Hello, welcome back to our lecture series for Western Civilization 102. In our previous lectures, we discussed the Renaissance and the Reformation. So we learned quite a lot about what was happening in Europe during the 15th, 16th centuries. We've learned a lot about religion and how religion is changing in Europe.
with the Protestant Reformation, men like Martin Luther and Ulrich Zwingli and John Calvin, John Wycliffe. Quite a few of these religious figures will reshape Europe as far as religion is concerned. But now we turn our focus to a few different, 16th century still at first, but different topics.
Now we will learn more about politics and government. We'll talk about the absolutism and the enlightenment in Europe between the years 1610 to the beginning of the French Revolution in 1789. So that's an estimate, rough guess about what you'll learn in these upcoming lectures. But our first lecture will discuss the topic of absolutism.
Now, absolutism... is growing in Europe in the 16th century. And the term absolutism simply means, and Dr. Price will go more in depth with this, but it simply means that, say, the monarch believes that he has absolute power. You will discover that in different countries there's usually some kind of assembly.
that the prince or the king or the Holy Roman Emperor, the monarch, relies on maybe for advice, but he doesn't feel he has to really follow the advice. He feels that he is absolute and he can do what he will. You'll find that in the different countries, Dr. Price will explain, there's different kinds of assemblies.
We're still not looking at... What you would think of as today with our Congress, for example, where men and women are elected. That's not the case.
But in England, you might view it as Parliament. In France, it's called the Estates General. In the Holy Roman Empire, this assembly is called the Diet. And Dr. Price will get into more about what that entailed, what that included, these assemblies that will...
be part of the governments of these different countries in Europe. But either way, we'll notice that this political thought of absolutism grows. Dr. Price will focus on the country of France when he discusses absolutism. But we will also find absolutist governments in other countries as well. England also will have...
an absolutist government. Russia, Austria, Prussia, just to name a few. So this was not inclusive, exclusive, I should say, to France.
But France is a very good example of how this develops in the late 16th century. You may hear a few familiar people in this lecture that you have learned about. in previous lectures, men such as Philip II of Spain, the Duke of Guise, which is a very powerful duke in France.
I know, I think he's been mentioned in a past lecture as well. And you'll also hear a little bit again about the wars of religion that take place. Not a lot, just a little bit in context with this topic of absolutism. You'll hear also about Catherine de'Medici. She obviously was a very important and famous figure in French history.
And we've learned about her in past lectures and she will be mentioned yet again in this lecture. And of course, Henry IV. I know you've learned about Henry IV in our dealings with French history as well.
You'll learn a little bit more about Henry IV and how he will gain more and more power in France and how he will rely on one of his advisors. His name is the Duke of Sully. S-U-L-L-Y, to help with state finances and to just make the economy of France better. It seems that, and you'll find out from Dr. Price, Henry IV was a very, very good French king. Now, just because I say absolutism and the kings feel like they don't have to listen and they don't even have to call their assemblies, they don't have to call Parliament into session or the Estates General.
That's going to cause problems later on, as you'll find out. French Revolution, there's problems with the English Civil War. So, you know, there's a lot of different problems with absolutism.
But it doesn't mean they have to be tyrants. So it doesn't go hand in hand. Or dictators.
Just because a king is absolute doesn't necessarily mean he is a dictator in the very negative sense that we think of that. when we think of the term in our society today. Of course, you'll learn more about, at least with France, how this absolutism grows, of course, in the French government.
So you'll learn more about Henry IV, and you'll find out that his successor, Henry IV, is assassinated, and his son, Louis XIII, will succeed him, but he's only a very small, small boy. Obviously, he cannot run France and rule France if he's only like nine years old. Okay, maybe he thinks he can, but obviously he cannot.
So he obviously needs somebody to help him out, Louis XIII. So he relies on a man named Cardinal Richelieu. Cardinal Richelieu is also a very important figure in French history as well.
So we'll learn a bit about Cardinal Richelieu. and how he will shape French history. Here in this early 17th century is more Richelieu's time frame than anything else.
