Trouin ruined Anglo-Dutch maritime commerce. Louis XIV. assisted in person at the sieges of Mons and Namur, operations for which he had a liking, because, like Louvois, who died in 1691, he thought little of the French soldiery in the open field. After three years of strife, ruinous to both sides, he made the first overtures of peace, thus marking an epoch in his foreign policy; though William took no unfair advantage of this, remaining content with the restitution of places taken by the Chambres de Réunion, except Strassburg, with a frontier-line of fortified Peace of Ryswick. places for the Dutch, and with the official deposition of the Stuarts. But the treaty of Ryswick (1697) marked the condemnation of the policy pursued since that of Nijmwegen. While signing this peace Louis XIV. was only thinking of the succession in Spain. By partitioning her in advance with the other strong powers, England and Holland, by means of the treaties of the Hague and of London (1698–1699),—as he had formerly done with the emperor in 1668,—he seemed at first to wish for a pacific solution of the eternal conflict between the Habsburgs and the Bourbons, and to restrict himself to the perfecting of his natural frontiers; but on the death of Charles II. of Spain (1700) he claimed everything in favour of his grandson, the duke of Anjou, now appointed universal heir, though risking the loss of all by once more letting himself fall into imprudent and provocative action in the dynastic interest.
English public opinion, desirous of peace, had forced William III. to recognize Philip V. of Spain; but Louis XIV.’s maintenance of the eventual right of his grandson to the crown of France, and the expulsion of the Dutch, who had not recognized Philip V., from the Barrier towns, War of the Spanish Succession. brought about the Grand Alliance of 1701 between the maritime Powers and the court of Vienna, desirous of partitioning the inheritance of Charles II. The recognition of the Old Pretender as James III., king of England, was only a response to the Grand Alliance, but it drew the English Tories into an inevitable war. Despite the death of William III. (March 19, 1702) his policy triumphed, and in this war, the longest in the reign, it was the names of the enemy’s generals, Prince Eugène of Savoy, Mazarin’s grand-nephew, and the duke of Marlborough, which sounded in the ear, instead of Condé, Turenne and Luxembourg. Although during the first campaigns (1701–1703) in Italy, in Germany and in the Netherlands success was equally balanced, the successors of Villars—thanks to the treason of the duke of Savoy—were defeated at Höchstädt and Landau, and were reduced to the defensive (1704). In 1706 the defeats at Ramillies and Turin led to the evacuation of the Netherlands and Italy, and endangered the safety of Dauphiné. In 1708 Louis XIV. by a supreme effort was still able to maintain his armies; but the rout at Oudenarde, due to the misunderstanding between the duke of Burgundy and Vendôme, left the northern frontier exposed, and the cannons of the Dutch were heard at Marly. Louis XIV. had to humble himself to the extent of asking the Dutch for peace; but they forgot the lesson of 1673, and revolted by their demands at the Hague, he made a last appeal to arms and to the patriotism of his subjects at Malplaquet (September 1709). After this came invasion. Nature herself conspired with the enemy in the disastrous winter of 1709.
What saved Louis XIV. was not merely his noble constancy of resolve, the firmness of the marquis de Torcy, secretary of state for foreign affairs, the victory of Vendôme at Villaviciosa, nor the loyalty of his people. The interruption of the conferences at Gertruydenberg having obliged the Whigs and Marlborough to resign their power into the hands of the Tories, now sick of war, the death of the emperor Joseph I. (April 1711), which risked the reconstruction of Charles V.’s colossal and unwieldy monarchy upon the shoulders of the archduke Charles, and Marshal Villars’ famous victory of Denain (July 1712) combined to render possible Peace of Utrecht, 1713. the treaties of Utrecht, Rastatt and Baden (1713–1714). These gave Italy and the Netherlands to the Habsburgs, Spain and her colonies to the Bourbons, the places on the coast and the colonial commerce to England (who had the lion’s share), and a royal crown to the duke of Savoy and the elector of Brandenburg. The peace of Utrecht was to France what the peace of Westphalia had been to Austria, and curtailed the former acquisitions of Louis XIV.
The ageing of the great king was betrayed not only by the fortune of war in the hands of Villeroy, la Feuillade, or Marsin; disgrace and misery at home were worse than defeat. By the strange and successive deaths of the Grand Dauphin (1711), the duke and duchess of Burgundy End of Louis XIV.’s reign. (1712)—who had been the only joy of the old monarch—and of his two grandsons (1712–1714), it seemed as though his whole family were involved under the same curse. The court, whose sentimental history has been related by Madame de la Fayette, its official splendours by Loret, and its intrigues by the duc de Saint-Simon, now resembled an infirmary of morose invalids, presided over by Louis XIV.’s elderly wife, Madame de Maintenon, under the domination of the Jesuit le Tellier. Neither was it merely the clamours of the people that arose against the monarch. All the more remarkable spirits of the time, like prophets in Israel, denounced a tyranny which put Chamillart at the head of the finances because he played billiards well, and Villeroy in command of the armies although he was utterly untrustworthy; which sent the “patriot” Vauban into disgrace, banished from the court Catinat, the Père la Pensée, “exiled” to Cambrai the too clear sighted Fénelon, and suspected Racine of Jansenism and La Fontaine of independence.
Disease and famine; crushing imposts and extortions; official debasement of the currency; bankruptcy; state prisons; religious and political inquisition; suppression of all institutions for the safe-guarding of rights; tyranny by the intendants; royal, feudal and clerical oppression burdening every faculty and every necessary of life; “monstrous and incurable luxury”; the horrible drama of poison; the twofold adultery of Madame de Montespan; and the narrow bigotry of Madame de Maintenon—all concurred to make the end of the reign a sad contrast with the splendour of its beginning. When reading Molière and Racine, Bossuet and Fénelon, the campaigns of Turenne, or Colbert’s ordinances; when enumerating the countless literary and scientific institutions of the great century; when considering the port of Brest, the Canal du Midi, Perrault’s colonnade of the Louvre, Mansart’s Invalides and the palace of Versailles, and Vauban’s fine fortifications—admiration is kindled for the radiant splendour of Louis XIV.’s period. But the art and literature expressed by the genius of the masters, reflected in the tastes of society, and to be taken by Europe as a model throughout a whole century, are no criterion of the social and political order of the day. They were but a magnificent drapery of pomp and glory thrown across a background of poverty, ignorance, superstition, hypocrisy and cruelty; remove it, and reality appears in all its brutal and sinister nudity. The corpse of Louis XIV., left to servants for disposal, and saluted all along the road to Saint Denis by the curses of a noisy crowd sitting in the cabarets, celebrating his death by drinking more than their fill as a compensation for having suffered too much from hunger during his lifetime—such was the coarse but sincere epitaph which popular opinion placed on the tomb of the “Grand Monarque.” The nation, restive under his now broken yoke, received with a joyous anticipation, which the future was to discount, the royal infant whom they called Louis the Well-beloved, and whose funeral sixty years later was to be greeted with the same proofs of disillusionment.
The death of Louis XIV. closed a great era of French history; the 18th century opens upon a crisis for the monarchy. From 1715 to 1723 came the reaction of the Regency, with its marvellous effrontery, innovating spirit and frivolous immorality. From 1723 to 1743 came the mealy-mouthed Character of the eighteenth century. despotism of Cardinal Fleury, and his apathetic policy within and without the kingdom. From 1743 to 1774 came the personal rule of Louis XV., when all the different powers were in conflicts—the bishops and parlement quarrelling, the government fighting against the clergy and the magistracy, and public opinion in declared opposition to the state. Till at last, from 1774 to 1789, came Louis XVI. with his honest illusions.
