Absolutist France
Absolutist France refers to the period of centralized royal power under French monarchs, particularly Louis XIV, during the 17th and 18th centuries. This system emphasized the king's absolute authority over all aspects of government and society, often characterized by the divine right of kings and the suppression of dissent. Absolutist France was marked by lavish court culture, territorial expansion, and the promotion of French arts and culture.
7 Key excerpts on "Absolutist France"
eBook - ePub- Jeremy D. Popkin(Author)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...But the eighteenth-century monarchy was far different from that of earlier epochs. In the Middle Ages, the king of France had been a feudal lord, whose vassals pledged him loyalty in return for the right to govern their own fiefs or domains. The kings of the Renaissance and especially those of the seventeenth century had transformed the monarchy into something very different: a so-called absolute monarchy, in which the king claimed to hold full sovereign powers over all his subjects and in which he was no longer bound by the reciprocal obligations of feudal society. Unlike the king of England, who needed the approval of Parliament to enact laws and collect taxes, the French king did not share his legislative power with any other institution. He commanded the army and navy and the entire machinery of governmental administration, and he was also the supreme judge, to whom verdicts in any other court could be appealed. The process by which the absolutist monarchical state had been built up culminated in the long reign of Louis XIV, who succeeded to the throne in 1643 at the age of five, and personally ran the government from the death of his advisor, Cardinal Mazarin, in 1661 until his own death in 1715. This determined and hard-working ruler came close to making government practice correspond to absolutist theory, as it had been articulated by earlier politicians such as the great minister of the early seventeenth century, Cardinal Richelieu. Louis XIV tamed the independent-minded nobility, integrating them into his system of government and encouraging ambitious aristocrats to spend their time bidding for favors at his court rather than asserting their independence in the provinces. Harsh repression ended the long series of seventeenth-century peasant revolts after 1675, and the expulsion of the Protestants in 1685 ended religious conflicts in the kingdom...
eBook - ePub- H.G. Koenigsberger(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...In reality European society had always been, and still remained, dynamic and unstable. What had happened was that central governments had built up an administrative machine that could govern a country with a hitherto unknown degree of efficiency and absence of interference from rival authorities, or so it seemed to many people at the time. The reality, however, was not so simple. Nor should the historian be surprised at this; for the structure of European society and politics had long since ceased to be simple. Of the many countries in which absolute monarchy was developed it is possible here to choose only two, both of which became in their rather different ways models for the rest of Europe: France and Brandenburg–Prussia. France The absolutism of Louis XIV The kings of France had claimed to be absolute rulers since at least the latter part of the fifteenth century. By absolutism they meant that they could levy taxes on their subjects without the consent of a representative assembly and that, at least within certain limits, they could make laws. This was not, however, the same as exercising effective control over the administration of France; for this, as we have seen (see Ch. 2 pp. 44 – 46) was subject to the autonomous powers and authority both of the high nobility, with their huge estates and their hundreds of clients among the lesser nobility and commoners, and of innumerable privileged corporations, from whole provinces down to local guilds. Moreover, during royal minorities central government tended to break down altogether and, each time this happened, the monarchy lost much of its effective authority again. The last time this had happened was during the minority of Louis XIV. In 1661, when his chief minister and mentor, the Italian Cardinal Mazarin, died, young Louis was determined to rule himself and to assert his authority absolutely over all others in the kingdom...
eBook - ePubWestern Civilization: A Global and Comparative Approach
Volume II: Since 1600
- Kenneth L. Campbell(Author)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Richelieu repressed a Huguenot rebellion and in 1627 successfully besieged the Huguenot fortress at La Rochelle; following the victory, he rescinded many of the Huguenots’ political and military privileges. Not wanting to make permanent enemies of the Huguenots, however, he left alone the provisions of the Edict of Nantes that called for religious tolerance. Absolutism in France Under Louis XIV The reign of Louis XIV (r. 1643–1715) in France is often taken as the epitome of absolute monarchy in Europe. When Louis XIV personally assumed the reins of power in 1661 at the age of twenty-three, he was filled with visions of royal glory and military triumph. He tried to foster a golden age of culture by sponsoring elaborate construction projects such as the immense royal palace at Versailles, patronizing artists and writers such as Molière and Racine, and establishing the French Academy of Sciences. Each of these undertakings was intended to reflect the glory of the “Sun King,” as Louis was known in recognition of the central position of the sun in the new Copernican universe. As the sun was superior to all the planets, Louis was superior to all other monarchs—or so he wanted his subjects and the world to believe. In addition to seeking to enhance his power and reputation through military victory and cultural enterprises, Louis XIV also tried to set a moral and religious tone for his kingdom under the guidance of Bishop Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet (1627–1704). Louis XIV represented the epitome of the divine right king and the absolute monarch in the seventeenth century. He reportedly said “I am the state” and sincerely believed that his interests and France’s interests perfectly coincided. After he revoked the Edict of Nantes in 1685 and expelled the Huguenots from France, he remained, like most other Frenchmen, impervious to the economic and intellectual resources that France lost...
