had been disappointed often before; as for Richelieu, who also suffered from a variety of excruciatingly painful diseases, his contemporaries seem to have thought him immortal. Thus, when on December 17, 1642, he succumbed to a final illness, his death took everyone by surprise. It was followed by a moment of intense suspense: Would the king, now that he was free of the cardinal’s forceful personality, change his policies and the rest of his ministers? Wou
ld he be ruled by a new favorite favorable to the anti-Richelieu party? It is, in fact, a measure of Louis XIII’s steadfastness that he did no such thing. Richelieu was succeeded by the very man he had chosen for his place, a brilliantly intelligent Italian of rather humble origin, Giulio Mazarini.

  This gifted diplomat had started his career in the pope’s service, and shown himself from the first to be a friend of France. As a result, Richelieu had requested his appointment as legate to the French court, then decided to train him as his successor. In 1639, Mazarini, upon being given his naturalization as a Frenchman, became Mazarin; soon after that, again at Richelieu’s urging, the pope made him a cardinal, but even if the new minister was now a prince of the Church, he never forgot his earlier diplomatic training; no one was more accommodating, more willing to fawn and flatter, than the new eminence. And while the court deplored his appointment as prime minister, it was thought he was so easily influenced as to offer no great threat to those who were determined on a change of policy and personnel.

  Unfortunately for them, however, there still was the king, and to everyone’s surprise, he went right on with the same political goals, the same methods of government. Taxes remained high; immediate obedience was still expected; the great nobles were still kept out of the Council, and, most important, the war with Spain continued. In the last year, the French army had won at least one great victory in its conquest of the Roussillon, that province on the French side of the Pyrenees which had heretofore belonged to Spain. Although the perennially gloomy Louis XIII was not given to underestimating his foes, the future looked promising: Portugal was seceding from Spain; Catalonia was in revolt, and the Spanish Government nearly bankrupt. The war with both branches of the House of Habsburg, Spain, and Austria, had been the fundamental choice of Louis XIII’s reign: Now, although the chief defender of that policy was dead, the king had decided to carry on all the same, and the amiable Cardinal Mazarin, different though he might be from the imperious and awe-inspiring Richelieu, fortified him in his resolve. Indeed, it was in that foreigner that, aside from the sovereign, the interest of France seemed most truly incarnate.

  As for Anne of Austria, her position immediately improved. “The Queen, after this death which caused her no great sorrow, began to expect her future power because of the crowd which surrounded her. It was not that the King thought any more of her … but the Queen began to be regarded as the mother of the two little princes and the wife of an ailing king. She was coming close to a regency which was bound to be long-lasting so that she was considered as a rising sun from which everyone hoped to receive a favorable influence.”6

  What would happen if Louis XIII died was now becoming a burning question. As December 1642 passed into January, then February 1643, it became clear that the king was growing weaker and weaker. If he died, leaving the throne to a five-year-old heir, a regency would have to take over, but then, who was the regent to be?

  Precedent, that chain of the Ancien Régime, argued for the young king’s uncle - as had been the case under Charles VI - or his mother: Everyone remembered that when, in 1610, the nine-year-old Louis XIII had succeeded his murdered father, it was his mother, Queen Marie de’ Medici, who had become regent; the disasters of that particular regency, however, were also fresh in every mind, first and foremost Louis XIII’s. On the other hand, Gaston d’Orléans, the other candidate, had betrayed his brother time and again and now stood ready to reverse the very policies the king wanted to see continued. It was hardly a happy choice, especially since Louis XIII distrusted his brother and his wife almost equally.

  In January 1643, the king was unwell, but then, he always was. Two months later, it became clear that, this time, the illness was even more serious than usual, and Mazarin began to press for a solution. Finally, on April 19, having realized that it was now only a question of days, Louis XIII ordered that the queen, his two sons, his brother, the princes of the blood royal, the dukes, and the principal officials gather in his bedroom the next day. There, one of the servants wrote, “the King, after having ordered that the curtains of his bed be opened, and having spoken to the Queen, Monsieur, his brother, and Monsieur le Prince,* raised his voice and made a very beautiful speech to all who were present, then he ordered M. de la Vrillière [a secretary of state] to read aloud the act proclaiming the Queen’s regency … The Queen was at the foot of the King’s bed, seated in a chair … She kept weeping … All the others also cried … The King who, that day, had a pink complexion and looked pleased and unworried, showed that he had no fear of death. Everyone could see the greatest king on earth, after so many victories and conquests, leaving his scepter and his crown with as little regret as if it had been a bundle of rotten straw.”7

  That Louis XIII, a devout Catholic, was not afraid of death we can well believe; the tears so abundantly shed by all present are a little more open to question. People, in the seventeenth century, still thought that crying was the normal and proper response to an emotionally trying situation: Men and women alike, when parting, for instance, or when they were present at a deathbed, sobbed as a matter of routine, even if the death in question actually suited them very well. Given this behavior, we may especially wonder about the queen’s tears. She never afterward gave any indication of missing her late husband; with his death, she would find herself in a far more agreeable position than before: There can be very little doubt, therefore, as to her real feelings.

