Arnauld De Pomponne: Louis XIV’s Moderate Minister

Abstract

The ministers of Louis XIV were not only the eyes, ears, and hands of the great king but also, we might say, a part of his brain. They did more than transmit information and execute policy as heads of the administrative system of the French monarchy; they shared in shaping the royal judgment and will, though it was ultimately the king’s alone to decide and act. Thus the character and personality of these great servants of the crown became a significant autonomous element in the web of historical causality. Yet we must know far more about them than we do to comprehend fully and exactly the role they played in French — and indeed in European — history in the eventful half-century after 1661. Though they were something less than Richelieu and Mazarin, because the king they served ruled as well as reigned, many of these men have been almost lost to historical memory, and important events in which they played an essential part are explained as if they had never existed.

Published originally in the American Historical Review, 61/3 (April 1956). Reprinted with permission.