eBook - ePub- Alan James(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Part Three Assessment Chapter Six The Origins of French Absolutism? DOI: 10.4324/9781315839110-12 In 1652 the crown was at war with its own subjects; the capital city was in chaos and there was widespread devastation in the surrounding countryside. Less than ten years later, one of the most celebrated periods of French history dawned with the ‘personal’ rule of Louis XIV. Though not without its critics, its setbacks and suffering, this reign to 1715 was certainly long and glorious and traditionally held by historians as the apotheosis of royal absolutism. We would do well, therefore, to reflect upon these crucial years up to 1661 and consider just how the monarchy was able to reposition itself in such apparently dramatic fashion. What happened in these nine years? Had Louis XIV been traumatised by the Fronde, growing up with a new-found determination never again to allow divisions and disobedience to disrupt his realm? Had the government under the restored Cardinal Mazarin managed to strengthen the pillars of the monarchy to such an extent that it could now rule without any opposition or hindrance? It is certainly true that the king displayed growing authoritarian tendencies and that he matched his words with actions. Yet there is a temptation for historians to exaggerate the strength of the monarchy in the years after the end of the Fronde from 1653. The rebels had been defeated, but on its own this did little to alleviate the difficulties the government faced. It should not be forgotten that France was still mired in a protracted, difficult war. Vocal opposition continued to ring in Paris, especially on religious matters, and in the country at large violent rebellions continued to erupt. Certainly these were momentous years...
eBook - ePubThe Modernization of the Western World
A Society Transformed
- John McGrath, Kathleen Callanan Martin(Authors)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...9 The Centralization and Rationalization of the Political State John McGrath Key Terms absolutism, “balance of power,” bullionism, constitutional monarchy, “Divine Right,” economy of scale, federated republic, infrastructure, mercantilism, separation of powers, “tax farmers” While long-term economic and social forces helped to redefine the role of government during the Early Modern Period, more immediate circumstances also spurred political change, reinforcing the movement toward more concentrated forms of authority. During the Reformation era, religious divisions within and among European states, often intensified by ethnic, social, and economic differences, challenged even the most powerful monarchs to keep a firm grip on their subjects. This gave many European rulers another reason to increase the size, power, and efficiency of their administrations. The result was a new form and style of political organization known as absolutism. 1 Typically, absolutism “introduced standing armies, a permanent bureaucracy, national taxation, a codified law, and the beginnings of a unified market.” 2 Together, these elements rationalized and centralized political authority, representing a significant step in the modernization of the political state. These new structures and policies were justified on the basis of new ideologies that marked a distinct shift from the traditional medieval concept of authority. In contrast to the largely decentralized feudal system where successive levels of nobility ruled in accordance with local customs and practices, absolutist monarchies began to enjoy, at least in theory, total and absolute power over all their subjects. Such power was often supported by the religious concept of “Divine Right,” the idea that God had specially selected the royal families and endowed them with extraordinary qualities with which to lead their kingdoms...
eBook - ePub- Max Beloff(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...The powerful edifice of the French monarchy that Louis XVI inherited from his predecessors apparently crumbled to pieces as the result of a train of events set in motion by the unsolved fiscal problems arising from the American wars; the Romanov, Empire fell only when millions of lives had been sacrificed; and when it did so, it brought down its two rivals to destruction with it. Upon the ruins of these three Empires there arose in our own day states making still greater demands upon their citizens, and exercising absolutisms more all-embracing than any hitherto known. It is perhaps worth calling attention once more to the geographical contrasts which underlie so much of European history; for the modern conflict of ideologies between western Liberalism and Socialist Absolutism, whether in its Nazi or Communist form, can only properly be understood if these are kept in mind. It is in western Europe with its various and many-sided social life that the ravages of political totalitarianism have been most firmly resisted; it is only where society itself has produced new institutions, or where older ones successfully resisted the absolutist monarchs of the eighteenth century and their revolutionary successors that one can still perceive that tension between the State and society which is the condition of a healthy political life. If the State is not omnipotent and omnicompetent in the North Atlantic democracies as it is, for instance, in Soviet Russia, this cannot be ascribed solely to constitutional guarantees, whether of the American written variety, or enshrined in accepted constitutional practice as in Britain. It is much more important that in these countries new independent agglomerations of power have replaced the privileged groups of the eighteenth century...
eBook - ePubThe Ideology of Order
A Comparative Analysis of Jean Bodin and Thomas Hobbes
- Preston King(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...The overall tenor of the book suggests that absolutism is some form of error or evil (with which, on one level, one may agree); and since the substantive content of absolutism is identified as centralisation, then this, too, is identified as some form of error or evil (a conclusion which is obviously silly). For the rest, the historical and argumentative leftovers of an author who advances the sort of position indicated can easily be anticipated, consisting of little more than faint and tattered photocopies of Tocqueville: the seventeenth century will be regarded as perfecting centralised ‘governmental techniques’; these will be said to be ‘appropriated by the successors of the absolutist regimes that created them’; the pre-revolutionary French monarchy will be said to have ‘paved the way’ for ‘Revolutionary and Napoleonic France’ by ‘its levelling and destroying tendencies’; whence we advance to the conclusion that the Age of Absolutism ‘comes to an end only to give way to the new age of “Democratic Absolutism”’; this being understood to mean, as already indicated, that ‘the history of absolutism is only just beginning to be written’ (pp. 18–19 and 180). Thus it is plain that Beloff identifies the history of absolutism with the growth of centralisation, and that absolutism becomes basically synonymous with centralism. Absolutism, however, is not to be equated with the centralisation of power. The term refers not so much to the fact of centralisation as to a universal justification for limitless movement towards centralisation. If we contrast absolutism, as a form of political organisation, with pluralism, we can grasp this point more clearly. To begin, absolutism cannot be equated with concentrated power; if that were so, then pluralism would prove a form of absolutism...
