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Louis XIV, also known as the Sun King, was the French King that had the throne since the age of five. After Louis XIII died, Louis XIV succeeded to the throne and was rented by Anne of Austria, Louis XIV’s mother, as Louis was too young to rule. Anne was assisted by Cardinal Mazarin who was an Italian diplomat and politician who served as Chief Minister to the King of France. After Mazarin died in 1661, Louis XIV was now in charge. When Louis XIV was 10 years old, civil conflicts, known as the Fronde broke out where there was a dispute between the parliament of Paris and the monarchy. People were unhappy with the amount of power the king and the monarchy had. The Fronde eventually fell and made the French monarch stronger, and began what would be an absolute monarch. In the following 55 years, he would no longer appoint Primer Ministers and the power was monopolized. Backed by the diplomatic achievements of two cardinals, Armand Jean de Plessy Richelieu and Jules Mazarin, Louis XIV made France a centralized kingdom with an absolute monarchy. He would become the longest-reigning monarch of a sovereign country. His name is associated with the whole political current of absolutism. Louis initiated France’s modernism and led it to the top of Europe as he shaped France followed by the rest of Europe.
France in the 17th century was divided into three estates. The clergy was the top estate and accounted for 1% of the French population, the nobility was the second estate with 3-4% of the population, and everybody else was at the bottom. The first and second estates held all the privileges – one main privilege being that they did not have to pay any taxes. In the days of absolutism, monarchs across Europe embraced the idea that they had the divine right to their absolute rule. France was already on its way to becoming an absolutist state. 17th-century France was the richest and most populous country in Christian Europe, with a population of about 19 million. France’s social hierarchies grant the top class with the most wealth a host of privileges, including tax exemptions, and no one can rebuild France’s fiscal foundations. Louis XIV’s absolutism itself made it impossible for France to create a national bank to mobilize social wealth to support the long war. Therefore, France’s measures to raise military spending include raising tax rates, issuing short-term credit notes, transferring future tax rights, repaying creditors with high-interest rates, and selling officials.
France under the rule of Louis XIV was somewhere between the Middle Ages and modern times, and its institutions and values were very different today. Although power has become more centralized and bureaucratic, the policy is still dictated, determined, and implemented by the monarch. While Louis XIV sought to rule in a rational way (impersonal bureaucracy), he managed not to let the bureaucracy give orders on his behalf, but to ensure his own power (highly personified absolute monarchy). Louis XIV is the god-like creator of this government, the sovereign and infinite God. In the early period of Louis XIV, the development and prosperity of the French economy, politics, ideology, and culture was the result of the long-term development and accumulation of the society, and it was also the embodiment of the multi-faceted adaptability between the feudal autocracy and the capitalist economy and culture.
Jean-Baptiste Colbert was the most prominent and important of all of Louis XIV’s officials. Colbert oversaw finances and public works, He drove the kingdom’s economy, including overseeing French expansion into North America. While Colbert was praised for improving the economy and helping it come out of bankruptcy, it is noted that the king’s excessive expenditure on wars caused France’s impoverishment. Louis XIV lived a lavish lifestyle during his rule. He began what was considered the ‘Age of Absolutism’.
The construction of Versailles was one of Louis XIV’s strategies to centralize power. Louis XIV completed the efforts of Richelieu and Mazarin to establish an absolutist state. He limited the powers of the nobility by turning them into members of his court, disarming them as magistrates. The king wanted to prevent further uprisings like the Fronde, he cut off the aristocracy from their old jobs and appointed officials for this while compensating the nobility with valuable gifts and lavish celebrations. The once powerful high nobility willingly left their castles in the provinces, only a few could afford to maintain their own court societies permanently. In order to keep up with the times and to follow the latest court fashions, many aristocrats went into debt or received arbitrary pensions from the king. The Palace of Versailles became the official seat of government in France on 6 May 1682, replacing the Louvre in Paris. Being assigned an apartment in Versailles was an important privilege that also gave the illusion of being part of the government at the center of power.
