.edu/history/wciv2/civ2ref/louis14.htm" under the watchful eye of the chief minister Cardinal Mazarin and continued this way until 1661 when Louis began his personal rule after the death of Mazarin. A corrupt finance minister named Nicholas Fouquet was sent to prison three years after Louis began his personal rule. At this point Louis declared that he would control his own government.Henry IV was the grandfather of Louis and had "come to have clear-cut, definite conceptions of the place, rights and functions of a king."(Packard 16) The age of Louis held very strongly to the divine right of kings which gave the people reason to follow the leadership of the king. The people believed that the king was given all authority and it did not matter the religious affiliation whether catholic or Protestant. The divine right was believed to have been decreed in the bible in (I Samuel viii: 10-18) to the prophet Samuel to anoint Saul as king over Israel, and in such passages as: By Me kings reigh, and princes decree justice (Proverbs viii: 15); and The powers that be are ordained of God, whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God(Romans xiii:1,2)(Packard 16,17) Louis was firm believer in strong authority in order to keep order in his rule. "To him, as a king, all his subjects owed homage and obedience. The lands and peoples which his ancestors had enclosed within the royal domain of France were his. The state was is dynastic property; apart from him and his dynasty, the state was nothing; it was unthinkable, even as land in the Middle Ages was unthinkable without a lord. Letat, cest moi-I am the state- was both theoretically and practically an entirely appropriate remark for Louis to have made." (Packard 16)Success marked the beginning of the personal reign of Louis by way of changes he made in the judicial structure through codes of civil procedure (1667) and criminal procedure (1669). The development of a local police ...
