cession, acquired the greater part of those territories of which Spain was deprived; yet as these acquisitions lay not contiguous, it may be doubted whether they were not rather a cause of weakness to her than of strength, by increasing her danger in a greater ratio than they multiplied her resources. France lost a portion of the frontiers which she had formerly acquired, as well as her influence in Germany; the fear with which she had inspired the different States driving them to unite themselves more closely with Austria. But these losses were nothing in comparison with her internal ills -the disorder of her finances and the exhaustion of her population.61 After the Peace of Utrecht, France, though still one of the principal elements of the European system, could no longer be reckoned the dominant Power. The influence and reputation of England, on the contrary, were much increased by the results of the war, in which she had proved herself a counterbalance to the power of France and Spain. Holland, on the other hand, gained nothing besides her barrier, and from this time her commerce began to fall into the hands of England.

Neither Louis XIV. nor Queen Anne long survived the Peace of Utrecht. Anne expired of an apoplexy, August 1st 1714; a sovereign as remarkable for her nullity as her rival Louis was for engrossing the state in his own person. She was succeeded by the Elector of Hanover, with the title of George I.; a prince whose chief political tenet was hatred of Louis XIV. One of his first acts was to dismiss the Tory Ministry, whom he regarded with abhorrence as the advisers of the Peace of Utrecht. The Whigs were reinstated in office; and Marlborough, who at this very time was intriguing with the Pretender, was again made Captain-General and Master of the Ordnance.

Louis XIV. survived the English Queen thirteen months; but it would have been better for his fame if he had preceded her to the tomb. He was now sunk in the extremity of anile superstition, bigotry, and intolerance. Since the death of his confessor, Père la Chaise, in 1709, Louis had surrendered the keeping of his conscience to Father le Tellier, a Jesuit, whose religion was tinctured with pride and malignancy, instead of the Christian virtues of humbleness and charity. One of the first acts of Le Tellier was to procure the destruction of the celebrated convent of Port Royal, the refuge of the Jansenists, the enemies of his sect (November 1709). He also

"The Duke of Argyll, who travelled in France after the peace, declared that for forty miles together he had not seen a man capable of bearing arms. VOL. III.

See

P

Lord Russell's Europe from the Peace of Utrecht, vol. i. p. 6. But this must surely have been an exaggeration.

(210

DEATH OF LOUIS XIV.

[BOOK V. obtained from Pope Clement XI. the celebrated bull Unigenitus (September 1713), by which were condemned 101 propositions extracted from the "Réflexions Morales sur le Nouveau Testament," an esteemed work by Quesnel, now the head of the Jansenists; a book which had received the approbation of Père la Chaise, and even of Clement himself. It would have been fortunate, however, if Le Tellier had confined himself only to attacking speculative doctrines. He persuaded the King to revive the intolerant spirit of the Edict of Nantes, and to invade the privileges of conscience and the sanctuary of domestic life. In 1712, a royal ordinance was published prohibiting physicians from succouring, after the third day, patients labouring under dangerous maladies, unless they could produce from an ecclesiastic a certificate of confession! This was followed, in 1715, by a still more atrocious edict, which denied those who died without receiving the sacraments the rites of sepulture.

Yet the political conduct of this royal zealot was marked in its last years by the grossest perfidy. Although he literally fulfilled his engagement to fill up the port of Dunkirk, he endeavoured to evade the spirit of it by causing to be made between that place and Mardyck a huge canal, a league in length, and capable of sheltering vessels of 80 guns. This was done on the pretence of providing an outlet for some canals previously emptied by the sluices at Dunkirk; and it was only after some threatening remonstrances from the English Government that the undertaking was suspended. Again, by the Peace of Utrecht Louis had solemnly recognised the succession of the House of Hanover in England, and had promised to withdraw his protection from the Stuarts; yet he secretly encouraged the pretended James III.'s ill-judged and abortive expedition to Scotland in 1715, by procuring for him a vessel, arms for 10,000 men, and a loan from Philip V. of 1,200,000 francs, which he was not able to advance out of his own funds. If these are bad specimens of Louis's political honesty, his legitimating his children by Madame de Montespan, the fruits of a double adultery, his endowing them with the rights of princes of the blood, and making them capable of succeeding to the crown, are no less cogent proofs that in spite of his mechanical devotion, he was totally destitute of any feeling of genuine morality and religion.

