I Am Louis XIV

With the help of wizards, the progress of Dunkirk's new dock can be described as fast. The king's adventure is not without rewards. Whether it is the shortening of labor time, or the salary expenditure of labor, officials, and professors, they have all been reduced. For the most part, this caused the Bishop Larivier (formerly the dean) to remain silent. He persuaded the king to stay away from those heretics as much as possible. , As for the dock project, for him, it is just a matter of tax increase and labor service. He cannot see the suffering imposed on the common people, and Louis can't say much about it. After all, the people at this time are still Without a clear enough self-awareness, they will rotate more with the baton of those with ulterior motives. For example, now, Louis’ generosity to refugees is limited to the Paris Basin, but it cannot be extended to Lyon or Provence, otherwise the people there He'd be the first to jump up and try to cut off his head.

It's not that the commoners nowadays are ignorant of good and evil, but they are definitely more willing to trust their lord, priest or anyone with a title than the king who is thousands of miles away. At most, it can only be passed on by pigeons and fast horses, and most people are illiterate. It is very easy for the local rulers to distort or tamper with the king's will-it seems that communication and education still have to be put on the bill, So the problem arises again - the king is short of money.

In the eyes of the king who can't say "even after I die", the treasury will probably never be filled. Louis put down the quill in his hand. It is the inner world. People in the inner world need food and cloth more than gold and silver, but the people in the damn outside world also need it. The king intends to buy wheat from Greece or Italy, but the result of repeated increases is that the sultan of Ottoman Turkey also needs it. Letters came to him to warn the pagan brother not to go too far.

oh. Louis thought blankly, let alone wheat, he had more excessive things to do. In order to ensure that the Holy Roman Empire would not have the opportunity to support the Vatican, under the persuasion of the envoy he sent, Ottoman Turkey went to attack Hungary, and the Holy Roman Empire complained endlessly on the iron hooves of the Sudanese army. After persisting for a period of time, it asked all the Catholic countries for help-as the descendant of St. Louis in name, of course Louis could not just sit idly by. Although he is the one who should be cursed... He plans to send a new army of 5,000 people. Fighting the heretics is the dream of every Catholic. With the strengthening of faith, the soldiers' fear and Empathy will be weakened the most, which is easier to hone a reliable army than in the civil war or fighting the British and Spaniards.

It's just that the soldiers' equipment and clothing...is another expense...Louis can of course let the soldiers prepare their own weapons, horses and clothes as before, but since seeing Cromwell's new model army, the young king has Without changing his previous thinking, a mixed, ignorant army that doesn't know why and for whom it is fighting will never be able to compete with an army with a unified mind and a firm will - he allocated funds for This new army prepared clothing, weapons, and horses (although they were only the most common rough horses), and allowed these soldiers to call themselves the king's soldiers, with red ribbons on their cuffs.

He wanted these soldiers to remember their King as they fought for God.

These expenses, fortunately, can be covered by savings from the construction of the Dunkirk docks. But soon, a new problem came again. It was not a war, but if it was not handled well, it might be the beginning of a new war.

Here we want to mention one person, that is, in the previous riots and rebellions, a certain adult who occasionally passed by, that is, the Duke of Lorraine.

The Duke of Lorraine is an interesting man. Although people often accuse him of being weak, incompetent, capricious, reckless, etc., how many of them come from his enemies or betrayed by him. Those who have died, such as the unrepentant Duke of Gaston, in order to gain his support, Duke Gaston insisted on marrying his sister in spite of the king's anger. As a result, in the most important battle of Paris, he obviously won He took the money from the Prince of Condé and the Duke of Gaston, but led his army around Paris and returned to Lorraine, ignoring his allies. It can be said that the situation at that time, if his With the army inserted, Louis and Bishop Mazarin probably won't win that easily.

Now the Prince of Condé has been forgiven by the king, and the Duke of Gaston has been forgiven by God. That is, he may be dying soon, but he has no heir yet, and the envoy of the king's accountability has also arrived at his castle.

Let’s talk about the situation in Lorraine again. When Charlemagne’s eldest son Lothair died, the territory of the Middle Frankish Kingdom was divided into three parts, and it was divided into Lotharnia-Lorraine, Burgundy-Provence, Italy. Lorraine split into upper and lower Lorraine in 953, and Lower Lorraine was merged by Burgundy in 1406. The current owner of Upper Lorraine is the Duke of Lorraine we know. He is not the last Lorraine. The eldest son of the duke, but the second son, like his elder brother, married his uncle's daughter, and perhaps it was for this reason that, at the instigation of his wife, usurped his elder brother's heir, and became Duke of Lorraine, But he hadn't been able to eradicate it, his brother was alive, exiled in fact, and he may have created a curse to have no heir, and now the doctors couldn't do anything about his... horrible disease that couldn't be publicized, and death was only a matter of time.

So when he faced the king's envoy's questioning, he was not afraid. On the contrary, he proposed a deal.

Although Louis knew that he might not have any good intentions, he still couldn't give up easily - because the condition given by the Duke of Lorraine was to decide to return Lorraine.

Any king would be tempted for such a reward. It is not easy to take back the territory of a nobleman. Apart from open rebellion, there is almost no reason for the rulers to take back the fiefdoms granted to their subjects. In the hands of ulterior motives, it is the source of ambition and fertile ground for conspiracy. Even if they don't want to rebel, then their interests and ideas will make it difficult for the king's proposition and laws to be carried out outside Paris, and they can take back a huge territory like Lorraine , It was something that Louis dreamed of, and even the terms of exchange proposed by the Duke of Lorraine were not difficult for the kings elsewhere.

