THE BOURBONS Henry IV. 1589-1610.—Would the new king also find himself powerless between the threat of Huguenotism and the popularity of the League? He could reckon only on the support of a section of the Huguenots and the catholic minority of the Politiques; whilst his rival, the cardinal de Bourbon, who had been proclaimed king as Charles X., could count upon the support of the League, Spain and the pope. Henry had practically to reconquer the whole kingdom and to re-create its national unity. His most valuable assets were his personal charm, his quick-wittedness, tenacity and dauntless courage. Success would have come to him more easily had he not been a Huguenot ; but he well knew that an abjuration of his faith would only ensure his position if he appeared sincere and not precipitate. Thus his first task must be the reconquest of his kingdom with the assistance of the aristocracy that, in gen eral, had remained loyal to him.
Instead of retreating to the south he remained in the neighbour hood of Paris, on the banks of the Seine and within reach of the reinforcements sent by Elizabeth. Twice, at Arques (1589) and at Ivry (159o) he defeated the duke of Mayenne, the lieutenant general of the League, and twice he fruitlessly attempted to storm Paris. Mayenne, aided by Alexander Farnese (q.v.), gov ernor of the Low Countries, prevented him also from capturing Rouen, that strong base for a siege of Paris. Luckily the Com mittee of Sixteen had disgusted the upper middle class of Paris by their demagogic fury and offended the patriotism of the more moderate members of the League and of the Politiques by their open alliance with Philip II. and by their acceptance of a Spanish garrison for Paris. Mayenne, who was playing for his own hand with both Henry IV. and Philip II., was compelled to break up this party of fanatics and theologians (Dec. 1591), and in order to put an end to the temporizing policy that was hastening on the disruption of the kingdom summoned the States-General to Paris (Dec. 1592) as though he himself were king. Henry IV. replied by outlawing every deputy who attended. Three-fourths of them stayed away, but Philip II. and the pope were represented. This "shadow States-General," followed by the parlement, had the good sense and loyalty to turn a deaf ear to ultramontane claims and Spanish intrigues that sought to give the throne to the daughter of Philip II. The famous pamphlet Satire Menippee re flected the awakening patriotism of the people, the weariness of religious disputes and the revival of public interest in national questions.
The movement in Henry's favour became irresistible when he decided to "take the step" and voluntarily renounced his Pro testantism at St. Denis on July 26, 1593. The coronation of the king at Chartres in Feb. 1594 completed the rout of the League. The parlement of Paris pronounced itself against Mayenne, the tool of Spain ; and Brissac, the governor, opened the gates of his capital to the king. The example of Paris and Henry's clemency rallied round him the most prudent members of the Catholic party, such as Villeroy and Jeannin, who were anxious for national unity, but he was forced to buy the adherents of the League, who charged him more than 6o million francs for his own kingdom. The pontifical absolution of Sept. finally drew the fangs of the League which was again betrayed by the frustrated attempt of the Jesuits' pupil, Jean Chatel, to assassinate the king. It only remained to expel the Spaniards. This war of deliverance was to efface the nightmare of the civil wars. Unhappily, the latter had so exhausted France that, notwithstanding a victory at Fontaine-Francaise (June , Amiens was captured and Paris threatened with a siege. But since the defeat of the Armada, Spain had grown equally enfeebled. Philip II. therefore resigned himself to the treaty of Vervins (1598) which confirmed that of Cateau-Cambresis and set its seal upon the decadence of Spain. Spain was no longer able to dismember or conquer France. The duke of Savoy was forced to capitulate in his turn. The treaty of Lyons (16o1) at last brought the frontiers of the kingdom to the southern Jura.
With the kingdom freed from the Spaniards and the religious wars concluded, all that remained for Henry IV. to do was to re-establish the royal authority that had been severely shaken since 156o. Was he to associate the nation with him in this work? As on the morrow of the Hundred Years' War, the weariness and the want of political intelligence in the land no less than the arrogance of the upper classes brought about a fresh abdication of the nation's rights. The cares of living made them forgetful of that necessity for control which had been maintained by the States-General from 156o to And this time, moderation on the part of the monarchy, although a factor, was no longer to be an essential of its triumph. A man of action and a soldier, Henry IV. never expected to have to render an account of his actions to anyone except God Himself. He ruled by divine right. There were no more meetings of the States-General, only of the Assembly of Notables, and then only "with his sword in his hand." No longer was the power shared with a Council of Twelve. His "conseil etroite," limited to five members drawn from all the parties, was little more than a committee of clerks, of whom the principal, Sully, a madman for work but of a cross-grained honesty, was the architect for the restoration of France.
