Henry IV and Sully Henry IV sought to curtail the privileges of the French nobility.

. He targeted provincial governors and the parlements, especially Paris's. During Louis XIII's reign, intendants subjected the privileged classes to stricter supervision, and somewhat successfully implemented the king's will. *Intendants: Royal officials under the french monarchy who supervised the provincial govt. in the name of the king The intendants were designed to reduce abuse of royal offices that nobles had bought. Henry and his finance minister, the duke of Sully, established government monopolies in many areas. This was the start of the mercantilism that Louis XIV pursued. Henry also had many canals made, to improve trade. The corvee, a tax on labor, paid for a permanent group of workers who improved roads and buildings. Sully tried to expand trade across Europe in a common market. Louis XIII and Richelieu Henry was assassinated in 1610, and Sully retired soon after. Louis XIII was only 9 at the time. Marie de Medicis, the queen mother and consort, sought security by signing a mutual defense pact with Spain in the Treaty of Fontainebleau in 1611. The treaty also arranged several royal marriages between the countries. She also promoted Cardinal Richelieu in an attempt to better secure the monarchy. Richelieu sought to make France the supreme European power. Although devoutly Catholic, Richelieu pursued an anti-Hapsburg policy (though he kept the treaty with Spain) by countering Spanish influence in Europe. He thus would lend support to Protestants, especially Gustavus Adolpus, who was his counterweight to the Hapsburgs of the HRE. His genius can be seen in the land gains France got out of the Treaty of Westphalia. At home, Richelieu pursued centralizing policies utterly without qualm. Richelieu, given a free hand by Louis, stepped up the campaign against the privileged classes. Disobedient nobles were imprisoned and even executed. Richelieu started the campaign against the Huguenots that would end with Louis XIV's revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Royal armies took over Huguenot cities in 1629. The 1629 Peace of Alais limited the Edict of Nantes by refusing fortified cities and independent courts to Huguenots. Richelieu employed state art and the printing press to indoctrinate the

French people in raison d'etat (reason of state), concept that the interests of the status justify a course of action. Young Louis XIV and Mazarin Although Richelieu helped strengthen the monarchy, his immediate legacy was discontent among the privileged. The crown's steady multiplication of royal offices, it replacement of local authorities by state agents, and its reduction of local sources of patronage undermined the traditional position of the privileged groups in French society. When Louis XIII died in 1643, Louis XIV was only five years old. The queen mother and consort, Anne of Austria, made Cardinal Mazarin the chief minister. Mazarin continued Richelieu's determined policy of centralization. Between 1649 and 1652, in a series of widespread rebellions known as the Fronde (after the slingshots used by street boys), segments of the nobility and townspeople sought to reverse the centralization. *Fronde: A series of rebellions against royal authority in Franct 1649-1652 The Parlement of Paris initiated the revolt and the nobility soon followed. Urging them were the wives of nobles and princes who were imprisoned. Mazarin released the prisoners in 1651; he and Louis then fled France. In 1652, after Paris descended into anarchy, the French people welcomed back the king. A strong king was preferable to many regional powers with competing and irreconcilable claims. The Fronde taught the monarchy to proceed carefully with centralization. The Years of Louis XIV's Personal Rule On the death of Mazarin in 1661, Louis assumed personal control. He appointed no single chief minister. One result was to make revolt more difficult; nobles would have to publicly stand up against the king, not just the chief minister. Mazarin prepared Louis XIV well to rule France. Louis wrote that the Fronde caused him to loathe kings of straw and he assured that he never would become one. First, Louis and his advisors became masters of propaganda and the creation of a political image. Louis never missed an opportunity to impress the French people with his grandeur, like dressing like a Roman emperor when the dauphin (the French heir to the throne) was born.

