Chapter 27

There was even some fiction in regard to his age, for though he had entered his fourteenth year, he was hardly thirteen years old. If a boy of that age were transferred from his place in school to the presidency of the United States to-day, the cases would be parallel. The education of the juvenile king had been neglected, perhaps intentionally, by Mazarin for his cunning purposes, and though he had been instructed in all the forms and ceremonials of the court, he was deficient in his knowledge of the solid branches of learning, even for one in his sphere at that age. But the government, so far as he was concerned, was all a fiction. It was to be carried on in his name in the future as it had been in the name of his mother, the queen-regent, before, though neither of them was the actual ruler. Mazarin was more than "the power behind the throne;" he was practically the throne itself.

At seven o'clock in the morning, six heralds, clothed in crimson velvet covered with _fleurs de lis_, the royal emblem of France, mounted on elegantly caparisoned horses, led the court to the palace where the Parliament assembled. The king's trumpeters came next to the heralds, and they were followed by the governors of provinces, two hundred of the nobility, and the officers of the royal household, escorted and flanked by several companies of light horsemen. Pages and valets had been dressed in new liveries, and the spectacle was as magnificent as the occasion required.

Then came the boy-king, as a chronicler of the period describes him, "with his august countenance beaming with a gentle dignity truly royal, and with his natural politeness, calling forth from the assembled multitude that lined the streets redoubled good wishes for his health and prosperity." The youth who played the principal part in this great ceremonial was dressed in elegant garments, so covered with gold embroideries that the color and material could hardly be discerned. He was mounted on a beautiful and high-spirited horse, which pranced and curvetted as if aware that he bore a king; and Louis managed him so skilfully and gracefully that he won the admiration of the spectators.

The king was received at the entrance of the palace chapel, where the court attended divine service, by the Bishop of Bayeux, who made an address to him, to which he listened, apparently in a thoughtful mood, and then ushered him into the chapel, where he heard low mass. Then he took his place in the hall of parliament. The minutest particulars of the scene that surrounded him when he took his seat are given in the memoirs of some who were present. Seated, and with his head covered, which was alone his privilege, the young king addressed the assembled representatives of the people:

"Gentlemen, I have come before my Parliament to inform you that, in obedience to the law of my kingdom, I desire to take upon myself the government of my country; and with the blessing of God, I trust that it will be conducted with justice and piety. My chancellor will state to you more particularly my intentions."

The official indicated returned to his place and eloquently enlarged upon the address of his majesty in a long discourse. The queen-mother then spoke to him, telling him that she had taken charge of his education and of the government in accordance with the expressed wish of the late king, her honored lord, and in obedience to the law she passed over to him the government of the kingdom, and hoped that the grace of God, with his own power and prudence, would render his reign a happy one. The king thanked her for the care she had given to his education and the government of the kingdom, and begged her to continue to give him her good counsels, saying that she should be his chief adviser.

His brother, the Duke of Anjou, then approached him, kneeled, kissed his hand, and protested his fidelity. The Duke of Orleans then followed the example of his nephew, as did a multitude of princes, dukes, marshals, ecclesiastics, and all the officers of state. The royal party returned to the Palais-Royal amidst the unanimous acclamations of the multitude, and the cries of "Vive le roi" continued all night, with bonfires and illuminations. The boy of fourteen was now actually the king, so far as forms could make him so, though he was to remain not much more than a cipher for several years to come.

The war of the Fronde lasted about eight years, and was carried on in the interest of the people against the court, which had overburdened them with taxes. The word "_fronde_" means a sling, and was applied to those who criticised the government then and in later years. The Parliament refused to impose the taxes required by the regent, which meant Mazarin, and some of its members were arrested and imprisoned. Some of the most distinguished nobles in France were implicated with the opposition, including the great Conde, the king's uncle. Mazarin's politic yielding, which alone saved him from destruction, assisted in restoring peace. Conde was in arms against the government, but he was defeated by Turenne. The people and the nobles were tired of the strife, and a general amnesty was proclaimed in 1653.

