History of Civilization in England, Vol. 2 of 3

409

As to the Countess de Fleix and Madame de Pons, see Mém. de Motteville, vol. iii. pp. 116, 369. According to the same high authority (vol. iii. p. 367), the inferiority of the Princess de Marsillac consisted in the painful fact, that her husband was merely the son of a duke, and the duke himself was still alive ‘il n'étoit que gentilhomme, et son père le duc de la Rochefoucauld n'étoit pas mort.’

410

The long account of these proceedings in Mém. de Motteville, vol. iii. pp. 367–393, shows the importance attached to them by contemporary opinion.

411

In October 1649, ‘la noblesse s'assembla à Paris sur le fait des tabourets,’ Mém. de Lenet, vol. i. p. 184.

412

‘Tous ceux donc qui par leurs aïeux avoient dans leurs maisons de la grandeur, par des alliances des femmes descendues de ceux qui étoient autrefois maîtres et souverains des provinces de France, demandèrent la même prérogative que celle qui venoit d'être accordée au sang de Foix.’ Mém. de Motteville, vol. iii. p. 117. Another contemporary says: ‘Cette prétention émut toutes les maisons de la cour sur cette différence et inégalité.’ Mém. d'Omer Talon, vol. iii. p. 6; and vol. ii. p. 437: ‘le marquis de Noirmoutier et celui de Vitry demandoient le tabouret pour leurs femmes.’

413

Indeed, at one moment, it was determined that a counter-demonstration should be made on the part of the inferior nobles; a proceeding which, if adopted, must have caused civil war: ‘Nous résolûmes une contre-assemblée de noblesse pour soutenir le tabouret de la maison de Rohan.’ De Retz, Mémoires, vol. i. p. 284.

414

Mém. de Motteville, vol. iii. p. 389.

415

‘Signé d'elle et des quatre secrétaires d'état.’ Ibid. vol. iii. p. 391.

416

The best accounts of this great struggle will be found in the Memoirs of Madame de Motteville, and in those of Omer Talon; two writers of very different minds, but both of them deeply impressed with the magnitude of the contest.

417

Saint-Aulaire (Hist. de la Fronde, vol. i. p. 317) says, that in this same year (1649), ‘l'esprit de discussion fermentait dans toutes les têtes, et chacun à cette époque soumettait les actes de l'autorité à un examen raisonné.’ Thus, too, in Mém. de Montglat, under 1649, ‘on ne parlait publiquement dans Paris que de république et de liberté,‘**RSQUvol. ii. p. 186. In 1648, ‘effusa est contemptio super principes.’ Mém. d'Omer Talon, vol. ii. p. 271.]

418

That the failure of the Fronde is not to be ascribed to the inconstancy of the people, is admitted by De Retz, by far the ablest observer of his time: ‘Vous vous étonnerez peut-être de ce que je dis plus sûr, à cause de l'instabilité du peuple: mais il faut avouer que celui de Paris se fixe plus aisément qu'aucun autre; et M. de Villeroi, qui a été le plus habile homme de son siècle, et qui en a parfaitement connu le naturel dans tout le cours de la ligue, où il le gouverna sous M. du Maine, a été de ce sentiment. Ce que j'en éprouvois moi-même me le persuadoit.’ Mém. de Retz, vol. i. p. 348; a remarkable passage, and forming a striking contrast to the declamation of those ignorant writers who are always reproaching the people with their fickleness.

419

This knotty point was decided in favour of the Duke of York, to whom, in 1649, ‘la reine fit de grands honneurs, et lui donna une chaise à bras.’ Mém. de Motteville, vol. iii. p. 275. In the chamber of the king, the matter seems to have been differently arranged; for Omer Talon (Mém. vol. ii. p. 332) tells us that ‘le duc d'Orléans n'avoit point de fauteuil, mais un simple siège pliant, à cause que nous étions dans la chambre du roi.’ In the subsequent year, the scene not being in the king's room, the same writer describes ‘M. le duc d'Orléans assis dans un fauteuil.’ Ibid. vol. iii. p. 95. Compare Le Vassor, Hist. de Louis XIII, vol. viii. p. 310. Voltaire (Dict. Philos. art. Cérémonies) says: ‘Le fauteuil à bras, la chaise à dos, le tabouret, la main droite et la main gauche, ont été pendant plusieurs siècles d'importants objets de politique, et d'illustres sujets de querelles.’ Œuvres de Voltaire, vol. xxxvii. p. 486. The etiquette of the ‘fauteuil’ and ‘chaise’ is explained in Mém. de Genlis, vol. x. p. 287.

