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Show THE WORLD'S GREAT EVENTS i ALBERT PAYSON TERHUNE i) oy UuadMeuil & Compauy.) T AM the state." The luim who Bald this threw a tremendous uccent ou the "I." It vas a way he had. lie weut oq the theory that he and his personal longings, long-ings, ainhitlons and glories were the only things ou earth to be considered. Yet this conceited Utile man In the big wig was the greatest sovereign of his day. For he was the "Grand Monarch," Mon-arch," Louis XIV, king of France. Kichelieti, the cardinal and prime minister, who had done so much for France, and incidentally for himself, was dead. And Louis XIII had died soon after his minister, leaving the throne to his live-year-old son, Louis XIV. Cardinal Mu.urin had succeeded succeed-ed Kichelieti ns prime minister, and managed to embroil ! ranee in foreign wars and domestic revolts. lie was a miser and forced the hoy king to slee;) In dirty, tattered sheets and to practice prac-tice other humiliating petty economies. econo-mies. Fou(itet, the minister of finance, took advantage of the unsettled un-settled slate of the court to rob the royal exchequer. Other abuses nourished nour-ished unhindered. Hence, when Mazarin died. In lfSGI, the twenty -three-year-old Louis decided de-cided he had had enough of ministers. When asked to whom various matters I of state were henceforth to be referred, re-ferred, he replied: "To me!" Henceforth Hence-forth he reigned as an absolute dictator. dicta-tor. France was wrecked by war, discontent dis-content and hard times. The treasury was in bad condition. The young monarch found his position no sinecure. sine-cure. He set to work at once to huild up the country, without and -within. At once the Golden age or France began be-gan to dawn. By 1CTS, Louis was everywhere acknowledged to be the most powerful sovereign of Europe. His army was the largest on earth. Industry, literature, architecture and art flourished In his realms as never before. The French court's magnificence magnifi-cence was the envy of all nations. Among the famous men who added lustre to Louis' reign and left Immortal Immor-tal names to posterity were the poet-dramatists poet-dramatists Moliere, Racine and Cor-neille; Cor-neille; the painters, Claude Lorraine and Lebrun ; the architect, Mansard, and the preacher, Uossuet. France's armies won everywhere brilliant victories vic-tories and France's fame and that of Its king were world-wide. Louis' personal character was oddly out of keeping with all this greatness. A man of notoriously bad morals, he was also intolerably vain, arrogant and self-centered. The man vho plans only for his own glory can .win no permanent success. And so it proved with the grand monarch. He outlived his greatness. As the years went on the men of genius who hud contributed contribut-ed so largely to his success began to die off. None of equal mentality replaced re-placed them. The beautiful and wicked women who in turn had swaved rhe court were now onlv old and wicked. The grand monarch himself him-self was feeling and showing the marks of age and of the life he had led. Nor were his country's affairs in less decadent condition. By an unjust and idiotic act of his own Louis hastened has-tened the downfall of the supremacy he had achieved. Mme. de Maintenon, a woman of Intensely In-tensely religious tendencies but of narrow, nar-row, limited intellect, attracted the old king's fancy. He secretly married her. Thereafter her Influence over him was boundless. At her wish the gay court grew sombre and stupid. The king devoted de-voted to piety the hours that had formerly for-merly been given to pleasrure. Then, at his wife's urgent plea, he revoked the edict of Nantes. This edict, established estab-lished by Henry IV, granted religious freedom and many other privileges to the Huguenots (Protestants) throughout through-out France. Its revocation threw the country Into panic. By thousands the Huguenots emigrated to Holland. England Eng-land and America. France suffered Incalculable In.lury from the wholesale departure of these Ill-treated people. Holland, Germany and Spain formed an alliance against France, and Louis learned most keenly that his power was on the wane. Then came the crushing blow of his whole life, in thf famous war of the Spanish succession. The king of Spain, dying, bequeathed his throne to the duke of Anjou. Louis' grandson. This, a crowning result of Louis' diplomacy, threatened to unite the kingdoms of France and Spain. But - the Archduke Charles disputed Anjou's claim; and Germany. Holland and England, espousing the archduke's cause, combined against Louis. In battle after battle the allies defeated the grand monarch's armies, until, by ( 1713. France was beaten and humiliated humili-ated and glad to sue for peace. Here Louis' old-time genius flared up for the moment; for only his statecraft and policy saved his country from dismemberment dis-memberment at this critical moment. On September l, 1710. in his seventy-seventh year. Louis XIV died. His greatness had died long before him. He lived to see his country hnmbled and disgraced through his follies, to see the plain people overburdened and oppressed by taxes to pay for his extravagances; ex-travagances; to witness the death of his son and grandson, and to know I that the en of panic and seml-anarciiy which was at hand was due to his own mistakes and sins. Surely a toler ably severe lesson In the folly of llv. In..- wholly for one's self and fnr per sonal glory. |