Absolutist France
Overview
Absolutist France
Absolutism is a period in French history during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in which the power of the monarch was theoretically unrestrained and unlimited. It resulted in exuberant wealth for the French monarchs, such as Louis XIV. It is also characterized by extreme poverty for most of the French population and exorbitant taxation, as well as political, social, and religious repression.
Learning Objectives
- Investigate the absolutist French state under Louis XIV.
- Identify key people, events of Absolutist France.
Key Terms / Key Concepts
Cardinal: a senior member of the Roman Catholic church who often acts as an advisor to the Pope; second only to the Pope in their power
Cardinal Armand de Richelieu: seventeenth-century French cardinal who wielded much power in shaping internal and external French policies
King Louis XVI (The Sun King): authoritarian, supremely wealthy monarch of France who represents the height of absolutism
Absolutism: practice in which European monarchs had unlimited power
Versailles: luxurious palace of King Louis XIV outside of Paris
The Fronde: series of French Civil Wars that erupted in the mid-seventeenth century in response to oppressive, absolutist rule under the French monarchies
Huguenot: a religious minority group of French Protestants
Absolutist France
The most exemplary case of absolutist government was that of France in the seventeenth century. The transformation of the French state from a conventional Renaissance-era monarchy to an absolute monarchy began under the reign of Louis XIII, the son of Henry IV. Louis XIII came to the throne as an eight-year-old when his father was assassinated in 1610. Following conventional practice when a king was too young to rule, his mother Marie de Medici held power as regent—one who rules in the name of the king; she also enlisted the help of a brilliant French cardinal, Armand de Richelieu. While Marie de Medici eventually stepped down as regent, Richelieu joined the king as his chief minister in 1628 and continued to play the key role in shaping the French state.
Portrait of Cardinal Armand de Richelieu.
Richelieu deserves a great deal of credit for laying the foundation for absolutism in France. He suppressed various revolts against royal power that were led by nobles, and he created a system of royal officials called Intendants. These officials were usually men drawn from the mercantile classes. They collected royal taxes and oversaw administration and military recruitment in the regions to which they were assigned; they did not have to answer to local lords.
Richelieu’s major focus was improving tax collection. To do so, he abolished three out of six regional assemblies that, traditionally, had the right to approve changes in taxation. He made himself superintendent of commerce and navigation, recognizing the growing importance of commerce in providing royal revenue. He managed to increase the revenue from the direct tax on land, almost threefold during his tenure (r. 1628 – 1642). That said, while he did curtail the power of the elite nobles, most of those who bore the brunt of his improved techniques of taxation were the peasants; Richelieu compared the peasants to mules, noting that they were only useful for working.
Richelieu was also a cardinal: one of the highest-ranking “princes of the church,” officially beholden only to the pope. His real focus, however, was the French crown. It was said that he “worshiped the state” much more than he appeared to concern himself with his duties as a cardinal. He even oversaw French support of the Protestant forces in the Thirty Years’ War as a check against the power of the Habsburgs, as well as supported the Ottoman Turks against the Habsburgs for the same reason. Just to underline this point: a Catholic cardinal, Richelieu, supported Protestants and Muslims against a Catholic monarchy in the name of French power.
King Louis XIV: The Sun King
Louis XIII died in 1643, and his son became King Louis XIV. The latter was still too young to take the throne, so his mother became regent, ruling alongside Richelieu’s protégé, Jules Mazarin. Mazarin continued Richelieu’s policies and focus on taxation and royal centralization. Almost immediately, however, simmering resentment against the growing power of the king exploded in a series of uprisings against the crown known as The Fronde, a noble-led civil war against the monarchy. They were defeated by loyal forces in 1653, but the uprisings made a profound impression on the young king, who vowed to bring the nobles into line.
