ELSASS
O
NE
day in 1670 the French army seized the Rhine bridge at Strassburg, and burned it. This was the signal that the French were not content with the part of Elsass acquired by the Treaty of Westphalia, and would not rest until Strassburg itself was theirs. At the time. Strassburg was the second city of the Holy Roman Empire, entirely German in character, its language the same Alemannic dialect spoken on the other side of the Rhine. But Louis XIV was implacable. Thanks to the dubious stratagem of the
Réunions
, Strassburg, or Strasbourg, would soon be absorbed, together with the whole of ‘Alsace’. Though the local dialect would survive, the province would become the touchstone of French unity.
1
German restorations, in 1870–1918 and 1940–5, would not last.
On the other, eastern flank of the Empire, in Silesia, the great city of Breslau was ruled on behalf of the Austrian Habsburgs by the last prince of the Silesian Piasts. Silesia’s origins were no more Austrian than Alsace was French. Silesia’s first connections were Polish and. until 1526, Bohemian. Just as the native language and culture of Alsace were to resist every attempt to Frenchify them completely, so the Silesian Slavs would hold out against the waves of Bohemian Germans, Austrians, and Prussians who came to dominate their province over the centuries.
2
On the other, eastern flank of Poland, in the province of Red Ruthenia, the great city of Lwów had been ruled by Poland for over 300 years. It was far more Polish than Strasburg was French or Breslau Austrian. Its Jewish community, too, had enjoyed great continuity. Yet the origins of Lwów or L’viv were not Polish but Ruthenian. In 1670, its career as a premier centre of Uniate, Ukrainian culture was in its infancy.
3
[
ÄYCZAKÓW
]
On the other, eastern flank of Ruthenia, the great city of Kiev on the Dnieper had just been conquered by Moscow (see p. 556). The Russian Orthodox Church was establishing its supremacy over central Ukraine, and launching the myth that Kiev was the cradle of Russian civilization.
Strassburg, Breslau, Lwów, .and Kiev had more in common than they knew. All were cosmopolitan capitals of multinational provinces or countries, for whom exclusive national claims would prove particularly destructive. By 1945, each had been re-laundered many times. Alsace had changed hands between France and Germany four times over. Silesia (alias Śląsk or Schlesien) had been fought over regularly by Austria, Prussia, Germany, and Poland. Red Ruthenia (alias East Galicia, Western Ukraine, or eastern Małopolska) had been disputed by Austrians, Poles, and Ukrainians at least six times. Central Ukraine had been torn apart by Russians and Germans, Ukrainians and Poles, Reds and Whites, Nazis and Soviets, at least twenty times.
When Strasbourg was made capital of the Council of Europe in 1949, the Iron Curtain shut out the city’s eastern counterparts. Indeed, since the German population of Breslau had been forced to leave, since Breslau had just become Wrocław through the mass influx of Polish refugees from Lwów, and since L’viv was swamped by an influx of Russians, resentments were running high. The internal frontiers of the Soviet bloc were every bit as impermeable as the Iron Curtain. The process of reconciliation, which started in the West, could not reach the whole of Europe for almost fifty years.
It is true, of course, that lavish royal patronage did provide a powerful stimulus in the direction of institutionalized uniformity. The Académie Française (1635), whose great Dictionary appeared in 1694, acted as the official guardian of the French language. The Académie de Peinture et de Sculpture, later the Beaux-Arts, put enormous powers into the hands of the King’s painter, Charles Le Brun (1619–90). The Académie des Sciences (1666) pursued similar activities to those of the Royal Society in London. The Académie de Musique (1669) offered a similar platform for the talents of the King’s musician, Jean-Baptiste Lully (1633–87), who wrote a score of operas. At the Beaux-Arts, which linked the artistic dictatorship of Le Brun with the organizational genius of Colbert, architects, decorators, engravers were mobilized into projects where harmony and order were the ruling passions. Above all, the royal Court commanded a concentration of cultural creativity with few parallels. In literature, ‘the King’s Four Friends’—Boileau, Molière, Racine, and La Fontaine—exercised an influence in their heyday which few writers have ever enjoyed. The Comédie-Française (1680) joined several existing troupes into one united, theatrical operation.
Yet on examination it becomes clear that the classical monopoly was more illusory than real. For one thing, the King’s own taste was more eclectic than is often supposed. The classical mania for formulating artistic rules was certainly present, but the rules were not necessarily observed by everyone. For another, the ‘Classical Parnassus’ which reigned for perhaps twenty years was gradually undermined. From 1687 onwards French cultural Ufe was absorbed by the furious quarrel of the
Anciens
and the
Modernes
. The façade of unity was cracked wide open, to expose a cultural landscape of variety and heterodoxy from which the parade of the giants has all too often diverted attention.
The foreign policy of Louis XTV was the best measure of his power and prestige. It rested on the most complete diplomatic service which Europe had ever seen—personally run by the King at Versailles—and on military forces which were only deployed in full after a long period of preparation. It led the continent of Europe into conflict. As a result, Louis XIV has been seen in some quarters as
the first of a line of tyrants who have tried to conquer Europe by force, the precursor of Napoleon or Hitler. The coalitions ranged against him can be made to appear as the ancestors of the ‘Allied Powers’ of later centuries.