It is not improbable that Louis's efforts in favour of the Pretender might have again precipitated France into a war with England had the King's life been prolonged. But in August 1715, he was seized with a slow fever, which terminated in symptoms of mortification, and after a confinement of three weeks put an end to his life,

Sept. 1st. In the last days of his existence, this mighty monarch was abandoned by all his family and courtiers-even by Madame de Maintenon, his wife-and expired in the presence only of priests, physicians, and attendants. He had attained the age of seventyseven years, during seventy-two of which he had sat upon the throne; the longest reign on record. He died with constancy and resignation, and the last days of his life show him to more advantage as a man than the season of his greatest glory and prosperity. In the presence of eternity, the dazzling mists of vanity and ambition, already partly dissipated by experience and misfortune, faded entirely before his mental vision, and revealed to him in their naked truth the objects which he had pursued. It had been well for his kingdom had the aged monarch been impressed at an earlier period of his reign with those words of counsel which he addressed on his death-bed to the youthful Dauphin. "My child," said he, "you will soon be the sovereign of a great kingdom. Do not forget your obligations to God; remember that it is to Him you owe all that you are. Endeavour to live at peace with your neighbours; do not imitate me in my fondness for war, nor in the exorbitant expenditure which I have incurred. Take counsel in all your actions. Endeavour to relieve the people at the earliest possible moment, and thus to accomplish what, unfortunately, I am unable to do myself." 62

These words, which were afterwards inscribed on the bed of Louis XV. by order of Marshal Villeroi, are, in fact, a condemnation by Louis himself of his whole reign. In that retrospect of conscience, he denounces his constant wars, his profligate expenditure, his uncontrollable self-will; and regrets that no time was left to him to repair the misfortunes which they had occasioned. This condemnatory review was confirmed by the French people. The day of his funeral was a day of rejoicing and holiday; the procession was greeted with laughter and songs by the carousing populace, who added another article of reproach over which the royal conscience had slumbered. Some proposed to use the funeral torches to set fire to the houses of the Jesuits; 63 but Louis had expired without giving the slightest indication that the course which he had pursued in religious matters occasioned him any compunction. In spite, however, of his defects, Louis XIV. must be allowed in many respects to have possessed the attributes of a great monarch. He was generous and munificent; in grace, affability, and dignity of manner, in all that goes to constitute the outward cs Voltaire, l. c.

62 Saint Simon, t. xii. p. 483; Voltaire, Siècle de Louis XIV., ch. xxviii.

212

HOW REGARDED BY THE FRENCH.

[Book V. bearing of a king, he was unrivalled; and all his projects, however unjust and impolitic, were marked by grandeur of conception and ability and perseverance in their execution. And now that the misery inflicted by his reign has been forgotten, and only its glory and conquests are remembered, it is probable that the image of Louis XIV. will continue to occupy a conspicuous niche in the national Pantheon of the French; a nation ever ready to pardon the faults of those who have extended their boundaries, upheld their military reputation, and promoted the fame of their literature and art.

CHAPTER VII.

WHILE these things were going on in Southern and Western Europe, the close of the seventeenth century was marked in the North by the breaking out of an extensive war. The death of Charles XI. of Sweden in April 1697, and the accession of his son Charles XII. at the age of only fifteen years, inspired several of the northern Sovereigns with the hope of aggrandising themselves at the expense of so youthful a monarch, and of recovering some of the territories which had been wrested from them by his predecessors. Sweden. still possessed the provinces which had been assigned to her by the Treaties of Oliva, Copenhagen and Kardis. Finnland, Carelia, Ingria, Esthonia and Livonia, as well as the greater part of Pomerania, the fortresses of Stettin and Stralsund, Wismar and its fortified harbour, and the duchies of Bremen and Verden continued subject to her sceptre. Augustus, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, was the prime mover in this conspiracy of sovereigns, and must be regarded as the main cause of a war which desolated Northern Europe during twenty years, and ruined for a long period his own dominions as well as Sweden.

Augustus himself, however, was led into the war by the counsels of Patkul, the Livonian noble, whose flight from Sweden and from the tyranny of Charles XI. has been already recorded.1 Patkul inspired Augustus with the hope of acquiring Livonia by painting in glowing colours the discontent which prevailed in that province. An article of the Pacta Conventa subscribed by Augustus on his election to the crown of Poland, by which, in vague terms, he had undertaken to recover the provinces which had been dismembered from that kingdom, might serve as an excuse with his Polish subjects for entering into the war; while, as regarded Sweden, it might be alleged that Livonia had been ceded to that Power by the Treaty of Oliva, only on condition that its privileges should be respected, and that these had been grossly violated by Charles XI. But under these plans of foreign aggression Augustus concealed another for the establishment of his power at home. Under

1 Above, p. 129. Patkul's conduct, however, can hardly be imputed to self

interest, as his own estates had not been subjected to the "reduction."