I Am Louis XIV

  Chapter 366 Some trifles between the Swedes and Lorraine-Alsace (2)

If Louis XIV hadn't fanciedly escorted his eldest princess to Malmö with 15,000 soldiers armed with guns, according to tradition, Karl XI should have waited in Stockholm for the wedding embassy to deliver the eldest princess to the Old Palace, and then at Wedding at St. Nicholas Cathedral.

But when Louis XIV's chariot appeared in Amsterdam, Charles XI and his mother, ministers, and members of parliament debated whether he should go to the French king, knowingly or not, the latter had been in Karl XI. He caused a lot of omissions and mistakes in the education of the world, but it also made the young Karl XI develop a somewhat withdrawn but stubborn character. He had a big fight with everyone - if he was still the boy who just came of age, Maybe he really was going to succumb to their chatter, but Karl XI fought the Danes with an army of tens of thousands and won.

He always remembered what the princess said to him. In this world, the tongue will never be sharper than the sword. In Paris and Versailles, he also heard many things about King Louis XIV of France, Louis XIV and He has many similarities. He lost his father when he was young, and was regented by his mother and important ministers. Hedwig Eleonora of Stein-Gottorp loved the king more and was more able to control his greed, even so, Louis XIV was revealed to the public because his army defeated Viscount Turenne, their little king was seen only once.

With this idea in mind, after returning to Stockholm, Karl XI tried his best to build an army that only belonged to him. Needless to say, the difficulties he faced were once the enemy he relied on the most. relatives and friends, but he would rather borrow from a French banker than take the first step - he succeeds, a young king with incompetence and a mediocre disposition is nothing like a young king who has defeated an old enemy, and he is finally at court has its own supporters.

  Now, he still needs a strong helper to run his court, to replace the queen dowager Eleonora, so that he will not be constrained by many parties.

Of course, that person is only Elizabeth, the eldest princess of France. He loves her not only because of her beauty, not because of her dowry, but also because she has received a systematic and good education, and her talent and vision are not at all in princes and dukes. Below, she will not only be his son's mother, but also his right-hand man, and even a safe haven. Since he has such expectations, he will not treat his wife coldly or simply ignore his wife like other kings and princes.

He was wrapped in the power of the previous victory, not so much to persuade, but to convince his mother and ministers, instead of riding in a carriage, he rode his horse around the clock to Malmo, so urgent was a last resort, although he did not need to Greet the bride, but need to visit and comfort the eldest princess with gifts (usually expensive jewelry) on the first night she arrives in Stockholm, if he doesn't, it shows that he doesn't have much compassion and respect for the new queen Love, some people will inevitably have to make trouble again.

When he rushed to Malmö, the lights were already high, and Charles XI did not know if he should ask for an audience, but before his messenger set off, the messenger of Louis XIV came, and Charles XI met After him, the Count of D'Artagnan, a dandy who was always smiling and feared by many people, after having tidied his hat and bowed to Karl XI, he asked him on behalf of the king: "Need a break? Still support? If you can, come see me in my room."

This casual tone and attitude brought Charles XI back to a few years ago. He nodded to the count, indicating that he could support it, and immediately went to see the king. After the count left, he hurriedly After wiping his face and hair, he changed his clothes, and brought his most credible attendants to Malmo Castle, where the king temporarily stayed.

This 14th-century castle is not very comfortable. There was a battle here not long ago, and Karl XI was familiar with it - he even remembered how a soldier fell from the city wall to the ground and his brain was broken. Flow, but at this time, for a king, the castle is always the most suitable palace. It can accommodate enough people, there are water sources, there are fortifications, and there are necessary auxiliary buildings such as warehouses.

As soon as he entered the door, he could smell the aroma of coffee. Swedes don't drink coffee for a long time, but after trying this refreshing drink, they can't put it down again - because Sweden is in a really good position. Too bad they are in the far north of Europa, eight months out of the year there is no more than four hours of sunshine, the sunrise is only seen from ten to eleven in the morning, and it sinks again at three or four in the afternoon... modern Everyone knows that natural light is closely related to people's natural rhythms, mainly the mutual regulation of sleep and digestive functions, and also affects people's emotions. People in the seventeenth century may not understand this, but they also know that they are sleepy all day long. Not a good thing.

  Coffee helps them stay awake when they should be working, making it the Swedes' favourite drink.

The pot of black coffee sent by Bontang was very strong, thick and bitter, according to the Swedish custom. After Karl XI saluted Louis XIV, he immediately picked it up and took a few sips. The hot and heavy liquid flowed into him. There was a chill in his stomach.

   "It's still so cold here." Louis XIV said that compared with the warm Paris and Versailles, the temperature in Sweden is really not flattering.

