Search Results

This chapter begins by examining the recent origin of French musical genre, being ironically the creation of an Italian, Jean-Baptiste Lully né Giovanni Battista Lull. The genre did not die with the oild king, on the contrary it was to have a very long life, living on into the 19th century in the form of grand opera. Next, this chapter discusses three events that stood out for their symbolic importance. It then explains that Fleury’s move against the Jansenists highs and lows provoked a vigorous counter-offensive from the Parlements. Subsequently, it discusses that the Parlements paraded themselves as the defenders of the constitution of the nation — acting with the king but, if necessary, against the king. Lastly, it evaluates the lives of Louis XV, Louis XVI, and Marie Antoinette, and the fall of the absolute monarchy.

The absolute monarchy was a personal monarchy and during the reign of Louis XIV, the king established a tradition that the king should act as his ‘own first minister’, coordinating the work of his ministerial servants. In the course of the eighteenth century that tradition was undermined by a series of social, administrative, and cultural changes to such an extent that by the 1780s ministers were increasingly behaving as independent political figures, courting public opinion and claiming to act in the name of public welfare or even the nation. By examining these changes, this chapter argues that the political culture of the absolute monarchy was in constant transition and that the failure of Louis XVI, in particular, to manage its effects was one of the principal causes of his loss of authority in the period preceding the Revolution of 1789.

The decline of France as a European power is an established eighteenth-century development and one that was laid at the Bourbon monarchy's door by its critics during the ancien régime. Within a worldview shaped by the aristocratic honour code, Louis XV and Louis XVI were seen as having dishonoured themselves and the country they ruled, by their political failures and especially the Austrian alliance concluded in 1756. These arguments were then adopted in the early stages of the French Revolution. Restoring that same honour, now increasingly attached to the nation and not the Bourbon dynasty, was a central objective of the members of both the National and Legislative Assemblies, and was integral to the Brissotin campaign for war against Austria, declared in spring 1792. This chapter reinforces the importance of continuities in political culture after 1789 and demonstrates the ways in which foreign policy was more central to the early Revolution than sometimes appreciated, contributing to the ‘nationalisation of honour’ (Hampson), as the nation and not the monarchy, became its focus.

When during the French Revolution the deputies of the National Assembly pondered the reasons for France's decades-long decline as a world power, many attributed it to the Franco-Austrian alliance of 1756, which had allegedly produced the humiliating outcome of the Seven Years' War. This chapter demonstrates how, why, and with what political effects the alliance was represented by its critics from its inception as the work of a powerful pro-Austrian ministerial lobby willing to sacrifice the interests of the nation to those of the dynasty and the Habsburgs. Reinforcing this view was the repeated appointment of incompetent military commanders loyal to the lobby supporting the alliance. At a time of rising national consciousness, the tale of infidelity, defeat, and impotence told by the alliance's many critics helped convince the general public that France was in desperate need of a new, nationally centred foreign policy as part of its general regeneration.

The reign of Louis XV was marked by ministerial instability, but also the consolidation of a model of ministerial disgrace that had first taken shape under Louis XIV. This chapter examines the continuities between the two reigns as well as the reasons behind that instability and argues that despite the rapid turnover in ministers the state machine had a certain permanence which meant that disgrace was not enough on its own to destabilize government. It also examines the changes in ministerial recruitment and the decline of the system of survivance that had underpinned the great ministerial dynasties of the reign of Louis XIV.

The court of Louis XV has been depicted as if it was a dusty museum, re-enacting the rituals and ceremonies of the Sun King, but without any vitality as cultural pre-eminence passed to Paris. Using the perspective of disgrace, this chapter takes a fresh look at the court in the eighteenth century, and argues that Louis XV showed dexterity in managing his court using intermediaries and access to his person in intimate settings such as his famous supper parties. Versailles was not immune to change, and in the course of the king’s reign the court experienced a form of ‘politicization’ resulting from changing patterns of ministerial recruitment and the influence of the political crises in the parlements. The infamous Revolution of 1771 demonstrates how Louis XV used his power to divide the opposition to his policies and to uphold his position as the head of the House of Bourbon.

The power to disgrace was not limited to individuals and it formed an essential part of the king’s strategy for managing the great corporations of the realm. The episcopate, cities, and provincial estates were all examples of institutions or corps that felt the effects of royal displeasure, but nothing better illustrated the phenomenon than the treatment of the parlements. This chapter explains the structure of judicial politics under the Bourbon monarchy, and looks at the many ways in which the king could use imprisonment, the internal exile or transfers of individuals or groups of magistrates from one city to another, disciplinary edicts, and many other often subtle techniques to impose his authority. It also considers the limitations of disgrace, how it could sometimes rebound to the disadvantage of the crown and the obstacles to the settlement of political crises resulting from the act of disgrace.

This chapter explores how France, in acting against the Jesuits, displays the feature of Archetto-centered plotting and planning that was present in diverse degrees in all the suppressing states. The contrast that first leaps to view is that while everywhere else it was the Catholic kings and their ministers who led the offensive against the Jesuits, in France that offensive came from “below” by parlements that took advantage of the monarchy's fiscal distress to impose a suppression of the Society on a reluctant Louis XV. That structural difference accounts in turn for the long-drawn-out and highly contingent and eventful character of the suppression in France as opposed to the “terrible swift sword” of the expulsions elsewhere.

In recent years, historians have become increasingly drawn to consider what were once thought of as national problems in a global context. This chapter is inspired by that approach and seeks to analyse the interaction between the crisis in mainland France and that being experienced by the French colonies in India. The crisis in India directly affected French imperial and commercial aspirations: the circumstances on the subcontinent show how the relationship between the crises around the world overlapped and affected each other, and not necessarily in a single direction emanating from Europe. India was one of the absolute monarchy's greatest lost opportunities for the triumphant assertion of imperial power and for the economic and fiscal rewards which empire and trade might have brought.

