Absolutism in France: Richelieu to Louis XIV

This is Unit One of Western Civilization Two: absolutism in France, from Richelieu to Louis the Fourteenth, and the first of the exam's twelve bands. The course begins where the exam begins, at the Peace of Westphalia in sixteen forty-eight, and it begins with France because France did absolutism first and most completely. The governing idea of this unit is a ledger with two columns. In one, a state stronger, more centralized and more admired than any in Europe: intendants in the provinces, nobles ranked by ritual at Versailles, a treasury doubled by Colbert, academies that made French the language of diplomacy. In the other, the cost: a productive minority driven out, thirty-five years of war for small gains, a palace that ate sixty percent of revenue, and a treasury technically bankrupt in seventeen fifteen. Hold both columns, because the exam asks for the facts inside each and never asks you to pick one. By the end you will be able to state the exam's scope and define the word. To describe two cardinals and a revolt. To describe the Sun King, his palace, and its cost. To describe Colbert, the academies and the revocation. To describe the wars, the bankruptcy, the theory and who paid. To sequence, classify and read a treatise. And to state the ledger.

Two entries to open: what the exam covers and how it weights this band, and what historians mean when they say absolutism.

Twelve bands, from Westphalia to the present.

WC2 0001 What the Exam Means by Western Civilization II, 1648 to the Present

The exam runs from the Peace of Westphalia to the present, about one hundred twenty questions in ninety minutes. Twelve periods carry fixed weights, and this first band, absolutism and constitutionalism from sixteen forty-eight to seventeen fifteen, carries seven to nine percent of the questions. It tests recall, cause, sequence, maps and passages, never essays.

A word no king of the century used.

WC2 0002 Absolutism: From First Among Equals to a King Above the Nobles

Absolutism is a historians' word; no seventeenth-century king used it. It names a change from a king who was first among equals, leading nobles with armies of their own, to a monarch holding all political power, acting in his subjects' name, standing above the greatest noble. Its marks were non-noble bureaucracies, larger armies, heavier taxes, and money flowing to the center. France's Wars of Religion had shown where the old way led.

Three entries on the cardinals who built the machine before Louis: Richelieu's intendants and tax, his reason of state, and the revolt that failed under Mazarin.

Merchants' sons answerable only to Paris.

WC2 0003 Richelieu, 1628 to 1642: Intendants and the Taille

Cardinal Richelieu, chief minister from sixteen twenty-eight to his death in sixteen forty-two, crushed noble revolts and created the intendants: royal governors, usually non-noble merchants' sons, who collected taxes and supervised administration answerable to no local lord. He abolished three of the six regional tax assemblies, and the taille, the land tax, nearly tripled. The burden fell on peasants, whom he compared to mules.

A cardinal who funded Lutherans and Turks.

WC2 0004 Raison d'État: A Cardinal Backs Protestants and Turks

Richelieu, the anchor says, worshiped the state. He backed Protestants in the Thirty Years' War and the Ottomans against the Habsburgs, because France's interest outranked his church's. Historians call that reason of state, raison d'état, and it is the anchor's theory of absolutism, distinct from divine right, which entry fifteen adds from Bossuet.

The revolt that taught a boy to fear his nobles.

WC2 0005 Mazarin and the Fronde, 1648 to 1653

Louis the Thirteenth died in sixteen forty-three, leaving a child king and a regency under Cardinal Mazarin, Richelieu's protégé. Nobles and the Paris parlement rose against the crown's taxes in the Fronde, a civil war in two campaigns, defeated by sixteen fifty-three. The witness says its collapse only strengthened the monarchy, and the boy king vowed to bring the nobles into line. The start year is the witness's.

Three entries on the king himself: fifty-four years on the throne, a palace built to rank nobles, and what that palace cost.

Apollo in a court ballet.

WC2 0006 Louis XIV, 1643 to 1715: The Sun King as Propagandist

Mazarin died in sixteen sixty-one; Louis, twenty-three, took full power and ruled until seventeen fifteen, a reign of fifty-four years counted from his childhood, with personal rule from sixty-one. He played Apollo, the Sun King, in a court ballet, and teams of artists and architects staged his glory. The anchor calls him a master marketer: display was policy.

A hunting lodge turned machine for governing nobles.

WC2 0007 Versailles: Palace, Ritual, and the Open Court as Instruments of Rule

Louis turned a hunting lodge fifteen miles from Paris into Europe's largest seat of power. Nobles had to spend part of each year there, ranked by rituals like the king's rising, squabbling for favors that only court standing could win, while any well-dressed person could walk in. The anchor puts court costs at half a noble's revenue. Ritual subordinated and flattered at once.

Cold food, frozen wine, and sixty percent.