   "Yes, Your Majesty."

   "This is Malmö, the southernmost part of Sweden. Stockholm will be colder." Louis looked at him: "Can I call you Karl?"

   "Yes, Your Majesty." Karl XI said that this was not a public occasion. Although he was the king of Sweden, the person in front of him was also half of his teacher and father-in-law.

"Then Karl," said Louis gently, "you know, I just picked the most beautiful rose in my garden a few days ago and sent it here, and I looked at this ice and snow, and I was worried and didn't know it. Can you get used to this unfamiliar country, can you re-grow roots and shoots here, spread leaves, bloom flowers and bear fruit."

"A rose is beautiful, but not a soft flower," said Karl XI. "She has thorns and a strong stalk—and I, Your Majesty, swear to you that your rose will bloom in Stockholm. more radiant."

   "Elizabeth should have told you that words are the emptiest and palest of things," said Louis. "But it is soothing, and I take your word, Carl."

   He glanced at Karl XI.

"It's been a long night, let's chat and talk about something I want to tell you." Louis moved his body to make himself more comfortable. He was used to no matter where he went, whether it was a war or a wedding , Bontang would have brought his furniture and bathtub well - the Versailles chairs have been covered with satin and goose down on the cushions, backs and armrests since a long time ago, and these two chairs are extra large, Bontang brought a blanket and offered one to each of the two kings.

"A king must marry a princess," Louis began with this sentence: "No, don't say king, even if an aristocrat acts willfully and marries a lowly woman as his wife, he will be banned from inheritance, even Those who are excluded from the entire court. So, I think you are also very clear that your future marriage will not be out of pure love, as the legends or dramas say."

   "My situation," he continued, "is different from other kings. My boyhood was spent in displacement and anxiety."

"Yes," said Karl XI admiringly, "you are a great man." Although his mother and the regent had their own thoughts, which caused him to lack education, at least he was still in his palace in Stockholm. He grew up peacefully without suffering, but Louis XIV was different. His enemies could not hide his present brilliance. The queen mother used to make a living by selling jewelry; they said that Louis XIV had fallen into the mix with the refugees, and even went to grow potatoes; they said that the current Duchess of Orleans had taken refuge with the Princess Henrietta of Louis XIV. Even almost died of fever due to no doctor and no medicine...

But for a smart person like Karl XI to hear, such difficulties can actually set off Louis XIV's extraordinary rationality and tenacity, just like a little light in the dark is most easily remembered. To be able to break free from such a dangerous and embarrassing situation and create such a considerable career, his heart and courage have long surpassed those poor **** who can only shake their lips.

"You see, I didn't agree on my marriage until I was twenty-two years old. As the king of France, my choices were very narrow. Finally, as you know, Princess Teresa of Spain became my wife, She's the same age as me." Louis looked at the fire in the fireplace and recalled his thoughts at the time: "France and England were enemies, Bourbon and Habsburg were enemies, and we fought each other, constantly looking for opportunities to destroy each other. , but had to intermarry because we had no other choice - back then, my ministers kept recommending beautiful ladies to me," he smiled at Karl XI, who was a little embarrassed because he The ministers also did the same: "I can understand them, because there is almost no possibility of peace between us and Spain and the Habsburgs. My wife is the princess of Spain. If she gets married, she can get my Love, let me ignore the threat of the Habsburgs because of this love, then France will be destroyed. But..."

He turned gently: "But I am also puzzled, because once Princess Teresa becomes my wife, she is the closest person to me, and my closest friends and relatives can't reach the level of me and her. To have children with her and grow old with her - I have seen how my mother lived the first half of her life in agony, and she was also the princess of Spain - am I going to let this tragedy continue?"

"I want to change." Louis continued: "I wrote her a letter, hoping that she could learn French soon, and to introduce her to the people and the situation in the Louvre, of course, only very crudely, because there must be someone Open my letter - I think if she still has self and thinking ability, she will understand," He looked at Karl XI: "That is, no matter what others say or do, her husband does not want her And he is a pair of enemies."

   "I hope so too," said Karl XI.

"There is no parent who does not love their children, but sometimes kings are the exception," said Louis. "It is said that there are three kinds of people in the world, men are one, women are one, and kings are one," Karl XI Laughing, Louis continued: "I am not surprised at all, Philip IV will definitely teach his daughter that even if she is married, she must stand firmly on Spain's side, remembering that she is a Spanish princess, not France. Queen, but how could such a thing happen? Carl, a girl became a man's wife, had children with him, and eventually went to the grave together. She spent more than a dozen years in her mother country, so what? What about the next few decades?"

