Christmas Every Day

1715 The death of Louis XIV

I did my master’s thesis in History on a book of political philosophy commissioned for the son of Louis XIV. I find that I am much less generous to the memory of the man than the English author of this 19th-century assessment.

Louis XIV had reigned over France for seventy-two years. He had been allowed to assume power beyond his predecessors; he had been idolised to a degree unknown to any other European sovereign. His wars, though latterly unfortunate, had greatly contributed to raise him in the eyes of his subjects. He had enlarged his dominions, and planted a grandson on the throne of Spain. As specially Le Grand Monarque amongst all contemporary sovereigns, he was viewed even by neighbouring nations as a being somewhat superior to common humanity. It becomes curious to see how such a demi-god could die.

Up to the 23^rd of August 1715, Louis was able to attend council and transact business; for two days more, he could listen to music and converse with his courtiers. About seven in the evening of the 25th, the musicians came as usual to entertain him; but he felt himself too unwell to receive them, and his medical advisers were called instead. It was seen that his hour was approaching, and the last offices of religion were that night administered to him.

Next day, after mass, he called to his bedside the cardinals De Rohan and De Billi, in presence of Madame de Maintenon (his wife), the Father Tellier, the chancellor, and other officers, and said to them ‘I die in the faith and submission of the church. I am not instructed in the matters which trouble her, but have followed your counsels, and uniformly done what you desired. If I have done amiss, you will be answerable before God, who is now my witness.’ The two cardinals made no other answer than by eulogiums on his conduct: he was destined to be flattered to the last moment of his life.

Immediately after, the king said: ‘I again take God to witness that I have never borne hatred to the Cardinal de Noailles; I have always been distressed by what I have done against him; but it was what they told me I ought to do.’ Thereupon, Blouin, Fagon, and Mareschal asked in elevated tones: ‘Will they not allow the king to see his archbishop, to mark the reconciliation? The king, who understood them, declared that, far from having any objection, he desired it, and ordered the chancellor to make the archbishop come to him— ‘If these gentlemen,’ he said, looking to the two cardinals, ‘do not find it inconvenient.’ It was a critical moment for them.

To leave the conqueror of heresy to die in the arms of a heretic was a great scandal in their eyes. They withdrew into the recess of a window to deliberate with the confessor, the chancellor, and Madame de Maintenon. Tellier and Billi judged the interview too dangerous, and induced Madame de Maintenon to think so likewise; Rohan and the chancellor, having the future in view, neither opposed nor approved; all, once more approaching the bed, renewed their praises of the delicacy of the royal conscience, and told him that such a step could not but subject the good cause to the triumph of its enemies—nevertheless, they were willing to see the archbishop come, if he would give the king his promise to accept the constitution. The timid prince submitted to their advice, and the chancellor wrote in consequence to the archbishop. Noailles felt keenly this last stroke of his enemies, answered with respect, but did not accept the conditions, and could not see the king. From that time he was nothing but an ingrate and a rebel, and they spoke of him no more, in order that the king might die in peace.

The same morning, the king had the infant Dauphin (his great-grandchild, subsequently Louis XV) brought to him by the Duchess de Ventadour, and addressed him in these words: ‘My child, you will soon be the sovereign of a great kingdom: what I most strongly recommend to you, is that you never forget your obligations to God; remember you owe Him all that you are. Endeavour to preserve peace with your neighbours. I have loved war too much. Do not imitate me in that, nor in my too great expenditure. Take counsel in all things; seek to know the best, that you may follow it. Relieve your people as much as you can, and do for them that which I have had the misfortune not to be able to do for them myself. Do not forget the great obligations you are under to Madame de Ventadour. For me, madam,’ turning to her, ‘I am sorry not to be in a condition more emphatically to mark my gratitude to you.’ He ended by saying to the Dauphin: ‘My dear child, I give you my blessing with all my heart;’ and he then embraced him twice with the greatest marks of tenderness.

The Duchess de Ventadour, seeing the king so moved, took away the Dauphin. The king then received, in succession, the princes and princesses of the blood, and spoke to them all, but separately to the Duc d’Orleans and the legitimate children, whom he had made come first. He rewarded all his domestics for the services they had rendered him, and recommended them to show the same attachment to the Dauphin.