420

See Mém. de Motteville, vol. iii. pp. 309, 310.

421

See a list of those it was proper for the queen to kiss, in Mém. de Motteville, vol. iii. p. 318.

422

Mém. de Omer Talon, vol. i. pp. 217–219. The Prince de Condé hotly asserted, that at a Te Deum ‘il ne pouvait être assis en autre place que dans la première chaire.’ This was in 1642.

423

For a quarrel respecting the ‘drap de pied,’ see Mém. de Motteville, vol. ii. p. 249.

424

A very serious dispute was caused by the claim of the Prince de Marsillac, for ‘permission d'entrer dans le Louvre en carrosse.’ Mém. de Motteville, vol. iii. pp. 367–389.

425

Mém. de Pontchartrain, vol. i. pp. 422, 423, at the coronation of Louis XIII. Other instances of difficulties caused by questions of precedence, will be found in Mém. d'Omer Talon, vol. iii. pp. 23, 24, 437; and even in the grave work of Sully, Œconomies Royales, vol. vii. p. 126, vol. viii. p. 395; which should be compared with De Thou, Hist. Univ. vol. ix. pp. 86, 87.

426

Mém. de Lenet, vol. i. pp. 378, 379. Lenet, who was a great admirer of the nobles, relates all this without the faintest perception of its absurdity. I ought not to omit a terrible dispute, in 1652, respecting the recognition of the claims of the Duke de Rohan (Mém. de Conrart, pp. 151, 152); nor another dispute, in the reign of Henry IV., as to whether a duke ought to sign his name before a marshal, or whether a marshal should sign first. De Thou, Hist. Univ. vol. xi. p. 11.

427

This difficulty, in 1652, caused a violent quarrel between the two dukes, and ended in a duel in which the Duke de Nemours was killed, as is mentioned by most of the contemporary writers. See Mém. de Montglat, vol. ii. p. 357; Mém. de la Rochefoucauld, vol. ii. p. 172; Mém. de Conrart, pp. 172–175; Mém. de Retz, vol. ii. p. 203; Mém. d'Omer Talon, vol. iii. p. 437.

428

Pontchartrain, one of the ministers of state, writes, under the year 1620: ‘En ce même temps s'étoit mû un très-grand différend entre M. le prince de Condé et M. le comte de Soissons, sur le sujet de la serviette que chacun d'eux prétendoit devoir présenter au roi quand ils se rencontreroient tous deux près sa majesté.’ Mém. de Pontchartrain, vol. ii. p. 295. Le Vassor, who gives a fuller account (Règne de Louis XIII, vol. iii. pp. 536, 537), says, ‘Chacun des deux princes du sang, fort échauffez à qui feroit une fonction de maître d'hôtel, tiroit la serviette de son côté, et la contestation augmentoit d'une manière dont les suites pouvoient devenir fâcheuses.’ But the king interposing, ‘ils furent donc obligez de céder: mais ce ne fut pas sans se dire l'un à l'autre des paroles hautes et menaçantes.’

429

According to some authorities, a man ought to be a duke before his wife could be allowed to meddle with the queen's shift; according to other authorities, the lady-in-waiting, whoever she might be, had the right, unless a princess happened to be present. On these alternatives, and on the difficulties caused by them, compare Mém. de Saint-Simon, 1842, vol. vii. p. 125, with Mém. de Motteville, vol. ii. pp. 28, 276, 277.

430

Also connected with the institution of chivalry, both being cognate symptoms of the same spirit.

431

Even just before the French Revolution, these feelings still existed. See, for instance the extraordinary details in Campan, Mém. sur Marie-Antoinette, vol. i. pp. 98, 99; which should be compared with an extract from Prudhomme's Mirror de Paris, in Southey's Commonplace Book, third series, 1850, p. 251, no. 165.

432

Ludlow thus expresses the sentiments which induced him to make war upon the crown: ‘The question in dispute between the king's party and us being, as I apprehend, whether the king should govern as a god by his will, and the nation be governed by force like beasts? or whether the people should be governed by laws made by themselves, and live under a government derived from their own consent? being fully persuaded, that an accommodation with the king was unsafe to the people of England, and unjust and wicked in the nature of it.’ Ludlow's Memoirs, vol. i. p. 230. Compare Whitelocke's spirited speech to Christina, in Journal of the Swedish Embassy, vol. i. p. 238; and see pp. 390, 391.