In reality, Louis’s vision was rather limited. Despite later comment, he does not seem to have had any clear plan for attaining France’s ‘natural frontiers’, let alone for overrunning the Continent. Though the caution of his early years was abandoned, his aims remained essentially dynastic and consolidatory. Having been linked by Mazarin to a Spanish Infanta, María Teresa, whom he married at Saint Jean-de-Luz in 1660 as part of the Treaty of the Pyrenees, he could not have avoided the problems presented by Spain’s crumbling succession. His constant involvement in the Netherlands and on the Rhine was justified by a genuine fear of encirclement. His thirst for war and expansion can hardly be compared to that of his brother monarchs in, say, Sweden or Russia. His love for
la gloire
might have seemed entirely conventional had it not been backed by such threatening logistics. Of Louis’s four major wars, the first two were confined to the Netherlands; the third was provoked by the
réunions
—Louis’s campaign to acquire German territory by judicial subterfuge. The fourth arose directly from the failure of the ruling Spanish dynasty. Behind them all lay international rivalry over colonies and trade,
[
GROTEMARKT
]
The War of Devolution (1667–8) derived from Louis’s exploitation of a dynastic claim to Brabant. It began with a French invasion of the Spanish Netherlands; inspired a ‘Triple Alliance’ of England, Holland, and Sweden; and ended at the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle with Louis in possession of twelve Belgian fortresses.
The Franco-Dutch War (1672–9) derived from Louis’s determination to punish the Dutch for their interference in his previous campaign. It was thoroughly prepared diplomatically, with Holland’s maritime rivals, England and Sweden, persuaded to switch their allegiance, and with Poland added to the French camp. It turned William III of Orange, Stadtholder of the United Provinces, into coordinator of the opposition. It began, as before, with a French advance into the Spanish Netherlands; but Condé’s crossing of the Rhine roused the Empire; and Louis did not miss the chance to disrupt Spain’s hold on the Franche-Comté. The Congress of Nijmegen (1678–9) saw Louis’s diplomats holding the ring—appeasing the Dutch with commercial advantages, forcing the Spaniards to cede territory, imposing a settlement on the lesser powers.
By the policy of
réunions
, Louis suspended open warfare in favour of annexations arranged through elaborate but dubious legal process. Courts were established to try royal petitions laying claim to scores of cities and jurisdictions on the eastern border. Every favourable verdict led to immediate occupation of the district concerned. No less than 160 annexations were organized in this way in the 1680s, notably Strassburg (1681) and Luxemburg (1684). With the Empire preoccupied by the Turkish advance on Vienna, Louis had timed the operation well.
The Nine Years War (1689–97) occurred as the result of Louis’s defiance of the League of Augsburg (1686), formed at the instigation of William of Orange to halt further French adventures. The French invasion of the Spanish Netherlands and
of the Palatinate, where Heidelberg was devastated, initiated an exhausting series of sieges and naval battles. By the Treaty of Ryswick (1697) Louis was obliged to abandon most of his
réunions
, but not Strasbourg,
[
ELSASS
]
[GROTEMARKT]
The War of the Spanish Succession (1701–13) has some claim to be called ‘the first world war’. It was fought in Germany, in the Netherlands, in Italy, in Spain, in the colonies, and on the high seas. It was brewing from the day in 1700 when Charles II of Spain died childless, and when Louis XIV decided to honour the late King’s will and to neglect his own undertakings. It was unavoidable once Louis had presented the court with his youthful grandson, Philippe d’Anjou, with the words ‘Voici le Roi d’Espagne’. It brought together the most extensive and powerful of anti-French coalitions, which was managed on the military front by the triumvirate of Prince Eugene of Savoy, the Duke of Marlborough, and the Grand Pensioner Heinsius. The fighting began when Louis took the precaution of reoccupying the Dutch-held ‘barrier fortresses’ in the Spanish Netherlands. It carried on through siege and countersiege, on land and sea, until all parties were thoroughly drained. In 1709, after the ‘very murdering’ but indecisive battle of Malplaquet, which saved France from invasion, Marshal du Villars was said to have told his sovereign, ‘One more victory like that for your enemies, Sire, and they will all be finished.’
The final outcome of the French wars, as enshrined in the twin treaties of Utrecht (1713) and Rastatt (1714), did not match the expectations of any of the principal combatants. France’s ambitions were trimmed but not reversed. She kept many important gains, including Lille, Franche-Comté, and Alsace; and Philippe d’Anjou remained on the Spanish throne. The Dutch, like the French, were exhausted, but survived with the control of the barrier fortresses. Spain, which had lost out when allied to the anti-French coalitions, lost out again when allied to the French. The Spaniards’ main purpose was to preserve the unity of their empire. They found that they provoked the very catastrophe which they had sought to avoid. The Austrians, who had sought to prevent the Spanish inheritance from falling to France, settled instead for a major share of the pickings, including the Spanish Netherlands, Milan, Naples, and Sardinia. It was the peripheral powers who proved the most obvious beneficiaries. Both the Hohenzollerns in Prussia and the House of Savoy were confirmed in their royal status. The former took Upper Gelderland on the Rhine and, with some delay, Swedish Pomerania; the latter took Sicily. The new United Kingdom of Great Britain (see below) gained immensely in status, confirmed in her control of Gibraltar and Minorca, of Newfoundland and other American lands, and of the Spanish colonial trade. The United Kingdom—no longer just England—now emerged as the foremost maritime power, as the leading diplomatic broker, and as the principal opponent of French supremacy.
