HIST 102 #14 - The Age of Louis XIV

Hello, welcome back to our lecture series for Western Civilization 102. Now, we have been discussing, uh, events that are taking place in Europe, oh, around the, um, 17th century, early to mid-17th century. We've discussed absolutism, we've discussed the 30 Years' War, and we've also talked about, uh, the English Civil War and the, uh, the Fronde that happened in France. And the, the ending with France is a perfect beginning for this lecture because we're staying in France and now we're focusing on the Age of Louis XIV.

Now, we already know that Louis XIV had an interesting childhood, and because of his childhood, Louis XIV distrusted, very suspicious of the aristocracy or the nobility in France, resulting from the Fronde, the rebellion that had taken place when he was a small boy. So, we already know that, you know, when he eventually becomes king of France, which he will, uh, he takes over direct control around the mid-17th century. He was 23 by the time. Can you imagine a 23-year-old in charge of a whole country? Even if you're 23, just, it's mind-boggling. And he'll actually rule for over half a century, so he is in charge of France for quite a long time. So, it's interesting that we'll find out from Mr. Elliott in this Age of Louis XIV how he will make sure the aristocracy in France, or the nobility, is contained. He has very interesting methods of keeping the aristocracy from being a problem for him, because if you do have a rebellion or a civil war in your own country, it takes money. So, it's going to take the aristocracy or some kind of backing of someone with some capital to get supplies, etc., to have a sustained civil war rebellion. And Louis XIV wants to make sure this doesn't happen to him.

Um, you may have heard of the very opulent and and famous Palace of Versailles. He will use this Palace of Versailles to keep these aristocrats in check, and we'll find out how he does that from Mr. Elliott. And he also will make sure that important government positions in France are not filled with the aristocracy or the nobility. He makes sure that he gives any kind of important government position to the bourgeoisie, or the middle class, because of course, they can be controlled a lot easier than, um, the aristocracy can. In fact, other monarchs throughout Europe will use Louie's, Louis XIV's example in their own countries or kingdoms of trying to keep the aristocracy in check. Definitely an absolutist ruler. Lots. He is very, very powerful. He's known as the Sun King, and you'll hear more about that as well in this upcoming lecture on Louis XIV.

So, many things take place during the Age of Louis XIV in France, and of course, in all of Europe. Um, there will also still be some residual problems dealing with religion in France. Now, you've already learned about Henry, Henry IV, or Henry of Navarre. He was the Bourbon king who was a Protestant when he came to the throne, but converts to Catholicism, but he issues the Edict of Nantes to grant toleration to Protestants, um, lets them worship in their private, you know, castles, etc., so that the, the religious fighting in France will, will taper off. The tension eases under, um, Henry. Well, we still have, you know, religious problems, of course. And under Louis XIV, there is a revocation, or a taking away of the Edict of Nantes, and there was destruction of those Huguenot or Protestant churches, closing of Protestant schools that resulted, and a lot of Protestant families under Louis XIV will flee into another country in Europe called Prussia. Now, a lot of these Protestant families were very much professionals, skilled, they contributed to society, they were a very strong middle class. So, what France lost, Prussia gained because of this revocation of the Edict of Nantes. So, we're still having that issue, of course, with religion. You would think it would be finished by now, but obviously not. It continues on even into the Age of Louis XIV, and there will be some persecutions occurring in France as well.

Um, also, you've heard of the Habsburgs. It's that dynasty. Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, was a Habsburg. Louis XIV is a Bourbon. They, he will marry into the Habsburg family, and the Habsburgs are traditionally Catholic in nature. Bourbons, of course, traditionally Protestant, but, you know, Henry, that first Bourbon to become king, had converted to Catholicism. So, Louis XIV will actually marry a Habsburg. Her name was Maria Theresa. Um, she was from Austria, not altogether too popular, by the way.

Now, he had a very, very excellent finance minister in the beginning of his reign. The finance minister, I'm sure you probably will hear more about him, but his name was Colbert, and Colbert did a great job of guiding Louis XIV. In fact, the French economy under Colbert was very solid. But Colbert will not live forever, and when Colbert dies, so does some of his reasoning, because in the second half of Louis XIV's reign, as you'll learn more about, Louis becomes involved in a lot of wars that are taking place. And, you know, that war costs money, and this will not be good for France. Louis takes over France as powerful, it's respected. European monarchs are emulating and and copying Louis XIV. Toward the second half of his reign, we start seeing France involved in not one, but quite a few wars throughout Europe that you'll, of course, hear about more with Mr. Elliott. Um, War of the Spanish Succession is one, just to give you one example. Um, you know, Louis was hoping to put a member of the Bourbon dynasty on the throne of Spain. Doesn't work, of course, as you'll find out, but he tries to do so. So, the second half of Louis XIV's reign, not quite as glorious as the first. Colbert died, and and Louis gets involved in a lot of costly warfare. Um, you know, he didn't have Colbert sitting on his shoulder whispering, "You don't, you don't need to do that. You don't need to do that." And he also became involved with a lady, her name was Madame de Maintenon, um, that will influence his religious philosophy. She was a very much a devout Catholic, and, uh, now she could not marry him and become queen because of her status. She wasn't high enough up in the ranks to actually become his queen, but she couldn't marry him openly, but she definitely became an influence on him later on.

