Thu, 27 Nov 2008
Nicholas Fouquet
Charles Drazin, The Man Who Outshone the
Sun King, Da Capo Press
When I was small I remember seeing a picture of
a grand house set behind what looked like a moat.
The stone was golden in the dusk light. Its grace
and beauty captured me and I wondered 'Who lived
there? Who created such a place?'. Thus began my
long love affair with France.
The name of the place was Vaux-le-Vicomte, and
the man who built it and guided such as Andre le Notre
was Nicholas Fouquet, superintendent of finance
under the Sun King, Louis XIV ... and this book
is his story.
The story starts off with Cardinal Richelieu and
Louis XIII. Richelieu was to make the mold for
the golden shoes that Mazarin, and later the
non-Cardinal Colbert wouldn't fit into. The
author's understanding of Richelieu, that of a
power-mad scruple-free non-religious Cardinal,
doesn't coincide with modern thought on this
subject, which holds his religious beliefs to have
been quite genuine. Putting them under the heading
of Baroque, they were deemed to be extremely
positive and not at all like the neo-Jansenism that
came to be practised in many places. Anyone who
has come across Irish priests will know about
Jansenism.
The point of this observation is that Mazarin,
under whom Fouquet worked primarily, was not a continuation
of the same. He was a rather smaller and meaner
version. Richelieu, with his subtlety, ruthlessness
and plain brain power remained the template - one
it seems, that Fouquet aimed at himself.
Fouquet's story starts in a well-connected
family and proceeds through the civil service with
the speed that money, connections, and his own
skills and daring would have suggested. And then he
flew too high and the jealous king brought him
down.
His undoing was the building of Vaux-le-Vicomte,
the finest house in France, and then having an
extraordinarily extravagant party to officially
open it. This book spends quite some time on the
building of the house and the people involved
with it. This is against the somewhat claustrophobic
background of Louis's incessant wars and Mazarin's
paranoid whinings.
What also is apparent is that statements by
the duc de Saint Simon in his memoirs about Louis
XIV being petulant and nasty certainly are borne
out here, even though after the Fronde
he could perhaps be forgiven a little jumpiness.
Although the author does talk about Fouquet's
spy network, I think more could have been made of
this and in particular more could have been made
of his friendship with the famous Madame de Sevigne
- she paid a heavy price, being questioned and put
out of favour at court but remaining a steadfast
though necessarily distant friend.
This period of French history was plundered by
Dumas for all sorts of exciting tales. This book
is another window into that time.
(Baron K)
[]
permanent link
| 
pre Dec 04 reviews are here