of aggravating death, that she shortened the sufferings of victims, removed the hand of man, and invented a machine to abridge the pangs of death.
"And it will also inform us that the Church of the Middle Ages exhausted itself in inventions to augment suffering, to render it poignant, intense; that she found out exquisite arts of torture, ingenious means to contrive that, without dying, one might long taste of death; and that, being stopped in that path by inflexible Nature, who, at a certain degree of pain, mercifully grants death, she wept at not being able to make man suffer longer."15
Louis XIV. died in 1715. He did not allow any assembly of the states to be convened during his reign. Every body began to manifest discontent. The nobility were humbled and degraded, and hungered for more power. The people had become very restive. The humbler class of the clergy, sincere Christians and true friends of their parishioners, prayed earnestly for reform. The Jesuits alone united with the monarch and his mistresses to maintain despotic sway. The court was utterly corrupt; the king a shameless profligate. Every thing was bartered for money. Justice was unknown. The court reveled in boundless luxury, while the mass of the people were in a state almost of starvation. The burden had become intolerable.
The monarchy of France attained its zenith during the reign of Louis XIV. Immense standing armies overawed Europe and prevented revolt at home. Literature and art flourished, for the king was ambitious to embellish his reign with the works of men of genius. Great freedom of opinion and of utterance was allowed, for neither king nor courtiers appear to have had any more fear of a rising of the peasants than they had of a revolt of the sheep. Vast works were constructed, which the poor and the starving alone paid for. Still there were not a few who perceived that the hour of vengeance was at hand. One of the magistrates of Louis XIV. remarked, "The conflict is soon to arrive between those who pay and those whose only function is to receive." The Duke of Orleans, who was regent after the death of Louis XIV., said, "If I were a subject I would most certainly revolt. The people are good-natured fools to suffer so long."
Louis XIV. left the throne to his great-grandchild, a boy five years of age. The populace followed the hearse of the departed monarch with insults and derisive shouts to the tomb. The hoary despot, upon a dying bed, manifested some compunctions of conscience. He left to his successor the words:
"I have, against my inclination, imposed great burdens on my subjects; but have been compelled to do it by the long wars which I have been obliged to maintain. Love peace, and undertake no war, except when the good of the state and the welfare of your people render it necessary."
These words were not heeded, until the people were, in their terrible might, inspired by fury and despair.
There is nothing more mournful to contemplate than the last days of Louis XIV. He was the victim of insupportable melancholy, dreading death almost with terror. His children and his grandchildren were nearly all dead. The people were crushed by burdens which they could no longer support. The treasury was in debt over eight hundred millions of dollars. Commerce was destroyed, industry paralyzed, and the country uncultivated and in many places almost depopulated. The armies of France had been conquered and humiliated; a disastrous war was threatening the realm, and the king from his dying bed could hear the execrations of the people, rising portentously around his throne.
FOOTNOTES:
8. Histoire de Madame de Maintenon, et des principaux Evenements du Regne de Louis XIV. Par M. le Duc de Noilles, Paris, 1848.
9. "Madame de Maintenon," writes St. Simon, "had men, affairs, justice, religion, all, without exception, in her hands, and the king and the state her victims."
10. Under these circumstances the Protestants sent the following touching petition: "It being impossible for us to live without the exercise of our religion, we are compelled, in spite of ourselves, to supplicate your majesty, with the most profound humility and respect, that you may be pleased to allow us to leave the kingdom, with our wives, our children, and our effects, to settle in foreign countries, where we can freely render to God the worship which we believe indispensable, and on which depends our happiness or our misery for eternity." This petition met only the response of aggravated severities.—Hist. of the Protestants of France, by G. de Félice, p. 486.
11. History of the Protestants of France, by G. de Félice, p. 405.
12. History of the Protestants of France, by G. de Félice, p. 408.
13. Histoire de l'Édit de Nantes, par Elias Benoît, tome v., p. 953.
14. Boulainvilliers.
15. "It is painful to detect continually the hand of the clergy in these scenes of violence, spoliation, and death. The venerable Malesherbes, the Baron de Breteuil, Rulhières, Joly de Fleury, Gilbert de Voisins, Rippert de Monclus, the highest statesmen, the most eminent magistrates, who have written upon the religious affairs of this period, utter but one voice on it. They agree in signalizing the influence of the priests, an influence as obstinate as incessant, sometimes haughty, sometimes supple and humble, but always supplicating the last means of restraint and severity for the re-establishment of religious unity."—History of the Protestants of France, by G. de Félice, p. 487.
Chapter III.
The Regency and Louis XV
State of France.—The Regency.—Financial Embarrassment.—Crimes of the Rulers.—Recoining the Currency.—Renewed Persecution of the Protestants.—Bishop Dubois.—Philosophy of Voltaire.—Anecdote of Franklin.—The King's Favorites.—Mademoiselle Poisson.—Her Ascendency.—Parc aux Cerfs.—Illustrative Anecdote.—Letter to the King.—Testimony of Chesterfield.—Anecdote of La Fayette.—Death of Pompadour.—Mademoiselle Lange.—Power of Du Barry.—Death of Louis XV.
The reign of Louis XIV. was that of an Oriental monarch. His authority was unlimited and unquestioned. The people had two powerful foes, the king and the nobles. The nobles, as the most numerous, were the most dreaded. The people consequently looked to the kings to protect them against the nobles, as sheep will look to their natural enemy, the dogs, to defend them from their still worse enemies, the wolves. The king had now obtained a perfect triumph over the nobles, and had gathered all the political power into his own hands. He had accomplished this by bribery, as well as by force. The acquiescence of the nobles in his supremacy was purchased by his conferring upon them all the offices of honor and emolument, by exempting them from all taxes, and by supporting them in indolence, luxury, and vice, from the toil of the crushed and starving masses. There were now in the nation two classes, and two only, with an impassable gulf between them. On the one side were eighty thousand aristocratic families living in idleness and luxury; on the other were twenty-four millions of people, who, as a mass, were kept in the lowest poverty, maintaining by their toil the haughty nobles, from whom they received only outrage and contempt
Louis