After dinner, the king addressed those about him. ‘ Gentlemen, I ask your pardon for the bad example I have given you. I would wish to show my sense of the manner in which you have always served me, my sense of your invariable attachment and fidelity. I am extremely vexed not to have been able to do for you all I wished to do. I ask you for my great-grandson the same attachment and fidelity you have shewn to me. I hope you will all stand unitedly round him, and that, if any one breaks away, you will aid in bringing him back. I feel that I am giving way too much, and making you give way too—pray, pardon me. Adieu, gentlemen; I reckon upon your occasionally remembering me.’

On Tuesday the 27th, when the king had no one beside him but Madame de Maintenon and the chancellor, he caused to be brought to him two caskets, from which he directed numerous papers to be taken out and burned, and gave orders to the chancellor regarding the remainder. Subsequently to this, he ordered his confessor to be called, and after speaking to him in a low voice, made the Count of Ponchartrain approach, and instructed him to carry out his commands relative to conveying his heart to the Jesuits’ convent, and depositing it there opposite that of his father, Louis XIII.

With the same composure, Louis caused the plan of the castle of Vincennes to be taken from a casket, and sent to the grand marshal of the household, to enable him to make preparations for the residence of the court, and conducting thither the young king—such were the words used. He employed also occasionally the expression, In the time that I was king; and then, addressing himself to Madame de Maintenon, said: ‘I have always heard that it is a difficult thing to die; I am now on the verge of this predicament, and I do not find the process of dissolution so painful a one.’ Madame de Maintenon replied, that such a moment was terrible when we still cherished an attachment to the world and had restitutions to make. ‘As an individual,’ rejoined the king, ‘I owe restitution to no one; and as regards what I owe the kingdom, I trust in the mercy of God. I have duly confessed myself; my confessor declares that I have a great reliance in God; I have it with all my heart.’

How indubitable a security was Father Tellier for the conscience of a king! The following day (Wednesday) Louis, as he was conversing with his confessor, beheld in the glass two of his servants who were weeping at the foot of his bed. ‘Why do you weep,’ said he, ‘did you think I was immortal? My age should have prepared you for my death.’ Then looking to Madame de Maintenon, ‘What consoles me in quitting you, is the hope that we shall soon be reunited in eternity!’ She made no reply to this farewell, which did not appear at all agreeable to her. ‘Bolduc, the first apothecary, assured me,’ says Duclos, ‘that Madame de Maintenon said, as she left the room: “See the appointment which he makes with me! this man has never loved any one but himself.” Such an expression, the authenticity of which I would not guarantee, as the principal domestics bore her no good-will, is more suitable to the widow of Scarron [her first husband] than to a queen.’ However this may be, Madame de Maintenon departed immediately for Saint-Cyr, with the intention of remaining there.

A Marseille empiric, named Lebrun, made his appearance with an elixir, which he announced as a remedy for the gangrene which was advancing so rapidly in the king’s leg. The physicians, having abandoned all hope, allowed the king to take a few drops of this liquid, which seemed to revive him, but he speedily relapsed; a second dose was presented, his attendants telling him at the same time that it was to recall him to life. ‘To life or to death,’ said the king, taking the glass, ‘whatever pleases God.’ He then asked his confessor for a general absolution.

Since the king had taken to his bed, the court had gathered in a marked manner around the Duke of Orleans [the future regent]; but the king having apparently rallied on Thursday, this favourable symptom was so exaggerated, that the duke found himself alone.

The king having noticed the absence of Madame de Maintenon, exhibited some chagrin, and asked for her several times. She returned speedily, and said that she had gone to unite her prayers with those of her daughters, the virgins of Saint-Cyr. Throughout the following day, the 30th, she remained beside the king till the evening, and then seeing his faculties becoming confused, she went to her own room, divided her furniture among her servants, and returned to Saint-Cyr, from which she no more emerged.

