Louis XIV and the Domestication of the Nobility - Essay Example

Louis XIV and the domestication of the nobility Introduction King Louis XIV was a revolutionary ruler who put an end to the constant power struggles between the French Kings and the nobility of the time through a number of radical reforms and established himself as the unchallenged supreme power of the nation. Ever since Louis XIV assumed his thrown in 1660, his ultimate priority was to take the power back from the French nobility and his policy of domesticating the nobility proved to be a landmark in the French history as the nation witnessed the most stable absolutism during his reign. The glittering palace at Versailles established in 1682 was aimed at domesticating the nobility; for this, he assembled the great nobles, who were traditionally ambitious and unruly, to the royal household so that he could always keep an eye on them and intervene promptly to prevent any sort of conspiracy or organized revolution against the royal thrown and it was one of the crucial weapons introduced by the King to bring the nobility and the aristocracy under his control. To attain this goal, Louis XIV designed the functioning of the royal court in such a way that the courtiers enjoyed only nominal ceremonial roles in the royal household and they had to compete each other for royal favour, rank and status in the new court. Similarly, Louis put an end to the local nobles controlling their armies in an independent manner by maintaining a strong centralized army that could suppress any sort of rebellion. In the same way, the regional governors were moved from one province to other on a regular basis so that they could never be powerful or influential in any particular region. Similarly, Louis successfully used the services of a group Intendants to control the local administers and to spy over them. He made revolutionary changes in the French government by reducing in size the number of senior ministers in the inner council and those chosen included his loyal subjects who were efficient and able. No doubt, the system of graduated poll tax upon all French subjects and a tax of one-tenth of personal income regardless of status introduced by Louis XIV have been instrumental in bringing about radical changes in the social basis of the country. This paper seeks to explore the radical reforms made by Louis XIV to domesticate the French nobility and in doing so the paper unearths the other factors that saw him to be the unchallenged absolute monarch of France. Historical background The historical background of the relation between the nobility and the Kings in France can be traced back to the medieval Europe where there was constant conflict between the concepts of absolutism and decentralized forms of political power characterized by the feudal societies and the aristocratic nobilities. Before Louis XIV’s radical reforms the French aristocracy, nobility and the land-lords exerted greater influence on governmental policies and royal administration. The king enjoyed only limited powers. Many of the provinces had their own regional parlements, and they maintained their own local Estates, and pursued their own sets of laws. It was really difficult for the royal administration to dictate terms on members of the high nobility with their huge estates and clients who possessed considerable amount of authority and influence. Similarly, the French nobility was always against absolutism and it held that “a decentralized monarchy would be controlled by the elite of the nobility and the third estate, established in the administration, the army and the judiciary according to their ability and their worth, and independent of ministerial despotism. Throughout, nobles would enjoy preference when they combined worthiness with dignity” (Chaussinand-Nogaret 1985, 15). As a result, one could find in French history many constant struggles for the division of power between the King and the nobility. For instance, during the reign of Louis XIII, in 1648, France’s chief law court, the parlement of Paris, questioned out rightly the divine right theory of the King and demanded that it had a right to be consulted over major decisions of the state. The provincial parliaments also joined in the upheaval and it resulted in the five years of civil war known as the Frondes. The five years of civil war had a great impact on the young Louis XIV that his later policies were aimed at taming the nobility and establishing a firm monarchical government. This is very well suggested by Mizoeff when the author states that even though ‘Louis was forced to abandon Paris, and the traditional monarchical system was almost overthrown’ in 1648, “could never forget this experience and, as soon as he became king in his own right in 1660, he set about eradicating any possibility that such a revolt could ever occur again” (Mirzoeff 1995, 62). As soon as he came to the thrown Louis XIV’s attempts were aimed at domesticating the great families, who had a long tradition of incitement to rebellion. Unlike his predecessors, Louis’s measures to domesticate the power magnates were highly thoughtful, effective and gradual; his first attempt was to deny these nobles any important positions in his councils and to deny them any administrative posts in the provinces so that they were completely negated of any meaningful role in the national governance. Similarly, in