In 1643, five year old Louis XIV was officially crowned King of France but of course, given his very young age, he did not actually rule the country himself. Instead, two ministers/advisors, Cardinals Richelieu and Mazarin, would govern in the young king’s place until 1661, when he reached the age of twenty-three. During this time, France experienced several instances of social upheaval, many of which were provoked by Mazarin’s attempt to take away some of the traditional privileges (such as tax exemptions) enjoyed by the nobility. In response, great numbers of these aristocrats joined together to rebel against the French crown. Known as the “Fronde,” these protests broke out many times between 1649 and 1652. Louis was greatly influenced by the “Fronde,” which he viewed as a consequence of his ministers’ weak and inept handling of the unruly nobles. The young king was determined to never allow unrest such as the “Fronde” to reoccur. In his eyes, the best course of action was for him to set himself up as an absolute monarch, one who would not tolerate rebellions, protests, or dissent but would also rule fairly and firmly. When he was finally able to assume the throne and rule independently in 1661, Louis immediately embarked on a campaign to increase his power as monarch. He handled the nobles with subtlety and grace, working to erode their power base and prove his superior standing while also managing to keep their loyalty and their political involvements under his firm control. As long as the aristocrats would agree to respect his position as King, he was prepared to allow them to retain their traditional privileges and local spheres of authority.

As King of France, Louis XIV reigned according to a philosophy which he summed up as “I am the state.” This statement was based on Louis’s belief in the so-called divine right of kings. A popular political philosophy for many centuries, the divine right of kings was the belief that a monarch derived his/her right to rule directly from God and was therefore immune to challenge or judgment. Throughout history, many monarchs around the globe (from Europe to Asia to the Middle East) would justify their positions according to this rationale but King Louis XIV took the philosophy to a new extreme. By declaring “I am the state,” Louis explicitly identified himself with the sociopolitical and physical existence of France. He viewed the nation as his own personal property, granted to him by virtue of divinely-determined genetics. As such, each and every event, person, and program that made up the French government, economic system, and social order fell under Louis’s direct control and was dependent upon his approval for its very existence. In modern terms, this made the King a micromanager – he adopted an intensely personal ruling style, in which all funds, permissions, projects, and power were ultimately allowed, denied, and/or controlled by him alone. He handed out favors, jobs, and money personally, at his own discretion and based on his feelings about the individual person.

As King of France in the late seventeenth century, Louis XIV was determined to strengthen his country’s position on the European continent. The King was especially concerned about France’s international reputation – in his mind, France would never truly be safe until her neighbors (particularly England and Spain) feared and respected her (and himself) in equal measure. With this mindset, Louis’s main foreign policy goal became securing France’s borders against all territorial incursions and military invasions. France’s northern border was particularly vulnerable; this region, which abutted the Spanish Netherlands and included the disputed territories of Alsace and Lorraine, had historically been used many times before as staging spots from which foreign armies had invaded the country. Louis was determined to strengthen this notoriously weak spot. Another area of concern was the southern border, which France shared with Spain. Louis considered the Spanish monarchy to be a persistent threat, especially given the long history of personal animosity between the French and Spanish crowns, and so he also took measures to build up France’s military presence along this border as well. While Louis’s efforts at securing the French border did indeed inspire fear in the minds of his European neighbors, his policy also backfired. While Spain and the Netherlands were deeply alarmed by what they saw as France’s newly threatening stance, this fear did not cause them to back down (as Louis had hoped) but instead would soon lead them to form military alliances in an attempt to take France down.

Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Central and Eastern Europe was overwhelmingly dominated by three dynasties. These were: the Hohenzollerns, who controlled Prussia; the Romanovs, who reigned as the czars of Russia for over three hundred years; and the Habsburgs of Austria. These three ruling houses wielded any and all of the region’s significant political power. Naturally, they all also treasured ambitions of ruling over their subjects in the same absolute monarchial style favored by many of their Western European counterparts.

Throughout the seventeenth century Poland’s government and political system was essentially nonfunctional. The government was run jointly by a monarch (who was elected by the nobility) and a legislative body (also comprised of the nobility) known as the “Sejm.” The bulk of the nation’s political problems all stemmed from the Sejm, which was notorious for its infighting and inability to agree or compromise. Often, the body’s members couldn’t even agree on the proper candidate for the kingship, let alone on more mundane matters such as financial or administrative concerns. To make matters worse, the Sejm operated under an entirely nonsensical rule – known as the “liberum veto,” this rule dictated that the entire body had to be dissolved for the remainder of the governing term if even ONE of its members disagreed on any piece of legislation. This veto completely derailed Poland’s entire political system, as each time a single member raised any sort of strenuous objection or criticism of a potential law, the entire legislature was legally required to pack up and go home (which they all too often did)! No real legislative progress could be made, no governmental issues assessed or resolved, and Poland’s entire political structure – and then the country – descended into weakness and atrophy.

