ABSTRACT
The structure of the French government in 1750 was complex. The process by which the absolutist monarchical state had been built up culminated in the long reign of Louis XIV, who succeeded to the throne in 1643 at the age of five, and personally ran the government from the death of his advisor, Cardinal Mazarin, in 1661 until his death in 1715. The institutional reforms attempted by Maupeou, Turgot, and Necker show that the top officials of France's royal government were acutely aware of the system's weaknesses long before the crisis of 1789. Louis XV's energetic foreign minister, the Duc de Choiseul, set in motion military reforms that eventually benefited the armies of the revolutionary period, but he lost his post in 1770 before the opportunity to take revenge on the British arose. It conflicted with the long-standing French tradition of Gallicanism, the doctrine which required that the French Catholic church demonstrate its subservience to the authority of the king.
