The Sun King (24 page)

At his first public audience with Louis XIV at Versailles the crowds in the château were so great that he could hardly get through them to the King's bedroom where he was received. Once there he made three deep reverences; the first on seeing the King, the second half-way across the room and the third when he was inside the balustrade surrounding the bed. Here the King awaited him, hat in hand, standing up and, signal mark of favour, spoke to him between the second and third reverences, saying he was glad to see so many French and English people together. He put on his hat; upon which Portland put on his and made his address, taking off the hat every time he mentioned his own or the French King. Louis then said ‘many things extremely flattering my myself' and dismissed him with a gracious smile. The courtiers remarked that Portland had been received as if he had been a sort of divinity. (Oral tradition has it that on one occasion Louis took Portland in his coach, inviting him with a gesture to get in first. When Portland did so without the slightest hesitation, Louis is supposed to have said ‘they told me that you were the most polite man in Europe and now I see that you are'.)

On receiving Portland's letter about the foregoing events, William replied ‘I have always commended your firmness and shall continue to do so provided you do not put it into practice against me'. He wrote to the Pensionary Heinsius, in Holland, to say that it was perhaps a pity that Portland had begun with the question of King James as ‘now he is perplexed as to how to proceed'. He told Portland not to mention it again but to get on with the Spanish succession.

However it was Louis XIV himself who broached this subject, through his ministers. They called on Portland and pointed out that King Charles might die at any minute: what did the King of England think should be
done in that case to prevent war? Portland replied vaguely that this death would certainly plunge their two countries into another war: the French and English interests were so much opposed that it was difficult to see how it could be avoided. The hard bargaining then began. Nobody now envisaged the whole Spanish empire remaining under one king, so the main points at issue between William and Louis were Spain itself, the Spanish Netherlands and, of special interest to England, South America and the security of Mediterranean trade. Louis XIV proposed that the crown of Spain should go to one of his younger grandsons, Anjou or Berri (now aged fifteen and thirteen), who should finish his education in Spain without a single Frenchman in his household. The Low Countries should go to the Elector of Bavaria. There should be such treaties for the protection of English trade as would give full satisfaction to Portland. Louis XIV supposed that the English would not like to see Spain joined to the Empire? The answer to this was that the English would not mind at all, knowing the state of the Emperor's affairs and in view of the fact that their enemy was France. The negotiations thus began went on for several months, like a game of poker. Portland saw the King continually and the two men evidently enjoyed each other's company, though Portland never wrote kindly about anything French and professed a deep distrust of the King's good faith. All the same he was gratified by his own personal success. One standing joke between him and Louis was the Duke of Savoy — the mere mention of his name — a suggestion, for instance, that he should be given Milan — was enough to send them into fits of laughter; and William, too, laughed sardonically on his side of the channel. This duke, a son-in-law of Monsieur's, turned his coat between France and the Empire and was renowned for never finishing a war in the same camp as that in which he began it, while always managing to be beaten — until Prince Eugène fought his battles for him, but this was not yet.

William told Portland to try and secure an interview with Mme de Maintenon; but she never saw the ambassadors, and as a firm friend of King James and Queen Mary was not likely to make an exception in favour of the usurper's. Portland was not invited to the very grand dinner party which Mme de Maintenon gave in April, when she married her niece to the Comte d'Ayen, son of the Duc de Noailles. Mme d'Aubigné, the despised sister-in-law and mother of the bride, was allowed to leave her convent in order to attend the festivities.

