Les droits, le droit et la diplomatie de Louis XIV

Louis XIV’s diplomacy relied on strong legal discourse to justify its claims and its takeovers by force. The arguments came from the law of nations as well as from private law, which enabled him to demand sovereignty over the Spanish Low Countries in the name of the rule of Devolution in the 1660s, and from old feudal law, which legitimated the politics of Reunions in the 1680s. The use of legal argumentation to claim rights did not prevent Louis XIV from breaking some of the most well established rules of the law of nations, which was in the process of being elaborated. The practice of kidnapping in a foreign territory was based on the use of force without any regard for the sovereignty of a weaker prince. In the last decades of the seventeenth century, the emergence of international public opinion and the spread of certain legal principles fed written propaganda that denounced Louis XIV’s bad faith or, on the contrary, supported the rightness of his claims. Criticising his greed was a way to present the French king as a troublemaker among the society of princes, whereas respecting each prince’s rights should enable the pacification of international relations. Finally, the War of Spanish Succession raised considerable legal difficulties following Philippe V’s renunciation of his right to the French crown, as required by the Allies. In this case, a legal provision resulting from diplomatic negotiations was imposed on the rules of succession to the French crown, which had been considered intangible. This process illustrates the new hierarchy of legal norms that came into being in the eighteenth century