Louvois, FRANÇOIS MICHEL LE TELLIER, MARQUIS DE

Louvois, FRANÇOIS MICHEL LE TELLIER, MARQUIS DE, the war-minister of Louis XIV., was born in Paris, 18th January 1641. His father was Chancellor and Secretary of State in the war department; the son joined him as assistant-secretary in 1662, and became war-minister in 1668. The first great task he set himself was to organise the armies of France. He created a standing army, gave it a corps of officers recruited by compulsion from among the nobility, established commissariat and hospital services, and founded the Hôtel des Invalides and various orders of merit. In the drilling of the armies he had a ready agent in Martinet, whose name is not yet forgotten in military life. His labours bore their fruit in the great war that ended with the peace of Nimeguen (1678). During the following years Louvois took a leading part in the capture of Strasburg, in 1681, in time of profound peace, and in the persecution of the Protestants through the dragonnades after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Louvois, a man of strong will, was overbearing and autocratic, brutal and cynical, unscrupulous in his means, but consistent and single in his aims—the aggrandisement of France and the maintenance of his own position. He died suddenly on 16th July 1691. See Life by C. Rousselet (6th ed. 4 vols. 1879); and Chotard's Louis XIV., Louvois, Fauban (1890).