| This paper attempts to discuss the transformation of absolute monarchy in France by taking the reform of the Regency period from 1715 to 1723 as an entry point.Scholars generally believe that the absolute monarchy in France was very ill by the time of Louis XVI,and that the crisis of the absolute monarchy did not occur at the time of its imminent demise,but after the peak of Louis XIV began to show its shortcomings.At this turning point of prosperity and decline,the aristocracy led by the duke of Orleans,the regent,began to reform the absolute monarchy in France,trying to solve the dilemma of the absolute monarchy.The dilemma of absolute monarchy in France has existed in the process of its theoretical construction.In the Middle Ages,French Kings were only "Kings" in their territories,unable to exercise direct jurisdiction over the territories that had been granted to nobles,who exercised judicial,tax and military powers similar to those of Kings.In order to rule the country,the French Kings in this period had to rely on the power of the church,the nobility,the guilds and other intermediate groups.The power of the French Kings in the middle ages was also restricted by these intermediate groups.Therefore,the king had to hold an estates-general meeting when taxing all his subjects.The drawback of this feudal monarchy was that once some big nobles were equal to or more powerful than the king,they would threaten and challenge the royal power.At the end of 16 th century,“les Guerres de religion”broke between Catholic and protestant,this is a result of the reasons above.On the surface,it is a religious conflict,in fact also doped the nobles and the king's power struggle,religious wars of the civil war and unrest due to prompt the French political thinkers began to think about the way out to solve this problem.In the late 16 th century,Jean Bodin first proposed the theory of sovereign sovereignty.He believed that sovereignty was the supreme power in a kingdom,which was indivisible and belonged to the king alone.The sovereign king could not only be free from artificial laws,but also establish new laws through legislative power.In the early seventeenth century,Charles Loyseau further developed Bodin's theoryof sovereignty.His innovation was to prove the legitimacy of the power of the king to create an office.The holders of the office obtained through the sale of the office represented the public power granted by the king,rather than the private power of the feudal Lord.On the basis of the former two,Le Bret combined the thought of state rationality to demonstrate the purpose of the king's use of absolute power,and to demonstrate the crime of lese majesty,which further freed the absolute power of the king.At this point,the French king has transformed from vindicator in medieval times to become the leader to lead the country forward.The French king has supreme power above nobles and social groups,Estates General,Assembly of notables has less constraint over royal power theoretically,as a result,the French king never called the Estates General to determine the taxing issue from 1614.However,the absolutism also faces a dilemma in the development practice: the absolute power of the king is more and more unrestricted in its use scope,time and purpose.Although Bodin,Loyseau,Le Bret,and later Bossuet all believed that the king should exercise absolute power in accordance with divine law,natural law,and the basic laws of the kingdom,in reality there was no specific institution that could restrain the king.Louis XIV put the theory of absolute monarchy into practice.He excluded the great nobles from decision-making in politics,and appointed the minor nobles to provide professional advice,finally he made the decision alone.At the same time,he used intendants to take over the judicial officials,using the administrative power to replace judicial power.Under the principle of "l'état,c'est ŕmoi",Louis XIV started a long foreign war,which he believed would bring honor to the king and happiness to the people.On the contrary,the war initiated by Louis XIV laid a heavy burden on the French people.At the end of the reign of Louis XIV,the great nobles represented by Fenelon and Saint-Simon united around the future heir to the French throne,the duke of Burgundy,they educated him that the king's duty is not to pursuit personal glory,but the happiness of people.They wanted the future king of France to be free of arbitrary personal rule,to rule openly with the help of great nobles,and to abdicate foreign wars and lighten the burden of the French people.Then they proposed theestablishment of a national Estates General system,the specialized division of state affairs of the Polysynodie and other specific reform measures.Although the duke of Burgundy died young and failed to succeed to the throne,these ideas and plans set the tone for reform during the Regency period.The regent tried to change the absolute monarchy with a series of reforms: a political attempt to solve the problem of the king's decision-making errors caused by his personal arbitrariness,the use of a small number of cronies,and the lack of adequate information.The Polysynodie divided the affairs of the state among seven committees,each composed mainly of the great nobility,on religion,foreign affairs,war,finance,navy,domestic affairs,and commerce.The Regent won the support of the nobility through the Polysynodie,and changed the restrictions on his personal rights in Louis XIV's will.However,the regent did not delegate full decision-making power to the Polysynodie,and the Polysynodie acted only as advisory bodies.In the actual operation process,the Polysynodie became an arena of political conflicts between nobles,nobles has been excluded from administration for a long time,this made them insufficient to govern,all these defects made the Polysynodie inefficient and unable to suitable to the local administrative system of Louis XIV,eventually they are abolished by regent after three years.The regent appointed a Scottish economist John Law to put forward paper money and banking reform in order to solve currency and debt crisis.Unlike previous French finance directors,who cut back on coinage,increased the face value of the currency and over issued coinage,John law proposes two different approaches to reform: First shall give priority to deal with the issue of currency shortages,rather than to pay down debt,he set up a private bank called the general bank,through cash a cheque at any time and proper management,his bank win the trust of French.He used this bank by issuing a lot of banknotes to solve the problem of shortage of money,and after the general bank upgrade for the royal bank,the banknotes have become same money as coin money legally.Second,Law set up a Mississippi company with a trading monopoly,lured investors into buying shares by advertising the company's expected high profits,and solved the debt crisis by convertingFrance's huge public debt into shares in the company after the value of the shares had risen.But in practice,Law's system,in which banks issued notes far in excess of their reserves,led to devaluation and inflation.The reforms also touched the interests of the parlementaires and financiers,adding the influence of the plague in Marseille,Law's reform of paper money and bank ends with failure.The failure of the Regency reforms marked the failure of the conservative transformation of absolute monarchy in France.The reform in the Regency period was carried out on the premise of not denying the legitimacy of the absolute royal power.The great nobles who initiated the reform hoped to transform the personal arbitrary rule formed by Louis XIV into a mild monarchy governed jointly by the king and the nobles by increasing the political participation of the nobles.Although the reform of the regent failed,his reform ideas and measures had a profound impact on the later reformers and revolutionaries in French Revolution. |
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