The most characteristic symptom of the misery of the king dom was brigandage, which could be put down only by the gal lows. The governors of the provinces furnished another danger. Great nobles with an armed following, they were rarely in open revolt against the king; but they were accustomed to quarrel and threaten, and to start underhand negotiations with foreign Pow ers that, at times, as in the case of marshal de Biron, duke of Bouillon, attained to the dimensions of a conspiracy (16o1–o2). As to the Protestants, contrary to Henry's hopes, their political activity showed no signs of diminishing. Between 1598 and 16o1 they held three assemblies and managed to prolong until 1611 the possession of the places de surete which had been granted them only for eight years.
Sully.—The most urgent duty confronting the king was to resuscitate the corpse of France. With the restoration of order, he gave to the peasant the desire for work and by reducing the taille rendered him better able to pay the tax. By forbidding the seizure of agricultural tools, by draining the marshes, and by permitting the free sale of wheat and wine according to the state of the harvests, Henry encouraged agricultural prosperity. In this work he was aided by Sully. The scarcity of agricultural labour, the high wages following on the civil wars, and the rise in the price of agricultural produce, enabled Henry's desire that "every family should have a fowl in the pot on Sunday" to be more frequently realized. Moreover, in spite of Sully, who, with his hatred of luxury and waste, was an agrarian, Henry, with the aid of Laffemas and Olivier de Serre, sought to awaken industry in the towns ; in which they would have been more successful had they seen that greater liberty could safely be given to the artisans. The edict of 1597, inaugurating the system of commercial com panies, was a prelude to Colbert's legislation; but Laffemas' suggestions for syndical courts were never given effect. Never theless some industries were founded or reorganized: silk-weav ing, for which the planting of mulberry trees was encouraged, glass-making, tapestry, etc.
Sully at least provided internal commerce with the necessary roads and canals. In the export trade Laffemas was again the precursor of Colbert in establishing the exemption from taxation of raw materials, and in prohibiting the importation of manu factured products similar to those made in the kingdom. Without actually winning back her former pre-eminence in the Levant, Marseilles gained for herself an honourable position in commerce. But Sully did not understand the significance of the commercial expansion started by Francis I. in Brazil and continued by Champlain in Canada. His real province lay in the supervision of finance, and in this he did not reveal himself an innovator; but he administered the wealth of the country as his own, honestly, carefully and strictly. His ideal was the accumulation of vast reserves in the Bastille. His only original creation, the edict of la paulette in 1604, was disastrous. In return for the annual payment of A o of the estimated revenue of the office, this edict made hereditary the judicial offices which had been held for life only. By means of the millions thus brought in from day to day, the kingdom was relieved from the necessity of hav ing to seek revenues from more regular and better sources : but political liberty and social justice were equally the losers by this extreme and ill-considered measure.
Proclaimed regent by the parlement, Marie de' Medici was as jealous of power as she was incapable of exercising it. Instead of weakening her opponents by pursuing Catherine de' Medici's policy of playing off one party against another, she could think of nothing better than to distribute offices and money among the chiefs of both parties. Once the treasury was despoiled and Sully disgraced she lost all her influence and became the tool of the ambition of a low-born Florentine, Concini. Thenceforward policy became a matter of petty artifice : after having made a show of drawing the sword against Conde, the leader of the great nobles, the Queen-Regent opened her purse instead. The "costly peace" of Sainte-Menehould (May 1614) marks the first abdication of power on the part of the monarchy.
To avoid giving Conde the pretext for further rebellion, the States-General—as always during a minority—was summoned. It was to be for the last time until 1789; but their meeting was of little importance. No mention was made of reforms or of any endeavour to curb the government. Each of the three orders was concerned solely to defend its own interests—the nobles, their pensions; the clergy, the theocratic claims of the papacy; the Third Estate, the paulette that gave it a kind of hereditary judi cial nobility. After subsidies had been voted and Louis XIII. declared of age, Marie de' Medici was able to bring about the marriage of the king with Anne of Austria, and that of the princess Elizabeth with the son of Philip III. The Protestants were rendered anxious by these Spanish marriages and by Sully's disgrace, and they united themselves to the party of the nobles who were irritated by the increasing power of the Concinis. Once again an incipient rebellion was nipped in the bud by means of governorships and pensions (Peace of Loudun, May 1616) . Concini then conceived the plan of imprisoning Conde and of replacing the "greybeards" of Henry IV. by his own men, notably by the almoner to the queen, Richelieu. He thought himself the master of the kingdom and assumed towards the king a sort of condescending guardianship. That sealed his doom : Louis XIII. had him assassinated on April 24, 1617, and his widow executed a few weeks later.
