44. Louis XIV. —(continued)
CHAPTER XLIV. Louis XIV. —(continued) 1643-1715
Many great men(, as I have said,) lived in the reign of Louis, who is himself sometimes called the Great, and one of the chief of these was beginning to be known at the time to which I have now come in this history. He was the writer of the best and most amusing French plays that have ever been written, and his name was Jean Moliére. The king, who was fond of books of all kinds, and also had a great love for the theatre, protected and helped Moliére, who often had quarrels with the great lords and courtiers to be found in the palace of Louis. Moliére used to bring them all into his plays and make fun of them, or point out their faults in a way which made them very angry, but which was both amusing and useful to the people of France, and was done so cleverly, that it is nearly as much pleasure to read his plays now as it was when they were written. At the same time lived Racine, who wrote plays of a different kind, usually very sad, and always graceful and touching, and written in beautiful language; and La Fontaine, who wrote fables about birds and beasts and all kinds of animals, which most people have read who know any French at all; and Bossuet, who was a bishop, and used to preach some of the most eloquent sermons that ever were heard, and in particular, used to make what were then called funeral orations over any famous person who died, which were long speeches giving an account of their lives, of what they had done, and what sort of people they had been. At the same time, too, lived Madame de Sévigné who used to write such charming and amusing letters to her daughter, that volumes fall of them have been printed, and are read with great pleasure and interest now; and many other men and women, too many to mention, who wrote different kinds of prose or poetry, or both.
There were also great painters, who painted the insides of houses and churches, besides making beautiful pictures, and architects who built the houses and churches, and also palaces and halls and arches, and engineers who made roads and canals, and many people, both men and women, who set up schools of different kinds and taught children there.
There has never been a reign in which more famous people have lived; and the king encouraged them all, and treated them very kindly, in return for which they all looked up to him as the greatest man living, and did in his honour whatever, they could do best, so that he became even more famous through them than he would have been by his own actions.
After the death of Mazarin, Louis had one minister who served him for many years well and faithfully, and pleased him by being humble and obedient, and not taking too much upon himself. His name was Colbert, and he did many things which were of great importance for France. For one thing, he managed to build a navy, that is, a set of ships of war. France had never had a navy before, but it was very useful in the wars that were soon to come. I have not space to tell of all the improvements that Colbert made, and all the others that he tried to make. He always had great difficulty in making Louis give him the money he wanted for carrying on the business of the country, for the king spent it very fast in his various great wars, or when he happened to be at peace, in buildings and feasts, and giving it to his friends, which he did foolishly and thoughtlessly, without considering, in spite of all that Colbert could say, the misery of some of his poor subjects who had to pay the taxes from which he gained his wealth. Not very long after Fouquet's disgrace, there was a war between the French and the Spaniards about some of the countries belonging to the Spanish princess whom Louis had married. Her father the King of Spain died, and her little brother became king. Louis said that certain parts of the Spanish kingdom ought now to belong to her, and he had in his mind secret hopes that he or his sons might some day be kings over Spain itself, for the young king was so weak and delicate that it did not seem as if he were likely to marry and have any children, and it was supposed that he might die at any time. He did, however, live for more than thirty years, though the ideas that he would have no child and that a French prince would succeed him on the throne both came true. The Spaniards refused to give up to the French queen the provinces which Louis said ought to be hers. Indeed, no one but the king thought that she had any right to them at all. Louis marched into the part of the Netherlands which belonged to Spain, and took some towns there. He had very easy work, for the Spaniards hardly resisted him, so the war did not last long. Peace was made next year, and Louis kept most of the places he had won in the Netherlands.
At about this time he had a new minister named Louvois, who had a great deal of influence over the king, and often used it to persuade him to go to war with some of his neighbours. Louis was fond of war; he liked to appear grand and strong to every one in Europe, and his generals usually won victories and triumphs for him whenever a war gave them the opportunity. Louis had schemes of making himself the greatest king that had ever been known; more than king, he wished to be emperor as well, and have the greater part of Europe under his rule. The English king of that time, Charles II., was his friend. Charles was secretly a Roman Catholic, and so was inclined to like the French king, and Louis gave him money and advice and help against his own subjects, and made him more a friend than ever. But there was one man in Europe who was growing up to be a bitter enemy to Louis. This was the young Prince of Orange, one of the chief men at that time in Holland, the grandson of the great William of Orange, who had been at the head of the Dutch in their long struggle against the Spaniards. The Dutch were Protestants, and their country being small and not very strong, they were in great danger from the French, and were always more or less expecting to be attacked by them. They now began to consult with some of the Protestant countries of Europe as to how they might make a league against France. Louis made a treaty with the English, who promised to help him, and then declared war against the Dutch.