When Mazarin died in 1661, Louis ascended to full power at just twenty-three-years-old. Louis went on to a long and dazzling rule, achieving the height of royal power and prestige, not just in France but in all of Europe. He ruled from 1643 – 1715 (including the years in which he ruled under the guidance of a regent), which means he was king for an astonishing 54 years at a time when the average life expectancy for those surviving infancy was only about 40 years. Louis was depicted as the sun god Apollo and called the “Sun King”, a term and an image he actively cultivated while declaring himself “without equal”. He was, among other things, a master marketer and propagandist of himself and his own authority. He had teams of artists, playwrights, and architects build statues, paint pictures, write plays and stories, and build buildings all glorifying his image.
Louis' Versailles Palace and Court Culture
Famously, Louis developed what had begun as a hunting lodge (first built by his father) into the most glorious palace in Europe; this palace was constructed in the village of Versailles, about 15 miles southeast of Paris, and built in the baroque style and lavishly decorated. Over the decades of his long rule, the structure and grounds of the Palace of Versailles grew into the largest and most spectacular seat of royal power in Europe, on par with any palace in the world at the time. There were 1,400 fountains in the gardens, 1,200 orange trees, and an ongoing series of operas, plays, balls, and parties. Since Louis ultimately had 2,000 rooms built both in the palace and in apartments in the village,10,000 people could live in the palace and its additional buildings, which were all furnished at the state’s expense. Today, the grounds cover about 2,000 acres, or just over 3 square miles (by comparison, Central Park in New York City is a mere 843 acres in size).
Louis expected high-ranking nobles to spend part of the year at Versailles, where they were lodged in apartments and spent their days bickering, gossiping, gambling, and taking part in elaborate rituals surrounding the person of the king. Each morning, high-ranking nobles greeted the king as he awoke (the “rising” of the king, in parallel to the rising of the sun), hand-picked favorites carried out such tasks as tying the ribbons on his shoes, and then the procession accompanied him to breakfast. Comparable rituals continued throughout the day, ensuring that only those nobles in the king’s favor ever had the opportunity to speak to him directly. The rituals were carefully staged not only to represent deference to Louis but also to emphasize the hierarchy of ranks among the nobles themselves, undermining their unity and forcing them to squabble over his favor.
Around the king’s person, courtiers had to be very careful to wear the right clothes, make the right gestures, use the correct phrases, and even display the correct facial expressions. Deviation could, and generally did, lead to humiliation and sometimes permanent loss of the king’s favor, to the delighted mockery of the other nobles. This was not just an elaborate game; anyone wishing to "get" anything from the royal government had to convince the king and his officials that he was witty, poised, fashionable, and respected within the court. One false move and a career could be ruined. At the same time, the rituals surrounding the king were not invented to humiliate and impoverish his nobles. Instead, they celebrated each noble’s power in terms of his or her proximity to the king. Nobles at Versailles were reminded of two things at once: their dependence and deference to the king and their own dignity and power as those who had the right to be near the king.
Not just nobles participated in the dizzying web of favor-trading, gossip, and bribery at Versailles, however. Louis XIV prided himself on the “openness” of his court, contrasting it with the closed-off court of a tyrant. Any well-dressed person was welcome to walk through the palace and the grounds and confer with those present. Both men and women from very humble origins sometimes rose to prominence at Versailles and made a healthy living by serving as go-betweens for elites seeking royal positions through the bureaucracy. Others took advantage of the state’s desperate need for revenue by proposing new tax schemes; those that were accepted usually came with a payment for the person who submitted the scheme, so it was possible to make a living by “brainstorming” for tax revenue on behalf of the monarchy.
The palace had been designed for display, not comfort. As a result, some aspects of life at Versailles seem comic today: the palace is so huge that the food was usually cold before it made it from the kitchens to the dining room; on one occasion Louis’ wine froze en route. Some of the nobles who lived in the palace or its grounds would use the hallways to relieve themselves instead of the privies because the latter were so inadequate and far from their rooms.
