Modern History Sourcebook: Saint-Simon: Court of Louis XIV
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Modern History Sourcebook: Duc de Saint-Simon: The Court of
Louis XIV
The Duc de Saint-Simon resided for many years at Versailles.
He left an account of Life there.
The Court
His natural talents were below mediocrity; but he had a mind capable
of improvement, of receiving polish, of assimilating what was
best in the minds of others without slavish imitation; and he
profited greatly throughout his life from having associated with
the ablest and wittiest persons, of both es, and of various
stations. He entered the world (if I may use such an expression
in speaking of a King who had already completed his twenty-third
year), at a fortunate moment, for men of distinction abounded.
His Ministers and Generals at this time, with their successors
trained in their schools, are universally acknowledged to have
been the ablest in Europe; for the domestic troubles and foreign
wars under which France had suffered ever since the death of Louis
XIII had brought to the front a number of brilliant names, and
the Court was made up of capable and illustrious personages....
Glory was his passion, but he also liked order and regularity
in all things; he was naturally prudent, moderate, and reserved;
always master of his tongue and his emotions. Will it be believed?
he was also naturally kind-hearted and just. God had given him
all that was necessary for him to be a good King, perhaps also
to be a fairly great one. All his faults were produced by his
surroundings. In his childhood he was so much neglected that no
one dared go near his rooms. He was often heard to speak of those
times with great bitterness; he used to relate how, through the
carelessness of his attendants, he was found one evening in the
basin of a fountain in the Palais-Royal gardens....
His Ministers, generals, mistresses, and courtiers soon found
out his weak point, namely, his love of hearing his own praises.
There was nothing he liked so much as flattery, or, to put it
more plainly, adulation; the coarser and clumsier it was, the
more he relished it. That was the only way to approach him; if
he ever took a liking to a man it was invariably due to some lucky
stroke of flattery in the first instance, and to indefatigable
perseverance in the same line afterwards. His Ministers owed much
of their influence to their frequent opportunities for burning
incense before him....
It was this love of praise which made it easy for Louvois to engage
him in serious wars, for he persuaded him that he had greater
talents for war than any of his Generals, greater both in design
and in execution, and the Generals themselves encouraged him in
this notion, to keep in favour with him. I mean such Generals
as Condé and Turenne; much more, of course, those who came
after them. He took to himself the credit of their successes with
admirable complacency, and honestly believed that he was all his
flatterers told him. Hence arose his fondness for reviews, which
he carried so far that his enemies called him, in derision, "the
King of reviews"; hence also his liking for sieges, where
he could make a cheap parade of bravery, and exhibit his vigilance,
forethought, and endurance of fatigue; for his robust constitution
enabled him to bear fatigue marvellously; he cared nothing for
hunger, heat, cold, or bad weather. He liked also, as he rode
through the lines, to hear people praising his dignified bearing
and fine appearance on horseback. His campaigns were his favourite
topic when talking to his mistresses. He talked well, expressed
himself clearly in well-chosen language; and no man could tell
a story better. His conversation, even on the most ordinary subjects,
was always marked by a certain natural dignity.
His mind was occupied with small things rather than with great,
and he delighted in all sorts of petty details, such as the dress
and drill of his soldiers; and it was just the same with regard
to his building operations, his household, and even his cookery.
He always thought he could teach something of their own craft
even to the most skilful professional men; and they, for their
part, used to listen gratefully to lessons which they had long
ago learnt by heart. He imagined that all this showed his indefatigable
industry; in reality, it was a great waste of time, and his Ministers
turned it to good account for their own purposes, as soon as they
had learnt the art of managing him; they kept his attention engaged
with a mass of details, while they contrived to get their own
way in more important matters.
His vanity, which was perpetually nourished - for even preachers
used to praise him to his face from the pulpit - was the cause
of the aggrandisement of his Ministers. He imagined that they
were great only through him, mere mouthpieces through which he
expressed his will; consequently he made no objection when they
gradually encroached on the privileges of the greatest noblemen.
He felt that he could at any moment reduce them to their original
obscurity; whereas, in the case of a nobleman, though he could
make him feel the weight of his displeasure, he could not deprive
him or his family of the advantages due to his birth. For this
reason he made it a rule never to admit a seigneur to his
Councils, to which the Duke de Beauvilliers was the only exception....
But for the fear of the devil, which, by God's grace, never forsook
him even in his wildest excesses, he would have caused himself
to be worshipped as a deity. He would not have lacked worshippers....