From this time, Louis had but slight intervals of consciousness, and thus was spent Saturday the 31^st. About eleven o’clock at night, the curé, the Cardinal de Rohan, and the ecclesiastics of the palace came to repeat the prayers appointed for those in the agonies of death. The ceremony recalled the dying monarch to himself; he uttered the responses to the prayers with a loud voice, and still recognising the Cardinal de Rohan, said to him: ‘These are the last benefits of the church.’ Several times he repeated: ‘My God, come to my aid; haste to succour me’, and thereupon fell into an agony, which terminated in death on Sunday the 1^st September, at eight o’clock in the morning.

‘Although,’ remarks Voltaire, ‘the life and death of Louis XIV were glorious, he was not so deeply regretted as he deserved. The love of novelty, the approach of a minority in which each one anticipated to make his fortune, the constitution dispute which soured men’s minds, all made the intelligence of his death be received with a feeling which went further than indifference. We have seen the same people, which, in 1686, had besought from Heaven with tears the recovery of its sick king, follow his funeral procession with very different demonstrations . . . . Notwithstanding his being blamed for littleness, for severities in his zeal against Jansenism, an overweening degree of arrogance in success towards foreigners, a weakness in female relationships, too much rigour in personal matters, wars lightly entered upon, the Palatinate given over to the flames, and the persecution of the adherents of the reformed doctrines, still his great qualities and actions, when placed in the balance, outweigh his defects. Time, which ripens the opinions of men, has set its seal on his reputation; and in despite of all that has been written against him, his name will never be pronounced without respect, and without conjuring up the idea of an epoch memorable through all ages. If we regard this prince in his private life, we see him, it is true, too full of his exalted position, but withal affable, refusing to his mother any share in the government, but fulfilling towards her all the duties of a son, and observing towards his wife all the externals of good-breeding; a good father, a good master, always decorous in public, hard-working in council, exact in business, just in thought, eloquent in speech, and amiable with dignity.’

Shooting and killing and such on this date

1813 Fort Mims Massacre

In 1813 a war broke out in present-day Alabama between white settlers and an anti-white faction of the Creek tribe, known as the Red Sticks. Vowing revenge for a white militia attack on a Creek pack train at the Battle of Burnt Corn, a 1,000-man force of Red Sticks attacked Fort Mims, which sheltered hundreds of whites, their black slaves, and mixed-race farmers.  After storming the gates, a bloody massacre ensued in which about 500 settlers were killed. (The slaves were spared but taken captive). The battle prompted initial panic and an armed response. The climactic Battle of Horseshoe Bend in 1814 resulted in an American victory over the Creeks and gained fame for the victorious general, Andrew Jackson.

1914 Battle of Tannenberg 

The German master plan for World War I envisioned first using most of its forces in fighting an offensive war against France on the Western Front, and maintaining a smaller army in the East for a defensive war against the Russian Empire. Once France had been conquered, the German army would then turn on the Russians who, it was believed, would be slower to mobilize. The Russians launched an attack on East Prussia in August 1914 and, at first, succeeded in driving the Germans back. The High Command in Berlin then sacked its military leadership in the East and replaced it with two new generals, Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff. With a more aggressive attitude, the two succeeded in smashing the Russians and forcing them out of East Prussia. The fame that this accrued the two led to their achieving a sort of military dictatorship over German from 1916-18. After the war both generals became involved in ultra-nationalist politics; Hindenburg was elected president of the Weimar Republic from 1925-34.

1918 Attempted Assassination of Vladimir Lenin

The Russian Revolution was a battle of coalitions. The Bolshevik wing of the Communist Party, led by Lenin, initially counted on the support of the left wing of the Socialist Revolutionaries but the two factions fell out early in 1918. One Left SR, Fanny Kaplan, who had been jailed under the Tsarist regime for a terrorist plot, approached Lenin as he emerged from a speech and shot at him three times with a pistol. Two bullets struck him in the neck and lung and he was rushed away for treatment. Kaplan told her captors: “My name is Fanya Kaplan. Today I shot Lenin. I did it on my own. I will not say from whom I obtained my revolver. I will give no details. I had resolved to kill Lenin long ago. I consider him a traitor to the Revolution.” She was soon executed by the Cheka, the Bolshevik secret police. This attempt, though a failure, had grave consequences: it prompted the Red Terror and probably hastened the death of Lenin who never quite recovered, leaving the Soviet project in the hands of Joseph Stalin.

