General History of Civilisation in Europe, From the Fall of the Roman Empire Till the French Revolution. A Treatise on Death Punishments.

by François Guizot

The French diplomacy of that epoch was also strongly marked by skill and ability. The names of Messieurs de Torey, d'Avaux, and Bonrepaus, are known to all well-informed persons. When we compare the despatches and memoirs, the capacity and conduct of these counsellors of Louis XIV. with the capabilities evinced by the Spanish, Portuguese, and German negotiators, we are struck with the superiority of the French ministers, not only as regards their thoughtful activity and application to business, but also in liberality of mind. These courtiers of an absolute king understood external circumstances and parties, the wants of liberty and popular movements, much better than the majority of the English themselves at that period. There was no diplomacy in Europe in the seventeenth century which appears at all equal to the French but the Dutch. The ministers employed by De Witt and William of Orange, those illustrious chiefs of the party of civil and religious liberty, were the only diplomatists who proved themselves fitting to enter the lists with the servants of the great monarch.

Thus, whether we consider the wars or diplomatic relations of Louis XIV., we come to the same conclusion. It is easy to be conceived how a government conducting its wars and negotiations in this manner, must have taken a high standing in Europe, and appeared not only very formidable as to power, but imposing for its ability and astuteness.

Let us now take the interior of France, and inquire into the administration and legislation of Louis XIV., in which we shall find additional explanatory causes of the strength and splendour of his government.

It is difficult to determine with precision what we ought to understand by administration in the government of a state. But I think, after fully investigating the matter, we may conclude that administration, in the most general point of view, consists in a concentration of means calculated to carry the will of the central power with the greatest promptitude and certainty into all parts of society, and to invest the central power in the same manner with the sinews of society, either in men or money. Such is, if I mistake not, the true object and prevailing character of administration. We consequently find that in those times when it is especially necessary to establish unity and order in society, administration is the great instrument of succeeding in that design, of drawing together, cementing, and uniting scattered and incohesive elements. Such was, in fact, the operation of Louis XIV.'s administration. Before his time, nothing had been more difficult, in France and in the rest of Europe, than to make the action of the central power felt in all the portions of society, and to gather into the hands of the central power the means of force possessed by the society. Louis XIV. laboured to effect these points, and succeeded to a certain extent infinitely better, at all events, than preceding governments. I cannot enter into details, but taking the public services of every kind, the finances, the departments of roads and public works, the military administration, and all the establishments which belong to every branch of administration, there is not one that will not be found to have had its origin, its development, or its greatest perfection, under the reign of Louis XIV. The greatest men of his time—Colbert and Louvois—displayed their genius, and exercised their ministries as administrators. It was by these means that his government acquired a generality, decisiveness, and consistence, in which all the European governments around him were wofully deficient.

Under the legislative phase, this reign presents the same character. I will return to the comparison of which I spoke at the commencement—to the legislative activity of the consular government, and its prodigious labour in a general revision and recasting of the laws. A work of the same sort took place under Louis XIV. The great ordinances which he promulgated regarding criminal affairs, law proceedings, commerce, the marine, woods, and waters, are veritable codes, which were digested in the same manner as our later codes, and discussed in the council of state sometimes under the presidency of Lamoignon. There are some men whose glory consists in having taken part in these labours and discussions—M. Pussort, for example. If we were to consider it merely in itself, we should pronounce very unfavourably of the legislation of Louis XIV., for it is full of errors very discernible at the present day, and which no one can fail to allow; it is not actuated by a sense of what true justice and liberty demanded, but directed to the preservation of public order, and to give the laws more regularity and certitude. But that alone was a great step, and it is not to be doubted that the ordinances of Louis XIV., being superior to anything exhibited at an antecedent period, very powerfully contributed to stimulate French society to advancement in the career of civilisation.

