The French monarchy Essay Example

The French monarchy Essay Example The French monarchy Essay The French monarchy Essay Essay Topic: History French monarchy was delegitimized due to various reasons, started off by Louis XV who provided an undesirable legacy of which Louis XV1 was going to suffer for. These problems caused him to lose any respect of his people and of his rule. The first thing that Louis XV did that lead to contempt in the people was the removal of the Paris parlement which was the most powerful parlement. Although the parlement did not represent the people, due to it being full of nobles, it still gave the people something to hold on to. The parlements main function was to prevent royal despotism and removing it solved the problem of opposition. The contempt in the people persuaded Louis XV1 to bring back the parlement to gain some cheap popularity. This was a foolish mistake since the blame went to his grandfather and bringing it back just gave opportunities for people to hinder his rule. The second thing that Louis XV did was to form an alliance with Austria going into the Seven years war, which was not very clever since Austria and France were traditional enemies and no alliance would make peace between the peoples. The huge defeats at the battle of Rosbach further fuelled the contempt and his decision to arrange his sons marriage to an Austrian girl automatically put his son in a difficult in future life. Sleaze was another big thing Louis XV took unto. He had many mistresses, but ithe type of mistresses he had especially proved foolish. One of his mistresses was Madame Du Barry, a high-class prostitute and this legacy of sleaze gave Louis XV1 a reputation of being unfaithful, although he was which was unfair. The people thought Louis XV1 was untrustworthy and so led to delegitimization. However, Louis XVl only provided a basis for failure, but Louis XV1 increased upon it. Louis built up a huge amount of royal debts due to the feudal system where only the peasants with little money had to pay tax. This meant that the peasants were more heavily taxed and so discontent grew. The peasants could not voice their discontents since they were not represented at Versailles properly by the Third Estate. This meant that delegitimization was inevitable. Louiss public life let the press know everything about him and so any weaknesses he had. This gave them material upon which to criticize. The public life was unfair as a reason for delegitimization because that was the tradition of France and so he followed it. However, it turned out that the public knew about the Kings circumcision due to his inability to have sex. This was another weakness, but prior to it, the lack of an heir led to Marie Antoinette getting blamed, which was hardly fair since it was actually Louis fault. She g ot nicknamed the Austrian bitch. Everything that can be said about Marie Antoinette and her contribution to the delegitimization of the monarchy is, in my opinion, unfair. She did not deserve her nickname, since she was in a foreign country which she did not choose to be in. It was her bully of a mother, Marie Theresa who made her marry into the French royal family. She had gone through many humiliating experiences, such as being handed over naked to the French at the border. There was much pornographic media concerning her, talking of her orgies when actually she was not like that at all. These criticisms were unfair, but still led to delegitimization. Overall, I feel that the actions of Louis XV provided a basis for delegitimization, but Louis XV1 also contributed. I feel that Marie Antoinette did nothing wrong and was only given a perception of everything evil in France by the media.