I Am Louis XIV

It goes without saying how grand the Queen Mother's funeral was.

In terms of money, there is a whole rich country to support it; in terms of character, although she is a foreign princess, the French unanimously praise this lady for being chaste and kind; emotionally, although she has some shortcomings, these shortcomings It's not because of her original intention - as a woman of this era, she has done a good job; except for the Palace of Versailles, the common people even deeply love the Queen Mother. Firstly, because she gave birth to two outstanding talents for France, especially the Queen Mother. It was Louis XIV. Secondly, because the Queen Mother, with the support of Louis, was extremely keen on charity activities - thirty years ago, when it came to doing good deeds, ladies would go to church, and the Queen Mother was always there. Spending large sums of money on Mass and pilgrimage, but in these thirty years, this behavior has almost disappeared, and the ladies prefer to build hospices, almshouses and orphanages.

Louis' minister Colbert came from a humble background, and he didn't know much about the tricks played by lower-level officials. He also knew how low the moral bottom line of those seemingly lonely poor people was - so low that it was almost nonexistent. He also understood those who were hidden in the darkness. In the film, criminals who are more terrifying than the devil are good at finding opportunities and exploits - if they continue to set up projects as they like in the past, allocate funds in a chaotic manner, and only place managers based on appearance and connections, the result will probably be the same as what a famous writer said. The charities described are almost the same.

In short, it is a battlefield where the weak prey on the strong, a quagmire where misbehavior takes place, a theater where profits are made for fame, and a nest where poisonous insects and beasts breed.

In view of the above reasons, Colbert carefully assigned his most capable assistants to the noble ladies headed by the Queen Mother to ensure that tens of thousands of livres would not go to places that would make His Majesty the King furious. , such as someone's pocket. These funds may be nothing to the church. They can easily spend thousands of livres just for one mass, not counting the additional expenses such as prayer fees, special gifts, notice fees, preaching fees, etc. In addition, if you need to pay elsewhere, The icons, priests and bishops all require additional money.

But when Louis XIII bought what is now Versailles, even if it was just a barren sandy land, 117 acres was not a small number, and it only cost 10,000 livres.

Paris and Versailles, these two cities that complement each other like pearls, still have a lot of useless land around them, especially swamps and gravel land that cannot be used for planting. These places can be bought at very cheap prices. In order to build the Palace of Versailles, here A large number of craftsmen have also gathered, so much so that a small town of Limoges has been formed. The carpenters and plasterers in the town are happy to work for the Queen Mother and the poor. To put it bluntly, with their profession, it is impossible to support their families. Problem, but once injured, the only place to go is the almshouse.

But these people didn't expect that what they thought was just a job for extra money would keep them working for more than ten years, and they might continue to do it in the future.

Mainly because after Colbert's officials diligently investigated the situation in the almshouses, they found that these places could no longer keep men, women, the elderly, and children together as before, like livestock.

Their reports are shocking. In the imagination of good people, the almshouse is always filled with poor but moral people. Although the donations they give may not be that much, if the hard-working young people are willing to work hard, the elderly will People and children can always survive if they do what they can, and even save some money to leave the workhouse.

In fact, this is not the case. The real workhouse is a smelly garbage dump. Here, people with moral conscience always die the fastest - new people will be exploited by the administrator and the people around them as soon as they arrive. They will be completely wiped out. They won't even leave you a fig leaf, woman. Inevitably, they become public vessels, and young men are sometimes no exception. The elderly are the targets of humiliation and beatings - purely for fun. As for the children - they are the concentration of the three and the lowest dolls. , because their physical strength is not as good as that of adults, and their brains are not as good as that of old people. They work all day long and suffer humiliation. There are madams who come in grandly to choose the tools for making money in the future, and there are also factory owners and workshop owners who come to buy slaves at a low price. , or the leaders of thieves and robbers came to recruit new blood and scapegoats - but this was still a way out. More children disappeared silently into the doorless and windowless rooms, leaving no trace.

The worst things you can imagine can happen here.

Colbert and his disciples were even afraid. They did not dare to guarantee that such a thing would not happen in the almshouse they opened. So, after submitting a report to the king, the charity presided over by the Queen Mother-from In terms of architectural system, it became a charity house, a relief home and an orphanage.

Among them, the charity house only accommodates the elderly over fifty years old, the almshouse is separated for men and women, and young people over the age of fourteen are gathered here. The orphanage is for those under fourteen years old and newborn babies. Garden of Eden. Whether they can be compared with charity places hundreds of years from now, of course not. Except for the old people who can no longer move and are about to be anointed, and the babies who can’t walk or talk, everyone here has to work. , it’s just that they have a place to live without paying high rents, they are exempted from the poll tax, and the workshops and factories of the Queen Mother and other noble ladies can also provide them with a job.

How to arrange the managers here is also a difficult problem. The managers' salaries are meager, but they cannot stop the huge profits from the madams, factory owners and criminal leaders. Later, His Majesty the King found a good way for them, that is Let the retired soldiers and officers have to choose managers from the army. These retired non-commissioned officers already have the retirement pension promised by His Majesty the King. This money is quite considerable, but it is not paid to them all at once; It was paid on a monthly basis. At that time, it was to prevent them from throwing the money at pubs and prostitutes as soon as they got it. Now it can become a constraint - unless the amount of bribes and corruption can exceed this amount of money, management will The person will not be tempted.

Moreover, in order to avoid long-term employment and eventually turning management into rule, these managers will change the relief homes where they work every once in a while. During the handover, the accounts will be checked by special supervision and accounting. If there are errors and In a chaotic place, the person responsible would not be able to leave the almshouse unless he made up for the shortfall, or in other words, he would go directly from the almshouse to Bastille.

