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The main themes of the seventeenth century, when France was ruled by
just two kings, Louis XIII (1610-43) and Louis XIV
(1643-1715), were, on the domestic front, the strengthening of the
centralized state embodied in the person of the king; and in
external affairs, the securing of frontiers in the Pyrenees, on the
Rhine and in the north, coupled with the attempt to prevent the
unification of the territories of the Habsburg kings of Spain and
Austria. Both kings had the good fortune to be served by capable,
hard-working ministers dedicated to these objectives. Louis XIII had
Cardinal Richelieu and Louis XIV had cardinals Mazarin
and Colbert . Both reigns were disturbed in their early years
by the inevitable
aristocratic attempts at a coup d'état.
Having crushed revolts by Louis XIII's brother Gaston, Duke of Orléans,
Richelieu 's commitment to extending royal absolutism brought him
into renewed conflict with the Protestants. Believing that their
retention of separate fortresses within the kingdom was a threat to
security, he attacked and took La Rochelle in 1627. Although he was
unable to extirpate their religion altogether, Protestants were never
again to present a military threat.
The
other important facet of Richelieu's domestic policy was the promotion
of economic self-sufficiency - mercantilism . To this end, he
encouraged the growth of the luxury craft industries, especially
textiles, in which France was to excel right up to the Revolution. He
built up the navy and granted privileges to companies involved in
establishing colonies in North America, Africa and the West
Indies.
In
pursuing his foreign policy objectives, Richelieu adroitly kept France
out of actual military involvement by paying substantial sums to the
great Swedish king and general, Gustavus Adolphus, helping him to fund
war against the Habsburgs in Germany. When in 1635, the French were
finally obliged to commit their own troops, they made significant gains
against the Spanish in the Netherlands, Alsace and Lorraine, and won
Roussillon for France.
Richelieu died just a few months before Louis XIII in 1642. As Louis XIV
was still an infant, his mother, Anne of Austria, acted as regent,
served by Richelieu's protégé, Cardinal Mazarin , who was hated
just as much as his predecessor by the traditional aristocracy and the
parlements . These unelected bodies, which had the function of
high courts and administrative councils, were protective of their
privileges and angry that an upstart should receive such preferment.
Spurred by these grievances, which were in any case exacerbated by the
ruinous cost of the Spanish wars, various groups in French society
combined in a series of revolts, known as the Frondes .
The
first Fronde, in 1648, was led by the parlement of Paris, which
took up the cause of the hereditary provincial tax-collecting officials
- a group that resented the supervisory role of the intendants ,
who had been appointed by the central royal bureaucracy to keep an eye
on them. Paris rose in revolt but capitulated at the advance of royal
troops. This was quickly followed by an aristocratic Fronde, supported
by various peasant risings round the country. These revolts were
suppressed easily enough. They were not really revolutionary movements
but, rather, the attempts of various groups to preserve their privileges
in the face of growing state power.
The
economic pressures that contributed to their support were relieved when
in 1659 Mazarin successfully brought the Spanish wars to an end with the
Treaty of the Pyrenees, cemented by the marriage of Louis XIV and
the daughter of Philip IV of Spain.
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On reaching the age of majority
in 1661, Louis XIV declared that he was going to be his own man
and do without a first minister. He proceeded to appoint a number of
able ministers, with whose aid he embarked on a long struggle to
modernize the administration.
The
war ministers, Le Tellier and his son Louvois, provided Louis with a
well-equipped and well-trained professional army that could muster some
400,000 men by 1670. But the principal reforms were carried out by
Colbert , who set about streamlining the state's finances and
tackling bureaucratic corruption. Although he was never able to overcome
the opposition completely, he did manage to produce a surplus in state
revenue. Attempting to compensate for deficiencies in the taxation
system by stimulating trade, he set up a free-trade area in northern and
central France, continued Richelieu's mercantilist economic policies,
established the French East India Company, and built up the navy and
merchant fleets with a view to challenging the world commercial
supremacy of the Dutch.
These were all policies that the hard-working king was involved in and
approved of. But in addition to his love of an extravagant court life at
Versailles, which earned him the title of the Sun King , he had
another obsession, ruinous to the state: the love of a prestigious
military victory. There were sound political reasons for the
campaigns he embarked on, but they did not help balance the budget.
Using his wife's Spanish connection, Louis demanded the cession of
certain Spanish provinces in the Low Countries, and then embarked on a
war against the Dutch in 1672. Forced to make peace at the Treaty of
Nijmegen in 1678 by his arch-enemy, the Protestant William of Orange
(later king of England), he nonetheless came out of the war with the
annexation to French territory of Franche-Comté , plus a number
of northern towns. In 1681 he simply grabbed Strasbourg, and got away
with it
In
1685, under the influence of his very Catholic mistress, Madame de Maintenon, the king removed all privileges from the Huguenots by
revoking the Edict of Nantes. This incensed the Protestant powers, who
combined under the auspices of the League of Augsburg. Another long and
exhausting war followed, ending, most unfavourably to the French, in the
Peace of Rijswik (1697).
No
sooner was this concluded than Louis became embroiled in the question of
who was to succeed the moribund Charles II of Spain. Both Louis and
Leopold Habsburg, the Holy Roman Emperor, had married sisters of
Charles. The prospect of Leopold acquiring the Spanish Habsburgs'
possessions in addition to his own vast lands was not welcome to Louis
or any other European power. However, when Charles died and it was
discovered that he'd named Louis' grandson, Philippe, as his heir, that
was a shift in the balance of power the English, Dutch and Austrians
were not prepared to tolerate.
William of Orange, now king of England as well as ruler of the Dutch
United Provinces, organized a Grand Alliance against Louis. The
so-called War of Spanish Succession broke out and it went badly
for the French, thanks largely to the brilliant generalship of the Duke
of Marlborough. A severe winter in 1709 compounded the hardships with
famine and bread riots at home, causing Louis to seek negotiations. The
terms were too harsh for him and the war dragged on until 1713, leaving
the country totally impoverished. The Sun King went out with scarcely a
whimper.
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