"The bows and scrapes of mistresses and confessors"

Finally getting to reading Churchill's biography of Marlborough, and his fine rant on Louis XIV deserves posting. Apropos of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes and associated persecutions:

We have no patience with the lackey pens which have sought to invest this long, hateful process with the appearances of dignity and honour. During the whole of his life Louis XIV was the curse and pest of Europe. No worse enemy of human freedom has ever appeared in the trappings of polite civilization. Insatiable appetite, cold, calculating ruthlessness, monumental conceit, presented themselves armed with fire and sword. The veneer of culture and good manners, of brilliant ceremonies and elaborate etiquette, only adds a heightening effect to the villainy of his life's story. Better the barbarian conquerors of antiquity, primordial figures of the abyss, than this high-heeled, beperiwigged dandy, strutting amid the bows and scrapes of mistresses and confessors to the torment of his age. Petty and mediocre in all except his lusts and power, the Sun King disturbed and harried mankind during more than fifty years of arrogant pomp.

... Without pretending to any analysis of his prose, note how Churchill is unafraid to marshal cliches -- "fire and sword," "cold and calculating" -- and assimilate them in a paragraph that doesn't sound at all cliched.

Unhappily, that qualifier about "in the trappings of polite civilization" has to do more heavy lifting now than it did when Churchill wrote.