1916 Birth of an under-rated author

Reputation is a fickle goddess; she attaches herself to the most undeserving of characters while those who truly merit fame often go unrecognized. This is certainly true for authors of fiction. Prolific drones like Margaret Atwood or Gore Vidal are lauded, while superior writers are condemned to ignominy because they are classified as “genre” writers. I will today, in a small way, make up for that by bringing to your attention the writing of Jack Vance.

The career of John Holbrook “Jack” Vance spanned a seventy-year period in which he won plaudits for his works of fantasy, science fiction and crime under his own name and pseudonyms including “Ellery Queen”. 

Vance was a master of plotting, dry wit, and, best of all, strange possible cultures. He might be termed the greatest sociologist of speculative fiction. To read a Vance novel is to be plunged into worlds where all communication might be sung, or where automation has been banned, or where the choice of the mask you wear determines your social status.

For fantasy fans I recommend the Lyonesse trilogy, for lovers of picaresque derring-do there are the Demon Princes novels and the Planet of Adventure series. You can find humour in the detections of Magnus Rudolph or Space Opera. The Pleasant Grove and Fox Valley Murders and the Cadwal Chronicles will tax your powers of deduction. My personal favourites are “The Moon Moth”, Emphyrio, and The Face. Give Vance a try; he will not disappoint.

1883 Krakatoa blows its top

The volcano on the island of Krakatoa in the Dutch East Indies had been unusually active for months in 1883, with numerous earthquakes and eruptions of ash and smoke. On the morning of August 27, 1883, these activities reached an astonishing and deadly climax. In four enormous explosions, the island self-destructed with consequences felt around the planet.

The first two explosions set off tsunamis that raced, as tall as 90 feet high, toward neighbouring islands. The third and fourth explosions may have made more noise than anything else in recorded history; they were heard in Australia and India, causing listeners 3,000 miles away to think they were hearing gunfire; they ruptured the ear drums of sailors on ships 40 miles away. The energy released in the final explosion tore the mountain apart; it has been estimated to have been many times more powerful than the largest hydrogen bomb exploded by humans. The air waves ripped around the globe several times and were still being felt days later.

The damage was breath-taking; the tsunamis and lava eruptions killed tens of thousands of inhabitants in the Indies. The clouds of ash that poured forth caused the sky to darken for years and produced sunsets so red and vivid that fire departments in North America were summoned to put out what were thought to be local fires. For months, the moon seemed to be blue or green and a ring was observed around the sun. The ash spewed into the skies reflected more sunlight than usual, causing global temperatures to drop and altering weather patterns for years.

Despite the title of the 1968 disaster movie Krakatoa, East of Java, the island is, in fact, west of Java.

1823 Kindness is rewarded

This site often marks the great, the horrible, and the momentous, but today we pause to consider the actions of six kind people, five of them poor, and undistinguished except by virtue, and the rich man who posthumously recompensed them.

On the 25^th of August 1823, took place one of those distributions of the Montyon prizes which form so pleasant a feature in the social condition of France. The Baron de Montyon, or Monthyon, was a wealthy man, who, during the second half of the last century, occupied a distinguished place in the estimation of his countrymen; chiefly in various judicial capacities, in which his probity and honour were universally admitted. He established, at various periods of his life, no less than eight prizes, to be awarded to worthy recipients by the Académie des Sciences, the Académie Française, and the Faculté de Medicine. They were briefly as follows: In 1780, he invested 12,000 francs, the interest to be spent as an annual prize for inventions and discoveries useful in the arts. In 1782, he invested an equal sum, for an annual prize for any literary work likely to be most useful to society; and a similar one for lessening the unhealthiness of trades and manufactures. In 1783, another of equal amount for the benefit of the poor of Poitou and Berri; one for assisting poor men of letters; one for simplifying certain special mechanical arts; and one for rewarding acts of virtue among the poor. In 1787, and subsequent years, he established other prizes—all for good and worthy objects. The revolution drove him to Switzerland, and then to England, whence he did not return to France till 1815. His prize for virtue had been suppressed by the revolutionists; but he took care, by his will, to remodel it on a permanent and enlarged basis. This good man died in 1820, at the advanced age of eighty-seven.

