France & the Birth of Modernity

Before Louis XIV, Voltaire explains, ôthe Italians called all the peoples beyond the Alps barbarians, and one must admit that the French partially deserved the insultö (Voltaire 124). He goes on to explain that at this time, France did not have culture, in part, because they did not have the necessities of life. France, he explains, had no fleet, and sparse industry. He describes a desolate France in which the nobility tyrannize the provinces, and France allowed other nations to carry on its commerce. Essentially, he surmises that ôever since the decline of the family of Charlemagne, France had been more of less languishing in this same state of weakness, because she had hardly ever enjoyed a good governmentö (Voltaire 125).

In Memoires, Louis XIV himself, describes the state of France at the time he was

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e time holding little power, as the parlements of the provinces created their own rule. The parlements were the 13 sovereign courts of the French judicial system, which held seats in Paris, and 13 other provincial centers. Their formation was essentially a result of the political tension between that monarchy and the aristocracy. Unfortunately the creation of these parlements only festered the growth of the political tensions, as it gave the aristocracy too much power. Harris argues that the work of Louis XIV was ôthe completion of the work of Henry IV, Richelieu, and Mazarinö, and certainly this seems to be the case, as the ôfundamental theme of government in seventeenth-century France was the defeat of the forces of feudal disintegration, and the achievement of state absolutismö (Harris 77). We see this in Voltaire: Henry the Great was on the point of rescuing France from the calamities and the barbarity into which thirty years of civil discord had plunged it, when he was assassinated in his capital in the midst of a people whose happiness he was just beginning to achieve. Cardinal Richelieu, occupied in reducing the power in the house of Austria, the Calvinists, and the nobility, never enjoyed a period of peaceful power in w
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2351
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)

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