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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