A Short History of France

by Mary Platt Parmele

The Salic Law was not recognized in Spain. Hence, the crown might descend to an heiress, and by her be transmitted to her husband. Such was the hope in the marriage of Louis with the Infanta; the hope of some happy turn of fortune, some break in the line of succession whereby the Spanish kingdom might be absorbed into a Bourbon empire, as it had once been in the empire of the Hapsburgs. This was the ignis fatuus which was to control the policy of this stormy reign, and which was to envelop it at last in the clouds of defeat and disaster.

The secret of Louis' greatness was his instinctive recognition of greatness in others. His new minister, Colbert, to whom he owed so much, was a man of the people, and a protestant. He it was who discovered the peculations of Fouquet, the magnificent Minister of Finance, who was building a palace at Vaux greater than the king himself could afford, and who was suddenly swept from this princely residence into the Bastille, where he spent the remaining years of his life with plenty of leisure in which to think upon the forty thousand pounds he had expended upon that fête he gave in honor of his royal master; and to recall the splendors of the supper and the size of the banqueting-hall, which Mansart, Le Brun, and the best that Italy could furnish at that time had made beautiful.

It is said that the unfortunate visit of the king to his minister's abode resulted in the creation of Versailles as a suburban residence. From the Palais de St. Germain, on the heights in the suburbs of Paris, Louis could see the Cathedral of St. Denis, where were the royal vaults and the ancestors he must some day join. So depressing was this view to him, and so charmed was he with the plan of Fouquet's palace and gardens, that artists were immediately set to work to make one more royal at Versailles, where his father, Louis XIII., used to have his hunting-box; the place where that much-governed king used to go to hide away from his scheming mother and his argus-eyed minister. The genius of Colbert was severely taxed to supply the means for Louis' magnificent tastes and for his foreign wars, at the same time. Even Colbert could not create money out of nothing. The burden must rest somewhere, and just as surely must ultimately be borne by the people.

The choice of Louvois as Minister of War was no less happy than that of Colbert in Finance. And with Vauban to build his defences, Turenne and Luxembourg and the great Condé to lead his armies, it is not strange that there were victories.

The four great wars of Louis' reign were not for theatrical effect, like that of the fanciful Charles VIII. in Italy. They were all in pursuance of a serious and definite purpose. Just or unjust, wise or unwise, they were planned in order to reach some boundary, or to secure some strategic position essential to France. These wars were:

First—The war upon the Spanish Netherlands, ending with the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, 1668.

Second—The invasion of the Dutch Republic, ending with the peace of Nymwegen, 1678.

Third—War with the coalition of European States, closing with the Treaty of Ryswick, 1697.

Fourth—War of the Spanish Succession, closed by the Treaty of Utrecht, 1713.

The first of these wars, undertaken because Louis believed and intended that Flanders should belong to France, to which it was geographically allied, was ostensibly undertaken in order to recover the unpaid dowry which had been promised by Spain in exchange for Louis' renunciation of any claim upon the throne of Spain which might result from his marriage with the Infanta Maria Theresa. His conquest of the Spanish possessions in Flanders might have been supposed to set at rest forever the question of a claim upon the Spanish throne. But we shall hear of that again. The success of this war made Louis, at twenty-nine years of age, the most heroic figure in Europe. Every one bowed before him, and everything seemed to be gravitating toward him as toward a central sun. Not alone nobility, but even genius put on his livery and became sycophantish, Bossuet and even Molière, hungering for his smile, and in despair if he frowned.