The costs of building and maintaining such an enormous temple to monarchical power were immense. During the height of its construction, 60% of the royal revenue went to funding the elaborate court at Versailles itself (this later dropped to 5% under Louis XVI, but the old figure was well-remembered and resented); this was an enormous ongoing expenditure that nevertheless shored up royal prestige. Louis himself delighted in the life at court, refusing to return to Paris (which he hated) and dismissing the financial costs as beneath his dignity to take notice of.
Louis' Domestic Achievements
Louis did not just preside over the ongoing pageant at Versailles. He was dedicated to glorifying French achievements in art and scholarship, as well as to his personal obsession: warfare. He created important theater companies, founded France’s first scientific academy, and supported the Académie Française—the body dedicated to preserving the purity of the French language founded earlier by Richelieu (during Louis XIV’s reign, the Academy published the first official French dictionary). French literature, art, and science all prospered under his sponsorship, and French became the language of international diplomacy among European states.
To keep up with costs, Louis continued to entrust revenue collection to non-noble bureaucrats. The most important was Jean Baptiste Colbert, who doubled royal revenues by reducing the cut taken by tax collectors. Colbert also increased tariffs on foreign trade going to France and greatly expanded France’s overseas commercial interests.
Louis' Religious Intolerance
While Louis’s primary legacy was the image of monarchy that he created, his practical policies were largely destructive to France itself. First, he relentlessly persecuted religious minorities, going after various small groups of religious dissenters but concentrating most of his attention and ire on the Huguenots. In 1685 he officially revoked the Edict of Nantes that his grandfather had created to grant the Huguenots toleration, and he offered them the choice of conversion to Catholicism or exile. While many did convert, over 200,000 fled to parts of Germany, the Netherlands, England, and America. In one fell swoop, Louis crippled what had been among the most commercially productive sectors of the French population, ultimately strengthening his various enemies in the process.
An Empire at War
Louis waged constant war. From 1680 – 1715 Louis launched a series of wars, primarily against his Habsburg rivals, which succeeded in seizing small chunks of territory on France’s borders; this seizing of various Habsburg lands saddled the monarchy with enormous debts. Colbert, the architect of the vastly more efficient systems of taxation, repeatedly warned Louis that these wars were financially destructive; however, Louis simply ignored the question of whether he had enough money to wage them. The threat of France was so great that even traditional enemies like England and the Netherlands on one hand and the Habsburgs on the other joined forces against Louis; after a lengthy war, the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 forced Louis to abandon further territorial ambitions. Furthermore, the costs of the wars were so high that his government desperately sought new sources of revenue, selling noble titles and bureaucratic offices, instituting still new taxes, and further trampling the peasants. When he died in 1715, France was bankrupt.
Primary Source: Jean Dormat- "On Social Order and Absolute Monarchy"
Jean Domat (1625-1696), “On Social Order and Absolute Monarchy” [Abridged]
There is no one who is not convinced of the importance of good order in the state and who does not sincerely wish to see that state well ordered in which he has to live. For everyone understands, and feels in himself by experience and by reason, that this order concerns and touches him in a number of ways ....
Everyone knows that human society forms a body of which each person is a member; and this truth, which Scripture teaches us and which the light of reason makes plain, is the foundation of all the duties that relate to the conduct of each person toward others and toward the body as a whole. For these sorts of duties are nothing else but the functions appropriate to the place each person holds according to his rank in society.
It is in this principle that we must seek the origin of the rules that determine the duties, both of those who govern and of those who are subject to government. For it is through the place God has assigned each person in the body of society, that He, by calling him to it, prescribes all his functions and duties. And just as He commands everyone to obey faithfully the precepts of His law that make up the duties of all people in general, so He prescribes for each one in particular the duties proper to his condition and status, according to his rank in the body of which he is a member. This includes the functions and duties of each member with respect to other individuals and with respect to the body as a whole.
