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Louis XIV (1643 – 1715) – The Sun King
Louis XIV was the King of France for 54 years. This long period of rule allowed him to dominated France. Louis was called "the Sun King" not only because he used the sun as his symbol, but because he believed that France depended on him the way the earth depended on the sun. Louis acted as the center of France, directing and controlling the lives of his subjects, often without caring about their own wishes.
Louis XIV was able to directly control the workings of his government through the administrative organization of his government. An important point of his administration was that he appointed intendants, or royal managers, from the middle class to govern the different parts of France according to his commands. The intendants were loyal to Louis XIV because they wanted to keep their positions. They worked to strengthen the power of the king by building the French economy and collecting taxes from the population. While these economic policies did grow the economy, the high taxes made many middle and lower class French citizens very poor.
Louis XIV's power was based his wealth. He used his wealth to build the Palace of Versailles to represent the glory and power of his reign. Versailles was more than just the center of Louis’ government. Louis spent extravagant amounts of money to make Versailles the cultural center of Europe. He financially supported the best artists, musicians and writers to make his court a sophisticated, luxurious and splendorous environment, which
Peter the Great - Tsar of Russia
was envied and copied by European monarchs for generations. Louis cleverly used Versailles to weaken the nobles so they could not rebel against him. He required the nobles of France to live at Versailles so that he could keep an eye on them. However, many nobles actually enjoyed living at Versailles because it was so luxurious and there was always something to do. As a result of having to move to Versailles, the nobles became “absentee landlords”, which means they didn't take care of the peasants who worked their land. Louis also used his money to fight wars to spread his power. For 30 of the 54 years that he ruled France, France was at war. Louis had the largest army in Europe at the time, with more than 400,000 professional soldiers. His most costly war was the War of the Spanish Succession where the other countries of Europe united in a "Balance of Power" strategy to defeat France. The smaller countries formed alliances to “balance” the greater power of France, because they saw France as such a big threat. Because of this, France was unable to use its greater military power to win any major victories.
Louis was a Catholic monarch and he believed that everyone should be the same religion because he believed this would give him more authority. In 1685, Louis revoked the Edict of Nantes. An “edict” is an order from a king. The Edict of Nantes was issued by Louis' grandfather, Henry IV, and it allowed people to have religious freedom. When Louis XIV took away their religious freedom, hundreds of thousands of merchants and craftsmen who were not Catholic left France and went to countries like England and the Netherlands, where they could practice their religion. Ultimately, the loss of this skilled and productive population hurt the economy of France and strengthened the economies of France’s enemies.
Peter the Great is remembered in Russia during the 43 years he ruled Russia as an absolute monarch, he transformed it from an isolated, backward country, into a major power in Europe. When Peter I became tsar (Russian word for emperor) in 1682, Russia was an underdeveloped country that was isolated from Europe. It was dominated by the conservative Russian Orthodox Church, and the people who lived in Russia were either nobles (boyars) or peasant serfs.
Peter was the first tsar to ever travel outside of Russia. He led a 250 man group called the “Grand Embassy” on a tour across Western Europe to learn as much as he could about how other Europeans worked to in order to use this knowledge to modernize Russia. For example, Peter worked as a carpenter building ships in Amsterdam, a studied dentistry and visited workshops in England where they made weapons. He also met other monarchs and learned how they organized and ran their governments. When he returned to Russia, Peter brought with him almost 700 European experts. Peter planned to use these experts to modernize Russia by making it more European. Peter did a lot to reform Russia such as putting Russia on the same calendar as the rest of Europe, publishing the first newspaper, opening the first public theater and translating foreign literature into Russian. He also had 200 factory workshops built and 52 iron works built, making Russia the world’s largest producer of iron.
Peter the Great wanted to help Russia become a more modern country. However, many people in Russia liked the traditional way of doing things and opposed Peter’s plans for modernization. One way Peter tried to modernize Russia was to force Russian men to shave their beards and make everyone wear western style clothes (instead of traditional Russian clothes). This resulted in increasing resentment against “modern ideas” from Europe. However, Peter ignored the complaints and used brute force to accomplish his goals.
Peter fought wars to expand Russia’s territory and make it a major power in Europe. Peter recognized that major powers of Europe all had access to the sea, and that to be a major power Russia also had to develop a navy. This posed a problem since Russia did not have access to the sea. Peter knew that Russia had to expand to gain access to the ocean. This meant Peter had to fight Russia’s southern neighbor, the Ottoman Empire, and its northern neighbor, Sweden. First Peter fought the Ottoman Empire for control of the port of Azov on the Black Sea. Then Peter fought the Great Northern War against Sweden for access to the Baltic Sea. In the war, Peter gained a strip of land on the Baltic Sea that he used to build a new capital city for Russia.
Peter built the city of St. Petersburg on the strip of land he captured on the Baltic Sea to be the symbol of the modern Russia he was creating. Peter began the construction of St. Petersburg in 1703 on a swamp next to the Baltic Sea. Through the will of his personality and brute force, St. Petersburg was built as one of the most modern cities in Europe. Between 30,000 and 100,000 peasant died building the city. He intended the city to be Russia’s “Window to Europe”, which would allow Russians to have closer contact with Europe. Peter hired Italian and French architects to design and oversee the building of the city. He ordered government officials and nobles to build houses and live in the city. Peter built a winter and summer palace (called the Peterhof or “The Russian Versailles”) in the city, as well as museums, libraries and the Academy of Science. In 1712, Peter moved the capital of Russia from Moscow to St. Petersburg. St. Petersburg would remain the capital of Russia until the Russian Revolution in 1918.
Through his reign, his domineering style and powerful mind, Peter began the transformation of Russia into a modern country and a major power in Europe. However, the process of modernization created a problem since it was based on the leader dictating and controlling the change instead of the Russian people taking charge of their own modernization. As a result, many parts of Russia, outside of St. Petersburg and Moscow, remained isolated and poor.
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