Why absolutism in france

He was still a powerful ruler but in one sense he shared his authority with them. When this system broke down, a country could descend into civil war. He had access to a standing royal army that was loyal only to him. A career in the military appeared to be one worth pursuing for someone with a noble background.

For those on the receiving end of absolutism, the army played a key role. He was a minister of the king, but he became one of the greatest builders of French absolutism. He served his royal master and his nation in ways that he believed were valuable, and in doing so, he is built up the absolute monarchy.

To accomplish this, Richelieu increased the size of the bureaucracy, as almost every succeeding king does. Furthermore, Richelieu increased the sale of office, bringing in additional revenues, and he figured out a kind of unique way to deal with nobles. Learn more about the hierarchical society of France in the s. Many nobles were disgruntled by the fact that they no longer appeared to have very important roles in the government.

Richelieu had another big problem: The Huguenots. According to the Edict of Nantes, the Huguenots could arm themselves and fortify their towns. They had become one of the last real significant obstacles to absolute royal power. The solution was to assemble the French army, go onto the battlefield, defeat the Huguenots, and take away those privileges.

Many years were spent battling the Huguenots until, finally, in , he captured their port city of La Rochelle, the last major Huguenot bastion, and the Huguenot problem was solved, at least in one sense. They were no longer allowed to bear arms or fortify their cities, but live like any other subjects in the kingdom. The only privilege that the Huguenots retained—that Richelieu allowed them to retain—was that he guaranteed them religious toleration.

They could still worship freely without fear of persecution, but we have to consider the fact that they could not defend themselves against persecution. Richelieu achieved much financially, in terms of increasing finances and tax collection, and making the government wealthier. The Cardinal did something, though, that was very important in dealing with the venal tax collectors. Venal tax collectors who bought their office had the bad habit of not passing on to the king all of the tax money that he was due from their tax collection.

Of course, that cuts into royal revenues. Learn more about the Declaration of the Rights of Man. Richelieu, however, instituted a new kind of royal official, called the intendant. It was not going to be an office that could be sold. Intendants would be appointed by the king; they would be paid salaries by the king; they would do what the king required.

The creation of this position was a huge step toward exercising more royal control over the country. These intendants acted as the chief royal agents in most local areas and districts, holding an important number of jobs. Among the many, tax collecting, of course, is central to absolutism. The intendants increased the collection of taxes tremendously, but they did so without actually collecting taxes themselves. Then, the intendant would guarantee the tax farmer the right to go out and collect taxes in a local area, so that the tax farmer could pay himself back for all of the money he had advanced to the king and also make a profit on this business.

The way the intendant guaranteed the collection of taxes was by using the royal army. And we are going to make sure you are paid back for that. Learn more about how revolutionaries sought to reform the church but divided the country. But the intendant had other jobs, as well.

Because of their efficient exercise of state authority, intendants were hated by peasants and nobles alike, both of whom revolted periodically from the s through the s in hopes of stopping the expansion of royal power. Despite the unrest, Richelieu had done his job very efficiently. French absolutism was about to reach its climax.

French Absolutism was a style of monarchy where the monarch had absolute power based on divine right. In other words, God gave the monarch the right to rule however and whenever from anywhere.

While he was a master at extracting revenue from his subjects, his greatest talent was spending it with dizzying speed. His financial excesses and poor financial management put the monarchy into a financial tailspin, and set in motion the events which would lead to the French Revolution.

An old agreement between the Crown and the nobility provided that the King could tax the common people freely provided he did not tax the nobles.

This was actually something of a quid pro quo; since the nobles did not pay taxes, they could not claim any legitimate say in how tax revenues were spent. The middle classes had numerous tax exemptions, so that they paid very little. As a result, Louis failed to tap substantial sources of revenue, and the weight of taxes fell most heavily on those who could least afford it, the peasants.

Colbert was a financial genius who soon managed the entire royal administration. His central principal was that the wealth and economy of France should serve the state; and he therefore rigorously instituted a mercantilist system on France. Since resources are limited, government intervention is needed to secure the largest part of a limited resource.

In order to accumulate gold, a nation must always sell more goods abroad than it buys abroad. Colbert attempted to make France self-sufficient by supporting old industries and creating new ones.

