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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".

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.

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.

Early in the afternoon of April 7th, 1498, Charles VIII of France escorted his queen, Anne of Brittany, to an antiquated gallery at his chateau of Amboise, to watch a game of tennis

After the travails of Valois France during the Hundred Years War and the kingdom's subsequent recovery under Charles VII and Louis XI, few magnates any longer felt inclined to contest the title of a mature heir apparent.

Louis himself had been brought up in relatively impecunious circumstances, thanks partly to the antipathy of the late Louis XI towards him and his house. There were nobles who had felt that the ruler's treatment of them and their kind as well as his alleged general misgovernment warranted conspiracy and even revolt against him. Although Louis d'Orleans had been far too young to engage in that reign's most concerted expression of magnate resentment, the War of the Public Weal, he had rationalised in comparable terms his own behaviour under Charles VIII.

Louis-Philippe was the eldest son of Louis-Philippe Joseph de Bourbon-Orléans, duc de Chartres, and Adélaïde de Bourbon-Penthièvre. At first styled duc de Valois, he became duc de Chartres when his father inherited the title duc d’Orléans in 1785.

Despite the fact that he had voted for the execution of Louis XVI in January 1793, the elder Louis-Philippe was arrested in Paris after his son’s desertion.

The execution of Philippe Égalité in November 1793 made Louis-Philippe the duc d’Orléans, and he became the centre of the Orleanist intrigues. He refused to countenance any plan to set himself up as king in France, however, possibly because he was negotiating with the revolutionaries for the release of his two brothers,

On June 7th, 1654, Louis XIV was crowned in the traditional manner at the cathedral of Reims

It was indeed one of the least significant events in the whole reign of Loins XIV

The minority had ended at rather an early age, but kings of France were not as ordinary men, in that, among other things, they had the capacity of coming of age prematurely

Louis XII became king of France by accident. Or, more precisely, because of an accident. On April 7th 1498, his cousin, the reigning monarch Charles VIII, stumbled and hit his head on the lintel of a doorway through which he was passing on his way to watch a tennis match in the royal chateau at Amboise. The king had recently been ill. He seemed to be recovering but this final blow in a life full of hard knocks finished him off. Having no surviving male heir, the crown passed to his nearest male relative, Louis duke of Orleans, who was crowned king in Rheims cathedral on 27 May 1498

Louis ended his reign having reformed the French legal system, reduced taxes, having enjoyed some military success in Italy and bearing the loving accolade, 'Father of the People'. In many respects he stands comparison with his contemporary, Henry VII of England

Louis was born in 1462 during the reign of his second cousin Louis XI. His father was Charles duke of Orleans, a celebrated poet and the head of a cadet branch of the royal house of Valois. Louis XI was succeeded by his son, Charles VIII, in 1483

The occasion of his liberty was the joyous passage through Meung of the new King, Louis XI, whose reign was to change the France in which Villon had pursued his rogue’s career out of all recognition

Of all the princes that I ever had the honour to know”, wrote Commines, “the wisest and most dexterous to extricate himself out of any danger or difficulty in time of adversity was our master King Louis XI.”

Louis was born in 1423, the year after the Dauphin, his father, had claimed his inheritance at the deaths of Henry V of England and Charles VI

Louis was the son of Charles VII of France

Louis was married to Margaret, daughter of James I of Scotland

Louis took part in his father’s campaigns of 1440–43 against the English, and in 1443 he forced the English to raise their siege of Dieppe. When the Anglo-French truce of 1444 left numbers of mercenary troops unemployed, he led a large body of them to attack Basel, in ostensible support of the German king Frederick V (later Holy Roman emperor as Frederick III) in his quarrel with the Swiss confederacy. Failing to take Basel, Louis attacked the Habsburg possessions in Alsace since Frederick would not grant him the promised winter quarters.

