Louis XIV Assumes Personal Rule
On 10 March 1661, the day after Cardinal Mazarin died, the 22-year-old Louis XIV summoned his ministers and declared that he would henceforth be his own first minister — a deliberate break with the tradition of chief ministers that had governed France since Richelieu. Within months he had arrested Nicolas Fouquet, the flamboyant Superintendent of Finances, on charges of embezzlement and lèse-majesté, using the trial to demonstrate that no subject, however powerful, stood above the king. He installed Jean-Baptiste Colbert as his chief financial administrator and began systematically reorganising the state around royal councils directly subordinated to himself. This moment inaugurates French absolutism at its fullest institutional expression: the king as sole fount of sovereignty, consciously eliminating any institutional counterweight.
- Year: 1661 CE
- Category: Political
