A symbol of French Absolutism

Louis XIV was one of France’s most effective and powerful monarchs. He strengthened his rule with a policy of absolutism. Where the king gained authority directly from God or the divine right to rule. There were no legal limits to the powers that the king could exercise, however, during his rule a monarch had certain influential groups of people who the king needed to negotiate and consult in order to establish an effective functioning government. Among these groups where the land owning nobility, royal officer nobles, the royal commissioners, the Catholic Church, the bourgeoisie and the peasants. More notably seen the King Louis XIV is regarded as the “sun king” because of the great grandeur he …show more content…

The first was the pays d’elections which came from the provinces where they king royal officers collected the tax directly. The second being the pay d’etats in the nobles assemblies negotiated and collected the tax for the king. Thirdly there was the amount of revenue from either renting or selling the forest grounds and the sale of timber. The fourth source of revenue was the money that came from selling royal offices, fees from royal officers referred to as the venality of office. Lastly the indirect taxes collected from a variety of sources such as salt, excises on transport of goods and sales taxes. Table 2 is a chart that shows the same information as table one but does it by percent figures. From the years 1663 t01687 there an increase in the amount of taxes coming from indirect sources to be over one half of revenue for most of the years. These indirect taxes affected mostly the lower classes because they had to pay taxes on daily rudiments suck as food and drinks. Table three shows just how much of the revenue collected was dispersed throughout the province top repay loans to the government or interests on royal offices. Finally along the line of expenditures table four shows were the king spent the revenues he collected by category and table five summarizes those cater goes by tallying up the individual expenses within that category together. In conclusion this tables provide us with the sense that Colbert was able to achieve some