Though Louis was well instructed in his religious duties, was entirely familiar with court etiquette, and knew enough about military affairs to enable him to review his troops, he knew little or nothing about the politics of his kingdom, for he had been purposely kept in ignorance of affairs of state. But he manifested a sound judgment and considerable discernment even at this early age. He accompanied Turenne in a campaign against Conde, and was present at the siege of Arras, which put an end to the Fronde contests. Some of the Frondeurs had injudiciously called in the aid of Spain to their cause, and that brought on war between the two nations. Peace was made in 1659, and one of the articles of the treaty stipulated the marriage of Louis XIV. and Marie Therese, daughter of Philip IV. of Spain, and they were married a year later. This princess was good-natured and beautiful, but this was about all that could be said of her, for she was rather weak in intellect, and was not such a queen as "Louis the Great" needed. His majesty was not attached to her, though he invariably treated her with the most ceremonious respect, and extended to her the utmost kindness and consideration.

Though the king had a certain respect for the proprieties of his position, he lived in a period of the greatest immorality and license, while he attended strictly to his formal religious duties. Judged by any standard of the morals of more modern times, the verdict of average citizens would be against him. He was surrounded by dissolute men, and some, who ought to have protected him from the assaults of vice, placed him in its way. He was no worse in this respect than even Richelieu and Mazarin, not to mention his mother and many of the most noted men of his time. This is not the place to detail the king's gallantries, for they would fill a volume.

When Louis was twenty-three years of age, Cardinal Mazarin died, having ruled the nation for eighteen years; but ten of them were after the king had come to his majority, and the minister had discovered that he had a will of his own, incompetent as he then was to hold the reins of government. Louis went to see him in his final hours, and asked him for his last counsels. "Sire," replied the dying cardinal, "see that you respect yourself, and others will respect you; never have another first minister; employ Colbert in all things in which you need the services of an intelligent and devoted man." And the king followed this advice, and perhaps Mazarin gave it because he understood so well the inclination of Louis.

Mazarin died possessed of an immense fortune, which was not generally believed to have been honestly acquired. He was a usurer, though he could be very liberal when his policy demanded. On his death-bed his confessor warned him that he was eternally lost if he did not restore whatever wealth he had fraudulently accumulated; but the dying cardinal declared that he had nothing which had not been bestowed upon him by the bounty of the king. His fortune was estimated at fifty millions of francs, or about ten millions of dollars, a vast sum for that time. He gave the bulk of it to his nieces and nephews, with presents to members of the royal family, and eighteen large diamonds to the crown, called "the Mazarins."

Like Richelieu, he had built a palace on the Seine, which he gave to the State, and the Palais Mazarin is now occupied by the French Academy. This act and the creation of a dukedom were to perpetuate his name. He was the owner of one of the original twenty-five Bibles printed by Gutenberg, which is called by Mazarin's name, and was once sold for about twenty thousand dollars.

After the death of the great minister, officials of the government desired to know to whom they were to apply for instructions, and the king promptly replied that they were to address themselves to him. Louis had hitherto devoted himself almost wholly to the pleasures of his dissolute age, and he astonished his people and the nations of Europe by assuming in reality the entire control of the affairs of state, which he retained to the end of his life. He proceeded at once to examine into the finances of the nation, and appointed Colbert, as Mazarin had advised, minister of this department. He succeeded Fouquet, a brilliant man who had amassed enormous wealth by robbing the treasury. Louis was firm and resolute in carrying out his will, and he caused the arrest of the peculating minister immediately after a magnificent fete he had given in honor of his sovereign. He was convicted and sentenced to imprisonment for life.

Colbert did not disappoint the king, and the measures recommended by him at once improved the finances, stimulated the commerce of the country, established extensive manufactures, and filled the treasury. France was in the highest degree prosperous as a nation. Louis was arbitrary and absolute. His most notable saying, "_L'etat c'est moi_" (I am the State), was fully realized in his administration. He made war and made peace at his own pleasure, and, as monarchs are measured, he was entitled to the appellation of Louis le Grand, chiselled on the triumphal arches of Paris to perpetuate his glory. In the later years of his reign his wars made serious inroads upon the treasury, and they were not always successful. The building of the immense and extravagant palace of Versailles, with its surroundings, costing a billion francs, was an act of folly often condemned, and was one of the burdens which broke down the treasury of the nation. Colbert was dead, and the king, with Louvois, his over-liberal minister, dissipated the resources he had collected.