We thus speedily perceive the sources of its strength and influence, under whatever point of view we regard this government. It was the first government which presented itself to the eyes of Europe as a power acting upon sure grounds, which had not to dispute its existence with inward enemies, but at ease as to its territory and its people, and solely occupied with the task of administering government, properly so called. All the European governments had been previously thrown into incessant wars, which deprived them of all security as well as of all leisure, or so pestered by internal parties or antagonists, that their time was passed in fighting for existence. The government of Louis XIV. was the first to appear as a busy thriving administration of affairs, as a power at once definitive and progressive, which was not afraid to innovate, because it could reckon securely on the future. There have been, in fact, very few governments equally innovating. Compare it with a government of the same nature—the unmixed monarchy of Philip II. in Spain; it was more absolute than that of Louis XIV., and yet it was far less regular and tranquil. How did Philip II. succeed in establishing absolute power in Spain? By stifling all activity in the country, opposing himself to every species of amelioration, and rendering the state of Spain completely stagnant. The government of Louis XIV., on the contrary, exhibited alacrity for all sorts of innovations, and showed itself favourable to the progress of letters, arts, wealth—in short, of civilisation. This was the veritable cause of its preponderance in Europe, which arose to such a pitch, that it became the type of a government not only to sovereigns, but also to nations, during the seventeenth century.

And now we ask ourselves, for it is impossible we should do otherwise, how a power so brilliant and so well established as I have represented it, should have so quickly fallen into decay, and how, after having played such a part in Europe, it became in the following century so vacillating, so weak, and so despised? The fact itself is incontestable. In the seventeenth century, the French government was at the head of European civilisation; in the eighteenth, this preponderance disappeared, and it was the French society, separated from its government, often even arrayed against it, that preceded and guided the European world in its advancements.

We here discover the incorrigible evil and the inevitable effect of absolute power. I will not enter into any detail as to the faults of Louis XIV.'s government, which committed many and great ones; I will not speak of the war of the Spanish succession, of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, of profligate expenditures, or of various other fatal actions which compromised his fortune. I will take the merits of his government to be such as I have just described them, granting that there was never perhaps an absolute government more grateful to its age and subjects, or that rendered more real services to the civilisation of its country, and of Europe in general. But simply because this government had no other principle than absolute power, and rested upon no other base, its decay was sudden and deserved. The essential deficiency of France under Louis XIV. was the want of institutions, of independent political bodies, subsisting by themselves, and capable of spontaneous action, and of offering resistance. The ancient French institutions, so far as they merited that appellation, no longer subsisted: Louis had succeeded in destroying them. He had no idea of endeavouring to replace them by modern institutions, for they would have annoyed him, and he was not at all disposed to court annoyance. The will and the action of central power are what appear in fullest force at that epoch. The government of Louis XIV. was great, brilliant, and most potent, but without roots. Free institutions are not only the guarantees of wisdom and justice, but also of the durability of governments. There is no system which can have a prolonged existence otherwise than by means of institutions. Wherever absolute power has stood the shocks of time, it has rested upon veritable institutions, sometimes upon the division of society into casts distinctly separated, and at other times upon a system of religious institutions. Under the reign of Louis XIV., power as well as liberty lacked the essential safeguard of institutions. There was nothing in France at that epoch to guarantee either the country against the illegitimate action of the government, or the government itself against the inevitable action of time. Thus did the government promote its own decay. It was not Louis XIV. alone that grew old and feeble at the end of his reign, but the whole principle of absolute power. Pure monarchy was as emasculated in 1712 as the monarch himself. And the evil was the more serious, in consequence of Louis XIV. having abolished political habits as well as institutions. Political habits cannot exist without independence. He alone who feels his own strength is capable either of serving power or of resisting it. Energetic characteristics disappear with the loss of independence, and dignity of mind can be sustained only by the assuredness of rights.

The real state in which Louis XIV. left France was, therefore, a society in full intellectual vigour and activity, and by its side a government essentially stationary, and without any means of reanimating itself, or taking part in the movement of its subjects; but after half a century of splendour, doomed to stagnation and feebleness, and whilst its founder was still alive, sank into a decay which nearly resembled dissolution. This was the situation in which France was placed at the close of the seventeenth century, and which gave to the following age so different a direction and character.