How Did The Enlightenment Thinkers

The Enlightenment had a profound effect on European monarchs during the 18th century. Radical Enlightenment challenged the principle of the European monarchies. The 18th century states, kings, queens, and their state servants developed a theory and practice of enlightened absolutism. Enlightenment thinkers considered themselves progressive. Many of the Enlightenment thinkers were eager to harness the political power of royal absolutism to their reforming agenda. As a result, many monarchies were overthrown.

Enlightened dictators across Europe believed they should use their concentrated power to break the influence of feudal aristocracies and the Church. They regarded themselves as instruments for protecting the good of the masses against special interests. Furthermore, they believed they could achieve these goals only if they had direct access to their

subjects and could treat them all as equals. In the later years of Enlightenment, absolute monarchs in several European countries adopted some of the ideas of Enlightenment political philosophers such as abolishing aristocratic tax immunities, limiting the nobility’s power to police the peasants, diminishing the peasant’s legal disabilities, promoting commerce, and establishing some measure of religious tolerance. Although some changes and reforms were implemented, most of these rulers did not fundamentally change absolutist rule.
Many Enlightenment thinkers paved the way for the revolts which were sure to come.

Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan and John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government defied the divine right of kings which basically stated the right to rule came from God. However, both Enlightenment thinkers proclaimed the purpose of authority was to protect human equality and freedom. Voltaire advocated for freedom of speech which would allow the people to express their ideas about government. He also supported freedom of religion which would give the people the right to worship God however they chose. Mary Wollstonecraft advocated rights for women. Jean Jacques Rousseau stated the people should agree to the rules by which they were governed and having an absolute monarchy prevented people from having true freedom. Politically, wars during the 1700s were most often fought within countries over secession to the throne rather than between opposing countries. Wars such as the English Civil War, the Glorious Revolution, the American Revolutionary War, and the French Revolution were all a direct result of this democratic Enlightenment

thinking.
As the ideas of the Enlightenment thinkers began to spread, the people began to be restless. The kings were criticized; people questioned the lives they lead under the rule of the kings; people began to fight for their freedoms and wanted a change in government. While Monarchies did rule throughout the 1700s, they did so with much less security than in earlier times. Seeking to rid their countries of tyrannical rule, the people rebelled and turned on their monarchs. In 1642, the English executed King Charles I during the English Civil War. His son, Charles II was exiled, resulting in the replacement of the English monarchy with the Commonwealth of England. The executions of King Louis XVI and his Queen Marie Antoinette were carried out by revolutionists who proclaimed their allegiance to the values of the 18th century movement of ideas. Subsequently, additional European monarchies soon fell. Royal instability suggested insecurity of the social order over which aristocracies had ruled. Thus, the effects of the Enlightenment directly impacted the monarchial rule of Europe.