As Richelieu rose to power through the influence of Marie de' Medici, so another adventurer, Albert de Luynes, came to the front by reason of his influence with Louis XIII., a forlorn child whom he had contrived to amuse. The change was one of name only. Luynes became a duke and marshal in Concini's stead, while the duke d'Epernon, a supporter of Marie de' Medici, who had been banished to Blois, assumed the leadership of the oppo sition in place of Conde. The treaties of Angouleme (1619) and Angers (162o) resembled the "unwholesome" treaties of Loudun and Sainte-Menehould. The Huguenot revolt was of a more serious nature. At the instigation of the militant Catholics, Luynes conceived the unfortunate idea of re-establishing the Roman Catholic faith in Beam, which had been Calvinist since 1563. But he was repulsed before Montauban, and his death in 1621 spared him the disgrace of his predecessor. His authority and intrigues were inherited during the next three years by Marie de' Medici. In those three years, there were three different ministers—all mediocre men. In the background stood the cold and subtle personality of Cardinal de Richelieu, who was to seize the helm and be for 18 years the king behind the throne. Richelieu, 1624-42.—Richelieu was fortunate in the moment of his accession to power. The country was sick of rule by deputy and of the 14 years of disorder; moreover grave events in Europe demanded the pursuit of a vigorous foreign policy. In his Testament Richelieu has revealed that the course of action followed by him with an indomitable and often cruel determina tion had been planned at the time of his entry into the royal council. "I promise," he told the king, "to devote all my energy and all the authority that it may please you to place in my hands to destroying the Huguenots, abasing the pride of the great nobles, restoring all your subjects to their duty and in raising the name of your majesty among foreign nations to its rightful place." Everybody was forced to bow before the dogma of absolute monarchy ; the Huguenots were the first on whom it was enforced. Taking advantage of Richelieu's pre-occupation in expelling the Austrians from the Valtelline, the emperor's line of communica tion with his Spanish lands, the Huguenot leaders, Rohan and Soubise, supported by their powerful organization and by Eng land, took up arms in 1625. Richelieu, who was hampered by court intrigues, and who wished to engage in a political rather than a religious conflict, preferred to make peace ; this was, however, no more than a postponement of the struggle. When in 1627, the English declared war upon France, and the Huguenots took their side, Richelieu resolved to fight to a finish. The capture of La Rochelle, after a siege marked by fierce fighting on both sides, and Rohan's defeat in the Cevennes, notwithstanding the help of Philip IV. of Spain, enabled Richelieu to impose upon the Huguenots the Edict of Alais (1629) . Henceforth they ceased to form a separate body within the State.
The overthrow of "the four square feet of the king's cabinet" involved a longer and more bitter struggle. To achieve his end, Richelieu had to remain in power, a difficult task with a master like Louis XIII. who "liked to be governed yet bore being governed with impatience." Taciturn and distrustful, Louis gradually came to trust his minister, but never learned to like him. He was accustomed to listen to his mother who accused the cardinal of "black ingratitude," and to his wife—too good a Spaniard—who reproached him with desiring to dismember her country. The heir to the throne, the king's brother, Gaston of Orleans, who posed as the beloved prince in all conspiracies directed against Richelieu and each time ultimately played Judas, had oftentimes to be reckoned with. These divisions within the royal family were naturally exploited by the nobles. Suspicious and irritable, Richelieu frequently believed himself to be threat ened when he was not; and, in identifying himself with the king, sincerely believed that he was defending the king's authority and not that of the cardinal. As long as his position was uncertain he was forced to suppress court conspiracies, time and again dis playing his merciless severity : on Chalais, who sought to prevent the marriage of Gaston of Orleans with Madame de Montpensier, the richest heiress in the kingdom (1626) ; on the brothers Marillac ; and even on the two queens, after the Day of Dupes, when they believed they had been successful in securing his dismissal (163o) . There were also armed revolts against the powerful minister, for sharing in which Montmorency, governor of Languedoc, forfeited his head in 1632. Other rebels against the cardinal's authority summoned foreigners to their aid— notably de Thou and Cinq-Mars, who allied themselves with Spain, but were overthrown and executed at Lyons (1642). Obedience to the king became general and unquestioned through out France.
It soon became necessary to revert to old and bad expedients and to strain to the utmost all the resources of the financial sys tem. This was the price of his nationalist policy. Moreover, since 163o, among the rural population for whom this policy was a dead letter, insurrections inspired by sheer misery were frequent ; the Croquants rose in the south, the Va-nu-pieds in Normandy. Even the rentiers of the Hotel de Ville, ordinarily a peaceable people, were excited by the curtailment of their incomes, and in 1639 and 1642 were roused to fury. Despite the great work that was accomplished the treasury remained empty and the reforms a dead letter. By education and temperament a priest, Richelieu looked upon material concerns as of secondary importance. He could organize neither an army nor a navy, neither justice, nor finance, nor colonies, but at most a police system : he did not reform—he shattered. His true greatness lay in the ecclesiastical art of diplomacy: his work was wholly accomplished in the field of foreign policy where he displayed most continuity and fore sight, perhaps because in foreign affairs alone he was able to work unhindered.
