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Y313: The Ascendancy of France 1610–1715

The development of absolute monarchy and the role of ministers: absolutist theory, regencies and chief ministers

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  • Unit group 3

Overview

Recall questions on absolutism and divine right, absolute versus arbitrary rule, the regency after 1610, Louis XIII’s coup of 1617, the Estates General of 1614, Richelieu’s aims, the regency of 1643 and Louis XIV’s decision of 1661.

What you need to know

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Key term

Which bishop and royal tutor produced the fullest French defence of divine-right monarchy?

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    What did French writers of the period mean when they described the king as an absolute monarch?

    Model answer

    They meant that sovereign power belonged to the king alone, so that he made law, dispensed justice and decided policy without the consent of any representative body, answering for his rule to God alone.

  2. 2

    Which bishop and royal tutor produced the fullest French defence of divine-right monarchy?

    Model answer

    Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, who argued from scripture that royal authority was sacred, paternal, absolute and answerable to reason.

  3. 3

    Why did contemporaries insist that absolute rule was not the same as arbitrary rule?

    Model answer

    An absolute king was still bound by divine and natural law and by the fundamental laws of the kingdom, such as the Salic law of succession and the ban on alienating the royal domain, and he was expected to respect his subjects' property and privileges.

  4. 4

    Who governed France in the years immediately after Henry IV's assassination in 1610?

    Model answer

    His widow Marie de' Medici ruled as regent for the boy Louis XIII, leaning heavily on the Italian favourite Concino Concini.

  5. 5

    How did Louis XIII seize personal control of the government in 1617?

    Model answer

    He had Concini shot at the entrance to the Louvre, dismissed his mother's ministers and sent Marie de' Medici away from court to Blois.

  6. 6

    What became of the Estates General after it met in 1614–15?

    Model answer

    It was not summoned again until 1789, so for the whole of this period France had no national representative assembly to check the crown.

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