The early 17th century. All right, because Henry IV was assassinated in 1610. And we'll still talk about religion, even in the early 17th century. You'll still hear about the Huguenots.
and the Catholics and what's being done in France to try to keep the peace. We'll find out what Richelieu's stand is on the religious question in France. Well, Richelieu dies in 1643, so mid-17th century, and a few weeks later, the king, Louis XIII, dies. So they're pretty neck and neck as far as leaving this world. And Louis XIII also had a very young son.
He's only, I think, five years old. And so that's not going to work as well. And this young son who will succeed Louis XIII, his name is Louis XIV. Of course, probably the most famous.
...of the French kings that we'll talk about. And so we'll find out in future lectures just what it was about Louis XIV that will make him so famous and so magnificent as an absolute monarch, as you will find out. You know, we haven't really talked much about government in this course so far. We've talked a lot about religion and theology, and I hope today I can start making that up.
We're going to talk, in Western civilization since 1500, one of the most noticeable trends in history is the steadily growing influence of government. What do I mean by that? Well, in 1500, most folks would never come in contact with anybody from their central government, with a representative or agent of the king.
A peasant simply wouldn't need to. Any dispute that he might have with another peasant would be taken care of, judged by his lord. Only in England was there such a thing as a royal common law court.
Likewise, any crime that a peasant might commit or might have committed against him would be dealt with by his lord. There was an outside chance that somebody might encounter a tax collector, but... By and large, for most of the peasantry, tax collectors were things that only happened to somebody else. If a villager owed money, he paid it to his lord, and his lord paid it in taxes to the king or to the crown.
The same was true of cities. When the king collected taxes from a city, he would collect them directly from the local city government. If you owed any taxes, you would pay your city government.
Your city government would... divvy those taxes up with the king. There were no censuses in Europe in 1500 because there was no need to have a census.
The king knew exactly how much the city owed him and the city knew exactly how much they owed to the king and so the king would send a collector to the city fathers, to the city council, and they would pay up. instead of having a direct taxation system whereby the populace pays the king off directly. Nobles might have direct contact with the king, either as advisors or in some cases as leaders of the army. But even that was beginning to fade. Noblemen were no longer called upon very often to serve the army as mounted knights.
And the kings were now looking for advisors who were clever and literate and numerate rather than individuals who were very good at hitting other people over the head. So the nobleman no longer had the qualities, intellectual qualities, if you will, that the king needed for the enhancement of his leadership. Of course, that's not true today.
Everybody is now in contact with the central government. We pay taxes directly in terms of income tax. We pay indirect taxes like sales taxes and gas taxes and excise taxes.
And we pay that directly essentially to our government. If we're going to buy stamps to send mail, we go to a government post office. If we are going to do almost anything, it seems these days, there are government regulations that come down from the central government and government permits and licenses.
We do get considerably more for our money than folks got in the 16th century, of course, from roads to defense to social security programs to health and education. But whatever the trade-off is, The growing power of government that we are familiar with really begins in the late 1500s with something called absolutism. Now, in order for absolutism to make sense, what I really need to do is give you some kind of idea about government in general in the 16th century. In the political system in Europe, normally speaking, every state, no matter how big or how small, had two institutions of government. Two institutions of government.
Now the first one's a pretty easy one. It was monarchy. That is, every state had what we generically refer to as a prince.
Now, that prince could be a great king, like the king of Spain, or the queen of England. It could be the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. It might be a minor ruler, that is the ruler of a very small state, like the elector of Saxony.
We talked about him a while back. His name was Frederick the Wise during the Reformation. Or the prince. of Hesse Castle, or the Duke of Bavaria.
They had various names, various titles, but the one thing they all had in common is they were sovereign rulers of their state. Sovereign rulers. What does that mean?
Well, sovereign essentially means that laws are made in his or her name. Laws are made in his or her name. And every state, again... No matter how big, no matter how small, every state had a monarch, a sovereign ruler.
