Vindication of the fronde? the cost of Louis Xiv's versailles building programme

French History

Volumn 21, Issue 2, 2007, Pages 205-225

  Bonney, Richard ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF LEICESTER   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 62849091584     PISSN: 02691191     EISSN: 14774542     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/fh/crm004     Document Type: Article

References (60)

1. R. J. Knecht, 'Francis I: prince and patron of the Renaissance', in The Courts of Europe: Politics, Patronage and Royalty, 1400-1800, ed. A. G. Dickens (1977), pp. 99-119;
2. idem, 'The court of Francis I', Eur Stud R, 8 (1978), 1-22;
3. idem, Renaissance Warrior and Patron: The Reign of Francis I(Cambridge, Mass., 1994), ch. 6;
4. idem, 'Francis I and Fontainebleau', Court Hist, 4 (1999), 93-118;
5. idem, 'Charles V's journey through France' in Court Festivals of the European Renaissance: Art, Politics and Performance, eds J. R. Mulryne and E. Goldring, (Aldershot, 2002), pp. 153-70;
6. idem, 'Court festivals as political spectacle: the example of sixteenth-century France', in Europa Triumphans: Court and Civic Festivals in Early Modern Europe, eds J. R. Mulryne, H. Watanabe-O'Kelly and M. Shewring (Aldershot, 2004), pp. 19-31.
7. P. Burke, The Fabrication of Louis XIV(1992).
8. Another well-known account of the reign, F. Bluche, Louis XIV, trans. M. Greengrass (Oxford, 1990), p. 171, does include some financial analysis of the expenditure on image building ('up to 1670, the Parisian palaces enjoyed a rate of investment which was double that of Versailles ⋯'), but it is incomplete.
9. Cf. pp. 689-90.
10. J. Duindam, Vienna and Versailles: The Courts of Europe's Dynastic Rivals, 1550-1780 (Cambridge, Mass., 2003).
11. J. M. Pénrose de Montclos, Versailles, trans. J. Goodman (New York, 1991), p. 60.
12. H. Carrier, Le labyrinthe de l'Etat. Essai sur le débat politique en France au temps de la Fronde, 1648-1653(2004).
13. Cited in Burke, The Fabrication of Louis XIV, p. 204.
14. Carrier, Le labyrinthe de l'Etat, p. 602: 'one of the major works of this period'.
15. R. Kleinman, Anne of Austria. Queen of France (Columbus, Ohio, 1985), p. 196.
16. H. H. Rowen, The King's State. Proprietary Dynasticism in Early Modern France (New Brunswick, N.J., 1980), p. 68.
17. K. Malettke, Opposition und Konspiration unter Ludwig XIV. Studien zu kritik und widerstand gegen system und politik des französischen königs während der ersten hälfte seiner persönlichen regierung (Göttingen, 1976), p. 91, n 16.
18. v, 18 Nov. 1652: 'which is not at all helpful'.
19. Carrier, La presse de la Fronde, ii. 377.
20. R. J. Bonney, 'France, 1494-1815', in idem, ed. The Rise of the Fiscal State in Europe, c. 1200-1815 (Oxford, 1999), pp. 132-3, 142-3.
21. 'People say that I am mean, but I do three things that have no connection with avarice, for I make war, I make love and I build.' Cited by M. Prestwich, 'France: monarchy and people, from Henri IV to Louis XLV, in The Age of Expansion. Europe and the World, 1559-1660, ed. H. R. Trevor-Roper (1968), p. 178.
22. T. Sarmant, Les demeures du Soleil: Louis XIV, Louvois et la surintendance des bâilments (2003), p. 330: 'l'union de la Guerre et des Bâtiments est un acte de majesté. Les contemporains ont senti, autant que nous, l'étrangeté du rapprochement, en dépit de l'expérience acquise par Louvois dans les fortifications ⋯ Le roi tient entre ses mains et la paix et la guerre; Louvois, qu'il a formé, n'est que son instrument. En 1690, un projet de jeton pour les Bâtiments du roi porte au revers un bras tenant un niveau et un autre bras tenant une épée, avec la légende ALTERA AEDIFICAT, ALTERA PVGNAT. C'est rappeler que les sciences et les arts, Fructus pacis, étaient aussi des Frucutus belli: les fruits des victoires royales.'
23. J. Hérault de Gourville, in Mémoires de Gourville, eds J. F. Michaud and J. J. F. Poujoulat, 3rd ser. v (1838), p. 525: 'Il projetoit une chambre de justice, et par conséquent la perte de M. Fouquet'
