Tuesday 7 December 2010

France in the 17th Century: The Consolidation of Power

The development of the French state as an absolute monarchy was the first step in an historical process that was to lead to more than a century of conflict, at times on a global scale. The result was a change in the geo-political order that has had ramifications down to the present day.

Repercussions of the Reformation
The Protestant Reformation had profound and long lasting consequences for
The Peace of Westphalia in 1648 marked the end of the Thirty Years War which had begun with Protestant-Catholic antagonism and dynastic politics within the Holy Roman Empire. The pan-European conflict saw interventions in support of the Protestant cause against the Austrian and Spanish Hapsburgs; three decades of continually shifting alliances saw German Liberties pitted against the Emperor, Protestant against Catholic, Lutheran against Calvinist, Jesuit against Capuchin, United Provinces against Spanish Netherlands, Denmark against Sweden and, most decisively, Bourbon against Hapsburg. In 1635, France had only recently consolidated Catholic supremacy after almost seventy years of religious confrontation with Calvinist sectarianism. But the First Minister, Cardinal Richelieu, threatened by the Austrian and Spanish presence on his borders, chose chauvinist expediency over religion and sided with Protestant interests. And religion was further subordinated to the needs of the state as Richelieu worked towards the concentration of power in the institution of the monarchy, underwritten always by the principle of the divine right of kings.

The Peace of Westphalia determined the future shape of German-speaking
Europe while creating a Protestant stronghold in the north that included a Dutch Republic independent from Spain. With the acquisition of Alsace, France was strengthened at the expense of the Empire. But the Peace of Westphalia did not by any means put an end to hostilities. For a further thirty years, until the Treaty of Nijmegen in 1678 provided a breathing space, the belligerents continued in a confusing series of coalitions. England, always watchful of the European balance of power and with more than a sideways glance at her commercial interests, now lent her weight variously in the confrontations that centred, for the most part, on the Low Countries: on occasion supporting the Dutch Republic but more often allied against a burgeoning mercantile threat. Nijmegen brought respite from conflict, amongst other things allowing France to pursue territorial expansion in the Americas, Asia and Africa. This was of no small significance for the century to come; but the period between the Peace of Westphalia and the Treaty of Nijmegen saw events that were of equal, if more subtle, consequence. These events revolved around the nature of Church and State, not the least of the many factors that placed England and France
on a collision course long before the outbreak of the Seven Years War.


 Mazarin and the Frondes
In France, Cardinal Mazarin had assumed the role of First Minister following the death of Richelieu in 1642 and had presided over the minority of Louis XIV after his accession at the age of five in 1643. Mazarin continued the policies of his predecessor, externally in opposing Hapsburg ambitions and internally in increasing the power of the Crown, not least at the expense of the great territorial magnates. These policies resulted in the civil disorders known as the Frondes, which developed in the last years of the Thirty Years War and encouraged Mazarin to seek a resolution to that conflict. The initial impulse of the Frondes was to protect the ancient feudal liberties from royal infringement, to defend the rights of courts of appeal (Parlements) and particularly the right of the Parlement of Paris to veto the decrees of the monarch. The first pressure on these liberties had come from extended and increased taxation to cover war expenditure. The initial Fronde Parlementaire placed Mazarin in direct conflict with the Parlement of Paris, which was supported by the Paris mob and the nobility. The Peace of Westphalia allowed the French armies under their great general Condé to return and place Paris under siege, ending the insurrection. The second Fronde, the Fronde des nobles, was in essence a confused struggle for power, influence and patronage by discontented nobles, who now included Condé, with support from a Spain that had been at war with France since that country’s intervention in the Thirty Years War. The second Fronde saw Mazarin briefly in exile on two occasions before returning unopposed in 1653.

The most significant result of all this turmoil was Mazarin’s further movement towards absolutism in order to consolidate the authority of the Crown and minimise dissent. The end of the Franco-Spanish War in 1659 (following the crucial involvement of an English contingent on the French side) resulted in the return of the last Frondeurs and their forgiveness by and reconciliation with Louis XIV and Mazarin. When Louis began his personal reign after the death of his mentor two years later, he was well versed in the political thinking of Richelieu and Mazarin and remained always conscious of the threat that had been presented by the Frondes. His reign, the longest of any European monarch, allowed more than adequate time for the fulfilment of the Cardinals’ absolutist aspirations. Henceforward Louis worked deliberately to establish the monarch as the totemic personification of the state, summarised succinctly in his forceful pronouncement to the Paris Parlement in 1655, “L’etat, c’est moi”.

Louis XIV: The Consolidation of Power
Reconciliation with Condé and the Frondeurs removed a potential internal threat; and the appointment of Jean-Baptiste Colbert as Controller of Finances, his more efficient taxation regime and his aggressive economic development policies, saved
France from impending bankruptcy. These were preconditions for an agenda of radical reforms, many of which aimed at eroding feudal institutions and the power of the nobility. The army was transformed by a programme of modernisation that attacked the privileges of the traditional military aristocracy and created a professional and disciplined armed force capable of sustaining France as a major European power through the disputes of the latter part of the century. Equally important was the series of ordinances aimed at rationalising the fragmented and localised legal system, culminating in the Code Louis which regularised civil procedure throughout the whole of France and transferred responsibility for the register of civil records from the church to the state. More significant still was the fundamental reorganisation of the civil administration: Louis strengthened his power by the creation of a new
bureaucracy where the high offices of state were no longer occupied by grandees pursuing vested interests.