He constructed roads and canals, imposed high foreign tariffs and eliminated many domestic tariffs to make purchase of domestic goods more attractive. His most important accomplishment was the creation of a powerful merchant marine to carry French goods.

The French merchant navy increased from 18 unseaworthy vessels in to frigates, galleys, and ships of the line in He hoped to make Canada part of the French empire and sent four thousand peasants there to populate Quebec. The city of Quebec was established in , one year after the founding of Jamestown. Colbert also established the French East India Company in , but it could not effectively compete with the Dutch and English East India Companies, which were more efficiently run.

The government had to bail out the company, and later revoked its charter. The textile industry, particularly production of woolen goods, grew at a prodigious rate. Louis also raised money by selling titles of nobility, ecclesiastical offices, as well as government and military positions. This not only raised money easily, it also enhanced loyalty, as those to whom he sold the office were legally bound to him. One minister commented rather dryly: "As soon as the crown creates an office, God creates a fool willing to buy it.

Few noble families could trace their titles back more than a few generations. This led to tense differences between the nobles of the sword who could trace back their ancestry many generations and the nobles of the robe who were the new comers. One noble of the sword denounced those who bought and paid for their offices and worked for the King as the "reign of the bourgeoisie.

Louis XIV and Religion: Although Louis was relatively pious, he had little interest in theology; however as he grew older, he brought into his inner circle a group of ministers who were extremely devout Catholics. He also brought into his bedroom a mistress who was also fervently religious. Apparently her fervency did not extend past the first five commandments. Louis reversed the policies of his predecessors, and began a campaign of persecution against French Huguenots. He closed most Protestant churches and attempted to force the Huguenots to convert to Catholicism.

In , he issued an Edict which revoked the Edict of Nantes, which had guaranteed religious liberty to the Calvinist Huguenots:. We now see with the proper gratitude that we owe to God…for the best and largest part of our subjects of the so-called reformed religion have embraced Catholicism, and now that, to the extent that the execution of the Edict of Nantes remains useless, we have judged that we can do nothing better to wipe out the memory of the troubles, of the confusion, of the evils that the progress of this false religion has caused our kingdom…than to revoke entirely the said Edict.

Although Louis pleased his Catholic subjects with the revocation the Edict of Nantes had never been popular almost , Huguenots emigrated to England, Prussia, Holland, and South Africa, despite an order from the king that forbade them from leaving the country. Louis also persecuted a weird group known as the Jansenists, named for Cornelius Jansen, the Bishop of Ypres who died in They disapproved of anything frivolous, and were particularly offended by the gaudy displays of Versailles.

They particularly disapproved of the idea of repeated penance, or of deathbed conversions. Their most determined enemies were the Jesuits, who persuaded the Pope to condemn them in Louis ran into some opposition from the Parlement of Paris, and died before he had completely eliminated the sect. The Concept of "Balance of Power:" The idea of a "balance of power" held that great powers should be in equilibrium with each other; no one power should be allowed to become too powerful.

The decline of one power could threaten the balance of. Power if as a result, the power of another state was considerably enhanced. It arose largely at the end of the era of religious warfare, and became the dominant cause of warfare: to prevent any one country from becoming too powerful or dominating too much of the continent.

Together with the idea of a balance of power was born the concept of International Law. Legal principles for times of peace and war were promulgated, primarily by a German Protestant, Samuel von Pufendorf , who wrote Of the Law of Nature and Nations.

Pufendorf argued that only a defensive war was justified, and arbitration should be used to settle peacetime disputes. French expansionism was a major concern to the surrounding nations of Europe during the reign of Louis XIV, who kept France at war for thirty three years, half the time of his personal rule. He had created a modern professional army, and took personal command of it himself.

In , Louis used an excuse to invade Flanders, which was part of the Spanish Netherlands. He acquired twelve towns including Lille, and Tournai. Five years later, he led an army into Holland; the Dutch saved themselves only by opening the dikes and flooding the countryside.

At the end of the war, Louis gained additional Flemish towns. Encouraged by his success, he seized the city of Strasbourg and later the province of Lorraine. He seemed invincible at this point.