Age of the Sun King and the Baroque 1680
In 1682 Louis XIV moved his court to Versailles. The following summer, the Ottoman army of Kara Mustafa Pasha surrounded Vienna. It was a century in which kings declared that they were the state, and cannon, wigs and opera filled Europe. At its end, the Bastille was waiting.
The shape of the age
After the Thirty Years' War, Europe's monarchs crushed the privileges of nobles and towns and gathered standing armies, officials and taxes into a single hand. This was absolutism. Instead of holding out in their castles, nobles competed for favour at court, and in the army they became officers who bought and sold their commissions. That is why, in this era, the knight's place is taken by the officer, the tournament by the carrousel, and court events such as the favourite's summons and the king's lever appear.
Wars were fought mostly over successions to thrones, and peace was made with lines drawn on the map. In the west, France sought supremacy while England, the Dutch Republic and the Habsburgs stood against it. In the north, a rising Russia challenged Sweden's grip on the Baltic, and in the east Poland-Lithuania, the Cossack Hetmanate, the Crimean Khanate and the Ottomans were entangled. Within the Holy Roman Empire, Brandenburg-Prussia was quietly building up its army.
Great events in the game
- The Siege of Vienna and the Great Turkish War In September 1683 the winged hussars of King John Sobieski of Poland swept down the Kahlenberg and broke the siege. The Holy League retook Buda in 1686, and with the Treaty of Karlowitz in 1699 the Ottomans for the first time made peace by giving up territory.
- The Glorious Revolution and the Jacobites When William of Orange landed at Torbay in 1688, James II fled to France, and Parliament offered the crown together with the Bill of Rights. In 1707 England and Scotland were united as Great Britain, and the last Jacobite rising of 1745 ended at Culloden the following year.
- The Great Northern War In 1700 the eighteen-year-old Charles XII crushed the Russian army at Narva, but in 1709 he was beaten by Peter the Great at Poltava. Peter moved his capital to Saint Petersburg, and with the Treaty of Nystad in 1721 Russia became an empire.
- The War of the Spanish Succession When Charles II of Spain left everything to Louis XIV's grandson in 1701, Europe split in two. After Blenheim and the capture of Gibraltar, the treaties of Utrecht and Rastatt in 1714 divided Spain's European lands. The next year the Sun King died after a reign of seventy-two years.
- The bubbles and Silesia In 1720 the shares of the Mississippi Company in Paris and the South Sea Company in London collapsed together. When Maria Theresa came to the throne in 1740, Frederick II of Prussia marched into Silesia, and the quarrel spread into the Seven Years' War of 1756.
- The Partition of Poland and the annexation of Crimea In 1772 Prussia, Austria and Russia divided a third of Poland-Lithuania between them, and in 1783 Catherine II annexed the Crimean Khanate. Then, in July 1789, the people of Paris storm the Bastille.
How to enjoy this era
The great kingdoms are solid, so it is hard to grow by conquest alone, but among the electorates of the Holy Roman Empire and the duchies of Italy, marriage and succession redraw the map. The era ends with the storming of the Bastille in 1789, and the story continues in the Age of Revolution.
Major powers
| Power | In the game |
|---|---|
| France | The Sun King's realm. With the largest standing army in Europe, it reaches for the Rhine and the crown of Spain. |
| Habsburg Monarchy | Grows eastward as it drives the Ottomans out of Hungary, but with Maria Theresa's accession it is surrounded by neighbours eyeing Silesia. |
| England · Dutch Republic | A maritime alliance that faces France with parliaments, banks and fleets. After the Glorious Revolution, for a time one Prince of Orange leads both. |
| Sweden · Muscovy | Fight the Great Northern War for mastery of the Baltic. The winner becomes an empire; the loser steps down from the ranks of the great powers. |
| Ottoman Empire · Poland-Lithuania | The two great states that clashed before Vienna. Over the century, both lose land to their neighbours. |
| Brandenburg-Prussia | From electorate to kingdom. A small state rises to the rank of great power on the strength of its army alone. |
Life in the age
Coffeehouses and salons, newspapers and exchanges were the new stages of city life. In London's coffeehouses insurance and shares were traded, in the salons of Paris great ladies invited philosophers, and the Encyclopédie fought the censors to spread the light of reason. Smallpox was still the most feared disease, and inoculation, brought from the Ottoman world, spread cautiously. Events such as the coffeehouse, the Tuesday salon, smallpox inoculation and the pamphleteer capture this atmosphere.
In the countryside peasants were still the great majority, but the potato from the New World gradually changed the fields and eased the hunger of bad harvests. Across the Atlantic the slave trade for sugar and tobacco reached its height, and Europe's ports grew rich on its profits. In Russia, Peter the Great taxed the beards of his nobles and forced Western dress and manners on them. It was also the age of Bach and Handel, of the harpsichord and the opera.