Scania, Blekinge, and Bohus, exacted the free passage of
the Sound for Swedish vessels, and the independence of
Holstein-Gottorp (1658).
The peace lasted hardly a few months; emboldened by
his first successes, the King of Sweden aspired to the con-
quest of Denmark, and again laid siege to Copenhagen.
But the town resisted; the Dutch dispatched a fleet into the
Sound; Austria, Poland, and Brandenburg sent an army
into Denmark. The Swedes, menaced on every side, gave
up the siege, and after the sudden death of Charles Gus-
tavus, peace was re-established between Denmark and
Sweden by the treaty of Copenhagen, which confirmed that
of Roskild, between Poland and Sweden by the treaty of
Oliva (1660), between Sweden and Russia by the treaty of
Kardis (1661). Upon the whole, Sweden came out honor-
ably from the unequal struggle she had just sustained. She
regained her natural boundaries on the south by the
acquisition of Blekinge, Halland, and Scania; her natural
boundaries on the coast of Norway, which belonged to Den-
mark, by the acquisition of Bohus, Jemtland, and Heridalia.
She obtained Lithuanian Livonia from Poland, and pre-
served Ingria with a large part of Carelia, captured from
the Russian Empire, so that all the shores of the Gulf of
Finland were her possession. But these continual wars
weighed heavily upon a poor people, few in number, and
upon a country almost entirely devoid of agriculture and
industry, and Sweden was unable to keep the scepter of the
North which she had seized.
In the midst of these military events a revolution occurred
of which the consequences have been modified only in our
day. The aristocracy in Denmark was paramount; King
Ferdinand III., supported by the clergy and the citizens,
shattered its power in 1660 and proclaimed the heredity
of the crown. The new law then promised was not pro-
claimed until 1709, under the name of the royal law; but it
existed in reality from 1660. It established the most com-
CHAP. XX.] CONDITION OF EUROPE IN 1661. 327
plete absolutism, and it endured until 1834. Unfortunately
the first of the hereditary kings was a German. He gave
over the entire administration to his compatriots, so that
German became the official language of the Danish terri-
tory. Denmark is to-day struggling against this influence.
Poland, which had formerly held the first rank in the North,
had descended to the second, and was very near falling to
the third. Her territory still extended from the Carpathian
Mountains to the Baltic, and from the Oder to the sources
of the Dnieper and Volga, but her anarchical constitution
and her elective royalty were already exposing her with-
out defense to foreign wars. What the Swedes had just
effected under Charles Gustavus the Russians were speed-
ily to accomplish. The latter, whom the Swedes, the
Poles, and the Duke of Courland and Semigalle shut off
from the Baltic, were separated from the Black Sea by the
warlike republic of the Cossacks, intractable subjects of
Poland, and by Tartar hordes. They had no possibility of
free extension save toward the desert regions of Siberia;
the fall of the powerful republic of Novgorod in 1476
under Ivan III. had opened the approaches of the Baltic
and of the Arctic Ocean; finally, by the destruction of the
Tartars of Astrakhan (1554) they had arrived a century
before upon the Caspian. The treaty of Andrussow (1667),
which deprived Poland of Smolensk, Tchernigow, and the
Ukraine, was Russia's first step toward the west. The
dynasty of the Romanoffs, founded by Michael Feodoro-
vitch, reigned after 1613 and became extinct in 1762.
Russia, however, already possessed formidable elements
of power. In the latter half of the fifteenth century Ivan
III. had abolished in his family the law of appanage; thereby
he established the unity of government and of the state; but
this same law he had, on the other hand, maintained for
the nobles, whereby they were divided and weakened. A
century afterward Ivan IV. had spent fifteen years in ren-
dering his boyars supple to the yoke, and had shown that
implacable cruelty which, even among that people accus-
tomed to disregard life, won him the name of the Terrible.
Finally, a ukase of 1592 had reduced all the peasants to the
servitude of the soil, prohibiting them from a change of
master or locality.