WC2 0008 What Versailles Cost: Sixty Percent of Revenue

At the height of construction Versailles took sixty percent of royal revenue, the anchor's figure, against five percent under Louis the Sixteenth, remembered and resented. The palace was built for display, not comfort: cold food, frozen wine, hallways used as privies. Louis hated Paris and ruled from the palace. The share is a ratio of revenue, never a sum, and the course converts nothing.

Three entries on money, culture and a wound: Colbert's revenue, the academies that made French Europe's language, and the decree that drove the Huguenots out.

A shopkeeper's son the nobles despised.

WC2 0009 Colbert: Doubling Revenue Without New Taxes

Jean-Baptiste Colbert ran the finances from sixteen sixty-one. He doubled royal revenue by cutting the collectors' take: where a quarter of taxes had reached the crown, up to eighty percent did. Tariffs and overseas commerce followed, and, the witness adds, royal manufactures and a merchant marine. Colbert warned against Louis's wars, and the king ignored him.

Power in the form of a dictionary.

WC2 0010 Academies, the Dictionary, and French as the Language of Diplomacy

Louis paid theater companies, founded the first state scientific academy, which the witness dates to sixteen sixty-six, well funded and tightly controlled, and had the Académie Française, Richelieu's creation, produce the first official dictionary. Under him French became the language of international diplomacy and of a shared aristocratic culture. Cultural show was power, the anchor says, not a sideline.

Convert or leave.

WC2 0011 The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, 1685

In sixteen eighty-five Louis revoked the Edict of Nantes, which had let Huguenots worship since fifteen ninety-eight, by the Edict of Fontainebleau. Protestants had to convert or leave, and the anchor puts the exodus above two hundred thousand, a commercially productive minority carrying its skills to Louis's enemies. The anchor calls it self-defeating; the exam asks fact and effect.

Five entries on the reckoning: the wars to Utrecht, the bankruptcy of seventeen fifteen, what absolutism cost every state, Bossuet's divine right, and who actually paid.

Thirty-five years of war, and a grandson on Spain's throne.

WC2 0012 Louis's Wars, 1680 to 1715, and Utrecht, 1713

France fought continuously from sixteen eighty to seventeen fifteen against the Habsburgs, with England, the Netherlands and Austria allied against Louis. The War of the Spanish Succession, seventeen-oh-one to thirteen, began when the last Spanish Habsburg named Louis's grandson heir. Utrecht in seventeen thirteen let Philip keep Spain, gave Austria Spain's Italian lands and the Spanish Netherlands, and gave Britain gains in America. Gains small, debts enormous.

The bill comes due.

WC2 0013 Bankrupt in 1715: Sold Titles, New Taxes, Trampled Peasants

To pay for war Louis sold titles and offices, invented taxes and, in the anchor's words, further trampled the peasants. At his death in seventeen fifteen the state was technically bankrupt, its small border gains bought with enormous debt. The anchor's verdict, that his practical policies were largely destructive, is voiced as the anchor's; unit four shows France still the greatest power. Bankrupt and dominant coexisted.

The state and the king were one.

WC2 0014 Governments Up 400 Percent: The Theory and the Cost of Absolutism

Across the seventeenth century royal governments grew about four hundred percent, the anchor's figure, and standing armies from about twenty thousand to over one hundred fifty thousand. The theory: a king above the nobles, answerable to no one in the kingdom, owing benevolent protection. L'état, c'est moi, the king and the government one. Not arbitrary, though: reason of state respected traditional rights.

The theory the exam expects, which the anchor never names.

WC2 0015 Divine Right: Bossuet's Version, Beside the Anchor's

The anchor's absolutism rests on reason of state, but the exam also expects divine right, which the anchor never names. Bishop Bossuet supplied it: royal power is sacred and absolute, and rulers act as God's ministers and lieutenants on earth. Absolute is not arbitrary, he insists; the prince answers to God alone. The witness calls Louis the epitome of a divine-right monarch.

A hundred days of labor a year.

WC2 0016 Who Paid: Peasants, Serfs, the Robot, and Codified Nobility

The losers were peasants, most of all in the east, where serfdom hardened in the seventeenth century and the Austrian robot demanded up to one hundred days of labor a year. In France taxes doubled between sixteen thirty and sixteen fifty. The military took half of revenue in peace and eighty percent in war, and tables of ranks codified nobility everywhere; unit three meets Peter's.

Three procedures: the reign on one line between three fixed points, five instruments sorted by the question each answers, and Bossuet read for what he assumes.

Three fixed points, and everything between.