As his allies could no longer sustain the combat alone, Riche lieu was himself compelled to make open war. He took into his pay the army of a German condottiere, Bernard of Saxe-Weimar, and came to an agreement with the Swedish chancellor, Oxen stierna, and with certain German princes; he let loose the dukes of Savoy, Parma and Mantua against Spain in the Milanais; and, finally, he allied himself with the Dutch to achieve the conquest and partition of the Spanish Netherlands. War followed in earnest (May 19, 2635). At the outset it went badly for France. The capture of Corbie, near Amiens, by the Spaniards and the invasion of Franche-Comte by the imperial troops served to re veal the vulnerability of Paris, so dangerously near the frontier. But (1638-4o), owing to Bernard of Saxe-Weimar and to Gue briant, as well as to the Swedish Generals, Alsace was conquered. Faced with revolts in Portugal and Catalonia, Spain lost Artois in 1640 and Roussillon in 1642. The defeat of the Spanish Habs burgs rendered their Viennese relatives more willing to negotiate. Richelieu's death (Dec. 4, 1642) prevented him from witnessing the triumph of his policy in the ensuing negotiations; but his dictatorship was justified by its results. Six months later Louis XIII. followed his minister to the grave (May 14, Mazarin (1643-61) .—A pupil of Richelieu's, Mazarin con tinued and completed his work. But the task was not done with out many set-backs. As in 161o, the crown fell to an infant, for Louis XIV. was only five years of age. The regent was no longer an Italian but a Spaniard, and the first again a for eigner, like Concini. Anne of Austria succeeded in annulling the will of Louis XIII., as had Marie de' Medici that of Henry IV., through the parlement of Paris, which was flattered by the oppor tunity of taking an active part in politics. Then, in a new Day of Dupes, this Spaniard of waning charms, who had been neglected by her husband and insulted by Richelieu, gave her full-blown and opulent person, together with absolute power, into the hands of Mazarin, instead of those of Gaston of Orleans. Of a hand some presence, amiable, very pliant, a lover of money to which he helped himself liberally, a superb diplomat, Mazarin justified Richelieu's confidence in him no less than the favour of Anne of Austria. For the maintenance of his authority in the kingdom, he relied upon the success of his foreign policy. Through his adroit diplomacy and the military genius of two young generals— Conde, the impulsive, and Turenne, the prudent—the great tree of the House of Austria was shaken to its very roots. At Rocroi (May 1643) Conde destroyed the renown of the famous Spanish infantry, afterwards joining forces with Turenne in Alsace. The Rhineland was freed by the victory at Freiburg-im-Breisgau (1644) and later the generals were again victorious at Nordlingen, Bavaria (1645). Meanwhile Mazarin laboured unceasingly to preserve the Swedish alliance. The Swedes were finally victorious at Zusmarhausen in Bavaria, when Turenne effected a junction with Wrangel, at the same moment that Conde, at Lens, for a second time defeated the Spaniards. At last Ferdinand III. brought himself to sign the peace that had for seven years been under negotiation.
It was far less difficult for Mazarin to assure the safety of France than to govern the kingdom. With the king a minor, he found himself confronted with the difficulties that Richelieu had been unable to solve, and which had become even more com plicated. Richelieu had governed in the name of a king of full age, and in the face of single opponents. With his position ham pered by his foreign birth and by the king's minority, the ad versaries of Mazarin had had ten years to coalesce against him, whilst everyone was sick of government by ministers. The main tenance of four armies, the necessity of supporting insurrections in Portugal and Catalonia, and the payment of subsidies to allies, had made taxation crushing. All who had been held in check by the iron hand of Richelieu sought to free themselves. The nobles, cramped by the disciplining of the nation ; the middle classes, whose commercial interests were suffering; the parlements, ambi tious of playing a role in political life similar to that of the English parliament with which they shared a common name ; the downtrodden populace—all made alliance. They were inflamed by the same fever that was then burning in Catalonia, Portugal, Naples and England.
The first and shortest phase was the Fronde of the parlement. At a time when the whole world was a little mad, the parlement had imagined a loyalist rebellion. Its armed protest was directed, not against the king, but against Mazarin and the men to whom he had delegated authority; but it was soon disgusted with its allies—the princes and nobles who had proffered their swords solely because they would thus be in a better position to extort concessions, and the Parisian mob which had been aroused by a warlike ecclesiastic, a Catiline in a priest's cassock, Paul de Gondi (see RETZ). When, therefore, a proposal was made in the parlement to receive a Spanish envoy sir les fleurs de lys, that assembly hastened to make terms with the Court by the Peace of Rueil (March i 1, 1649).
