King Louis XVI was born in the palace of Versailles on August 24, 1754. When he was 16 years old he was arranged to marry Marie Antoinette of the Habsburg empire, her mother was Maria Theresa. The French ruling family and the Habsburg family wanted the couple to get married so the two ruling families would have a stronger relationship. In 1774 his brother passed making him the new king of France. Growing up he did not receive the proper training to rule France making him a weak leader. Also he was not interested in ruling France he wanted to do so much more. He had problems handling state affairs, he was very shy and he had trouble making up his mind. Even with all of these problems he was very interested in governing more effectively than his grandfather. He had inherited a lot of debt and the people hoped that he would help them. The monarchs had trouble raising money from the people because the aristocracy was excused from paying taxes. He tried to make them pay but that meant the nobility would have to pay taxed as well so they tried their best not to get the law passed and t...
He was a man who made French stronger, provided his own legacy and impression that will most
nation. In order to become a true absolute ruler Louis xiv needed to make sure
In 1765, Holy Roman Emperor Francis I, her father, died of a stroke. He left Maria Theresa his position, and gave their eldest son, Emperor Joseph II, the throne. Because of this political, it became a requirement for Marie Antoinette to marry Louis Auguste. Her mother sent her to France and agreed on this marriage. It was hard to adjus...
Politically, Louis was corrupt because of his greed. He fought costly wars--in the high numbers of casualties and monetary encouragement--at the drop of a hat. His country was the most powerful, and was very populous. His armies were large in size at peacetime, and even larger in wartime. Their strength, though, was no match for the failure Louis faced in wars. His wars left France almost bankrupt. He wanted larger borders, went to any extent to get them, but lost all of the three times he tried.
Louis XIV (Figure 1), the absolute monarch of France from 1643 to 1715, was a model of other European monarchs. Louis was born on 5th of September 1638 in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, where located outside of Paris in north central France, and died in 1715 at an age of seventy-seven. After the death of his father Louis XIII in 1963, his mother Anne of Austria and the chief minister Cardinal Jules Mazarin were appointed regent while Louis XIV was young. For the throne, Louis was allowed to attend councils of st...
Marie Antoinette, or officially known as Marie-Antoinette-Josephe-Jeanne d'Autriche-Lorraine, was born in 1755 to the life of luxury as the Princess of Austria. Her family was rather close despite being raised by a series of governesses. She also received the necessary education at that time. At age 14, her mother arranged Marie to be married
Louis' father was Louis XIII and his mother was Anne of Austria. There is some dispute as to who actually fathered Louis XIV because his father was mentally unstable and did not like Anne of Austria. Whatever the reality, Louis was born on September 5, 1638. By all accounts Louis' childhood was not very happy. He was reared primarily by servants. At one point he almost drowned in a pond because no one was watching him.
Louis XIV inherited the throne in 1643 when he was only five (Cairns 103). From the moment he entered power and his reign began he had greedy intentions and enormous ideas of divine rule (Cairns 112). In 1661, Louis chief advisor Cardinal Jules Mazarin died and Louis then decided that he would be the only ruler of France (Spielvagel 1). Louis once expressed, “It is now time that I govern them myself. I request and order you to seal no orders except my command,… I order you not to sign anything, not even a passport… without my command; to render account to me personally each day and to favor no one” (Spielvagel 1). This quote reveals Louis’s desire to have power over everything and control everyone around him. Louis used the sun as his symbol of power. He often quoted, “I am the state” (Cairns 35). Exposed in this quote is Louis mindset that he had all power. Using the sun as his symbol of power enforced his belief that he was the center of all things. Author of “Court Described by Duc De Saint Simon,” Elena Steingrad, stated the following when referring to King Louis’s life, “… he compelled his courtiers to live beyond their income, and gradually reduced then to depend on his bounty for the means of subsistence. This was a plague which became a scourge to the whole country…” (4). The quote shows Louis’ greedy intentions, which eventually led to widespread confusion and an economic drop to the country of France (Steingrad 4). Louis XIV in the beginning of his reign was starting to show signs of his enormous, greedy intentions and his belief in divine rule. It was the start of his reign that France began to slowly crumble.
contributed to the execution of King Louis XVI so that French citizens might find a better existence under honest rule. To keep citizens focused on the revolution, he established a
“Let them eat cake.” A famous response given by Queen Marie Antoinette when she was asked about the grain shortages in her country. But, did she really say this? Many people see Marie Antoinette as a leading cause of the French revolution, with her enormous spending, affairs, disapproval of reform, and influence on her husband, King Louis XVI. But did Marie Antoinette play a decisive role in causing the French Revolution? Or were the peoples judgements the cause of the uprising? This essay will provide both sides of this argument, stating findings and facts about Marie Antoinette’s influence on the people of France, and what feelings she provoked in them with her actions, and if there was any connection between her behavior and beginning of the French Revolution.
For the first portion of his quote, “one king”, Louis consolidated his power in many ways. France, as well as many other countries throughout the middle ages and early renaissance, had their power balanced between the nobles and the dynastic ruling class, where nobles controlled their individual provinces and the king would have to rely on his nobles to spread his royal decrees. This was highly demonstrated throughout the Holy Roman Empire during the 16th and parts of the 17th century, where the polygot of cultures, religions, and languages lead Charles V to have to rely on the nobles, confederacy, and a decentralization of government to rule. Because of these sacrifices, Charles V never really ruled his country, nor did he achieve any of his goals. He died a white haired old man, giving his domains to his son and brother. Louis XIV actually achieved his goal in a very different way, by defeating the power of the noble class, while strenghening the middle class, or the bourgeois. Louis built an internal beauracracy within France, and believed that a countries power came from it’s unification and military prowess. These beliefs were largely based on the early years of his rule. Louis XIV became king when he was only 5 years old, so his mother. Anne of Austria, and Cardinal Mazarin, rumored to be her lover, ruled in his place as a child. Mazarin was the ideological heir to Richelieu, w...
In the seventeenth century there were different types of leaders in Europe. The classic monarchial rule was giving way to absolutist rule. Absolute kings claimed to be ruling directly from God, therefore having divine rule that could not be interfered with. In 1643 Louis XIV began his reign over France as an absolute king.
The way Louis XIV ruled over France was not quite the way his father ruled. Louis XIV was considered to have unruly nobility. Louis XIV was also in the process of reinforcing the traditional Gallicanism, which is a doctrine limiting the authority of the Pope in France. Also, Louis XIV began to diminish the power of the nobility and clergy. He achieved great control over the second estate (nobility) in France by essentially attaching much of the higher nobility to his range at his palace at Versailles, which required them to spend most of the year under his close watch instead of in th...
King Louis XIV's 72 year reign was incredibly influential in shaping French history. King Louis XIV’s childhood was traumatic because of “La Fronde” which was a noble rebellion against the monarchy. This experience taught King Louis XIV to distrust the nobles. It was for this reason that he eventually excluded nobility from the council and surrounded himself with loyal ministers whom he could control. He also separated the aristocracy from the people of France by moving the court to the Palace of Versailles. One of the most notable of King Louis XIV’s decisions was that he refused to appoint another Prime Minister after the death of Prime Minister Mazarin. Every decision, from the declaration of war to the approval of a passport, went through him personally. During his reign as king, France participated in several wars including the War of Devolution, in Anglo-Dutch War, and the War of the Spanish Succession. Another major action he took was the proclamation of the Edict of Fontainebleau, which revoked the Edict of Nantes, imposing religious uniformity through Catholi...