LUIGI XIV, KING OF FRANCE — Granting of a pension to Pietro Antonio Muti (Aug. 1643), with the autograph signature of five-year-old L. XIV — Rome, Marchese Muti Collection.
Engl. Gub. photographic archive.)
the Dutch, who had flooded their territory to save Amsterdam and had once again placed at the head of their military forces, as stadtholder, William of Orange, the most determined enemy of L. XIV, who curbed and humbled his ambitious arrogance. The king did not perceive how tenuous the basis of his success was and, remaining heavily armed, through the famous Chambers of Reunion claimed and occupied the ancient dependencies—real or alleged—of his new territories, including Luxembourg and Strasbourg (1681), while in Italy he induced the duke of Mantua to cede to him the right to garrison Casale Monferrato and bombarded Genoa (1684) because it was building ships for Spain. Europe did not dare to react, and in the truce of Ratisbon (15 Aug. 1684), concluded with the Diet, the occupied territories were left to him for twenty years; the preceding year the Turks had been under the walls of Vienna, partly at the instigation of L. XIV, and only Sobieski’s arms had saved the capital. European hostility, fanned in the Protestant countries by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685), took definite shape in the League of Augsburg (1686); and in 1689 William of Orange became king of England in place of his father-in-law, the Catholic James II. War now broke out in earnest, and L. XIV opened it by turning the pleasant Palatinate into a scorched earth amid the horror of Europe. For France, already exhausted, defeats alternated with victories, and L. XIV, by detaching Victor Amadeus of Savoy from the League through the cession of Pinerolo, was able to reach the Peace of Ryswick (1697), returning many conquests and recognizing Orange as king of England.
The succession in Spain was imminent, and L. XIV, while negotiating with England over the partition of the inheritance, succeeded, by appealing to Spanish national pride, in having his grandson Philip of Anjou designated sole heir to the entire monarchy. Acceptance was a provocation to the English and the Dutch, but a refusal, which would have substituted Charles of Habsburg for Philip, was difficult and harmful. L. XIV’s true fault was that he aggravated the tension,
by driving the Dutch out of Flanders, where they held certain strongholds, sending French troops to Milan, and recognizing James III Stuart as king of England. A European coalition was formed, and from 1701 the war was fought on three fronts: Germany, Italy, and Flanders; by 1704 Germany was already lost, and by 1706 Italy and Flanders as well; in Spain the Archduke Charles had landed. France’s condition, threatened with invasion, induced the king to seek peace; but when he was required to drive his grandson from Spain, he refused, preferring to humble himself by appealing to his people. Salvation came from the danger that Spain and Austria might be united when, upon the death of Emperor Leopold, he was succeeded by his brother Charles, the Spanish claimant. Holland and England concluded peace with L. XIV at Utrecht (1713) on the basis of partition, and the emperor Charles VI had to accept it the following year. France’s sole advantage was that Spain would no longer be its enemy, but there remained, on its flank, the threat of Austria established in Belgium.
Although the personal power of King L. XIV took definite shape in 1661 with the Conseil d'en haut, in which every important matter was decided, centralization was gradually organized during the following decade both at the center and throughout the country, especially through the development of the provincial intendants. Finance constituted the most troubled and delicate sector, and L. XIV, having dealt harshly with Fouquet, imprudent in flaunting ill-gotten riches, found in G. B. Colbert—who, however, was only comptroller general—the honest and capable man who gave the administration its new character. The Council of Finance met twice a week around the king, who examined the registers of revenues and expenditures and signed the final accounts. In the provinces the intendants supervised municipal administrations, at first to settle their debts and remedy their mismanagement, then through comprehensive oversight which, although ultimately beneficial, suppressed the old autonomies. Thus absolutism penetrated deeply into the country in order to establish an order that in fact did not exist, eliminating local resistance and abuses.