In the short respite (April 1649–Jan. 165o) that followed the Peace of Rueil there ensued a scramble for power among the nobles : Conde, proud and turbulent ; the coward Gaston of Orleans; the incapable Conti and the intriguing Longueville, the betrayed husband. The victor of Lens and Charenton, thinking the world at his feet, assumed so dictatorial a manner that Anne of Austria and Mazarin, assured by Gondi of the support of the parlement and the mob, had him arrested. In defence of Conde, a great conspiracy of Court ladies sought vainly to arouse Nor mandy, Burgundy and Bordeaux. Enslaved by Madame de Longueville, Turenne involved himself with the Spaniards and was defeated at Rethel (Dec. 15, 165o). Unhappily, and as was his habit, no sooner was he victorious than Mazarin forgot his promises, especially that of a cardinal's hat for Gondi. The nobles and the parlement made common cause, and Mazarin fled to Briihl in the electorate of Cologne, whence he continued to dominate the queen and the kingdom (Feb. 1651). But the leaders of the two parties—Conde, designedly released from prison, and Gondi, who hated him—were soon engaged in a mortal rivalry. The exile of Mazarin and the attainment by the king of his majority (Sept. 5, 1651) brought a temporary lull in the storm which broke out again on the return of Mazarin (Jan. 1652). Because he had not been given Mazarin's place as chief minister, Conde renewed the civil war with the help of Spain. Successful against the royal army at Bleneau, taken by surprise at Etampes, nearly destroyed by Turenne at Porte Sainte-Antoine, and only saved through the exertions of La Grande Mademoiselle, the daughter of Gaston of Orleans, Conde lost the support of Paris by permitting the massacre of a number of its citizens who were demonstrating in front of the Hotel de Ville in favour of peace. A general weariness of civil war gave a good opportunity to Mazarin's agents. That the way might be smoothed to a re conciliation, the cardinal pretended to exile himself again to Bouillon. A general collapse of the revolt ensued. Conde had taken refuge in Spain where he remained seven years, Gaston of Orleans was in exile, de Retz (Gondi) in prison and the parlement confined to its judicial functions. The field was thus left open for Mazarin who, four months after the king, returned in triumph to the Paris that had lately driven him forth with jeers and mockery (Feb. The Administration of Mazarin.—The work of restoring the damage wrought by four years of destruction awaited him. He held the nobility in check by means of the rich dowries of his numerous nieces, and henceforth employed them in war and at court. Others, like de Retz or de la Rochefoucauld, sought con solation in their Memoirs or their Maxims; the parlement, which had confused political power with the exercise of judicial func tions, learnt in the session of April 13, 1655, at Vincennes, that the days of political demonstration were ended. Power was given to middle-class men, such as Servien, Le Tellier and Lionne, who had faithfully served Mazarin in evil days. Like Henry IV. after the League, so Mazarin after the Fronde gradually redeemed a ruined kingdom. Like Richelieu he covered France with a net work of agents, who were henceforth a regular and permanent part of the administration, and who assured him of that peace and security without which he could not have carried out his immense peculations. His imitator and superintendent, Fouquet, the Maecenas of the future Augustus, cast over this gambler's policy the brilliant cloak of artistic prowess and the glamour of literature.
The Spanish War still dragged on; for the two countries were worn out by 20 years of war, and while both were incapable of terminating it by superior force neither would yield by seeking peace. Spain had the advantage of being able to transport troops to the Netherlands by sea and to raise mercenaries within the empire; by breaking the alliance of Spain with Cromwell, Mazarin struck a blow at these sea-communications. Unable to prevent the election to the empire of Leopold I. on the death of Ferdinand III., he cut off the emperor from the Netherlands by grouping together the princes of western Germany in the League of the Rhine, which insisted upon the neutrality of the empire (1658) . Soon afterwards the decisive moment arrived with Turenne's defeat of Conde and the Spaniards at the battle of the Dunes and the subsequent conquest of maritime Flanders. The victor was marching upon Brussels when Spain sued for peace.
For the performance of his duties, which he carried out with exemplary regularity and assiduity, Louis held himself responsible to God alone. To the lieutenant de Dieu, the utmost humiliation would be to accept his power from the hands of the people. As to his rights—these he conceived to have no other limit than his own interest and his duty towards God. In this belief he was an apt pupil of Bossuet. There were to be no grand-viziers or mayors of the palace, but only ministers who should be the trained instruments of his will. The superior rights of the people, and with them the States-General and the independent courts of justice, all these must be swept away; there could be no indi vidual rights among his subjects, save only the use of their property; the sole remedy offered for their miseries was prayer and resignation. Liberty he tolerated for himself alone. Thus did the nation identify itself—and gladly—with the person of the king.