Louis XIV now sent the Comte de Tallart to represent him in London. Tallart was one of those Frenchmen who seem to be the nearest thing to perfection that humanity can produce. He was delightful and brilliant and was considered the best company of anybody at Versailles. Portland had seen a good deal of him there and, while never denying that he was a good talker, described him as being too pleased with himself. If Portland had a fault, it was jealousy. King William, whose own ambassador had received so much courtesy from the French, wished
to show all possible kindness to Tallart: he sent his yacht, the
William and Mary
, to bring him from Calais. Tallart soon became a great addition to London life, with his painted coaches, elegant clothes and charming personality; and King William liked him very much. He took the Duke of Ormonde's town house, in St James's Square, on to which he built a chapel, and here he kept one of those French embassies which to this day outshine all others. Lord Macaulay once remarked that French embassies to London, enjoying the advantages of good food, beautiful decoration and brilliant entertainment, have been the objects of degrading worship, and certainly the envoys from other lands are inclined to think so. In those days governments did not possess houses in foreign towns, as now; the ambassadors sometimes exchanged with each other (for instance, under Louis XV, the Dukes of Nivernais and Bedford exchanged not only houses but also servants and carriages) but more often they took some available house for the duration of their mission. The exception was the French ambassador to Rome who generally, but not always, lived in the Palazzo Farnese.

Louis XIV had drawn up a set of instructions for Tallart which show an extraordinarily acute knowledge of the English character and way of life. He was to find out which members of society were the leaders of public opinion — they would not necessarily be members of the government or aristocrats. There would be no harm in hobnobbing with the opposition; only of course he must have nothing to do with any Jacobite or he would be discredited. If the subject of King James were to be raised, Tallart was to say that Louis XIV would naturally like to see his cousin back on the throne but only if this was the unanimous desire of the English people.

As much as Portland distrusted Louis XIV, Tallart was convinced of the good faith of King William; but he wrote home saying that he was ‘by no means as powerful as we thought'. Public finances, he added, were in a bad way and the only interest the average Englishman took in the Spanish succession was to know how it might affect trade. He said that Lord Albemarle rose in favour every day. William himself told Portland that he was having a good deal of trouble with the English, who ‘don't care a fig for foreign affairs and only think of how one party can injure the other. Parliament does more harm than can be imagined by reducing the army estimates'. Presently he went to his beloved Holland, paying Tallart the compliment of taking him.

Towards the end of Portland's visit, on 22 April, Monsieur gave a dinner party for him at Saint-Cloud. There were twenty guests, including the Chevalier de Lorraine and the Marquis d'Effiat. Madame seems not to have been there. Portland sat between Monsieur's son the Duc de Chartres and the Duchesse de Foix — Monsieur had Chartres on his right and Mlle de Montauban on his left. The food was marvellous — all the early vegetables appearing for the first time. There was a splendid silver-gilt
surtout de table
, a new invention, much remarked
upon, by M. de Launay who had made two for the King.

In June 1698 Portland took his leave of the French King, from whom no foreigner and few French people had ever received so many honours and marks of favour. But Portland's dreadful sorrow was not lightened thereby, and he went to rejoin William knowing that things could never be the same between them again. Indeed when he had concluded the business with France, he resigned his charges at Court and retired into private life. One is glad to know that William sent for him on his deathbed and died in his arms, while Albemarle stood by. However it was Mary who had the last word: dangling over that strange man's heart, they found a locket containing her hair.

The Treaty of Loo was the outcome of Portland's and Tallart's embassies and it was a striking success for all concerned. The little Bavarian prince was to have Spain and her colonies, while the Dauphin and the Emperor were given various European territories as compensation. Louis XIV seems to have signed the treaty in good faith, since he wrote to d'Harcourt, his ambassador at Madrid, telling him to explain to any Spaniards who might show preference for a French king that it was the only method by which peace could be preserved. This arrangement came to nought, and is now forgotten because the baby who was the lynchpin of it died — poisoned, his father thought, by some Austrian spy. So all was to begin again.

At the turn of the century the King had reigned for nearly sixty years, had governed by himself for forty and had been married to Mme de Maintenon for seventeen. He was now an old man. He no longer greeted the duchesses with a kiss: he said his face had become too horrid. His grandson was married; his elder children were middle-aged, the Grand Dauphin rising forty and the Princesse de Conti thirty-four. Her life had been disappointing for one so lovely and so romantic: she never had a faithful lover or even very devoted friends. Now she had become pious, rather ailing and as dry as a stick; and officers of the guard were no longer sent away for daring to gaze at her. As soon as the much more fascinating Mme la Duchesse was grown up, she took Marie-Anne's place as the Dauphin's favourite sister.