433

On the disgraceful subserviency of the most eminent men of letters, see Capefigue's Louis XIV., vol. i. pp. 41, 42, 116; and on the feeling of the people, Le Vassor, who wrote late in the reign of Louis XIV., bitterly says, ‘mais les Français, accoutumés à l'esclavage, ne sentent plus la pesanteur de leurs chaînes.’ Le Vassor, Hist. de Louis XIII, vol. vi. p. 670. Foreigners were equally amazed at the general, and still more, at the willing servility. Lord Shaftesbury, in a letter dated February 1704–5, passes a glowing eulogy upon liberty; but he adds, that in France ‘you will hardly find this argument understood; for whatever flashes may now and then appear, I never yet knew one single Frenchman a free man.’ Forster's Original Letters of Locke, Sidney, and Shaftesbury, 1830, p. 205. In the same year, De Foe makes a similar remark in regard to the French nobles, Wilson's Life of De Foe, vol. ii. p. 209; and, in 1699, Addison writes from Blois a letter which strikingly illustrates the degradation of the French. Aikin's Life of Addison, vol. i. p. 80. Compare Burnet's Own Time, vol. iv. p. 365, on ‘the gross excess of flattery to which the French have run, beyond the examples of former ages, in honour of their king.’

434

The terms of this compact between the crown and the church are fairly stated by M. Ranke: ‘Wir sehen, die beiden Gewalten unterstützten einander. Der König ward von den Einwirkungen der weltlichen, der Clerus von der unbedingten Autorität der geistlichen Gewalt des Papstthums freigesprochen.’ Die Päpste, vol. iii. p. 168.

435

This part of his character is skilfully drawn by Sismondi, Hist. des Français, vol. xxv. p. 43.

436

Flasson supposes that the first persecuting laws were in 1679: ‘Des l'année 1679 les concessions faites aux protestans avaient été graduellement restreintes.’ Diplomatie Française, vol. iv. p. 92. But the fact is, that these laws began in 1662, the year after the death of Mazarin. See Sismondi, Hist. des Français, vol. xxv. p. 167; Benoist, Edit. de Nantes, vol. iii. pp. 460–462, 481. In 1667, a letter from Thynne to Lord Clarendon (Lister's Life of Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 446) mentions ‘the horrid persecutions the reformed religion undergoes in France;’ and Locke, who travelled in France in 1675 and 1676, states in his Journal (King's Life of Locke, vol. i. p. 110) that the Protestants were losing ‘every day some privilege or other.’

437

An account of the revocation will be found in all the French historians; but I do not remember that any of them have noticed that there was a rumour of it in Paris twenty years before it occurred. In March 1665 Patin writes, ‘On dit que, pour miner les huguenots, le roi veut supprimer les chambres de l'édit, et abolir l'édit de Nantes.’ Lettres de Patin, vol. iii. p. 516.

438

Compare Burnet's Own Time, vol. iii. pp. 73–76, with Siècle de Louis XIV, in Œuvres de Voltaire, vol. xx. pp. 377, 378. Voltaire says that the Protestants who persisted in their religion ‘étaient livrés aux soldats, qui eurent toute licence, excepté celle de tuer. Il y eut pourtant plusieurs personnes si cruellement maltraitées qu'elles en moururent.’ And Burnet, who was in France in 1685, says, ‘all men set their thoughts on work to invent new methods of cruelty.’ What some of those methods were, I shall now relate; because the evidence, however painful it may be, is necessary to enable us to understand the reign of Louis XIV. It is necessary that the veil should be rent; and that the squeamish delicacy which would hide such facts, should give way before the obligation which the historian is under of holding up to public opprobrium, and branding with public infamy, the church by which the measures were instigated, the sovereign by whom they were enforced, and the age in which they were permitted.

