It is always refreshing to listen to listed tone of your lectures. It makes Sunday morning over a cup of coffee relaxing, entertaining, and educational.
If we think about the law of unintended consequences, we could see that Louis XIV paved the way to the British to establish they world trade empire, by eliminating the Dutch from the world stage and also by weakening France's finances and establishing heavy mercantilistic policies that will reduce french trade influence around the globe.
I know your probably tired, I know you probably have a lot of things to attend to and occupy on your time and mental resources but I'm glad for every video you've produced.
I have some reservation with HISTORIOGRAPHY, which I have always understood as referring to the ways/lenses historical events/people can be seen/understood: the writer's slant/thesis. I think LEGACY would be more fitting as it is part of a 3-part sequence of looking at any events: background, event, and outcome & legacy.
Great video! I know you have a busy schedule, but I think more historiography videos would be great! They are really interesting and helpful in summing up events!
"The State is me" is a formula attributed to Louis XIV and he would have pronounced April 13, 1655 in front of Parisian parliamentarians. It is supposed to remind the primacy of the royal authority in a context of mistrust with the Parliament, which contests edits taken in court of March 20, 1655. Nevertheless, historians dispute that this sentence, which does not appear in the the registers of the Parliament, was really pronounced by Louis XIV. Especially since on his death bed, Louis XIV uttered a completely different phrase saying: "I die, but the state will always remain".
A few corrections here. The United Provinces ceased existing during january of 1795 when it was replaced by a French puppet state, the Batavian Republic. At that time Napoleon wasn’t even in Italy yet! Louis XIV never said « l’état c’est moi ». He said « Je m’en vais,mais l’état demeurera toujours » which is a completely different thing.
A bit off tropic, but how would louis have picked out his naval captains before the war of the Spanish succession. He would have obviously wanted men of a higher education but were would he have lookded for such man to be his naval captions?
I would conclude that the money wasn't spend very well. While he removed the Dutch from European politics, it got replaced by an even stronger opponent in the form of England. The house of Habsburg were already in decline. The territory gained was only marginal. In the end France was bankrupt and the population suffered. The question remains if somebody other than Louis XIV would have done a better job with the same amount of resources available.
Louis did not say "I am the State." Edit: The deathbed thing is considered true usually but it is considered that as with many deathbed confessions they exaggerated the Monarch's faults, since many consider that Louis did actually relieve his subjects.
he and his enemies, who are also feudalists, have achieved that the number of dead subjects exceeded that of the living, which in turn led to the economic necessity of a peace agreement because human material had to be renewed and grown again before further fighting.
Interesting but you are repeating an error (like most of historians) Louis did not say I am the State, on the contrary at the time of his death he said" I am going but the State remains. "
I was told in my college-level Western Civilization class that Louis XIV had left France with roughly the same borders and thus didn't really make it any stronger; not really considering that France was stronger because its enemies were weaker. Would you say calling France a "military state" became accurate under Louis XIV or would you say it could be called this before him? My theory on why he told that to his son was because Louis XV was a terrible king and his father didn't want him to do something stupid and ruin all his work.
The territorial gains under Louis were definitely negligible, but he did raise a very powerful army. I wouldn't call France a "military state" in the sense that we'd think of such a thing today - or in the sense that Prussia was a "military state" even at that time. Louis was very much a patron of the arts and loved science and the theater and all of that. But he did raise the largest standing army in Europe and I believe he was responsible for turning France into Europe's pre-eminent military power at that time.
Tom Richey I meant it more in the sense of Prussia, and I was wondering because I've read France be called militarized in the middle ages as well. By the way what centuries span would you say you specialize in?
+TheSilentStorm I wouldn't really say I specialize in anything, really. The European History course I teach is 1450-Present but I'm largely self-taught outside of US History. I'll be putting up more US History videos this year - that's what I was doing on here originally when I started about four years ago but the European History videos were doing much better (and still are!) in terms of views and engagement. As for France, it was such a large country in comparison to Prussia that it didn't have to mobilize as much of its fighting age population in order to go to war. By comparison, Prussia, as a much smaller country, had to devote a lot more of the nation's manpower and resources in order to have a strong military.
Tom Richey I would've guessed 1500-present, but I thought with a focus on European history so that's interesting to know. Would you say Louis XIV is the first French king to devote an extraordinary amount of manpower and resources into the army? I remember in one video you said France had a lot of weak and forgettable kings early on.
I guess the results of his reign is mixed. On one hand did he crack down on the nobility, but on the other hand he kicked out the hugenotts - which was a huge mistake. He had great advisors, but he also spoiled much of the progress Colbert made. And prinz Eugen of Savoy decided to leave France to join the Austrian military, an event which later on would lead him to bring his military skills at work against France. Vaubans great fortress (aka "star wars") project did cost huge sums of money, while France safety was put in jeopardy anyways by powerful alliances by neighbours who felt threatened. Vauban was also an expert of every town in France, and suggested a very controversial, but very rational tax plan that would have brought fury from the nobility if it ever had been implemented. But no one dared to. So then the french revolution happened, and the new government washed away all dust from Vaubans plan and implemented much of it.
Could Louis letter be interpreted as him wanting his accomplishments to be immortalised i.e. He didn't want his son casting a shadow over his accomplishments with greater victories and therefore tried to sway him against conquest?
lol, you call history an art again, you got alot of shit for calling it that before by the drunken peasents. Could you elaborate on that. I'm sure you actually have a completelly legitimate reason for saying that.