Marie Therese, the queen, died in 1683. He afterward married Madame de Maintenon, then the widow of the lame and deformed poet Scarron, who had rescued her from poverty. She had a powerful influence over the king, which was unfortunate for him, for she was a bigot, though a better woman than most of those who had been his intimates. Throughout his reign Louis maintained the most severe system of court etiquette. He regarded himself as the absolute owner of his realm, and the arbiter of the existence of all his subjects. His habits were methodical. He rose at eight, and was dressed by his valets in the presence of many courtiers, after he had performed his devotions. He breakfasted at ten, and dined alone at one, waited upon by the highest officers of the court. His presence awed those who came before him.

He patronized and encouraged poets, authors, and artists; and Moliere, both author and actor, was a great favorite with him, and appears to have been the only man of his profession who was ever admitted to the honor of dining with the king. Though Louis was not known to make a joke himself, he greatly enjoyed the witty conversation of Moliere, who is commemorated in Paris by a fountain and street named after him.

The last years of the reign of Louis XIV. are in strong contrast with the glorious period of the zenith of his prosperity. Several bloody defeats of his armies darkened the military splendor of his reign, the treasury was well-nigh bankrupt, and his court for the speedy trial and punishment of offenders, political or otherwise, had estranged the people; but he remained arbitrary and absolute to the end. At the age of seventy-seven he died, after intense suffering, in 1715. He died a great king, but not a great man.

[Signature of the author.]

WILLIAM PENN

(1644-1718)

William Penn was born in London, October 14, 1644. He was the son of a naval officer of the same name, who served with distinction both in the Protectorate and after the Restoration, and who was much esteemed by Charles II. and the Duke of York. At the age of fifteen he was entered as a gentleman-commoner at Christchurch, Oxford. He had not been long in residence, when he received, from the preaching of Thomas Loe, his first bias toward the doctrines of the Quakers; and in conjunction with some fellow-students he began to withdraw from attendance on the Established Church, and to hold private prayer-meetings. For this conduct Penn and his friends were fined by the college for non-conformity: and the former was soon involved in more serious censure by his ill-governed zeal, in consequence of an order from the king that the ancient custom of wearing surplices should be revived. This seemed to Penn an infringement of the simplicity of Christian worship; whereupon he, with some friends, tore the surplices from the backs of those students who appeared in them. For this act of violence, totally inconsistent, it is to be observed, with the principles of toleration which regulated his conduct in after life, he and they were very justly expelled.

Admiral Penn, who, like most sailors, possessed a quick temper and high notions of discipline and obedience, was little pleased with this event, and still less satisfied with his son's grave demeanor, and avoidance of the manners and ceremonies of polite life. Arguments failing, he had recourse to blows, and as a last resource, he turned his son out of doors; but soon relented so far as to equip him, in 1662, for a journey to France, in hope that the gayety of that country would expel his new-fashioned and, as he regarded them, fanatical notions. Paris, however, soon became wearisome to William Penn, and he spent a considerable time at Saumur, for the sake of the instruction and company of Moses Amyrault, an eminent Protestant divine. Here he confirmed and improved his religious impressions, and at the same time acquired, from the insensible influence of those who surrounded him, an increased polish and courtliness of demeanor, which greatly gratified the admiral on his return home in 1664.

Admiral Penn went to sea in 1664, and remained two years on service. During this time the external effects of his son's residence in France had worn away, and he had returned to those grave habits, and that rule of associating only with religious people, which had before given his father so much displeasure. To try the effect of absence and change of associates, Admiral Penn sent William to manage his estates in Ireland, a duty which the latter performed with satisfaction both to himself and his employer. But it chanced that, on a visit to Cork, he again attended the preaching of Thomas Loe, by whose exhortations he was deeply impressed. From this time he began to frequent the Quakers' meetings; and in September, 1667, he was imprisoned, with others, under the persecuting laws which then disgraced the statute-book. Upon application to the higher authorities, he was soon released. Soon after the admiral again turned him out of doors.

In 1668, he began to preach, and in the same year he published his first work, "Truth Exalted, etc." We cannot here notice his very numerous works, of which the titles run, for the most part, to an extraordinary length; but "The Sandy Foundation Shaken," published in the same year, claims notice as having led to his first public persecution. He was detained in prison for seven months, and treated with much severity. In 1669 he had the satisfaction of being reconciled to his father. He was one of the first sufferers by the passing of the Conventicle Act, in 1670. He was imprisoned in Newgate, and tried for preaching to a seditious and riotous assembly in Gracechurch Street; and this trial is remarkable and celebrated in criminal jurisprudence for the firmness with which he defended himself, and still more for the admirable courage and constancy with which the jury maintained the verdict of acquittal which they pronounced.

