Louis XIV.
Louis le Grand, greatest of the Bourbons, lived too long. For seventy-two years (1643-1775) Louis was king and for, at least, fifty years his power was absolute.
Louis’ long reign had as contemporary English history the disastrous Civil War and the beheading of Charles I. (1649); the Cromwellian Protectorate (1653); the Restoration of the Stuarts (1660); the reign of the Merry Monarch, the misfortunes of James II., the revolution of 1688, the battle of the Boyne, and the final deposition and expulsion of James II.; the accession to the throne of England as King William III., of Louis’ most inveterate foe, William, Prince of Orange (1688); the death of King William III. (1702); the reign of Queen Anne, her death, and the beginning of the House of Hanover (1715).
On the continent the Thirty Years’ War was happily ended by the treaty of Westphalia (1648). Peter the Great ascended the throne of Russia (1682). In the great battle of Pultowa (1709) the power of Sweden was practically annihilated; the madly victorious career of Charles XII. of Sweden was stopped, and his successes together with the more solid attainments of his predecessor, Gustavus Adolphus, were rendered negative; Russia advanced over her prostrate foe to her place among the nations.
For forty years success, pleasure, honor, power, and glory beamed in full radiance upon Louis—both as man and monarch. Had he died even as late as 1702 when William, his great rival foe, died, Louis would have been, to all appearances, the most blessed of mortals and his reign the most glorious in the annals of France.
If Pompey the Great had died on his triumphal return from the Mithradatic war, his life would have been esteemed singularly happy and free from the reverses and misfortunes that are the ordinary lot of mortals. But Pompey lived to see all his blushing honors grow gray, as the admiring eyes that had once adoringly gazed upon Pompey the Great turned from him, the setting sun, to the dazzling effulgence of the rising orb, Caius Julius Cæsar. Pharsalia lay in that alienating gaze and assassination and bloody death.
The last years of Louis XIV. were burdened with many miseries. His fortitude and magnanimity under these crushing blows form, perhaps, his best claim to the title Great. The War of the Spanish Succession ended with the humiliating treaty of Utrecht. Blenheim, Ramillies, Oudenarde, Malplaquet had, in great measure, swept away all that the successful years had, with blood and treasure, attained. But it was in his domestic relations that the aged monarch was most sorely afflicted. The Dauphin died, and a few months later his second son, the Duke of Burgundy, Fenelon’s favorite pupil, died; Adelaide of Savoy, wife of the Duke of Burgundy, soon followed her husband to the grave; their two sons yet lived, and of these, the elder, a promising youth, died suddenly and there remained only a delicate infant—the future Louis XV.
Louis bore all these sorrows with fortitude and sublime resignation. In the same stoic or heroic attitude of mind he looked forward into the gathering darkness of death. There is something truly great in the man who can suffer cataclysmic misfortunes and deny to himself the relief of a cry of complaint.
Louis died calmly at Versailles, Sept. 1, 1715. His last words were to his little grandson, a frail boy of five years; sadly the dying monarch said, “My child, you are about to become a great king. Do not imitate me either in my taste for building or in my love of war. Endeavor on the contrary to live in peace with the neighboring nations. Render to God all that you owe to him and cause his name to be honored by your subjects. Strive also to relieve the burdens of your people which I myself have been unable to do.”
And with this futile advice carrying with it his own confession of failure Louis le Grand died. The king is dead—long live the king!
[Chapter XIV.]
PULTOWA
Russia came into existence as a nation on the day of the victory of the Muscovite troops under Peter the First over the Swedes and allies under Charles XII. of Sweden, at Pultowa, A.D. 1709. What Russia has attained to since that date is known and startling significant; what she was previous to that date is insignificant.
As Creasy says: “Yet a century and a half (two centuries) have hardly elapsed since Russia was first recognized as a member of the drama of modern European history—, previous to the battle of Pultowa, Russia played no part. Charles V. and his great rival (Francis I.), our Elizabeth and her adversary Philip of Spain, the Guises, Sully, Richelieu, Cromwell, De Witt, William of Orange, and the other leading spirits of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, thought no more about the Muscovite Czar than we now think about the King of Timbuctoo.”
Sweden lost on that dread day when “fortune fled the royal Swede”, all that she had toilsomely gained thro’ the slow centuries. At one blow her fairest provinces were torn from her; and the rival Russian throne ascended to European prominence over the prostrate power of Sweden.
Peter the Great even upon the field of victory fully realized that Pultowa was for him the key to the Baltic. Even amid the carnage of the slaughter-field where ten thousand men lay dying or dead and the Vorksla river ran red, his eagle gaze beheld the Russia resultant from the Treaty of Nystadt. Exultantly he cried out that “the sun of the morning had fallen from Heaven, and the foundation of St. Petersburg at length stood firm.”
From dread Pultowa’s day even to the hour, Russia has steadily advanced by slow, gigantic strides unto a dominating prominence among the family of nations. The cabinets of Turkey, Austria, Germany, Italy, France, and England are secretly tho’ effectively influenced by Russia.