Epilogue

Abstract

In 1682, a year before the death of Colbert, the court of Louis XIV took up permanent residence in the elaborately and extravagantly enlarged château of Versailles. Yet that sumptuous setting, which dazzled the outside world, masked the declining power of the central government which surrounded the king. In 1661 the monarch and his new councils had hoped to change French society and to reform the administration, but, as the costs of war had slowly emasculated the independent strength of the royal treasury, the ministers had been forced to rely on the traditional and separatist institutions and officials forming the bureaucratic hierarchy of France. This meant that conservative provincialism prevailed, and plans for creating a unified and centralised state had to be abandoned. Moreover these attempts at reform had provoked an increasing unity among different privileged groups in the localities, as they sought to resist the innovations of the central government whose ‘national priorities they did not share. Behind the courteous exchanges which passed between Paris and the provincial capitals, there was a growing mood of hostility.