The ascendancy of France, 1598-1715

by Henry Offley Wakeman

Desire for uniformity.

In the seventeenth century to a mind like that of Louis XIV., small in scope but concentrated in grip, there was much that was attractive in such an argument. Those were days when social distinctions, trade interests, local independence were all being ruthlessly sacrificed to the solidarity of the monarchy. Why should not religious distinctions be subject to the same law? However contented and loyal the Huguenots might be, their very existence was an imperfection in an absolute monarchy, which ought only to be tolerated as long as the necessities of state required it. But that was not all. Louis himself was somewhat altering in character as he grew older. The cup of pleasure had begun to pall. The artificiality of court life was becoming a restraint to him. The atmosphere of gross adulation by which he was surrounded proved more distasteful every day. Religion, always a strong influence over him, reasserted her claims more imperiously as the pleasures and vanities of life were turning to ashes in his hands. Louis had always been decorously orthodox. He now became fervently devout. His court became more strict in life, more healthy in tone. Simplicity of manners, strong sense of duty, sobriety of conversation reigned in the place of luxury and frivolity. Courtiers complained that Versailles was no better than a monastery. Influence of Madame de Maintenon. The genius of the change was a woman. Louis as long ago as 1669 had chosen as the governess of his children by Madame de Montespan, the young widow of the deformed burlesque poet Scarron, known to history as Madame de Maintenon. At first he was piqued by the primness and self-restraint of her demeanour, but gradually the beauty of her character, the wit and grace of her conversation, the soundness of her judgment, the force and vigour of her nature, illuminated and sanctified by the purest flame of religious devotion, called out a response from his better qualities, and in the end established a complete mastery over him. In 1683, two years after the death of Maria Theresa, he married her secretly, and although at her own wish she never assumed the dignity of queen, her position was thoroughly well understood both in France and in the courts of Europe, and she received at all hands the respect due both to her rank and her virtues. Her political influence has been much exaggerated, for it was of a quality very difficult to appraise. She rarely if ever interfered directly except in those matters of personal patronage in which her sex is always so deeply interested, but her indirect influence was very strong, not only because Louis had a great opinion of her good sense and frequently consulted her, but more especially because of the power which she wielded invisibly over the character and mind of the king himself. As under her influence he became more devout, he naturally allowed his increased affection for the interests of religion to mould his policy. As his conscience became more sensitive to the claims of the Church, he felt more than he had done before the scandal of his quarrel with the Holy See, he realised more than before the duties of his position as the first Catholic power of Europe. Probably had Madame de Maintenon lived out the rest of her life in poverty as the widow of Scarron, Louis would still have revoked the Edict of Nantes, have made up his quarrel with the Pope, and have persecuted the community of Port Royal. Still, it is none the less true that he was impelled to that policy by the knowledge that it was approved of by her mind, and strengthened in it by the sense of duty which he had imbibed from her society.

Disabilities placed upon the Huguenots. Encouragement of conversions, 1681.

Impelled then by his fondness for uniformity, anxious to prove his orthodoxy in spite of his difficulties with Rome, and believing that the Huguenots themselves were ripe for conversion, Louis began his repressive policy in 1681 by excluding all Huguenots from public employment. They were to be marked by the law, as Roman Catholics were marked in England, as people who were unfitted by their religion to hold positions of trust. But repression was only one side of his policy. While those who obstinately adhered to their independence and their religion were stamped as persons unworthy of trust, those who would listen to reason, and be obedient to the wishes of their lord and father, were covered with benefits and rewarded with pensions. In 1682 missions were held throughout France to convert the heretics. Bossuet devoted himself to the work with incredible zeal and success. An office was established in Paris under a convert named Pelisson to organise the work of conversion. Converts received their rewards in the best of government posts, and the receipt of government pensions. So numerous were they that Louis thought that he might safely proceed to the next step and destroy heresy at its root. Edicts were issued closing the Huguenot churches and schools and making it a penal offence for a Huguenot pastor to preach. It soon appeared that he was wrong. Among the middle classes in the south and centre of France there were thousands to whom their religion was of far more moment to them than their property or even their lives. Emigration of the Huguenots and popular risings, 1682–1683. In 1682 numbers of the best and most industrious of the artisans of France began to leave their country rather than abandon their religion. Louis at once forbade emigration under pain of the galleys. There was but one resource left to the poor Huguenots, deprived of all honourable employment in their own country and prevented from seeking it in another. In desperation the mountaineers in the Cevennes rose in tumult rather than revolt in 1683. Stifled almost in its birth by the royal troops it was made the excuse of inhuman barbarities. The ‘Dragonades,’ 1684. Dragoons were quartered upon the miserable inhabitants until they renounced their religion. Many a Huguenot who would willingly die for his religion could not bear to see his family and home at the mercy of a brutal soldiery. During the year 1684 this vile system was in force throughout the south of France. Conversions were announced by the thousand. In Languedoc it was said that as many as 60,000 took place in three days. At last in October 1685 the coping stone was put to this edifice of blood and crime. Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, 1685. An edict was issued by which all the privileges accorded to the Huguenots by the Edict of Nantes were withdrawn, the reformed worship was suppressed, and the ministers expelled. Huguenotism became from that moment in France, like Episcopacy a few years later in Scotland, an illegal religion outside the pale of the law and proscribed by it.