The Ottomans had lost the religious and military enthu-
siasm of the preceding age, but they still held the first rank
328 THE A SCENDENC Y OF FRA NCE.
in oriental Europe. The Prince of Transylvania was their
vassal; the ban at of Temeswar and a considerable part of
Hungary were in their hands; the Dniester separated them
from Poland, and all the coast of the Black Sea as far
as Kouban belonged to them. In Asia their domains
extended from Erivan to Bagdad. Venice struggled pain-
fully against them. In 1660 they captured Mitylene and
Lemnos, and the same year they defeated the Austrians in
Hungary. In 1663 the latter saw Neuhoesel fall at the
gates of Pressburg, and Vienna found herself once more
unprotected and menaced. Louis XIV. preluded his con-
quests by ostentatiously sending assistance to the Austrians
for the battle of St. Gothard (1664), and to Venice for the
siege of Candia (1667).
CHAPTER XXI.
THE REIGN OF LOUIS XIV. TO THE WAR OF THE
LEAGUE OF AUGSBURG.
Administrative Centralization of ranee ; Colbert and Louvois. War in
Flanders (1667). First Coalition against France (1668). War with
Holland (1672). Conquests by Louis XIV. in Time of Peace.
Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685).
AFTER the death of Mazarin Louis XIV. resolved to
dispense with a prime minister. In this he persisted until
. . . the end of his life, working eight hours a day
Admimstra- , . ' . . >
tive centraiiza- and allowing no important business to be
88*rt Prmi JSd decided without him. Few sovereigns have
Louvois. better understood and practiced what he
called the "trade of a king." "One reigns by work," he
wrote in his instructions to his son, "one reigns for work; it
is ingratitude and audacity toward God, injustice and
tyranny toward men, to desire the one without the other."
What is more remarkable still, this young prince, who
grasped the reins so boldly, had already conceived the
whole plan of his policy. Not only did Louis XIV. reign
with unlimited power, but he was the first to establish in
France the theory of absolute monarchy. In his estimation
royalty was a divine institution; sovereigns were the repre-
sentatives of God upon earth, his lieutenants, providen-
tially inspired by him, and by virtue of this sharing in
some degree his power and infallibility. Thus in the pres-
ence of royalty he allowed no liberty to exist which could
cause it umbrage. The greater part of the provinces had
their own States or Chambers; these he suppressed. Those
which were preserved, as in Languedoc, Burgundy, Prov-
ence, and Brittany, met only to execute the orders which
they received from the ministers. The remnant of munic-
ipal and provincial liberties was destroyed; the king, coin-
330 THE ASCENDENCY OF FRANCE. [BOOK V.
ing money from the ancient rights dear to the towns, con-
verted the mayoralties into hereditary offices and sold them
to the highest bidder.
Municipal life was therefore suspended in the country as
political life had been long before a grievous situation, for
France lacked a practical business education; when a cen-
tury later she was forced to take the government of herself
from the faltering hands of absolute royalty she found
many bold and powerful logicians to guide her, but no
experienced men who understood how to adjust the future
to the past. To be stable political liberty must stand upon
the broad basis of municipal liberties. . Thus it has grown
and been maintained in England.*
The parliaments were Only courts of justice ; the nobility
only a military class destined to shed its blood upon all
battlefields, or to follow in the festivals the triumphal car
of majesty. The clergy itself became more monarchical,
and never was an embarrassment to Louis. As for the third
estate, it was easily held in check by the army, the police,
the extreme severity of the laws ; by the respect also which,
after so many centuries of feudal oppression, it accorded to
a power which gave it internal peace and also called it into
numerous departments of public administration.
Thus the dominating trait of the government of Louis
XIV. was an immense effort to bring back into the hands of
the prince all the forces of the country, doubtless to dispose
of them in the interest of the country, but more especially
for the interest of the king. Hence that excessive central-
ization which enveloped the commerce, the industry, the
political life, even the moral life of France; and the thou-
sand bonds of a minute regulation, so that the initiative of
the ministers was almost universally substituted for individual
and communal action. As the result of this system France
lived less by her own life than by the life of her govern-
ment. When age and disease caused that omnipresent
hand of power to grow cold everything declined. A great
people was subjected to the vicissitudes of one man's exist-
ence, to the hazard of royal birth, or to the choice of
* The free institutions and constitutional government of England have
nowhere been more appreciated than in France. To enumerate all the
writers who have expressed themselves in terms of admiration, often
bordering upon envy, would be to give the almost complete list of
French thinkers. ED.
CHAP. XXL] THE REIGN OF LOUIS XIV. 331
incapable ministers. However, during happy years this
administration, which made itself the universal guardian,
restored to the people in- well-being and security an equiva-
lent of what they lost in general and individual liberty.