But this god upon earth required his temple. He made it at Versailles, where everyone and everything was his creation and offered up adoration to their maker. The highest nobility of France competed for posts in the royal household. The anciennes cohues de France, gay, unceremonious and military, gave place to a stiff court with an elaborate etiquette in which the king pontificated. Attendance at court was the first and only duty in the eyes of a proud prince who saw and noted everything and above all, the absentees. Versailles became the centre of the national life and a model for foreign courts. If he thus played a part in the history of civilization, he also profoundly affected the social and political life of France. Through the insistence upon etiquette and the place-hunting that were the guiding prin ciples in the lives of the courtiers, Versailles sterilized the leisured upper classes; its extravagant cost of upkeep exhausted the work ing classes and, finally, it separated the king more and more from his kingdom. But, however deified, Louis XIV. could not exercise power in solitude. He was aided in his work of government by a hierarchy of officials, who were neither nobles nor ecclesiastics, but taken from the commonalty (to the indignation of the aris tocratic Saint-Simon) and by special councils over which he regularly presided. This entailed a working routine which he in variably observed.
In administrative matters he proved himself no innovator. Refusing to sanction any radical reform, he devoted himself to organizing in all its details the mechanical system he had in herited from his ancestors, both in the central as well as in the provincial administrations. He destroyed all vestiges of an autonomy that might have cast a shadow upon his own power. The governors were reduced to mere puppets ; the parlernents limited to their judicial functions; the provincial estates met only on a royal summons and were curbed on occasion by lettres de cachet (q.v.) ; the liberties of the municipalities were destroyed on the pretext of their bad financial administration. On these ruins Louis erected the absolute power of his intendants (q.v.).
A mere accountant, exacting and exact, Colbert was more original in economic matters. Not that he was concerned about the individual welfare of the people, nor preoccupied with theories. Commercial and industrial prosperity afforded him no other interest than that of making the country wealthy and the State great. He wished to give to 17th-century France the same modern and industrial character that had been given to the mari time countries by the New World. As the manufacturers and merchants were either indifferent or lacking in initiative, Colbert replaced them by royal authority. He made general the mediaeval system of corporations, governed manufacture by stringent regulations which aimed at winning foreign markets by meticulous probity in business, and created industry on a grand scale by his energy and outstanding genius for organization. But by plac ing industry in a strict dependence upon finance Colbert ag gravated the servitude of the workers by the further servitude of their work. His royal factories of silk, glass, lace, linen, tapestry, etc., prospered under royal protection, but at the ex pense of the small industries. After his death, deprived of their crutches and injured by the intolerant policy of the king, his industrial creations, except for the manufacture of articles of luxury, collapsed. Like all his contemporaries, Colbert believed that the true secret of commerce and of the prosperity of a country lay in selling as much as possible to the foreigner and buying as little as possible from him. Thus gold would flow into and not out of the country. Sometimes a free trader, sometimes a protectionist, Colbert was always a realist. If he imposed the prohibitive tariffs of 1664-67, he opened Marseilles and Dunkirk as free ports, built the canal du midi connecting the Mediter ranean with the Atlantic, and reduced many taxes. But he failed to establish a unified system of weights and measures and to abolish the inter-provincial customs that made of France a Europe in miniature. Bureaucracy alone was inadequate in a land in which individual effort was suspect.
That he might increase foreign trade Colbert inaugurated a colonial and maritime policy which was to prove the most original and most fruitful of his achievements. Like Richelieu, he sought new markets and endeavoured to revive French interest in those distant enterprises in which it had been outstripped by the English and the Dutch trade since the Wars of Religion. He extended the New France from Canada to the Mississippi by supporting la Salle in Louisiana; to this he added the French tropical possessions in Guiana; he established the king's authority on the African coast from the bay of Arguin to the shores of Sierra Leone ; he gained a footing in Madagascar ; and he established the first French trading posts in India. A commercial monopoly of these territories was given to the great royal companies. To enable France to defend her colonies, Colbert created a navy that became the passion of himself and of his son, Seignelay, and for its accommodation Vauban constructed great arsenals at Brest, Havre, Dunkirk, R ochef ort and Toulon. He took convicts to man the Mediter ranean fleet, and for that on the Atlantic he introduced the system of naval conscription that has remained almost unmodified since. Thanks to his efforts, the French navy, at least until 1692, was in perfect condition. His unwearying activity displayed itself also in the organization of justice, police and administration. Although his forestry code remains a model to this day, while the great codi fication of his uncle, Pussort, was an attempt to unify legislation, Colbert preserved in its entirety the ancient machine of govern ment. The hereditary transmission of offices of justice was main tained and the administration of the law continued slow, corrupt and cruel. Organized in 1667 by La Reynie, the police became a ministerial force ; and in like manner the Academies were charged by Colbert with the regulation of Letters, Science and the Arts.