Results of the measure.

The results of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes were very different from what Louis and his ministers expected. So far from crushing the Huguenots into submission it goaded them into madness. They realised that now there was no chance of peace for them in their own country. One by one, family by family, they fled from their homes leaving behind them their property, taking their lives in their hands. Numbers were caught and sent to the galleys, numbers more escaped, and carried to the enemies of France in England and Brandenburg and Holland the thrift and the skill which under Colbert’s enlightened patronage had done so much to make France the wealthiest of European states. Holland dates its industrial revival and Brandenburg its industrial life from the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Huguenot soldiers, like Ruvigny and Schomberg, brought the discipline and training of the French armies to bear fruit in the English and Dutch service. It is said that fifty thousand families escaped in this way to fertilise with their industry the soil of the enemies of France. Those who were left behind, who were too poor or too ignorant to escape, continued in the mountains of the Cevennes a desultory and fanatical struggle with their oppressor. In the days of Louis’s greatest need, in the War of the Spanish Succession, they kept the ablest of French generals and an army of veterans from the theatre of war. Eventually in the next reign they obtained and have since enjoyed a grudging toleration. Even the uniformity of religion so dear to the heart of Louis was not attained. Large numbers of Protestants and of Protestant children, it is true, were added to the ranks of Catholicism, but Huguenotism lived on in France, socially and politically insignificant, but still alive. France soon found that persecution had bereft her of her children and her wealth, without even giving her in return that complete national solidarity which formed the excuse for the crime.

Aggressive policy of Louis, 1678–1688.

The interest of ecclesiastical questions, however intense, however absorbing, never diverted the jealous eye of Louis XIV. for one moment from his own aggrandisement. He did not become the less ambitious because he had grown devout, or the less far-reaching in his plans because they were now largely affected by his determination to play the part of champion of the Church. No sooner was the peace of Nimwegen signed than Louis began to cast about for pretexts for evading it. By the words of the treaty the towns ceded to France were expressed to be surrendered ‘with their dependencies.’ The ambiguity of this phrase, possibly intentional, gave a great opportunity to that kind of masterful diplomacy which Louis loved. The Chambres des Réunions, 1679. In 1679 he appointed tribunals, called Chambres des Réunions, consisting of members of the parlements of Metz, Beisach, and Besançon to adjudge the territories in Alsace, Franche Comté, and the three bishoprics which were included in this phrase, and accordingly appertained to France. The Chambres well understood their duty. Without hesitation they pronounced all Alsace, Zweibrücken, Saarbrück and other smaller districts to be included in the treaty. No sooner was the decision pronounced than French troops occupied the territories in question, and their annexation to France became an accomplished fact. In vain the diet and the princes whose lands were thus unceremoniously seized protested. Force and possession were on the side of Louis and he knew it. While they were protesting he was cynically preparing for a stroke more audacious still. Occupation of Strasburg, 1681. The great city of Strasburg was included in the decision which gave all Alsace to Louis, but Strasburg could not be occupied in a moment like Saarbrück or Montbéliard. French gold and diplomacy were set to work, the magistrates were bribed or intimidated, and at the end of September 1681 all Europe rang with the news that Louis XIV. was master of the key of the upper Rhine. The skill of Vauban was at once enlisted in its defence, and before the war broke out again Strasburg had been added to the impregnable circle of fortresses, which guarded France and threatened her enemies from Lille to Pignerol. Like his apt pupil Napoleon in after times Louis XIV. thoroughly understood the policy of employing brute force in the time of peace against unwilling enemies, in order to obtain advantageous positions either in diplomacy or war as the basis of future effort. The Emperor threatened by the Turks was unable, Germany was unwilling, to renew the war for the sake of Strasburg, and Louis proceeded calmly and steadily on his way. By an arrangement with Charles of Mantua he occupied Casale in Piedmont the same day that Strasburg fell into his hands. By the truce of Regensburg concluded after a short war with Spain in 1684, and approved by the diet, he secured possession for twenty years of his ill-gotten gains.

Improvement of the army and navy, 1678–1688.

Meanwhile no pains were spared by the vigilant and careful mind of Louvois to bring the army to a pitch of perfection hitherto unknown. Camps of instruction were formed, the precursors of the modern Châlons and Aldershot, where 150,000 men were kept constantly at drill. Regiments, no longer farmed as it were by their colonel, were paid, clothed, armed, and victualled by the war office. Stores were collected along the frontier. All France resounded with the clash of arms and preparation for war. Through the zeal of Seignelay, the son of Colbert, similar energy was expended upon the navy. Arsenals were formed at Brest and Toulon. Ships of war were built to the number of one hundred and eighty and fitted with all the appliances of naval warfare as it was then understood. Since the decay of the navy of Spain the command of the Mediterranean had been shared between the Venetians, the Turks, and the Corsairs of Algiers. Naval supremacy in the Mediterranean.Now under Duquesne and de Tourville France stretched forth her hand to win an easy supremacy over the Mediterranean, and to claim partnership with England in the rule of the ocean. In 1683 Duquesne destroyed the pirates of Algiers and Tripoli, and liberated their Christian slaves. In 1685 he forced the republic of Genoa to renounce its traditional alliance with Spain and to become the humble vassal of France.