Grand Siècle

Grand Siècle (French pronunciation: [ɡʁɑ̃ sjɛkl]) or Great Century refers to the period of French history during the 17th century, under the reigns of Louis XIII and Louis XIV.^[2]

Economy, politics and warfare

Though primarily associated with Louis XIV's reign, the Grand siècle was notable for the development of art, music and literature already before the Sun King rise to power and historians usually date its beginnings with the start of Henry IV's reign in 1589. The effects of the end of the French Wars of Religion obtained by Henry IV (with the 1598 Edict of Nantes sanctioning religious peace between Catholics and Protestants) and, later, the impact of the Thirty Years' War, which made the Kingdom of France the dominant European power in place of a Spain exhausted by continuous wars were considerable. This new dominant position, achieved by the middle of the 17th-century, was allowed through the newfound internal peace but also the careful management of the royal household and government by a succession of efficient kings and ministers throughout the century (kings Henry IV, Louis XIII and Louis XIV advised by ministers Sully, Cardinal Richelieu and Cardinal Mazarin). Louis XIV's personal reign, under an absolutist stance from 1661 onwards, definitively quelled the rebellion of the upper aristocracy, thanks to the construction of the Palace of Versailles, where the court was relocated, and created a powerful state apparatus, through the work of effective ministers of state such as Colbert and Louvois who reformed many policies. Hailing from families of secondary nobility and fiercely loyal to the king, they developed trade, manufacturing, the navy and French colonies according to the economic theories of mercantilism.

In the military field, several brilliant generals succeeded one another at the head of the royal armies throughout the century, such as the Grand Condé, victorious in the 1643 Battle of Rocroi, which marked the decline of the Spanish tercios and the advent of line infantry, the great strategist Viscount Turenne, renowned for his strategic troop movements and maneuvers (he was Napoleon Bonaparte's most admired general); and, under Louis XIV, the Marshals of Luxembourg, Vendôme, and Villars. Across the 17th-century, France experienced a military expansion of its borders to the north, east and south with the conquest of Spanish Roussillon, part of Flanders, German-speaking Alsace, and Spanish-held Franche-Comté, at the expense of the Habsburg monarchy. At the beginning of the 18th century, France, which had been surrounded by Habsburg-ruled states since the end of the 16th century, succeeded in placing a member of the Bourbon royal family on the Spanish throne, the Duke of Anjou, a grandson of Louis XIV, who became Philip V of Spain, fulfilling the objective that had governed a good part of its foreign policy during the previous century.

In 1626, Richelieu created the French Royal Navy, which was later reorganized and expanded by Minister Colbert during the reign of Louis XIV, under the leadership of brilliant flagships such as Duquesne and Tourville. In the 17th century, France created its own colonial empire with a vast domain in North America, called New France, stretching from Quebec to Louisiana (named in honor of Louis XIV) via the Mississippi. Several French explorers were the first to venture into the interior of the North American continent, the most famous being René Robert Cavelier de La Salle, who explored the Great Lakes region. But the country's most important holdings for its economy were the various islands in the Caribbean, where sugarcane cultivation was developed through slaves imported from Africa, particularly Saint-Domingue (now Haiti), Guadeloupe, Martinique, and Grenada. To trade with the Orient and India, a French East India Company was created in 1664, under state authority, while France established various trading posts along the coast of India.