Absolutism
In France, in the aftermath of the Religious Wars, lawyers and philosophers sought to find the truly universal social order that would prevent the chaos and horror of civil war. Religious faith had seemed divisive and destructive. Many French thinkers at first hoped law and philosophy would succeed in reestablishing moral and social order where religion had failed.
<>In 1610, A French judicial scholar name Charles Loyseau spelled out a theory of social order in a much admired book entitled A Treatise on Orders. Loyseau was attempting to codify--write down as written code--the social system that France and other countries had inherited from the Middle Ages. The main orders were the church (including bishops, canons, priests, monks, etc.) and the nobility (including kings, dukes, counts, knights, etc.). Everyone else not in these two orders--the majority of the population-- was not really considered to belong to an order, but they were represented in the medieval Estates General, the Parliament of France, as the so-called "Third Estate."> Loyseau hoped that if the French people refocused their attention on the system of hierarchy and honor that ordered medieval society, the harmony of society would be restored and preserved. But it seemed that France and Europe generally could not rely on medieval tradition to restore peace. While the ideals of orders and ranks in society was maintained as an ideal, a new idea gained new favor first in France, and then throughout Europe. That is the divine right of kings.The "divine right" idea was used to bolster the
idea of the absolute sovereignty of the king. The absolute monarch was
seen to transcend-- and in political terms if not social
terms--dissolve
all orders and ranks. All were equal under the king; to
exercise
power, one must gain the king's favor. This
is quite different from medieval political order, where the king was
really
just the first or greatest of the many lords of the land. Absolutism
has clear advantages and disadvantages. There is no question as
to
authority and who has it. On the other hand, centralized authority can
be stifling to a vital society. The clear advantages of political
and social order, along with enhanced national power and glory, led the
French, Germans, Russians and even the English, for a time, to embrace
the ideals of absolutism.
The Implementation of Absolute Monarchy in France
It was perhaps ironic that the system of absolute monarchy owes so much to the capable leadership not of a king, but of a Cardinal, Cardinal Richelieu, who as the book describes, dissolved the Protestants' military power, increased the power of the central government by employing "intendants"--officials directly responsible to the king, and by conducting an assertive foreign policy against France's foreign rivals. After Cardinal Richelieu died, a faction of nobles revolted against royal power and royal taxation in the 1640s and 1650s. This fighting only underscored the need for more order in France.
The theory and practice of absolute monarchy reached its greatest
height
in the reign of Louis XIV (1643-1715). This is so because Louis
was
both mentally and physically up to the task. He was a tall man of
impressive bearing, and also shrewd and intelligent. He
understood
instinctively how to make himself the indispensable apex and fulcrum of
royal government. He did this by making his every action the
ritual
centerpiece of royal court, and by making the royal court the center of
political life in France.
An essential step in making the himself and the court the center of French life was the building of the magnificent palace of Versailles between 1669 and 1688. Versailles was virtually a city, where thousands of noblemen and their families could live at court in luxury and splendor. The courtiers hoped to distinguish themselves in the service of the king in person, and receive due rewards from the king, be it titles, offices, pensions, or other benefits. One of the courtiers, the Duke of Saint-Simon, described the the manner that Louis ruled his court. A typical morning would go as follows.
At eight the king is awaken by the chief valet, and dressed by chamberlains. At 8:15 the chief Chamberlain would usher in those privileged gentlemen who had been granted the right to attend the king that morning, and there would be a short time to speak with him as the king was presented the holy water and a prayer-book before proceeding into the cabinet room for a short religious service, and then return to the bedroom. More courtiers privileged enough to attend the king would arrive as the king put on his shoes and stockings and dressing gown, and shaved. He might chat with those around him as he did this. After dressing there was more prayer and all would proceed to the cabinet room. The king would issue instructions to the officers and officials present, then would proceed to a council of state, or of finance, depending on the day. When he passed through the galleries of the palaces, throngs gathered around him to pay their respects.
Dinners and Suppers, concerts and other occasions were similarly
ritualized,
with courtiers striving for the eye or ear of the king. As
Saint-Simon
writes:
The Theory of Absolutism
King Louis trained his sons carefully in the theory of
absolutism.
One of the officials entrusted with the education of Louis's son was
Bishop
Bossuet, who wrote for his charge a small book entitled Politics Drawn
from the Very Words of the Holy Scriptures, which stands as the
clearest
theoretical statement of the theory of absolute monarchy. In his
text, Bishop Bossuet argued that the Bible makes clear that God has
placed
kings over nations for their good government, that God has done this
for
the people's own good (and thus King must rule for the good of the
people
and not himself), and because royal power is for the good, it must be
absolute--that
is to say that no person or group should be able to override his
authority.
Bossuet makes very clear that absolute rule is not arbitrary rule; it
is
not simply at the whim of the king. The king must rule for the
good
of the kingdom as a whole, and he must exercise his God-given reason in
making his judgments. Bossuet made clear the essential reasoning
behind this theory of government:
With these words in mind, it can easily be understood why Louis XIV
took the fateful step in 1685 of revoking the Edict of Nantes, making
Protestantism
illegal, and forcing the Protestants (Huguenots) to either convert or
flee.
Tens of thousands of skilled tradesmen, craftsmen, merchants, seamen,
and
others chose exile, and the great cost to French industry, trade, and
navy
was to be long-lasting. For one thing, after 1685, France was
never
a match to Great Britain on the high seas, either in shipping or in
naval
warfare. The intolerance of absolutism, and the loss of the
Huguenots
had a lot to do with that. There was another great disadvantage
to
the absolutism of Louis XIV. While he put an end to
internal
strife, he committed France to prolonged and costly wars of expansion
in
an attempt to establish France as Europe's undisputed power, which only
succeeded after decades of fighting in adding a few tiny slices of
territory
to France, while burdening it with a mountain of debt.