Louis XIV Read online

  If the Parlement represented no one but itself, however, it did have one important political function. In order to avoid confusion, and because a record had to be kept somewhere, it had been decided, around 1300, that all royal edicts would be inscribed in its registers. This notarization was merely an administrative convenience; with the passage of time, the Parlement had arrogated onto itself first the right to make remonstrances* and then that of refusing registration altogether. Since, however, it was an established principle that the king was supreme, registration could still be forced on a reluctant Parlement. Whenever necessary (in practice, very seldom) the king went to the Parlement in person and held a lit de justice during which he ordered the registration of the controversial edict; the Parlement then invariably obeyed.

  Once before, however, its powers had been expanded. When, in 1610, Henri IV was assassinated, his widow went to the Parlement to claim an untrammeled regency despite the late king’s will, and she was given it. She also promptly found that the Parlement, in consequence, had become far more fractious than ever before, and it had taken all the authority of Louis XIII and Richelieu together to put it down again. Now, in 1643, there was a will, which, further, had been well and truly registered - as Henri IV’s had not.

  That the queen would follow Marie de’ Médicis’s precedent, no one doubted. As Voltaire, a century later, commented: “The custom which attributes the regency to the King’s mother seemed then to the French almost as fundamental a law as that which makes women unable to bear the crown.”11 And indeed, at the lit de justice, as the five-year-old Louis XIV sat on a heap of velvet cushions embroidered with gold fleur-de-lis, the late king’s will was declared invalid. France was to be governed, without restrictions, by the queen mother.

  It all seemed remarkably easy. No opposition was expressed; even the one man who had the most to lose kept his peace: Monsieur thought he knew his sister-in-law well enough not to worry. Anne of Austria, after all, was weak, kind, indolent, and not especially clever. She was obviously incapable of governing by herself; equally obviously, she would turn to Monsieur for help: The two had always been close friends and fellow enemies of Richelieu.

  “The great cabal [which surrounded her] was composed of all those who were displeased with the former reign, wanted to take their revenge for what Cardinal de Richelieu had done to them on his remaining relatives and friends, and had no doubt that the Queen, who had suffered as much and more than them, intended this to happen. But they found in her the same change that, in earlier times, earned Louis XII so much praise because, once he became King, he refused to take vengeance on the duc d’Orléans’s enemies.”*12

  In this case, however, her own change, far from earning praise, caused first consternation, then anger. Although she did, indeed, free from prison or recall from exile many of those who had incurred Richelieu’s displeasure, she only waited for four days before, on May 18, she announced that she had chosen a prime minister - not Monsieur, not Monsieur le Prince, not one of the former ministers dismissed at Richelieu’s urging, not even one of the young nobles who had stood by her in her troubles and carried her secret messages: No, the new ruler of France was that fawning Italian whom Richelieu gave to Louis XIII, that man of no birth and no connections, Cardinal Mazarin.

  The stupor which greeted this announcement was universal, but while most disapproved of the queen’s choice, none was in a mood to oppose it: Anne of Austria was genuinely popular; she was the king’s mother at a time when the Parlement’s attorney general had just described the monarch as a visible deity; just as important, it was clear that the spineless Mazarin would do as he was told. The general mood of euphoria was further reinforced when news came of a great French victory: At Rocroi, the twenty-one-year-old duc d’Enghien, Monsieur le Prince’s son and a great military genius, had just crushed the Spanish cavalry. Of course, there had been French victories before, but this one, as people realized, began the final decline of Spain.

  In that summer of 1643, the first of Louis XIV’s reign, the Court and Parlement, while still rejoicing over the great change, looked about them to see where power was to be found, and what they discovered often surprised them. Of course, at the very apex of the pyramid, there was the king, blond, blue-eyed, a little boy with round cheeks and a surprisingly serious disposition. His brother, Philippe, duc d’Anjou, at the tender age of three, was dark, animated, joyful. And although they were both treated with enormous respect, although the king, especially, was frequently displayed in public, where he was greeted with adoration, neither mattered much; even a living idol can hardly take over the government before he has learned to write his name. No one forgot the high rate of infant mortality, either: Many children died before their teens. That Louis XIV would survive to manhood was, on the whole, not very probable.