From its high point early in the 1680s, therefore, Louis XIV’s Great Experiment produced ever diminishing returns. The wars, the religious persecutions, the deaths of all the great personalities, were accompanied by failures of a more deep-seated nature. Both the French state and French society were showing signs of a long wasting disease. The state’s finances, for example, passed into grave disarray. By 1715 the Government’s net income stood at 69 million livres, and expenditure at 132 million; the public debt was variously computed at between 830 to 2,800 million.
22
More seriously, the mass of the French population was gaining little benefit from a life of increasing deprivation: the scandalous exemptions of the nobility continued; the middle classes, sorely wounded by the departure of the Huguenots, were struggling to ease the burdens of state regulation; the peasants toiled on the verge of starvation and without hope of relief. In the years of famine, contemporary reports of their dire distress—of barefoot starvelings eking out a subsistence on a diet of bark, berries, and beet—are supported by modern statistical studies of mortality and food prices. The long procession of provinces in open and bloody revolt continued—Béarn (1664), the Vivarais (1670), Bordeaux (1674), Brittany (1675), Languedoc (1703–9), Cahors (1709). Rural riots and outbreaks of château-burning were mercilessly punished with military repressions and mass hangings. The façade still glittered, but the foundations were starting to shake. When Louis XIV finally died, on 1 September 1715, the curtain fell to the ringing words which began the funeral oration: ‘Dieu seul, mes frères,’ intoned Bishop Massillon, ‘Dieu seul est grand’ (my brothers, God alone is great).
GROTE MARKT
I
N
1695 the
Grote Markt
or
Grand’Place
of Brussels was reduced to cinders when one of France’s more inept marshals, the Duke of Villeroi, bombarded the city with red-hot shot. In that one engagement, when the armies of Louis XIV advanced into the Spanish Netherlands, they destroyed sixteen churches, 4,000 houses, and a civic square which has been described as ‘a perfect image in stone of our European political culture at its finest’.
1
Laid out in the decades after 1312, when Brussels was granted its charter, the expanse of the Grote Markt had seen the jousting tournaments of the Dukes of Brabant and of Burgundy. On the south side, the Gothic City Hall supported a slender, soaring belfry 160 ft high, surmounted by a gilded statue of St Michael. Opposite, the Renaissance Maison du Roi had housed many dukes but never a king. On either flank rose the tall guild houses of the ‘nine nations’, among them the ‘Bakers’ Dome’ of Le Roi d’Espagne, the statued façade of the Archers’ House, La Louve, and the poop-shaped upper storey of the ‘Boat-Builders’. In front of them, the cobbled pavement had witnessed the hanging of Egmont and Horn. In 1795 it would resound to Dumouriez’s declaration of the French Republic, and in 1830 to skirmishes with Dutch troops. Nowadays, it is the setting for the annual Ommegang procession, headed by actors playing out ‘the court of Charles V’. Otherwise it has been taken over by flower-sellers, the Sunday bird market and, until recently, by parking lots.
Brussels was handsomely restored under Austrian rule after 1713, and extensively renovated when it became capital of the Kingdom of Belgium in 1830. In the nineteenth century, linked by a ‘pentagon’ of boulevards, the new districts spread over the nearby hills. The Coudenberg received the royal, palace, the government ministries, and the Parliament. The Koekelberg, in imitation of Montmartre, received the grandiose domed basilica of the Sacré-Cœur, completed only in 1970. The gleaming metallic molecule of the Atomium recalls the Universal Exhibition of 1958. The modern Cité deBerlaymont (1967) houses the headquarters of the European Commission, Zaventem the headquarters of NATO. Since 1971, Brussels-Bruxelles has formed a bi-lingual region within Belgium’s three linguistic cantons—equal in legal status to its Flemish-speaking, French-speaking, and German-speaking counterparts. Originally a predominantly Flemish city, it now displays the most complicated linguistic patterns, including French, Turkish, and even English sectors..
Sentimental observers have seen Brussels as a fitting capital for the future Europe because it has supposedly overcome its own and its neighbours’ nationalism. It has been described as the mouth of a ‘tunnel of history’, reaching back under the dark mountain of modern nationalism to ‘the wonderful model’ of ‘multicultural’, ‘polyphonic Burgundy’.
2
It may be so. But extravagant intellectual pretensions do not fit the local style. From his pedestal on a street corner just off the Grote Markt, the statue of the
Manneken Pis
, the jovial ‘Little Piddle Boy’ (1619), who survived Villeroi’s bombardment, expresses the healthiest of opinions on all such conceits.