The Crisis of absolutism Was related to the external conflicts between the different powers and the wars of succession.
Absolutist states developed in Europe as feudalism declined.
The absolute monarchs believed that they governed by divine right, an idea established by the bishop Jacques Bénigne Bossuet (1.627-1.704).
These kings centralized their power, with the help of brilliant advisers, seeking to increase the revenues of the State and assuming greater control of the Church.
The absolute monarchs had the capacity to make laws, tax taxes, administer justice, control state officials and determine foreign policy.
Absolutism developed more ferociously in France. The French people demanded a strong leader after years of religious conflict and devastating famine.
Henry IV was the first Bourbon king of France, who tried to alleviate the religious tensions with the Edict of Nantes (1598), which granted French Protestants a certain freedom for religious worship in the fortified cities.
Enrique balanced the French budget in only 12 years and paid the real debt. His assassination in 1610 left France in more than a decade of political turmoil.
The heir to the throne Louis XIII And his adviser Cardinal Richelieu led France to the Thirty Years' War in an attempt to increase French power and prestige.
The plan worked, making France the most powerful nation in Europe. When Richelieu died, Cardinal Mazarin assumed the position of principal counselor to Louis XIII, but quickly took the lead role of the nation when Louis XIII died in 1643, leaving his five-year-old son Louis XIV on the throne.
The young Louis XIV learned a valuable lesson about the conduct of the French nobility during the Fronde (1648-1.653), an uprising that taught him that the aristocracy was not trustworthy, a lesson he never forgot.
When he was 23, Louis XIV took control of France and began his personal government. He sold titles of nobility to many upper-middle-class Frenchmen and then gave them jobs in government.
These new nobles were blindly loyal to their king. Always suspicious of the high nobility, Louis built the palace at Versailles and made sure that the aristocrats were too busy and distracted to cause trouble. Luis also revoked the Edict of Nantes and allowed the open persecution of French dissent.
Causes of the crisis of absolutism
Due to the immense thirst for power of Louis XIV, a series of wars that marked the crisis of absolutism were unleashed, and among the most outstanding are the following:
The war of return (1,667-1,668)
After the death of Philip IV (1,665). Louis XIV claimed that the Spanish possessions in the Netherlands had been transferred to him through his wife, Maria Theresa of Austria - daughter of Philip IV.
The new King Charles II, rejected this imposition, reason why the French invaded in 1,667 the Spanish Netherlands.
In response, the Dutch, the English and the Swedes formed an alliance to protect the balance of power in the area and finally induced Louis XIV to accept the Treaty of Aachen .
By which France retained some fortified cities in the Spanish Netherlands, but agreed to renounce to claim the Spanish Netherlands as a whole.
The Dutch War (1967-67)
The Dutch represented a barrier to French expansion and were an important trading rival, making them a strategic objective.
Louis XIV set out to isolate the Dutch from England and Sweden. He signed treaties with the English and the Swedes, and invaded the Netherlands.
The armies of Spain, Austria and Brandenburg moved against Louis XIV. After years of struggle, Louis XIV conquered the following territories: the Franche-Comté of Spain, the Imperial Territory Alsace-Lorraine and Luxembourg.
The nine-year war or the Augsburg League War (1,688-1,697)
After the Dutch war, other European nations increasingly opposed Louis XIV's appetite for power.
In 1668, Bavaria, the Holy Roman Empire, the Palatinate, Saxony, Spain and Sweden formed the League of Augsburg to oppose the expansionist policies of Louis XIV.
The war began in 1688 when Louis XIV again forced the expansion to the northeast. France dominated most of the land battles, while the Augsburg League was victorious at sea.
Battles were extended to the Spanish, English and French colonial possessions in the new world. As both sides ran out of money to wage the war, they negotiated the Treaty of Ryswick In 1697.
Louis XIV had to give up much of the conquered territory and France won very shortly after nine years of conflict.
The War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1713)
It was the last and most dismal war in which Louis XIV was involved. When the Spanish king Carlos II died in 1700 and in the absence of an obvious successor, Europe was left in the hope of knowing who would inherit the Spanish throne.
Louis XIV had claimed the right of his son Louis of France (1661-1711) to be the legitimate heir since his mother Maria Theresa of Austria, was the sister of King Charles II.
Nevertheless, the Roman emperor Leopoldo II, also had married with one of the sisters of Carlos II and affirmed that the throne had to belong to its dynasty. Before the death of Charles II, the two factions in dispute agreed on partitions that would divide the Spanish lands.
Just before he died, Charles II had a last will not to divide the Spanish territory, reason for which he designated as heir of all the Spanish possessions to Felipe de Anjou, the grandson of Luis XIV, who became Felipe V, which gave To an already powerful France with an enormous amount of lands and resources in Europe and the New World.
No European nation wanted the French to inherit the Spanish throne, so opponents of the French reign instigated a war to try to restore the balance of power on the continent and stop the commercial interests of Louis XIV abroad.
Guided by the British William III, the European nations formed the Great Alliance of 1,701, made up of England, Holland and the Holy Roman Empire. Spain allied with the French to honor the will of Charles II and prevent the division of Spanish territory.
The fighting began in 1702, with a slow and strategic war. The Great Alliance managed to reap many key victories thanks to the capabilities of its qualified military leaders.
General John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough (1650-1722), led the British troops and collaborated with the leader of the Habsburgs, Prince Eugene of Savoy (1663-1736) to defeat the French at Blenheim in 1704 with an attack surprise. The English also acquired the important Mediterranean port city of Gibraltar in 1704.
After other Allied victories, Louis XIV began negotiations for a peace agreement in 1778. However, the demands of his enemies were too hard and Louis XIV did not accept them. The various states at war continued to fight for their own reasons, as the war swept through most of Europe.
He granted the throne of Spain to the grandson of Louis XIV, Philip V, but with the understanding that French and Spanish thrones would never be inherited by the same person. The treaty also distributed other Spanish holdings.
The Austrians acquired most of the conquered Mediterranean territories: Naples, Sardinia, Milan and the Spanish Netherlands.
The Duke of Savoy won Sicily and the Duke of Brandenburg became King of Prussia. France was forced to abandon many of its North American territories and set aside its ambitions to expand to the Netherlands.
The British acquired Gibraltar, the island of Menorca in the Mediterranean, and many of the territories lost by France in North America, all of which increased the power of Britain.
The British also acquired from Spain the rights to supply Spanish America with African slaves and the treaties reestablished the policy of balance of power in Europe.
The frequent wars of Louis XIV, along with his disorderly expenses, had brought France to the brink of bankruptcy. All these events unleashed the decline of absolute monarchy, giving way to new theories of government based on the sovereignty of the people, Constitutional monarchies Or even in parliamentary republics.
References
- M. (2015). Routledge Revivals: The Age of Absolutism 1660-1815. New York, Routledge.
- Dupuy, E. and Dupuy T. (1993). Harper Encyclopedia of Military History from 3,500 BC to the present. New York, Harper Collins Publishing.
- Hickman, D et al. (2016). The Sung King: Louis XIV, France and Europe, 1,643 -1,715. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
- Treasure, G. (1995). Mazarin: The Crisis of Absolutism in France. New York, Routledge
- Wilson, P. (2000). Absolutism in Central Europe. New York, Routledge.