In the novel The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas, King Louis XIII and Cardinal Richelieu are in authority in France, each struggling to gain absolute power. As a result conflicts emerge that will lead to the progress of France. France was constantly in external conflicts with England and in internal conflicts with the Huguenots that provoked war against the Catholics and even the King, but never against the Cardinal (Dumas, 1). Queen Anne’s romance to the Duke of Buckingham, who at the time was an enemy of France, was not unknown to the Cardinal, like nothing else that escaped him from knowing it. The story’s protagonist, D’Artagnan faces the most dangerous spy of the Cardinal, Lady de Winter. This lady is the one entrusted with the task of assassinating the Duke of Buckingham. This novel is regarded as fictional and the events may not be as accurate as the actual ones.
On the contrary there is much historicity behind it. There really lived a King Louis XIII, a Cardinal Richelieu, an Anne of Austria, and George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham. Most events that occur throughout the story happened in reality. The siege of La Rochelle being the one of the major political and religious conflict in the book was a great event of the reign of Louis XIII. The Cardinal may have had the greatest influence in cause and resolution of this war against the Protestants. The results were in favor of the Cardinal as might have been expected. He is presented as an antagonist to the Queen, mainly in her romantic affair with the Duke of Buckingham. However the result does not turn in the favor of the Cardinal this time, not as it had been expected.
In the absolute monarchy of France two parties ruled the same nation under two men (Dumas, 73). ...
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...ings musketeers by his antagonist throughout the novel, the Cardinal.
Every conflict described here has lead to the progress of one thing, mainly to the advancement of the Cardinals power in France and to the victory of the Catholics in the siege of la Rochelle. This is just a glimpse of how conflicts can lead to historical progress. This novel is also famous for its saying “All for one and one for all” (Dumas, The Three Musketeers). The musketeer’s friendship is part of the reason that progress occurred in the conflicts mention above. It is not just in novels where the conflicts lead to historical advancement, but this was a great source to portray the progress. Throughout history conflicts have been emerged to lead to the progress of one thing and the other that has lost makes its necessary improvements but at the final stage both have reached a necessary object.
The Return of Martin Guerre, written by Natalie Zemon Davis, is the tale of a court case that takes place in sixteenth century France. Martin Guerre is a peasant who deserted his wife and family for many years. While Martin Guerre is gone, a man named Arnaud du Tilh arrives at Martin’s village and claims to be Martin Guerre. Bertrande, who is Guerre’s wife, Guerre’s sisters, and many of the villagers, accepts the imposter. After almost three years of being happily married, Bertrande takes the fraud to court under pressure of Pierre Guerre, her stepfather and Guerre’s brother. Arnaud du Tilh is almost declared innocent, but the real Martin Guerre appears in the courthouse. Throughout this tale, many factors of the peasant life are highlighted. The author gives a very effective and detailed insight to a peasant’s life during the time of Martin Guerre. Davis does a successful job of portraying the peasant lifestyle in sixteenth century France by accentuating the social, cultural, and judicial factors of everyday peasant life.
To summarize the book into a few paragraphs doesn't due it the justice it deserves. The beginning details of the French and Ind...
The Memoires de l’Estat de France quoted in R J Knecht Profiles in Power: Catherine de Medici, Essex, 1998
In the novel, later, Mme. de Clèves asks for further explanation for the love between a woman and the king with “several other lovers” (1039). This passion forms the “political and social effects” (1039) that change the norms in the court. The court mixes this false “event into its own structure, so that the implausible now becomes the norm for the entire court” (1039). This incident drives to the extent of passions, “political ambitions and social events”, that utilize M. de Clève’s passion. Hence, the power of Duchesse de Valentinois doubles “the power of the monarch” (1039).
In Shakespeare’s “The Life of King Henry V,” set in England in the early fifteenth century, with the famous and heroic English King, Henry V, claiming his “rights” to the French throne. This claim caused complications and the declaration of war on both English and French soil. This political war, then turn into a route of complicated negotiations, after King Henry’s terrifying forces had successfully defeated French forces. As the result of the war, a peace treaty was made, and part of that agreement was the marriage between King Henry V and the daughter of the King of France, Katherine of Valois. An analysis of the both King Henry’s and Katherine’s relationship reveals that both had conflicting perspectives of one another, which resulted as a marriage in political unions of two powerful nations rather than a union of two lovers.