The system established by Colbert worked steadily until when everything had to be sacrificed to the wars in Flanders and the splendours of Versailles. Versailles and war squandered the wealth of a country in which the peasants, almost prostrate under the burden of taxation, were everywhere in a state of revolt, and from which the persecuted Huguenots were fast emigrating. More over, Colbert's work had inherent in it the cause of its own de struction. Like a good Cartesian, Colbert conceived of the State as a vast "machine," of which all the various and well-ordered parts received their impulse from an outside source—himself. He did not understand, nor did his contemporaries understand, that efficient reform will not result from a government acting towards a nation as though it were some insensate object created solely to obey and pay.
Although since the Peace of Alais they had been deprived of their political privileges, the Huguenots had enjoyed freedom of worship and had prospered in the fields of industry, agriculture and commerce. Religious division, however, hindered the unification of the kingdom. The priests, under the influence of the Compagnie du Saint-Sacrement sought from 1651 onwards to unify matters —at first by persuasion, later by a legal and narrow interpreta tion of the Edict of Nantes. His passion for absolutism, his re ligious zeal—the more active since he wished to make amends for his injuries to public and private morals, the financial necessity of increasing the free-will offerings of the clergy and of gaining their support in his quarrels with the papacy—all these led Louis XIV. to identify himself with this foolish policy. Between 1661 and 1685 the Huguenots were successively excluded from the States-General, the diplomatic service, and the municipalities, and were deprived of their hospitals, colleges, academies and schools. Fines proving inadequate, soldiers were quartered upon the recalci trant by Louvois until the day when Louis, at the instigation of the priests, revoked the Edict of Nantes (1685). There followed on the part of the Huguenots an emigration en masse, and later, the terrible revolt of the Camisards (q.v.) which held the royal armies in check in the Cevennes from 1703 to 1711, at a time when the kingdom was threatened with invasion. Nevertheless, even if it was decimated numerically and intellectually, Protestant ism was not entirely destroyed.
Louis XIV. was the first to make tentative offers for peace, a fact that marks a stage in his foreign policy. The temperate peace of Ryswick left him Strasbourg, while it compelled him to suppress all commercial tariffs and to recognize William III. as king of England ; it also gave a barrier line of fortifications to the Dutch (1697).
The English and the Dutch, who were primarily interested in commerce, recognized Philip V., but the unwise policy of Louis XIV. was to afford William III. and Heinsius the opportunity they sought for partitioning the Spanish colonies. The assertion of the right of Philip V. eventually to succeed to the French throne, coupled with the expulsion of the Dutch from the barrier fortresses, brought about the Grand Alliance of 1701 between the maritime powers and Austria. The recognition by Louis of James III. as king of England was only in response to the Grand Alli ance : but it succeeded in forcing England into the inevitable war. In spite of the death of William III. (1702) his policy triumphed. In the long war of the Spanish Succession it was no longer the names of the French generals, but those of Prince Eugene and the duke of Marlborough, which were on all men's lips. Though from 1701-03 success was equally balanced in Italy, Germany and the Netherlands, the successors of Villars (who had been sent against the Camisards) owing to the treachery of the duke of Savoy, lost Germany at Hochstadt or Blenheim 0704). In 1706 the de feats of Ramillies and Turin led to the evacuation of the Nether , lands and of Italy. In 1708 the disaster of Oudenarde left the northern frontier exposed, and Dutch cannon were heard at Marly. Nature allied herself with the enemy during the terrible winter of 1709. Louis XIV. was forced to humble himself to ask for peace from the Dutch, but they forgot the lesson of 1673. Disgusted by their unwillingness to compromise, Louis for the first time appealed to the patriotism of his people at Malplaquet. And then invasion followed. Louis was saved from disaster only by his dauntless courage, the strong will of his secretary of State, Torcy, and the victory of Vendome at Villaviciosa. The failure of the conferences at Gertruydenberg, which obliged the Whigs and Marlborough to resign their power into the hands of the Tories, now weary of the war and chiefly preoccupied in secur ing the mastery of the sea; the death (171 1) of Joseph I., who had attempted to reconstruct the empire of Charles V. for his brother, Charles VI. ; and the victory of Villars at Denain (1712) —all combined to render possible the Peace of Utrecht (see UTRECHT, TREATY OF) which sealed the Franco-Spanish defeat by giving Italy and the Netherlands to the Habsburgs, Spain and her colonies to the Bourbons, and a royal crown to the duke of Savoy and the elector of Brandenburg. Gibraltar, Minorca, the gates of Canada and colonial commerce, fell to England which, in affect ing to defend the liberty of Europe, had always had the acquire ment of these in view. The Treaty of Utrecht was for France what the Peace of Westphalia had been for the House of Austria —a return to the first territorial acquisitions of Louis XIV. and an end to her hegemony in Europe. (See SPANISH SUCCESSION.) Last Days of Louis XIV.