All right. Now, of course, Louis XIV eventually dies. 1715 is when he died, and on his deathbed, um, his grandson will become the next heir, the next ruler, I guess, to the, the French throne. But his grandson's only like five years old, so France is in for a rough ride after the Age of Louis XIV. So, let's find out a little bit more about Louis XIV and his government and France itself. Good.

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Many, if not most, American students consciously or unconsciously are driven to some knowledge and much opinion of Louis XIV through the popular culture and through our political certainty. Readers are presented with a particular interpretation of the peculiar images of the famous and infamous king, and the novels of Alexandre Dumas, particularly, uh, *The Three Musketeers*, published in 1844, and its sequel *Ten Years Later*, which was published three years later, and by the various film adaptations, especially the 1998 movie *The Man in the Iron Mask*, starring Leonardo DiCaprio as the imaginary royal twins, a handsome, good guy Philippe, and his slightly older, definitely and charmingly evil bad guy brother, Louis XIV. While this novel and movie plots do have some vague basis in in history and truth, a massive succession always plagued the French royals, and many of us have double personalities. This literature and, uh, cinematic schizophrenia effectively, if deceptively, presents the Louis and the France most of us assume that we know and presume to incorporate in our historical literacy. And imagine Louis XIV is most often who we see and what we get. And what we get in history is a pronounced bias. One of the greatest challenges of History 102 is to at least try to put aside what we think we know about Louis XIV and then reconsider the king on his own terms, in that of his age.

Now, we come to all this difficulty honestly. Louis XIV remains, after all, the most renowned king of France, and really the most renowned king of anywhere else and anyone else. But it's not completely that he's Louis, but that he's French that qualifies or disqualifies our consistent understanding of 17th and 18th century Europe. For most Americans, Louis's Gallic reality puts Louis XIV on the wrong side of history. And for most of our history, and for most of our present, we evidence about a sort of a bias toward England and against France. And if it's against France, it's against the French, and by extension, look against Louis XIV. Our national and our in our our cultural heritage is based on the legacy of our English language, English institutions, English traditions, English conventions, English literature, English civilization. We see the world through a predominantly Anglo and Anglo-American perspective. English history is our foundation. English likes and dislikes are the important puzzle of our own. And we generally have the same historical friends and foes as do the English, and that's what helps keep us anglophilic. We like the English and rather Franco-phobic. We dislike the French. For most American students, French history usually begins at the Hundred Years' War, 1337 to 1453, if you remember History 101. But it's, it's a history as presented usually by the Shakespeare plays, particularly *Henry V*, which was written in 1599. The famous lines, "Once more into the the breach, dear friends, once more, and close the wall up with her English dead." Well, Shakespeare wrote and reads with an English national bias, a sort of a patriotic sentiment. And since England's fighting France and Henry V, the French are the bad guys, and they continue to be so down the years in our own literature, history, fact, and mostly opinion.

After the Reformation, France remains predominantly Catholic, while England devolves or evolves, depending on how you view this, into a Protestant power. And this adds a religious diversity and divergence and rivalry to the ongoing dynastic and national antagonisms. And since the United States is primarily a province of Republic, we have a sort of an inclusive anti-Catholic bias in in America. After 1492, when the French and the English take their their European quarrels over the ocean, uh, the French remained the bad guys to the English settlers and settlements in a new, uh, New England. It's the French out of New France, out of Canada, who aided about the First Nations of a Native American Indian America in their savage response to English settlement, English invasion, and English colonization. We usually style the North American frontier component of 18th century warfare as the French and Indian War, and we link our two traditional, uh, uh, American enemies in a war won by the English and lost by the French. Although France is aiding abetting of the 13 revolting colonies will prove perhaps that the, the French would be the chief determining factor in the waging and winning of the War of American Independence. And the fact that France conveniently sells, uh, the, uh, vast Mid-Continental territory, the heartland of North America, to the young United States, uh, through the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. And the France has been our ally in World War I, World War II, the Cold War. Many in the states profess or pretend to hate the French. Perhaps our Anglo-American history and heritage makes us so. And our English history is, uh, probably the mother of our French dislike. Or might it be the politics?