For eleven years, from his defeat at the Boyne in July 1690 until his death in September 1701, James II lived at Saint-Germain-en-Laye (near Versailles) in one of the most spectacular royal palaces of the Baroque period

Louis was obliged to recognise William III as de facto King of England, as a condition for signing the peace treaty of Ryswick, which marked the end of the War of the League of Augsburg. The treaty in no way affected James II’s status as de jure king, nor his son’s status as de jure Prince of Wales, but James now had to tolerate the presence in Paris, and occasionally at the French Court, of a hostile English ambassador

At the tercentenary of the King’s death, it is surely time to take a closer look at the life that James led in France

Louis was the fourth son of the dauphin Louis, the son of Louis XV, and received the title comte de Provence; after the death of his two elder brothers and the accession of his remaining elder brother as Louis XVI in 1774, he became heir presumptive

With little concern for the safety of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, who were held captive in Paris, the Comte de Provence issued uncompromising counterrevolutionary manifestos, organized émigré associations, and sought the support of other monarchs in the fight against the Revolution. When the King and Queen were executed in 1793, he declared himself regent for his nephew, the dauphin Louis XVII, at whose death, in June 1795, he proclaimed himself Louis XVIII.

promoting the royalist cause, however hopeless it seemed after Napoleon’s proclamation as emperor in 1804

Louis-Philippe d'Orléans was France's last king. He took power in 1830 after the July Revolution, but was forced to abdicate after an uprising in 1848.

With the monarchy restored and Louis XVIII in power, Louis-Philippe, holding the title of Duke of Orléans, took possession of his familial estates

In 1824, Louis XVIII was succeeded on the throne by his brother, Charles X. As the unpopular Charles X angered the bourgeoisie with his policies, Louis-Philippe, now one of the wealthiest men in France, maintained contact with liberal opposition groups. When Charles X issued four repressive ordinances in 1830, the July Revolution led to a loss of control for the monarchy. Louis-Philippe stepped into the power vacuum and was elected lieutenant general of France. After Charles X abdicated, Louis-Philippe was sworn in as King Louis-Philippe I on August 9, 1830

Orleanist, French Orléaniste, any of the constitutional monarchists in 18th- and 19th-century France who favoured the Orléans branch of the house of Bourbon (the descendants of Philippe, duke d’Orléans, younger brother of Louis XIV). Its zenith of power occurred during the July Monarchy (1830–48) of Louis-Philippe (duke d’Orléans from 1793 to 1830).

the centre of opposition to the encroachment of Bourbon royal power.

the Orleanists returned at the restoration of Louis XVIII and were identified with liberal and bourgeois principles. It is true that Louis XVIII had been induced to grant a constitutional charter, but he and his successor, Charles X, claimed to rule by divine right and to confer liberties upon their subjects of their own will.

The treaty of marriage between Henry V of England and Catherine of France, daughter of Charles VI, sworn in the Cathedral of Troyes on May 21st, 1420, marks the darkest hours of the French monarchy in the fifteenth century. In thirty-one short articles, the treaty made Henry the son of Charles VI and heir, with Henry's own heirs, to the Crown of France. It also made Henry regent until the king's death and gave him the government of the kingdom of France. The 'so-called' dauphin, Charles, was thought to be definitively isolated, having already forfeited his rights after he had had John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, assassinated at Montereau on September 10th, 1419

On the borders of the territories where he strove to impose his authority as regent and heir to France, the Dukes of Brittany (John V) and of Burgundy (Philip the Good), contrived to safeguard their de facto independence

The unexpected death of Henry V on August 31st, 1422, and the long-awaited death of Charles VI (October 21st, 1422), the brutal regency of the Duke of Bedford, and the Amiens alliance of April 1423 between the three dukes (Bedford, Brittany, Burgundy), all contributed, to different extents, to aggravate the political conflict

This was the reputation acquired by Francis the First in his own time and reverently preserved by subsequent generations. His mother, Louise of Savoy, laid its foundation even before it was certain that he would inherit the throne of his second cousin, Louis XII. In 1504 she had a medallion engraved in honour of the ten-year-old Duke of Valois

While Francis I has been remembered as the chivalrous leader who sustained a long and unequal struggle against the Hapsburg Emperor, Charles V, he has also been described as the King of the Renaissance

There are, however, other aspects of Francis I that are less consistent with the popular impression. He was the autocrat who built upon the work of Louis XI in creating the despotism of the new monarchy.