The two original sources for our knowledge of these events are, Quick's Synodicon in Gallia, 1692, folio; and Benoist, Histoire de l'Edit de Nantes, 1695, 4to. From these works I extract the following accounts of what happened in France in 1685. ‘Afterwards they fall upon the persons of the Protestants; and there was no wickedness, though never so horrid, which they did not put in practice, that they might enforce them to change their religion… They bound them as criminals are when they be put to the rack; and in that posture, putting a funnel into their mouths, they poured wine down their throats till its fumes had deprived them of their reason, and they had in that condition made them consent to become Catholics. Some they stripped stark naked, and after they had offered them a thousand indignities, they stuck them with pins from head to foot; they cut them with pen-knives, tear them by the noses with red-hot pincers, and dragged them about the rooms till they promised to become Roman Catholics, or that the doleful outcries of these poor tormented creatures, calling upon God for mercy, constrained them to let them go… In some places they tied fathers and husbands to the bed-posts, and ravished their wives and daughters before their eyes… From others they pluck off the nails of their hands and toes, which must needs cause an intolerable pain. They burnt the feet of others. They blew up men and women with bellows, till they were ready to burst in pieces. If these horrid usages could not prevail upon them to violate their consciences, and abandon their religion, they did then imprison them in close and noisome dungeons, in which they exercised all kinds of inhumanities upon them.’ Quick's Synodicon, vol. i. pp. cxxx. cxxxi. ‘Cependant les troupes exerçoient partout de cruautez inouies. Tout leur étoit permis, pourveu qu'ils ne fissent pas mourir. Ils faisoient danser quelquefois leurs hôtes, jusqu'à ce qu'ils tombassent en défaillance. Ils bernoient les autres jusqu'à ce qu'ils n'en pouvoient plus… Il y en eut quelques-uns à qui on versa de l'eau bouillante dans la bouche… Il y en eut plusieurs à qui on donna des coups de bâton sous les pieds, pour éprouver si ce supplice est aussi cruel que les relations le publient. On arrachoit à d'autres le poil de la barbe… D'autres brûloient à la chandelle le poil des bras et des jambes de leurs hôtes. D'autres faisoient brûler de la poudre, si près du visage de ceux qui leur resistoient, qu'elle leur grilloit toute la peau. Ils mettoient à d'autres des charbons allumez dans les mains, et les contraignoient de les tenir fermées, jusqu'à ce que les charbons fussent éteints… On brûla les pieds à plusieurs, tenant les uns long-tems devant un grand feu; appliquant aux autres une pelle ardente sous les pieds; liant les pieds des autres dans des bottines pleines de graisse, qu'on faisoit fondre et chauffer peu à peu devant un brasier ardent.’ Benoist, Hist. de l'Edit de Nantes, vol. v. pp. 887–889. One of the Protestants, named Ryau, they ‘lièrent fort étroitement; lui sevrèrent les doigts des mains; lui fichèrent des épingles sous les ongles; lui firent brûler de la poudre dans les oreilles; lui percèrent les cuisses en plusieurs lieux, et versèrent du vinaigre et du sel dans ses blessures. Par ce tourment ils épuisèrent sa patience en deux jours; et le forcèrent à changer de religion,’ p. 890. ‘Ses dragons étoient les mêmes en tous lieux. Ils battoient, ils étourdissoient, ils brûloient en Bourgogne comme en Poitou, en Champagne comme en Guyenne, en Normandie comme en Languedoc. Mais ils n'avoient pour les femmes ni plus de respect, ni plus de pitié que pour les hommes. Au contraire, ils abusoient de la tendre pudeur qui est une des propriétez de leur sexe; et ils s'en prevaloient pour leur faire de plus sensibles outrages. On leur levoit quelquefois leurs juppes par dessus la tête, et on leur jetoit des seaux d'eau sur le corps. Il y en eut plusieurs que les soldats mirent en chemise, et qu'ils forcèrent de danser avec eux dans cet état… Deux filles de Calais, nommées le Noble, furent mises toutes nuës sur le pavé, et furent ainsi exposées à la mocquerie et aux outrages des passans… Des dragons ayant lié la dame de Vezençai à la quenouille de son lit, lui crachoient dans la bouche quand elle l'ouvroit pour parler ou pour soupirer.’ pp. 891, 892. At p. 917 are other details, far more horrible, respecting the treatment of women, and which indignation rather than shame prevents me from transcribing. Indeed, the shame can only light on the church and the government under whose united authority such scandalous outrages could be openly perpetrated, merely for the sake of compelling men to change their religious opinions.

439

M. Blanqui (Hist. de l'Economie Politique, vol. ii. p. 10) says, that the revocation of the Edict of Nantes cost France ‘cinq cent mille de ses enfants les plus industrieux,’ who carried into other countries ‘les habitudes d'ordre et de travail dont ils étaient imbus.’ See also Siècle de Louis XIV, chap. xxxvi., in Œuvres de Voltaire, vol. xx. pp. 380, 381. Several of them emigrated to North America. Compare Godwin on Population, pp. 388, 389, with Benoist, l'Edit de Nantes, vol. v. pp. 973, 974, and Lyell's Second Visit to the United States, edit. 1849, vol. ii. p. 159. See also, on the effects of the Revocation, Lettres inédites de Voltaire, vol. ii. p. 473.

440

On the diminished respect for kings, caused by the abandonment of divine right, see Spencer's Social Statics, pp. 423, 424; and on the influence of the clergy in propagating the old doctrine, see Allen's learned work on the Royal Prerogative, edit. 1849, p. 156. See also some striking remarks by Locke, in King's Life of Locke, vol ii. p. 90.