Now, this is kind of odd since we all have this idea that the Founding Fathers drew extensively on French political theory for American American political thought. And, well, we got to go back beyond the revolution, really back there to the to the to the evening and dawn of, uh, English settlement in North America to appreciate our French phobic discontent. As Americans, we come from an English political tradition that's evolved over time. It's one that rejects royal power, centralized authority, and autocratic might makes, uh, right, this majestical rule. And we embrace instead these republican virtues of smaller, uh, less empowered, more representative government, of checks and balances. We eventually arrive and pretty much stay with Mr. Jefferson's, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal," which means at the time, no kings, no, no sirs, no, no levels, no aristocrats. And we rather subconsciously choose liberty over a perceived royal tyranny of absolutism. After all, we drove the English kings, the lords, and sirs out of our portion of the continent in our revolution. We reject the bloody excesses of the French as they drove theirs away. We reject the Bonapartes that follow the the Bourbon kings into power and in ruin. And we tend to dismiss French world institutions as out of date and out of step to our values. And we sort of double down them as, uh, as aristocratic and anachronistic failures, suitable only for the dustbins of history. There are no kings in America, so all kings must be bad, particularly French kings. So, the, the certainty of our political success is the stepmother of our opinion against the French.

There's also this cultural divide which separates France and America by distances greater than leagues, miles, and oceans. Some stateside moderns see the French as a slightly amusing, distasteful, or even a contemptible people. They're the ones who eat snails too much, don't bathe very often, are a little too formal and effeminate, a feat and way too rude. Uh, we see them as rather consistent surrender monkeys. We're always dropping their guns and raising their hands to surrender to the victorious enemies. We also see them as rather inconsistent in their appreciation of the United States, who saved them from two very real enemies in World War I and II. There's a recent, uh, recent political factor here of the French disinclination to join George W. Bush's war in Iraq or participate in his, uh, against his axes of evil, sparked a general popular an American disdain for French policy in particular, and for the French in general. Even in South Louisiana, with a very, very deep and abiding, pervasive French heritage, some cars boasted a paper bumper sticker, "Sinner bomb the French." Now, these incidents and inclinations of French phobia, like Freedom Fries, might have little to do with reality and everything to do with our perception of Louis XIV, but almost nothing to do with the actuality of Louis and his friends. Certainly, Louis and the French ate snails, they didn't bathe very often, but that was a worldwide convention carried everywhere in the force except in Japan. They do appear overly formal and a bit offended due to social, uh, conventions and fashion dictates. But to imagine the French of Louis XIV's time, or before, or after, as, uh, I guess those those flag-waving, white flag-waving cowards who are always ready to surrender, is a certifiable falsehood and evidence is a willful ignorance of military history.

Now, to misperceive Louis XIV is to misunderstand French, European, American, and world history. To correctly perceive the Age of Louis XIV for History 102 requires that we reconsider the signature king and his country when the continent context of Louis XIV himself. And that remains a challenge, not only from our questionable perception of Louis, the French, but because of the complexity of the of, uh, of the of the Age of Louis XIV. It's, it's so complex, lots of times it makes modern students want to want to act out the opening lines of that famous, uh, Kingsmen song from the 1960s, "Louie Louie." It's the greatest rock and roll song ever written. You might be familiar with it from the movie *Animal House*. Was a real good version up on YouTube. You need to listen to that. Well, the first verse of "Louie Louie" goes, and I won't sing it, uh, "Louie Louie, oh no, the same me, gotta go." In other words, you close the book, you give it up, it's too complex. You step away from Louis XIV and his Europe. But it's, that's not what we're going to do here in in 102. Uh, it's going to be "Louie Louie, we gotta go, gotta go back to the Age of Louis XIV." And back in time and place for History 102. So, here goes, uh, proverbially, the child is father to the man, and we need to consider Louie's biography as a man, as a king, and as an image. We might want to first think our way through French history up to the time of Louis XIV to place him and his in the proper perspective. And to do that, we first have to start with geography.

Now, if you can imagine a globe or a map, that would fix your image of, uh, of France. France is in the northwest corner of Europe, uh, with a face looking not just across the English Channel, but also across the Atlantic Ocean. Uh, it also has its owner belly on the Mediterranean Sea. Now, with these watery boundaries to the west and south, by fronting two seas, the the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, France is a regional maritime power at the center of the European world. Uh, on the European continent, some mountain barriers to to the southwest and east separate France from her neighbors, Spain and Italy. But her northern and eastern boundaries with the various German states were and are forested and farmlands. This is a geography made for war. Now, France has this long history of human occupation, all the way from a very extensive prehistoric presence, prehistoric civilization, stretching, uh, over a fabulous Stone Age culture with all those wonderful, uh, Stone Age cave art that I talked about, and maybe you saw in History 101. Now, it goes from from this prehistoric period, run into this very rich, very warlike Celtic warrior culture, well described in Caesar's *The Conquest of Gaul*. Now, Gaul was conquered, it was subdued, it was occupied by Imperial Rome, but it was civilized to and Christianized very early. France was certainly invaded by all sorts of dramatic and and, uh, and Nordic peoples, but she remained mustered for Gallic and her Romano-Gallic sensibilities, pride, and identity. From a general northern stronghold that becomes Paris, kings in France became kings of France by presence, persistence, patience, and power. And I believe you follow the English historical themes, we usually perceive France losing the Hundred Years' War. After all, the English winning Crecy and Agincourt, they burned Joan of Arc into a crispy critter. But France and her kings managed to hold on. Now, while France loses the battles, she always seems to win the war, and she remains intact, she remains growing.

