The Sun King

With great anticipation I have delved into the story of Louis de Burbon. Why? Certainly not because I think Louis XIV was the pinnacle of enlightened leadership. The story of the builder of Versailles, the Grand Monarch, Machiavelli's Prince made flesh, is mainly interesting to me for the simple reason that Louis was able to take a state that had been plagued with a weak king and turn it into a state with a king who had total control (theoretically) of his state.

What I have leanred however is to put a very different face on this "absolute" monarch. Far from being the total tyrant Louis, though successfully destroying the nobility and reducing it down to The King, Dukes, and everyone else, was the king of a state that was out of anyones control. France in the 17th century was suffering from the effects of a command economy, similar to that of the Soviet Union.

In its attempt to control the flow of money into the state, its policies systematically destroyed the agricultural production. Taxes had no uniformity accept in that they were all collected inefficiently and came into the hands of corrupt civil servants. So horribly was the tax system mismanaged that it is estimated that it cost France 25% of the collected revenue just to collect the taxes.

France had the most regressive tax system imaginable. The wealthy paid practically nothing while the artisans bore the brunt. This crushed innovation, industry, agriculture, and the people themselves. Only the very poor or the very rich got off.

The best that can be said of Louis XIV is that his vast expenditures, and reduction of the power of the middle aristocracy, set France on the road to revolutioin. Louis XIV was the grandest king of his age and the longest reigning monarch in the history of Europe. The Sun King burned so brightly that the fire of French kings died out within a century after his death. Would it were that England had suffered such privations it too would no longer suffer the silliness of monarchy.