Ruthless bombing of cities, regardless of the fate of civilians. Sending troops to slaughter his own subjects. Inhuman punishments for those who dare to otherwise believe in God. This monarch stopped at nothing. This is why he got a nickname that every child knows.
"He was a great king:it was he who raised France to the rank of the greatest nations of Europe" - assessed the achievements of Louis XIV, and thus the famous "sun king", another great leader, Napoleon. And with his inherent contempt for human beings (he himself sent millions of his countrymen to countless wars) he passed over the costs of his predecessor's successes. "Is even the sun free of spots?" - he said.
Louis XIV in the portrait of Charles le Bruno.
A similar assessment is presented by many historians focusing on the issues of "raison d'état" and "state interest". They write about the king himself that he was rather gentle, polite and sensitive to the harm of his subjects. Rarely are opinions as extreme as the one presented in literary form by the writer and anthropologist Albert Sánchez Piñol.
" The monster has transformed his country into a heavily armed autocratic tyranny, a creation unknown in modern times, and did not even try to hide that it seeks to rule over the whole world "- he stated emphatically in the pages of the novel" Victus " . Is this radical assessment only an expression of the writer's imagination, or is there a grain of truth in it?
Destructive Wars
One fact remains undeniable. By his striving to maximally strengthen France's international position and enlarge its territories, Louis XIV condemned his people to constant involvement in armed conflicts. The statistics speak for themselves. During 55 years of reign (counting from the moment of taking over independent rule after the death of Cardinal Mazarin, i.e. from 1661) waged wars for 36 years . He made most of them himself.
The reign of Louis XIV was marked by endless wars. The illustration shows the painting by Adam Frans van der Meulen "Louis XIV at Maastricht".
Of course, this state of affairs had its consequences for the ruler's subjects. The Sun King, who apparently considered the people of the country cheap cannon fodder, was summoning larger and larger armies. At the height of the Thirty Years' War, which took place partly during the lifetime of his predecessor, Louis XIII, and during the actual reign of Mazarin, the size of the French army was no more than 200,000. Ludwik, in the last decade of the 17th century, had an army of about 420,000 soldiers .
The ruler caused the peasants to be called up for service. Two such conscription was carried out in 1688 and 1701. The remaining regular recruitments were conducted with the same consistency, but very often abused. This was of no interest to the king of France. His only goal was to send as many people as possible to the lands of the opponents. The history books are silent about how many of them returned. Ludwik probably didn't want to know that either.
War crimes?
It was even more easy for the Sun King to decide the lives and deaths of his subjects in the lands that were the subject of his attack. He was ruthless in the conduct of conflicts and did not hesitate to resort to brutal means to implement his decisions. This is perfectly demonstrated by the threats by Louis XIV of 1683. Using the involvement of Emperor Leopold I of Habsburg in the fight against the Turks, he then threatened the Netherlands with sending troops to their territory. When the provinces made an alliance with Spain in response and attacked several border towns in France, the ruler was furious. He promised that for every French city destroyed, he would have 50 enemy centers razed to the ground.
Although the king did not manage to fulfill his threats against the Netherlands, Genoa felt his revenge in full a year later. In May 1684, Louis XIV ordered the city to be bombed for daring to support Spain. The inhabitants allowed the Spaniards to recruit mercenaries and build galleys in their area. The Sun King sent his fleet to the city, from which he dropped 13,000 mortar shells on Genoa. The city is on fire. Two-thirds of the buildings were completely destroyed.
However, the French monarch showed his greatest barbarism at the beginning of the Nine Years' War (1688-1697). He sent his troops to the Palatinate under the Minister of War, François Michel Le Tellier de Louvois. And he agreed that his envoy would use the scorched earth tactic on the German lands. The faithful servant undertook the task with extreme zeal. Literally razed about twenty cities . This is how one of Louis' biographers, Georges Bordonove, described the activities of the French troops:
Nothing has been spared, neither the magnificent castle of the Palatinate Elector, nor temples, monasteries, nor hospitals, villages, manors or even scattered farms . Even vine shoots were pulled out, fruit trees were cut. There was a river of fire behind the French troops who were looting.
During the Ten Years' War, the French showed ruthless brutality. Burning Durlach, one of the twenty or so cities they destroyed.
The action of Louis XIV's troops sparked outrage throughout Europe. Ultimately, it also worked to his disadvantage, strengthening the anti-French alliance. The shock of the devastation of the Palatinate also prompted the first steps to be taken to prevent such a move in the future, which led to the creation of a framework for international law in the 17th century.
Debts… and new taxes
Costly wars led inexorably to the ruin of the royal treasury. Especially since the ruler who took care of his prestige, also in his private life, was extremely wasteful. Even during the lifetime of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, the Minister of Finance, who called for austerity, the situation was not so dire. After his death in 1683, Louis abandoned all sense.
Enormous funds were spent on the construction of Versailles, the seat of the king's dreams. It is enough to mention that every year he imported millions of flower bulbs into his gardens. At that time, the ruler was often informed that his subjects were suffering from poverty. However, he did not think that fabulously expensive investments should be withheld because of this.
