So yesterday I was scrolling through some old history stuff online, right? Stumbled on this thing called the Edict of Fontainebleau. Sounded fancy. Important. Someone told me it kicked out the Huguenots. Big deal. But then they asked, “Hey, who actually wrote that thing?” And I realized… I didn’t have a clue. Everyone talks about it, but nobody says who actually put pen to paper and made it happen. Weird.
My First Guess Was Way Off
Sitting around scratching my head. Okay, 1685, France. Big, nasty decision against Protestants. King must have done it, right? Louis XIV, the Sun King, dude loved being in charge. Felt obvious. Like, OF COURSE it was the King. He signed everything important. I almost closed the laptop right there, figured case closed. But then I thought, hold up, did Louis XIV actually sit down and write all that legal mumbo jumbo himself? Doubtful. Kings have people for that. So, who were his people?
Digging Deeper Was Annoying (At First)
Started digging. Searched “Edict of Fontainebleau author” or “who drafted it”. Kept finding the same basic history lesson: “Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes”. Like, duh, I get that. WHO. WROTE. THE. WORDS? Frustrating. Felt like everyone just skipped over the boring bit – who actually crafted the document? Then I shifted gears. Stopped looking for the Edict itself and started looking at who ran Louis’s government. Who were his key guys in the 1680s?
The Big Players Around Louis
- The Big Guns: Everyone points to Louvois – War Minister, tough guy, pushed hard against the Huguenots. Also Colbert, Finance Minister before he died in 1683. He wasn’t a fan of them either. But these guys are big-picture advisors. Did they write laws? Probably not daily.
- The Legal Brains: Then it hit me. Who actually wrote the kingdom’s laws? That’s the job of the Keeper of the Seals. France’s top law dude. Signed off on everything official.
Scrambled to find out who was Keeper of the Seals in 1685. BOOM. Michel le Tellier. And get this, his son, Louvois? Yeah, the War Minister guy! Father handled law, son handled army stuff. Powerful family. But was Michel le Tellier the actual scribe? Maybe not literally, but legally, he was responsible. He held the seals used to authenticate royal orders like the Edict. My gut said this was the guy.
The Shocker (For Me, Anyway)
Turns out, while Louvois definitely pushed the King hard to revoke the Edict, and the King absolutely made the decision and signed it, Michel le Tellier, as Chancellor and Keeper of the Seals, was the one officially tasked with its preparation and promulgation. His name isn’t plastered all over history books for it like the King’s, but he was the chief legal officer making the awful machinery work.
Here’s the kicker I found: Michel le Tellier actually died just a few weeks after the Edict was issued. Like, October 1685. Some folks dug up old letters suggesting he was already seriously ill while pushing this brutal policy through! Makes you wonder. But yeah, all the official records point back to him and his office as the ones who physically produced it under the King’s command and Louvois’s pressure. Talk about a final, nasty legacy.
Why It’s Not Obvious
Looking back, it makes sense why people just say “Louis XIV”. He owned the decision, took the credit (or blame) in history. Guys like Le Tellier handled the dirty work behind the throne. They drafted the documents based on the King’s orders and his ministers’ advice. He was the legal architect, the executor, even if the idea and the final say came from elsewhere. Found it fascinating how a massive, life-wrecking decision came down through this chain: King > Powerful Minister (Louvois) > Top Lawyer (Le Tellier) > the document itself. History’s messy like that.
