It is related that in 1661, on the day following the death of the great
Cardinal Mazarin, the various officials of the State approached their young
King, Louis XIV. "To whom shall we go now for orders, Your Majesty?" "To
me," answered Louis, and from that date until his death in 1715 they had
no other master. Whether we accept the tale as literal fact or only as the
vivid French way of visualizing a truth, we find here the central point
of over fifty years of European history. The two celebrated cardinals,
Richelieu and Mazarin, had, by their strength and wisdom, made France by
far the most powerful state in Europe. Moreover, they had so reduced the
authority of the French nobility, the clergy, and the courts of law as to
have become practically absolute and untrammelled in their control of the
entire government. Now, all this enormous power, both at home and abroad,
over France and over Europe, was assumed by a young man of twenty-three. "I
am the state," said Louis at a later period of his career. He might almost
have said, "I am Europe," looking as he did only to the Europe that
dominated, and took pleasure in itself, and made life one continued
glittering revel of splendor. Independent Europe, that claimed the right of
thinking for itself, the suffering Europe of the peasants, who starved and
shed their blood in helpless agony--these were against Louis almost from
the beginning, and ever increasingly against him.

At first the young monarch found life very bright around him. His courtiers
called him "the rising sun," and his ambition was to justify the title, to
be what with his enormous wealth and authority was scarcely difficult, the
Grand Monarch. He rushed into causeless war and snatched provinces from
his feeble neighbors, exhausted Germany and decaying Spain. He built huge
fortresses along his frontiers, and military roads from end to end of his
domains. His court was one continuous round of splendid entertainments. He
encouraged literature, or at least pensioned authors and had them clustered