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Louis XIV by John B. Wolf Review by: Geoffrey Bruun The American Historical Review, Vol. 74, No. 1 (Oct., 1968), pp. 183-184 Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1857723 . Accessed: 28/06/2014 15:13 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . Oxford University Press and American Historical Association are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The American Historical Review. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 91.213.220.184 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 15:13:56 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Louis XIVby John B. Wolf

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Louis XIV by John B. WolfReview by: Geoffrey BruunThe American Historical Review, Vol. 74, No. 1 (Oct., 1968), pp. 183-184Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1857723 .

Accessed: 28/06/2014 15:13

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Oxford University Press and American Historical Association are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize,preserve and extend access to The American Historical Review.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 91.213.220.184 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 15:13:56 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Modern Europe I83

By a fortunate coincidence, another good new book presents the other side of this crucial struggle: Raymond F. Kierstead, Pomponne de Bellievirc (AHR, LXXIII [Oct. I968], i8i).

In Sully's other administrative roles, he displayed an understanding of the applications of quantitative measurement to government and war; this revises the image of "a latter-day Roman republican" interested only in agriculture and the treasury. Even more strikingly new is the appearance of the Huguenot noble- man as "a far-sighted cameralist" inspired by the example of Philip II of Spain. In documenting Sully's contribution to "internal improvements" and the urban- ization of Paris, Buisseret brings out his use of public works as an alternative to war in that they would absorb "the turbulent humors of the kingdom" and the importance of his administrative innovations for the future.

An error in the dates of Henri d'Albret (I502-I555), grandfather of Henry IV, is unfortunate but incidental. Sully's highhandedness, especially toward the robins, his vanity, his passion for building, and his firm but unfanatical Prot- estantism are all confirmed. Although his indifference to overseas trading com- panies may have been influenced by a bribe from the Dutch, he is found to be financially honest.

An interesting account of the development of Sully's legend by the philosophes is supplemented by the exposure of such myths as his alleged indifference to the arts and charges that he stacked his administration with Protestants and that he was categorically opposed to mercantilism. The ultimate distortion of the legend Buisseret expresses as "the idea that the king was a brave bungler who relied on Sully for all serious affairs . . . [as] in some sense a father-figure." While the "Grand Design" belongs to the legend, Sully had a new sense of patrie, which "provided the unifying element in his life" and makes Buisseret's Sully "much more similar to Richelieu than is normally allowed."

Tufts University NANCY L. ROELKER

LOUIS XIV. By John B. Wolf. (New York: W. W. Norton and Company. I968. Pp. xix, 678. $I2.50.)

IN I95I, when Professor Wolf completed The Emergence of the Great Powers for "The Rise of Modern Europe" series, he regretted that there was no good biography of Louis XIV. "Here, if anywhere in this period," he observed, "is an opportunity for a new book." He has now remedied the deficiency with this massive, detailed, soundly documented biography of 300,000 words. "In the process of writing this book," he admits, "it became evident that my picture of Louis XIV was somewhat different from the one that usually stalks the pages of history." How much his own impression of the Sun King altered in eighteen years can be measured by comparing The Emergence of the Great Powers with the present work.

In these pages Louis evolves from an affectionate, conscientious prince to a prudent, hard-working monarch. His devotion to his mother, and to Mazarin, his foster father and political mentor, is convincingly documented. So, too, are his methods of personal administration after Mazarin's death. His correspondence with his ministers and generals reveals him not as an "arrogant megalomaniac"

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I84 Reviews of Books

but as "a man who frequently felt psychologically insecure." To see the real Louis behind the vainglorious actor, Wolf maintains, it is essential to understand his conception of gloire and to recall the mystique that invested a divine right monarch in the seventeenth century.

How Louis labored to enhance the prestige of the crown while reducing the power of the great nobles is a familiar theme. Wolf acknowledges that "by separating the reality and the mystique of power and position, Louis began the process that in the next century almost made the nobility into a parasitical class... ." But Louis was not thinking of the next century; he was remembering the Fronde. To avert a recurrence of political fragmentation the monarch had to win acceptance as the symbol, ordained by God, of the power, the glory, and the unity of France. "The best way to get an understanding of the develop- ment of the new mystique of royalty at the climax of the period when kings ruled by divine right is to read through the mass of contemporary material that flooded from the presses of France." From this material, Wolf goes on to explain, emerges his thesis that "the deification of the person of the king in this theo- centric era was accomplished in much the same way and with the same intentions that secular societies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have deified the state."

The extravagance of Versailles and the recurrent wars of Louis's long reign were not inspired by his personal pride, but rather by his concern for the dignity of his office. His lofty concept of that office lured him into military moves and made him a haughty negotiator so that he "often found it next to impossible to disengage from a war. . . ." As the defender and in a sense the prisoner of his inheritance, rather than the arrogant arbiter of France and Europe, Louis becomes a more comprehensible and more sympathetic figure.

Wolf deserves the gratitude of his fellow historians for the arduous archival labors he undertook to humanize a monarch who had been too largely re- duced to a stereotype. This thoughtful, undramatized, lucidly written biography is enriched by five maps and fifty illustrations. There is an index of persons and places, and the forty pages of sources, notes, and references provide at the same time an elaborate bibliography.

Ithaca, New York GEOFFREY BRUUN

LA COMtDIE FRAN9AISE AU I8e SIJtCLE: tTUDE ?CONOMIQUE. By Claude Alasseur. Preface by J. Fourastie. [Ecole Pratique des Hautes 1ttudes- Sorbonne. VIe Section: Sciences economiques et sociales. Centre de Recherches Historiques. Civilisation et societes, Number 3.] (Paris: Mouton & Co. I967. Pp. Viii, 20o. 35 fr.)

DISCOVERY of the accounts of the Come'die Franfaise for I680-1793 prompted this quantitative study. Two-thirds of the work and almost its entire organization reflect the monthly and annual registers, while nineteen statistical tables occupy the sixty-five pages of appendixes.

The opening chapter, on various social classes and their apparent presence in the audience, rests on secondary sources. The chapter on the administrative evolution of the Comedie is too short to emphasize sufficiently the regulations of

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