 Second, Louis made sure the French nobles and other major social groups would benefit from the growth of his own authority. Though Louis limited the influence of noble institutions on the monarchy, he never tried to abolish those institutions or limit their authority at the local level. Ex: He usually conferred with regional parlements before making rulings that affected their regions. The only exception was the Parlement of Paris, which he stripped of much power in 1673. The tradition had been that all new laws had to be registered with them. Louis set out to anchor his rule in the principle of the divine right of kings, to domesticate the French nobility by binding them to the court rituals of Versailles, and to crush religious dissent. King by Divine Right Building on tradition reverence, Louis XIV defended absolute royal authority on the grounds of divine right. The political theorist Bishop Jacques-Benigne Bossuet was an ardent champion of the traditional rights of the king in matters of church affairs. Bossuet defended the divine right of kings with examples from the Old Testament. Bossuet argued that none save God could judge the king. Therefore, the king was answerable to God only and no earthly thing. Louis was famous for the quote L'etat, c'est moi. (The state, I am.) *Diving right of Kings: The theory that monarchs are appointed by and answerable only to God. Versailles Constructed by Louis starting in 1660, Versailles was the seat of government away from Paris, from which he could direct his country. The palace became Louis's residence in 1682. It was a true temple to royalty, architecturally designed and artistically decorated to proclaim the glory of the Sun King. Although Versailles consumed over half of Louis annual revenues, it paid significant political dividend. Because Louis ruled personally, he was the chief source of favors and patronage in France. Louis encouraged nobles to approach him directly, but through elaborate court etiquette. They competed over opportunities to attend to him, like at rising or going to bed. Like his father, Louis was married to the Spanish Infanta, and after her

death married the pious Madame de Maintenon. During his first marriage he was quite the womanizer. Court life was a carefully planned and successfully executed effort to domesticate and trivialize the nobility. This kept them occupied and currying favor with the king, and not planning revolts. Dress codes and high stakes gambling contributed to indebtedness and dependency on the king (who made every attempt of loaning money). These nobles had no real power. Business was conducted through powerful councils that were headed by non-noble people Louis named. They were smart but had no power bases from which to threaten him. Thus, the nobles depended totally upon Louis for any power. Some nobles stayed at their local estates, of course, and many others were too poor to go to court. But the rich and the powerful were there, and Louis could control them. Suppression of the Jansenists Louis believed that political unity and stability required religious conformity. Because of their power, Jesuits had been banned from France by Catherine de Medicis. Henry IV lifted the ban, with certain conditions to control Jesuit power. The Jesuits were not, however, easily harnessed. They rapidly monopolized the education of the upper classes, and their devout students promoted religious reform throughout France. Jansenism arose in the 1630s as part of the opposition among some Catholics to the theology and political influence of the Jesuits. *Jansenism: 17th century movement within the Catholic Church that taught that human beings were so corrupted by original sin that they could do nothing good nor secure their own salvation without divine grace (Opposed Jesuits) They adhered strictly to the teachings of St. Augustine (like many Protestants) and not the Council of Trent. They especially opposed the idea of free will and said that original sin meant that only divine grace could save people. Cornelius Jansen was a Flemish theologian and the bishop of Ypres. The powerful Parisian family of the Arnaulds joined the Jansenist ranks in the 1640s. They believed, as did many others, that Jesuits had assassinated Henry IV. The Jesuits attacked the Jansenists as Crypto-Calvinists. In 1653, Pope Innocent X declared the Jansenists theological propositions

heretical. Jansenist books: o Cornelius Jansen, 1640: Augustinus. The basis of Jansenism. o Antoine Arnauld, 1643: On Frequent Communion. Attacks Jesuit confessional practices. o Blaise Pascal, 1656: Provincial Letters. Pascal tried to reconcile religion and the new Enlightenment. He objected to Jesuit moral theology not only as being lax and shallow, but also because it failed to do full justice to the religious experience. In 1660, Louis enforced the papal bull that banned Jansenism. Many went underground, and in 1710 Louis did a more thorough purge. Jansenism had offered the prospect of Catholicism broad enough to appeal to France's Protestant Huguenots. By suppressing it, Louis also eliminated the best home for religious unity. Government Geared for Warfare France had a largely subsistence economy, and its cities enjoyed only limited commercial prosperity. But by the 1660s, France was superior in Europe in administrative bureaucracy, armed forces, and national unity. Louis could afford to maintain a large army, and his chief military and foreign policy goal was to achieve secure international boundaries for France, especially from the north. Louis saw himself as a warrior king and on more than one occasion personally accompanied his armies to battle. Many of France's neighbors formed alliances against him. Colbert and the French Economy Jean-Baptiste Colbert was the finance minister and Louiss most brilliant advisor. Colbert worked to centralize the French economy. Colbert regulated trade with tariffs, created new national industries, created efficient factories, simplified the bureaucracy, abolished unnecessary positions, reduced the number of taxexempt nobles, and increased the taille tax on the poor. This kind of close government control of the economy is known as mercantilism. It aim was to maximize exports and reserves of bullion. His personal micromanaging, however, may have led to the failure of the French colonies in the New World.

