Louis XIV: An Absolute Monarchy

Moliere was specific in mentioning King Louis’ power over the country to foreshadow his role in Tartuffe. Instead of appealing to the King to save the day in a believable fashion, Moliere creates a comical play to allow the audience to come to the realization themselves. People blindly follow the king, similarly to how Orgon and others blindly follow Tartuffe. King Louis XIV ruled the country for seventy-two years, during which time people grew to trust that he was doing what was best for the country, without ever knowing what he was doing.

The new leader did everything he could to restore France to its former glory. He got rid of any of the fools who opposed him, for he knew they would hold back his great plan of creating a new, better France. ¨Thus, it was Napoleon who shot down the columns of rebels marching against the National Convention (13 Vendémiaire year IV;

King Henry VIII decided to part way from the catholic church when the pope denied his request to divorce his wife, and thus birth The  Church of England.   As the Church of England

France began building toward absolutism when Henry VI created the Edict of Nantes in efforts to reduce the violence in the country and gained many supporters. When Richelieu temporarily took the throne he centralized the government and established the supremacy of the king's law. When Louis XIV finally became king, Franch was already well on its way to an absolute monarchy. He went even further by diminishing the power of the nobility and gave them only ceremonial tasks until they we no longer relevant in the political

King Louis XIV, during his reign, had stated that the monarch should be equal to the task given to him and that any deficiencies in ability would be supplemented by the divinity of the office of King. Unfortunately, King Louis XV was unequal to his task and King Louis XVI, even more so . King Louis XVI, a man who was not quick to emotion, was skilled nonetheless, as a locksmith and loved to eat and to hunt .However, according to John Harman, Louis before 1787 was a clear‐headed, intelligent and politically savvy man. He was able to understand the difficulties and dilemmas of his day to day tenure, but could not deal with them effectively .

However, he also let the power go to his head and became the absolutism ruler that the revolution had fought against. But when comparing his rule to that of the the monarchy and the national assembly, it still stands out as the best of the three for his better

It is a form of government, where one ruler has the absolute power and the people have no saying in political decisions. Furthermore, the leader is said to be chosen by God and he is the only one that can change laws in a country. Louis XIV’s reign of 72 years was luxurious, powerful and the aristocracy enjoyed an extravagant lifestyle. In addition, his life had a strict order and every minute was planned. Choosing the sun as a symbol is a major indication to his highly powerful life as King of France and like the sun was the center of the universe, France was the center of the continent.

At the age of twenty-three Louis XIV of France declared his determination to be what he referred to as ‘real king’ – to become the sole and absolute ruler of France. To achieve this he invested himself in establishing a meticulous routine, but never did the king view his duties as a toil as his belief was that it was the primary duty of a royal prince to always present himself as noble and composed. Willing in his search for glorification, Louis spent his lifetime creating a magnificent and grand spectacle at the court of Versailles. The self-proclaimed ‘Roi du Soleil’ believed wholly in the theory of absolute monarchy and consciously spent his years embodying the spirit of the sun, and employing countless displays of spectacle which frequently

he only wanted help from the secretaries and ministers of state to assist him, when he asked for them. he did not want them to sign anything without command. Louis XIV swore to take complete control over the government. Louis began to call himself the “Sun King” as a symbol of his absolute power. After taking control of the government, he worked to centralize and tight control of France and its colonies.

When Henry VIII received a daughter rather than a son, he believed he was being punished for marrying and sleeping with Catherine, his brother’s wife, and he sought an annulment. After Catherine’s nephew, Charles V, held the pope hostage to prevent the annulment, Thomas Cranmer and Thomas Cromwell, two Protestants, decided to help Henry VIII to get him away from the church. After getting him an annulment, Henry made himself the head of the new church due to the Act of Supremacy. This lead to the Dissolution, which took the wealth and land from the church and gave it back to Henry. After he wrote a new Bible, had a son with his third wife, and aided the Protestant Reformation, he died.

The Edict of Nantes was issued in 1598 by Henri IV of France to grant French Protestants (also known as Huguenots) equal rights with Catholics. The Edict was introduced primarily to end the long-running, disruptive French Wars of Religion. Henri IV also had personal reasons for supporting the Edict. Until assuming the throne Henri himself had been a Protestant, and he remained sympathetic to their cause: he converted in order to become king, famously saying, "Paris is worth a Mass." The Edict succeeded in restoring peace and internal unity to France for many years.

Sebastian Castellio best shows this perception in Document 1. The French Theologian paints a direct correlation between the lack of stability of a territory with the advent of differing religions or denominations (Document 1). Castellio’s point of view most likely stems from his experiences as a French Protestant and how his views led to his exile from France and how two religions resulted in a civil war in France. Spain under Philip II also maintained the importance of religious uniformity for political stability and strength. Pere Oroming’s painting of the expulsion of the Moriscos clearly illustrates this concept (Document 6).

This event replaced Protestant religion with Catholicism as the official religion of the monarchy. In the preface Paine reveals that he is hoping to reassure people of their new king, while many people believe the opposite. The book was translated into French and was a major component not only of the French Revolution but of the American as well. Paine writes about humans and the “laws of nature’, stating that all men are born in a state of freedom. He writes that “though man in that state have an uncontrollable liberty to dispose of his person or possessions,yet he had not liberty to destroy himself…”, meaning that all men have the power to destroy his possessions but he cannot destroy himself.

In Document One after the Revolutionary War the people tore down the statue of King George which was the people 's way of disregarding the king 's divine right, his power. The people were no longer going to be ruled where their opposition did not matter. Another political was stated in the Declaration of Independence, “Governments are instituted among men deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed” (Document 2). This officially ended the power of divine right which was the king got their power from god. The people would now give the power to the the government they would consent if they agreed to what they were being taxed, restricted on, etc.

It wasn’t really until the presidency of Johnson that progressivism could rise because he managed to lead a democratic Congress to implement the new socioeconomic programs. Johnson 's presidency marked the peak of modern liberalism in the United States after the New Deal