Western Civilization II / Unit 2 WC2 0120 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Absolutism and Constitutionalism Compared: France and England on Five Features
The idea
The exam's first band is built on one contrast, and it tests the contrast feature by feature. The features are five: who administers the provinces, who consents to taxes, who commands the army, how the crown borrows, and what binds the king. France answers each with the king; England, after sixteen eighty-nine, answers each with parliament.
In practice
Five pairs. Administration: France's intendants, sent from Paris and answerable to no lord, against England's gentry in the counties, taxed only with their own consent in parliament. Taxes: the taille tripled by Richelieu without any assembly's vote, against the Petition of Right and the Bill's clause that levying money without parliament is illegal. The army: Louis's one hundred fifty thousand under noble officers, against a peacetime army forbidden without parliament's consent. Borrowing: Louis selling titles and offices and dying bankrupt, against the Bank of England's bonds backed by the state. What binds the king: reason of state and Bossuet's God, against a statute passed by the body that chose the king.
Where people slip
Do not read the contrast as weak crown against strong crown. The anchor's point is that England's state grew larger and richer than France's once parliament owned it. Constitutional did not mean small; it meant consented to. Expect the exam to test the intendant against the gentry and the Bank against the bankruptcy.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
Builds on
- 0003Richelieu, 1628 to 1642: Intendants and the Taille
- 0007Versailles: Palace, Ritual, and the Open Court as Instruments of Rule
- 0013Bankrupt in 1715: Sold Titles, New Taxes, Trampled Peasants
- 0102A Poor Crown: Parliament's Purse and the Gentry
- 0112The Bill of Rights and Europe's First Constitutional Monarchy
- 0113After 1688: Parliament Governs, and the Bank of England, 1694
Unlocks
- Nothing yet depends on this.
Something wrong in this lesson? Flag it