To what extent did the absolutist state in France protect the interests of feudal elements?
Absolutism in Europe starts from the 15th and 16th centuries to 18th century. According to Perry Anderson, the absolutist state is the political outcome of the 14th and 15th centuries’ feudal crisis. It is based on centralized monarchy-a departure from the pyramidical, parcellized, feudal sovereignty. The main features of the absolutist state are: standing army, permanent bureaucracy, codified law, national taxation and unified laws. Their emergence coincides with the disappearance of serfdom. There are two indicators that mark the end of feudalism: free labour and emergence of market in land which marked the end of aristocracy. Anderson says that feudal aristocracy remained dominant both economically and politically but it underwent changes. Absolutist state is a response to those changes. In this essay, we shall look at French absolutism. I have referred to Perry Anderson’s book ‘Lineages of the Absolutist State’ and all views given here are Anderson’s views.
France is a classic example of absolutist state, according to Anderson. Absolutism in France enjoyed no such early advantage as in Spain, in the form of lucrative overseas empire. Nor was it confronted with the permanent structural problems of fusing disparate kingdoms at home, with radically contrasted political and cultural legacies.
Three temporal events took place in France which became the pretext of greater centralization. However they were not smooth linear processes of centralization. These events were The Hundred Years’ War, The thirty Years’ War and the Fronde.
Monarchy in France in the 15th century was called Capetian monarchy. It was followed by the rule of the Valois with the Hundred Years’ War in between the rule of the two dynasties.
In the case of the Hundred Years’ War, two things worked in favour of the king. First, a standing army was created for the first time and the aristocracy gave its consent. Secondly, a regular national tax – taille royale of 1439 – was imposed for the first time to pay for the expenses of the standing army.
For the Valois, they faced a bigger challenge for consolidation of power in France. The population was high and its sheer size made it difficult to be managed efficiently
Louis XI, who succeeded in 1461, tackled both internal and external opposition to Valois power. The ‘new monarchy’ established by him, however, was not a centralized or integrated state. France was redivided into 12 governorships, administration over which was entrusted to royal princes or nobles. Local parlements, provincial courts created by the monarchy with supreme judicial authority in their areas, emerged.
The Estates-General emerged around this time due to the dynastic need for fiscal or foreign policy support from the subjects of the far-flung areas at the realm of the empire. The kings would summon all the lords for fiscal matters. These Estates-Generals had more of a rubber stamp role and they develop only much later.
In the early 16th century, Francis I and Henry II presided over a prosperous and multiplying realm. The Estates-General had lapsed. Legal officials – maitres de requetes – gradually extended the juridical rights of the monarchy, and parlements were overawed by special sessions or lits de justice. However, both consulted frequently with regional assemblies and carefully respected traditional noble privileges. The economic immunities of the Church were not infringed by the change of patronage over it. Royal edicts still in principle needed formal registration by the parlements to become laws. Fiscal revenues doubled between 1517 and the 1540’s. However, the direct fiscal yield as a proportion of national wealth actually fell. On the other hand, the issue of public bonds to rentiers from 1522 onwards helped to maintain the royal treasury comfortably.
The Civil Wars were set of by the religious conflicts attendant on the Reformation. They exposed the multiple tensions and contradictions of the French social formation during the Renaissance. The struggle between the Huguenots and the Holy League served as an arena for the kind of political conflict that would lead to a transition to absolutist state. The Religious Wars had three main contenders: the Guise, the Montmorency and the Bourbon houses. The inter-feudal struggle between these noble houses was intensified by the plight of needy rural squires all over France. The towns split into two camps: the Southern cities joined the Huguenots while the Northern towns joined the League. Ferment of other social forces emerged out of this conflict.
Widespread resentment emerged in the Northern cities around this time. Once Henry of Navarre became the monarch, the ideology of these urban revolts started to lean towards republicanism. At the same time, the tremendous devastation of the countryside by the constant military campaigns pushed the South-Central peasantry into non-religious uprisings in the 1590’s. it was this dual threat in town and country that finally reunited the ruling class: the nobility started to close ranks as soon as there was a real danger of an upheaval from below. Henry IV accepted Catholicism, rallied the aristocratic patrons of the League, isolated the Committees, and suppressed the peasant revolts. Thus, with the coming of the Bourbon monarchy with Henry IV, the absolutist state came of age.