order to remove “the magnates from their provincial seats of power and to divert their attention from local affairs, the king required their continual attendance at court” (Root 1992, 25). Thus, Louis XIV made conscious efforts to divorce the government from its traditional French social foundations and he “excluded the official elites from the essential pact between power and its object, between government and the governed. He had broken the tacit contract made at the beginning of the monarchy; the noble contract, a sort of aristocratic social contract” (Chaussinand-Nogaret 1985, 13). The court The Duc de Saint-Simon provides a vivid account of the life at the court of Louis XIV which includes a clear cut description of the court, and the life at the Versailles. For him, Louis XIV was fortunate enough to have the most efficient and ablest ministers and generals of the time and his court “was made up of capable and illustrious personages” (Halsall 1997). However, as a king Louis XIV was easily moved by flattery and this accounted for many serious wars fought by him at the instigation of Louvois and other generals. The Versailles palace included two symmetrical apartments on the first floor (one for the king and the other for the queen) with a central reception room and terrace overlooking the gardens. Besides, a taller stone building was created in the garden side of the existing building; the whole castle was embellished with columns of marble, wrought-iron balconies and ornaments on the roof. The great architectural works of Louis Le Vau (1612-1670), the gardener Andre Le Nôtre (1613-1700) and the painter Charles Le Brun (1619-1690) thus transformed the castle into a monumental premier palace and court. The Versailles palace was enriched with new gardens, a royal chapel, the Hall of Mirrors, Grand Trianon, hundreds of sculptural works by Fançois Girardon (1628-1715), Antoine Coysevox (1640-1720) and Etienne Le Hongre (1628-1690), fountains, a Marly machine driven by the current of the Seine River, an artificial pond of about seventy acres, and an elaborate underground network of reservoirs and aqueducts. The reasons why the king controlled the court Louis XIV’s glittering palace at Versailles established in 1682 was not only a celebration of the wealth and power of the Sun King but it was one of the crucial weapons introduced by the King to bring the nobility and the aristocracy under his control. As Yglesias (2008) rightly puts it, “Louis XIV made the aristocracy’s presence at Versailles a key prerequisite for their obtaining favor, patronage, and power” and “by assembling many of the most important local notables at his court, he was able to watch over them closely while separating them from their local power bases” (Yglesias 2008). Thus, the building of the court was a conscious tactical step undertaken by Louis XIV to silence the nobility and in turn he offered the nobles material rewards and an opportunity to become part of the court’s luxurious lifestyle. Louis XIV’s policy was successful enough to deviate the interests of the nobility and as Steves, Smith & Openshaw (2007) observe the nobility lost sight of conspiring against the royal administration and “living a life of almost enforced idleness, the “domesticated” aristocracy couldn’t interfere with the way Louis ran things” (Steves, Smith & Openshaw 2007, 468). The domestic policy of Louis was to extend absolute royal rule by selecting a group of ministers who were loyal to him. The group included such distinguished personalities in French history like Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Michel Le Tellier, Francois-Michel Le Tellier, Marquis de Louvois, Hughes de Lionne, and Jules Mazarin. In the latter part of his reign, Louis chose the successors of these men to ensure ‘continuation of policy and loyalty’ and he “deliberately excluded the Princes of the Blood and established nobility in general” (Louis XIV and Domestic Policy). Louis favoured as his ministers on nobles who came from relatively new aristocratic families rather than following the traditional manner of ministers of high nobility and royal princes. People such as Michel Le Tellier, secretary of state for war; Hugues de Lionne, secretary for foreign affairs; and Nicholas Fouquet, superintendent of finances are a few examples for such insightful choice. However, he always wanted all of them to be subservient. Another remarkable domestic policy of Louis was to redefine the role of Intendants “to reform local/regional financial systems, judicial systems and policing the law” whereby he could take away power and influence from the local nobility who had been feudal in their approach so far (Louis XIV and Domestic Policy). Similarly, Louis put an end to the local nobles controlling their armies in an independent manner by maintaining a strong centralized army that could suppress any sort of rebellion. In the same way, the regional governors were moved from one province to other on a regular basis so that they could never be powerful or influential in any particular region. It was during Louis’ reign that Jean-Baptiste Colbert strengthened the French army and resorted to colonisation and commerce for the development of the French economy. Louis had certain political motives too in the creation of the Versailles palace. He wanted to protect himself from any outbursts on the part of the Parisian