Now, there are extensive French Wars of Religion to consider, where faith and atrocity emerged from both sides. It settles somewhat by the, the famous Treaty of Nantes of 1599, the Edict of Nantes, we usually call it, which awards Protestants certain rights in an overwhelmingly Catholic France. But if English kings start losing royal rights from the Magna Carta onward, French kings keep cultivate and expand their power. England decentralizes, France centralizes power in her kings. Uh, these kings and the royal ministers, mostly mostly in somewhat kind of perhaps keep France out of the worst excesses of the 30 Years' War, which humbles and devastates the German states. But there are complicated internal struggles and conflicts that occupy France until Louis XIV assumes personal rule in 1643. And at this point, we turn from an oversimplified historical geography to maybe a, a fairly complex historical biography.

Louie's born on September 5th of 1638. Louis XIV is a Virgo, but he's born on an unusual sign of parental association. His parents, Anne of Austria and Louis XIII of France, had been married for over 20 years with not much evidence of conjugal duty or bliss. And Anne of Austria was a Spanish-born Habsburg princess. She married Louis XIII at 14 as part of an alliance guarantee between Spain and France, but she had produced no heir throughout their long years of marriage, and was attractive, but her husband was uninterested in her and in women generally. Her royal husband, Louis XIII, became king at eight, when his, uh, his father, Louis, Henry IV, was assassinated. Now, Henry IV, uh, converts to Catholicism, the famous, "Paris is worth a mass" quote. He issues the Edict of Nantes, and anybody, but he's murdered in 1610, and his young heir, Louis XIII, is really too young to an experience to be the actual king. So, France would be ruled by Henry IV's wife and widow, Louis XIII's mother, Marie de' Medici. Now, as a Medici, she's rich, she's beautiful, she's cultured, she's willful, she's vain, she's extravagant, and she's very powerful. She loves pomp, ceremony, and conspiracy. Much of her grandson, Louis XIV's, good traits maybe traced back to his Italian grandmother, his Medici grandmother. But Marie didn't think to holly of her son, Louis XIII, as regent. She simply ignored him and ruled rather haphazardly through a series of unpopular ministers. Uncertainty and madness brought out the worst in family rivalry during a regency in the early reign of Louis XIII. But for all practical purposes, the Queen Mother Marie remained in power, surviving many revolts and uprisings and sponsoring revolution, uprising herself against her, her own son and king. By 1617, Louis XIII came of age. He became really the king in and of France. He overruled much, if not all, of his mother's alliances and policies, and finally just exiled her. Gone out of sight, out of mind. She escaped and revolted again, but her son's interests were produced and protected by a new minister and eventual Cardinal Richelieu, and his new wife, Anne of Austria. Marie was exiled again, where she continued to conspire against Louis XIII. Now, having such a ferocious and dangerous mother certainly must have influenced Louis XIII's attitudes against women and and conspiring women, certainly. And you combine this with his general interest in nearly all women, with a possible tendency to depression, with the probable inclination of homosexuality and impotency, with the certainty of ill health, it should come as no surprise that two young royals and in Louis XIII had no children for some time.

Now, we need to be careful in dismissing Louis XIII and not not much of a good king. Uh, he was martial. He expanded France's army, or navy, her territory, and encouraged a, a worldwide colonial, uh, uh, uh, exploration. But he left much of the ruling of France, the everyday ruling of France, to Cardinal Richelieu, who may or may not have become Anne's lover. Louis XIII always, the team, a very, very close eye on dangerous rivals, his cousins, his uncles, his brother, and of course, his mother. Louis XIII was certainly not a very good husband, and the royals were often apart by circumstances and by mutual consent. Are Louis XIII's disinterest only a chance sharing of a bed? The only bed left over in a royal move, and a fortunate rainstorm put it together and produced a son, R Louis XIV, in 1638. And Louis XIII, with awful suspicions of his paternity, wondered who the baby daddy really was. Father and son were not close, and they never were close. Now, because of Louis XIV, we used to dispense 13 as unattractive, non-entity, and in popular history teaching, kind of badly, but probably rather fairly. And most would remember him for, uh, is for dying in 1643 and making way for his famous son.