Sully, Richelieu and Colbert were the ministers responsible for the building of the absolutist institution in France. Henry IV fixed royal presence and power centrally in Paris, rebuilding the city and making it the permanent capital. Civic pacification was accompanied by official care for agriculture recovery and promotion of export trades. Sully, the Huguenot Chancellor, doubled the net revenues of the state, mainly by shifting to indirect taxes, rationalizing tax-farms and cutting expenses. The most important institutional development was the introduction of the paulette or the sale of offices in the state apparatus in 1604. France became the classical land of sale of offices, as sinecures and prebends were created for revenue purposes. Tax-farms were regularly auctioned to large financiers. The rising costs of foreign and domestic policy in the background of the Thirty Years’ War made the monarchy resort to forced loans at high interests from the syndicates of its own tax-farmers, who were the officiers who had bought offices in the state treasury. This led to widespread confusion. The multiplication of venal offices in which a new noblesse de robe became lodged, obstructed any firm control over major judicial and financial agencies and led to massive decentralization.
Richelieu started to build a rationalized administrative machine capable for the first time to direct royal control and intervention throughout France. The De facto ruler, the Cardinal, ordered the destruction of the remaining Huguenot fortresses in the south-west, with the capture of La Rochelle. Successive aristocratic conspiracies were foiled, the highest medieval military dignitaries were abolished, noble castles were levelled, duelling was banned and estates where local resistance still persisted were suppressed. Richelieu successfully established the intendant system. The Intendants de Justice, de Police et de Finances were functionaries dispatched with enormous powers into the provinces. Their offices were revocable and non-purchasable and were recruited from the maitres de requetes. They represented the new power of the absolutist state in the most far-flung areas. They were extremely unpopular with the officiers, whose powers they infringed.
The relationship between taxes and dues has been seen as a tension between ‘centralized’ and ‘local’ feudal rent. The complexity of the structure of the state permitted a slow yet relentless unification of the noble class itself, which was gradually adapted into a new centralized mould, subject to the public control of the intendants, while still occupying pric=vately owned positions in the officier system and local authority in the parlements. It also achieved the task of integrating the new French bourgeoisie into the circle of the feudal state. The purchase of offices was such a profitable investment that capital was diverted away from manufacturing sectors into a conflict with the state. Sinecures and fees, tax-farms and loans, honours and bonds all drew bourgeois wealth away from production. The acquisition of noble titles and fiscal immunity became normal entrepreneurial goals for roturiers. The social consequence was to create a bourgeoisie which tended to become increasingly assimilated to the aristocracy through the exemptions and privileges of offices. The state sponsored royal manufactures and public trading companies which provided business opportunities for this class. The result was to ‘side-track’ the political evolution of the French bourgeoisie for a hundred and fifty years.
The weight of this whole apparatus fell on the poor. The reorganized feudal state went on to oppress mercilessly the rural and urban masses. There was also a sudden and enormous rise in the fiscal burden. This was because of Richelieu’s diplomatic and military intervention in the Thirty Years’ War. The real costs of the war were borne by the poor where social havoc broke out. The fiscal pressures brought about revolts by the rural and urban masses.
The Fronde can be regarded as the high ‘crest’ of this long wave of popular revolts, in which the office-holding magistrature and the municipal bourgeoisie used mass discontents for their own ends against the state. Mazarin steered French foreign policy through to the end of the Thirty Years’ War and with it the capture of Alsace. The Fronde reproduced many elements of the pattern that marked the Religious Wars. Although the social pressure from below was probably more urgent, the Fronde was actually less dangerous to the state than the Religious Wars, because the propertied class were united. Both the officier and the intendant system had recruitments from the noblesse de robe, while the bankers and tax-farmers against whom the parlements protested were closely connected in personnel to them. The annealing process permitted by the coexistence of the two systems within a single state thus ended by ensuring much prompter solidarity against the masses.
