Neither phase of the Fronde posed the grievous threat to the very basis of the state that had existed in the previous century. Mazarin was the chief object of enmity, and that fact itself helps to explain the less serious nature of the threat. What was at issue was not the king’s authority per se but the manner in which it had been exercised since Richelieu’s time.
After the Fronde, Mazarin continued to play a key role in government as chief adviser to the young king, whose respect and affection he had long possessed. His career ended on a high note with a successful conclusion of the war with Spain negotiated by the Peace of the Pyrenees (1659). According to its terms, France gained Roussillon and Cerdagne in the south and Artois and a number of border towns in the north; and the Rhine became France’s frontier in the east. By the treaty, too, Louis XIV was betrothed to the infanta Marie-Thérèse, the elder daughter of Philip IV of Spain. It was by any reckoning a triumphant peace, though it sowed the seeds of future European conflict over the issue of the Spanish succession. When Mazarin died in 1661, Louis was confident enough to take up the reins of government without recourse to another first minister. The age of Louis XIV
Throughout his long reign Louis XIV (1643–1715) never lost the hold over his people he had assumed at the beginning. He worked hard to project his authority in the splendid setting of Versailles and to depict it in his arrogant motto “Nec pluribus impar” (“None his equal”) and in his sun emblem. He buttressed his authority with the divine-right doctrines elaborated by Bishop Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet and proclaimed it across Europe by force of arms. Yet he made surprisingly few institutional or administrative changes in the structure of government. Like Richelieu, Louis used the system that he had inherited and adapted it to suit his own personality and outlook. This practice may be seen first in his attitude to the machinery of central government.
Louis XIV, detail of a portrait by Hyacinthe Rigaud, 1701; in the Louvre, Paris.Giraudon/Art Resource, New York
The development of central government
Louis’s inner council was based on the model of the royal council in Richelieu’s days, a High Council (Conseil d’en Haut) consisting of only three or four members and excluding the king’s own relatives. Members of this council were known as ministers, but they held no formal right to the title and ceased to be a minister if the king chose not to summon them. The first of these great men were Michel Le Tellier, Hugues de Lionne, and Nicolas Fouquet; but the last was disgraced within a year, and by 1665 his place had been taken by Mazarin’s former secretary, Jean-Baptiste Colbert. These three men dominated the government in the early years of Louis’s personal reign, but always, as with Richelieu and Louis XIII, under the watchful and jealous eye of the king. Le Tellier had been secretary of state for military affairs under Mazarin’s regime, and his greatest contribution under Louis was to reorganize the army along lines that were hardly changed until after 1789. He created a royal army that wore the king’s uniform; it was commanded by his officers and was ultimately responsible to the sovereign. It was a standing army of hitherto undreamed-of size, reaching 400,000 men in times of war and requiring close regulation in matters of discipline, training, recruitment, supply, and overall organization. The success of Le Tellier and of his son Louvois, who succeeded him, goes far to explain the dominance of French arms in Europe during Louis’s reign.
Lionne, the expert in foreign affairs, had been the chief French negotiator at the Peace of the Pyrenees. His effective influence on Louis is difficult to gauge; he certainly was not the sole source of advice in foreign affairs. Lionne remains a more elusive personality than his colleagues, though there can be no doubt of his importance. It should be remembered that all important matters of state were reviewed at the High Council; and the king’s ministers were expected to give advice and opinions on all that was discussed, not simply on matters in the area of their particular expertise.
Colbert, however, remains the best-known of these intimate counselors. Of the 17 ministers summoned by Louis XIV to the High Council during his reign, 5 were members of the Colbert family. In 1664, Colbert was appointed superintendent of the king’s buildings; in 1665, controller general of finances; in 1669, secretary of state for the navy. His capacity for work and his grasp of detail were remarkable; but he was not an original, much less a revolutionary, thinker. His chief contribution to the king’s finances, like Sully’s, was to make the machinery more efficient, not to substitute any new mechanisms. Colbert’s first achievement was to present the king with a monthly statement of the financial situation, though his annual estimates for the following year never persuaded Louis of the need for economies if his mind was set in other directions. Yet, within 10 years of taking office, Colbert, mainly by tightening up on the tax-collecting administration and by rationalizing the gathering of indirect taxes, did succeed in producing a surplus. He turned a large part of central and northern France into a free-trade area and gave the responsibility for collecting all indirect taxes there to a new syndicate of tax farmers called the Farmers-General. Under Colbert, the total sum levied from indirect taxation rose from 36 million livres to 62 million.
In his industrial policy Colbert believed that France needed to produce for itself those manufactured goods that it was importing. To achieve this mercantilist goal, derived from, among other sources, the ideas of Richelieu, Colbert was willing to invoke a variety of improvisations: direct subsidies, exemptions from the taille, monopoly grants, and controls exercised through town guilds. Skilled foreign workmen were persuaded to settle in France and to pass on their skills to native artisans; protective tariffs were imposed. The famous tapestry works of the Gobelin family was made a state enterprise, and France became largely self-sufficient in the production of woolen cloth. Colbert also had some success in other industries, such as sugar refining, plate-glass making, and the production of silk, naval stores, and armaments. The overall results of his hard work, however, were disappointing. French economic growth lagged behind that of England and the Netherlands, where governments permitted greater entrepreneurial initiative.
Much more successful were Colbert’s efforts at fostering the growth of the navy. He reorganized the recruitment system on a rotating basis, whereby seamen served in the royal navy for six months every three years. He refurbished the hospitals in each of the major ports; rebuilt the arsenals at Toulon and Rochefort; and increased the size of the navy from about 25 ships in 1661 to 144 in 1677. He also established schools of marine engineering, hydrography, and cartography. His interest in reestablishing French sea power was, in part, to challenge the commercial supremacy of the Dutch. He encouraged the building of the French mercantile marine and established a number of overseas trading companies, in particular the East India and Levant companies, neither of which had much success. He also attempted to protect French colonial interests in the West Indies and Canada. The Code Noir of 1685, imposed after Colbert’s death, legalized slavery in the French colonies, even though it was banned in France itself.