Now, on his father's death, Louis the Dauphin, which means the heir, officially became Louis XIV. He was only five years old. His ascension was almost instantly celebrated by the occasion of a spectacular victory over the Habsburg rivals in the famous Battle of Rocroi. Louis XIV, as an infant, as a child, got his first real taste of royal glory. But he did not rule. His mother did, and seized power and became the regent, and ruling through a series of unpopular, if able, ministers, particularly the eventual successor to Richelieu and Cardinal in his own right, uh, Mazarin. Now, Mazarin, who may or may not have been the Queen's regent's lover, was a very, very confident man. He imagined, uh, successor, negotiated the wonderfully, uh, efficient, uh, Peace of Westphalia in 1648, which firmly ended the 30 Years' War. France's reward for this treaty was that she got considerable concessions in land from Austria. She grew the size of her kingdom, and she, she took on a role as the, the deal maker and power breaker in Europe. Initially, there was little time for rejoicing, though, because almost immediately, France erupted in a nascent, terrible, terrible civil war, and we, we call this the Fronde, which is named from the word for slingshot, was a weapon of choice used by some of the rebels in the civil war insurrection. Though it's kind of hard to call them rebels. A lot of the people involved were ex-soldiers who were unhappy by the peace and unemployment at the end of the 30 Years' War. All sorts of people who had been set adrift by the course of the war, or all sorts of folks were unhappy with Mazarin's prosecution of the war, especially by his enhanced taxes, his reduction of certain autocratic, aristocratic, and urban feudal privileges, as an expansion of the royal power at the expense of those aristocratic and urban French. For them, after about three years of constant rebellion and rioting, there was a time to discredit all the rebellion, rioting, which, while terrifying the, uh, the young and, uh, new king and angering Louis XIV and his, and his people, you could argue that this demonstration against royal authority, the Fronde, sparked a massive increase in royal power and prerogative and helps make Louis, Louis, uh, uh, and that sort of parsley formats Louis's, uh, absolutism as a response to the Fronde, which is used as the basis of how we make an assessment of the Age of Louis XIV.

Assume this rebellion involved all sorts and all manners of Louie's near and far relations and possible rival claimants. And so, the, the Fronde evolves into a war against Louis's throne. Princes less loyal than, uh, than they should, and less royal than Louis, began to intrigue against their king, entreat against his ministers, entreat against their, uh, rivals, his rivals, and each other. Just about everybody intrigued against everybody else. Um, though this, the Fronde did bring into province and suspicion perhaps the two greatest soldiers of the age, Condé and Turenne, as rebels, at least initially. And Condé and Turenne will, will write, uh, will write lords, the military history of Europe at this time. Now, Spain's entry under one side of the of certain Frondeurs alarmed the French peasantry, who rose up in defense of their king. Battles were fought, they were won, they were lost, commanders changed sides back and forth, people betrayed Louis, and some asked his pardon. Pretty soon, the rebellion is simply fizzled out. And imagine, went in and out of exile. France stalled and staggered under ruin and anarchy. Turenne switched sides, and all of a sudden would support the king, while Condé stayed, uh, rebellious and fought for Spain, fought for the rebels, fought for himself, fought against Louis. Now, Paris supported the Fronde, which earned the king's eternal distaste, dislike, and wrath. Imagine we're in and out of exile again, like like a piece of toaster popping up and down all the time. Spain and Royal France began to campaign against each other all along the, uh, their shared border. And, uh, it's when France began to confronting an external threat, this external threat of foreign armies, that France realized were suffering to no end and no really good here, we're sliding to ruin, and they began to turn toward the king as her only source of salvation and peace. And in 1658, in June, Condé lost the Battle of the Dunes to the now Louis-loyal Turenne. In November of 1659, all parties signed the Peace of the Pyrenees with Condé firmly forgiven by Louis in early 1660.

Now, the Fronde helps make Louis, Louis, and an absolutist. When the rebellion first opened back, when it first got off the ground, the Parisian mob burst into the royal palaces, the young king's bedchamber, I was a threatening menace. Louis pretended to be asleep, he hid in his bed, and once they finally left, he got up and escaped. And he escaped under very trying conditions. He was terrified, he lived meager, he did without, and he always disliked and avoided Paris. From this moment on, for the rest of his life, he couldn't stand the, the rebellion, the disorder, the anarchy. He never believed the pretension that folks were flying the Fronde against his ministers, against his mother, and for him. He vowed never to be so powerless, powerless before the mob, powerless before the rebels, powerless before the aristocrats, powerless before his mother, powerless before his ministries, never be powerless again. Like a, like some French, uh, scarred O'Hara, I'll never be powerless again.

