FC95: The Age of Louis XIV, the "Sun King" (1643-1715) - The Flow of History - 2 views
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Introduction From 1643 to 1815 France dominated much of Europe's political history and culture. Foreigners came to France, preferring it to the charms of their own homeland. Even today, many still consider it the place to visit in Europe and the world. In the 1600's and 1700's there was a good reason for this dominance: population. France had 23,000,000 people in a strongly unified state compared to 5,000,000 in Spain and England, and 2,000,000 in the Dutch Republic and the largest of the German states. This reservoir of humanity first reached for and nearly attained the dominance of Europe under Louis XIV, the "Sun King".
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Louis' early life and reign (1643-61) Louis was born in 1638 and succeeded his father, Louis XIII, as king in 1643 at the age of five. Luckily, another able minister and Richelieu's successor, Cardinal Mazarin, continued to run the government. In 1648, encroachment by the government on the nobles' power, poor harvests, high taxes, and unemployed mercenaries plundering the countryside after the Thirty Years War led to a serious revolt known as the Fronde, named after the slingshot used by French boys. Louis and the court barely escaped from Paris with their lives. Although Mazarin and his allies crushed the rebels after five hard years of fighting (1648-53), Louis never forgot the fear and humiliation of having to run from the Parisian mob and fight for his life and throne against the nobles. This bitter experience would heavily influence Louis' policies when he ruled on his own.
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Louis XIV may not have said, "I am the state", but he ruled as if he had said it. Louis was the supreme example of the absolute monarch, and other rulers in Europe could do no better than follow his example. Although Louis wished to be remembered as a great conqueror, his first decade of active rule was largely taken up with building France's internal strength. There are two main areas of Louis' rule we will look at here: finances and the army. Louis' finance minister, Jean Baptiste Colbert, was an astute businessman of modest lineage, being the son of a draper. Colbert's goal was to build France's industries and reduce foreign imports. This seventeenth century policy where a country tried to export more goods and import more gold and silver was known as mercantilism. While its purpose was to generate revenue for the king, it also showed the growing power of the emerging nation state. Colbert declared his intention to reform the whole financial structure of the French state, and he did succeed in reducing the royal debt by cutting down on the number of tax farms he sold and freeing royal lands from mortgage. Colbert especially concentrated on developing France's economy in three ways.
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Versailles Louis' religious faith was largely a superficial one attached to the elaborate ritual of the Catholic mass. This love of ritual also showed itself in how Louis ran his court at his magnificent palace of Versailles, several miles outside of Paris. Much of the reason for building Versailles goes back to the Fronde that had driven Louis from Paris as a young boy. Ever since then, Louis had distrusted the volatile Paris mob and was determined to move the court away from the influence of that city. Versailles was also the showpiece of Louis' reign, glorifying him as the Sun King with its magnificent halls and gardens.
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Religion was one aspect of Louis' reign that illustrated the absolute nature of his monarchy quite well. Louis himself was quite a pious Catholic, learning that trait from his mother. However, in the spirit of the day, he saw religion as a department of state subordinate to the will of the king. By the same token, not adhering to the Catholic faith was seen as treason. As a result, Louis gradually restricted the rights of the French Huguenots and finally, in 1685, revoked the Edict of Nantes, which had given them religious freedom since the end of the French Wars of Religion in 1598. This drove 200,000 Huguenots out of France, depriving it of some of its most skilled labor. Thus Louis let his political and religious biases ruin a large sector of France's economy.
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Results of Louis' reign The age of Louis XIV was important to European history for several reasons. First of all, it saw the triumph of absolutism in France and continental Europe. Versailles was a glittering symbol and example for other European rulers to follow. Any number of German and East European monarchs modeled their states and courts after Louis XIV, sometimes to the point of financial ruin. Second, Louis' wars showed the system of Balance of Power politics working better than ever. French aggression was contained and the status quo was maintained. All this had its price, since the larger sizes of the armies and the final replacement of the pike with the musket took European warfare to a new level of destruction. Finally, Louis' reign definitely established France as the dominant power in Europe. However, the cost was immense and left his successors a huge debt. Ironically, the problems caused by Louis XIV's reign would help lead to the French Revolution in 1789 and the spread of democratic principles across Europe and eventually the world.
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Louis' main goals were to expand France to its "natural borders": the Rhine, the Alps, and the Pyrenees. This, of course, would make him enemies among the Dutch, Germans, Austrians, Spanish, and English. Therefore, Louis' diplomacy had to clear the way to make sure he did not fight everyone at once. For this purpose he skillfully used money to neutralize potential enemies (such as Charles II of England in the Secret Treaty of Dover) and extracted favorable terms from stalemate or losing situations. But Louis could also make some fateful blunders to hurt his cause. His obsessive hatred of the Dutch dominated his policy too much, as did his own self-confidence and arrogance in trying to publicly humiliate his enemies. However, this just alarmed Louis' enemies more, especially the Dutch, Austrians, and English, who allied against Louis to preserve the balance of power.
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Exhaustion on both sides finally led to the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. Louis' grandson took the throne of Spain and its American empire, but the French and Spanish thrones could not be united under one ruler. Austria got the Spanish Netherlands to contain French aggression to the north. Just as the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 had contained Hapsburg aggression, the Treaty of Utrecht contained French expansion. Two years later Louis XIV was dead, with little to show for his vaunted ambitions as a conqueror except an exhausted economy and dissatisfied populace.
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Just as Louis's palace at Versailles dominated European culture during the late 1600's and early 1700's, his diplomacy and wars dominated Europeans political history. As Louis himself put it: "The character of a conqueror is regarded as the noblest and highest of titles." Interestingly enough, he never led his troops in battle except for overseeing a few sieges from a safe distance.