ity overwhelmed with debts, the
least burdensome of which had been contracted at an interest of
fifteen and twenty on the hundred; the magistrates, the _rentiers_, long
deprived of the revenues owed them by the State; the peasants, in
certain provinces, wanting for everything, even for straw on which to
lie; those of our frontiers passing over to foreign countries; very many
districts of our territory uncultivated and deserted." For the credit
side of the account of this greatest of kings, the historian can cite
the acquisition of two provinces, Flanders and Franche-Comte, certain
cities, Strasbourg, Landau, Dunkerque, "so many victories, Europe
defied, France so long preponderant, finally, the incomparable
brilliancy of that court of Versailles and those marvels of the letters
and the arts which have given to the seventeenth century the name of the
_siecle_ de Louis Quatorze!" Of the bigotry, ignorance, intolerance, and
incredible and always uneasy vanity of the little soul of this great
monarch the chroniclers of even his sycophants are full.

His political creed may be learned from this passage in his _Memoires_:
"The kings are absolute lords and have naturally the full and entire
disposition of all property which is possessed as well by the churchmen
as by the laymen, to use at all times, as judicious stewards, that is to
say, according to the general need of their State. Everything which may
be found within the limits of their States, of whatsoever nature it may
be, appertains to them by the same title, and the coin which is in their
strong-box and that which remains in the hands of their treasurers, and
that which they permit to remain in the commerce of their peoples."

Consequently, the end of this reign of seventy-two years was "very
different from its beginning. He received his kingdom powerful and
preponderating abroad, tranquil and contented at home; he left it
weakened, humiliated, discontented, impoverished, and already filled
with the seeds of the Revolution." (Roederer: _Memoires_.)

For the administration of the government of the State, there were three
great Councils, under the immediate direction of the king, who was his
own prime minister. The _Conseil d'en haut_, to which he called the
secretaries of State, and sometimes the princes of the blood,
corresponded to the modern council of ministers in that it had the
general direction of the great political affairs, with the additional
function of judg