Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/610

574 FRANCE [HISTORY. 1661. developing itself very slowly and late, seemed to onlookers to be only heavy and commonplace ; courtiers noted with keen eyes that the young prince liked amusements, and they promised themselves a bright and joyous reign, in which they would have free leave to spend as they liked the hardly-won wealth of France ; it seemed to them perfectly natural that they should waste at will what they had never earned, and they fully believed that the young king would be their accomplice. His capacity seemed to be small ; he was timid and ignorant. Mazarin almost alone was not mistaken in him, and no one knew him so well ; " he will set off late, but will go further than all the rest," was his judgment, and a just one, on the young monarch s charac ter. For he was serious, severe, obstinate ; he learnt little, and that slowly ; but what he did learn he never forgot. He would neither bend nor forgive ; and when he had once taken on himself the heavy burden of his kingly duties he never flinched nor repined for more than half a century. From the beginning he declared that he would rule without a first minister, this Mazarin had instilled into him as a fundamental law of his kingcraft ; and he kept his word, although it became clear in time that it was quite possible to hold him in close leading strings, so long as he himself did not find it out. At first, however, he was determined to have only agents around him, men of business who should never expect to become too prominent, not great lords of church or state, but men of middle or humble origin. With them he was prepared to undertake any amount of dry detail work of public business. Without a sigh he dedicated henceforth four or five hours a day, or even more, to public affairs ; his commonplace abilities, his instinct of orderliness, his love of minutue, his punctual routine, which would have disgusted a livelier prince, formed the happiness of his life. " His ministers," says Michelet, " might change or die ; he, always the same, went through his duties, ceremonies, royal fetes, and the like, with the regularity of the sun, which he had chosen as his emblem." With a morbid conscience, he easily became subject to his confessor; with a limited intelligence and great lack of knowledge, he was dependent on his ministers without knowing it ; with a vein of small vanity in his char acter, he was not above being led by the flatteries of the woman he loved. Finally, Louis XIV., though heavy-look ing, was handsome and majestic in person ; no one has ever played the part of a king with such equable gravity and success ; his dignity was as striking as his selfishness ; for his heart was dull, and neither surprises nor warm feelings could throw him off his balance. His whole reign passed without his ever showing any real feeling for his poor sub jects ; and his indifference to the health and feelings of those nearest him, his treatment of his court, especially of the ladies of it, was such as nothing but their abject fear of him, and the meanness engendered by the atmosphere of such a court, could explain. The ma- Louis XIV. began his true reign in 1661 by dividing the cliinery business of government into three agencies. He placed all foreign affairs under Lionne, who had served him so well in the war against Spain : Le Tellier had charge of the army and was war-secretary, supported by his strong-handed son, the terrible Louvois ; and finance was entrusted to Fou- quet, the most brilliant and unsatisfactory of his ministers. All three were men of middle origin : Lionne came of a family of gentle birth in Dauphiny; Le Tellier s father was a lawyer ; and Fouquet was a citizen who pretended (as many Frenchmen have since done) to be of noble birth. The king had at his side also Mazarin s most trusted depend ant Colbert, grandson of a wool-seller of Rheims. It was thought at court, where Louis was no better understood than elsewhere, that Fouquet would before long carry all before him, and fill the coveted post of first minister of the crown. govern ment. The queen-mother, seeing that the king did nothing for his 1661- governor Villeroy, and that he was stepping resolutely for ward in the path he had chosen, complained bitterly of her son s ingratitude, and declared with a sneer that he "wanted to pretend to be a man of ability." Fouquet, ambitious and bright, a favourite with the queen-mother, the court ladies, the literary world, the Jansenists, a man who let the finances fall into hopeless confusion and stooped to dishonest representations to save his credit, was not the man to suit the young king, and in a few month s time he had fallen for ever from power, and Colbert sat in his place. John Baptiste Colbert, who was minister of Louis XIV. Colbe for two-aud -twenty years, claimed descent from a Scottish family settled in France, and his character, his common- sense, rigid principles, business ways and tastes, and his simple habits, were just what one might have expected from such an origin ; "a mind somewhat heavy and harsh, but solid, active, unwearied in work." He was first named comptroller-general of finance ; he had also the supreme care of all home-affairs, and when the navy (after 1669) was first in his own and then in his son s hands, he may be said to have had charge of that also. Till Louvois succeeded to the ministry of war in 1666, Colbert s influence on all parts of the administration was paramount ; and the young king, partly understanding what he was doing, and wholly desirous of doing his best, gladly seconded him in every thing. At first Colbert found everything in the financial department in a melancholy state : more than half the sum gathered in taxes disappeared before it reached the treasury, and the expenditure had so far grown as to leave a yearly deficit of nearly twenty-two millions of livres. To reorgan ize the finances was his first task; and by stern dealing with intermediate officials, by fixing the interest of loans at a maximum of five per cent., by sweeping away masses of useless officers, he succeeded in so far reducing the cost of levying the taxes and the burdens of the state that in six years time the position of affairs was reversed, and the treasury had a good balance in hand, while the burde-ns imposed on the people were lightened. The years which preceded the Devolution war of 1667 are perhaps the most prosperous that France had ever seen. She made extra ordinary progress in all directions. Even in foreign affairs Frar her power was shown : she humbled the papacy, she asserted ""& her precedence over Spain in the streets of London, she c helped the emperor Leopold to resist the Turks and en abled Montecuculi to win a decisive victory over them at St Gothard in Hungary, her fleets in the Mediterranean cleared away the African pirates. At home the triumphs of peace were far more splendid even than these warlike signs of power. Colbert s activity was unflagging; tore- organize tLe finances might have seemed enough to another minister ; he regarded it as only the groundwork of his structure ; on it he would raise a new and brilliant France, splendid among the nations, not only feared that was something but admired as well, and humbly imitated. So he set himself in these years to develop his country on every side. For agriculture indeed he would do but little, for his temper was the opposite of that of Sully. Sully, a great lord, and owner of broad estates, rated manufactures as of little value by the side of tillage ; Colbert, a towns man, and of the middle classes, thought that the encourage ment of agriculture signified the increase of noble wealth and privilege, while manufactures would tend to build up a rich and useful burgher class, obedient to the king and fruitful in taxpaying. He therefore devoted his attention to manufactures and commerce, and to the communications by land and water necessary for them. He made good roads, set on foot the canal of Languedoc, declared Mar seilles and Dunkirk free ports. He then re-established old