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  • Essay / Louis XIV: The Sun King - 1212

    In the 17th century, the ideals of absolutism were completely condensed in King Louis , one law, one faith.” As a model for the rest of the European powers who wanted to achieve an absolutist regime, Louis XIV achieved his goals (one king, one law and one faith) very well. For the first part of his quote, “a king,” Louis consolidated his power in several ways. France, along with many other countries throughout the Middle Ages and early Renaissance, had power balanced between the nobles and the dynastic ruling class, where the nobles controlled their individual provinces and the king had to rely on his nobles to disseminate his royal decrees. . This was strongly demonstrated throughout the Holy Roman Empire in the 16th and part of the 17th century, where the polygon of cultures, religions and languages ​​led Charles V to have to rely on the nobles, the confederation and a decentralization of government to govern. Because of these sacrifices, Charles V never truly governed his country and achieved none of his goals. He died an old man with white hair, giving his estates to his son and brother. Louis XIV actually achieved his goal in a very different way, by defeating the power of the noble class, while strengthening the middle, or bourgeois, class. Louis built an internal beauracracy in France and believed that a country's power came from its unification and military prowess. These beliefs were based largely on the early years of his reign. Louis XIV became king when he was only 5 years old, hence his mother. Anne of Austria and Cardinal Mazarin, said to have been his lover, ruled in his place when he was a child. Mazarin was the ideological heir of Richelieu, who was to modify the Edict of Nantes, in which they were not allowed to have their own armies and cities. Louis goes even further in this amendment by completely repealing the Edict of Nantes. The Huguenots were then forced to leave France, as they were forbidden to practice their religion or have their own schools, and the Huguenots were publicly humiliated by Louis' troops. Many Huguenots were tortured into converting to Catholicism. A fifth of the Huguenots were able to escape France, many of whom were skilled artisans, and took their talents to friendly Protestant countries. Louis also suppressed a sect of Catholicism, the Jansenists, a group of Catholics who had a somewhat Calvinist ideology. Louis believed that some Jansenists were in the center of the Frondes, so he took the Jansenist center, Port-Royal, and burned it to the ground..