The year 1714 was a very important year for the Habsburg’s Austrian Empire. It was in during this year that Austria concluded the Treaty of Rastatt with France, finally ending their longstanding quarrel over the Spanish Succession. The terms of this peace deal were extremely favorable to Austria – the Habsburgs gained control over both Lombardy (a region in northern Italy) and the entire Spanish Netherlands, which thereafter became known as the Austrian Netherlands. By that time, the Austrian Empire already covered a vast swathe of territory, including Hungary, Croatia, Transylvania (modern Romania), Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, and Wenceslas. With the treaty’s new additions, the Austrian Empire expanded even more dramatically, far beyond their original few possessions in the German states. The Habsburg rulers took these new acquisitions as a favorable sign and quickly began consolidating their power over their new territories and citizens.

Unfortunately for the Habsburgs, more land did not automatically bring with it more peace or more prosperity. Instead, the Austrian Habsburgs quickly found that it was nearly impossible to govern their vast empire in any sort of unified, logical way. This was due to one simple but hugely influential factor: geographic size. When combined together, all of the many territories, duchies, regions, and kingdoms over which the Habsburgs ruled were simply way too large to function as one political unit. Along with all this new land came a wide variety of new peoples from many different ethnic groups, all speaking different languages, following varying local customs, and following several religious faiths. The Austrian Empire was unable to find any sort of common ground on which its diverse citizens could unify; instead, the Habsburgs had to rule each region separately, according to the various traditions, dominant languages, and most popular religions of each locale. By necessity, this stretched the Austrian government even further, as vast numbers of personnel and resources had to be used to govern each of the Empire’s regions in its own specific manner. This system of ruling also made the Habsburgs dependent on the cooperation and goodwill of each region’s local leaders, many of whom were too self-interested, ill-informed, or outright resentful of Habsburg rule to provide proper help.

The Pragmatic Sanction was a legal document drawn up by Charles IV, the ruler of the Austrian Empire, in order to establish the proper line of succession for the Habsburgs. Charles had no male heirs, but he did have a daughter, the brilliant Maria Theresa. Unfortunately, the Habsburgs didn’t usually permit women to rule, but Charles was determined to give his daughter her rightful inheritance and also to keep the Austrian government as stable as possible. So, towards the end of his twenty-nine year reign, Charles established the Pragmatic Sanction, which legally designated Maria Theresa as his only heir and the rightful ruler (after his death) of the Austrian Empire. The Sanction was backed up by many other members of the Habsburg royal family, who used their power and influence to secure support for the Sanction from many of the Empire’s various local leaders. Sadly, while the Sanction did indeed gain a great deal of acceptance, its terms fell apart almost immediately after Maria Theresa tried to implement it and claim her place as ruler after her father’s death in 1740. The new Habsburg queen soon found herself embroiled in a bitter war with Prussia, which invaded Austria in the hopes of stealing some of the Habsburgs’ many territories. Maria Theresa swiftly discovered just how vulnerable her spot on the Austrian throne was, as many of the Empire’s local figures turned against her, rejected her leadership, or even conspired with the invading Prussians.

Under Frederick William’s leadership, seventeenth century Prussia was transformed into a socially unified and politically organized state. Frederick William, who was known as the Great Elector, deliberately embarked on an ambitious campaign to unify his country and increase his dynasty’s power base. His first move was to begin to build up the Prussian army, using a new taxation system of his own creation. Whenever any particular group or region expressed reluctance to pay these new taxes, Frederick William used his new army to forcibly collect the money. The army also proved useful to the Great Elector in another way – he was able to intimidate the Prussian nobility and keep them out of government affairs, an exclusion which he could (and often did) enforce militarily if necessary. Frederick William further excluded the nobility by refusing to appoint them to high positions of leadership in his new army. Instead, he turned to the Junkers, socially high-ranking landlords who controlled the large serf population. By allowing the Junkers to occupy important positions in his military, the Great Elector earned their loyalty and ensured their obedience to the Prussian state, all while depriving the nobility of any military influence.

Beginning in the seventeenth century, the Ottoman Empire entered a long, slow period of gradual decline from power that would ultimately culminate in the dissolution of the Empire at the end of World War One. Much like the contemporaneous Habsburg Austrian Empire, the Ottoman Empire faced two intertwined and fundamental problems: its vast size made it very difficult for the central authority to effectively govern the entire Empire. This problem was worsened by the vast ethnic and religious diversity that existed within the Empire. Although the Ottoman government was extremely tolerant of religious and ethnic minorities, it was nevertheless quite difficult to communicate effectively with all the Empire’s separate ethnic and religious groups, many of whom did not share the same political values or even speak the same language as their Ottoman rulers. The central Ottoman government, which was ruled by a sultan (aka king), was secular in nature but depended greatly on Islamic religious authorities (known as “Ulama”) for administrative advice and policies that were consistent with the values of the Empire’s most numerous religious group, Islam. This dependence would become an obstacle to continued progress within the Empire, as the government increasingly relied on religious policies and rejected the many technical, scientific, and military innovations that were then emerging in Western Europe. This rejection would ensure that whenever military conflicts broke out between the Ottomans and any of the various European states, the Ottoman army would find themselves equipped with less advanced weaponry and outdated military tactics than those used by their opponents.