In 1661, Mazarin dies, and Louis assumes personal command of France, personal rule. Now, it begins to reform France with his eyes to his power and on French security. He summed up the situation succinctly, saying, "Disorder rules everything." And he tried, he turned his attention to reorganize his ruined kingdom. Now, Nicolas Fouquet had been directing royal finances during the early days of the Fronde and the early days of, uh, Louie's personal power. Now, uh, Fouquet was this, was his financial genius, and he found ways to, to, uh, restore the royal bankruptcy, the, the national debt, and arranged credit for the king's private and personal expenses. He simply re-floated France from all this financial ruin brought on by by the wars and rebellions. A war breeds corruption, but so does a post-war peace. And while reorganizing and reforming public and private royal finance, Fouquet worked wonders. But power corrupts, and absolute financial power corrupts absolutely. Money flowed through, through, uh, Fouquet's hands, flowed because of Fouquet's hands, but they always seem to stick to his fingers. Ability, ambition, average, and appearance will become his downfall. Uh, invited by Fouquet to see the minister's new established, uh, estate, Louis began to measure the buildings, the splendor of the château, the gardens, the, the art, the, the all, all the splendid things that Fouquet had, and he saw red. He saw the red ink of French finances that no matter what Fouquet was doing, France was always bleeding money. But Louie also went green. He went green with envy because he saw Fouquet's establishment was of such a grand scale in nature, had such a public face and private taste, that it was more lush and luxurious than anything Louis XIV had himself. Louis saw Fouquet as a rival, and after the regency and the Fronde, there could be no rivals, there could be no king, there could be no first Frenchman other than Louis XIV. 2017, Louis had had Fouquet investigated, arrested by d'Artagnan, Three Musketeers fame, no less, tried, convicted, and imprisoned. All of Fouquet's wealth, properties, possessions were seized by the king and became Louis'. Jean-Baptiste Colbert replaced Fouquet, proving more able, more loyal, more humble, left self, I guess, more self-effacing, less sticky-fingered, and more capable of getting blood out of the turn of French finances. With Colbert's help, Louis XIV restarted his personal reign with massive reforms to royal, private, and public France. The goals were pretty simple: Make Louis XIV the most fabulous king ever, make France the most flooded kingdom ever, make Louis's France the new Rome. And by and large, he was successful.

Now, they did so by by building on France's strengths and by compensating for France's weaknesses. And they did this lines of three ongoing initiatives: taxation, mercantilism, and presentation. Taxation, mercantilism, and presentation. Now, for all the tragedy and all the ruin of France's invasions and insurrections, Louie's kingdom was an awakening giant. France had the largest population of all the European states. She had a very, very fertile soil. She could feed her people, usually. She had tremendous natural resources. She had considerable industrial and commercial power. She had two coasts open to the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, which which gave her, uh, the possibility of trade. And she had innumerable rivers that were all mouthful inside France. He could move in and out of France with some ease. Colbert had this uncanny ability at taxation. He could raise royal state revenue on just about anything and everything. He could do it efficiently, effectively, and he did it ruthlessly. He produced money for Louis. He developed and refined a particular economic theory and practice called mercantilism. Now, mercantilism is designed to produce state power and prosperity by fostering self-sufficiency, by practicing a wise economy, and by increasing the influx of gold and silver through a luxury trade. It fosters self-sufficiency, it practices the wise economy, it increases the influx of gold and silver through a luxury trade. The king, through Colbert's reforms, encouraged French commerce and industry. I created a French naval presence capable of rivaling Spain, the, the, the first, uh, uh, and foremost naval power of the time. And the navy means trade, it means security, and trade and security means power. France tried to produce as much, if not all, of what's needed in France itself. Didn't want to send their wealth out and and fund and fuel her neighbors, her rivals, or her enemies. Now, Colbert advised Louis to spend only when spending was absolutely necessary. Spend no more or no less than you need to spend. Now, this is not being marginally but carefully frugal. And Louis would be at turns, tight-fisted with a sou, or lavish with a liver. Unpredictably, Louis was pennywise and pound wise, and foolish with with neither small nor large amounts of money.

Now, this quality of, of a wise economy did not disqualify that third initiative of presentation. And this is a private presentation, a public presentation, and a royal presentation. We're talking about here, and they all would co-mingle in particular images of France generally, and in Louis XIV specifically. Now, because France appears in American history with LaSalle's claim to Louisiana in 1682, most Americans view images of Louis XIV when he was when they wrote the middle-aged man in his 40s. But in the 1660s, Louis was a 20-something young king. He was this bright and shining new monarch, more in the Leonardo DiCaprio tradition than you might imagine. And Louis would use all his considerable looks, abilities, charms, powers, and position to present a most attractive public, private, and royal presence. Now, private presentation might start with Louis XIV, but it did not end there. Private presentation also refers to private possessions, to the material objects that came to find the good life in France as simply the good French life. This is one of quality and luxury that anybody can obtain by simply buying French stuff. And France worked hard at this, and she achieved a marvelous ability to produce fashionable objects, luxury goods such as tapestries, porcelains, silks, jewelry, clothes, hats, crockery, and all sorts of gem crockery that showed the world that you were a person of taste and refinement simply because you had them. Now, many of these French manufactured items were talent is just as owned by Louis XIV. They were pitched to connect the king with what you could buy. And pretty soon, French market supply was totally overwhelmed by French and European market demand. You could be as cool as a French buying by buying whatever they were selling, kind of the branding of Europe. It was a French brand. You bought the right things, you bought the French things. Louise's France set the standard for the best in the body price of everything material. People across Europe aspired to look like, live like, and be like the French. And with everybody high and low, hopefully and enthusiasm imitating French ways and means, French styles and fashions, the French and their king achieved unprecedented influence and presence in Europe. That when Louis refurbished his France, uh, and sometimes he did this in a conscious but secret homage to what, uh, the grace and grandeur of, uh, the unfortunate Fouquet, Louis was encouraging a particular image of France, an image of his France.