In July 1830, the ‘bourgeois revolution’ in France ousted Charles X and the Second Bourbon Restoration, and a new era in Anglo-French relations ensued. The terms set down at the Congress of Vienna in 1815 following Napoleon’s defeat were now considered academic. Britain, as victor against France, had been obliged to uphold the articles of the various treaties, designed, as one of them stated, for the purpose of ‘maintaining the order of things re-established in France’. The quasi-constitutional Orleans monarchy of Charles X’s successor Louis-Philippe was therefore recognised by Britain

In a diplomatic dispatch of 1832, Lord Granville, British ambassador in Paris, noted that Perier, then president of the Council, believed that ‘the welfare of France and England and the peace of Europe depended upon an intimate alliance and concert between the two governments’

By 1848, once more heading foreign affairs (June 1846 to December 1851), the ‘Jupiter Anglicanus of the Foreign Office’ allowed Anglo-French relations to sink to a level not witnessed since 1814. He had orchestrated the creation of Belgium in 1831, a supposedly neutral country but one which would naturally  be pro-British and often anti-French

The ousting in 1830 of the Bourbon dynasty in France in favour of the Orleanist branch of the family v as more than a mere palace coup, the replacement of one king by another; it represented a decisive challenge to a principle of monarchy which de- pended on hereditary succession for its legitimacy. Charles X had relied on the sanction of tradition, the support of the nobility, and the bonding of 'Throne and Altar', as the foundations of his authority. By contrast, Louis-Philippe, duc d'Orleans, symbolised the marriage of monarchy to liberalism; Orleanism was not yet a fully articulated political philosophy (if it ever was), but the supporters of the duc d'Orleans stood for press freedom, the legality of opposition, an end to the dominance of high politics by the old notable families, and a curb on the political influence of the Catholic church

As late as the Revolution of 1830, it remained a remarkably vague creed predicated on personalities rather than ideology

Orleans tried to remedy his conspicuous unpopularity at Versailles by courting public opinion – a force no politician could afford to ignore by Louis XVI's reign

One day after being convicted of conspiracy with foreign powers and sentenced to death by the French National Convention, King Louis XVI is executed by guillotine in the Place de la Revolution in Paris.

Louis assembled the States-General, a national assembly that represented the three “estates” of the French people–the nobles, the clergy, and the commons.

On July 14, 1789, violence erupted when Parisians stormed the Bastille–a state prison where they believed ammunition was stored.

The ambitions of Louis XIV dissipated French resources in a series of wasting wars against the combined powers of Europe

The King had succeeded in placing his second grandson upon the throne of Spain as Philip V

Frankish aristocracy had been distorted by the rise of monarchical despotism

the very survival of the first Bourbon king amid the dangers and conspiracies of his time suggests a certain element of rational calculation, if not outright hypocrisy.

Navarre were established during his own lifetime

In 1594 Jean Boucher, the most influential curé among the revolutionary leaders of the Leaguer Sixteen, launched an attack upon the hypocrisy of the king’s conversion fully as personal and venomous as his earlier indictment of the last Valois, Henri III

On June 18th, the Battle of Waterloo brought to an end Napoleon's attempted comeback in the Hundred Days

At this point, two centuries ago, the victorious Allies – Britain, Austria, Russia and Prussia – would determine the fate of France

The Austrian chancellor, Metternich, came from Vienna, Tsar Alexander from St Petersburg and, from Berlin, the 72-year-old Prussian Marshal Blücher

the third major war of Louis XIV of France, in which his expansionist plans were blocked by an alliance led by England, the United Provinces of the Netherlands, and the Austrian Habsburgs

the epileptic and partly insane king Charles II, was unable to produce heirs

the Austrian Habsburgs, headed by the Holy Roman emperor Leopold I