Mme de Montespan had left the Court in 1691; she had long been urged to do so by her own son, du Maine, who coveted her flat. He also appropriated her house at Clagny which was thought embarrassingly near Versailles for her to live there once she had parted from the King. Mme de Maintenon had seen to it that her position should become more and more difficult; her younger children were taken away from her, the Comte de Toulouse, aged thirteen, was sent to the wars and Mlle de Blois put in charge of dreadful old Mme de Montchevreuil. This was the last straw. Athénaïs flew into a rage and told Bossuet to tell the King that she wished to retire for ever. She was taken at her word, as perhaps she had not expected to be; and the very next day du Maine was supervising the removal of her furniture. Quick work, as she remarked ruefully. After the death of the Marquis de Montespan in 1701 she hoped that the King would turn against Mme de Maintenon and marry her. She always declared that she was the one he loved, and that he had only left her for fear of hellfire. But in fact she never saw him again. Plunged in devotion and good works, she spent her last years trying to avoid her old colleague the Devil; she could not sleep alone or in the dark and was terrified of death. Saint-Simon describes her as still perfectly beautiful at sixty, but Madame says her skin was like a piece of paper children had been playing with, her whole face covered with little lines and her hair snow white.

A few months after his mother's departure, du Maine married one of
the midget Bourbons, a sister of M. le Duc. Athénaïs was not invited to the wedding. Du Maine was still the heart, the soul and the oracle of Mme de Maintenon, and the King loved his company; but everybody else much preferred his brother Toulouse who made an honourable career for himself in the Navy, married (for love) a member of the Noailles family and never had any royal pretentions. His country seat was Ram-bouillet — his town house the present Banque de France.

The King's family life had never been so sunny. It was transformed by the arrival, in 1696, of a bride for the Duc de Bourgogne; she was the twelve-year-old Marie-Adélaïde, the child of that Duke of Savoy who was considered so ridiculous by his fellow-rulers. Her mother was a daughter of Monsieur and Henrietta. There was such a to-do over the arrival of the little princess that Saint-Simon was able to play truant from the Court to achieve a long-cherished project; he took the painter Rigaud to La Trappe. The holy Abbé de Rancé would never allow himself to be painted — Rigaud had to pretend to be an ordinary visitor; but by dint of staring at Rancé for an hour or two he was able to go away and produce an excellent likeness from memory. That the King did not even notice the absence, without leave, of one of his dukes, was a measure of his interest in the new grand-daughter. He went all the way to Montargis to meet her, and wrote from there to give Mme de Maintenon his impressions of the infinitely important child, future Queen of France. This is the only letter (as opposed to little notes) from Louis to his wife that she did not burn after his death.

‘I got here before five o'clock; the Princess arrived just before six. I went to receive her at her coach. She waited for me to speak first and then she answered very well, with a hint of shyness which would have pleased you. I led her through the crowd to her room, from time to time I had the torches brought nearer so that their light fell on her face and she could be seen. She endured this walk and these lights with graceful modesty. At length we got to her room where the crowd and the heat were enough to kill one. From time to time I showed her to those who came up and I was watching her from all points of view in order to tell you my impression.'

We can imagine how he watched her, in the flickering light of those torches, like a clever old fox with eyes that missed nothing. It was love at first sight. He goes on to tell Mme de Maintenon that he has never seen such grace or such a pretty figure; she is dressed fit to be painted (no doubt her French mother had seen to that); her eyes are bright and beautiful, her complexion perfect; she had masses of black hair, luscious red lips; white, most irregular teeth (which were to make her short life a martyrdom), pretty hands, rather red as little girls' hands are, and she is thin, which is also of her age. Her curtsey very poor, very Italian and there is something altogether Italian about her look; but she pleases. He can see that all are enchanted with her. She is like the first picture they had — not a bit like the others. He will write again
after supper when he expects to have noticed some more touches. He hopes he will be able to keep up a certain attitude he has adopted until he gets home, which he is longing to do.