The king himself, as we have already seen, understood the
obligations imposed upon him by this immense authority.
"We should consider the welfare of our subjects rather than
our own good," he said. "And this authority which we
possess over them should serve us only to work more effect-
ively for their happiness." If he loaded his ministers with
honors, riches, and power, it was on condition that they
consecrated every moment of their life to public affairs.
From this long-sustained effort resulted the most active,
the most vigilant, administration that France had yet pos-
sessed. Its history is almost entirely summed up in the
history of two great ministers, Colbert and Louvois.
Colbert directed what would be five ministries to-day: the
finances, intrusted to him at the fall of Fouquet, the king's
household together with the fine arts, agriculture including
commerce, public works, and from 1669 the marine, an
overwhelming weight, under which he did not succumb.
The finances had again fallen into the chaos from which Sully
had rescued them. The public debt was about 430,000,000
francs, the revenues were devoured two years in advance,
and the treasury out of annual taxes of 84,000,000 re-
ceived scarcely 32,000,000. Colbert began by establishing a
chamber of justice for the discovery of the malversations of
the officers of finance. The farmers of the revenue who had
profited by state necessities to lend upon usury were com-
pelled to make restitution ; the fines amounted to 1 10,000,000.
Colbert was the real creator of the budget. Before his
time expenditures were made at random without consulting
the treasury receipts. He was the first to draw up each year
an estimate, divided under two heads, in which the revenues
and the probable expenses were indicated in advance.
The taille, or land tax, was paid only by the burgesses and
the people; in 1661 it amounted to 52,500,000. Colbert
lowered it by successive reductions to 32,500,000. In the
midst of the troubles of the Fronde many people had
ennobled themselves by their own authority, or had bought
titles of nobility for a few crowns; thereby the privileged
classes were doubled. A royal ordinance revoked all the
patents of nobility granted during the last thirty years ; about
33 2 THE ASCENDENCY OF FRANCE. [BOOK V.
40,000 families, the richest residents of the parishes, were
again submitted to the impost, so the imposts of their neigh-
bors were reduced.
The comptroller general with good reason preferred the
aides, or indirect taxes, to which all contributed, to the
villain tax. He augmented or created taxes upon coffee,
tobacco, wine, cards, lotteries, and the like; and from
1,500,000 francs raised them to 21,000,000.
The summary of the financial adminstration of Colbert
is as follows: In 1661 out of 85,000,000 in taxes the
treasury had to pay 52,500,000 in pensions and salaries;
there remained only 32,500,000, and the expenditure was
60,000,000 deficit 27,500,000. In 1^83, the year of Col-
bert's death, the imposts brought in 112,500,000, notwith-
standing a reduction of 22,500,000 upon the villain tax;
of this salaries and pensions required only 22,500,000; the
net revenue of the treasury was 90,000,000. Thus, on the
one side, Colbert had augmented the receipts 27,500,000,
and diminished the pensions and salaries 30,000,000, which
constituted a net annual benefit to the state of 57,500,000;
and, on the other hand, he had freed the lower classes
from 22,500,000 by diminishing the villain tax. There is
nothing to add to such figures.
Colbert did not sacrifice agriculture to manufactures, as
was often said. He exempted numerous families from the
villain tax; he interdicted the seizure of tools and of cattle
in payment of taxes due to the state ; he established, or
rather re-established, studs, where French horses were
crossed with those of Africa and Denmark; cattle were
brought from Germany and Switzerland to improve those of
France; he granted bounties to the best breeders; he
prdered the drainage of the marshes; finally, he published
a code of water and forest laws (1669) which is still for the
most part in force to-day. But he committed the blunder
of respecting the popular prejudice which saw in the free-
dom of the corn trade a cause of scarcity.
In spite of the efforts of Henry IV. manufactures were
still in their infancy, and the French obtained almost every-
thing from foreign countries. Colbert, born in the shop of
a merchant at Rheims, under the sign of the Long Cloak,
wanted France to produce for herself; he imposed heavy
duties, on their entrance into the kingdom, upon products
from foreign countries (tariff of 1667).
