LOUIS AND ABSOLUTISM

Louis XIV and Absolutism



Louis XIV and Absolutism

Introduction

The book, Louis XIV and Absolutism, is written by William Beik. This book has delineated the successes of Louis and the concept of Absolutism as a secondary source. This book represents the life of Louis, who revived French Monarchy. This book has become a personal interest to me because through this book I learnt various new and astonishing things.

King Louis XIV

This book portrays the life of King Louis XIV in a balanced way. King Louis XIV of France was also a significant representative of the tradition. Following the Glorious Revolution in England in 1688 and the French Revolution of 1789, monarchs in those countries were no longer able to base their claims to sovereign power on a divine mandate. In the contemporary world, few if any sovereigns base their legitimacy on a claim of divine right .

In a personal reign of 54 years, Louis XIV was able to bring to France immense prestige in Europe. Despite wars and financial crises, it has always been to protect and enrich his kingdom, economically, geographically and culturally. The "Sun King", a great universal monarchy, is remembered as a brilliant France, as evidenced by the magnificent Palace of Versailles. Louis XIV does not see his reign without conquest. It all starts with the modernization of the French army, under the responsibility of Le Tellier and his son Louvois. The total defense reorganization significantly increases the strength and enthusiasm of the army. With this first company, he obtained a part of Lille and Flanders. The conflict is followed by the war Holland, 1672 that begins and ends in 1678 by the Peace of Nijmegen. The king now holds the Franche-Comté, but has found an enemy in the person of William of Orange.

Divine moral theory emerged out of various ideas that were central to medieval European political thought, notably the claim that God granted power to both secular and religious authorities on Earth, the notion of the Great Chain of Being, and the metaphor of the body politic. The claim that the king was the head of the body politic is powerfully illustrated in the frontispiece of Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan, in which the king's body is literally made up of the bodies of myriad subjects. (It should be noted, however, that Hobbes, although an absolutist, was not a divine right theorist but one of the founders of the social contract tradition.) Given that the human body has but one head and that a two-headed being would be seen as a monster or a foolish being, divine right theorists argued that the king's authority must not be challenged or divided. In their view, multiple sources of authority would inevitably lead to political strife or even to civil war. Any attempt to oppose the king could accordingly be construed as treason. For this reason, King Charles I of England refused at his trial to accept that the British Parliament had any right to hold him accountable for his actions as ...