In all of this Louis, like many rulers before or since, recognised that the realisation of an ideal state, of whatever complexion, requires a centralised authoritarian regime capable of imposing its political vision. This requirement dictated a new relationship between the secular power and the church. Traditional limitations on papal authority in France were to increase as Louis further subordinated the church to the crown. Nevertheless, the king was determined that France should remain, above all, a Catholic realm, perpetuating the unique relationship between the monarchy and the Gallic church whereby the latter imparted a sacral status to kings who were obliged by their coronation oath to defend French Catholicism. To this end (and partly to mollify the Pope) Louis imposed new restrictions on the Protestant Huguenots, eventually revoking the Edict of Nantes that had allowed them a degree of religious and political freedom and, in Louis’s eyes, was an unwanted reminder of royal weakness. Henceforward monarchy, state and church were one and the dogma of divine kingship and divine right was given its definitive form.

Versailles: Seat and Symbol of State

The ultimate symbol of the state as unified edifice was the Palace of Versailles, which had seen its major development phase after the Treaty of Nijmegen. In 1682 Louis removed the royal court from Paris to the former hunting lodge. In doing so he ensured that the national focus was firmly on himself rather than on the Capital or the citizenry. As importantly, the nobility and the military establishment, always potential sources of subversive cabals, were separated from their localised power bases, brought under close observation and immersed in the isolated and leisurely distractions of courtly life. But Versailles was as much an idea as an architectural tour-de-force or an instrument of political control. The Palace was at the hub of Louis’s extensive patronage of the arts: the court’s painters, sculptors and composers were famed across Europe; and classical French literature flourished under a king who was confident enough in his power to afford his protection to such contentious writers as Molière and Racine. France, in the meantime, had gained territory on the Rhine that helped secure its borders; and colonial expansion was proceeding at a pace. Versailles, in all its glittering splendour, was the embodiment of national aspiration and the emblem of French prosperity and power, a magnificent theatre for the conduct of state affairs and an intimidating setting for the reception of foreign dignitaries. The French court inspired awe, envy and imitation in other European powers.

Above all, Louis XIV and
Versailles emerged as the quintessential manifestation of French nationhood that was to reverberate down the centuries. If a nation is the de facto expression of accumulated historical events, national self-consciousness is the repository of an accumulated and residual mythology that can be adapted and exploited at need. The perception of French cultural superiority that stems from Louis and Versailles persisted and was an ingredient in the colonial administrations that introduced French institutions and values to their subject peoples. The conviction of French pre-eminence and the legendary legacy of Versailles resonated with Bonaparte and de Gaulle (the Revolution that brought Napoleon to power had more than a passing similarity to the Frondes. His Code Napoleon was based on the Code Louis and through his conquests transformed the legal systems of much of Europe). Louis and Versailles created and gave substance to the notion of ‘La France’, a notion that was arguably (and ironically) to be best articulated by Eugène Delacroix in his 1830 Revolutionary painting ‘Liberty Leading the People’ (Louvre). The Sun King joined Charles Martel, Charlemagne, St Louis and Joan of Arc in France
’s national pantheon.

                         

The 1680s saw
France reaching the height of her power, to the growing concern of her neighbours. The War of the League of Augsburg that began in 1688 failed in its aim of curtailing French ambition and ended, towards the close of the century, with a settlement that gave France a permanent frontier on the Rhine. European anxieties persisted and were to surface once more as a new century brought the spectre of a continental monolith through the threatened union of Bourbon and Hapsburg. And 1688 had been a pivotal year across the English Channel
, where the Glorious Revolution had marked the threshold of what some historians have labelled the Second Hundred Years War. The roots of this renewal of ancient enmity lay forty years before, towards the end of the Thirty Years War, when schism upon schism brought radical changes to the English Church and State.

Recommended reading: The Pursuit of Glory:
Europe
1648-1815 / Tim Blanning (for review and more books, go to the Europe Page of the History Unlimited Bookshop).
Europe and the world. The potent ingredient of religious fervour added a new compulsion to age-long struggles for political ascendancy and territorial gain. The Religious Wars of the 16th and 17th centuries devastated the countries in which they took place and one of the many complex outcomes was the rise of the nation state as a political force and the decline of the sometime hegemony of the Roman Catholic Church. In the words of Bertrand Russell: “The important aspect of Protestantism was schism, not heresy, for schism led to national Churches, and national Churches were not strong enough to control lay government”. Even in some Catholic countries, Church was made subservient to State. And, often, veneration of the State assumed the aspect of a secular religion that could be as virulent a source of hatred as sectarian discord.

The Thirty Years War

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