Cardinal Mazarin's The Sun King Louis XIV

The Sun King, Louis XIV, born in 1638, becomes king at the young age of four years old. Though a troublesome child, his advisors knew him to be a natural born leader (Biography.com). When he comes into power, Louis was too young to really run an entire country. His mentor and tutor, Cardinal Mazarin, helps him and teaches him. When a huge civil war breaks out over Cardinal Mazarin, Mazarin starts getting Louis to really take on the idea of the Divine Right Theory. As Louis grows older in his politics, his policies starts change with him. Louis XIV believed that there should be some type of hierarchy in the military, that people should abide by Divine Right Theory, that instead of fixing the huge flaws in the taxes, France should just switch to mercantilism, and that France should expand itself overseas. These things pushed themselves into what people see as the French Revolution. Louis XIV’s policies on

His mother appointed Cardinal Mazarin to be his tutor and mentor. In Mazarin’s teaching, he made young Louis write down, repeatedly, “Homage is due to kings. They do as they please.”(Stokes 10). As Mazarin tries to instill Divine Right Theory in Louis, there begins a widespread unhappiness for the idea of royal power being extended to Mazarin. There begins these civil wars called Frondes. Soon the Nobles, bourgeoisie, and the workers start to rise against this expansion of power. The first Fronde starts when Louis is ten, but the second one, starts actual riots. The nobles and ‘middle class’ start fighting in the streets and barricades. These were the one of the few starting grounds for the The French Revolution. Leo Gershoy, a history professor, says, “The Fronde was the last attempt before the Revolution to promulgate a charter limiting royal absolutism, and its failure assured the triumph of the doctrine of absolutism in the long personal reign of Louis XIV.” (Gershoy