  Then there was Monsieur, who, as the king’s uncle, certainly expected to be in charge. Of course, he was promptly appeased by titles and pensions, but, luckily for the queen, few men have ever been more unfit to govern. Lazy, shallow-minded, incapable of both exertion and tenacity of purpose, unable to apply himself to the actual tasks of government, Monsieur was perfectly happy to sit in the Council when he did not have anything more amusing to do, attend their majesties often, and see to it that his favorites got a variety of plums. Visible influence mattered far more to him than the reality of power; with all that, and putting aside his unfortunate tendency to betray his friends in a crisis, Monsieur was quite a nice man; kind, well-disposed, cheerful; on the whole, he liked to please.

  Monsieur le Prince, the First Prince of the Blood Royal, was equally unmenacing. Because he cared about money more than anything, he had abased himself before Richelieu and even married his son, the duc d’Enghien, to one of Richelieu’s nieces. Now he was just as ready to abase himself before the regent, but his son was already looking like a very different proposition; still, he was off at the northern border winning battles.

  After that, there was a bevy of very distant relatives, the duc de Longueville, the comte de Soissons, and Henri IV’s bastard sons, the ducs de Beaufort and de Vendôme. But they, too, were well-disposed, and the grandees were far too busy enjoying the benefits of the new reign to make trouble. Power, therefore, was concentrated in just two members of the Council: Cardinal Mazarin and the regent herself.

  Few statesmen have ever had a more misleading appearance. Although cardinals in the seventeenth century were very grand people indeed, entitled to take precedence over the dukes and be addressed as “mon cousin” by the king, Mazarin seemed deliberately to abase himself. Where Richelieu had been proud, haughty, domineering, Mazarin apparently could never be sufficiently humble. He bowed low to people who should have bowed to him, cared nothing for the precedence to which he was entitled, went on at great length about the virtues of most everyone else while making it plain he could not hold a candle to them. Pudgy, unattractive, dark, he altogether lacked physical presence; he was also despised for his lack of sexual adventures in an age when high churchmen commonly had mistresses or minions, especially since he was not even a priest; indeed, there is considerable doubt that he actually believed in God. Finally, his very lack of family and connections seemed to be another weakness: Richelieu, upon reaching power, had been able to use his many relatives in positions of importance. Mazarin was alone.

  That, as it turned out, was also his main strength. Anne of Austria, who was far cleverer than most people thought, realized that if she chose a prime minister who depended on herself only, then she would have power without fatigue: Mazarin could implement the decisions made by the regent. The drawbacks of Monsieur, for instance, or a former minister with obligations and a party were obvious: They themselves would rule in the queen’s name. And Mazarin was not only safe - no one would oppose his dismissal, should the regent want another minister - but he was also extremely clever. His earlier diplomatic successes were a matter of record, as was the fact that, alone in France, he had managed to be Richelieu’s man with
out alienating the queen. He also had almost superhuman powers when it came to convincing the fractious and appeasing the unappeasable. He knew how to negotiate with a foreign power, but also how to propitiate touchy and difficult men at home. And finally, he made it plain to the regent that he intended to carry on - less brutally, of course - Richelieu’s policies: the war with Spain must go on until France was victorious, and the taxes would therefore stay high. Not only that, but he thought that what his mentor had done by using raw strength, he could achieve by negotiation and compromise.

  Had Mazarin been merely clever, he would have advocated the opposite: Everyone knew that the queen was pro-Spanish and a devout Catholic; she was therefore expected to reach a quick peace with her brother, Philip IV, and Emperor Ferdinand III, the head of the Austrian branch of her house; she would lower taxes; she would turn the government to her friends who would reverse the centralizing policies of the previous reign. Only, just as Mazarin had an ironlike tenacity under all his obeisances, Anne of Austria turned out to have the intelligence and spirit of a great ruler. Spanish she might once have been; now, to the general stupefaction, she became an ardent Frenchwoman.