WC2 0017 Sequencing France, 1610 to 1715

Hold three fixed points: Henry the Fourth's assassination in sixteen ten, which put a child on the throne; Mazarin's death in sixteen sixty-one, which began Louis's personal rule; and Utrecht in seventeen thirteen, which ended his ambitions. Then place six events. Richelieu becomes chief minister in sixteen twenty-eight, after sixteen ten and before Louis the Thirteenth's death in forty-three. The Fronde, forty-eight to fifty-three, falls in the regency, before sixty-one. Colbert takes the finances in sixty-one, the year personal rule begins. The revocation comes in eighty-five, deep in the personal rule. The Succession war opens in seventeen-oh-one, after the revocation and before Utrecht. Louis dies in fifteen, two years after Utrecht. Richelieu, the Fronde, Colbert, the revocation, the Succession war, Utrecht, the king's death. The anchor writes Richelieu's tenure as a reign; it was a ministry.

Who administers, who pays, who obeys, who admires, who fights.

WC2 0018 Classifying an Absolutist Instrument: Intendant, Tax, Ritual, Academy, Army

The exam describes a royal measure and asks what it was for, and this unit supplies five kinds of instrument, each answering one question. An intendant replaces a noble governor: who administers. A tax reaches the peasant the nobles cannot: who pays. A ritual ranks nobles against each other: who obeys. An academy makes the king the patron of learning: who admires. An army makes him the only power with soldiers: who fights. So a merchant's son collecting taxes in a province, answerable only to Paris, is the intendant. The taille nearly tripled while assemblies are abolished is the tax. Dukes competing to hand the king his shirt is the ritual. A dictionary under royal patronage is the academy. One hundred fifty thousand men in uniform under noble officers is the army. The instruments overlap; classify by the question, and expect the intendant against the noble governor above all.

Where power comes from, whom the king answers to, what limits him.

WC2 0019 Reading Bossuet on Divine Right: What the Passage Assumes

A political treatise tells you what a regime wanted believed. Ask three questions of any passage: where does power come from, whom does the ruler answer to, and what limits him. Bossuet's Political Treatise, read in the Hanover extract from Robinson's Readings of nineteen-oh-six, answers all three, paraphrased. Rulers act as ministers of God and his lieutenants on earth, and the throne is God's: power comes from God through Scripture, not from the people. The person of the king is sacred and to attack him is sacrilege: he answers to God alone and renders account to no one. Kings must use their power with fear and restraint as a thing God will judge, and absolute government is not arbitrary: what limits him is God's judgment and reason, no earthly institution. Do not confuse this with the anchor's theory. A king answerable to God alone is Bossuet; a state's interest above the church is Richelieu.

One capstone entry: the two-column ledger of a reign that made France the model of Europe and could not pay for it.

Two ledgers, one reign.

WC2 0020 How Louis XIV Made France the Model of Europe and Bankrupted It

The exam's first band asks how absolutism worked, and France is its case because France did it first and most completely. The change began before Louis: Richelieu's intendants, half the regional assemblies gone, the taille nearly tripled, and reason of state, Protestants and Ottomans backed against the Habsburgs. Mazarin continued him, and the Fronde failed and, the witness says, only strengthened the monarchy. Louis took personal power in sixteen sixty-one and built the rest. Versailles gathered the nobles under his eye and ranked them by ritual, so that the men who had fought the crown now competed to hand the king his shirt. Colbert doubled revenue without new taxes. Academies and a dictionary made French the language of Europe's diplomacy. Behind the show stood the anchor's numbers, governments four hundred percent larger and armies from twenty thousand to one hundred fifty thousand. That is why Europe copied France, and unit three shows Prussia, Austria and Russia copying it. The same reign shows the cost. The revocation of sixteen eighty-five drove out a productive minority. Thirty-five years of war won small borders, allied England, the Netherlands and Austria against him, and ended at Utrecht in seventeen thirteen with France exhausted. Versailles took sixty percent of revenue. Louis sold titles, invented taxes, pressed the peasants, and died in seventeen fifteen with the state technically bankrupt. The anchor's judgment that his policies were largely destructive is voiced as the anchor's. The record supports both halves: a state stronger and more admired than any in Europe, and a treasury that could not carry it.

Look at what you can now do. You can state the exam's scope and its first band's weight, and define absolutism as the historians' word for a king above his nobles. You can describe Richelieu's intendants and taille, his reason of state, and the Fronde that failed under Mazarin and strengthened the crown. You can describe Louis's personal rule from sixteen sixty-one, Versailles as a machine for ranking nobles, and its sixty percent of revenue as a ratio. You can describe Colbert doubling revenue, the academies and the dictionary, and the revocation that sent two hundred thousand skills to Louis's enemies. You can describe the wars to Utrecht, the bankruptcy of seventeen fifteen, the four hundred percent, Bossuet's divine right beside the anchor's reason of state, and the peasants and serfs who paid. You can sequence the reign between three fixed points, classify five instruments, and read a treatise for its assumptions. And you can state the ledger, model and bankrupt, which is this unit's one idea. Unit two opens on the kingdom where absolutism failed and the state grew stronger anyway.