King of the World by Philip Mansel

Author:Philip Mansel [Mansel, Philip]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780241960592
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2019-07-10T16:00:00+00:00

18

France against Europe

‘Ultima ratio regum’, ‘The final argument of kings’, was the motto often inscribed on Louis XIV’s massive bronze cannon, below the royal crown and coat of arms of three fleurs-de-lys. By 1688 the King owned at least 13,000 cannon: examples can be seen in the courtyard of the Invalides today. They were not only his ‘final argument’, but often his first argument too.1 It was not (as commonly stated) Voltaire but Louis XIV’s principal secretary, the Président Rose, who first wrote, ‘God is on the side of the big squadrons and the big battalions against the small ones, and the same for armies.’2

In September 1688, when Louis decided to attack the Rhineland, his armed forces were at their peak. One of his officers, M. de La Colonie, remembered: ‘nothing was talked about any more except war and the entire youth of the kingdom displayed such a great spirit of emulation that it dreamt only of following the torrents of the new levies that were being raised every day.’3 From 20 November, tax registers were used as a means of finding one recruit (in theory) for every 2,000 livres of taille paid by a parish. In practice soldiers were recruited mainly through the attractions of enlistment ‘bounties’ and, as the economic situation worsened, regular supplies of food.4 The provincial militias, reformed and strengthened by Louvois, provided another source of recruits for the army. A feudal ‘ban’ summoned nobles to arms, although they often commuted military service by paying higher taxes;5 By 1693, the army reached around 320,000 men and 20,000 officers.6

Louvois, high in royal favour, had continued his modernization of the army. He was unusually hard-working, even for a minister of Louis XIV, and was helped by no more than thirty officials, working from rooms in the Hôtel de la Surintendance in Versailles, for he was also, after the death of Colbert, Surintendant des Bâtiments.7 Systems of pay and promotion by seniority had been standardized. Regiments of carabiniers were introduced after 1680. By the 1690s around 160 barracks had been built, hospitals improved and uniforms standardized; the King’s guards and personal regiments like the Régiment du Roi wore blue, line troops grey, the Swiss Guards red.8 By 1705 muskets and pikes had been replaced by guns with bayonets. Officers were severely punished, or imprisoned, if caught diverting their soldiers’ pay or rations to themselves.9

The Brandenburg Ambassador Ezechiel Spanheim, who won the reputation of being the most intelligent and erudite diplomat in Paris, admired the size, discipline and obedience of the army, and the excellence of the frontier forts. However, he knew that the navy was weak, and French cannon badly made. France had no allies, and had been weakened by the Huguenots’ flight. He believed that Louvois had instilled in Louis a fatal overestimation of the power of France and the weakness of its enemies, and foretold defeat.10 Without knowing of Louis XIV’s promises to the Ottoman government, Spanheim wrote that war was undertaken in 1688 ‘de gaieté de coeur’: it was not only cruel and unjust, but badly planned.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.