[1589 - 1789] L'Ancien Régime: The Age of Absolutism

We begin in 1589. France is a nation tearing itself apart. For decades, brutal wars of religion have pitted Catholic against Protestant, neighbor against neighbor. The country is exhausted, bleeding from a thousand wounds. Into this chaos steps a man of immense charm and pragmatism, Henri IV. A Protestant who famously decided that “Paris is worth a mass,” he converted to Catholicism to unite his kingdom, but he did not forget his former allies. With the Edict of Nantes in 1598, he granted Protestants unheard-of rights, stitching a bleeding nation back together not with force alone, but with compromise. He was a king who walked among his people, who promised them not glory, but stability and a "chicken in every pot." He laid the foundation. But it was his successors who would build the towering, glittering, and ultimately fragile edifice of French Absolutism. After Henri’s assassination, his son Louis XIII and his brilliant, ruthless chief minister, Cardinal Richelieu, began the real work. For them, the goal was simple and terrifying: all power must flow to the King. The nobility, with their private armies and fortified castles that had challenged royal authority for centuries, had to be tamed. Richelieu moved against them, ordering the destruction of feudal castle walls and crushing their conspiracies with an iron fist. He championed a new, cold-blooded political idea: *raison d'état*—the reason of state. What was good for the state, as defined by the King and his minister, trumped all other concerns, be it tradition, law, or even morality. France was being forged into a single, centralized weapon. And then came the master who would wield it. In 1643, a five-year-old boy became Louis XIV. This was the Sun King, the man who would personify absolutism so completely that the phrase, *“L'état, c'est moi”*—"I am the state"—would be forever linked to his name. His reign was an act of political theatre on a scale the world had never seen. The stage for this performance was Versailles. What began as a modest hunting lodge was transformed into the most magnificent palace in Europe—a sprawling city of stone and gold with over 700 rooms, set in nearly 2,000 acres of manicured gardens where nature itself was bent to the King’s will. But Versailles was more than a home; it was a magnificent gilded cage. Louis XIV demanded the great nobles of France leave their regional power bases and come live at his court. Here, their lives revolved entirely around him. Their importance was measured by whether they were chosen to watch the King wake up (*le lever*) or go to bed (*le coucher*). They bankrupted themselves on fantastically elaborate clothing—silk coats heavy with silver thread, towering wigs, diamond-buckled shoes—all to catch the King’s eye. A nod from Louis could make a man’s career; a frown could ruin him. Their ancient military power was replaced by a desperate squabble for social prestige. While they played at court, the King's professional administrators, men from the rising middle class, ran the country for him. This was the France of the Three Estates, the rigid social pyramid that defined everyone’s life. At the very top was the First Estate, the Clergy, owning about 10% of the land and paying virtually no taxes. Below them, the Second Estate, the Nobility, who owned another 25% of the land and were also exempt from most taxation, enjoying privileges like the right to hunt and wear a sword. And then there was everyone else: the Third Estate. This was not a monolith. It included wealthy merchants and lawyers in the cities, skilled artisans in their workshops, and, overwhelmingly, the 20 million peasants who worked the land. They were the engine of France, representing some 97% of the population. And they bore almost the entire tax burden, from the *taille*, a land tax, to the hated *gabelle*, a tax on salt, an essential preservative. For a peasant in the Auvergne, life was a cycle of back-breaking labour for a meager harvest, while a portion of his crop and his money went to a distant lord and a glorious King he would never see. The splendor of Versailles, the costly wars Louis XIV fought to expand France’s borders, the burgeoning bureaucracy—it was all paid for on the backs of the Third Estate. And as the 18th century dawned, the cracks began to show. Louis XIV’s long reign ended in 1715, leaving France a cultural powerhouse but also deeply in debt. His successor, Louis XV, continued the tradition of splendor, but the magic was fading. The intellectual air was changing. In the salons of Paris, thinkers of the Enlightenment—Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot—were asking dangerous questions. Why should a man’s birth determine his rights? What is the basis of a king’s authority? They spoke of a social contract, of liberty, and of reason. These ideas, printed in forbidden pamphlets, spread like wildfire. By the time the well-meaning but tragically indecisive Louis XVI ascended the throne in 1774, he inherited a system on the verge of collapse. France’s support for the American Revolution, a blow against their British rivals, was a catastrophic financial gamble. By the late 1780s, the government was spending half its entire revenue just to pay the interest on its mountainous debt. While the Queen, Marie Antoinette, was unfairly caricatured for her extravagance, the perception of a court fiddling while the nation burned took hold. In 1788 and 1789, bad harvests sent the price of bread—the staple food of the poor—skyrocketing. For a Parisian labourer, bread could now cost 88% of his daily wage. Hunger turned to anger. The system, which demanded everything from the many to lavishly support the few, had reached its breaking point. In a last-ditch effort to solve the financial crisis, Louis XVI did something no French king had done in 175 years. He summoned the Estates-General, the ancient representative assembly of the three estates. As representatives from across the nation gathered in Versailles in May 1789, they brought with them lists of grievances and hopes for reform. They did not yet know they were standing on the precipice of a revolution that would consume the King, shatter the old regime, and change the world forever. The air itself thrummed with tension. The age of absolutism was about to end in fire.