Absolutism In The 17th Century Essay

The 17th Century saw the height of absolutism in Europe. The monarchs Louis XIV, who ruled France from 1643 to 1715, and Peter the Great, who ruled Russia from 1682 to 1725, both obtained absolute power in their states. Both subjugated nobles, both developed armies, and both failed to address social inequalities.

Both Louis and Peter were traumatized early in their reigns by noble uprisings. The Fronde, an attempt by French nobles to decentralize the government by limiting the king’s power, began in 1650. Because Louis was at that time too young to rule, Cardinal Mazarin was the administrator. With help from the bourgeoisie and peasants, who had little to gain from a noble takeover (a return to feudalistic society), Mazarin suppressed the

Two thirds of Louis’s seventy-two year rule was spent at war, and under him, French expansionism reached its height (specifically at the Peace of Utrecht, which ended the War of Spanish Succession). He introduced the army to artillery, reformed the chain of command, and increased the size of the army tenfold from 25,000 men to 250,000, at times even reaching 400,000, the biggest army in Europe. However, because France often challenged the balance of power principle and faced resistance from all Europe, his wars were largely unsuccessful and resulted in an insurmountable national debt. Peter was much more successful militarily. He brought back from his Grand Tour the Prussian organization and discipline and applied it to the Russian rabble army. His reforms were tested immediately in 1700 by Charles XII of Sweden in the Great Northern War. The more experienced Swedes initially held the upper hand, but as the Russian army developed, they began to hold their own and eventually beat back the Swedes at Poltava in 1709, marking the first signs of Russia’s prominence. In 1721, Peter signed the Treaty of Nystad, granting him the Baltic States and the all-important water access. He built his new, Western inspired capital city, St. Petersburg, on the Gulf of