Louis XIV Book Report

In Louis XIV and Twenty Million Frenchmen, historian Pierre Goubert gives us a unique interpretation of the era of Louis XIV. Shunning the traditional “glitter of Versailles” interpretation of the era, Goubert renders a depiction of the reign of France’s “glorious” king in relation to the ordinary men and women of the age. By assessing the rule of Louis XIV in this way, Goubert attempts to show the king in relation to the populace that were affected by his social policy decisions. By highlighting the diplomatic and political history of the era, Goubert is able to explain the results of these policy decisions on the people of France. As Goubert (8) says of his purpose in examining the reign of Louis XIV from this perspective “The object of this book is rather to set Louis in relation to his kingdom and his time and ultimately to consider the eternal problem of the great man in history.”

Through an examination of the economy and the social structure, Goubert provides us with a look at the social conditions affecting the people of France during Louis’ reign under Mazarin. We discover through demographic statistics that high birth rates were offset by high levels of mortality. People had a life expectancy of less than twenty-five years and infant mortality equated to one out of four babies dying, but the natural fecundity of the French population proved to combat such demographic statistics even though disease, famin

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XIV’s ambitions surpassed his actual abilities “In 1661, the king even imagined, like his forbears and like Cato of old, that he could control the way his subjects dressed and ‘do away with all these fancy foreign ideas’. But even in his early days, French fashion decline to bow to Louis.” Where more serious aspects of Louis’ reign are concerned, the author does agree that Louis was able to consolidate his domestic resource base in order to achieve his goals of territorial expansion and the assumption of a bigger role international politics. However, Goubert argues that Louis’ ambitious reach extended past his warrior and intellectual abilities. The king viewed the rest of Europe as weak and vulnerable. So, too, the king was prone to ignoring economic matters that would eventually not be ignored and further serve to undermine his goals. In some judgments, Goubert (302) contends Louis was prescient, in others, just plain ignorant “Some of his observations, as regards Spain and Italy, were perfectly correct. In others, he was mistaken. He stupidly underestimated the United Provinces, as though a small, bourgeois and Calvinist population were an inevitable sign of weakness.” The policies of the “majestic” king are also criti
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Approximate Word count = 1896
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)

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