"Unless one torture replaces another, one pain trumps another," Louie said. "So, on the wedding night, after people had all left our bedrooms, I would Leza said, don't worry about Spain, don't worry about France, just look at me, I will respect you, I will protect you, I will do what a husband should do, and you just have to pay me back. Guess that's when Trey How did Sarah answer me?"

   "May I know?" Karl XI asked shyly.

"You can see," said Louie, "that Elizabeth is not just my child--Teresa said that a person who is used to suffering doesn't care to eat more, but if he tastes good, he will eat it later. No pain. Then I told her that if I broke my promise, she could take revenge on me as she liked, and she could take revenge on me.”

  Karl XI didn't know what to say for a while.

   "Don't think that she really can't do anything." Louis XIV said: "A noble lady, after being deceived, can burst into rage enough to burn an entire kingdom."

   "But why would you make such a promise?"

"Because husband and wife are one body." Louis said: "Your marriage to Elizabeth is a covenant between France and Sweden, but at the same time, it is also a sacred covenant. When you hold your hands together, when you swear to God, you also act as a covenant. The descendants of Adam and Eve are not just kings and queens. Although you are not related by blood, you have to create a new bloodline - that is Paladinnett-Zweibruecken (the Swedish dynasty founded by Karl X) and Bourbon."

   "What do you want me to do? I love Elizabeth, but I need your guidance." Carl XI whispered.

"I won't promise you, or say some ridiculous things, such as the French won't want my eldest princess to exert influence on you and make Sweden a vassal of France, let alone the Swedes, even you don't Believe it."

  Karl hesitated, "Yes," he confessed: "I wouldn't believe it." He, Louis XIV, were kings, and they knew that no personal emotion could be compared with national interests.

"But this apprehension," said Louis XIV, "probably goes further than you think. You are a king, and you have a problem, that is, you are doomed to be against your ministers and princes, from your father Karl The tenth intentionally began to curb the royal property and territory lost from Gustav II and Queen Christina - at that time, in order to stabilize their rule, they unashamedly conferred nobles and rewarded fiefs. What is the income? A third of what it was under Gustavus I, or less?"

You're already building and expanding your standing army in a planned way, building warships, promoting middle and low-level officials, and that's fine, but those people, you know what I'm talking about, they're probably not going to be caught off guard, how many congressmen do you think would be willing to obey your orders? Your every move is under their watch - Carl, kings dying are the few, and most kings die either as villains or as traitors.

And worst of all, your mother, the Queen Mother and you have never been on the same page, your Chancellor, the Duke of Oxencienne, has a close relationship with her, the court and the nobles in the court will only be more inclined to abide by the old rules of them instead of you.

   Who else can be around you that you can trust unconditionally? Only your wife. "

Louis continued quickly, "I am willing to make a promise to my queen. At first it was just out of pity. I thought my wife should be respected by me, but then I found that a wife who embraces loyalty and love , how much strength and help can she bring to her husband... Karl, although I am the sun king and the ruler of France now, if one day I lose everything, then there will be only Teresa standing by my side, Because we swore together before God that her brilliance came only from me, not from her father, and when people saw her they would say that she was the wife of the king of France, the mother of the king of France, but not Say, the princess of Spain."

   "Like Elizabeth." Karl XI muttered.

"Just like Elizabeth," said Louis, "you will face no less difficulties than I did at the time. Although I don't want to admit it, soon Elizabeth will be your wife. I hope you can be like me and Teresa. , helping each other instead of hating each other as they had hoped—because," he leaned forward and threw a log into the fireplace: "for the nobles, perhaps the king is their real enemy, and the queen is wrapped around her mother. The power of the family can be a help or a constraint for the king, how do you think they will choose?"

   "I choose to be like you and Queen Teresa." Carl XI may have had a little fear of marriage and the queen at first, but now he is no longer hesitant.

"As for France and Sweden," Louis took a sip of his coffee: "I will now speak to you as a king, sir, since Henry IV, France has sought natural borders, that is to say, on the west side of Boulder. It is limited to the Tany Peninsula, facing the United Kingdom, and ends with the Rhone Valley and Marseille-Toulon-Nice line in the east. The Pyrenees Mountains are separated from Spain by the high mountain barrier; the Alps in the east block Italy and Switzerland, and the Rue in the northeast. The La Mountains, the Black Forest, and the Rhine Valley cut France and the Holy Roman Empire…”

   "Not only did you do it," said Karl XI, "but you went a step further."

   "That's what worries all the Europas, except the French," Louis said unabashedly: "Did you also think I'd get the whole Europa?"

   "Don't you want to?"

"There was an empire before, and it was called Rome," said Louis, twirling his coffee mug idly: "You have not yet thoroughly understood your country, or rather mastered it, so you cannot understand—conquer and rule Completely different things, completely different things, for a reasonable person, what he can control is his own, I admit that I have ambitions, but maybe not more expansive than Henry IV." He looked at Carl XI: "But maybe I'll want to see how beavers build their nests."