  Of course, there was a good reason for this radical transformation. In the first place, she no longer felt oppressed by a dour husband and dictatorial minister, so she could judge their policies on the merits, and she quickly realized that they tended to reinforce the sovereign’s authority. Like the good Habsburg she was, Anne of Austria firmly believed kings (and queens) to be of semidivine essence, and she longed for the kind of unquestioned obedience expected, and received, by her brother. Most important of all, however, was her position as the new king’s mother. There could be no doubt that she dearly loved both her sons and meant them to have a prosperous future. Then, too, she had been brought up to respect greatness; she lived in a world where honor was all, where Corneille’s plays - Le Cid was just seven years old - accurately depicted the importance of duty and glory. As the mother of the infant king, her obligation was plain: She must govern so as to ensure the grandeur of her son’s realm. Thus, instead of making peace, she became, if not a bellicist, at least an ardent proponent of a victorious peace, and firmly intended Louis XIV to become, in that often used contemporary phrase, le plus grand roi du monde (the greatest king in the world). Within the four days that separated Louis XIII’s death and his own appointment as prime minister, Mazarin was able to show her, first, that these were his very goals, and second, that he could achieve them while eschewing his predecessor’s brutal methods.

  As regent, Anne of Austria’s duties were numerous: She must govern, oversee the education of her children, decide whether to grant the innumerable favors daily asked of her, make sure that the war was pursued vigorously, and, just as important, hold court in a dignified and splendid manner. Clearly, it was all too much, especially for a woman just freed from almost thirty years of constraint, and, indeed, except for rewarding her friends, the regent was content to leave most of the work to Mazarin while she enjoyed herself. Still, she remained very easy of access; the royal family and great nobles attended her regularly; she was, in fact, the most visible person in France. What, then, was she like?

  There are, of course, many descriptions of the regent; the most trustworthy of these, however, is undoubtedly that of Mme de Motteville, her faithful lady, and perhaps the person at court who knew her best and spent the most time with her. After telling us that “her feelings are all noble: her soul is both kind and brave,” Mme de Motteville goes on to describe her. “She is tall and well-built, has a kind and majestic demeanor … She [is] one of the great beauties of her century … Her eyes are perfectly beautiful; their expression is sweet and serious … Her mouth is small and red … she can win a thousand hearts with just one of her smiles … her hair is beautiful, a light chestnut in color, and very abundant … Her hands, which have received universal praise … are extremely white …

  “Her bosom is beautiful and shapely … All her skin is equally white, and of a delicateness which cannot sufficiently be praised. The complexion of her face is not as good, and her neglect of its conservation, which means she hardly ever wears a mask,* does not help it. Her nose is not as beautiful as her other features: it is big, but its size goes quite well with her large eyes … Her feet are very beautiful, small and shapely …

  “She is no slave to fashion, but dresses well. She is clean and very tidy.”13 Of course, the queen was well aware of her reputation for beauty: She never forgot that the dashing duke of Buckingham had fallen in love with her at first sight, and she was especially proud of her hands - which were, indeed, famous. With all that, however, she was not vain: Her lively religious feelings prevented it; while she dressed in the splendid fashion which became her station, she was never very interested in clothes; similarly, although she owned some spectacular jewels and always wore a necklace of huge pearls, she never tried, once she was regent, to enlarge her collection. Her main expense, in fact, was her chapel: There, only gold and precious stones were good enough. No doubt she remembered the Spanish churches of her childhood.

  “Piety,” Mme de Motteville goes on, “is one of the main illustrations of this great princess … we constantly see her praying and giving charity. She is tireless in her religious practices … she often takes communion; she worships holy relics … Her chapel is her favorite place.