  Far from really grieving, in fact, she must have been absolutely furious. The king, it is true, had officially appointed her regent, but then, Monsieur became lieutenant general of the young king - and, usually, the lieutenant general was the person who ruled when the king could not. Nor was that all: The government was to be run by a Council of regency led by Cardinal Mazarin, whom the queen had no reason to trust, and composed almost exclusively of Richelieu’s friends. It could not be clearer, therefore: Although the queen might be regent in name, she would be powerless in fact. She can hardly have been grateful for this final proof that her husband distrusted her utterly, but she had won one great point: Her children were not to be taken away from her, and such was the magic aura surrounding even an infant king that whoever controlled him was well on the way to controlling France.

  For the moment, however, Louis XIII was still alive, and the way he unexpectedly clung to life must have proved a considerable worry to his future widow. All through April, he held on, and people began to wonder if he might not survive after all, especially when one day he vomited an immensely long worm: Perhaps that had been the cause of his illness. Still, at the beginning of May, he grew so weak that he could no longer leave his bed, and then, this peevish, fussy man whose life had been spent in complaining, behaved just the way a king was expected to do. “Séguin, the Queen’s First Physician, told me that two hours before [the King’s] death, as he passed before his bed, the King nodded to him to come over; then, giving him his hand, he said in a firm voice: ‘Séguin, feel my pulse and tell me, please, how many more hours I will live; but feel it properly for I would really like to know the truth.’ The physician, seeing how calm he was … told him very plainly: ‘Sire, Your Majesty cannot have more than two or three hours at most.’ Upon which that prince, joining his hands together and looking up at the heavens, answered softly and without showing any emotion: ‘Well, Lord, I accept this gladly.’“8

  Indeed, at the hour of his death, Louis XIII, who was generally disliked, conquered everyone’s admiration. “The King died on Thursday [May 14] at three in the afternoon,” Turenne, the great general, wrote his sister. “It is true that no one has ever ended so beautifully or so courageously. As for the court’s affliction, it is very mediocre … there are great intrigues to change the Council as set up by the late King.”9 Turenne was right: No one regretted the death. The great aristocrats felt free, at long last, from the yoke they had borne with such impatience; the rising middle class, officeholders and Parlement men, looked forward to the gain in influence which always resulted f
rom a weak government - and regencies were notoriously weak - and the people hoped for tax relief. Indeed, Olivier Lefèvre d’Ormesson, a magistrate, expressed the consensus in his diary: “He died … after having reigned for thirty-three years less two hours. He never had any contentment in his life and always met with crises. He accomplished some things, but only under the leadership of his favorites, especially the Cardinal who, for twenty years, always had to force him to do things so that, during his illness, he said that the way the Cardinal had constrained him had reduced him to his present state.”10 We know today that this assessment is not a fair one, but at the time, it seemed an evident truth. Now, of course, all looked forward to a change.

  They were not disappointed: It was a cliché that the queen was kind. If she ruled, therefore, all expected a new age of plenty, and within twenty-four hours of the king’s death, Anne of Austria set out to claim the power her late husband had tried to deny her. Of course, she also pretended a sorrow she cannot have felt: Appearances had to be respected, but immediately she put herself in touch with the Parlement. The king had died at Saint-Germaine-en-Laye: The very next day, the queen moved back to the Louvre and called the Parlement to a lit de justice.

  What took place next was nothing less than a coup d’état. Louis XIII’s will had not only been read to the assembled grandees, it had also been duly registered by the Parlement - only a formality, but a necessary one. The Parlement, unlike its English namesake, was not an elected chamber; rather, it consisted of several courts of law composed of judges who had bought their offices. Thus it embodied neither the will of the people nor, indeed, much legal knowledge, but was simply a gathering of rich people whose family had a tradition of holding this kind of office. Only forty years earlier, in fact, the conseillers and présidents of the Parlement had talked King Henri IV into making their offices hereditary against the payment of a yearly tax.