441

‘Qu'est devenu, en effet, le droit divin, cette pensée, autrefois acceptée par les masses, que les rois étaient les représentants de Dieu sur la terre, que la racine de leur pouvoir était dans le ciel? Elle s'est évanouie devant cette autre pensée, qu'aucun nuage, aucun mysticisme n'obscurcit; devant cette pensée si naturelle et brillant d'une clarté si nette et si vive, que la souveraine puissance, sur la terre, appartient au peuple entier, et non à une fraction, et moins encore à un seul homme.’ Rey, Science Sociale, vol. iii. p. 308. Compare Manning on the Law of Nations, p. 101; Laing's Sweden, p. 408; Laing's Denmark, p. 196; Burke's Works, vol. i. p. 391.

442

In this, as in all instances, the language of respect long survives the feeling to which the language owed its origin. Lord Brougham (Political Philosophy, vol. i. p. 42, Lond. 1849) observes, that ‘all their titles are derived from a divine original – all refer to them as representing the Deity on earth. They are called “Grace,” “Majesty.” They are termed “The Lord's anointed,” “The Vicegerent of God upon earth;” with many other names which are either nonsensical or blasphemous, but which are outdone in absurdity by the kings of the East.’ True enough: but if Lord Brougham had written thus three centuries ago, he would have had his ears cut off for his pains.

443

‘La première période du gouvernement de Louis XIV commence donc en 1661.’ Capefigue's Louis XIV., vol. i. p. 4.

444

Biog. Univ. vol. xi. p. 157.

445

In Biog. Univ. vol. xxxiii. p. 50, he is said to have composed it ‘à l'âge de seize ans;’ and at p. 46, to have been born in 1623.

446

Leslie's Natural Philosophy, p. 201; Bordas Demoulin, Le Cartésianisme, vol. i. p. 310. Sir John Herschel (Disc. on Nat. Philos. pp. 229, 230) calls this ‘one of the first, if not the very first,’ crucial instance recorded in physics; and he thinks that it ‘tended, more powerfully than any thing which had previously been done in science, to confirm in the minds of men that disposition to experimental verification which had scarcely yet taken full and secure root.’ In this point of view, the addition it actually made to knowledge is the smallest part of its merit.

447

Montucla (Hist. des Mathématiques, vol. ii. p. 61) says, ‘vers 1658;’ and at p. 65, ‘il se mit, vers le commencement de 1658, à considérer plus profondément les propriétés de cette courbe.’

448

Montucla (Hist. des Mathémat. vol. ii. p. 136) enthusiastically declares that ‘si Descartes eût manqué à l'esprit humain, Fermat l'eût remplacé en géométrie.’ Simson, the celebrated restorer of Greek geometry, said that Fermat was the only modern who understood porisms. See Trail's Account of Simson, 1812, 4to. pp. 18, 41. On the connexion between his views and the subsequent discovery of the differential calculus, see Brewster's Life of Newton, vol. ii. pp. 7, 8; and compare Comte, Philosophie Positive, vol. i. pp. 228, 229, 726, 727.

449

See extracts from two letters written by Fermat to Roberval, in 1636, in Montucla, Hist. des Mathématiques, vol. ii. pp. 136, 137; respecting which there is no notice in the meagre article on Fermat, in Hutton's Mathematical Dictionary, vol. i. p. 510, 4to. 1815. It is a disgrace to English mathematicians that this unsatisfactory work of Hutton's should still remain the best they have produced on the history of their own science. The same disregard of dates is shown in the hasty remarks on Fermat by Playfair. See Playfair's Dissertation on the Progress of Mathematical Science, Encyclop. Brit. vol. i. p. 440, 7th edition.

450

Hutton's Mathemat. Dict. vol. i. p. 572.

451

Ibid. vol. ii. p. 46.

452

Of which Sauveur may be considered the creator. Compare Eloge de Sauveur, in Œuvres de Fontenelle, Paris, 1766, vol. v. p. 435, with Whewell's Hist. of the Induc. Sciences, vol. ii. p. 334; Comte, Philos. Pos. vol. ii. pp. 627, 628.

453

In the report presented to Napoleon by the French Institute, it is said of the reign of Louis XIV., ‘les sciences exactes et les sciences physiques peu cultivées en France dans un siècle qui paroissoit ne trouver de charmes que dans la littérature.’ Dacier, Rapport Historique, p. 24. Or, as Lacretelle expresses it (Dix-huitième Siècle, vol. ii. p. 10), ‘La France, après avoir fourni Descartes et Pascal, eut pendant quelque temps à envier aux nations étrangères la gloire de produire des génies créateurs dans les sciences.’