The construction of Versailles took huge sums of money to save Louis' budget. ignoring the poverty of his subjects, he kept tightening the more and more tax screw.
In order to patch the holes in the budget, the king most often opted for loans. He took out huge (and high-interest) loans from helpful financiers. He left their repayments to his successors. They must have had a long hiccup, since Napoleon, though full of admiration for the great monarch, reminded him of "two hundred million in debt."
Another proven way to repair the purse, i.e. raising taxes, was used. The king did not want to do this at first, fearing rebellion. In the end, however, the situation left him no choice. Although the current tax, from which the nobility and clergy were excluded, remained unchanged, new burdens were introduced, such as the alcohol trade tax or various types of stamp duties.
Against your own people
With increasing payments to the state, it is no wonder that the subjects regularly rioted. In fact, while a small part of the nation was rich in wealth, the rest lived poorly. In a country with a population of 20 million, according to Pierre Goubert, a researcher in the social history of that period, starved about a million people. What about the rest? As a rule, several hens, one or two goats and a small plot protected her from malnutrition.
Constant wars and the profligacy of Louis XVI left over a million French people to starve.
The year 1675 was exceptional in terms of the dissatisfaction of its subjects. Bordeaux then rebelled against the royal authority. The fate of this city clearly shows the king's "sensitivity" to the poverty of his nation.
The immediate cause of the revolt was the increase in taxes on tobacco and tin products. The riots started in late March this year by a group of women who hurled stones and curses on agents trying to implement the new arrangements. The crowd quickly took control of the city. He held it for over four months - despite successive attempts by government forces to recapture Bordeaux.
Finally, in November, sixteen troops were sent to the city. It is true that Louis XIV was at war at that time - but he still found several thousand soldiers to suppress an internal rebellion. This sealed the fate of the inhabitants. The struggle lasted all winter, but soon, as the researcher of the popular uprisings of that period, Leon Bernard, wrote, Bordeaux became "literally a city of the dead, with ruined industry" .
Country for Catholics only
As if that were not enough, the Sun King also started crusades in his own country. "We have made every effort to unite [back - ed. A. W.] with the Church of those who separated from it, ”wrote Louis XIV in his testament. This was explained, inter alia, by the fact that in 1685 he revoked the Edict of Nantes, which guaranteed freedom of religion to the Huguenots (French followers of Calvin). In this way, he finally ruined France's relative peace from its establishment in 1598 from religious persecution. Protestantism has been officially banned.
The Huguenots were under real fire. In the following years, as many as 200,000 people decided to flee the country . The fate of the others, if they refused to convert to Catholicism, was unenviable. So-called dragonadas, i.e. the quarters of troops of soldiers of the military formation known as dragoons, were established with Huguenot families. Dragons were free to terrorize dissenters and devastate their property.
It also happened that Protestants were sentenced to galleys for refusing to join the Catholic Church. Soon they constituted as much as 12% of all galley lords. And Ludwik strengthened his fleet with extra hands to work ...
Port-Royal-des-Champs Abbey, headquarters of the Jansenists.
The ruler's dislike of religious "innovators" also touched the Jansenists - the Catholic milieu, which in its own way interpreted the doctrine of the Church and significantly departed from the mainstream designated by the pope. Their main seat was the Abbey of Port-Royal-des-Champs.
The king decided to deal with them only at the end of his life. In 1709 he ordered the army to disperse a group of about 20 people who were in the abbey. In the following years, he also ordered the destruction of buildings, the transport of the bones of the followers of the movement from the graves to common graves and - finally - the demolition of the church. These measures seem excessive considering the magnitude of the threat that this relatively small group of "misfits" could have posed.
Stains in the sun
It should be said, however, that the then rulers were characterized by a different sensitivity than in later times. Kings - both Louis XIV and his contemporaries - were used to treating the state as their backyard. They disposed of the people living in it as they had their own property.
The subjects celebrated Louis XIV only in the context of their tax expense.
The insensitivity to the pain of those lower on the social ladder is illustrated by the story of the Countess de Berry, cited by Louis XIV's biographer Anthony Levi. The aristocrat in 1711 was expecting her first child. She wasn't feeling very well, so doctors persuaded her to avoid all expeditions.
Louis was going to Fontainebleau at that time and insisted that the countess go there as well. The only convenience he allowed was a boat ride instead of horseback riding. Unfortunately, the boat hit the bridge, and the Countess, under the shock of shock, gave birth to a dead daughter. "The king simply stated that if a dead child is female, it is a small loss" - says Levi.
From the point of view of the French monarch, the loss may indeed have been small. His subjects bypassed it in the end, as French historian Goubert points out, mainly in terms of tax efficiency. "The state is me," he said finally. Fortunately, today such statements do not need to be believed.
Inspiration:
This article was inspired by the novel by Albert Sánchez Piñola entitled “Victus. The fall of Barcelona 1714 ”, Literary Oficyna Noir Sur Blanc 2018.