caa a22 4500 386314861 CHVBK 20180307111602.0 cr unu---uuuuu 161130e198812 xx s 000 0 eng 10.2307/3678966 doi S0080440100013153 pii (NATIONALLICENCE)cambridge-10.2307/3678966 Mettam Roger Power, Status and Precedence: rivalries among the provincial élites of Louis XIV'S France [Elektronische Daten] [Roger Mettam] During the past thirty years most historians have acknowledged that it is anachronistic to describe Louis XIV as an absolute monarch. Many of them have turned their attention towards the various elite groups whose power and privileges coexisted with those of the crown in the very different, and sometimes fiercely separatist, provinces which formed the kingdom of France. A few have attributed such great influence to local nobles and institutions that the royal government seems to have been reduced to impotence. This impression, clearly too extreme, has been created first by a preoccupation with those issues and periods where the crown was in conflict with many, or in the case of the Frondes with almost all, of its leading subjects, and a disregard for the more numerous occasions when the king and at least some élite groups had identical or compatible purposes. Secondly, it has arisen from a neglect of the informal channels of communication which were often more important than the formal administrative structure for linking the court and the provinces, and for conducting the everyday routine of government. The most important of these was the network of ‘brokers', often influential governors and bishops, by which provincial requests for highly prized royal patronage—whether titles, orders, offices, privileges or pensions— were conveyed to the ministers and to the king himself. The possibility of personal advancement was a vital consideration for members of the upper social échelons as they calculated their responses to ministerial instructions and enquiries. Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1988 Transactions of the Royal Historical Society Cambridge University Press 38(1988-12), 43-62 0080-4401 38<43 1988 38 RHT https://doi.org/10.2307/3678966 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI 1 research-article jats NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.2307/3678966 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 100 1- Mettam Roger NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- Transactions of the Royal Historical Society Cambridge University Press 38(1988-12), 43-62 0080-4401 38<43 1988 38 RHT CC0 http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0 nationallicence BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-cambridge