Nowhere do we see so lavish the presentation or so successful accomplishment as we do in the progressive expansions of certain royal residences, especially Versailles. Now, palaces normally house the king and his court, but this former hunting lodge of Versailles, which was far enough away from Paris for privacy, protection, to to suppress any bad memories or bad dreams of the horrible Fronde, Louis had this transformed as a built presentation that burns the image of the king as this young and and gracious majesty and gave him his luxurious sheen where he glowed like a new young Sun King. Now, not only would this become the premier royal residence, but Versailles also served a greater purpose. European royalty were imitating, uh, Louis's architecture at Versailles, as well as copying all the French fashion, cultural artifacts that everyone else did. But Louis required that Versailles do something else. He required it be that it'd be the place where all the aristocrats would gather, and the presence of all French aristocrats at Versailles made meant that they lived, they loved, they pranced, and they danced under the careful scrutiny of the king. Now, not only this, is did this bind end the often difficult and and very, uh, uh, diffident blue bloods into a more personal and therefore a more dependent relationship with the court, the king, but some of these aristocrats came from the very families in regions that participated on the other side, the bad side, the rebellious side of the throne. And Louis could watch these folks. And so what Versailles becomes is this golden cage to monitor and defang the aristocratic enclosed tradition, minor or major royal kiss and can, all those rivals, all those enemies who did and could threaten Louie's power. Versailles became the nerve center of Louie's of Louie's agency to to increase and and control, expand and protect his power as king. Uh, Versailles also became a national and international showcase used to dazzle Louis's family, his folks, his friends, his allies, his enemies of exactly how grand and accomplished Louis's France really is. Foreign princes and ambassadors, the generals could arrive at, uh, Versailles and view the rising sun power of the new king. Versailles demonstrated that France would, could, and did do tremendous things. These vast constructions of palaces, offices, gardens, and fountains, by its very design, Versailles demonstrated that the French could control nature. They did this formalized garden, formalized layout, those as a symbol of French control and the glory of the king and his power. This immense scale, the supreme design, this very well-handled execution of Versailles, all anybody and everybody, if you arrived, if you gawk, if you visit, if you stayed, if you lingered at Versailles, you were always on the, the eye of the king, and always was in this perfect world, this impressive world that Louis had constructed.

Now, public presentation was not limited to architecture or the landscape. Louis cultivated all, all manner of things to, to demonstrate his power and his prestige, to complement the excellence of his kingdom. After imprisoning, uh, Fouquet, Louis adopted Fouquet's gardener, André Le Nôtre, his painter, Charles Le Brun, and his architect, Louis Le Vau, and built this, uh, remarkable trinity of accomplishments into a broad base, uh, uh, stable of talent for his royal purposes and his royal services. A royal patience graced all the arts and letters: French painting, French sculpture, French literature, French poetry, French music, French dance, French theater, all set standards for civilized life in France and in Europe. Foreign commissions and purchases of of art brought in revenue to France and raised the prestige of any and everything French. And soon everybody wanted to be French, wanted to be like the French, wanting to live like the French. French dancing, French fashion, French cooking, French feasting, French kissing, all became the rage of Europe. French as a language, the French language replaced Latin as the, the recognized, expected language of the most cultivated men. Even the hated and feared Paris, and other regional, uh, uh, locations were modified, improved, and enhanced to do this wonderful presentation of the quality of life in France. And nor were the sciences neglected, and not even the law. Again, France sets its standards in every field.

Now, what Louis hungered for was glory. Glory through doing and glory through being. And his name and presence were soon stamped across everything and everywhere. Even Louisiana's favorite, uh, and and famous Code Napoléon has its origins in an earlier code, Louis. It set legal standards, legal logic, and consistent inconsistency across a Romanized Europe that was presto change-o made into a galaxy Europe, French Europe. And who soon they spread all their ideas of almost everything around the world where they remain pretty much in place this day. If imitation is the highest form of flattering, every other kingdom, even enemy states, were openly aping Louis and France's every move and gesture.

Now, the young king was happy to build, to trade, to direct and inspire, but simultaneously to all this cultural seduction, Louie's public presentations could take on a lethal quality as well. He was not hesitant to make war as well as love to the rest of Europe. And war, not horse racing, is the true sport of kings. And Louis could play hard, fast, and fatal with his soldiers and sailors. He could make war by necessity. The first duty of a state is always to protect itself, but he could also make war by choice. Louis had these different ideas about the territory borders of France and sought, users successfully, to extend France to national, defendable borders at the expense of his Spanish, Italian, German, and Austrian neighbors, and against any internal independent freedoms that were that were within his France. Louis thought that if you spoke French, no matter what your national ethnic background, you were French, and therefore you were his. And he would launch what he cheekily called "Wars of Reunion" to extend his borders to include more people, even if they were somebody else's folks. Now, he would delightfully increase his territories by treaty or alliance or purchase, but actually embraced military solutions for the use of his power. By using his army with the financial reform and aggressive taxation of Colbert, he could usually afford to do so, especially if he could supplement French funding with seizures and assessments of defeated enemies. But he used lavish gifts and loans to influence and to win friends and influence people as well. But it was the army that was the fang of his radiant sunny smile. He had, he had Europe's largest, best trained, best equipped, and best supplied standing army, and he was not shy to use it. It was officered by all these aristocrats, defanged at Versailles, and newly re-fang for Louie's use. The army had its ranks drawn from this vast agricultural population. It was supplied and supported from strong and well-stocked fortifications designed geometrically by Vauban, who set the standards for European military engineering. French armies have this reputation for hard marching and stand-up fighting, and they all, they did this all with a certain élan, a certain, a grace and charm, sort of a brave ability. Here they fought, and they fought with style. Win or lose, some surrendered monkeys, the French.