Again, the generic term, a prince. Well, there's also another institution of government in these 16th century states, and you don't hear much talk about them, but they exist, and they're very important as well. They are called estates, E-S-T-A-T-E-S, estates. That's a generic name for them.
They might have different names in different countries, and in fact they do. The Estates of England, for instance, are the Parliament, is the Parliament. The Estates of the Holy Roman Empire is called the Diet.
The Estates of France is called the Estates General. Well, what are the Estates? No matter what they're called, the Estates are assemblies in which sat the legitimate representatives of the classes privileged by law.
Now, there are three classes, basically, three estates in Europe in the 1500s, and they are the old medieval estates that are called the first estate, the clergy, the second estate, the nobility, and the third estate, which is basically everybody else. We call them the peasants. So those are the estates, and those are the classes involved in the estates.
And each estate in Europe in the 1500s is a little different. I'll give you a few examples. First off, these estates met by class.
In the English Parliament, for instance, there are two subdivisions of Parliament. There is the House of Lords, which contains... The English nobility and the bishops and archbishop in England, they're called the Lord's Spiritual, the bishops and archbishop, and the Lord's Temporal, the various titled nobility. And they also have a second house called the House of Commons. And in the House of Commons, the common people are represented.
In France, the Estates General had three... estates or three classes. The first estate was the clergyman.
They sat in a separate room. The second estate was the nobility. They sat in a separate room. And the third estate were representatives primarily of the bourgeoisie, and they sat in a third room. In the Holy Roman Empire, the only people who sat in the estates were princes, these minor princes.
of Germany. There was an upper estate, which was actually fairly small. It contained the seven electors. These are the seven German princes whose job it is when the old emperor dies to select a new emperor.
In the lower estate, all the other princes of the Holy Roman Empire sat, and this was called the Diet of the Holy Roman Empire. The Counts and Dukes and other princes were involved in the lower house of the Dieppe. Well, now it's important to realize that these men were not usually elected. They weren't usually elected. They held their office by virtue of their rank, by virtue of their position in society.
They often sat by virtue of their office. For instance, the clergy exist as a class only because they are members of the clergy. The nobility exist as a class only as a matter of their birthright. Somebody way back in the past had done distinguished service for the king, and so they had received some kind of... of a position of nobility.
Even in those few places where delegates were elected to represent the common folks, the peasantry, such as the House of Commons in England, voting rights in those days were so restricted that a vast majority of the population could never actually vote. for their representative. In fact, the House of Commons in England primarily represents the landed gentry. who are members of the common class, the great landed gentry, they're often called the squires, or the merchants and bankers and traders of the cities of England, the bourgeoisie. Very few people are elected to represent Joe Doakes, who spends his day working out in the fields.
As a rule, When the peasants were represented in one house, as was the case in the Estates General in France and the Parliament of England, they primarily represent the wealthier common folks of the realm, the bourgeoisie, and the wealthy, in England, the wealthy landed gentry. But no matter how the estates are arranged, no matter how the estates are chosen, they originally existed for the purpose of assisting and advising the prince. It was their job to give advice to the ruling monarch, the sovereign prince. The estates were supposed to exercise a restraining influence on the theoretically unlimited powers of the monarch.
Well, I've talked now for several minutes and I really still haven't given you any idea of what absolutism is, so let me try to fix that in a few sentences now. Absolutism is when the prince or king, the sovereign ruler, decides that he will no longer listen to the estates. He is no longer going to pay attention to the advisory body that is supposed to restrain his power. That may be different in different places.
They may never, it's the king's prerogative to call the estates. So in some cases the king simply stops calling the estates. They never meet again. In some instances, England's a good example, the king calls the parliament, but he just stops listening to it. He doesn't pay any attention to what parliament has to tell him.
Now... One thing that's important to put down here, and it's important to note, an absolute monarch can't do whatever he wants. This is not a totalitarian dictatorship. An absolute monarch is still restrained by the traditions and customs of the land that he rules. He simply doesn't.
consult the estates anymore. He no longer calls them or he no longer listens to them. Well, where does this idea of absolutism come from? And the answer to that is that it arises first in France and it will be strongest for nearly two and a half centuries in France.