[Necessity and the Origin of Government]
Because all men are equal by nature, that is to say, by their basic humanity, nature does not make anyone subject to others .... But within this natural equality, people are differentiated by factors that make their status unequal, and forge between them relationships and dependencies that determine the various duties of each toward the others, and make government necessary ....
The first distinction that subjects people to others is the one created by birth between parents and children. And this distinction leads to a first kind of government in families, where children owe obedience to their parents, who head the family.
The second distinction among persons arises from the diversity of employments required by society, and which unite them all into a body of which each is a member. For just as God has made each person depend on the help of others for various needs, He has differentiated their status and their employments for the sake of all these needs, assigning to people the place in which they should function. And it is through these interdependent employments and conditions that the ties binding human society are formed, as well as the ties among its individual members. This also makes it necessary to have a head to unite and rule the body of the society created by these various employments, and to maintain the order of the relationships that give the public the benefit of the different functions corresponding to each person's station in life.
***
It is a further consequence of these principles that, since all people do not do their duty and some, on the contrary, commit injustices, for the sake of keeping order in society, injustices and all enterprises against this order must be repressed: which was possible only through authority given to some over others, and which made government necessary.
This necessity of government over people equal by their nature, distinguished from each other only by the differences that God established among them according to their stations and professions, makes it clear that government arises from His will; and because only He is the natural sovereign of men, it is from Him that all those who govern derive their power and all their authority, and it is God Himself Whom they represent in their functions.
[The Duties of the Governed]
Since government is necessary for the public good, and God Himself has established it, it is consequently also necessary for those who are subject to government, to be submissive and obedient. For otherwise they would resist God Himself, and government, which should be the bond of peace and unity that brings about the public good, would become an occasion for divisions and disturbances that would cause its downfall.
The first duty of obedience to government is the duty to obey those who hold the first place in it, monarchs or others who are the heads of the body that makes up society, and to obey them as the limbs of the human body obey the head to which they are united.
This obedience to him who governs should be considered as obedience to the power of God Himself, Who has instituted [the prince] as His lieutenant ....
***
Obedience to government includes the duties of keeping the laws, not undertaking anything contrary to them, performing what is ordered, abstaining from what is forbidden, shouldering public burdens, whether offices or taxes; and in general everyone is obliged not only not to contravene public order in any way, but to contribute to it [positively) according to his circumstances.
Since this obedience is necessary to maintain the order and peace that should unite the head and members composing the body of the state, it constitutes a universal duty for all subjects in all cases to obey the orders of the prince, without taking the liberty of passing judgment on the orders they should obey. For otherwise, the right to inquire what is just or not would make everyone a master, and this liberty would encourage seditions. Thus each individual owes obedience to the laws themselves and [even] to unjust orders, provided he can obey and follow them without injustice on his own part. And the only exception that can qualify this obedience is limited to cases in which one could not obey without disobeying the divine law.
[The Power, Rights, and Duties of Sovereigns]
The sovereign power of government should be proportionate to its mandate, and in the station he occupies in the body of human society that makes up the state, he who is the head should hold the place of God. For since God is the only natural sovereign of men, their judge, their lawgiver, their king, no man can have lawful authority over others unless he holds it from the hand of God .... The power of sovereigns being thus derived from the authority of God, it acts as the arm and force of the justice that should be the soul of government; and that justice alone has the natural claim to rule the minds and hearts of men, for it is over these two faculties of men that justice should reign.
***
According to these principles, which are the natural foundations of the authority of those who govern, their power must have two essential attributes: one, to make that justice rule from which their power is entirely derived, and the other, to be as absolute as the rule of that justice itself, which is to say, the rule of God Himself Who is justice and Who wishes to reign through [princes] as He wishes them to reign through Him. For this reason Scripture gives the name of gods to those to whom God has entrusted the right of judging, which is the first and most essential of all the functions of government....
