According to that doctrine, the French king possessed the right of temporal and spiritual régale—that is, the right to nominate new bishops and to administer and draw the revenue from bishoprics while they remained vacant. In 1673, despite papal opposition, Louis extended this right to the whole of the French kingdom, which had been enlarged in the recent War of Devolution (1667–68). Eventually, in 1682, the Four Gallican Articles were published as a law of the French state, asserting that the king was in no way subject to the pope in temporal matters and could not be excommunicated and reaffirming the independence of the French church from Rome. The mutual animosity of king and pope ended only in 1693, when Louis agreed to suspend the edict of 1682; but it was a suspension only, not a recantation. The tradition of Gallican independence remained. Absolutism of Louis
Thus, in religious matters (except where Jansenism was concerned), in his dealings with the nobility and the Parlement, in his attitude toward the economy, and in his manner of governing the country, Louis revealed a desire to exercise a paternal control of affairs that might suggest a modern dictator rather than a 17th-century king. Though such a comparison has been made, it is most misleading; neither in theoretical nor in practical terms could Louis XIV be thought of as all-powerful. First of all, the legitimacy of his position under the law—the ancient fundamental law of succession—made him the interpreter of the law and the fount of justice in the state, not a capricious autocrat. Similarly, his kingship bestowed upon him a quasi-spiritual role, symbolized by his consecration with holy oil at his coronation, which obliged him to govern justly in accordance with the laws of God and Christian morality. He was also bound by the need to take counsel; and, though he always made up his own mind, he insisted on receiving advice on all important matters of state, which further restricted any arbitrary instincts. Next, there was the essentially federal nature of the country, with its collection of such peripheral provinces as Brittany, Normandy, and Provence, all retaining their own Estates and customs. Within both these pays d’état and pays d’élection (where the Estates no longer met) there was a variety of groups and corporations, not to mention individuals, with their own legally held rights, privileges, and exemptions, such as the nobility, the clergy, the towns, and the king’s officers. To impose rigid uniformity in such a situation was both impossible and undreamed of by contemporaries. On the contrary, one of the king’s prime obligations was to uphold and respect the myriad different rights to which his subjects laid claim.
Perhaps most of all, the king was limited by financial stringency. Louis could and often did try to persuade the cities and provincial Estates to raise their contributions and the clergy to increase the size of their don gratuit (“free gift”); he also created more offices and annuities. But these were mere palliatives, and the king was forced on two occasions to introduce novel measures: in 1695 he levied a capitation, or head tax, applicable to all French laymen, even to the princes of the blood, and in 1710 a dixième (the tithe, or tenth) that similarly went against the interests of the privileged classes, including the clergy, by requiring one-tenth to be paid to the state from all incomes. Significantly, however, Louis made it perfectly clear on both occasions that he recognized the extraordinary and temporary nature of these impositions, made necessary by the pressures of war. It was impossible to be a despot while financial resources were so precarious, while no nationwide police force existed, and while the state of communications remained so poor. All these factors make it clear that a situation simply did not exist in which totalitarian government, at least by 20th-century standards, could have had any meaning.
The financial difficulties that limited Louis XIV’s ambitions were due in part to the problems plaguing France’s economy. Unfavourable climatic conditions—the so-called Little Ice Age of the 17th century—resulted in frequent crop failures; in 1693–94 and 1709–10, much of the country suffered food shortages that left the population vulnerable to epidemics. The heavy taxes required to pay for the king’s wars were an additional hindrance to economic growth, and frequent warring kept France from gaining a larger share of the lucrative overseas trade that was enriching its rivals, England and the Netherlands.
Finally, Louis XIV remained the prisoner of France’s social structure. It is sometimes alleged that the king ruled through the bourgeoisie, but, while a number of the most distinguished families of the reign were not of ancient nobility, their faithful and effective service to the king was rewarded in an entirely traditional way—by social elevation. Colbert’s father was an unsuccessful merchant; however, all his granddaughters married dukes. In other words, the opportunity to enter the highest ranks of the nobility, which had long been available in France, was simply emphasized by Louis XIV. As the greatest nobleman in France, he had no doubt that he must retain the prestige and privileges of the nobility; but he knew equally well that the nobility should not become a caste closed to ambitious and able men. He thus maintained the tradition of royal patronage, which helped to defuse social conflict. Foreign affairs
From the beginning of his reign, Louis pursued a vigorous foreign policy. Historical opinion has traditionally held that Louis sought to dominate Europe, only to meet his just deserts at the end of his reign. (For the traditional interpretation, see Germany: The age of Louis XIV.) More recently another interpretation has emerged that argues that Louis pursued consistent and for the most part moderate aims and pursued them successfully up to and including the Treaty of Utrecht (1713). The starting point for the more recent interpretation is the ambiguous Peace of Münster (1648), forming part of the great European settlement of Westphalia, the terms of which subsequently became a bone of contention between Bourbon and Habsburg rulers. One of the critical issues of the treaty was the fate of the three bishoprics of Metz, Toul, and Verdun on the northeast frontier of France. These bishoprics, occupied by the French since 1552, were formally acquired in 1648 together with a number of towns in nearby Alsace. One of the main Habsburg aims both in the War of the League of Augsburg (1689–97; also called the War of the Grand Alliance) and in the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–14) was the restoration of the three bishoprics and the province of Franche-Comté, also on the eastern frontier of France, connecting Burgundy with Alsace, which Louis had acquired through the Treaties of Nijmegen (1678–79) that concluded the Dutch War (1672–78). Louis, however, was determined to hold onto the gains in Alsace, however ambiguously acquired; he also hoped to add Lorraine, to the north of Franche-Comté, to consolidate further this least-secure French frontier area.
French expansion, 1600–1766.Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
Louis’s policy in the northeast was constant and understandable. Franche-Comté was one entry into France previously exploited by its enemies that Louis succeeded in closing in 1678. He had already closed another, the port of Dunkirk, by purchasing it from Charles II of England in 1662; a third gateway, from the southern Netherlands, was effectively barred by the military fortifications erected by his great military engineer, Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban, in the 1680s. The capture of Lorraine would have bolted yet one more dangerous entry. Of course, the situation looked quite different from the Habsburg point of view, especially after Louis’s seizure of the key city of Strassburg (French Strasbourg) in 1681, an episode that goes to the heart of the controversial matter of his reunion policy. Following the successful Treaties of Nijmegen, Louis began to employ his own judicial courts to claim sovereignty over all the dependencies of territories that he already possessed in Alsace, Franche-Comté, Metz, Toul, and Verdun. The maneuver enabled him to consolidate his control, especially over Alsace and Franche-Comté, though the legality of the claims to some of the alleged “dependencies” was extremely dubious. There was no legal justification whatever for Louis’s greatest coup in the area—the seizure in September 1681 of the independent city of Strassburg. To Louis this key city, the door through which imperial armies could pass (and three times in the recently concluded war had passed) into Alsace, represented a serious threat, for Strassburg was within easy reach of the Danube valley and Vienna. His fears about French vulnerability in this region may best be illustrated by his offer during the War of the League of Augsburg to waive his claim to the Spanish succession on condition that Nijmegen be respected, that Lorraine be absorbed into France (with proper compensations elsewhere), and that the Spanish and Austrian lands not be united under one ruler. The Holy Roman emperor Leopold I immediately rejected these proposals. When the final climactic conflict of his reign, the War of the Spanish Succession, was proceeding badly, Louis offered to relinquish all the gains he had made from the Spanish inheritance; but he desperately hoped to hold on to Metz, Toul, Verdun, Alsace, and Franche-Comté.