And it, France is going to set the standard. for absolutism in Europe. And absolutism arises out of the religious wars that take place in France in the 16th century.
Religious wars in France were very different from the religious wars we've already looked at in, say, Germany. In Germany, religious warfare ended, at least for a while. And although it'll crank up again later, it ended in about 1555 with the religious peace of Augsburg.
In Germany, the wars were primarily between Lutheran and Catholic princes. In France, they were between Calvinists and Catholics. And even though there were great families very much involved, It was also a war in France among the common people of both faiths. Calvinism had really spread like wildfire in France since the 1540s. It is estimated, by the way the French Calvinists are called Huguenots, and it's estimated by historians that nearly half of the population of France Nearly half were Huguenots by the middle of the 1600s.
Additionally, nearly half the... I'm sorry, by the middle of the 1500s. Additionally, nearly half of the nobility of France were Huguenots.
And in fact, some historians think that the Huguenots by the middle of the 1500s had actually achieved a slight majority among the nobility of France. To make matters worse, in much of France, Huguenots and Catholics were not segregated by region. Now, if you remember when we talked about Lutheranism in Germany, the model after the Peace of Augsburg was the religion of the prince is the religion of his subjects, which means that the German principalities were more or less segregated by religion.
Some were entirely Lutheran. Some were entirely Catholic. Well, that's not how it worked out in France. In France, Catholics...
and Protestants literally lived in many cases right next door to each other. They lived in towns and villages all over France, so their struggles become nasty neighbor-on-neighbor activities. Time after time, you would see in France that the The baker, who was a Catholic, would suddenly go berserk and grab a rolling pin and go kill a couple of three suspected Protestants down the street. The butcher, the Huguenot butcher, would become angry at his Catholic customers and start a fight. And these fights would turn into blood feuds, and these blood feuds would soon spread throughout the town.
What you had was literally civil war abuse. block at a time in France. But wait, there's more, and in many ways it's just as bad. Catholic noblemen would fight with Protestant noblemen. Huguenot noblemen would fight with Catholic noblemen.
And since these members of the French nobility in many cases had enormous private armies, you would see the the the feud between Catholics and Huguenots break out into actual battles between various noblemen with their various private armies. Now, as if that's not bad enough, whenever the Estates General was called by the king, these French noblemen would bring their feud to Paris. And the streets would run with blood. They would fight each other in the streets of Paris.
And as if that's not bad enough to make matters worse, there were opportunities for foreign intrigue as well. A militant Catholic organization in France was called the Catholic League. And it was led by a fellow named the Duke of Guise. the Duke of Guise, Henri le Duc de Guise. And he encouraged religious warfare among the League members and any Protestants they could find.
And the Duke of Guise was backed up not only by the Pope, but also he was supported with money and equipment from Philip II, the King of Spain. Why did Philip support the Catholic League? The answer is quite simply that Philip wanted to see as much mayhem, as much chaos in France as possible, because he believed that as long as France stayed weak, Spain would be the dominant power in Europe. And to some extent, he was quite right. In addition to that, the Huguenots, the Calvinists, were often supported by England and Scotland and various German Protestant groups.
So foreign intrigue becomes a big part of the story here. It was causing even more trouble, even more chaos, even more mayhem in France. Between 1562... And 1589. The French fought a series of some seven or eight, depending on which historian you ask, some seven or eight civil wars of religion, which weakened the kingdom of France, devastated the land, and even weakened the power of the king himself.
As a result of all this civil unrest, France by the late 1500s is a mess, a complete mess. Well, as these wars are going on, and Frenchmen are killing Frenchmen over theology and church organization and politics to some extent, a new political force begins to arise. in France begins to make an appearance. And they are called the politiques.