It is unbelievable that a man who has conquered Flanders and Holland in one breath and added a third of the new territory to France, Karl XI muttered in his heart for a while, but he was talking with him. After the eldest princess communicated, she also began to take the initiative to ask to learn. Ancient Roman history is a compulsory course for all kings. Of course, he also understood that the territory of the ancient Roman Empire once spanned Europe and Asia. Such a behemoth, the emperor's will (except for the earliest Octavian) may not even be able to get out of the city of Rome, almost all territories are divided and ruled by local governors - and now Ottoman Turkey, otherwise Leopold I would not have believed so easily The Governor of Bosnia will sell Bosnia to Austria.

   "And you," Louis asked, "tell me, where did you see?"

  Karl XI bowed his head and thought for a while, "I think it's my whole life," he replied with a sigh: "Perhaps the greatest achievement is the re-establishment of the Kalmar Union."

What Karl XI was talking about was the union of Scandinavian countries formed in 1397 at the Kalmar Conference under the auspices of Queen Margrethe of Denmark, which was jointly supported by the three kingdoms of Norway, Sweden and Denmark. One ruler, Queen Margrethe, the alliance continued until 1523, when the Swedish nobleman Gustav Vasa declared Sweden's independence.

Speaking of which, Karl XI's Swedish throne is still inherited from the Vassar Dynasty. This approach is undoubtedly anti-customer, but if Sweden can have only one voice like Louis XIV, it is not impossible to achieve such a goal. Only after clarifying this point, Charles XI also understood the meaning of Louis XIV - all he could see was Scandinavia, and during the period of Louis XIV, France at least would not expand its power to the north - There is no chance that they will need to be hostile to each other for decades. Then even for Sweden, for his own ambitions, he would stand on the same stance as his wife.

   "I want to say it's for love." Karl XI raised his hands and pressed his face.

   "Well, that thing is useless," said Louie.

  ———

   Just as the conversation between the king and the other king came to an end, a man suffering from love was wading through the quagmire.

After Louis XIV came into power, he began to build roads and bridges. Lorraine, as the first new territory to be incorporated into France, was also a major producer of glass china, steel and wood, so from a very early time there were wide roads and Bridges, the army that quelled the rebellion could have followed them all the way into Lorraine, but the thugs of Lorraine were not fools. They destroyed a bridge and the road was interrupted. The Count of Soissons looked at the map and determined the downstream, the distance There was a bridge about a league or two from here, so I decided to go there.

Lorraine was rainy in spring, and the river was turbid and churning. They left the main road. The path the hunters and villagers walked on was the so-called animal road. It was narrow and small, wet and slippery, and the vines dragged their arms and feet. , It rained again when the sky was dark. Referring to the map and the memory of the guide, they came to a small village with only two or three hundred people.

  This village didn't even have a name at first, but the priests who surveyed and mapped it gave it a name called Mona, which means small.

  The village chief of Mona Village is actually a relative of the guide, although it is a little far away.

The village chief was tall, but as soon as he entered the room, his back was hunched as if he was carrying a heavy stone, and he looked at people, and the villagers they had seen, from under his bushy, ragged eyebrows. Just as full of fear and trepidation, a pair of huge hands tightly held the decent silk blouse, as if someone would **** it away if they didn't do it.

The Count of Soissons just asked casually, they had also stayed in other villages along the way, and the Lorraines had similar attitudes towards them - they were not French after all: "How many rooms are there?" He asked, after getting After a vague number, the earl frowned. It seemed that only officers could live in the house, but the soldiers also had tents. "Find a suitable place for them," he said.

The village chief pointed them to a place, which was a huge raised rock, surprisingly flat, where it was said that the villagers were drying their wheat, enough for the soldiers to be stationed there—Joseph and Eugen, as officers, could be there. They were staying in the village, but the Count of Soissons demanded that they leave until all the soldiers were asleep.

Some of the army's new tents were captured at the Battle of Kamnica, but after being captured, they were refurbished, dewormed, and painted with waterproof paint. Each tent could accommodate ten people, and the soldiers were able to quickly and skillfully complete it. The work was done, but they also delayed until it was completely dark, and when they returned to the village in their cloaks, drank a large glass of mulled wine with pepper, and prepared to go to sleep, it was only three or four years before dawn. hours.

   Maybe because he was too tired, little Eugen couldn't sleep. He lay on the bed, looking at the darkness in front of him, calculating where the eldest princess had gone...

   Then he heard someone push the door open and come in.

   Added and updated, seven thousand words. Ah, less than 8,000, because it's not too long, happy holidays.

   (end of this chapter)