  “Her virtue is firm, but without fuss; she is modest, without being shocked by an innocent cheerfulness … She is quick to believe good reports and unwilling to hear denunciations.

  “She is kind, friendly and familiar with all those who are close to her and who have the honor of serving her … but that quality does not prevent her from being proud or from discerning very clearly those who do their duty by behaving as they should from those who lack the proper respect …”14

  Her pride was, indeed, extreme: She never forgot that she was a princess of Spain and a queen of France, and while on a number of occasions, she was forced to dissemble, she never forgave those who had given her less than what she considered her due. In that sense, her amiability, which was genuine, was also misleading: The smiling woman could easily become an affronted sovereign.

  While her elevation as regent did, in one way, make her life much easier - not least by ending her money problems - it also presented her with new difficulties: Government, in mid-seventeenth-century France, required a very firm hand. Luckily, she had many of the qualities needed to face the problems which awaited her. “She likes few people, but devotedly … She is firm and discreet,” Mme de Motteville tells us. “She hates her enemies … and would willingly take revenge on them; but reason and her conscience hold her back … She is naturally generous, and capable of giving profusely … She is not frightened by great dangers … In great occasions, she is fearless, and neither death nor misfortune can move her.”15 These, as it turned out, were precious qualities. Because, within so little time, France had become the cultural leader in Europe, we tend to forget what an uncivilized and violent place it was still in the 1640s; especially since the plays of Corneille, with their exalted and austere feeling, the majestic portraits of Philippe de Champaigne or the seductive early letters of Mme de Sévigné are misleading: Far from showing us the norm, they are no more than an indication of things to come.

  With the disappearance of the king and the cardinal, the long-repressed centrifugal forces in French society were released. The king’s relatives wanted to rule; the great nobles intended to control the state; the middle class yearned for power and was getting ready to seize it by blocking the queen’s ministers at every turn.

  For a little time, the queen’s popularity and Mazarin’s humility kept things quiet. Because of this situation, both Anne and Mazarin have often been reproached with lacking vigor and thus inviting disorder, but the truth is that no other course was possible. The nature of the French government had changed radically under Louis XIII, and only an adult king backed by a minister of genius could keep it goin
g. A female regent simply lacked the power and authority to behave like the late king: Compromise was very much the order of the day; as long as the army remained victorious, it surely was not a bad policy.

  Indeed, as the exiles came home, as the royal family appeared to be united around the new government, a new golden age seemed to begin. Smart people did note that while the queen recalled her old friend, the duchesse de Chevreuse, from exile, she showed herself astonishingly cool when that arch-plotter proved to be at her old tricks again. But when, in 1644, Anne moved from the austere and still fortified Louvre to the brand-new Palais Royal, it seemed like the confirmation that a new era was, indeed, under way: While the Louvre symbolized the monarchy in all its strength, the Palais Royal was set right in the middle of the city, without walls, moats, or any defensive outbuildings. Erected as the most modern, most sumptuous of palaces by Cardinal de Richelieu, it had been left, in his will, to the Crown. When she moved into its convenient and cheerful ambiance, the regent signaled the beginning of a more easygoing, more self-indulgent style of government. Unlike the earlier, war-torn regencies of Catherine de Médicis in the sixteenth century or Marie de Médici in the early seventeenth, this period was obviously going to be a time of good feeling.

  * Anne of Austria, in spite of her name, was a Spanish Habsburg, the daughter of King Philip III.

  * Well-to-do women, in the seventeenth century, never breastfed their own babies; they hired nurses to take on that duty. When the king visited his son, therefore, he did not see the queen.

  † Monsieur, with no name, was the title always borne by the king’s brother.

  * The title borne by the king’s cousin, the prince de Condé.

  * Remonstrances were the process by which a delegation of the Parlement objected to an edict; the king could overlook this or accede to the Parlement’s request for changes. Originally, remonstrances were made only when a new edict conflicted with an older law.