Well, who are the politiques? They are prominent, educated men, both Catholic and Protestant, and they argue that the most important thing for the future of France is simply to end the religious warfare. It just had to stop. Too many people are suffering, too many people are dying, too much hate is spreading, and France is literally falling apart as a result of this religious warfare.
In early writings, the politiques, who are often lawyers and intellectuals, oppose the influence of the Catholic League. oppose the influence of the Guise family. They rally against the Guises because Philip II of Spain supports the Duke of Guise.
They argue that the Guises and the Catholic League are puppets to the Spanish king and threaten the strength and unity and prosperity of La Belle France of France. They... defended the idea of what in essence is sort of an early form of French nationalism. It's called Gallicanism.
And they defend the notion that there should be a distinction between church and state, a separation between church and state, in order to slow down the bloodshed. They also believe to some extent that there's only one institution in France that has the prestige and authority to stop the killing and that institution is the king. Well, you might be asking at this point, if the king has the power to stop it, then why the heck hasn't he done so already? If the king can snap his fingers and make the trouble go away, Why doesn't he do it?
Well, at least in part, the answer to that question is that France had two or three really pathetic kings during this period. One of them, Charles IX, was only ten years old when he became king in 1560, and he died in 1574. His mother... was named Catherine de'Medici. She came from an aristocratic Italian family. She ruled France during Charles'reign, even after Charles was in his 20s.
She ruled France during Charles'reign, and she was violently pro-Catholic. During the reign of Charles IX, the worst massacre of Protestants that... had ever taken place would take place in Paris on St. Bartholomew's Day.
That's August the 24th, 1572. On that day, a great many Protestant leaders, Protestant noblemen had come to Paris to attend a wedding. They had been invited by de'Medici, by Catherine de'Medici, who told them. That they would be safe in Paris during the wedding. After the wedding was over and the bride and groom went up to enjoy their honeymoon, the palace guard...
began to massacre Protestant guests in their beds. And then suddenly the entire city of Paris broke into a massacre where Catholics decided to even the score with Protestants. Thousands and thousands of Parisians were killed. Their bodies were thrown in the Seine River, which, according to reports, ran red with blood. During the reign of the next king, Henry III, a war broke out called the War of the Three Henrys.
Great name for a war. Henry the King, Henry the Duke of Guise, we've already talked about him with his Catholic League, and a third player who's kind of important, a fellow by the name of Prince Henry of Navarre. Prince Henry of Navarre. who was the leader of the Huguenot forces.
It was a three-way catastrophe for France and a time for celebration for Philip II of Spain. The politiques, remember the politiques, the politiques argued that it was not just the kind of person who was necessary, The king had to have nearly complete authority, nearly complete power over France. Now, he had to respect the laws of the land, but other than that, he shouldn't have any restrictions at all. He should be an absolute ruler. If he needed to throw people in jail in order to stop the fighting, then he should have the right to throw people in jail.
If he needed to do away... with folks who were causing disorder, well he should have the power to do that for the good of the French people. The king needed absolute powers, the politiques argued, in order to stop the killing, in order to unite the country. When 1589, the politiques got the king, or the kind of king, they wanted. And that was Henry IV of France.
We just met him a few minutes ago. His name is Henry of Navarre. He was the leader of the Protestant forces.
Now, Henry IV was a prince of the French line. He was the next in line to become king after Henry III. But when he tried to take the throne, In 1589, the Catholic League and the Guise family tried to keep him from taking the throne, tried to keep him out of Paris. So Henry was forced to take the city of Paris by force, and he did so with military support from Queen Elizabeth of England.
Henry took the crown, took the throne. by military means, but it was his by right. He may have been a Huguenot, but he was also an extraordinarily practical politician.
After a few years on the throne, Henry began to realize that he would never be able to pull the country together as a Huguenot. So he converted in 1594, he converted to Roman Catholicism. One of his Huguenot friends said, Oh, Henry, why have you done this?
You have betrayed your co-religionists. And Henry made a truly practical political statement. He said, Don't you think that Paris is well worth a mass?
