INTRODUCTION: NO LIBRARY OF COURT documents could pretend to be representative which ignored the famous “Memoirs” of the Duc de Saint-Simon. They stand, by universal consent, at the head of French historical papers, and are the one great source from which all historians derive their insight into the closing years of the reign of the “Grand Monarch,” Louis XIV: whom the author shows to be anything but grand—and of the Regency.

The opinion of the French critic, Sainte-Beuve, is fairly typical. “With the Memoirs of De Retz, it seemed that perfection had been attained, in interest, in movement, in moral analysis, in pictorial vivacity, and that there was no reason for expecting they could be surpassed. But the ‘Memoirs’ of Saint-Simon came; and they offer merits … which make them the most precious body of Memoirs that as yet exist.”

Villemain declared their author to be “the most original of geniuses in French literature, the foremost of prose satirists; inexhaustible in details of manners and customs, a wordpainter like Tacitus; the author of a language of his own, lacking in accuracy, system, and art, yet an admirable writer.”

Leon Vallee reinforces this by saying: “Saint-Simon can not be compared to any of his contemporaries. He has an individuality, a style, and a language solely his own …. Language he treated like an abject slave. When he had gone to its farthest limit, when it failed to express his ideas or feelings, he forced it—the result was a new term, or a change in the ordinary meaning of words sprang forth from has pen.

With this was joined a vigour and breadth of style, very pronounced, which makes up the originality of the works of Saint-Simon and contributes toward placing their author in the foremost rank of French writers.”

Louis de Rouvroy, who later became the Duc de Saint-Simon, was born in Paris, January 16, 1675. He claimed descent from Charlemagne, but the story goes that his father, as a young page of Louis XIII., gained favour with his royal master by his skill in holding the stirrup, and was finally made a duke and peer of France. The boy Louis had no lesser persons than the King and Queen Marie Therese as godparents, and made his first formal appearance at Court when seventeen. He tells us that he was not a studious boy, but was fond of reading history; and that if he had been given rein to read all he desired of it, he might have made “some figure in the world.”

At nineteen, like D’Artagnan, he entered the King’s Musketeers. At twenty he was made a captain in the cavalry; and the same year he married the beautiful daughter of the Marechal de Larges. This marriage, which was purely political in its inception, finally turned into a genuine love match—a pleasant exception to the majority of such affairs. He became devoted to his wife, saying: “she exceeded all that was promised of her, and all that I myself had hoped.” Partly because of this marriage, and also because he felt himself slighted in certain army appointments, he resigned his commissim after five years’ service, and retired for a time to private life.

Upon his return to Court, taking up apartments which the royal favour had reserved for him at Versailles, Saint-Simon secretly entered upon the self-appointed task for which he is now known to fame—a task which the proud King of a vainglorious Court would have lost no time in terminating had it been discovered—the task of judge, spy, critic, portraitist, and historian, rolled into one. Day by day, henceforth for many years, he was to set down upon his private “Memoirs” the results of his personal observations, supplemented by the gossip brought to him by his unsuspecting friends; for neither courtier, statesman, minister, nor friend ever looked upon those notes which this “little Duke with his cruel, piercing, unsatisfied eyes” was so busily penning.

Says Vallee: “He filled a unique position at Court, being accepted by all, even by the King himself, as a cynic, personally liked for his disposition, enjoying consideration on account of the prestige of his social connections, inspiring fear in the more timid by the severity and fearlessness of his criticism.”

Yet Louis XIV. never seems to have liked him, and Saint-Simon owed his influence chiefly to his friendly relations with the Dauphin’s family. During the Regency, he tried to restrain the profligate Duke of Orleans, and in return was offered the position of governor of the boy, Louis XV., which he refused. Soon after, he retired to private life, and devoted his remaining years largely to revising his beloved “Memoirs.”

The autograph manuscript, still in existence, reveals the immense labour which he put into it. The writing is remarkable for its legibility and freedom from erasure. It comprises no less than 2,300 pages in folio.

After the author’s death, in 1755, the secret of his lifelong labour was revealed; and the Duc de Choiseul, fearing the result of these frank revelations, confiscated them and placed them among the state archives. For sixty years they remained under lock and key, being seen by only a few privileged persons, among them Marmontel, Duclos, and Voltaire. A garbled version of extracts appeared in 1789, possibly being used as a Revolutionary text. Finally, in 1819, a descendant of the analyst, bearing the same name, obtained permission from Louis XVIII. to set this “prisoner of the Bastille” at liberty; and in 1829 an authoritative edition, revised and arranged by chapters, appeared. It created a tremendous stir.