This chapter outlines the various interpretations of legitimate violence in the French Atlantic world and describes the stakes that induced European and indigenous men to conduct campaigns or undertake violent actions in the years between 1748 and 1756. It also provides an overview of the different goals and concerns that military elites in France drew from their prior war experience, thereby providing insight into how multiple noble, martial masculinities could coexist in the French Atlantic empire so long as they did not come into direct contact. The year 1748 brought about different results for martial elites in both France and New France. Louis XV’s peace in Europe returned French military nobles to a world of anxiety over their future position, status, and opportunity. New France, on the other hand, experienced no peace at all, making a sixteen-year war in North America, not a seven-year war. Conflict among Native nations, British colonies, and the French regime in Canada carried on after the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle went into effect and flowed seamlessly into the “new war” in 1756. Onontio, the indigenous name for both the governors of New France and the king of France, remained at war, continuing a pattern of borderlands conflict more than a half century old.

According to the Divine Right theory of kingship, monarchs drew their legitimacy and characteristics from God. They therefore shared in God’s rightful power to terrify. Supporters of absolutism accordingly lauded their rulers for striking terror in their common enemies and frequently called them “the terror” of their enemies, or of their neighbors, or of the whole world. This was a particularly effective way of likening the monarch to the divine source of monarchical power, and it served as a kind of shorthand for praising the ruler’s military might, decisiveness, courage, and effectiveness. It could also apply to commanders, military forces (armies and navies), and social classes, who were also acclaimed for instilling terror in, or for being the terror of, their enemies. Finally, insofar as sovereignty came to be seen as an attribute of nations rather than princes, those nations too could be the terror of enemy nations. In this way they also acquired the charisma previously reserved for monarchs.

This chapter details a confluence of events in 1757 that radically changed the composition of the royal council and the direction of the war in Europe and North America. These include the foiled assassination of Louis XV; the disgrace of Marc Pierre de Voyer de Paulmy, Comte d’Argenson which undermined the war effort; and the fall of naval minister Jean-Baptiste de Machault d’Arnouville, which thrust the ministry into a period of constant upheaval. Dismissals and tension at court added to the Crown’s military misfortunes in Europe. Frederick II and a small Prussian army inflicted a humiliating defeat on the French at Rossbach (in Saxony) in November 1757, which placed France on the defensive and fueled public and court concerns about war strategy, alliances, and finance. In response to these upheavals, the king’s ministers constantly referred to honor and zeal and sought positive examples of war to prove to the more pragmatically minded public that attention to the king’s honor motivated the success of French arms. The French court made sure to monitor the international press for news in order to place any French success, wherever it occurred, in the service of propaganda.

This chapter examines the tripartite nature of the settlement pattern that emerged at St. Louis during the 1760s: it consisted of a nuclear village, plowlands for sowing grain, and commons for pasturing livestock, gathering firewood, and shooting rabbits and squirrels. It begins with a description of the physical configuration of early St. Louis and goes on to discuss Indians' claims to the land on which St. Louis was built. It then traces the history of town planning at early St. Louis before turning to Louis St. Ange de Bellerive's conveyance of land grants in early St. Louis containing an explicit homesteading provision. It concludes with an account of French monarch Louis XV's promulgatation of a land ordinance for Louisiana.

The tenuous nature of the French claim on Louisiana during the reign of Louis XV is the focus of Alexandre Dubé’s essay. In the early eighteenth century, French ambition for its American empire was evident through the wide array of goods—not just food, but manufactured consumer goods such as blankets and paper—that the royal government undertook to supply to colonists. During the second quarter of the eighteenth century, the French King was the greatest single source of imported goods in the Mississippi Valley. These goods became an essential element in the trade between colonists and native peoples, a trade that, it was hoped, would cement ties between the two groups. In this way, the king-as-merchant was a central actor in an elaborate effort to integrate Indian societies into the French mercantilist system.

In 1754, George II was already old by the standard of contemporary European monarchs, particularly Louis XV of France. Yet he continued to play an active role in ceremonial and social events and terms. In the meantime, the political situation in Britain seemed to be stable under the Pelhams. Moreover, when Henry Pelham, the First Lord of the Treasury, died, George's views on ministerial choice prevailed. William Pitt, whom George did not want, failed to win the Secretaryship of State vacated by Newcastle's replacement of Pelham at the Treasury. Instead, the decision for the successive promotions of Robert Holdernesse in 1751 and Sir Thomas Robinson in 1754 to Secretaryships was a reflection of the king's preference for ministers with whom he could deal easily, and for courtiers and men with diplomatic experience, over managers of the Commons. The relationship between domestic politics and foreign policy would prove to be a key issue throughout George's reign as king of Britain. George II died on October 25, 1760 at Kensington Palace.

The epilogue sketches out the consequences of the institutional and ideological transformations regarding the royal conscience. It argues that the ‘privatization’ of royal conscience operated in two directions. The royal conscience lost its double dimension of the public and private persona, giving way to a humanization of the monarch but also turning attention to his private sins. This largely contributed to a scandalization of the monarch, which, as the case of Louis XV demonstrates, had fatal effects on his capacity to exercise the royal touch, undermining monarchical sacrality. On the other hand the privatization of royal conscience also contributed to eliminating the political sins and the moral dimensions of politics from the discussion in councils. The absolute royal conscience was no longer meant to submit to the exterior authority of theologians following a probable opinion; like the conscience of his subjects, the monarch’s conscience was now fully individualized and privatized.