Arvède Barine - Louis XIV and La Grande Mademoiselle, 1652-1693

Because the Court was in general lazy and frivolous, a hasty opinion of the remainder of France should not be formed. The Court did not fairly represent the entire nation; outside of it there was room for other opinions and sentiments. It was during the years of 1650 to 1656, which appear to us at first sight almost a moral desert, that private charity made in the midst of France one of its greatest efforts, an effort very much to the honour of all concerned in it.

I have noticed elsewhere 66 66 See The Youth of La Grande Mademoiselle . For this chapter cf. La misère au temps de la Fronde et Saint-Vincent de Paul , by Feillet; La cabale des dévots , by by Raoul Allier; Saint-Vincent de Paul , by Emanuel Broglie; Saint-Vincent de Paul et les Goudi , by Chantelauze; Port-Royal , by Sainte-Beuve. the frightful poverty of the country during the Fronde. This distress which was changing into desert places one strip after another of French territory, must be relieved, and amongst those in authority no one was found capable of doing it.

It is hardly possible to represent to one's self to-day the condition left by the simple passage of an army belonging to a civilised people, through a French or German land, two or three hundred years ago.

The idea of restricting the sufferings caused by war to those which are inevitable is a novel one. In the seventeenth century, on the contrary, the effort was to increase them. The chiefs for the most part showed a savage desire to excite the mania for destruction which is so easily aroused with soldiers during a campaign. Towards the end of the Fronde, some troops belonging to Condé, then in the service of the King of Spain, occupied his old province of Bourgogne. If any district of France could have hoped to be respected by the Prince, it was this one; his father had possessed it before him and it was full of their friends. Ties of this kind, however, were of no advantage. March 23, 1652, the States of Bourgogne wrote to M. de Bielle, their deputy at Court:

The enemies having already burned fourteen villages [the names follow], besides others since burned, these fire-fiends are still in campaign and continuing these horrible ravages, all which has been under the express order of M. le Prince, which the commandant [de la ville] de Seurre has received, to burn the entire Province if it be possible. The same Sieur de Bielle can judge by the account of these fires, to which there has so far been no impediment presented, in what state the Province will be in a short time.

The common soldier troubled himself little whether the sacked region was on the one or the other side of the frontier. He made hardly any difference.

Some weeks after the fires in Bourgogne, two armies tortured the Brie. The one belonged to the King, the other to the Duc de Lorraine, and there was only a shade less of cruelty with the French forces than with the others. When all the troops had passed, the country was filled with charnel houses, and there are charnel houses and charnel houses.

That of Rampillon, 67 67 Village of the arrondissement of Provins. particularly atrocious, must be placed to the account of the Lorraines: "at each step one met mutilated people, with scattered limbs; women cut in four quarters after violation; men expiring under the ruins of burning houses, others spitted." 68 68 Feillet, La misère au temps de la Fronde . No trouble was taken to suppress these hells of infection.

It would be difficult to find any fashion of carrying on a war both more ferocious and more stupid. Some chiefs of divisions, precursers of humanitarian ideas, timidly protested, in the name of interest only, against a system which always gave to campaigning armies the plague, famine, and universal hatred. A letter addressed to Mazarin, and signed by four of these, Fabert at the head, supplicates him to arrest the ravages of a foreigner in the services of France, M. de Rosen. Mazarin took care to pay no attention to this protest: it would have been necessary first to pay Rosen and his soldiers. If it is expected to find any sense of responsibility in the State, in the opinion of contemporaries, for saving the survivors, left without bread, animals, nor harvests, without roof and without working tools, there is disappointment; the State held itself no more responsible for public disasters than for the poor, always with it.

The conception of social duty was not yet born. Public assistance was in its infancy, and the little which existed had been completely disorganised by the general disorders; like everything else. Each city took care of its beggars or neglected them according to its own resources and circumstances. On the other hand, the idea of Christian charity had taken a strong hold upon some circles, under the combined influence of the Jansenism which exacted from its devotees a living faith; of a secret Catholic society whose existence is one of the most curious historical discoveries of these last years 69 69 See the volume of Raoul Allier, La cabale des dévots . ; and of a poor saint whose peasant airs and whose patched soutane caused much laughter when he presented himself before the Queen. Vincent de Paul is easily recognised. Relations with great people had not changed him. It was said of him after years of Court society, "M. Vincent is always M. Vincent," and this was true: men of this calibre never change, happily for the world.

He became the keynote of the impulse which caused the regeneration of provincial life, almost ruined by the wars of the Fronde. Even after the work was ended it would be difficult to decide upon the share of each of these bodies in this colossal enterprise. The society to which allusion has been made was founded in 1627, by the Duc de Ventadour, whose mystical thought had led him, as often happens, to essentially practical works. The name of Compagnie du Saint Sacrement was given it, and without doubt its supreme end was "to make honoured the Holy Sacrament."

Precisely on account of this, the society sought to "procure" for itself "all the good" in its power, for nothing is more profitable to religion than support, material as well as spiritual and moral, distributed under its inspiration and as one might say on its own part.

One passes easily from the practice of charity, a source of precious teaching, to the correction of manners. After comes the desire to control souls, which naturally leads to the destruction of heresies, with or without gentleness.

This programme was responsible for many admirable charitable works, two centuries in advance of current ideas, and, at the same time, for cruelties, infamies, all the vices inseparable from the sectarian spirit in which the end justifies the means.

Once started, the society rapidly increased, always hidden, and multiplying precautions not to be discovered, since neither clergy nor royalty were well disposed towards this mysterious force, from which they were constantly receiving shocks without being able to discover whence came the blows.

It was an occult power, analogous in its extent and its intolerance, and even in the ways and means employed, to the Free Masonry of the present.

The Compagnie du Saint-Sacrement had links throughout France and in all classes. Anne of Austria was included in its sacred band and a shoemaker played in it an important rôle. Vincent de Paul enrolled himself in the ranks towards the year 1635, contributed to the good, and probably was ignorant of the evil to be found in its folds. Dating from his affiliation, his charitable works so mingled with those of the society that it was no longer to be recognised. The society brought to the Saint powerful succour, and aided him effectively in finding the support of which he had need; it would be difficult to say from whom came the first idea of many good works.