ABSOLUTISM AT ITS PEAK: FRANCE UNDER LOUIS XIV/Terzioglu-March 16, 2009

Absolutism at its peak: France under Louis XIV

Introductory remarks

-State-building as a conflictual process; the seventeenth-century crisis

-Different paths of state building in the seventeenth century: England and France.

France before Louis XIV
a)The French monarchical tradition

b)Limits to absolutism
-Size and population
-Local particularisms – the concept of “liberty”
-Religious diversity

c)Precursors to Louis XIV
-Henry IV

-Cardinal Richelieu

RICHELIEU

-Cardinal Mazarin
-The Fronde

The personal rule of Louis XIV
a)Cooptation of rather than confrontation with the social groups and institutions that represented a check on royal authority

b)Government through “the nobility of the robe”, while keeping the “nobility of the sword” preoccupied, in debt and in check in the Versailles

VERSAILLES

c)Extensive use of cultural patronage to glorify his rule and to manipulate the royal image.

d)Use of the theory of “the divine right of kings” to justify his rule and power.

LOUIS XIV and his family

e)Mercantilist economic policies

f)Modernization of the army

g)Policy of religious intolerance
-Suppression of Protestantism (Revocation of the Edict of Nantes)
-Suppression of Jansenism

massacre of St.Bartholomew

h)Military ventures

Louis XIV

The legacy and perception of Louis XIV: two contrasting Enlightenment perspectives

-Montesqueiu, The Persian Letters, 1721

-Voltaire, The Age of Louis XIV, 1750

VOLTAIRE