Wielomski: Is Louis XIV liable for the revolution?

Alexis de Tocqueville's thesis is well known that the progressive centralization of the French monarchy, the apogee of which was the regulation of Louis XIV, has undermined the conventional social hierarchy and the liquidation of all local bodies. The French were converted into a tomized and unfree mass managed from Paris. All it had to do was take over Paris and... the revolution happened. This was not the first thesis in France, as specified a future was foretold by the liberal-aristocratic critics of King-Sun politics specified as Montescius, Saint-Simon or Fenelon – inactive at the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries.

What always amazed me as a investigator of French conservatism was the amazing deficiency of writings defending monarchy and Catholicism at the time of Enlightenment and at the beginning of the revolution. Only in 1796, the seventh year of the revolt, the first serious writings against it were published by Joseph de Maistre and Louis de Bonald. In my fresh investigation into the political thought of the Louis XIV era, I yet found the answer to this question.

Louis XIV's Admirators delight in describing culture in the age of his reign, calling it "the large Stulet" (fr. Grand Siècle). They compose about excellent taste, architecture, buildings and palaces, the growth of poetry, literature, comedy, ballet, opera, music, philosophy, the French Academy, etc. The list of large people is exchanged with feathers, letters of philosophers, writers, poets and playwrights: Blaise Pascal, Pierre Yurieu, Pierre Bayle, Nicolas Malebranche, François Fénelon, Pierre Corneille, Jean Racine, Molière, François de La Rochefoucauld, Jean de La Fontaine, Mme de Lafayette, Nicolas Boileau, etc. Interestingly, among all these names of large creators there is not 1 who writes about politics and supports Louis XIV. Either they did not compose about politics at all, or they were opposed to the king and the absolute monarchy: average and expressed in a more or little veiled manner (Pascal, Saint-Simon and Fénelon) or openly, erstwhile it comes to Huguenots who after 1685 were forced to live on emigration (Jurieu, Bayle).

Why this intellectual asceticism in which French politics lived? The political censorship created by Richelieu looked at political reflection and the publication of treaties devoted to it. The authorities do not want the subjects to take care of, interest in, and discuss politics, even if they would conclude that they have the best strategy in the world. The people are to be politically drowsy and passive to be freely administered. Thus, there are no legal trials on the explanation of absolutism, describing God’s authority and unlimited in any way. Culture is to show the greatness of the king and his state. Louis XIV so throws money to architects, painters, literates, poets, playwrights, historians, but not political thinkers. These measures are to add to the king, as was then said, a reputation. On the 1 hand, it is to be fascinated by its greatness, wealth and power, and on the another hand, it is to be feared abroad. The depolitization of an individual-led nation requires that the people have no interest in politics and have read nothing about it.

Researchers agree that Louis XIV did not feel at all the request for an intellectual and public justification of his existence, the built absolutistic state strategy and the conduct of specified a alternatively than another interior and abroad policy. He pursued his goals due to the fact that he could do so, feeling outside the public's judgment. Not only do I personally agree with this view, but I am inclined to radicalize it: Louis XIV knew well that he had accumulated power far beyond the conventional unwritten constitution. Therefore, without being able to justify a fresh way of ruling, crossing the conventional strategy model, the ruler ignored the request for intellectual conceptualization of the fresh political system, as no 1 could put it before any human tribunal, and even dared to criticize it publicly.

We are so sad to conclude that from the point of view of political doctrine France Louis XIV was an intellectual desert. Sovereign imposed intellectual asceticism on the subjects, trying to redirect their interest towards politically neutral and non-threatening areas specified as art, architecture, literature and poetry, where he was the most crucial patron to form the taste of the public. Neither the subjects nor the public in another countries have received any conceptualization of doctrine, any justification for the fresh model of the constitutional absolute monarchy. For the full answer to why France was expected to look as the ruler made it, the old Monarchian saying "Because I like it so much" (fr. Car tel est notre plaisir).

For Louis XIV, the publication of any book required authoritative approval, which was given reluctantly by political writings, so the King’s supporters did not print anything. Paradoxically, during this highly long individual reign (1661-1715) only 2 crucial proroyal treaties were created in France. The first were the political diaries of the king himself from the 1960s, containing extended political reflections, as well as the work of Bishop Jacques Bossuet PoliticsThe Bible. However, the king abandoned the writing of diaries and they had already appeared posthumously, and Bossuet's work appeared in 1709 erstwhile its author was already dead. Although he was a close associate of the king, the court showed no interest in his treaty and had to spend it, at his expense, the secretary of the deceased bishop.

Since the book of Proroy was not allowed to be printed in France since 1661, how is it amazing that in the 18th century there is an intellectual opposition, printing books illegally? Yes, Louis XIV, with his tyranny, taught monarchs to compose and print books, paving the way for revolution.

Adam Wielomski