Note 516 — Chapter IV

Oppressed by defeats abroad, and by famine and misery at home, Louis was laid at the mercy of his enemies; and ‘was only saved by a party revolution in the English ministry.’ Arnold's Lectures on Modern History, p. 137. Compare Fragments sur l'Histoire, article xxiii. in Œuvres de Voltaire, vol. xxvii. p. 345, with De Tocqueville, Règne de Louis XV, vol. i. p. 86.

[517] For evidence of the depression and, indeed, utter exhaustion of France during the latter years of Louis XIV., compare Duclos, Mémoires, vol. i. pp. 11–18, with Marmontel, Hist. de la Régence, Paris, 1826, pp. 79–97. The Lettres inédites de Madame de Maintenon (vol. i. pp. 263, 284, 358, 389, 393, 408, 414, 422, 426, 447, 457, 463, vol. ii. pp. 19, 23, 33, 46, 56, and numerous other passages) fully confirm this, and, moreover, prove that in Paris, early in the eighteenth century, the resources, even of the wealthy classes, were beginning to fail; while both public and private credit were so shaken, that it was hardly possible to obtain money on any terms. In 1710, she, the wife of Louis XIV., complains of her inability to borrow 500 livres: ‘Tout mon crédit échoue souvent auprès de M. Desmaretz pour une somme de cinq cents livres.’ Ibid. vol. ii. p. 33. In 1709, she writes (vol. i. p. 447): ‘Le jeu devient insipide, parce qu'il n'y a presque plus d'argent.’ See also vol. ii. p. 112; and in February 1711 (p. 151): ‘Ce n'est pas l'abondance mais l'avarice qui fait jouer nos courtisans; on met le tout pour le tout pour avoir quelque argent, et les tables de lansquenet ont plus l'air d'un triste commerce que d'un divertissement.’

In regard to the people generally, the French writers supply us with little information, because in that age they were too much occupied with their great king and their showy literature, to pay attention to mere popular interests. But I have collected from other sources some information which I will now put together, and which I recommend to the notice of the next French author who undertakes to compose a history of Louis XIV.

Locke, who was travelling in France in 1676 and 1677, writes in his journal, ‘The rent of land in France fallen one–half in these few years, by reason of the poverty of the people.’ King's Life of Locke, vol. i. p. 139. About the same time, Sir William Temple says (Works, vol. ii. p. 268), ‘The French peasantry are wholly dispirited by labour and want.’ In 1691, another observer, proceeding from Calais, writes, ‘From hence, travelling to Paris, there was opportunity enough to observe what a prodigious state of poverty the ambition and absoluteness of a tyrant can reduce an opulent and fertile country to. There were visible all the marks and signs of a growing misfortune; all the dismal indications of an overwhelming calamity. The fields were uncultivated, the villages unpeopled, the houses dropping to decay.’ Burton's Diary, note by Rutt, vol. iv. p. 79. In a tract published in 1689, the author says (Somers Tracts, vol. x. p. 264), ‘I have known in France poor people sell their beds, and lie upon straw; sell their pots, kettles, and all their necessary household goods, to content the unmerciful collectors of the king's taxes.’ Dr. Lister, who visited Paris in 1698, says, ‘Such is the vast multitude of poor wretches in all parts of this city, that whether a person is in a carriage or on foot, in the street, or even in a shop, he is alike unable to transact business, on account of the importunities of mendicants.’ Lister's Account of Paris, p. 46. Compare a Letter from Prior, in Ellis's Letters of Literary Men, p. 213. In 1708, Addison, who, from personal observation, was well acquainted with France, writes: ‘We think here as you do in the country, that France is on her last legs.’ Aikin's Life of Addison, vol. i. p. 233. Finally, in 1718—that is, three years after the death of Louis—Lady Mary Montagu gives the following account of the result of his reign, in a letter to Lady Rich, dated Paris, 10th October, 1718: ‘I think nothing so terrible as objects of misery, except one had the god-like attribute of being able to redress them; and all the country villages of France show nothing else. While the post-horses are changed, the whole town comes out to beg, with such miserable starved faces, and thin, tattered clothes, they need no other eloquence to persuade one of the wretchedness of their condition.’ Works of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, vol. iii. p. 74, edit. 1803.