Makers of History
Louis XIV.
By JOHN S. C. ABBOTT
WITH ENGRAVINGS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
1904
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870, by
Harper & Brothers,
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
Copyright, 1898, by Laura A. Buck.
LOUIS XIV.PREFACE
We all live a double life: the external life which the world sees, andthe internal life of hopes and fears, joys and griefs, temptations andsins, which the world sees not, and of which it knows but little. Nonelead this double life more emphatically than those who are seated uponthrones.
Though this historic sketch contains allusions to all the mostimportant events in the reign of Louis XIV., it has been the mainobject of the writer to develop the inner life of the palace; to leadthe reader into the interior of the Louvre, the Tuileries, Versailles,and Marly, and to exhibit the monarch as a man, in the details ofdomestic privacy.
This can more easily be done in reference to Louis XIV. than any otherking. Very many of the prominent members of his household left theirautobiographies, filled with the minutest incidents of every-day life.
It is impossible to give any correct idea of the life of this proudmonarch without allusion to the corruption in the midst of which hespent his days. Still, the writer, while faithful to fact, hasendeavored so to describe these scenes that any father can safely readthe narrative aloud to his family.
There are few chapters in history more replete with horrors than thatwhich records the "Revocation of the Edict of Nantes." The facts givenare beyond all possibility of contradiction. In the contemplation ofthese scenes the mind pauses, bewildered by the reflection forced uponit, that many of the actors in these fiend-like outrages were inspiredby motives akin to sincerity and conscientiousness.
The thoughtful reader will perceive that in this long and wicked reignLouis XIV. was sowing the wind from which his descendants reaped thewhirlwind. It was the despotism of Louis XIV. and of Louis XV. whichushered in that most sublime of all earthly dramas, the FrenchRevolution.
John S. C. Abbott.
New Haven, Conn., 1870.