France in the seventeenth century furnished the best
example of an absolute monarchy supported by pretensions to divine right.
French absolutism owed most of all to Cardinal Richelieu, the chief
minister of Louis XIII. Though a man of poor physique and in weak health, he
possessed such strength of will, together with such thorough understanding of
politics, that he was able to dominate the king and through the king to govern
France for eighteen years (1624-1642 A.D.).
POLICIES OF RICHELIEU
Richelieu's foreign policy led to his intervention on the
side of the Protestants at a decisive moment in the Thirty Years' War. The
great cardinal, however, did not live to see the triumph of his measures in the
Peace of Westphalia, which humiliated the Hapsburgs and raised France to the
first place among the states of western Europe. Richelieu's domestic policy—to
make the French king supreme—was equally successful. Though the nobles were
still rich and influential, Richelieu beat down their opposition by forbidding
the practice of duelling, that last remnant of private warfare, by ordering
many castles to be blown up with gunpowder, and by bringing rebellious dukes
and counts to the scaffold. Henceforth the nobles were no longer feudal lords
but only courtiers.