mob and to distract the nobility from affairs of state: “by providing enough space to house the courtiers, the chateau and its outbuildings helped to "domesticate" the French nobility. Under the kings watchful eye, great lords no longer plotted--they remained with the court, ready to please and serve the king” (Evans). As a result, since 1682, Louis’ tactics were so successful that the nobility ceased to be an important factor in French politics. Versailles and the domestication of Nobility As Saint-Simon narrates, King Louis XIV was influenced by “the feeling that he would be regarded with greater awe and veneration” when no longer exposed every day to the gaze of the multitude and this prompted him to remove the court from Paris (Halsall 1997). Another major reason for the shifting of the court to Versailles was his love affair with Mademoiselle de la Vallière and his subsequent frequent excursions to Versailles. As his visits became more frequent, the king gradually so enlarged the château that within no time the immense buildings proved to be a better place of accommodation for the courtiers and in 1682 the court was removed to Versailles. The frequent festivities conducted at Versailles were attended by courtiers and the nobility that he himself nominated. The King made special care to maintain continual attendance at Court and anyone who made his personal absence felt without sound reasons was subjected to his displeasure. Similarly, King Louis XIV “always took great pains to find out what was going on in public places, in society, in private houses, even family secrets, and maintained an immense number of spies and tale-bearers” and as Saint-Simon observes many were unjustly punished or prejudiced against due to such reports carried to him (Halsall 1997). Everyone at the court longed to receive an honour from the king in the form of a smile, a glance, a trifling question or some commonplace remarks. Louis XIV was a shrewd ruler who ensured the loyalty of the courtiers by compelling them to “live beyond their income” and by gradually reducing them to ‘depend on his bounty for the means of subsistence’ and for Saint-Simon this folly motivated by pride and ostentation was sure to ruin the country (Halsall 1997). The construction of the Versailles palace brought about radical changes in the prevailing French administrative system. The functioning of the royal court was designed in such a way that the courtiers enjoyed only nominal ceremonial roles in the royal household and they had to compete each other for royal favour, rank and status in the new court. Louis XIV’s motives were evident in the way he staffed the royal household with great nobles, who were traditionally ambitious and unruly so that he could always keep an eye on them and intervene promptly to prevent any sort of conspiracy or organized revolution against the royal reign. His policy was successful enough to divide the nobility of the nation into two groups, those at courts and those in the country; this brought about a distinction among the nobility and both these groups had a sort of competition and district towards each other which favoured the royal cause. One could easily notice that Louis XIV’s long term goal was to strengthen the monarchy and the royal government by creating a visible division among the nobility. As Kettering (1986) observes, “when the great nobles lived permanently at court, they no longer spent much time in the provinces where they owned estates or held office, and their absence weakened and impersonalized their ties of loyalty with the provincial nobility whom they no longer saw or knew, a trend intensified by the growing hostility between the court and country” (Kettering 1986, 221). Thus, the Versailles was instrumental in marginalizing the traditional authoritative role played by the French nobility whereas it helped strengthening the royal administrative power in the nation. Louis XIV’s tactics were far-sighted and he imposed his grip on the nobility and the aristocracy gradually. Very often, his policies sounded to the nobility as mutually beneficial and Louis XIV always convinced the nobles that they could get access to the king only through the court and that they could request favours for themselves and their clients only by pleasing and flattering him. As a result, very often, the courtiers “competed each other for precedence in twin pyramids of ascendancy, one noble and one bourgeois. They were as concerned to prevent the success of one of their rivals as to promote their own cause and Versailles thus served not only to domesticate the French elite, but to control them” (Mirzoeff 1995, 62). On the other hand, the King could command royal patronage from the nobility which helped him to get a large amount of support from their families and clients. In Campbell’s opinion, “the system relied more on mutual benefits than on a clear triumph of the King over the nobility, because the King needed his nobles not only as an audience for his theatre of power but also as clients who could use their own influence over men to help him govern” (Campbell 1996, 24). In many respects, Louis XIV assumed the role of an uncontrolled absolute monarch. Louis XIV’s reign brought France back to the traditional royal absolutism; her shifted shifted the entire administrative system of France to an authoritarian system of government and his policy towards