Louis XIV
Louis XIV and the Decline of Absolutism in FranceQuestion Posed: What steps did Louis XIV take to increase the power of the crown in France and what did he do that led to its eventual demise. Louis XIV was a charismatic fool with an ego the size of Texas. He took some major steps to increase his power but then he took some even bigger steps and managed to take the most powerful nation on earth and send it down the toilet. Louis did however do some things well just before he screwed France over, but even these things contributed to France's eventual decline. First of all Louis build Versailles, and for all practical purposes Versailles was nothing but an up scaled Disney World for nobles. Louis saw that
This was pretty much the straw that broke the camel's back and when Louis died there was chaos in France. Nobles would come there and be entertained all day and all night by hunting, sports, theater, and the beautiful atmosphere. Louis second contribution to absolutism in France was his new policies of taxation that basically relied on the middle class for most of France's income. And consequently most of the people that left were Louis tax base: the middle class. he had a big problem with the nobles taking power away form him so he decided to tame them with entertainment and ritual so he built Versailles. The downside of this is that Louis eventually evicted most of his middle class in a pig headed move that would soon cost him his power. This basically said that if you weren't catholic you better get out or your going to be killed. The downside of Versailles is that it drained about 40 percent of the France's economy. So now Louis doesn't have any money coming in and still has this gaping hole left in the economy form the construction of Versailles. France at the time had a enormous army of over 200,000 making them the most powerful nation on the planet, but wars cost money especially when your paying 200,000 people to fight them, and money was not something France had an abundance of at the time. Louis saw things were starting to look up for him with an enormous cash flow and nobles that were fighting over who could bring Louis his clothes in the morning so he got cocky and revoked the Edict of Nantes. Now any other person would assume that Louis would cool his jets for a bit and let the economy of France restabilize, but Louis thinks otherwise and gets involved in some wars. Versailles did such a good job of dumbing up the nobles that soon after its construction Louis had nearly all of them under his control. So to make a long story short France lost and was forced to sign a treaty that gave stuff to everyone that fought against France stuff that used to belong to France.
Common topics in this essay:
Edict Nantes,
Europe Nobles,
Louis XIV,
Disney World,
Question Posed,
Versailles Mecca,
middle class,
louis xiv,
European History,
power crown,
powerful nation,
increase power,
absolutism france,
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