Before the death of the Queen Mother, such charitable places had expanded to 300 places in Paris, Versailles and several other cities in the basin. When people saw the black iron gates with golden lilies, suns and Virgin belts hanging on them, The coat of arms means that this is an almshouse built with donations from the Queen Mother. The Queen Mother did not have a personal coat of arms, so the king gave her his sun head and golden lily. As for the Virgin Belt, it was popular among noble ladies. A leather belt inlaid with the image of the Virgin Mary. The 37-year-old Queen Mother had a miscarriage. People said she could not give birth to a healthy heir, but a storm kept the king in the Louvre - and this is how she got it. Louis XIV.

At that time and when she was confirmed to be pregnant, the Queen Mother wore a Virgin Belt. Louis XIII also vowed to dedicate France to the Virgin Mary, so the Queen Mother's coat of arms has the Virgin Belt part, and others , all almshouses are named after the holy name of the Virgin Mary plus the place name, such as - Notre Dame Mary-Paris Hospice, or Virgin Mary-Limoges Almshouse.

But for those poor and lonely people, the Queen Mother was their Holy Mother, or she was the human incarnation of the Holy Mother. When they heard the news of the Queen Mother's death, they couldn't help crying loudly, like the ancient Romans, tearing their hair. , took off their shoes and smeared mud on their faces. This kind of mourning was not pretentious at all, and it looked extremely ugly, but no one would accuse them of being uncultured.

Some of them asked the administrator to go to Paris to see off the Queen Mother. This would of course cost them several days of wages, deplete their meager savings, and even directly affect their lives for more than ten years. But they still showed their firm will, just like devout believers who were going to Jerusalem for pilgrimage. "If you don't agree, we will run away. It doesn't matter if we don't come back." They said this, no matter how hard-hearted they were. The people could not help but be shaken, not to mention that the managers here were still followers of the king. Thinking of how sad the king was, they had to agree to the requests of these people.

A few smart managers also gathered people who wanted to attend the funeral and formed a team to go to Paris to prevent them from getting lost or having an accident, or being intercepted by local officials and people - their colleagues I also thought this method was very good, so the queues became longer and longer, and there were more and more people. For a while, some people thought they were really some kind of pilgrim team - because they really held up the cross, and there were many people on the road. Pray all the time.

When the Marquis of Loise and Colbert received the application from their subordinates, and the king also learned about it from the "little bird" and the officials, they didn't take it too seriously. Who knew that along the way, there would eventually be 10,000 people? Five thousand people came to Paris.

Louis XIV's original plan was to transform Paris from the political center of France into an economic and artistic center, and move the political center to Versailles, not only because Parisians no longer trusted him, but also because Paris, as an ancient capital, It was no longer sufficient to meet the needs of Louis XIV. Not to mention anything else, if the current French government and all the officials and nobles were to be crammed into the city of Paris, the city would be overcrowded and burst into flames, and it would be impossible for the Louvre to allow everyone the king valued and liked. Can have a room of my own.

Thankfully, it's also for this reason. Paris and Versailles have countless houses, even on both sides of the avenues connecting them. Smart people built rows of three- or four-story buildings here. The servants of the Palace of Versailles and The attendants all live here, as well as the families of officers and soldiers, officials from other provinces, tourists, etc. They are also hotels, shops, restaurants... Versailles and Limoges on one side are enough to supply the needs of 100,000 people. , and when there were 150,000 people living in Paris, it was not a problem to accommodate the unexpected arrival of 15,000 people.

Louis XIV allocated a sum of money to ensure these people's accommodation, meals, and travel expenses while they were in Paris. After ensuring that even if these people would not get rich, their future lives would not be affected, he couldn't help but feel sad. , but this kind of sadness adds a touch of soft comfort compared with his previous pain and sadness - if the Queen Mother could know about this, she would definitely feel happy - not just because her efforts were rewarded , also because this is not the honor she has because she is the princess of Austria, or the queen or queen mother of France, but the response she gets because of her own kindness.

Even noble ladies like Queen Theresa and Duchess of Montpensier couldn't help but be moved by it. They personally sent candles to these people because they knew that they would definitely not be able to afford candles - although candles were already available. Extracting from oil is not yet affordable for these homeless poor people. After coming back, they all said that they wanted to build more almshouses. Louis looked at those bright eyes and couldn't find any reason to object - he didn't want to object in the first place.

The injustice to women in this era is engraved in holy scriptures and stone tablets. Louis XIV's school allowed to admit female and male students at the same time, which attracted a lot of criticism. If it were not for the power of the Sun King, perhaps they would have long been due to various reasons. Even so, for more than ten years, female students can still only find their way out in marriage. It can only be said that after receiving education, compared with those women who are still sleeping in tradition, they finally know how to start looking for a way forward. ——Of course, this is difficult, very difficult. Louis will not blame those girls who shrink from all kinds of difficulties, but he still hopes that they can see a little light.

If women continue to be stubbornly rejected on the battlefield, in politics, and in the academy, what about charity? Women have an advantage over men in this regard. If men are sentimental, they will be regarded as weak, but women are recognized as beings who are born with maternal and benevolent hearts. Men should not mind giving up their power in this regard - —It’s just that they don’t know that anything or anything will bring the same amazing power after becoming huge.

But that might be a long time later.

——————

But from now on, Anne of Austria will be remembered fondly in the history books as no longer just the king's daughter, the king's wife, the king's mother, or the king's grandmother - she was a saint, A good man who saved countless people, this title may be the most suitable for this ill-fated lady.

"His Majesty……"

"Look," Louis said to Bontang, "how beautiful they are seeing her off."