Saint-Simon had been merciless, from King down to lady’s maid, in depicting the daily life of a famous Court. He had stripped it of all its tinsel and pretension, and laid the ragged framework bare. “He wrote like the Devil for posterity!” exclaimed Chateaubriand. But the work at once became universally read and quoted, both in France and England.

Macaulay made frequent use of it in his historical essays. It was, in a word, recognised as the chief authority upon an important period of thirty years (1694-1723).

Since then it has passed through many editions, finally receiving an adequate English translation at the hands of Bayle St. John, who has been careful to adhere to the peculiarities of Saint-Simon’s style. It is this version which is now presented in full, giving us not only many vivid pictures of the author’s time, but of the author himself. “I do not pride myself upon my freedom from prejudice—impartiality,” he confesses—” it would be useless to attempt it. But I have tried at all times to tell the truth.”

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Memoirs of Louis XIV and His Court and of the Regency by The Duke of Saint-Simon, the Pennsylvania State University, Electronic Classics Series, Jim Manis, Faculty Editor, Hazleton, PA 18201-1291 is a Portable Document File produced as part of an ongoing student publication project to bring classical works of literature, in English, to free and easy access of those wishing to make use of them.

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Copyright © 2003 The Pennsylvania State University

Louis de Rouvroy, duc de Saint-Simon (January 16, 1675 – March 2, 1755), French soldier, diplomatist and writer of memoirs, was born at Versailles. The dukedom-peerage granted to his father, Claude de Saint-Simon(1608-1693), is the central fact in his history.

Louis XIV (baptised as Louis-Dieudonné, "Louis-God-given") (September 5, 1638 – September 1, 1715) ruled as King of France and of Navarre. He acceded to the throne a few months before his fifth birthday, but did not assume actual personal control of the government until the death of his prime minister (Premier ministre), the Italian Jules Cardinal Mazarin, in 1661. Louis would remain on the throne till his death just prior to his seventy-seventh birthday in 1715. His reign thus spanned seventy-two years, three months, and eighteen days, the longest documented of any European monarch to date.

Louis XIV is also known as Louis the Great (in French Louis le Grand or, alternatively, le Grand Monarque, "the Great Monarch"), because, following his initial success in the Franco-Dutch War and the Treaty of Nijmegen, the Parlement de Paris decreed that all public inscriptions and statues of the king should carry that epithet attached to his name.[citation needed]

He is also popularly known as The Sun King (in French le Roi Soleil) because of the idea that, just as the planets revolve around the Sun, so too should France and the court revolve around him. As a result, he was commonly associated with Apollo Helios, the Greco-Roman god of the Sun. As a patron of the arts, this association was fitting because Louis was, like Apollo Musagetes, the "leader of the Muses".

During his reign, he increased the power and influence of France in Europe, engaging in three major wars—the Franco-Dutch War, the War of the League of Augsburg, and the War of the Spanish Succession—and two minor conflicts—the War of Devolution, and the War of the Reunions.

The political and military scene in France during his reign was filled with such illustrious names as Mazarin, Fouquet, Colbert, Michel Le Tellier, Le Tellier's son Louvois, le Grand Condé, Turenne, Vauban, Villars and Tourville. Under his reign, France achieved not only political and military pre-eminence, but also cultural dominance with various cultural figures such as Molière, Racine, Boileau, La Fontaine, Lully, Le Brun, Rigaud, Louis Le Vau, Jules Hardouin Mansart, Claude Perrault and Le Nôtre. The cultural achievements accomplished by these figures contributed to the prestige of France, its people, its language and its king.

Louis XIV worked successfully to create a centralized state governed from the capital in order to sweep away the fragmented feudalism which hitherto persisted in France, thus giving rise to the modern state. As a result of his efforts, which seemed absolutist, Louis XIV became the archetypal absolute monarch. The phrase "L'État, c'est moi" ("I am the State") is frequently attributed to him, though considered an inaccuracy by historians.[citation needed] Quite contrary to that apocryphal quote, Louis XIV is actually reported to have said on his death bed: "Je m'en vais, mais l'État demeurera toujours." ("I depart, but the State shall always remain").

(From wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

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