In the process of maintaining the autocracy, Louis XIV reformed the French administrative system. In particular, he placed the French armed forces, previously virtually independent of the king under the firm control of the state. He strengthened the idea of the ‘chain of command’ in which he would be the ‘supreme commander’. He increased the size of the army and successfully merged various military units as infantry and artillery into a single and unified army force. Louis XIV’s foreign policy was both vanity and power politics. Louis XIV was a vain man who saw conquest as the road to glory. At the same time, he intended to expand French territory, thereby strengthening French security and establishing France as the hegemon of Europe. Louis XIV’s desires sparked a series of conflicts that eventually made France the enemy of most of Europe.
Louis XIV greatly improved the royal power, strengthened the despotism of France, and influenced the despotism of other countries through the attack on religious authority. He did everything in his power to prove his famous saying ‘I am the state’. He thought of himself as ‘God’s duty’, and nobody was allowed to overpower him. His goal was ‘one king, one law, one religion’. Louis XIV was a devout Catholic and attended Mass most days. Catholicism was predominant in the country, but Protestant was a significant minority too. Louis XIV was not religiously paranoid, but he looked at things from the point of view of the divine right of kings. The king, therefore, believed that the existence of minority religions threatened the principle of absolutism.
‘God has given you all the qualities of greatness you must put them to use.’ As the ‘theocracy’ king, Louis XIV tried his best to hunt down the enemies of Catholicism to realize ‘a faith’; as the founder of the absolute monarchy, he firmly controlled the religious power under the royal power. The rapid rise of religion in France can be traced back to 496 AD when the Frankish leader Clovis was baptized in Rome and officially converted to Christianity. In the era of Louis XIV, there were mainly Catholic, Jesuit, Jansen, Quiet, Huguenot, and other religious sects in France. Louis XIV elected a bishop to restore the Gallic Church in his favor. In this case, it is his duty to establish a prosperous Catholic Church, and he should ruthlessly hunt down the enemies of Catholicism. From this point of view, Louis XIV faithfully served the Reformation. Since he is the protector of the Jesuits and considers himself the absolute master of the theocratic state, of course, he will inevitably conflict with all matters (other denominations) opposed to Catholicism in France.
The measures mainly include the following aspects: first, repeal the Edict of Nantes. When he first assumed political power, the king solemnly swore that he would continue to carry out Henry IV’s edict of religious tolerance. At that time ‘the Huguenots were the most industrious, enterprising and loyal subjects of his kingdom.’ The French king finally signed the decree repealing the Edict of Nantes on October 18, 1685, and four days later the decree was officially announced. Although it was only the king’s personal act, it was universally welcomed. The people at the court applauded the king’s intention to eliminate the Huguenots. It was officially announced that Protestantism had been wiped out, and ‘there is no longer any legitimate religion in France except Roman Catholicism.’ Catholicism has never been so powerful in France, and it firmly controls the hearts of the French people. Second, the promulgation of the ban; in 1685, the authorities banned Calvinists from hiring Catholics as servants, for fear that their masters would corrupt and poison the servants. The following year, a decree was issued, ordering them to fire the servants of the Huguenots so that they may be arrested as homeless people. At that time, except for the attempt to force Protestants to convert, the methods of persecuting Protestants continued to change.
The Palace of Versailles revealed Louis XIV’s essence of absolutism. It was the palace of Louis XIV – a high-quality masterpiece of French baroque architecture. It was a powerful symbol of the absolute monarchy which future kingdoms would try to recreate. Louis XIV ascended the throne as a child and reigned for several decades, dying aged 78 in 1715. He accomplished absolutism in his kingdom and was at the peak of his power, politically and socially. Only his costly wars – the War of Spanish Succession – led to France’s economy to ruin. His imposing court at Versailles became the ideal of many European royal courts. 20,000 people worked here while the Sun King acted from here in a centralized manner.
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