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Title: Age of Louis XIV by Will Durant, Ariel Durant ISBN: 0-671-01215-0 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Pub. Date: 01 December, 1963 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $40.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.75 (8 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Sunrise, Sunset!
Comment: Over the past year I have read extensively about the 17th century. "The Age of Louis XIV" is the best book which I have found on the period. Volume VII of Will and Ariel Durant's multi-volume "Story of Civilization", this book documents more detail of the era than any others which I have read.
The book begins with sections on France and England. The next section is "The Periphery" dealing with Russia, Poland, Scandinavia, Germany, Italy, and Iberia. After the geographically oriented sections, the reader is treated to sections organized along intellectual topics, such as science, philosophy, and faith and reason, which contain chapters dealing with specific philosophers or scientists. The conclusion wraps it all up with the denouement of Louis XIV.
This book makes the 17th century understandable. The premier character of the era was Louis XIV, the Sun King of France. During his reign, the policies of he and his ministers established France's day in the sun. Absolute ruler of the most populous and powerful kingdom in Western Europe, Louis made France the center of Western Civilization. On these pages we learn about the Fronde, the revolt by the nobility at the rising of his Sun, from which Louis acquired his life long aversion to Paris, Louis' aggressive support of Catholicism, while at the same time maintaining illicit personal relationships, and his generous support for the arts. This era, rich in French literature and theatre, as represented in Moliere, is revealed.
The forces threatening to rend the Catholic Church further asunder, as well as the relationship between King and Pope, are dealt with in detail. I was surprised to learn that Louis exercised a power over the Church in France similar to that which Henry VIII had previously established over the Church in England.
England, meanwhile, endured Cromwell, The Stuart Restoration, and the Glorious Revolution, while spawning Milton, Dryden, Swift and other literary giants.
Interesting contrasts are illustrated. Whereas in France the monarchy was strengthened into absolutism, England was making hesitating steps toward democracy. Whereas Louis excluded much of the nobility from government and military service, essentially forcing them into the role of idle rich, the English nobility gradually gained power and responsibility for the governance of their country. We can see how these trends may have encouraged the resentment of the aristocrats on the part of the French peasantry, which may have contributed to the intensity of feeling during The Terror of the French Revolution. By contrast, the empowerment of the English nobility may have helped solidify the tradition of peaceful political maturation.
On the Periphery, Charles XII brought Sweden to the zenith of its international power, while Peter the great modernized Russia. Germany survived the onslaught of the Turks, while Italy and Iberia, the "Old Europe" of the day, slid through an era of decline.
Intellectually the era was one of giants. Many of the names with which we are familiar come alive as we read of Isaac Newton, Thomas Hobbes, John Lock, Spinoza, Leibniz and others.
The conclusion of the era was the sunset of the Sun King. Having exhausted his country with dynastic war, bled it with unequal taxation and incurred the enmity of the world, Louis negotiated a peace which left his kingdom a shattered hulk of its former greatness.
For anyone desiring an introduction to the history of the 17th century, this is a great place to start. It has me ready for other books in the Durants' "Story of Civilization".
Rating: 5
Summary: Amazing masterpiece.
Comment: Though the central figure of this book is Louix XIV, this book is not about French history, but about European history as a whole.
The focus of this book is not on political and military history but on the history of religion, art, literature, science and philosophy. Or I can say politics is deeply involved in religion, art, literature and philosophy. I have never studied European philosophy before, and I thought it would be exttremely difficult to understand philosophy. But while I was reading this book, I found that phlosophy could be much easier when it was explained in a political context of the times.
And in this book English history was emphasized as much as French history. It is quite natural because Louis himself was deeply involved in and greatly responsible for the 17th century English history, and Thomas Hobbes and John Locke were Englishmen.
I believe that this book is the best book I've ever read. I'd like to read all 12 volumes of Will & Ariel Durant's "The History of Civilization" series.
By the way, I found 2 trivial mistakes in this book.
According to p 505, Halley identified another comet, seen in 1680, with one observed in the year of Christ's death; he traced its recurrence every 575 years, and from the periodicity he computed its orbit and speed around the sun. According to my own calculation, however, 575 x 2 + 33 = 1183, while 575 x 3 + 33 = 1758.
According to p 513, Mariotte amused his friends by showing that "cold" could burn: with a concave slab of ice he focused sunlight upon gunpowder, causing it to explode. To focus sunlight, however, we need a convex lens, not a concave lens.
Rating: 5
Summary: Another masterful volume of the landmark series
Comment: The Durants succeed again in encapsulating the 17th century in Europe. They label it as the landmark century intellectually and scientifically and there is much truth to their assessment: the 18th Century, the "Enlightenment" and "Aufklarung" usually takes pride of place given the American and French Revolutions that dominated them and the general retreat of superstition and obscurantism that marred both Catholicism and Protestantism in the previous centuries. The Durants clearly show that all the 18th century did was develop themes initially sounded and expounded by 17th century thinkers such as Hobbes, Locke, Newton, Leibniz, Spinoza and the English Deists. These writers, and others, laid the bedrock for the various revolutions that shook Europe in the 1700 and 1800s and which have culminated in our own day: The Industrial, Political and Scientific.
Thematically, the book is erected upon the scaffolding of the Le Roi Soleil's life. They present his wars, mistresses, patronage of art, political autocracy as well as murderous bigotry. In my opinion, in their conclusion they let Louis off far too lightly. He was a man who countenanced, nay, actually encouraged and gloried not only in wars to dominate Europe--a common enough failing amongst the crowned--but in the Persecution of the Huguenots he left a blot on his record that, in light of the deadly century we just left and the religious fanaticism of 11 September, should sink his record in the humanitarian sense.
His vanity and thirst for "la glorie" (which he admitted himself to have been his worst failing) bankrupted France and left the Peasants in a savage and degrading poverty they hadn't experienced since the calamities of the 14th century. His refusal to use his power to actually reform government and tax the nobility mark his reign as regressive and disastrous in many ways. Still his impeccable taste in the visual and plastic arts-as opposed to his love of second-rate playwrights and third-rate opera--make him the supreme art patron in history. And the prestige and admiration that accumulated acted as a sort of bank that his incompetent, worthless successor cruised upon. Only under sixteenth Louis did the credit of the Sun King's name finally run out...
Still, the Durants must credited for making this error sparkle and shimmer with life and the lovely prose still entrances and pleases regardless of how dull or recondite the subject might be. Again, they are two of the greatest of all American writers. Someday, I hope, they will be acknowledged as such.
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Title: STORY OF CIVILIZATION, VOL V: THE RENAISSANCE by Will Durant ISBN: 0671616005 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Pub. Date: 01 December, 1953 List Price(USD): $40.00 |
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Title: The Age of Napoleon: A History of European Civilization from 1789 to 1815 by Will Durant, William James Durant, Ariel Durant ISBN: 067121988X Publisher: Simon & Schuster Pub. Date: 01 October, 1975 List Price(USD): $40.00 |
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Title: Age of Reason Begins by Will Durant ISBN: 0671013203 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Pub. Date: 01 December, 1961 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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Title: Rousseau and Revolution: A History of Civilization in France, England, and Germany from 1756, and in the Remainder of Europe from 1715, to 1789 by Will Durant, Ariel Durant ISBN: 1567310214 Publisher: MJF Books Pub. Date: 01 July, 1997 List Price(USD): $17.98 |
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Title: The Reformation by Will Durant ISBN: 0671610503 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Pub. Date: 01 June, 1957 List Price(USD): $40.00 |
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