24. R. J. Bonney, The King's Debts. Finance and Politics in France, 1589-1661 (Oxford, 1981), pp. 204, 241;
25. D. Dessert, Fouquet (1987), p. 73.
26. H. Carrier, La Fronde. Contestation démocratique et misère paysanne. 52 Mazarinades, 2 vols (1982), ii. 34-5, no. 9.
27. J. Lair, Nicolas Foucquet. Procureur-général, surintendant des finances, ministre d'État de Louis XIV, 2 vols (1890), i. 519.
28. Gourville, Mémoires, p. 535.
29. E. Caldicott, 'Richelieu and the Arts', in Richelieu and His Age, eds J. Bergin and L. Brockliss (Oxford, 1992), pp. 203-35.
30. Above all, the superbly illustrated Richelieu: Art and Power, ed. H. Todd Goldfarb (co-production of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum-Fondation Corboud, Cologne; Ghent, 2002).
31. Bonney, The King's Debts, p, 265.
32. Dessert, Fouquet, p. 240, states the view of the king, that the fall of Fouquet had been decided three months earlier, i.e. since May or June 1661. Foucquet nevertheless claimed that, by virtue of his commission as surinteudant, the king was his sole judge. This claim was rejected by a decree of the conseil d'en haut drafted in the hand of Chancellor Séguier: AAE, Fr. 911, fo. 290-2, 6 July 1662. The decree cited as its justification the edict establishing the chambre de justice and the registration of the edict by the Parlement of Paris and other Parisian sovereign courts.
33. Burke, The Fabrication of Louis XIV, pp. 49-50.
34. G. Rowlands, The Dynastic State and the Army under Louis XIV. Royal Service and Private Interest, 1661-1701 (Cambridge, Mass., 2002), pp. 34-5.
35. Daniel Dessert, a partisan of Foucquet and a venomous critic of Colbert, argues that in Colbert's hands Louis XIV became no more than a marionette royale: Dessert, Colbert ou le serpent venimeux (Brussels, 2001), p. 7.
36. Sarmant, Les demeures du Soleil, p. 328. Sarmant adds that the surintendance des bâilments between 1683 and 1691 'est en effet un bon observatoire de la pratique gouvernmentale d'Ancien Régime'.
37. R. J. Bonney, Political Change in France under Richelieu and Mazarin, 1624-1661 (Oxford, 1978), pp. 422-3. A[rchives] N[ationales] E 1766, fo. 273, 22 Apr. 1672. AN E 1775, fo. 359, 18 April 1674. Bibliothèque Nationale, Mélanges Colbert 295, fo. 314, 8 Dec. 1675.
38. Pérouse de Montclos, Versailles, p. 25.
39. C. Mau-richeau-Beaupré, Versailles (Monaco, 1949), p. 23.
40. Cf. A. L. Moote, Louis XIII, the Just (Berkeley and Los Angeles, Calif., 1989), pp. 263-4.
41. B. Barbiche, in Dictionnaire du grand siècle, ed. F. Bluche (1990), p. 173.
42. B. Barbiche, Les institutions de la monarchie française à l'époque modeme (1999), p. 243.
43. Mansart was premier architecte between 1685 and 1699. 'L'extraordinaire réussite d'un Hardouin-Mansart, petit bourgeois devenu presque grand seigneur et presque ministre, a dû faire rêver plus d'un': Sarmant, Les demenres du Soleil, p. 334.
44. The author is indebted to Abi Longhurst, who transcribed the figures for costs of the château of Versailles. The calculations are based on J. Guiffrey (ed.), Comptes des Bâtiments du Roi sons le règne de Louis XIV (1881-1901). There is some criticism of this source at http://www.haven.u- net.com/6text-7B2.htm#Appendix%201 but while there may be reservations about the accounts in detail there can be little doubt that as a source overall they provide an invaluable guide to the royal expenditure on the palaces.
45. A. Corvisier, Louvois (1983), p. 386.
46. Because of pressure of work resulting from other responsibilities, Colbert had left work on the royal buildings to his youngest son, the marquis d'Ormoy and Blainville, who obtained the survivance in 1672. There were serious criticisms of his administration: 'battre Colbert sur le terrain de la comptabilité était tentant pour Louvois': Corvisier, Louvois, p. 382. Louvois, too, had to delegate, in his case to Villacerf as inspector-general of buildings from 1686.