CHAP. XXI.] THE REIGN OF LOUIS XIV. 333
This was the inauguration of the protective system, a
system useful to an infant industry, but injurious after it is
developed. He spared no pains in purchasing or penetrat-
ing the industrial secrets of neighboring nations, and in
attracting the most skillful workmen to France; this was
good policy both then and now. The number of manu-
factures rapidly increased. He maintained them by sub-
sidies intelligently awarded, advancing a certain sum to each
trade in addition to considerable donations to masters and
workmen. He obtained from the Church the abolition
of seventeen holidays, and thereby diminished useless inter-
ruptions of labor. Finally, he instituted councils of arbitra-
tors to settle disputes in the working world. In 1669 for
wool alone there were 44,200 looms and more than 60,000
workmen. The woolen factories of Sedan, Louviers,
Elbeuf, and Abbeville had no rivals in Europe; tin, steel,
crockery, morocco, which had always been brought from a
distance, were worked in France; Persian and Turkish
carpets were excelled at La Savonnerie; rich stuffs, in which
silk is interwoven with gold and silver, were made at Lyons
and Tours; finer mirrors were manufactured at Tourlaville
near Cherburg and at Paris than in Venice; the tapestries
of Flanders were surpassed by those of the Gobelins.
Colbert could not remove the numerous tolls established
upon the roads and rivers; he reduced them, however, and
in twelve provinces suppressed the internal customs duties.
By diminishing the export dues (1664) he encouraged the
exportation of wines and brandies. He declared Dunkirk,
Bayonne, and Marseilles free ports, and granted to the last
of these towns in 1660 a marine insurance company; he
created markets, favored the transport of foreign merchan-
dise through France, caused the highways which had become
impassable to be repaired, and constructed new ones.
Finally he formed a plan for a canal in Burgundy, decreed
the construction of one at Orleans, which was opened in
1692, and deepened the one at Languedoc, which was to
connect the Mediterranean and the ocean. The port of
Cette was constructed at one of its extremities, Toulouse
was at the other; and from Toulouse the Garonne led easily
to Bordeaux and the ocean. This work, gigantic for that
period, was begun in 1664 and continued without interrup-
tion until 1681. It was executed by the celebrated Riquet,
descendant of an ancient Florentine family, upon the designs
334 THE ASCENDENCY OF FRANCE. [BOOK V.
of Andreossi, a French engineer; it cost about 7,000,000
francs, and employed annually 10,000 to 12,000 workmen.
Commerce thus encouraged developed rapidly. For the
regulation and advancement of this new activity a board of
trade was instituted in 1665, and Louis XIV. presided over
it nearly every fortnight. Similar boards were established
in the provinces; t.iey were to choose from their number
the three most experienced merchants to appear at court,
"in order to inform the king and M. de Colbert what it
would be expedient to do." An ordinance of 1671, which
unfortunately was not executed, prescribed uniform weights
and measures for all the ports and arsenals of France.
Foreigners had made themselves masters of all French
commerce by sea; each year 4000 Dutch vessels discharged
upon the French shores the products of their industry with
the merchandise of the two worlds, and carried away French
silks, wines, and brandies for transportation to Europe and
to distant countries. Colbert wished to raise France from
this inferiority. Already in 1658 the superintendent Fou-
quet had established an anchorage tax of 'fifty sous per
ton upon foreign vessels, payable at entrance and departure
from French ports; Colbert retained this duty; moreover,
he granted to French vessels export and import bounties,
and to builders of ships designed for distant commerce
another bounty of from 7^ to 12^ francs per ton; he estab-
lished five large companies after the model of the Dutch and
English companies: those of the East and West Indies in
1664; those of the North and the Levant in 1666; that of
the Senegal in 1673; granted them the exclusive monopoly
of the commerce in these remote regions, made then con-
siderable advances (6,000,000 francs for the East India
Company alone), and obliged the princes of the blood, the
lords, and the wealthy to take shares in them; finally, an
edict of 1669 declared that to engage in sea commerce was
not unbecoming to the nobility.
France possessed only Canada with Acadia, or Nova
Scotia, Cayenne in Guiana, the island of Bourbon, a few
factories in Madagascar and the Indies. Colbert purchased
for less than a million Martinique, Guadaloupe, St. Lucia,
Grenada, and the Grenadilles, Marie Galante, St. Martin,
St. Christopher, St. Bartholomew, St. Croix, and La Tortue
in the Lesser Antilles (1664); he placed under French pro-
tection the French freebooters of St. Domingo, who had
CHAP. XXL] THE REIGN OF LOUIS XIV. 335
taken possession of the western part of the island (1664);
he sent new colonists to Cayenne and Canada, seized New-
foundland to command the entrance of the St. Lawrence,
and commenced the occupation of the magnificent valley of
the Mississippi, or Louisiana, which had just been explored
by the celebrated traveler Robert de la Salle (1680). In
Africa he captured Goree from the Dutch (1665), and took
possession of the eastern shores of Madagascar. In Asia
the India Company was established at Surat, at Chanderna-
gor, and later at Pondicherry. Finally, to reserve all the
commerce of French colonies for the national flag, Colbert
closed their ports to foreign vessels.
