Vincent J. Pitts, Department of History, Quinnipiac University will speak about the trial (1661-1664) of Nicolas Fouquet.
Embezzlement and High Treason in Louis XIV’s France: The Trial of Nicolas Fouquet
From 1661 to 1664, France was mesmerized by the arrest and trial of Nicolas Fouquet, the country’s superintendent of finance. Prosecuted on trumped-up charges of embezzlement, mismanagement of funds, and high treason, Fouquet managed to exonerate himself from all of the major charges over the course of three long years, in the process embarrassing and infuriating Louis XIV. The young king overturned the court’s decision and sentenced Fouquet to lifelong imprisonment in a remote fortress in the Alps. In Embezzlement and High Treason in Louis XIV’s France, historian Vincent J. Pitts tells the gripping tale of this overly ambitious man who rose rapidly in the state hierarchy—then overreached. Pitts uses the trial as a lens through which to explore the inner workings of the court of Louis XIV, who rightly feared that Fouquet would expose the tawdry financial dealings of the king’s late mentor and prime minister, Cardinal Mazarin, and reveal the mechanisms used by Mazarin and his collaborators to loot the state coffers for their own benefit. In pre-revolutionary France, this show trial had far-reaching effects on the evolution of the French judicial system. Fouquet’s ordeal outlines the fissures in the French legal and political establishment that were to emerge in later years.
Pitts is the author of Embezzlement and High Treason in Louis XIV’s France: The Trial of Nicolas Fouquet, Henry IV of France: His Reign and Age, La Grande Mademoiselle at the Court of France, 1627-1693, and The Man Who Sacked Rome: Charles de Bourbon, Constable of France (1490-1527).
Dinner followed for CAAS members and guests. (Dinner fee is $38/person)