The author notes that the King at an early age relied mostly on his mentors for knowledge and advice, notably two of which were councils of elders. The King’s entire life and on matters of decisionmaking was under the influence of these elders and from members of the court. The effects of overreliance on the need to make a decisive decision is witnessed when the moment to plan the escape, the King ponders and waste a lot of time in thinking and going over the idea of evading. The King took much time that Marie and Fersen had already begun planning for the escape long before the king had already given the consent for such an idea. Marie’s plan was underway and was schedule on May but the King’s nature of indecisiveness led to his postponing of the due date. Timothy Tackett notes down that the King does not just postpone the escape once but six times. These acts of postponing the escape finally end as he decides on the twentieth of June as the eloping day. The author yet again argues that if the family had left earlier on agreed dates their chances of a safe gateway would be higher and less risky. The King’s decision on postponing and prolonging the escape paved way for a chance that led to the conspiracy to be
In the Age of Absolutism, both England and France had strong absolute monarchies and leaders. Though Louis XIV, monarch of France, and Charles I, leader of Britain, both served as their country’s king and served in this role in different ways.
At the beginning of the 17th century, France was a place of internal strife and bickering bureaucrats. The king, Louis XIII, had come to the throne in 1610 at the age of nine, leaving the running of the kingdom to his mother, Marie de Medici. One of her court favorites, Armand de Plessis de Richelieu, rose through the ranks, eventually gaining the title of Cardinal and becoming one of Louis’ key advisors and minister. His political manifesto, Political Testament, was a treatise for King Louis XIII that offered him advice mainly concerned with the management and subtle subjugation of the nobles and the behavior of a prince. Beneath all of the obeisant rhetoric, Richelieu was essentially writing a handbook for Louis XIII on how to survive as a king in a political landscape increasingly dominated by the aristocracy. Richelieu’s ideology shows a pragmatic attitude reminiscent of The Prince, a political work by 15th century Florentine politician Niccoló Machiavelli.
The seventeenth century marked the beginning of modernity in social hierarchy. King Charles II had come back from the continent after ten years in exile with a new thought on how to treat women. “These women were intimately connected with the king. They would experience the most immediate and profound effects of the restoration. In order to see these effects, be a major member of the royal court, and gain a higher social standing, women became royal mistresses. The women of Charles’ court had gained celebrity, independent wealth, and influence, and this was unrecognizably modern for this age and time.” Charles had learned about how to have a successful marriage and many relationships with his mistresses from the aristocratic women of France. Women in France were not only playing a prominent role in French court but they were gaining respect for it. French aristocratic women were debating and writing about what they wanted from their relationships. These novels of allegorical love were guidebooks to help men get well on the...
As almost anyone with the slightest knowledge of European history can tell you, the French and the British do not like each other. Some French and British people still hate each other today for issues that occurred 100 of years ago. So on top of the conflict that is already present between France and Great Britain there is a new one in the pursuit of gaining more land and power for one’s cou...
During the 16th and 17th centuries a new type of ruling emerged as a result of unorganized government called royal absolutism. This type of government was seen in many European countries including France and Russia where King Louis XIV and Peter the Great ruled respectively. Both had ways of ruling that were similar to each other and different to each other. Politically, economically and socially both Louis XIV and Peter the Great were similar to and different from how they ruled and what their reign resulted.
Joan lived during a turbulent time in French history. The French and English states had been at war since 1337 over disputed territories in France and who could inherit the French throne. The English claimed that their king could inherit the French throne through shared royal bloodlines and also inherit vast territories in present-day southwestern France. By the time of Joan’s birth, the English had secured almost all of France and were poised to capture the French crown. The French heir to the throne, the Dauphin, was forced into hiding and Paris was under English control. It was under these dire circumstances that Joan emerged.
The French people were quick to blame the government for all the misfortune they possess, yet ignored the potential evil or crisis the social body was heading towards within themselves. Because of the rapid sequence of horrific events in the beginning of the French revolution, it prevented the subversive principles to be spread passes the frontiers of France, and the wars of conquest which succeeded them gave to the public mind a direction little favorable to revolutionary principles (2). French men have disgraced the religion by ‘attacking with a steady and systematic animosity, and all it is there that the weapon of ridicule has been used with the most ease and success (2). Metternich was not in support of the French
... voted into the new republic. “France was a republic, but one now in the hands of an assembly dominated by conservatives, many of whom were monarchists”7.
The story begins with the Marquise de Merteuil corresponding with Vicomte de Valmont regarding a luscious new act of ‘revenge’, as she describes it, against the Comte de Gercourt. The young Cecile de Volanges has just come home from the convent and her marriage to Gercourt has been arranged. However, before he can wed the innocent child, Merteuil proposes Valmont ‘educate’ her, thus spoiling Gercourt’s fancy for untarnished convent girls. Valmont is uninterested in such an easy seduction and is far more aroused by the thought of lulling The Presidente’ de Tourvel, the very epitome of virtue, into submission. And so the tale unfolds.