Louis XIV dominated Europe from the 1660s to the early 18th century; he made France strong and feared by her neighbours. He is known as the quintessential ‘absolute’ monarch and created an enduring image of himself as ‘the Sun King’. But did reality reflect the glittering image? This course will examine the life and times of Louis and in the process reflect upon this question.
To understand the reign of Louis XIV we must go back in time and the course will begin in the 1560s and the crisis France experienced as a result of the Reformation. The French Wars of Religion between Catholics and Huguenots (Protestants) tore the country apart for over 40 years and France came close to disintegrating between the ambitions of rival religious groups, ‘over-mighty’ subjects and foreign (usually Hapsburg) intervention. In these circumstances many looked to the restoration of a strong and centralised monarchy as the only force capable of imposing order and unity on France. We will examine the ways Henry IV and Sully, Richelieu and Mazarin struggled to achieve this goal in the early decades of the 17th century. A goal which was often frustrated by the periodic rebellions of the Huguenots, the fact that both Louis XIII and Louis XIV succeeded to the throne as young children and, between 1649 and 1653, the rebellion of the nobility known as the Fronde.
Louis XIV grew up surrounded by these threats of disorder and developed a strong determination, when he took personal control of the government in 1661, to crush all opposition to his royal will and to unify and modernise France. We will examine some of the ways he tried to achieve this through the economic policies of Colbert, the growth of French colonialism in north America, Africa and the far east, and the use of royal officers in the provinces to tame the nobility and raise an efficient tax revenue. For Louis, France needed to be strong to enable him to go to war, both to protect France’s long and vulnerable borders, but also to achieve gloire for himself and for the honour of France. We will examine Louis’s wars in detail and discuss his objectives: was he simply seeking security and honour for France or did he see himself as some sort of universal monarch ruling a great European empire?
Of the 54 years of Louis’s personal rule he spent well over 30 of them waging war against his neighbours and it has often been said that Louis ruined both his reputation and his country by his belligerence. This is a question we will discuss as well as the practical limits to Louis’s authority imposed by the state of France and the privileges of the nobility and church. In regard to Louis’s relationship with the church, we will look at the Gallican question and the supposed threat to orthodoxy and unity posed by the Jansenists and the Huguenots and the ways in which Louis, as ‘the Most Christian King’, dealt with them. We will also consider the ways in which Louis manufactured such a glorious image of himself and why it was considered so important. In particular we will examine the Palace of Versailles – the stage upon which the ‘Sun King’ performed. In conclusion we will try to assess the successes and failures of a monarch who, directly or indirectly, set France upon a path to European power and prestige which has lasted until the present day.
