Louis XIV and Twenty Million Frenchmen
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, famine and war served to further keep the population in check “In the never-ending battle marked by advances and withdrawals of the plague, by sudden attacks of famine, followed by equally sudden retreats, the forces of life and fertility tended on the whole to combat death in all its aspects” (Goubert 25).
The production of France revolved around agriculture, but because of a lack of technology production was not efficient. It was difficult to collect taxes ...