In other words, don't you think it's worthwhile for me to convert so I can control the city of Paris? To assure his Calvinist friends, that he still had their interests at heart. In 1598, Henry wrote an edict called the Edict of Nantes, N-A-N-T-E-S, which gave substantial freedoms, including the right to have their own armies and their own walled cities and the right to worship as they pleased, substantial freedoms to the Calvinists, to the Huguenots. Then he set out to rebuild France in the way that the politiques wanted him to.
He never called the Estates General. Not once during his entire reign did he call the Estates General. He employed members of the middle class as officials in his government rather than use the nobility in order to cut down on the nobility's power and prestige.
He regarded the nobility justifiably, I think, as the source of most of the trouble in France. And so he sort of... worked them out of the political equation.
He added experts in law and finance in order to control all of France from Paris, to control a central government that could run the whole country. He sent out royal officials to the towns to oversee the mayors and the town councils. In other words, He greatly strengthened the power of the central government in France, and that's why he is considered the first absolute monarch. Now, during his reign, Henry IV had one particular key advisor, a faithful right-hand man, and this fellow's name was Maximilian de Bethune, Duke.
De Sully, and he's usually just referred to as Sully. To regularize state finances, to promote agriculture and drain swamps to create more cropland, Henry and Sully worked together to expand the power and prosperity of the throne and to make France a better place. They undertook extensive public works projects and encouraged education.
They founded the first military academy in France. Henry and Sully also protected forests from devastation. They built a new highway system and constructed bridges and canals and promoted merchant activity throughout France.
Henry also encouraged and subsidized the Asian and African trade. French ships began to explore and set up trading posts in Africa, in China, in India, and elsewhere, even Russia, in order to expand the export-import trade and make France that much more prosperous. Now, Henry also realized that a powerful absolute monarch has to control his country, has to protect his country from foreign intervention. He realized the threat that Spain had become to the peace and prosperity of France. Henry fought a series of short wars with Spain and used diplomacy to try to undermine Spanish influence elsewhere in Europe.
The year before he came to the throne, of course, Spain had experienced an enormous setback in 1588 when the great Spanish Armada, which tried to invade England, was destroyed. by Elizabeth's navy. And this weakened Spain on the international scene considerably. But Henry wanted to weaken Spain even more. Henry IV took advantage of Spanish setbacks and pushed Spain militarily in support, not only in direct warfare with Spain, but Henry also supported the invasion of Spain.
the Protestant cause in Holland, and with his help the Dutch ultimately became independent from Spain. Without Spanish support, and because Henry had become a Catholic king, Henry's greatest domestic threat, the Catholic League, simply faded out of existence. It no longer had...
support, outside support, and it was difficult for the Catholic League to mount a complaint against Henry, who had become a Catholic king. Henry IV proved to be a man of vision and courage. Instead of waging costly wars to suppress his nobles, Henry simply paid them off with gifts. As king, he adopted policies and undertook projects to improve the lives of all of his subjects, which made him one of France's most popular and most beloved rulers. Well, Henry died, actually he was assassinated, in 1610, and he was succeeded to the throne by his son, Louis XIII, who was all of nine years old at the time.
Now, as you can guess, Louis was unable to continue his father's policies because he was so young. And so the bickering and trouble at court began once more. The noblemen decided this was their opportunity to start fussing and fighting again.
Henry was dead. A lot of Henry's work began to sort of become unraveled. But in 1624, Louis XIII appointed as his chief minister a truly remarkable man who got the French government back on the road.
to absolutism. And this fellow's name was Cardinal Richelieu. Now, he was a cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church and a truly remarkable individual.
In 1624, when he came to power, he identified three very serious problems that faced the French monarchy. And he believed that he needed to deal with these problems. in order to reconfirm the power of the throne, reconfirm the power of the central government.
Well, let's talk about it a bit. The first of these problems was left over from the Edict of Nome. Remember, this is the edict that Henry IV had given to the Huguenots that gave them the right to worship according to their conscience.