In the same year died Sir William Penn, in perfect harmony with his son, toward whom he in the end felt the most cordial regard and esteem, and to whom he bequeathed an estate computed at L1,500 a year--a large sum in that age. Toward the end of the year he was again imprisoned in Newgate for six months, the statutable penalty for refusing to take the oath of allegiance, which was maliciously tendered to him by a magistrate. This appears to have been the last absolute persecution for religion's sake which he endured. Though his poor brethren continued to suffer imprisonment in the stocks, fines, and whipping, as the penalty of their peaceable meetings for divine worship, the wealthy proprietor, though he travelled largely, both in England and abroad, and labored both in writing and in preaching, as the missionary of his sect, both escaped injury, and acquired reputation and esteem by his self-devotion. To the favor of the king and the Duke of York he had a hereditary claim, which appears always to have been cheerfully acknowledged; and an instance of the rising consideration in which he was held appears in his being admitted to plead, before a committee of the House of Commons, the request of the Quakers that their solemn affirmation should be admitted in the place of an oath.

Penn married in 1672, and took up his abode at Rickmansworth, in Hertfordshire. In 1677 we find him removed to Worminghurst, in Sussex, which long continued to be his place of residence. His first engagement in the plantation of America was in 1676, in consequence of being chosen arbitrator in a dispute between two quakers who had become jointly concerned in the colony of New Jersey.

In these transactions he had the opportunity of contemplating the glorious results which might be hoped for from a colony founded with no interested views, but on the principles of universal peace, toleration, and liberty; and he felt an earnest desire to be the instrument in so great a work, more especially as it held out a prospect of deliverance to his persecuted Quaker brethren in England, by giving them a free and happy asylum in a foreign land. Circumstances favored his wish. The crown was indebted to him L16,000 for money advanced by the late admiral for the naval service. Accordingly, Penn received, in 1681, a grant by charter of that extensive province, named Pennsylvania by Charles himself, in honor of the admiral.

He immediately drew up and published "Some Account of Pennsylvania, etc.;" and then "Certain Conditions or Concessions, etc.," to be agreed on between himself and those who wished to purchase land in the province. These having been accepted by many persons, he proceeded to frame the rough sketch of a constitution, on which he proposed to base the charter of the province. The price fixed on land was forty shillings, with the annual quit-rent of one shilling, for one hundred acres; and it was provided that no one should, in word or deed, affront or wrong any Indian without incurring the same penalty as if the offence had been committed against a fellow-planter; that strict precautions should be taken against fraud in the quality of goods sold to them; and that all differences between the two nations should be adjudged by twelve men, six of each. And he declares his intention "to leave myself and my successors no power of doing mischief; that the will of one man may not hinder the good of a whole country." It was this constitution, substantially, which Burke, in his "Account of the European Settlements in America," describes as "that noble charter of privileges, by which he made them as free as any people in the world, and which has since drawn such vast numbers of so many different persuasions and such various countries to put themselves under the protection of his laws. He made the most perfect freedom, both religious and civil, the basis of his establishment; and this has done more toward the settling of the province, and toward the settling of it in a strong and permanent manner, than the wisest regulations could have done on any other plan."

In 1682 a number of settlers, principally Quakers, having been already sent out, Penn himself embarked for Pennsylvania, leaving his wife and children in England. On occasion of this parting, he addressed to them a long and affectionate letter, which presents a very beautiful picture of his domestic character, and affords a curious insight into the minute regularity of his daily habits. He landed on the banks of the Delaware in October, and forthwith summoned an assembly of the freemen of the province, by whom the frame of government, as it had been promulgated in England, was accepted. Penn's principles did not suffer him to consider his title to the land as valid without the consent of the natural owners of the soil. He had instructed persons to negotiate a treaty of sale with the Indian nations before his own departure from England; and one of his first acts was to hold that memorable assembly, to which the history of the world offers none alike, at which this bargain was ratified, and a strict league of amity established. We do not find specified the exact date of this meeting, which took place under an enormous elm-tree, near the site of Philadelphia, and of which a few particulars only have been preserved by the uncertain record of tradition. Well and faithfully was that treaty of friendship kept by the wild denizens of the woods; "a friendship," says Proud, the historian of Pennsylvania, "which for the space of more than seventy years was never interrupted, or so long as the Quakers retained power in the government."