The Enlightened Despotism of the eighteenth century, in countries other than France, would take a lead from the absolutist tendencies which had flourished in all their ideal purity under Louis XIV and a handful of other rulers. Yet this despotism of the age of Enlightenment was often the work of sceptical or quasi-agnostic monarchs. It would not therefore allow itself to be held in check by the religious scruples which often restrained Louis from going too far down the road to arbitrary power. We know that the Sun-King, once the wars which made them necessary were over, stopped the imposition of certain taxes, such as the capitation and the dixième. They had only ever been imposed, and even then unwillingly, n order to provide finance for French armies in the field. It is difficult to imagine a Frederick II or even a George II, a great imposer of taxes, acting in this way, in imitation of what was, when all is said and done, a certain moderation. Overweening pride is not always to be found where simplificatory traditions, passed on through the generations by collective and repetitive historians, have said it was.
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The historical image of the Sun-King, it is worth repeating, shifted from Lemontey through Lavisse, to Mandrou. In reality Louis, with all his splendours - ruinous, odious, costly and oppressive, or creative, organizational, rationalizing - was a man of his time. Posterity was to mythologize him as a convenient and caricatured puppet, a target for the darts aimed at him by hatred of despotism, justified in themselves but also anachronistic or teleological.
This 'slippage of image' was already discernible in the work of Saint-Simon, the legitimate or putative father of many future errors. On his death bed, addressing the Dauphin who would become Louis XV, the Sun-King had declared in so many words: 'My dear child, you are going to the be the greatest king in the word; never forget the obligations you owe to God, do not imitate me in waging war, try to maintain peace with your neighbours, to relieve your people as much as you can, which I could not always do by reason of the necessities of the state. Always follow good advice and remember that all you are you owe to God...'. The same text as revised by Saint-Simon, departs from its initial version that we have just cited and adds some clearly unique interpolations or innovations: 'My child you are going to be a great king; do not imitate me in my taste for building, nor in my taste for war, try rather to keep at peace with your neighbours, render to God that which you owe Him, recognize your obligations to Him, make him honoured by your subjects, always follow good advice, try to relieve your peoples, which I was unfortunate enough not to be able to do.' The subtle nuances introduced in the post mortem version are evident and even amplified by the little duke who apparently cared little about reproducing accurately the almost last words of the dying king. The
necessities of state have disappeared. In the same way the phrase about the king's exaggerated taste for buildings has been added by Saint-Simon, the only chronicler to do so, off his own bat, and yet the confession was thereafter supposed to have been made by Louis himself. It was a shrewed addition. The authentic text straight from the king's mouth signalled the existence of warfare with its attendant
necessities, from which Louis had certainly drawn what we would consider to be excessive, frankly war-mongering and, ultimately, financially ruinous conclusions. The period between 1713 and 1740 would be different [...], a perspective which the dying Louis seems to have foreseen when he looked to the future. The Saint-Simonian texts are distorted to perfection: they present the twisted image, which would become dominant in the nineteenth century, of a delirious old king, looking back on his long life and admitting that he had let himself to be impelled throughout his reign by an obsession with war and a highly expensive taste for buildings. The idea of unfortunate necessity, for the benefit of the state, was capital in the thought of Louis XIV, yet it has totally disappeared in the interpretative reconstruction by Saint-Simon. The imputation of irrational bellicism and building mania is already in full spate, a double torrent of stereotypes which it would be very difficult to turn back towards its source.
Sources and Literature on Europe 1648-1763
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Originally Posted by Louis XI
? I found him quite a balanced historian, to be frank! He is definitely set on destroying the revolutionary stereotypes associated with Louis XIV. I'll quote him straight off the 
... Indeed a period of intellectual decadence.
