Germany in the Age of Louis XIV

GERMANY IN THE AGE OF LOUIS XIV

Wolfgang Menzel

PERENNIAL PRESS

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Copyright © 2016 by Wolfgang Menzel

Published by Perennial Press

Interior design by Pronoun

Distribution by Pronoun

ISBN: 9781518369964

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I, Louis the Fourteenth

The Swiss Peasant War

Holland in distress

The great Elector

Ill-treatment of the imperial cities.—The loss of Strassburg

Vienna besieged by the Turks

French depredations

German princes on foreign thrones

The Northern war.—Charles the Twelfth

The Spanish war of Succession

2016

I, LOUIS THE FOURTEENTH

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THE CENTURY SUBSEQUENT TO THE peace of Westphalia is distinguished as the age of Louis the Fourteenth, that monarch being the sun by which it was illumined, and whose splendor was reflected by all the courts of Europe. The first revolution against the middle ages was accomplished in him, by his subjection of the interests of the aristocratic and inferior classes beneath his despotic rule. He said with truth l’état c’est moi, for entire France, the country and the people, their arms, and even their thoughts, were his. The sole object of the whole nation was to do the will of their sovereign; car tel est notre plaisir was the usual termination to his commands. The magnificent chateau of Versailles, the abode of this terrestrial deity, was peopled with mistresses and a countless troop of parasites, on whom the gold, drawn from the impoverished and oppressed people, was lavished. The nobility and clergy, long subject to their lord and king, shared the license of the court and formed a numerous band of courtiers, whilst men of the lower classes, whose superior parts had brought them into note, were attached as philosophers, poets, and artists, to the court, the monarch extending his patronage to every art and science prostituted by flattery.

The French court, although externally Catholic, was solely guided by the tenets of the new philosophy, which were spread over the rest of the world by the sonnets of anacreontic poets and the bon-mots of court savants, This philosophy set forth that egotism was the only quality natural to man, that virtues were but feigned, or, when real, ridiculous. Freedom from the ancient prejudices of honor or religion, and carelessness in the choice of means for the attainment of an object, were regarded as proofs of genius. Immorality was the necessary accompaniment of talent. Virtue implied stupidity; the grossest license, the greatest wit. Vice became the mode, was publicly displayed and admired. The first duty imposed upon knighthood, the protection of innocence, was exchanged for seduction, adultery, or nightly orgies, and the highest ambition of the prince, the courtier, or the officer was to enrich the chronique scandaleuse with his name. A courtier’s honor consisted in breaking his word, in deceiving maidens, and cheating creditors, in contracting enormous debts and in boasting of their remaining unpaid, etc.; nor was this demoralization confined to private life. The cabinet of Versailles, in its treatment of all the European powers, followed the rules of this modern philosophy, as shown in the conduct of the Parisian cavalier towards the citizens, their wives and daughters, by the practice of rudeness, seduction, robbery, and every dishonorable art. It treated laws, treaties, and truth with contempt, and ever insisted upon its own infallibility.

The doctrine that a prince can do no wrong had a magical effect upon the other sovereigns of Europe; Louis XIV. became their model, and the object to which most of them aspired, the attainment, like him, of deification upon earth. Even Germany, impoverished and weakened by her recent struggle, was infected with this universal mania, and [A. D. 1656] John George II. began to act the part of a miniature Louis XIV., in starving and desolate Saxony. A splendid guard, a household on a more extensive scale, sumptuous fêtes, grandes battues, lion-hunts, theatricals, Italian operas, (a new mode, for which singers were, at great expense, imported from Italy,) regattas and fireworks on the Elbe, the formation of expensive cabinets of art and of museums, were to raise the elector of Saxony on a par with the great sovereign of France, and, in 1660, the state becoming in consequence bankrupt, the wretched Estates were compelled to wrest the sums required to supply the pleasures of the prince from his suffering people. To him succeeded [A. D. 1680] John George III., who spent all he possessed on his troops; then [A. D. 16913 John George IV., who reigned until 1694, and whose mistress, Sibylla yon Neidschütz, reigned conjointly with her mother over the country and plundered the people, whilst his minister, Count yon Hoymb, openly carried on a system of robbery and extortion.–—In Bavaria, [A. D. 1679,] Ferdinand Maria followed the example of Saxony. The miseries endured by the people during the thirty years’ war were forgotten by the elector, who erected Schleisheim (Little Versailles) and Nymphenburg (Little Marly), and gave theatrical entertainments and fetes, according to the French mode.–—He lived in most extraordinary splendor. Two hundred-weight and nineteen pounds of gold were expended on the embroidery alone of his bed of state. His consort, Adelheid, a daughter of Victor Amadeus of Savoy, an extremely bigoted princess, surpassed his extravagance in her gifts to the churches. She long remained childless, and, on the birth of that traitor to Germany, Maximilian Emanuel, caused the celebrated Theatin church at Munich to be built by an Italian architect. She died before its completion, and it was consequently finished on a less magnificent scale than the original plan.

Ancient Spanish dignity was still maintained in the old imperial house. Ferdinand III. closed the wounds inflicted by the thirty years’ war and zealously endeavored at the diet, held at Nuremberg, [A. D. 1663,] to regulate the affairs of the empire, the imperial chamber, etc.; but life could no longer be breathed into the dead body of the state, and no emperor, since Ferdinand, has since presided in person over the diet.

This monarch fell sick and died shortly after of fright, occasioned by the fall of one of his guards, who had snatched up the youngest prince in order to save him from a fire that had burst out in the emperor’s chamber. He was succeeded by his son, Leopold with the thick lip, who was then in his eighteenth year. This prince, whose principal amusement during his childhood had been the erection of miniature altars, the adornment of figures and pictures of saints, etc., had, under the tuition of the Jesuit Neidhart, grown up a melancholy bigot, stiff, unbending, punctilious, and grave, devoid of life or energy.

The advantages gained by Louis XIV., by the treaty of Westphalia, merely inspired him with a desire for the acquisition of still greater. He even speculated upon gaining possession of the imperial throne, and, with that intent, bribed several of the princes, the elector, Charles Louis, of the Pfalz, (who was at that time enraged at the loss of the Upper Pfalz, and, consequently, lent a willing ear to the perfidious counsels of France,) with a gift of 110,000 dollars, and Bavaria, Cologne, and Mayence with sums similar in amount. Saxony and Brandenburg, however, withstood the temptation, and the German crown was rescued from the disgrace of adorning the brow of a foreign despot, of Germany’s most inveterate foe, to be placed