The distribution in 1823 will serve as well as any other, to show the mode in which the Montyon prize for virtue is awarded. Five prizes were given to five persons—four women and one man. One of the women, although her husband earned but sixteenpence a day, had taken into her house and supported a poor destitute female neighbour. Another, a milliner, had for twelve years supported the mistress under whom she had served as an apprentice, and who was afflicted with an incurable malady. A third had, in a similar way, supported for seventeen years a mistress under whom she had acted as a servant, and who had fallen into abject poverty. A fourth, who was a portress, had shewn her charity in a somewhat similar way. These four persons received one thousand francs each. But the chief prize was awarded to an old clothesman, Joseph Bécard.

During the French Revolution, one M. Chaviffiac, of Arras, had first been imprisoned, and then put to death. Many years afterwards, in 1812, his widow came to Paris, to obtain, if possible, some property which had belonged to her husband. In this she failed, and she was reduced to the lowest pitch of want. Bécard, when a servant to the Marquis de Steinfort, at Arras, had known the Chavilliacs as persons of some consideration in the place; and happening now to meet the poor lady in her adversity, he resolved to struggle for her as well as for himself, for grief had made her blind and helpless. He begged coarse food for himself, in order that he might buy better food for her out of his small incomings as an old clothesman. She became ill, and occupied the only bed he possessed; and he slept on a chair for three months—or rather kept resolutely awake during the greater part of the night, in order that he might attend upon the sick lady. Pain and suffering made her peevish and sour of temper; but he bore it all patiently, never once departing from his custom of treating her as a lady—higher in birth and natural condition than himself. This life continued for eleven years, she being the whole of the time entirely dependent on that noble-spirited but humble man. The lady died in May 1823. Bécard gave a small sum to a curé, to offer up prayers for her soul; he carved with his own hands a small wooden cross; and he placed it, together with an inscription, on her grave. Such was the man to whom the Académie Française, acting under the provisions of the Montyon bequest, awarded a prize of fifteen hundred francs, a gold medal, and honourable commendation in presence of the assembled academicians.

These prizes, often considered the forerunners of the Nobel Prizes, continue to be offered. One of them was awarded in 1879 to the French-Canadian writer Louis Fréchette.

410  Visigoths sack Rome

After decades of wandering through the Roman empire looking for a place to settle, battling other barbarians at times, at other times fighting Roman armies, the Visigothic horde under its king Alaric trudged down the Italian peninsula in the summer of 410. The bribes, diplomacy and military force that had kept Alaric at bay were now absent; he had besieged Rome twice before and now that his extortionate demands were being rebuffed by the Emperor Honorius (safe in Ravenna) he meant to take and loot Rome.

By  this time, Rome was no longer a politically important city; the capital of the West was in Ravenna, the East was governed from Constantinople. It had been bled dry of its wealth by earlier barbarian threats, but it was still a large and prosperous town that Alaric was intent on plundering. On August 24 his troops entered the city and subjected it to a thorough but not atrocious sack. The Visigoths were by this time Christians (though of the Arian variety, now out of fashion in Rome) and they allowed some churches to be used as sanctuary. Nevertheless, there was the usual murder, rape, pillaging and slave-taking before Alaric called a halt and his forces withdrew.

Rome, in physical terms, would undergo worse treatment by invaders. In 455, the Vandals would launch a much more harmful attack; in 846, 11,000 Arab raiders looted St Peter’s Basilica;  in 1527, German troops, many of them Lutherans, sacked Rome in what was probably the most destructive attack the city ever endured. But the psychological effect of the 410 Fall of Rome was enormous. It was, said St Jerome, as if “the whole world had died in one city.” It appalled the ancient world and led many to blame the adoption of Christianity for the destruction. This charge summoned forth St Augustine’s epic The City of God which not only rebutted such accusations but laid forth a Christian scheme for understanding all of history.

In the long run the 410 attack would be overshadowed by the fall of the entire Roman empire in the West. In 476, a barbarian general took the imperial crown from the last emperor and sent the boy home.