The most pragmatic and immediate concern of Louis XIV’s government in terms of foreign policy was to ensure the territorial security of the kingdom. This could be achieved in part through the acquisition of more territory, and partly through bringing the surrounding smaller states directly into the French orbit. The latter policy
functioned on the basis that these small states would benefit from French protection at the cost of surrendering their autonomy in matters of foreign policy, and in some cases, their domestic policy as well. But Louis’s lack of sensitivity to the interests of their rulers ultimately led to its failure. Throughout his personal rule his tactics towards them were characterized by bullying and arrogance: during the War of Devolution he forced Duke Charles IV of Lorraine against his will to hand over a part of his army to fight alongside the French, and parallels can be seen in 1690 and 1703 when he made the same demands on Victor Amadeus II of Savoy. Louis’s inability to show sufficient sensitivity to the ambitions of Victor Amadeus led to breakdown in Franco-Savoyard relations on both occasions, and then to the occupation of part of Victor Amadeus’s states in order to guarantee the south-eastern frontier of the kingdom.
If Louis’s primary intention with regard to both Lorraine and Savoie was to make them into friendly satellite states of France, he only began to learn how to do this when it was almost too late. The partial occupation of Lorraine during the War of the Spanish Succession, despite the significant extra cost and inconveniences incurred, demonstrates that by the end of the reign, Louis had begun to learn his lesson. Louis’s preferred ‘neutralization’ of Lorraine was without doubt the more realistic and responsible of the two visions in 1702, and it was only as a result of events that he was forced to go further.
There were certainly other factors driving French foreign policy during the course of the reign. The politics of the frontier, for instance, evolved significantly during the period. Historians have long argued about the extent of Louis’s desire to extend his territory, perhaps towards what were perceived as the ‘natural frontiers’ of France, namely the Alps, the Pyrenees, and the Rhine. Certainly there were those close to
Louis XIV who supported this idea; from the 1670s Vauban favoured a more linear frontier whereby the kingdom would become a bounded and enclosed space.467 As Vauban wrote in 1693:
‘All the ambitions of France should be contained within the summits of the Alps and the Pyrenees, the Swiss and the two seas: it is there that she should intend to establish her boundaries by legitimate means according to the times and the occasions.’468
Yet even if there was significant strategic value to a territory, there was not necessarily any attempt made to permanently annex it; in the case of Savoie, the temporary conquest of the duchy supported the war itself but no attempt was made to make this acquisition permanent. This was despite the argument of Vauban, who was in favour of the permanent acquisition of both Nice and Savoie; in 1696 he called for Louis XIV to cede Pinerolo and keep Montmélian, and in 1705 he was against the destruction of Montmélian, as he believed it should be kept as part of thepré carré.
To facilitate its strategic objectives, the French crown maintained an arsenal of jealously guarded claims to territories outside its borders, which needed to be kept alive, if hibernating, and could be activated whenever necessity dictated.469 Just as Richelieu had done after his occupation of Lorraine, Louis XIV employed jurists and historiographers to publicize the legal basis of his claims to the duchy.470 There was ample precedent of activating latent claims on titles to legitimize a French monarch’s control of an occupied territory. Louis XIII was declared count of Barcelona when 467
P. Sahlins, ‘Natural Frontiers Revisited: France’s Boundaries since the Seventeenth Century’,American Historical Review, 95 (1990), p. 1434. 468
Vauban, ‘Réflexion sur la guerre présente et sur les nouveaux convertis’, 5 May 1693, quoted in P. Canestrier, ‘L’oeuvre de Vauban dans les Alpes Maritimes’, in
Congrès Vauban(Beaune, 1935), p. 489. 469
When Louis XIV heard through his envoy to the duke of Lorraine in 1704 that a ducal historiographer was writing a history of the duke’s father, in which it was claimed that the succession to the duchy was transmitted in the male line at the exclusion of women (thereby bypassing Louis XIV’s claims), Louis insisted that the envoy lodge an objection, as this point was ‘far from decided’. AAE CP Lorr. 55 f. 188, Louis XIV to d’Audiffret, 19 Jun. 1704.
470
For example, the professor of Law and Historiographer Royal, Jean Doujat, produced a memorandum on the subject in 1673: BN MF 4877 f. 74, ‘Mémoire de l’Etat ancien et moderne de Lorraine...”, 1673.
French troops assisted the Catalan Revolt in the 1640s, and in 1694 and 1697 the ducs de Noailles and Vendôme respectively were invested by Louis’s command with the office of viceroy of Catalonia when they occupied the province. Louis XIV claimed Roussillon as part of his legitimate patrimony when the province was ceded to France at the Peace of the Pyrenees, and selective history was used to argue that Roussillon was not Catalan but historically and legitimately French.471 At the time of the
conquest of the Franche-Comté during the War of Devolution, the French government publicized its rights to the province through the rights of Queen Marie-Therèse, and this had a favourable effect on French influence there.472 These rights were activated particularly when a territory was seen as being strategically useful for France: thus Louis XIV was given the title of ‘count of Nice’ during the occupations of the county in the 1690s and 1700s.473 More subtly, during the occupation of Savoie in the 1690s, medals designed by the members of theAcadémie Royale des Inscriptionsin
commemoration of the 1690 battle of Staffarda depicted Louis XIV (as Hercules) who can be seen trampling the centaur (Victor Amadeus) and taking the ducal coronet.474 Of course, there was considerable variation in how substantial these claims actually were, and the activation of claims, particularly in the cases of Nice and Savoie, did not necessarily imply a desire to annex a territory outright.
Chapters II and III provided a narrative of the two occupations of Lorraine and
Savoie. What emerges from this is that there was no pre-conceived or uniform policy practiced by the French when it came to the occupations of these territories, and that they developed on the basis of varying events and pressures. Many of these pressures were born out of the strategic objectives of the French monarchy. Others came from
471
According to French legal arguments, when Louis XIII accepted the Accords of Péronne in Sep. 1641, he and his heirs had been accepted as the legitimate rulers of the Catalan people. Stewart,Roussillon and France, pp. 20-23.
472
Grosperrin,L’Influence Française, p. 9 473
The titleLudovicus XIV Dei gratia rex Francia et Navarria comes Nisseaewas used in the seals of theSénat, the idea being that the county was a dependency of Provence: Chaumet,Louis XIV, ‘Comte de Nice’, p. 213.
474
Another medal, struck in the early 1690s, contains the legend ‘SABAUDIA IN PROVINCIARUM REDACTA’, expressing the irrevocable annexation of Savoie to France. J. Jacquiot, ‘La valeur d’information des allégories de médailles concernant l’Histoire de la Savoie dans la second moitié du XVIIe siècle’ in G. Mombello et al. (eds.),Culture et Pouvoir dans les Etats de Savoie du XVIIe siecle à la Revolution
within the territories, stimulated by the occupied populations, and others still came from the rightful, but usurped, rulers. The following chapters will compliment this by investigating in further detail the way that the French administered the occupied territories, and the way the French authorities and the occupied populations interacted with each other.