Because we’re planning to visit England this summer and because I’m an Anglophile, anyway, I’ve been reading quite a few books set in England lately, sort of preparing myself for the journey. And a lot of my reading has happened to be centered around the seventeenth century, particularly the English Civil War between the Cavaliers and the Roundheads, Charles I, Oliver Cromwell, and all that jazz. So, I thought I’d stay in the same ballpark, 1600’s, but switch it up a bit and read this Messner biography of Louis XIV of France.

Louis XIV was an amazing man, but not so very admirable. He seems to have been blinded by his upbringing, his cultural assumptions, and his own pride and greed into making a lot of misery for a lot of people. His biographer calls him “disdainfully aloof” and “a proud absolute ruler” and “the supreme embodiment of Absolute Monarchy.” Although his seventy-two year reign, longer than the reign of any other French king in history, saw many accomplishments and triumphs for French hegemony as well as French literature, art and architecture, Louis’s rule also perpetrated the horrendous persecution of French Huguenots and eventually drained the French economy to the point of bankruptcy. (It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.)

Louis XIV is famous for the slogan, “I am the state.” He truly believed what he was taught: that France existed for him and that he, Louis XIV, was the sole judge and arbiter of everything that happened in that ever-expanding nation. His only responsibility was to God, and the people of France existed to serve God by serving Louis. He said, “It is for kings to make their own decisions, for no one dares or is able to suggest any that are as good or as royal as those which we make ourselves.”

It was particularly interesting to me to read about Louis’s economic policies. The French under Louis XIV adhered to the economic theory of mercantilism, “the economic theory that trade generates wealth and is stimulated by the accumulation of profitable balances, which a government should encourage by means of protectionism.” However, in addition, Louis IV’s economy was an example of what came to be called “Colbertism” named for Louis’s chief financial advisor, Colbert. “Colbertism meant unlimited government control of economic life. Louis XIV, as the foremost exponent of absolute despotism, felt it perfectly natural to give his finance minister freedom in directing with an iron hand all of France’s production and distribution of goods.”

“These principles led seventeenth-century France on the road to forced nationalization, in some even to socialization, of its economy.” But instead of being done for “the people”, as Marxism would later claim, this centralized and autocratic government of the economy was intended for the glory of France and even more for the glory and increased power of Louis XIV. And the interesting thing is that such dictatorship for the sake of the nation’s power and glory does work for a time in increasing the nation power and fame. France did indeed become larger, taking over more and more territory, more organized and orderly, richer and more powerful. The arts flourished in France under Louis XIV. The economy and the middle class bourgeoise also grew and became more prosperous.

BUT as taxes became higher and higher to sustain Louis’s army, his territorial ambitions, and his extravagant lifestyle as well as that of his courtiers and as Louis himself felt the need to appease God by purifying the church and driving out the Huguenots, the whole scheme began to collapse. As Margaret Thatcher so aptly put it many centuries later, “Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They always run out of other people’s money.” Louis’s government and economic system was the worst of all possible systems, combining an absolute monarchy or dictatorship with the nationalization of much of the industry in the country and with nothing going back to the people except the satisfaction of living in the glorious Age of Louis XIV. This idea of the common people living and working for the monarchy and the higher classes living off of the monarchy and not working led directly to the French Revolution a little less than a century after Louis’ death.

“Louis’ state remained anchored to one person, the sovereign. He had willfully neglected to allow the growth of any institution fostering participation by the people whom he ruled. The success of the state depended solely on the manner in which the monarch played his role. When the successors of Louis XIV completely failed to fill this role which he had created for them, the whole system collapsed, like a house erected on shifting sand, in the French Revolution of 1789.”

This biography was such a good read with many insights that can be applied to our own times as well as just interesting bits of knowledge and information. Did you know that Louis XIV was the king who built the enormous and expensive palace of Versailles or that he was one of the first European kings to have a standing army?