—But it was not only the fortune of war which disappointed the old age of the Grand Monarch. The grief and misery in which his reign ended were worse than de feat. With the deaths of the Grand Dauphin, of the duke and duchess of Burgundy, and of his two grandsons, which left as his heir a frail great-grandchild of four years, it seemed as though his whole family were under a curse. The court now resembled a gloomy infirmary presided over by an old and evasive matron in the person of Madame de Maintenon. It was not merely the clamour of an exhausted people which arose against the monarch. The intellectual leaders, like prophets in Israel, denounced a tyranny which placed Chamillard in charge of the finances—be cause he played billiards well—and the incapable Villeroy in corn mand of the army, while it disgraced the patriotic Vauban, ban ished Catinat, and exiled Fenelon. Everything conspired to make the end of the reign a glaring contrast to its brilliant opening. When one recalls Moliere and Racine, Bossuet and Fenelon, the campaigns of Turenne and the statutes of Colbert, the many literary and scientific foundations, the harbour of Brest, the canal du midi, the colonnade of the Louvre, the Invalides, Ver sailles and Vauban's fortifications—admiration cannot fail to be aroused for the brilliant and magnificent age of Louis XIV. But the art and literature expressed by the genius of masters, reflected in the tastes of society, and adopted by Europe as its model throughout a century are no criterion of the social and political organization of that age. They are but a magnificent cloak which serves to conceal the ostentation and arrogance, no less than the misery and superstition, of the time; remove it, and reality ap pears in its brutal and sinister nudity. The corpse of Louis XIV. deserted by all save the lackeys, and greeted all along the road to St. Denis by the curses of the crowd in the cabarets—who feted his death by getting drunk because they had suffered too often from hunger in his lifetime—such was the coarse but truthful epitaph inscribed by public opinion on the tombstone of the "Grand Monarque." And that, too, was the reason why the peo ple hailed the accession of the handsome child whom they called Louis the Well-beloved with the joyful hope to which the future was to give the lie, and whose funeral, 6o years later, was to be greeted with the same proofs of disillusionment.
The 18th century, like the 17th, opened with a coup d'etat. By his will, Louis XIV. entrusted the regency to his nephew, the duke of Orleans; but, as he disliked him, he placed all the power in the hands of a council in which his illegitimate children with Madame de Maintenon and the Jesuits held the predominant position. In thus seeking to render the regent powerless, Louis only succeeded in making him powerful. For the regent, in order to rid himself of such possible rivals in the event of a premature decease of Louis XV., sought allies in the parlement. In return for its declaration that Louis' will was null and void, the regent restored to it the right of remonstrance which had been suspended since 1673. On the advice of Saint-Simon he replaced the secre taries of State by six councils, largely composed of the great nobles; he also abolished the laws against the Jansenists. Highly endowed, but lacking the ability to use his talents, Orleans was presently forced to recognize the inconvenience of a hydra-headed Government, the mistake of having restored to the parlement a political power they were not slow to abuse, and the vanity of his hope of achieving a religious peace. A reaction was accom plished, but not before Louis XIV.'s governmental machine had suffered gravely.
When he attained his majority in 1723 Louis XV. left all power in the hands of his chief ministers for another 20 years. After the deaths, at an interval of four months, of Dubois and Orleans, the duke of Bourbon, great-grandson of the great Conde, took over the reins of power, only to suffer himself to be led by a worthless woman, the marquise de Prie, thus inaugurating the long reign in diplomacy of publicly recognized mistresses and similar follies. They found standing in their way the man who had been the author of their fortunes, Cardinal Fleury, the king's tutor. Bour bon hoped to maintain himself in power by marrying Louis XV. to Maria Leszczinska. The dismissal of the Spanish infanta, who had been betrothed to Louis XV., greatly strained relations with Spain. Discontent was aroused by the new tax of the cinquan tieme imposed upon all classes of revenue, and by the revival of a persecution of the Jansenists and Huguenots which had seemed to have died out. All this was cleverly exploited by Fleury. Acting on his advice the king dismissed the duke of Bourbon in 1726.
Fleury had hardly had time to breathe again when a fresh con flagration burst out in the east. The tsarina Anne and Charles VI. had agreed upon the partition of Turkey. Villeneuve, the French ambassador at Constantinople, was supported by his government in his endeavour to postpone this event ; he aroused the courage of the Turks and armed them with the assistance of Bonneval (q.v.). The peace of Belgrade (1739), in which the capitulations (q.v.) were renewed and the designs of Russia and Austria checked, was a great moral and material victory for France (see EASTERN