The right to have their own armies for their defense, their own Calvinist armies, their own Protestant armies, gave them the right to keep cannons and weapons to defend themselves, gave them the right to wall their towns, create segregated Huguenot towns and put walls around them to defend themselves. Well... What that meant to Richelieu was that there was a large armed force in France over which or over whom the king had no power whatsoever. They essentially were a great private army that had no allegiance to the king, that were heavily armed, who could stay behind their walled cities to defend themselves. Now...
Richelieu called upon the Huguenots to disarm themselves. What you might think is, well of course he does, because he wants to forcibly convert them back to Catholicism. But that's not the case. Richelieu is not concerned that they are Huguenots. He's concerned that they're not French anymore, that they no longer have an allegiance to the King of France.
Well, when he... And Richelieu demands that the Huguenots disarm. They say, no, we won't do it.
And so Richelieu goes to war against the Huguenots. Over the course of several years, between 1624 and 1629, the Huguenots and the forces of the king fight a series of wars, sieges. And finally, in 1629, the Huguenots are forced. to surrender. Just when they think that Richelieu will punish them for being Protestant, Cardinal Richelieu simply says, put down your weapons, tear down your walls, you are still guaranteed the right to worship as you see fit, the king will protect you from the Catholics, but you are now essentially Frenchmen.
You should look to the king for your defense. He passed no restrictions on their freedom to practice their religion. The only restrictions made them less of a threat and essentially more French.
So that's number one, the Huguenot problem. The second goal that Richelieu had was to reduce the power of the nobility. Now, when Louis XIII came to the throne, the noblemen had begun their previous exercises in warfare, civil warfare. They had begun to try to strip more power from the king.
All of the stuff that Henry IV had done to control the nobility began to fall apart. And Richelieu realized that the noblemen had become, at least some of them, too big for their britches. There was even a term for these over-powerful noblemen, some of whom had armies as large as the king's army.
And this term was over-mighty subjects. Well... Richelieu decided to take on the over-mighty subjects.
He did so in many different ways. He tried to undermine their influence. He worked very hard to keep foreign intrigue out of France. But finally, what he resorted to is a couple of heads of two of these noble families attempted a coup against the king, attempted to take the king out.
Richelieu sent forces to their homes, dragged these men out into the courtyard, and cut their heads off. No trial, no inquiry, just a quick, easy termination. And Richelieu made it abundantly clear to other members of the French nobility that he could do it again any time he wanted to.
Essentially, what he applied was the rule of, I know where you live. And this had a marvelously salutary effect on the other noblemen, who decided that perhaps they did not want to fuss and fight. They did not want to give young Louis XIII a hard time.
Now, Richelieu's third goal was to raise the prestige of France in... European power politics. And we're going to talk more about that, at least one aspect of that, next time.
What you should do now is just put down that Richelieu employed diplomacy, espionage, money to make France stronger by weakening France's most dangerous enemies, the Habsburgs. in Austria and Germany, the King of Spain and the British throne. Well, Richelieu died in 1643, and just a few weeks later, the king who had relied on him so much for so long died as well.
When Louis XIII died, he was succeeded yet again by a little boy. This time, a little boy just five years old, who would take the name Louis XIV. But as you know, since we live in a state that's named after this guy, Louis XIV turned out not only to be a magnificent French king, but the greatest absolute monarch that ever lived. Don't forget, though, that the foundation Louis XIV built on was laid by Henry IV and his chief minister, Sully, and by Louis XIII and his chief minister, Cardinal Richelieu. As we will see a few lectures down the road, it's Louis XIV...
who would become the most magnificent absolute monarch of them all, who would acquire the name Le Roi Sommelier, the Sun King. And we'll save that for another time. All right, so we learned about absolutism, and we also discovered that the religious question is not over.
And even though we've had all of this religious warfare, In the past, and we've had some peace, obviously, it will not last. In fact, for our next lecture, we will discuss the Thirty Years'War, which was a religious war, among other things, that takes place in Europe in the late 17th century, well, mid-17th century. Until next time.