This war lasted for six years, and is a very remarkable one. Louis gained great glory by it, and a good deal of land; yet, on the whole, the Dutch showed that they were able to resist him, and he then first found out what a dangerous enemy William of Orange might come to be. Louis marched into Holland through Germany and crossed the Rhine, which was thought a very wonderful and glorious event, though there was not really much difficulty about it; but many poems have been written in its honour, and the people of Paris came to have an idea that a great feat had been performed; some of them thought that the whole army swam over the river with their enemies firing at them as they went.
The Dutch seeing Louis in their country, and not being able to resist him, were much alarmed. It was proposed, as the only way of stopping the French army, that the whole country round Amsterdam, the capital of Holland, should be flooded, so that it would be impossible for an army to pass. Holland is so low that the sea would naturally flow over the north part of it if the water were not kept out by great walls or banks called dykes, built on purpose by the Dutch. In these dykes are gates called sluices, and when the sluices are opened the water comes rushing through them and covers the country inside. Of course the sluices are usually kept (carefully) shut, but it was now proposed to open them. There was a little town near Amsterdam where the chief sluices were. One of the French generals was told to take four thousand men and march towards this town. Instead of four thousand he took rather less than two thousand, being short of food. When he got near the town he stopped, and sent on a body of a hundred and fifty soldiers towards Amsterdam. Even these did not get all the way; they stopped in a town which they took on their road, and only four of them went on to Muyden, where the sluices were. The people, thinking that all the army was behind them, fled away, and these four soldiers had Muyden in their power. However, the Dutch soon found out that no one else was at hand; they came back to Muyden, made the soldiers tipsy, and sent them out of the town, and from that time guarded it carefully. After this the sluices were opened, and Amsterdam was soon an island in the middle of a sea of water, underneath which were country houses, gardens, fields, all given up by the Dutch for the sake of resisting Louis. They had some idea, if he should still prove too strong for them, of flooding the whole country, and all going off in a body on board their ships, to find themselves a new home in America; but this did not prove to be necessary. William of Orange found friends to help him in Europe, and a league was made against the French king.
When winter came and Louis went back to France, his subjects resolved to give him some name to show him how much they admired him for the success he had so far gained against the Dutch. After some disputing they settled that he should be called Louis le Grand, or the Great, and by this name he is known in history. Most of the countries of Europe, Protestant and Roman Catholic alike, now joined together against Louis, for they were all growing afraid of his great power. Germany, Spain, and Denmark came to the help of Holland, and the war went on for year after year. One great misfortune for the French was that their great general, the Count of Turenne, was killed by a cannon-shot while he was fighting in Germany. All the best and wisest people in France were grieved at his death. Peace was made at last between all the different countries that had been at war, but it was a peace that was not to last long. William knew that he and Louis XIV. must always be deadly enemies, but for the time they ceased fighting. This is called the peace of Nimeguen, from the name of the Dutch town where (it) was signed.
When this war was over, Louis had a few years of quiet. One of his chief friends at this time was a lady called Madame de Maintenon. She had at one time been governess to some of his children, and he gradually came to admire and respect her so much that he asked her advice about everything, and at last, after the queen's death, ended by marrying her privately. She was never called queen, or treated as one, but (went on being) considered as a private person, though she really was the wife of the king. In many ways the advice she gave him was very good and useful; she made him attend to serious matters, and think more about religion than he had ever done before; but she was partly the reason of his doing what is usually considered as one of the worst actions of his life — at once wrong and foolish — which happened between the war with the Dutch and the next war ten years afterwards.