Louvois and the French Military The marquis of Louvois created Louiss 250,000-strong army. Louvois was Louiss minister of war and a brilliant military tactician. Before Louvois, the French army had been an amalgam of local recruits and mercenaries, uncoordinated groups whose loyalty could not always be counted upon. Without regular pay, the troops lived by pillage. Louvois instituted salaries and discipline, making the army a respectable profession. He introduced a system of promotion by merit. Because it was well-disciplined, the army had public support. It no longer threatened the people it was supposed to protect. This provides an excellent example of the kinds of benefits many saw in the growing authority of the monarchy. Louis's Early Wars The War of Devolution Louis first great foreign adventure, from 1667-8. It was fought over Louis's claim, through his wife, to the Spanish Belgian provinces. According to the Treaty of the Pyrenees (1659), Marie renounced her claim to the Spanish throne contingent on a 500,000 crown dowry. When Philip IV of Spain died in 1665, he explicitly denied Marie any inheritance. Louis hoped to turn the (otherwise useless to him) marriage into territorial gain. He wanted a part of that inheritance. Louis's legal argument was that in certain areas of the Spanish inheritance, such as Flanders, property devolved to children of the first marriage, aka Marie, and not Charles II. Louis sent his armies into Flanders and the France-Comte in 1667. In response, England, Sweden, and the Netherlands formed the Triple Alliance against him. Louis agreed to the Treaty of Aix-la-Chappele, which gave him a few towns of the Spanish Belgium. Invasion of the Netherlands In 1670, with the Treaty of Dover, the French and English became allies against the Dutch. This crumbled the Triple Alliance. Louis invaded the Netherlands in 1672, who he blamed for stopping his earlier war. He was incensed by the Dutch who took credit for his defeat. A cartoon depicted the sun

(Louis) being eclipsed by a great moon of Dutch cheese. Louis's invasion brought down Dutch statesmen Jan and Cornelius De Witt. They were replaced with William, Prince of Orange. Orange united the HRE, Spain, Lorraine, and Brandenburg in an alliance against the Christian Turks. (France) In the war, Admiral Duquesne established clear French domination of the Mediterranean. The Peace of Nijmwegen (1678-9) gave Louis some land, including the Franche-Comte. But the Netherlands were left standing. Revocation of the Edict of Nantes After the Edict of Nantes, relations between Catholics and Huguenots were still hostile. The Huguenot population was declining in the 1660s. After the Peace of Nijmwegen, Louis launched a methodical campaign against the Huguenots in a determined effort to unity France religiously. He banned Huguenots from government offices and any good job. He used tax policy to encourage them to convert. He also quartered troops in their towns and homes. In 1685, Louis revoked the Edict of Nantes. Protestants were forced to flee. Many became galley slaves for merchants or the navy. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes was a major blunder. Protestant countries saw Louis as a new Philip II, intent on a Catholic reconquest of Europe and who needed to be resisted at all costs. 250,000 Huguenots emigrated and strengthened Protestant nations, especially the Netherlands. Others became guerrilla fighters at home. Louis, to his death, considered the revocation to be his most pious act, one that placed God in his debt. Louis's Later Wars The League of Augsburg and the Nine Years' War In 1681, Louis's army took the city of Strasbourg, prompting new alliances against him. The League of Augsburg, created in 1686 to counter France's push into Germany, included England, Spain, Sweden, the Netherlands, Bavaria, Saxony, the palatinate, and Austria. In 1688, Louis invaded the palatinate on a flimsy argument that his sisterin-law should ascend the throne. Upon hearing of the destruction of her homeland, the sister-in-law pleaded with Louis to spare some of it. He used her as a tool. He had all taxes collected in her name.