the domestication of the nobility played a pivotal role in this transition. Carroll (2006), in this respect, purports that Louis advocated “a different form of repression operated at Versailles” whereby he forced the aristocracy to internalize ‘strict rules of etiquette into self-restraint’ (Carroll 2006, 319). The Seigneurs which once had great power and influence in the French administration now lost their hold on administration and Louis XIV exercised his divine right to rule to its fullest. The other two major factors that contributed to Louis XIV’s absolute monarchy were the immense wealth and the mightiest army in Europe that he had at his disposal. He often held that he was the State (“Létat, cest moi” [I am the state]) and took special efforts to curtail the power from local authorities and distributed governmental power among a specialized group of ministries who were chosen by him and were completely loyal to him. The reign of Louis XIV in France was marked by glory, splendour, majesty, prosperity and grand pageantry. He made the bourgeoisie unassertive and silent by bribing them with “newly created titles, offices, and reflected glory through the illusion that of playing some small part in governance. The peasantry was distant and mostly ignorant of the King’s affairs, and usually far from his thoughts. With the leading classes neutered and domesticated, Louis was unchallenged in his personal ministry of French affairs” (Nolan 2008, 259-260). Even though his reigning period witnessed a series of violent tax revolts he was able to silence them. The Intendants were of great assistance to Louis towards suppressing the nobility and keeping them under his heels. During the initial stages of his rule, Louis XIV made it clear that the Intendants are redeployed and redirected: the Intendants were directed “to spend longer in their jurisdiction, acting as the main source of intelligence for the crown and leaving mundane matters of administration in the hands of the local office-holders” (Carroll 2006, 322). His policy towards the local administration making use of the services of the Intendants was so effective that within a short span of time the Intendants could exert great pressure on the local bodies of governance and gradually the Intendants proved themselves to be expert investigators and the king looked into all the matters that the Intendants brought into his notice as an authoritative judge. All these factors prompted Furet (1981) to describe Louis XIV as “the classic symbol of the triumph of the monarchy in France” under whose reign “the intendant, as the representative of the bureaux of Versailles and wielder of the Sovereign’s delegated authority, stamped out the traditional powers of municipalities and great families in the provinces” and the nobility was either “confined to military activities, or enlisted in the administration of the State” (Furet 1981, 108). Thus, it can be concluded that almost all the measures and policies adopted by Louis XIV towards the domestication of the nobility were sufficient enough to seize the traditional authority of the seigneurs and the local communities and to exert ‘absolute’ monarchy over them. Louis XIV not only aimed at domesticating the nobility; on the other hand he made sure that he received utmost popular support and that even the common men get a touch of his heroic stature. He always wanted to be flattered, appreciated and venerated as a great heroic legendary figure even among the common folk. Thus, another tactic employed by Louis XIV was to place his enormous and gigantic statues and paintings in public places. Mirzoeff (1995), in this respect observes that there were no less than statues and paintings made of Louis XIV by the end of his long reign in 1715 and the author purports that “for the general population, who had no access to the king’s cabinet of paintings, the campaign in stone was the most visible manifestation of the absolute monarch” (Mirzoeff 1995, 64). An interesting factor to be noted is that most of these statues and paintings were placed in those towns which had displayed signs of political unrest or independence, and these statues and paintings of Louis XIV served as a remainder of a remainder of royal authority and majesty for those nobility who had the least plan to question his supremacy. Due to the king’s habit of placing statues and carving his gigantic figure on stones, King Louis XIV is very often described as the Sun King. The term rightly suits Louis as he himself fostered the myth of himself as the Sun King, and claimed that he was the sole source of light for all of his people. Besides, many of these statues and paintings of the King were inaugurated with wide level publicity which included grand celebrations, speeches, parades, fireworks and music. The administrative reforms undertaken by Louis XIV also deserve attention. He made revolutionary changes in the French government by reducing in size the number of senior ministers in the inner council and those chosen included his loyal subjects who were efficient and able. Most of the greatness attributed to Louis XVI today would not have been completed unless he received the able assistance from ministers such as Jean-Baptiste Colbert and the marquis de Louvois, even though the latter was responsible for certain unwanted wars that Louis engaged in. Similarly, Louis XIV kept to himself the right