Life at Versailles
Very early in the reign of Louis XIV the Court was removed from
Paris, never to return. The troubles of the minority had given
him a dislike to that city; his enforced and surreptitious flight
from it still rankled in his memory; he did not consider himself
safe there, and thought cabals would be more easily detected if
the Court was in the country, where the movements and temporary
absences of any of its members would be more easily noticed....
No doubt that he was also influenced by the feeling that he would
be regarded with greater awe and veneration when no longer exposed
every day to the gaze of the multitude.
His love-affair with Mademoiselle de la Vallière, which
at first was covered as far as possible with a veil of mystery,
was the cause of frequent excursions to Versailles. This was at
that time at small country house, built by Louis XIII to avoid
the unpleasant necessity, which had sometimes befallen him, of
sleeping at a wretched wayside tavern or in a windmill, when benighted
out hunting in the forest of St. Leger.... The visits of Louis
XIV becoming more frequent, he enlarged the château by
degrees till its immense buildings afforded better accommodation
for the Court than was to be found at St. Germain, where most
of the courtiers had to put up with uncomfortable lodgings in
the town. The Court was therefore removed to Versailles in 1682,
not long before the Queen's death. The new building contained
an infinite number of rooms for courtiers, and the King liked
the grant of these rooms to be regarded as a coveted privilege.
He availed himself of the frequent festivities at Versailles,
and his excursions to other places, as a means of making the courtiers
assiduous in their attendance and anxious to please him; for he
nominated beforehand those who were to take part in them, and
could thus gratify some and inflict a snub on others. He was conscious
that the substantial favours he had to bestow were not nearly
sufficient to produce a continual effect; he had therefore to
invent imaginary ones, and no one was so clever in devising petty
distinctions and preferences which aroused jealousy and emulation.
The visits to Marly later on were very useful to him in this way;
also those to Trianon, where certain ladies, chosen beforehand,
were admitted to his table. It was another distinction to hold
his candlestick at his coucher; as soon as he had finished
his prayers he used to name the courtier to whom it was to be
handed, always choosing one of the highest rank among those present....
Not only did he expect all persons of distinction to be in continual
attendance at Court, but he was quick to notice the absence of
those of inferior degree; at his lever, his coucher,
his meals, in the gardens of Versailles (the only place where
the courtiers in general were allowed to follow him), he used
to cast his eyes to right and left; nothing escaped him, he saw
everybody. If any one habitually living at Court absented himself
he insisted on knowing the reason; those who came there only for
flying visits had also to give a satisfactory explanation; any
one who seldom or never appeared there was certain to incur his
displeasure. If asked to bestow a favour on such persons he would
reply haughtily: "I do not know him"; of such as rarely
presented themselves he would say, "He is a man I never see";
and from these judgements there was no appeal.
He always took great pains to find out what was going on in public
places, in society, in private houses, even family secrets, and
maintained an immense number of spies and tale-bearers. These
were of all sorts; some did not know that their reports were carried
to him; others did know it; there were others, again, who used
to write to him directly, through channels which he prescribed;
others who were admitted by the backstairs and saw him in his
private room. Many a man in all ranks of life was ruined by these
methods, often very unjustly, without ever being able to discover
the reason; and when the King had once taken a prejudice against
a man, he hardly ever got over it....
No one understood better than Louis XIV the art of enhancing the
value of a favour by his manner of bestowing it; he knew how to
make the most of a word, a smile, even of a glance. If he addressed
any one, were it but to ask a trifling question or make some commonplace
remark, all eyes were turned on the person so honored; it was
a mark of favour which always gave rise to comment....
He loved splendour, magnificence, and profusion in all things,
and encouraged similar tastes in his Court; to spend money freely
on equipages and buildings, on feasting and at cards, was a sure
way to gain his favour, perhaps to obtain the honour of a word
from him. Motives of policy had something to do with this; by
making expensive habits the fashion, and, for people in a certain
position, a necessity, he compelled his courtiers to live beyond
their income, and gradually reduced them to depend on his bounty
for the means of subsistence. This was a plague which, once introduced,
became a scourge to the whole country, for it did not take long
to spread to Paris, and thence to the armies and the provinces;
so that a man of any position is now estimated entirely according
to his expenditure on his table and other luxuries. This folly,
sustained by pride and ostentation, has already produced widespread
confusion; it threatens to end in nothing short of ruin and a
general overthrow.
From The Memoirs of the Duke de Saint-Simon, ed. F. Arkwright
(New York Brentano's, n.d.), Vol. V, pp. 254, 259-63, 271-274,
276-278
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(c)Paul Halsall Aug 1997
halsall@murray.fordham.edu
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