Since the power of princes thus comes to them from God, and since He gives it to them only as an instrument of His providence and His rule over the states whose government He delegates to them, it is clear that they should use this power in accordance with the aims that divine providence and rule have established for them; and that the material and visible manifestations of their authority should reflect the operation of the will of God.... [The will of GodJ Whose rule they ought to make visible through their power, should be the governing principle for the way they use that power, since their power is the instrument [of the divine will] and is entrusted to them only for that purpose.
This, without a doubt, is the foundation and first principle of all the duties of sovereigns, namely to let God Himself rule; that is, to govern according to His will which is nothing other than justice. Thus it is the rule of justice which should be the glory [of the rule] of princes.
***
Among the rights of the sovereign, the first is the right to administer justice, the foundation of public order, whether he exercises it himself as occasions arise or whether he lets it be exercised by others whom he delegates for the purpose ....
***
This same right to enforce the laws, and to maintain order in general by the administration of justice and the deployment of sovereign power, gives the prince the right to use his authority to enforce the laws of the Church, whose protector, conservator, and defender [sic] he should be; so that by the aid of his authority, religion rules all his subjects....
***
Among the rights that the laws give the sovereign should be included [the right] to display all the signs of grandeur and majesty necessary to make manifest the authority and dignity of such wide-ranging and lofty power, and to impress veneration for it upon the minds of all subjects. For although they should see in it the power of God Who has established it and should revere it apart from any visible signs of grandeur, nevertheless since God accompanies His own power with visible splendor on earth and in the heavens as in a throne and a palace...
He permits that the power He shares with sovereigns be proportionately enhanced by them in ways suitable for arousing respect in the people. This can only be done by the splendor that radiates from the magnificence of their palaces and the other visible signs of grandeur that surround them, and whose use He Himself has given to the princes who have ruled according to His spirit.
***
The first and most essential of all the duties of those whom God raises to sovereign government is to acknowledge this truth: that it is from God that they hold all their power [sic], that it is His place they take, that it is through Him they should reign, and that it is to Him they should look for the knowledge and wisdom needed to master the art of governing. And it is these truths they should make the principle of all their conduct and the foundation of all their duties.
***
The first result of these principles is that sovereigns should know what God requires of them in their station and how they should use the power He has given them. And it is from Him they should learn it, by reading His law, whose study He has explicitly prescribed for them, including what they should know in order to govern well.
***
These general obligations ... encompass all the specific duties of those who hold sovereign power. For [these obligations] cover everything that concerns the administration of justice, the general policing of the state, public order, the repose of subjects, peace of mind in families, vigilance over everything that can contribute to the common good, the choice of able ministers who love justice and truth [sic], the appointment of good men to the dignities and offices that the sovereign himself needs to fill with persons known to him, the observance of regulations for filling other offices with people not subject to his personal choice, discretion in the use of severity or mercy in those cases where the rigor of justice may be tempered, a wise distribution of benefices, rewards, exemptions, privileges, and other favors; good administration of the public finances, prudence in conducting relations with foreign states, and lastly everything that can make government pleasing to good people, terrible to the wicked, and worthy in all respects of the divine mandate to govern men, and of the use of a power which, coming only from God, shares in His own Authority.
***
We may add as a last duty of the sovereign, which follows from the first and includes all the others, that although his power seems to place him above the law, no one having the right to call him to account, nevertheless he should observe the laws as they may apply to him. And he is obliged to do this not only in order to set a good example to his subjects and make them love their duty, but because his sovereign power does not exempt him from his own duty, and his station requires him to prefer the general good of the state to his personal interests, and it is a glory for him to look upon the general good as his own.
From Modern History Sourcebook, Fordham University
Attributions
Images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Boundless World History
"France and Authoritarianism"
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-worldhistory/chapter/france-and-authoritarianism/
"On Social Order and Absolute Monarchy." Jean Dormat. Fordham University. https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/mod/1687domat.asp