 A long, extraordinarily destructive war resulted. Between 1688 and 1697, the League and France battled in the Nine Years' War. Simultaneously, England and France struggled for control of North America in the King William's War. The Nine Years' War ended in stalemate. The Peace of Ryswick, 1697, was a triumph of William III of England and Emperor Leopold. It secured Holland (yet again) and thwarted Louis's expansion into Germany. War of the Spanish Succession: Treaties of Utrecht and Rastatt On November 1, 1700, Charles II of Spain finally died. He was known as the sufferer and the bewitched because of his genetic deformities and lingering illnesses. Charles was most likely a case of extreme Hapsburg inbreeding. His mother was the niece of his father, and the uncle-niece pairing went back 12 times in his heritage. He was descended from Mad Juana 14 different ways. He bordered on the mentally retarded, had a disfigured face, and could barely talk because his tongue was super-fat. He was impotent and died childless. Both Louis and Austrian emperor Leopold had married daughters of Philip IV's first marriage. They both had claims to the Spanish throne. Louis's wife was the older of the two, but she had renounced her claim to the throne with the Treaty of the Pyrenees. While Louis feared the union of the two Hapsburg inheritances, the rest of Europe feared a dual France-Spain. As a result, before Charles's death, negotiations began in Europe to partition his inheritance in a way that would preserve the existing balance of power. Charles, however, upset these negotiations when, upon his death, he signed his lands to Philip of Anjou, Louis's grandson. Louis saw God's hand in Charles's will and took full advantage of the opportunity it provided. He brushed aside the negotiations. Philip of Anjou moved to Madrid and became Philip V of Spain. Louis then sent troops to Flanders, ostensibly to remove Dutch troops from Spanish land. Philip opened up Spanish colonies to French ships. In 1701, England, Holland, and the HRE formed the Grand Alliance against Louis. They wanted Flanders as a neutral barrier and wanted the emperor to get

his fair share of the Spanish succession. Louis increased the stakes when he recognized the son of James II as the true king of England. If Louis won, England would have a Catholic monarchy. In 1701, the thirteen year War of the Spanish Succession began, and once again total war enveloped Western Europe. France, for the first time, went to war with inadequate finances, a poorly equipped army, and mediocre generals. The English used advanced weaponry and superior tactics. John Churchill, the duke of Marlborough, bested Louis's soldiers in every major engagement. In 1708-9, famine, revolts, and uncollectible taxes tore France apart internally. Despair pervaded the French court. How could God forsake Louis, who had done so much for Him? Louis would have made peace in 1709, but the termsincluding removing Philip from the Spanish thronewere too much. France signed an armistice with England at Utrecht in 1713. France concluded hostilities with the Netherlands in the Treaty of Rastatt in 1714. This agreement confirmed Philip V as king of Spain, but gave Gibraltar and Minorca to England (giving it powerful Mediterranean lands). It also transferred the Spanish Belgium to the Austrians (Hapsburgs), as well as all Italian lands. Louis also approved George of Hanover to become the next king of England. Spanish power declined in the wake of the war, though it had been declining for at least 50 years earlier due to a misuse of state resources and incompetent kings. Philip's wife used his position to get her son's noble positions in Italy. This was a misdirection of state resources. Only until Charles III in 1759 did Spain have a good, efficient leader. But it was too late. Politically, the 18th century would belong to England, as the 17th had to France and the 16th to Spain. Louis's territory wouldn't come around until Napoleon. Louis XIV's Legacy Louis left France a mixed legacy. His wars brought death and destruction and sapped the nation's resources. The love of war that he instilled in the French nobility and monarchy would causes a drain on

resources that never would be fixed. Louis's policies of centralization would later make it difficult for France to develop effective institution of representation and self-government. Louis's role was not so absolute as to exert oppressive control over the daily lives of his subjects. He had no police state. His absolutism functioned in foreign affairs, religion, and in economic affairs.