Now, we should not mistake Louie's fabrication of France as a fabrication of Louie's role. In this fabrication, he was no front man, no royal talking head. Louis talked the talk, and he walked the walk. He directed France's rise to power and prosperity personally. Louis was a hands-on king, as easy as the unmade men says who came. He created a new French royal state by using the best and brightest people in France. Louis never said his signature statement, "I am the state," but he could have, because France was of his own creation. And he reformed the French bureaucracy to serve him and France very well. He would surround himself with able ministers drawn into the royal service from the rising and better-educated middle class, who saw the king as their protector and shield against the aristocrats who wanted to keep them down. Now, these new civil servants served the king personally, served France, uh, devotedly, and worked under Louie's close personal supervision as he directed the financial, the industrial, the commercial, and the military reform of France.

Now, all this required great royal stamina and royal presentation. With hand in hand with power, Louis lived a very, very personal life where every gesture, every act, every action was watched intently and for imitation and emulation. Louis lived in the in the in the glare of his own sunlight. There was little privacy and much self-sacrifice. Louis worked, played, prayed, lived, danced, ate, and bathed in the public eye. And where art imitates life, and life imitates art, where everybody wanted to be French, and Louis was France, he set the standard in full view. He had this commanding presence, and he was a pretty good actor. He had discerning taste, and he had undeniable ability. Beyond being king, he was the most attractive man. He was a fine athlete, a strong rider, a very, very exuberant dancer, and he was enough of the man and a king to be vain about it. He was cautious, but he had to be. He always lived in the spotlight where every gesture was watched very carefully. We also lived within this family legacy of assassination, rivalry, and betrayal. Court life was formal for very good reasons of presentation and protection. Louis moved about in this vast crowd of courtiers who had to be kept at a respectable distance, but close enough to be under Louis's eye, at Louis's hand, and watching Louis smile. He sacrificed to be who, where, and what he had become. He had stepped back for a moment. He truly and newly loved in his youth to make a political marriage to his Spanish princess, Maria Theresa. She was the king of Spain's eldest daughter. She had renounced her claim to the Spanish throne and promised a fabulous dowry to marry Louis. She loved him, thought herself not pretty enough, or sworn before him. He treated her with great courtesy, uh, attention, and affection over the long course of his long life. He took numerous lovers and had a select cadre of long-time mistresses. And we moderns tend to look askance at his open and secret promiscuity, but we've got marriages for love, and what Louis had was the marriages that were were aligned along the European style of of marriage for for connection in 17th and Central Europe. He was unfailingly courteous to all women. He was known to certainly doff his hat at any woman, even passing servant women in the halls and staircases of Versailles. His life, his king, was so far removed from modern sensibilities and sensitivities that we have a hard time understanding Louis XIV. And to do that, I'd like to recommend to a particular movie besides *The Musketeers* and *Man in the Iron Mask*. I'd like you to watch *The Man in the Iron Mask*. It's PG-13, so be careful what you see, but it has, uh, Julian Sands as maybe the most perfect Louis you'll ever see, and it presents Colbert and and, uh, Condé. It shows the, the ways and means of how a court worked. But you need to watch the very careful of a presentation of Louie's younger brother, Philippe, who was not his twin, but wore a mask and much more confined than anything I'm made of iron. But watch especially those courtiers who are often caused to be a feat and offended, who were in truth hard, fast, brave, and killing gentlemen. I'd like you to also look at the Google Art Project, the Palace of Versailles, which gives you a tour of the inside and outside of Versailles, beyond your, uh, you're going there through the power of your computer in your home or in your classroom.

Now, this short and perhaps oversimplified snapshot of the famous king is more French-friendly than you're normally going to get, but hopefully that prepares you for the next wave, the next exploration of Louis XIV within a greater European and American context. And next time I see you, we'll be reconsidering the 17th and 18th centuries as the Age of Louis XIV. Thank you.

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Well, we've just learned a lot about France and the Age of Louis XIV. When we come back for our next lecture, we'll pick up around the Glorious Revolution, which actually occurred in England with the Stuart Dynasty. We'll pick up there all the way up until the Treaty of Utrecht, which ended that Spanish Succession War that took place with Louis XIV. Until next time.