After Louis XIV became the king of France, the absolutist state was firmly established. The parlements were silenced, their claim to present remonstrances before registering royal edicts annulled in 1673. The estates could not dispute and bargain over taxes: precise fiscal demands were dictated by the monarchy which they had to accept. The municipal authority of the bonnes villes was brought under control. Louis XIV had four important ministers: Le Tellier in charge of military affairs, Colbert who combined management of the royal finances, household and navy, Lionne in charge of foreign policy and Seguire as chancellor in charge of internal security.
Colbert was the chief architect of the absolutist state. He established the Conseil d’ en Haut presided over by the king and comprising of his most trusted political servants. It became the executive body of the state while the Conseil des Depeches dealt with provincial and domestic matters and the Conseil des Finances supervised the economic organization. The country was divided into thirty-two generalites, in each of which the royal intendant now ruled supreme, assisted by sub-delegues, and vested with new powers over the assessment and supervision of the taille – vital duties that were transferred from the old officier ‘treasurers’ formerly in control of them. A permanent police force was created to keep order and repress riots in Paris in 1667, which was later extended throughout France. The army was increased in size to some 300,000. The growth of this military apparatus meant the final disarming of the provincial nobility, and the capacity to strike down popular rebellions with efficiency.
The organizational accomplishments of Bourbon absolutism were designed in the conception of Louis XIV to serve a specific purpose – military expansion. Under Colbert, fiscal pressure was stabilized and trade promoted. State expenses were cut down by the wholesale suppression of new offices created since 1630; the depredations of tax-farmers were reduced. The net revenue doubled from 1661 to 1671 and a budgetary surplus was regularly achieved. An ambitious mercantilist programme to accelerate manufacturing and commercial growth in France and colonial expansion overseas was launched: royal subvention founded new industries, chartered companies were created to exploit the trade of the East and West Indies, shipyards were heavily subsidized and an extremely protectionist tariff system was imposed. This very mercantilism led to the invasion of Holland in 1672 to suppress competition of its trade. At home, Colbert’s fiscal retrenchment had been permanently wrecked: sale of offices was multiplied, old taxes were increased, new taxes were levied, loans were floated, and commercial subsidies were jettisoned. War was to dominate every aspect of the reign from here on. Louis XIV’s war aims were frustrated everywhere. To finance the war, a hoard of new offices was invented for sale, titles were auctioned, forced loans and public rents were multiplied, monetary values manipulated and for the first time a ‘capitation’ tax was imposed which the nobility did not escape. By reaching for everything, French absolutism eventually secured virtually nothing from its supreme effort of political expansion.
Peace was restored by divisions in the victorious coalition against Louis XIV, which allowed the junior branch of the Bourbon dynasty to retain the monarchy in Spain, at the price of political separation from France. The paradox of French absolutism was that its greatest domestic florescence did not coincide with its greatest international ascendancy: on the contrary, it was still defective and incomplete state structure of Richelieu and Mazarin , marked by institutional anomalies and torn by internal upheavals, which achieved spectacular foreign successes, while the consolidated and stabilized monarchy of Louis XIV – with its enormously augmented authority and army – momentously failed to impose itself on Europe or make notable territorial gains. Institutional construction and international expansion were dephased and inverted. Reason was because there already existed many strong absolutist states like Spain which held European dominance for over a century.
Thus, Louis XIV’s ultimate defeat was not due to his numerous strategic mistakes, but to the changing of the relative position of France within the European political system on the advent of the English Revolution. It was the economic rise of English capitalism and the political consolidation of its state in late 17th century which ‘overtook’ French absolutism.
Bibliography
- Anderson, Perry
Lineages of the Absolutist State
- Ertman, Thomas
Birth of the Leviathan
Building States and Regimes in Medieval and Early Modern Europe
- Huberman, Leo
Man’s Worldly Goods