Louis XIV
Louis XIV was the ruler of France from the death of his father in 1643, when he was just four, until his death in 1715, and he became the epitome of the Absolute Monarch — the Sun King, Louis the Great. He declared himself in his majority from 1651, when he was only thirteen, although he didn’t fully control the reins of power until the death of Cardinal Mazarin ten years later. In most ways, he shaped what we think of when we think of the French monarchy, with the immense palace in Versailles, the huge and inwardly focussed court, out of touch with the people who made up his state — Louis XIII is generally credited with putting in place the mechanisms that allowed Louis XIV to rule as an absolute monarch, but the sun king is the one brought it all together.
I’m not a fan of the Great Man theories of history, but it is generally agreed that the weaknesses of Louis XVI are one strand of the causes of the French Revolution — if he had not been trying to control a state shaped by his much stronger great-great-grandfather, these weaknesses might have been less of a liability.
Anyway, I came across the memoirs of the Duke de Saint-Simon, and I’m not really used to primary sources so I was really struck by the descriptions of Louis that he had. Bearing in mind that Saint-Simon had a grudge against Louis, I still find the picture that he paints vivid and absorbing.
‘His natural talents were below mediocrity; but he had a mind capable of improvement, […] of assimilating what was best in the minds of others without slavish imitation’
This is appealing, Louis the learner, absorbing information and skills from those around him, even if, despite being ‘naturally prudent, moderate, and reserved’, he ‘always thought he could teach something of their own craft even to the most professional men’. Which would be downright irritating, I expect we can all agree. If sixteenth century France was a fantasy novel, and Louis was a king in it, I suspect the author would either dwell on this bit until we come to agree that Louis needs to be overthrown, or not mention it at all.
‘His Ministers, generals, mistresses, and courtiers soon found out his weak point, namely, his love of hearing his own praises’, and used it to their advantage, first to get into his good books, and then to flatter him into believing that he came up with their good ideas: ‘He took to himself the credit of [his generals’] successes with admirable complacency, and honestly believed that he was all his flatterers told him.’ In our fantasy novel (our fantasy fantasy novel, I suppose), Our Hero would be appalled at the machinations of the king’s advisors, and be the only one who would tell him The Truth — inexplicably, Our Hero would also be the only one who could tell The Truth to the king and be believed. But I think this part illustrates how even a strong-willed and minded man like Louis was just couldn’t be capable of being absolute ruler of such a large country as France and do a good job of it — so how much worse would poor, pudgy Louis XVI do at it?
‘In his childhood he was so much neglected that no one dared go near his rooms’ — this part I would really like to dig into, but haven’t had the time. Louis is generally considered to have been very close to his mother, if I remember correctly at least one chapter of Antonia Fraser’s book Love and Louis XIV is dedicated to their relationship as his first love. How this reported neglect fits in to that picture, I’m not sure, and it is too long since I read Fraser’s book to remember.
It’d be gold in our fantasy novel, though. He’d have his nurse, and that one wily, Machiavellian advisor who risked reprobation to befriend the child, but otherwise wouldn’t be able to trust anyone (despite believing all the flattery, see above).
‘His mind was occupied with small things rather than with great, and he delighted in all sorts of petty details’, including carrying out frequent reviews of his armies. I find this endearing, maybe because I recognise myself a bit in that, the seductiveness of looking at the tiny things that are lining up properly and are distracting me from the big things I should be thinking about. But if Louis is constantly told that the victories are thanks to him, he doesn’t even need to worry about the big things, and probably believed that his obsession with epaulettes was part of the reason for the victories. He would lay siege to towns and cities when that was the less sensible cause of action, because ‘his robust constitution enabled him to bear fatigue marvellously’ so he could appear to be at the forefront of the action, and to be superior to the officers and men. I can’t imagine that managing to get into a fantasy novel, certainly not unless Louis was a bad king who needed overthrowing, although perhaps George RR Martin had that in mind with Robert Baratheon’s hunting parties.
‘But for the fear of the devil, which, by God’s grace, never forsook him even in his wildest excesses, he would have caused himself to be worshipped as a deity’ — there’s a possibly apocryphal quote from Louis that does the rounds every so often, “Has God forgotten all I have done for Him?” presumably in reference to Louis’s work in winding back the religious tolerance that had eventually ended France’s wars of religion. I think this is Saint-Simon being snarky again, too, although thinking of the opulence of Versailles, perhaps not.
One of the things that I find most interesting about studying history is the constant reminder that there is more than one interpretation to even the smallest of events, and that one account cannot hope to show The Truth. These insights of Saint-Simon’s into Louis’s character, no matter their motivation, show something that I had missed from my texts, but again cannot be the full picture — one more thread to add in to the mix that starts to approximate what actually happened.
