Colbert and the navy

The comptroller general’s sphere of activity continually expanded. He busied himself with everything, from questions of finance to the naming of Louis’s illegitimate children. As secretary of state for the navy from 1668, he undertook to make France a great power at sea. This meant forming a fighting fleet, building and equipping the king’s ships, fortifying ports, and encouraging the merchant navy. The Atlantic fleet was composed of sailing ships; the Mediterranean fleet, of galleys. To man the Atlantic fleet, professional sailors were required to sign on for the king’s service. For the galleys, Colbert encouraged magistrates to sentence common criminals to serve in them and had no scruple about making use of other sources of manpower: political offenders, Protestants, and slaves seized from Africa and Canada.

Colbert reconstructed the works and arsenal of Toulon and founded the port and arsenal of Rochefort and naval schools at Rochefort, Dieppe, and Saint-Malo. Calais, Dunkerque, Brest, and Le Havre were fortified. The need for naval construction goes far to explain Colbert’s vigilance over the forests (Ordonnance des eaux et forêts, 1669), one of the most corruptly administered sectors of the royal domain. As he also wanted the French ships of the line to have a handsome appearance, in order to impress foreigners, he engaged excellent artists, such as Pierre Puget, to decorate them. Encouragement was given to the building of ships for the merchant navy by allowing a premium on those built at home and imposing a duty on those built abroad; and as French workmen were forbidden to emigrate, so French seamen were forbidden to serve foreigners on pain of death.

The arts

In 1669 the king added still further to Colbert’s dignities by making him responsible for the intellectual and artistic life of the country, as secretary of state for the king’s household. He applied to the arts the same principle that had guided him previously: the enhancement of the power and prestige of France.

Colbert, himself a member of the Académie Française, founded the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (1663) to choose inscriptions for medals and monuments celebrating the king’s victories; the Académie des Sciences (1666) to study how the sciences could be exploited to the kingdom’s advantage; and the Académie Royale d’Architecture (1671) to lay down rules and refine the taste of French work. He also founded schools, such as the Académie de France in Rome, in which artists could be trained under some of the great masters of the time; and schools for practical purposes, such as the École des Jeunes de Langues, for the study of Oriental languages. The Observatoire de Paris, of which the Italian astronomer Giovanni Cassini was put in charge, was founded by Louis XIV at Colbert’s instigation. The Italian architect Gian Lorenzo Bernini was invited to submit a design for the Louvre, but its execution proved too expensive, and plans by French architects eventually were adopted.

Other spheres of activity

Colbert encouraged emigration to Canada to form the colony of New France. He promoted legislation on many matters, such as the Ordonnance criminelle of 1670, commercial laws, and the so-called Code Noir on slave labour. In agriculture he tried to protect the peasants so far as was consistent with his general economic system, to improve the breed of horses and sheep, and to promote new crops. His concern for economic progress made him hostile to measures against the Protestants (many of whom were in business) and mistrustful of monks and even of the secular clergy (on the ground that too many men who should have been in commerce took holy orders). He himself remained a faithful Catholic.

Last years

At the end of his life, however, Colbert was a disappointed man. For the carrying out of his far-reaching reforms, the country needed peace; but Louis XIV had been drawn into a series of wars that imposed a heavy drain on the national revenues. Even so, by energetically applying the authoritarian methods of the times, without distinction of persons or heed to public opinion, Colbert had made the monarchy stronger and the nation better equipped. The order that he had introduced into public administration was to have a lasting effect.

Colbert’s eldest son, Jean-Baptiste, marquis de Seignelay, had been granted the right to succeed his father as secretary of state for the navy; the second son, Jacques-Nicholas, was archbishop of Rouen; the fourth son, Jules-Armand, marquis d’Ormoy, was surintendant des bâtiments (minister of construction); and three of his daughters were married to dukes.