In ecclesiastical policy L. XIV, both in internal affairs and in relations with the papacy, followed the same absolutist mentality. With the popes he had two conflicts over local matters: the first, in 1662, over the Corsican papal guard, in which Pope Alexander VII had to submit to a humiliating Treaty (Pisa, 12 Feb. 1664); the other with Pope Innocent XI, who wanted the abolition of the “liberty of the quarter” that the French ambassadors claimed to retain, while the others renounced II. But the true clash of a properly ecclesiastical nature concerned the right of regale (administration of vacant dioceses), which L. XIV extended to all France in 1673–75. Only in 1678–80 did Pope Innocent XI protest publicly, and the king made use of the Assembly of the Clergy, which complained that the Pope was interfering in a civil matter; then, in response to renewed protests by the Pontiff, another assembly in March 1682 voted the famous four articles of the so-called “Gallican liberties,” injurious to the full authority of the Pope, which L. XIV ordered all to profess and to teach in the universities and seminaries. Proceeding in the same absolutist spirit, he imposed conversion upon the Huguenots, more through harassment than persuasion, and when Calvinism appeared to have been routed through emigration or forced conversion, he revoked the Edict of Nantes as superfluous. In Catholic France not everyone agreed with this violent course, and in Rome the Pope, while celebrating the conversion of the heretics, doubted that these purported “liberties” might lead France into schism. Innocent XI refused investiture to the new bishops who had taken part in the assembly of 1682, and, when the archbishopric of Cologne became vacant, opposed the French candidate. The outbreak of war
and its harshness compelled L. to seek an accommodation, after Pope Alexander VIII had condemned the four propositions in a bull in 1691. Only under Innocent XII, in 1693, was an agreement reached in which the Pope tolerated the regale; he nevertheless obtained from the new bishops a repudiation of the Gallican propositions and the king’s withdrawal of the order to teach them. In the disputes with the Jansenists, by contrast, the king supported papal action; concerning Quietism, he solicited its condemnation from the Pope. During the last War of the Spanish Succession, the papacy, threatened and indeed attacked by the Emperor, enjoyed better relations with the King.
L. XIV’s death was received as a relief throughout the kingdom after the final years of fearful suffering; disturbances were even feared. Thus ended the king who had once been France’s idol, and who had nevertheless assured it, if not an impossible political primacy, cultural supremacy in European civilization, which even disasters could not erase. Unfortunately, in creating absolute monarchy, L. XIV instilled in it a mortal germ through the exaggeration of sovereign arbitrariness, which in his own case was somewhat restrained by his constant personal intervention in affairs—something that no longer occurred under his successors, who were lacking in will. The craving for absolutism was aggravated by his isolation, as he established himself with the court at Versailles, where he certainly also worked seriously, but where instead it appeared that only the pomp of his royalty was being celebrated, against the background of a mass of courtiers and within a burdensome etiquette that separated him from the country and made him, together with his successors, a prisoner of those privileged classes with which the monarchy would ultimately plunge to ruin. - Vedi tav. CXV.
Studi: Per una valutazione generale, oltre il famoso Sicile de Louis XIV del Voltaire, V. le storie gen. di Francia del Michelet, Martin e Lavisse, la Französische Geschichte im XVI. und XVII. Jahrb. di L. Ranke, Lipsia 1869; L. Bertrand, Louis XIV, Parigi 1923; per la vita di corte, P. de Nolbec, Versailles résidence de Louis XIV, ivi 1923, e M.me St-René-Taillandier, Le grand roi et sa cour, ivi 1930; per i rapporti con il papato V. Pastor, XIV e XV, V. indice; M. D'Angelo, L. XIV e la S. Sede (1689-93), Roma 1914; J. Orcibal, Louis XIV contre Innocent XI, Parigi 1949; L. O'Brien, Innocent XI and the revocation of the edict of Nantes, Berkeley (California) 1930. Per la politica interna: G. Pagès, La monarchie d'ancien régime en France, Parigi 1928; Marquis de Roux, Louis XIV et les provinces conquises, ivi 1938. Per la politica estera: E. Waldteufel, La politique étrangère de Louis XIV, ivi 1898; G. C. Picavet, La diplomatie française au temps de Louis XIV, ivi 1922; sulla rivolta di Messina, E. Laloy, La révolte de Messine, l'exhibition de Sicile et la politique française en Italie, 3 voll., ivi 1929-31; V. inoltre P. Gazotte, La France de Louis XIV, ivi 1946; Ph. De Vries, Het beeld van Lodewijk XIV in de Franse geschiedt-schrijning, Amsterdam 1948; Ph. Sagnac-A. de St-Léger, Louis XIV (1661-1715), 3° ed., Parigi 1949; L. André, Louis XIV et l'Europe, ivi 1950; J. E. King, Science and rationalism in the government of Louis XIV, Baltimore 1950. Luigi Simeoni