152 HISTORY OF FRANCE. [chai-. which was signed at Utrecht, in 17 13, by all the great powers of Europe, and closed the last of the wars of Lewis XIV. The first had been all success, the second full of fruitless victories, the third of ruinous defeats. 23. Death of Lewis XIV. 1715. — Sad and weaiy was the court of the king who had survived two generations of great men, but who still trod his dreary round with un- abated industry. He had no one near him to trust or love but Madame de Maintenon, who was older than himself, sick at heart of the dull display around, and complaining to her friends of having to amuse an unamusable king. There were now but few Huguenots to persecute ; so the king and his wife fell on the Jaiiseiiists, a devout and learned party within the Church itself, which carried the doctrines of St. Augustine to excess, and were less sub- missive to the pope than the rest. As a work of piety, the famous monastery of the nuns oi Poft-Royal wa.?, destroyed. Lewis appointed a council of regency, in which Orleans should have but one vote, and he left the personal care of the child who was to succeed him to the Duke of Maine, one of his own natural sons, who had been made legiti- mate. To the last the old king toiled on, even when con- fined to his bed, still remaining the dignified, self-collected, man that he had been all his life, telling the poor infant at his bed-side to abstain from wars and buildings, to remember his God, and to try to relieve his people, as he himself had never been able to do. So, on the ist of September, 171 5, in his seventy-seventh year^ died Lewis XIV. He was far from having been the worst man of his rate, but he was probably the most mischievous, by the wide-spread influence of his wonderful ascendency of cha- racter and his utterly false views of the glories and duties of a king. 24. The Regency, 17 15. — The choice of the Duke of Maine was the best Lewis XIV. could have made as a guardian for the poor babe, who in purple leading-strings was shown to the people as Lewis Xl But he was hate- ful to the princes of the blood and the nobility, who were bitterly jealous of his position. The will was merely mur- mured over in Parliament, and Philip, Duke of Orleans, was declared regent as his birthright. He was one of the few clever men of his family, but utterly without principle and shamelessly profligate in his own life. Still he had his good points. So far as he troubled himself to govern, his native ability, kindness of heart, and a certain origi-
