General Reading.—Gardiner, The First Two Stuarts and the Puritan Revolution (Charles Scribner's Sons, $1.00). Gardiner, Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution (Clarendon Press, $2.25). For Cromwell, Carlyle, "The Hero as King" in Heroes and Hero Worship. Morley, Oliver Cromwell (The Century Company, $3.50). For the Puritans, Campbell, The Puritans in Europe, Holland, England, and America (2 vols., Harper, $5.00). Fiske, The Beginnings of New England (Houghton, Mifflin & Co., $2.00). Macaulay, Essay on Milton.
CHAPTER XXXI
THE ASCENDENCY OF FRANCE UNDER LOUIS XIV
France at the accession of Louis XIV, 1643–1715.
191. Under the despotic rule of Louis XIV (1643–1715) France enjoyed a commanding influence in European affairs. After the wars of religion were over, the royal authority had been reëstablished by the wise conduct of Henry IV. Richelieu had solidified the monarchy by depriving the Huguenots of the exceptional privileges granted to them for their protection by Henry IV; he had also destroyed the fortified castles of the nobles, whose power had greatly increased during the turmoil of the Huguenot wars. His successor, Cardinal Mazarin, who conducted the government during Louis XIV's boyhood, was able to put down a last rising of the discontented nobility.[348]
What Richelieu and Mazarin had done for the French Monarchy.
When Mazarin died in 1661, he left to the young monarch a kingdom such as no previous French king had enjoyed. The nobles, who for centuries had disputed the power with Hugh Capet and his successors, were no longer feudal lords but only courtiers. The Huguenots, whose claim to a place in the state beside the Catholics had led to the terrible civil wars of the sixteenth century, were reduced in numbers and no longer held fortified towns from which they could defy the king's agents. Richelieu and Mazarin had successfully taken a hand in the Thirty Years' War, and France had come out of it with enlarged territory and increased importance in European affairs.
The government of Louis XIV.