47. Louvois was 'le parfait continuateur'. Sarmant rejects the idea of ideological or stylistic differences between Colbert and Louvois, p. 329.
48. M. M. and R. J. Bonney, Jean-Roland Malet: Premier historien des finances de la monarchie française (1993).
49. By choosing the untypical year 1685 as his example, Thierry Sarmant exaggerates the average annual expenditure on the royal buildings: Sarmant, Les demeures du Soleil, p. 17.
50. R. W. Berger, A Royal Passion. Louis XIV as Patron of Architecture (Cambridge, Mass., 1994), p. 107, characterizes the period 1678-1715 as a second phase of activity: 'Versailles, beginning in 1678, was transformed by Mansart into a gigantic, unified creation, unprecedented in scale, a new architectural archetype for the age of absolutism'. For the Versailles project as a whole, with Sarmant (cited below, n 61) we would question the term 'unified creation'.
51. A. Maistre, Le Canal des Deux Mers. Canal Royal du Languedoc, 1661-1810 (Toulouse, 1968), pp. 113-16.
52. J.-F. Solnon considers that it would have been cheap at the price had it cost 82 million, which it did not: Solnon, 'Versailles', in Dictionnaire du grand siècle, ed. Bluche, p. 1581.
53. Pérouse de Montclos suggests that 'roughly 80 million livres [were] expended in construction of the château complex and its gardens': idem, Versailles, p. 60. The confusion arises from the 1691 estimate of Marinier, Hardouin-Mansart's clerk, which is not in conformity with the published accounts, which produced a figure of 81.2 million.
54. G. Walton, Louis XlV's Versailles (Chicago, Ill., 1986), p. 50. See Table 2.
55. Walton, Louis XIV's Versailles, p. 166.
56. Berger, A Royal Passion, pp. 114, 151.
57. This table is discussed in more detail in R. J. Bonney, 'The French challenge to the Spanish Netherlands, 1635-1700'
58. in Banca, crédito y capital. La Monarquía Hispánica y los antiguos Países Bajos, 1505-1700, eds C. Sanz Ayán and B.J. García García, (Madrid, 2006), pp. 275-96.
59. Bluche, Louis XIV, p. 171.
60. '⋯ que les rois ne connaissent pas frein à leur autorité et qu'ils sont maîtres absolus de la vie et des biens de leurs sujets: c'était en effet le grand, le principal problème soulevé par la Fronde parlementaire': Carrier, La presse de la Fronde, i. 226-7. Fénelon's theme was Louis XIV's reckless pursuit of military rather than architectural glory; but the pursuit of architectural glory would doubtless have been criticized had the kingdombeen at peace: http://www.gutenberg.net/1/3/9/1/13914/. 'You, Sire, who could have secured such solid and peaceful glory by being the father of your subjects and the arbiter between your neighbours, have been turned into the common enemy of your neighbours, and you are being put at risk of passing for a harsh master in your own kingdom ⋯. This is this great kingdom, that so flourishes under a king who is depicted to us every day as the delight of his people, and who would truly be this if flattering advice had not poisoned him ⋯. Popular revolts, which had long become unknown, are becoming frequent ⋯. You are reduced to the shameful and deplorable extremity, either of leaving revolt unpunished and increasing it by that impunity, or of having the people massacred with inhumanity, when you have reduced them to despair by stripping from them, through your taxes for this war, the bread which they attempt to earn from the sweat of their brows. Yet while they have no bread, you yourself have no money, and you do not wish to recognize the extremity to which you are reduced ⋯. This glory, which hardens your heart, is dearer to you than justice, than your own repose, than the preservation of your people who perish every day from illnesses caused by famine, finally than your eternal salvation, which is incompatible with this idol of glory ⋯. You love only your glory and your convenience. You take everything for yourself as if you were God on earth, and everything else had only been created to be sacrificed to you. On the contrary, it is you whom God has only placed on earth for the good of your people.'