The foundation of French absolutism was established in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
The following helped achieve the foundation of French absolutism:
Henry IV (b. 1553, ruled 1589-1610) The Duke of Sully (Maximilian de Bethune, 1560-1641), Henry IV’s chief minister, established economic growth and financial stability for France, reducing the crushing debt that had accumulated during the religious wars between Catholics and the Calvinists (Huguenots) by reforming the tax system and tax collection. The Duke also instituted a program of economic improvement by constructing new roads and bridges that improved transportation and promoted economic prosperity. Henry IV strengthened the power of the monarch by limiting the power of the nobles over the regional parliaments. In 1610, Henry IV was assassinated by a fanatic who thought that Henry was a menace to the Catholic Church.
Louis XIII (b. 1601, ruled 1610-1643) Louis was only nine years old when he became king. His mother, Marie de Medici, replaced the Duke of Sully and ran the government inefficiently until her son was 23, spending money lavishly on court expenditures as well as pensions to discontent nobles. In 1617, Louis XIII forced his mother into retirement because she had excluded him from running the government even though he had been declared of age in 1614. They were reconciled in 1624 and she was able to secure the appointment of her protégé, Cardinal Richelieu. (At this time, religious leaders held official positions in the government in many Catholic countries.) By 1630, she became jealous of Richelieu’s influence and urged Louis to dismiss him. Instead, the king sent his mother into exile and she never returned to France. Afterwards, the king gave full support to Richelieu, who was appointed prime minister.
Cardinal Richelieu (1624-1642) Richelieu’s goal was to establish the supremacy of the king and French domination of the European continent. He achieved these objectives by destroying the fortified castles of the French nobles, which had long been a symbol of their independence. He also crushed the political power of the Huguenots. When the Huguenots revolted in 1625, Richelieu personally supervised the siege of their walled city, La Rochelle, and forced it to surrender. By the Peace of Alais in 1629, the Huguenots were allowed to keep their religion but they lost their fortified cities, military, and territorial rights. Richelieu did not want the Huguenots to ever again be able to defy the king and then withdraw behind a strong defense. Through his spy system, he efficiently destroyed any conspiracy that threatened royal power. By the use of the intendant system, he transferred local government functions from the nobles to royal officials, further weakening the power of the nobles. The intendants were royal officials who collected taxes, recruited soldiers, and carried out government policies in the provinces. All of these officials regularly communicated to Richelieu. He also levied taxes without the consent of the Estates General, the French parliament. All these steps served to strengthen the power of the king. In foreign affairs, Richelieu involved France in the Thirty Years War, supporting the Protestants in order to weaken the domination of the Hapsburgs and establish French control on the continent.
Louis XIV (b. 1638, ruled 1643-1715) Louis was only four when his father died and his mother Queen Anne selected Cardinal Mazarin as Prime Minister. Mazarin, resented by the people because he was Italian, continued Richelieu’s strategies for centralizing power; however, he lacked Richelieu’s shrewdness. Mazarin’s attempts to increase the royal revenue led to civil wars, called the Fronde, that lasted intermittently from 1649 to 1652. The term fronde means a slingshot and frondeurs were originally mischievous street children who threw mud or shot rocks at passing carriages of the rich. The term came to symbolize anyone who opposed the policies of the government. In 1649, a bitter civil war ensued between the monarch and the Frondeurs (the nobility and the middle class). Riots wrecked Paris and violence continued intermittently for a number of years, resulting in Louis XIV and Cardinal Mazarin fleeing the city. However, internal differences between the nobles and the middle class and the overall chaos in the country contributed to Louis XIV’s eventual return. The Frondeurs had no systematic program other than the overthrow of Mazarin.
The rebellions had a traumatic effect on Louis XIV, who became convinced that the sole alternative to anarchy and the power of the nobles was to establish an absolute monarchy. After the death of Mazarin in 1661, Louis became his own prime minister and adopted the ideal of the Divine Right of Kings. This concept had been developing in France since the sixteenth century. According to Bishop Jacques Bossuet, one of Louis’ advisers, the king was chosen by God to rule, and only God had authority over the king, not a parliamentary body or any group of nobles. This Divine Right Theory of rule provided the justification for the absolute sovereignty of Louis and his monarchy. Louis’ statement, “L’Etat c’est moi” (I am the state) represents his belief that there was no higher authority that could ever control him.
During Louis XIV’s 72-year reign, France became a dominant power in Europe. European countries envied France’s success in industry and agriculture. Jean Baptiste Colbert (1619-1683), Louis’ able finance minister, helped revive trade and the economy. While he did not invent the system of mercantilism, discussed later in the chapter on “Mercantilism and the Agricultural/Industrial Revolution,” he rigorously applied it to France. To advance prosperity, Colbert promoted good farming methods, internal improvements (roads and canals), support of both old and new industries, and the creation of a strong merchant marine, which enabled France to establish trading posts in North America as well as Asia. Colbert’s goal was to make France self sufficient by centralizing the economy through government control of trade and industry.
Louis XIV also sought to control religion, believing that more than one religion could not exist and that religious unity was essential for absolute control. In 1685, he revoked the Edict of Nantes. He destroyed Huguenot schools and churches and took away their civil rights. The Huguenots escaped France and settled in Holland, England, and America. Many of those who fled were craftsmen and business people and their loss hurt the French economy.
Louis kept France at war for much of the time that he ruled. He pursued an aggressive foreign policy, wanting France to achieve its natural boundaries along the Rhine River. To this end, Louis created a personal army that was employed by the state instead of the nobles. The French armies were able to gain some territory in Germany and its surrounding areas. France was engaged in the following wars: the War of Devolution or the First Dutch War (1667-1668); the Second Dutch War (1672-1678); and the War of the League of Augsburg (1681-1697). By the end of the Fourth War, the War of the Spanish Succession (1702-1714), fought because of Louis’ efforts to lay claim to the Spanish throne for his grandson, the European countries of Holland, Great Britain, and Austria were able to contain Louis’ territorial ambitions. In 1713, France signed the Peace of Utrecht, which forbade the union of France and Spain, stating that the two countries could not be ruled by the same monarch. The treaty also made Louis XIV’s grandson, Philip IV, the new king of Spain. The treaty ended French expansionism and left France on the brink of bankruptcy.
The reign of Louis XIV is considered the Golden Age of France. French became the language of polite society and replaced Latin as the language of diplomacy and scholarship. Louis, who was referred to as the Grand Monarch or the Sun King because like the sun he was the center of all power, was a strong patron of the arts. He loved the stage and encouraged writers like Molière, Racine, and Louis De Rouvroy Saint-Simon to pursue their crafts. The French style of classicism and fashion were the models for all of Europe.
Louis XIV’s palace at Versailles influenced the architectural style of Europe. It was built 12 miles outside of Paris, at a cost of over $100 million, and filled with 1400 fountains – this palace served as a fundamental tool of state policy under Louis. He was able to control the nobles who were forced to live at Versailles and also used the elaborate architecture to impress his subjects and foreign visitors. Versailles became a reflection of French genius. Peter the Great of Russia and Frederick the Great of Prussia would try to model their palaces on the one in Versailles. By the time of Louis’ death in 1715, France was the leading nation on the European continent. However, his extravagant life style at Versailles burdened the peasants with taxes, the long war emptied the treasury, drained the manpower of the country, and held back economic development of the country.