Mazarin had allowed the military marine created by
Richelieu ;o decline. Colbert first caused the few vessels
still in the French harbors to be repaired; he purchased
others in Sweden and Holland ; shipyards were established
at Dunkirk, Havre, and Rochefort, which was built upon
the Charente commanding the Gulf of Gascony. Henry
IV. had founded Toulon and Richelieu Brest; but they had
not so much made them great harbors as shown what could
be done there. After 1665 Duquesne remained seven years
at Brest, and when Seignelay, the son of Colbert, went there
in 1672 he saw a fleet of 50 vessels of the line. In 1683
Vauban surrounded it with formidable defenses. After the
peace of Nimeguen he also executed immense works at
Toulon, which made that town what nature intended it
should be, one of the finest ports in the world. The new
flrating dock that he constructed could itself contain 100
ships of the line.
To recruit the fleet Colbert created the maritime registry,
or system of classification, which the French still preserve,
and which compels the maritime population of the coast, in
return for certain privileges, to furnish the recruits neces-
sary for the crews. These recruits according to their age
and the position of their family are divided into different
classes, which are successively summoned according to the
needs of the service. This institution, to-day less beneficial
than then, was completed by the founding of a pension
fund, which assured on their retirement a pension to vet-
eran seamen. The first census in 1670 registered 36,000
sailors, but in 1683 t ne number was 77,852. Armaments
could then be multiplied. In 1661 the war fleet consisted
of only 39 ships; in 1678 it comprised 120, and five years
33 6 THE ASCENDENCY OF FRANCE. [BOOK V.
later, 176. In 1692 the king had 131 ships, 133 frigates,
and 101 other vessels. The corps of the marine guards,
composed of 1000 noblemen, was instituted in 1672 to train
good officers, as was also a school of gunners to form skillful
artillerymen, and a school of hydrography to furnish ships
with exact charts.
In a memorandum submitted to the king May 15, 1665,
Colbert had asked that legislation be remodeled so that
there should be in France only one system of laws, and of
weights and measures. He moreover asked that justice
should be free, that the sale of offices should be abolished,
the value of which was estimated at 800,000,000 francs, that
the number of monks be diminished, and the useful profes-
sions encouraged. A commission was in fact appointed.
It was composed of counselors of state and masters of
petitions,* such as Voisin, d'Aligre, Boucherat, and Pussort,
who after the completion of the work discussed it with the
eminent members of Parliament in the presence of the
ministers and under the presidency of the chancellor,
sometimes even under that of the king. Six codes were
the result of these deliberations: in 1667 the Civil Ordi-
nance, which abolished some of the iniquitous practices
of the Middle Ages, diminished the delays of justice, and
regulated the form of the registers of the civil status; in
1669 that of the Waters and Forests; in 1670 the Ordinance
of Criminal Instruction, which restricted the use of the rack
and various cases of provisory imprisonment, but which
permitted neither counsel nor witness to one accused of a
capital crime, maintained the atrocious old-time punish-
ments, as the wheel and quartering, and always meted out
a punishment disproportionate to the offense; in 1673 the
Commercial Code, a true title of glory for Colbert; in 1681
the Marine and Colonial Code, which has formed the com-
mon law of European nations and serves them even to-day as
basis of maritime law; in 1685 the Black Code, which regu-
* The French term " maitres des requetes," rendered "masters of
petitions," like many others denoting feudal and mediaeval offices, has no
exactly corresponding term in English. Especially difficult is it, save with
long circumlocution, to indicate the judicial magistrates, their duties and
even the names of the numerous courts. Moreover, function and juris-
diction varied greatly during the centuries. Under Louis the maitres
des requetes sat by alternating periods of three months in the state council
and in the Royal Court of Judicature. In the former case they had no
vote, but could plead or advise ; in the latter they pronounced decrees