‘The Empire is Peace!’
Guy de Maupassant reflects on the way that a statesman’s place in history has so often been defined not by deeds or character but by his one-liners.
1876
Guy de Maupassant reflects on the way that a statesman’s place in history has so often been defined not by deeds or character but by his one-liners.
1876
Guy de Maupassant is looking back over the sayings of some of France’s most famous rulers. Some sayings were witty, some heroic, some fatuous; many, he admitted, probably spurious. But all fixed the speaker in the mind, even making up for a humiliating defeat or an oppressive reign. It shows that what every statesman chasing a place in history really needs is a glib one-liner.
abridged
“If God prolongs my life, I hope to see in my kingdom no peasant so poor that he cannot put a fowl in the pot for his Sunday’s dinner.”*
It is with words such as these that enthusiastic and foolish crowds are flattered and governed. By a couple of clever sayings, Henry IV has drawn his own portrait for posterity. One cannot pronounce his name without at once having a vision of the white plumes, and of the delicious flavour of a poule-au-pot.
Louis XIII made no happy hits. This dull king had a dull reign.*
Louis XIV* created the formula of absolute personal power: “The State is myself.”*
He gave the measure of royal pride in its fullest expansion: “I have almost had to wait.”*
He set the example of sonorous political phrases, which make alliances between two nations: “The Pyrenees exist no longer!”*
All his reign is in these few phrases.
Louis XV,* most corrupt of kings, elegant and witty, has bequeathed to posterity that delightful keynote of his supreme indifference: “After me, the deluge.”*
* Attributed to Henry IV, King of France from 1589 to 1610, a contemporary of Elizabeth I (r. 1558-1603) and James VI and I (r. 1603-1625). Modern historians tend to take Henry ‘the Good’ at face value but Guy de Maupassant was of another opinion. “Hats off, gentlemen!” he wrote. “Here is the master! Sly, sceptical, tricky, deceitful beyond belief, artful beyond compare; a drunkard, debauchee, unbeliever, he managed by a few happy and pointed sayings to make for himself in history an admirable reputation as a chivalrous, generous king, a brave loyal, and honest man.”
* Louis XIII ruled from 1610 to 1643, at the same time as James I (r. 1603-1625) and Charles I (1625-1649) of England. Louis’s reign was not really dull at all — it was dominated at home by his colourful first minister of State from 1624 to 1642, Armand Jean du Plessis, Duke of Richelieu (Cardinal Richelieu), and coincided with the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648) — but a king with no bon mot might as well have done nothing.
* Louis XIV ruled from 1643 to 1715, during the reigns in England of Charles I (r. 1625-1649), Charles II (1649-1685), James II (r. 1685-1688), William III and Mary II (r. 1688-1694), William III (1694-1702), Anne (r. 1702-1714) and George I (r. 1714-1727). Louis, the Sun King, maintained a dazzling court while making sure that France was a thorn in side of many European states, clashing with England in The Nine Years’ War.
* This famous bon mot is generally held to be spurious. Historian William Lecky argued it was nonetheless apt for a monarch who claimed the same kind of absolute ownership and control over the people as a communist politburo does. See A Backward Step.
* Supposedly spoken at Versailles when the royal carriage arrived with only seconds to spare. It is held to be spurious.
* The Treaty of the Pyrenees was signed on November 7th, 1659, and ended the Franco-Spanish War of 1635-1659. Louis’s soundbite was intended to celebrate the end of diplomatic barriers between France and Spain.
* Louis XV ruled France from 1715 to 1774, during the reigns of George I (r. 1714-1727), George II (r. 1727-1760) and George III (r. 1760-1820). Louis suffered a humiliating defeat at Britain’s hands in the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763), which also cost him New France, a broad and long strip of territory reaching from northeast Canada through the American midwest all the way to the Gulf of Mexico.
* The quip dates to 1757 and a prophecy that the imminent return of Halley’s comet would trigger a flood of Biblical proportions. Louis, who had already suffered an attempted assassination and defeat at the Battle of Rossbach that year, seems to have been implying with gloomy satisfaction that soon none of it would matter any more. See also Edmond Halley.