Introduction
Louis XIV of France (r. 1643-1715) ruled France for seventy-two years, and as Victor Duruy records here, his intentions were good. He aspired to be a father to his subjects, to better their lives by skilfully-crafted legislation, to support their daily needs and to narrow the gap between rich and poor. He also records that the king’s well-meant management of other people’s lives ended as it usually does.
HE [Louis XIV] believed that kings had imperious duties to fulfil. “We ought,” he said, “to consider rather the good of our subjects than our own. It is for their advantage that we should give them laws, and the power which we have over them should be used only for their more effectual betterment. It is more admirable to deserve the name of father than that of master, and if the latter is ours by the fact of birth, the former is the cherished object of our ambition.”
“Our subjects,” he says elsewhere, “are our true wealth. If God gives me grace to do all that I have in mind, I hope to bring the happiness of my reign to such a height that (I will not say that there shall be no more rich and poor, for that distinction is eternally produced among men by fortune, by industry, and by brain) there shall be neither indigence nor beggary in my kingdom, that no one, however wretched he may be, shall not be assured of his daily bread, either through his own toil or through the ordinary and regulated assistance of the state.”
Such were the ideas of Louis upon the kingly office. [...]
Précis
French historian Victor Duruy looked back to the early years of Louis XIV’s reign in France, and the king’s dream of being loved as a father to the nation for enlightened and selfless policies that narrowed the gap between rich and poor, and guaranteed a basic standard of living to every one of his subjects. (55 / 60 words)
French historian Victor Duruy looked back to the early years of Louis XIV’s reign in France, and the king’s dream of being loved as a father to the nation for enlightened and selfless policies that narrowed the gap between rich and poor, and guaranteed a basic standard of living to every one of his subjects.
Variations: 1.increase the length of this precis to exactly 60 words. 2.reduce the length of this precis to exactly 50 words. 3.introduce one of the following words into the precis: about, if, just, not, otherwise, ought, since, until.
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