to approve every financial decision of the central government. Similarly, the employment of provincial Intendants brought about better efficiency in the fiscal system of taxation and borrowing. Louis XIV undertook all possible measures to keep control over everything in the nation. For this he disbanded the General assembly, a legislative branch of the French army, and he wanted to have supreme control over the French army as he considered it as an essential prerequisite to prevent any sort of further civil wars from the nobility. He even tried to dictated terms on the religious beliefs of the French people and advocated Catholicism in the nation; he even tried to convert the Protestants Huguenots to Catholicism by military force. It was Louis XIV who introduced the system of graduated poll tax upon all French subjects and a tax of one-tenth of personal income regardless of status which culminated in bringing about radical changes in the social basis of the country. The development of army and navy of France was another landmark achieved by Louis XIV and as a true monarch Louis always tried to get single-minded vain glory for all the successes he made at the battlefield. One of the noteworthy contributions that Louis made to French history was in the realm of military power. France reached the zenith of its military glory during Louis XIV’s reign; the army comprised of 400,000 professionally trained soldiers. The War of Devolution in 1667 which ended with the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle on 2 May 1668 offered him part of the Spanish Netherlands; the Dutch war that ended with the signing of the Treaties of Nijmegen added Lorraine, the provinces of Franche-Comté and Artois in addition to parts of Flanders and Hainau to the territory of France; and even in the War of Spanish Succession which was fought under the grand alliance of a number of nations, Louis’ military power was unshaken. To conclude, all these administrative reforms saw the growth of a supreme absolute monarch who dominated almost all areas of royal administration and this image of an unchallenged supreme king had been instrumental in the domestication of the nobility too. Conclusions A probe through history convinces one that not many great rulers have been successful in breaking away traditional aristocratic power like Louis XIV. Smith makes it clear when he states that only far sighted leaders such as Louis XIV, Russia’s Peter the Great, and the Hohenzollerns in Prussia “succeeded in part by subduing the traditional nobility, limiting its claim to the hereditary privilege and authority, forcing all aristocrats to serve the interests of the monarchy, and making merit a new determinant of social status” (Smith 180). One can clearly watch the traces towards the formation of a modern state in Louis XIV’s administrative reforms. His reign in France, which lasted for more than a half century is the longest for any European rulers and, no doubt, France had never seen such stable governance earlier. The move from aristocracy to monarchy, a move from decentralized governance into absolutism is seen during Louis XIV’s reign. Louis’ rule in France saw its territories broadened, Catholicism widespread, the bureaucracy and administration of France greatly improved, and its military and economic power strengthened. However, the condition of the peasantry remained the same or rather worse and history shows that Louis XIV’s rule and his absolutism had far reaching results for the nation that culminated in the French revolution of 1798. On the other hand, the radical reforms made by Louis XIV have become legendary part of history and the way he domesticated the nobility and exercised his absolute monarchy is nothing short of greatness. References Campbell, Peter Robert. 1996. Power and politics in Old Regime France, 1720-1745. Illustrated Edition: Routledge. Carroll, Stuart. 2006. Blood and violence in early modern France. Illustrated Edition: Oxford University Press. Chaussinand-Nogaret, Guy. 1985. The French nobility in the eighteenth century: from feudalism to enlightenment. Illustrated Edition: Cambridge University Press. Evans, C.T. Louis XIV and the Versailles palace. http://staff.gps.edu/mines/louis_xiv_and_the_versailles_pal.htm (accessed March 20, 2010). Furet, François. 1981. Interpreting the French Revolution. Reprint Edition: Cambridge University Press. Halsall, Paul. 1997. Saint-Simon, Duc de. Modern History Sourcebook: Duc de Saint-Simon: The Court of Louis XIV. From The Memoirs of the Duke de Saint-Simon, ed. F. Arkwright (New York Brentanos, n.d.), Vol. V, pp. 254, 259-63, 271-274, 276-278. http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/17stsimon.html (accessed March 20, 2010). Kettering, Sharon. 1986. Patrons, brokers, and clients in seventeenth-century France. Illustrated Edition: Oxford University Press US. Louis XIV and Domestic Policy. 2010. History Learning Site: France in the Seventeenth Century. http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/louis_xiv_and_domestic_policy.htm (accessed March 20, 2010). Mirzoeff, Nicholas. 1995. Bodyscape: art, modernity and the ideal figure Visual cultures Gender, Racism, Ethnicity. Illustrated Edition: Routledge. Nolan, Cathal J. 2008. Wars of the age of Louis XIV, 1650-1715: an encyclopedia of global warfare and civilization. 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