To speak of Louis XIV as a ‘social king’ would, of course, be anachronistic. Social security did not exist, inequalities were considerable, famines and destitution regularly afflicted the kingdom, and society under the Ancien Régime was based on a hierarchy that no one today would think to describe as ‘social’. But there was a conception of royal power that has now largely been forgotten: a King of France was not merely to govern. He was to be approachable, open to requests and, at times, directly addressed by his subjects.
Louis XIV himself wrote in 1662 that one of the distinctive features of the French monarchy was ‘the subjects’ free and easy access to the prince’. Versailles, which the contemporary imagination readily depicts as a gilded fortress cut off from the people, was in reality a surprisingly accessible palace for its time. Even today, the palace serves as a reminder that visitors from all walks of life could come to see the King and the royal family pass by.
Above all, there existed a rather extraordinary institution: that of the ‘placets’.
Every Monday at Versailles, a table was set up in the Hall of the Guards within the King’s private quarters. Anyone with a request, a complaint, an injustice to report or a plea for help could submit a written petition addressed to the sovereign. These requests came from all walks of life, and many were from people of extremely modest means who had sometimes travelled across part of the kingdom in the hope of obtaining justice, administrative intervention or simply money.
The Palace of Versailles thus preserves the records of these ‘humble subjects’ who came to ask the monarch for support, arbitration or financial assistance. At first, Louis XIV collected these petitions himself, before this task was gradually entrusted to his entourage.
One must appreciate what this meant in a society without telephones, email, modern media and, of course, social media: in theory, a peasant or a craftsman could send the account of his misfortune directly to the very top of the state.
This does not mean that Louis XIV received every poor person individually in his private chambers, nor that he personally resolved every injustice in the kingdom. It would be absurd to interpret this practice as a form of democracy ahead of its time. The system was extremely hierarchical, with numerous intermediaries, and a petition could very well come to nothing. But the political principle was there: the sovereign had to remain accessible.
Even Versailles had been designed, in part, around this idea. The palace explains that Louis XIV was thus upholding an ancient tradition of the monarchy, according to which the king had to be approachable by his subjects. The Grand Apartment was open, and anyone could see the sovereign passing through as he made his way, for example, to the chapel.
Even more surprising to our contemporary eyes, this proximity also extended to matters of illness.
The kings of France were believed to possess the power to cure scrofula, a disease characterised in particular by lymph node damage associated with tuberculosis. During specific ceremonies, the sick were presented to the sovereign, who would touch them and make the sign of the cross over them.
Of course, no branch of modern medicine recognises any therapeutic power in this gesture. But to understand the era, we must view this rite through the eyes of the 17th century: the poor, the sick and the marginalised could find themselves physically just a few centimetres away from the man considered the most powerful in the kingdom.
And Louis XIV seems to have taken this duty particularly seriously. According to records from the Palace of Versailles, he is said to have touched around 200,000 sick people during his reign. During these ceremonies, the sick would arrive from various French provinces and even from abroad.
The picture therefore deserves to be qualified.
No, Louis XIV was not a ‘social’ monarch in the modern sense. His reign was also one of taxes, wars, privileges, food shortages and a deeply unequal society. But no, Versailles was not merely that hermetic bubble in which a handful of aristocrats lived without ever catching sight of the rest of the country.
Absolute monarchy presented this paradox: the king placed himself above everyone else and, precisely for that reason, had to symbolically belong to everyone.
A man living in poverty could scarcely approach a minister or a nobleman. But he could come to Versailles with his petition and hope that his complaint would reach the sovereign.
At a time when we are constantly talking about the distance between those in power and those they govern, this old practice takes on a rather surprising resonance.
This is obviously not a matter of lamenting the Ancien Régime or idealising Louis XIV. It is simply a matter of remembering that amidst the gilded decorations, the courtiers and the vast galleries of Versailles, there was also a small table that was set up on Mondays.
And on that table, ordinary people would lay out their problems.
A debt. An injustice. A pension. A desperate situation. A plea for help.
Three centuries later, this is perhaps one of the least well-known and most human images of Versailles: behind the Sun King, there was also, at times, a man compelled to listen to the grievances of those living at the very bottom of his kingdom.
