Dr. Vess's World Civilization Virtual Library

The Reign of Louis XIV (1643-1715)

The Sun King

Objectives:

1. Be able to explain the features of Louis's childhood which led him to absolutism.
2. Be able to discuss the theory of absolutism as seen in Thomas Hobbes and the Bishop Bossuet. Be able to explain how Versailles exemplified these ideas.
3. Be able to discuss the ways in which Louis XIV controlled the three estates.
4. Be able to trace the decline of Louis starting with his foreign wars.
5. Be able to explain the term "devolution."
6. Be able to briefly describe the issues which led to the wars of Louis, and KNOW WHAT THE WARS were!
7. Be able to critically appraise Louis XIV and to discuss the different historiographical views of him.
Food for Thought:

Louis XIV learned in early childhood to mistrust the nobility and the church. Moving his palace to the outskirts of Paris, he symbolized royal authority in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Louis controlled all aspects of society. What nobles is did not move to Versailles, he spied upon in the countryside. Controlling the Parliaments, courts and the church, he forged the modern nation state. Where France was once a country fragmented by the power of the nobles, it was now united under the central authority of the monarchy. Louis instituted a series of events which would ultimately culminate in the French revolution, fought in the name of the people against the abuses of an all-powerful monarchy.
Famous Quotations:

I am the state. attributed remark before Parliament in 1651.

Has God forgotten all I have done for Him? attributed remark upon learning of the defeat at Malplaquet, 1709.

No arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. The condition of man . . . is a condition of war of everyone against everyone. The privilege of absurdity; to which no living creature is subject but man only. Hobbes, Leviathan

OUTLINE

I. l'etat c'est moi

A. His childhood

i. Cardinal Richelieu ii. Cardinal Mazarin iii. The revolt of the Fronde (1648)

B. Louis the Sun King and the Age of Gloire

i. Removed himself from the reach of the nobles: Versailles -- symbol of his glory

ii. glory of Versailles accompanied by grandeur of French culture: Moliereexplore Moliere's critique of French Society in Tartuffe Rameau

iii. Reduced nobles to personal valets

iv. elaborate court ritual centered around Louis

v. grand society of pomp and circumstance, but little content

vi. Louis's "intellect beneath mediocrity"

BUT -- L'ETAT C'EST LOUIS!

II. The Centralized State

A. Theorist of the Absolute Monarchy: Hobbes and the Leviathan

i. Bishop Bossuet

B. The Leviathan in practice:

i. Jean Baptiste Colbert and economic reform: fewer exemptions and privileges for nobility

ii. mercantilism:

a) commerce and production in France

b) tariffs on imports

c) no internal tariffs: The Five Great Farms

d) development of navy to transport goods

iii. Government:

a) Council of State

b) Council of Dispatches

c) Privy Council

d) intendants

e) control of Parliaments by lit de justice

f) Right of evocation

g) centralized army

C. Control of the three estates i. nobility:

a) to Versailles

b) taxes

c) intendants ii. clergy:

a) Gallican church

b) suppression of Jansenists

c) revoked Edict of Nantes -- 1685 iii. commoners:

a) suppression of Parliament III. NEC PLURIBUS IMPAR -- NONE HIS EQUAL: Louis and the expansion of Gloire

A. War of Devolution i. Spain and Charles II

ii. The Dutch

a) Rembrandt

b) Huyghens

c) Dutch East India Company

d) Protestant and Republican Government William of Orange

iii. Treaty of Nijmegen -- 1678 The Franche-Comte

B. Louis's Power and the Tidal Wave of Panic through Europe: The League of Augsburg

i. The League of Protestant AND Catholic foes of Louis:

a) Holy Roman Emperor

b) King of Spain

c) King of Sweden

d) Electors of Bavaria, Saxony, Palatinate

e) Dutch Republic

f) England

ii. The Peace of Ryswick -- 1697

C. The War of the Spanish Succession 1701-1713

i. Charles II wills France to grandson "The Pyrennes exist no longer"

*The Grand Alliance -- Protestant League led by William of Orange

ii. Allied victories

a) Blenheim 1704

iii. Peace of Utrecht 1713

a) Philip V on throne of France

b) **** trade route for France to New World

c) end of Dutch Supremacy in commerce -- forts on frontiers

d) Duke of Brandenburg of King of PRUSSIA

e) BRITAIN was big winner:

i) received Newfoundland, Hudson Bay from France (New World)

ii) Gibraltar and Minorca

iii) Right of ASIENTO from the Spanish:

a) right to bring goods to Panama = slaves

IV. Evaluations of Louis's Reign

A. Voltaire excellence of French culture due to Louis's greatness

B. Duke of Saint-Simon "This vanity, this unmeasured and unreasonable love of admiration, was his ruin."

C. Contemporary appraisals bureaucracy gone mad.

*Danger of Hobbes's philosophy -- Hitler!!!!