Since the time of Richelieu the Huguenots in France had been left tolerably quiet. The Edict of Nantes, which Henry had made on purpose to protect them and make it possible for them to live comfortably in France, had been more or less observed. They had churches of their own, they held their services as often as they liked, and they were able to hold places in the Government and offices of different kinds. The Huguenots had for many years past been very loyal; they never rose up against the king or gave any trouble of any kind in the country; and they were among the best of Louis's subjects, specially sober, honest, and industrious. But Louis had always had a great dislike to them. He looked upon them as enemies to France, and the priests and Madame de Maintenon encouraged him in these feelings, and told him it was his duty to try to put a stop to heresy. He showed his dislike more and more plainly; he never appointed Huguenots to offices or places; money was collected on purpose to bribe Huguenots to change their religion; and at last Louvois, his minister, invented a horrible plan of quartering soldiers on, that is, sending them to live in the houses of, the Protestants who refused to change their religion.
A body of soldiers would be sent to some village, and five or six men to the cottage of each Huguenot family. The peasants had to give them lodging, find them food, for which they often did not pay, and bear the rude rough way in which the soldiers treated them. The peasants who became Roman Catholics had no soldiers sent to them, and so great was the cruelty of these men, who were told to make themselves as unpleasant as possible to their hosts, that more people were persuaded to change, or pretend to change their religion by this plan than by any other that had been tried. Great lists of people who had changed were sent week by week to the king, and at last his ministers and Roman Catholic friends succeeded in persuading him that there really were scarcely any Protestants left in the country.
He now did what he had long wished to do; he revoked or called back the Edict of Nantes. It ceased to be a law in France, and all the help and protection it had given to the Huguenots was gone. They were never to meet for worship; all the Protestant pastors or clergymen must leave the country in a fortnight; all children must be brought up as Roman Catholics, and, under pain of terrible punishments, no Huguenot, who was not a pastor, was to escape out of France. It was soon seen how great a mistake had been made when it was said that there were not many Huguenots left in France. In spite of the order that they should stay, thousands of them left their homes, and, (in spite of) every difficulty and danger, they fled away from their native country and escaped into England, or Holland, or Germany, where they might carry on their own religion undisturbed.
They had terrible adventures; the king's soldiers were always on the watch to stop them, turn them back, carry them off to prison and to cruel punishment. The ports were watched all round the coast, and it was almost impossible to find boats to carry them across the sea. Families had to separate, so as to have a better chance of escaping safely; husbands and wives, parents and children, brothers and sisters, often said good-bye for the last time before they set off on their separate journeys, and never saw each other again. One would escape safely, and another be taken prisoner, or sometimes both would be taken prisoners and sent to the galleys, or kept in prison for many years, perhaps their lifetimes. Roman Catholics who helped the Protestants to escape were punished as if they had been Protestants themselves, and many Roman Catholics suffered in this way.
The galleys were great boats, on which were fixed benches, where the unfortunate galley slaves spent the whole of the day and night chained to their seats, and rowing from place to place, with an officer watching to see that they never stopped their work, and to flog any one he chose, as he walked up and down the deck, with a great whip in his hand. Many Huguenots were condemned to this for life, and died on the galleys. But the Protestants ran the risk of all these horrors sooner than stay in a country where they were forbidden to worship God as they thought right, and where their children were taken from them and brought up to believe a false religion. They found fishing-boats and other small vessels in which they crossed the sea, sometimes hidden underneath the cargo of coal, or of whatever made the lading of the boat. They were most kindly received in all the countries to which they fled, and were very useful visitors, for they carried their industrious habits and their skill in all kinds of work to the countries that received them, where their hosts were eager to learn what they had to teach. In London, they set up places for making silk; in Holland, they taught the making of cloths and paper. Some of them settled in Berlin, which was then a small and unimportant town, but which soon became so rich by their industry and the wealth which it brought, that it has now become one of the principal cities of Europe, being the capital of Prussia and of the German Empire. Thus other countries gained as much as France lost by the folly and cruelty of Louis in driving the best of his subjects from their homes.
The king had now reigned for forty years; but as he had thirty years still before him at the time when he revoked the Edict of Nantes, and as there still remains a good deal to be said about him, I will finish his reign in another chapter.