No, it should be said that for Louis, as long as he is willing to let go of his conscience, the conditions of the Duke of Lorraine are not so harsh-he just asks that before he dies, he still retains the ownership of Lorraine and has the right to expropriate in the territory One million livres in taxes. This request is aimed at the merchants and commoners in the territory of Lorraine. They are the ones who suffer, and they are the ones who are desperate. The Duke of Lorraine can enjoy himself and spend as much as he can before going to see God, and the king can come to Lorraine as a saint—as long as He announced that Lorraine would be tax-free for one or two years, and the people of Lorraine would regard him as a living savior.

But the reality is also the same, whether it is the minister, the queen mother, or the judges of the high court, what they are arguing about is only the second condition of the Duke of Lorraine, that is to say, he wants to be a blood prince. The class part of the French royal family, to put it simply, the Duke of Lorraine requires three titles for blood relatives, the last one is for women, let alone, there are two for men, the first one, It is also the most honorable member of the legal clan, that is, the clan closest to the royal family by blood. When the royal family dies, the first blood prince will become the heir to the throne. Before Henry IV, he was the first of the Valois royal family. Blood Prince.

Of course the Duke of Lorraine did not expect to receive this kind of treatment. It is impossible, absolutely impossible. What he prayed for was the second title. They are called His Royal Highness, but this request was strongly opposed by Prince Condé and Prince Conti. Against, Louis has no doubts at all. If he agrees, maybe Prince Condé will set off a second rebellion.

This kind of torment, which was totally reversed for Louis, lasted for several weeks. After thinking for a while, the king summoned the Viscount Turenne, a friend of the Prince of Condé and a loyal courtier of the king. Almost amused by the vigilant look on his face, this gentleman must have wandered between the king and his friends for a long time, "I have an important matter for you to do." The king couldn't bear to torture the elderly general, so he Said directly: "I heard that the former Duke of Lorraine is still in the Netherlands."

"In exile, Your Majesty," said the Viscount Turenne.

"Then can you let him come back to France?" the king asked, "maybe you can try to get him to recruit an army." He looked at the other party's flickering eyes: "Let him go and urge that man on our behalf." Duke of Lorraine."

"You want the Duke of Lorraine to come to Paris?" Viscount Turenne was also thinking, and he probably guessed what the king meant.

"Well," said the king, "but you have to be careful not to let him reset successfully."

"How is it possible," Viscount Turenne is satisfied enough without being caught between friends and the king, "I will do this for you, I want him to linger in front of the fragrant meat, but he will never be able to bite Take a bite."

This sentence made the king smile again. Of course, even if the Duke of Lorraine is not a piece of fragrant meat, he is also a poor rabbit. The elder brother of thousands of soldiers, after weighing things up, he boarded a carriage, rushed to Paris, and threw himself at the king's knees to pray for asylum. He dared not mention the previous conditions, but he would never let go. It is absolutely impossible to take away Lorraine. The king immediately accepted his complaint and placed him in the original Richelieu house.

This made the Duke of Lorraine deeply dissatisfied. Everyone knows that the Louvre is the center of France, and all the glory and glory are only in the Louvre. The Count d'Artagnan, who was returning from Dunkirk, showed great envy for this, and the Duke of Lorraine couldn't help being very curious. He knew that the Count d'Artagnan was the king's favorite, and the favorite loved him Where does your envy come from? He couldn't even live in the Louvre.

But such questions were quickly answered. When he stepped into the entrance hall, he felt that it was different from the outside. The air here was full of fragrance and warmth, but it was not the kind brought by charcoal. It always smelled of smoke and dust, but the smell he smelled was slightly damp, a comfortable dampness—he looked around, under the brilliant lights, there was no fireplace, only one standing on the wall. Statue of flowing water in the niche—clean water pours from a water bottle held by a snow-white marble female statue into a lotus-leaf-shaped tray, turning sparkling foam.

At this time, the Duke of Lorraine realized that the ground he touched after switching to soft-soled shoes was hot. He couldn't help but exclaimed, and subconsciously leaned over to touch it. Then he realized his gaffe and couldn't help but Luckily, his entourage and Count D'Artagnan seemed to be attracted by the ingenious mirrored walls and gold-leaf zenith, and they even had to be reminded by the Duke before they could look away—afterwards the Duke After serving you, go to the bathroom next to the bedroom to wash up. The renovated Richelieu house has almost the same area as the bedroom. In other words, it was originally an adjacent bedroom. The Duke of Lorraine only felt that the light here was particularly sufficient. , When I looked up, I realized that there was a glass zenith above the fixed bathtub, and the clouds could be seen directly.

"This is something that only the sultans of Ottoman Turkey can enjoy." The Duke of Lorraine couldn't help shouting. Although he hated books like many dignitaries, he was very interested in hearing about the extravagance of the sultan. It is said that the Sultan once built a bathroom in his harem where he could see the sky while bathing.

And it's not just a bathroom that people here are willing to learn from the Sultan...

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"Is he satisfied then?" asked the king without looking up.

"Even a devil," said the Count d'Artagnan, "could not be dissatisfied, and even a king could not enjoy such pleasures. Your Majesty, you have been very kind to him."

"I just moved here some things I heard." Louis replied. In this era, the sultan of Ottoman Turkey is the one who enjoys it. He just used some means he could do, although It is impossible for him to prepare a harem for the Duke of Lorraine, but he can still do it with a bathroom and a few famous ladies.