In the trial of Louis XIV I as well as the jury agreed on the conviction of each charge. We found the defendant guilty of the following: Recklessly waging war for 33 years in Europe and the expense of the French people, developing the Royal Court of Versailles which did not benefit the French people or the French state and finally, maintaining a unjust tax policy. We found the defendant innocent of ruthlessly persecuting the Huguenots, depriving the French nobility of political freedom and destroying the French economy through the policy of mercantilism. As a juror it was my duty to sort out the information from both the prosecution and the defense to try and make an impartial and informed decision. As both the prosecution and the defense made a strong case, this proved difficult task for me and my fellow jurors.

On the first count of recklessly waging war for 33 years, was one of the more discussed and argued about issues of the trial. I came to my final decision for several reasons. To start the defense did not present adequate evidence for any real reason for Louis’s vast conflicts, whereas the prosecution did. The prosecution had several witnesses such as John Churchill who testified that Louis’s wars “upset the balance of power.” Furthermore instead of trying to show that Louis’s campaign was in the best interest of France the defense tried to discredit the witness, which did not answer any of my questions on Louis’s reasoning for the war. This lack of info combined with the evidence given by the prosecution gave me a firm belief in Louis’s guilt.

As for ruthlessly persecuting the Huguenots we found Louis innocent. We came to this conclusion as the although the prosecution had witnesses to try and show Louis’s viciousness to the Huguenots heard testimony by Louis, that he did give them the choice to come back after converting, which is more than countries such as Spain where doing in terms of religious tolerance

The third charge which was the development of the Court of Versailles with no benefit to France and his inhabitance we fond the defendant guilty. This has to do with the fact that although the defense did prove from the testimony of Jean-Baeaptiste Lully ,an artist who had first hand experience with the court, could not come up with a straight answer to the question “how did it benefit the people of France” he just kept repeating that it glorified French culture and France itself. Another major tipping point was in the defense’s closing statements they said that “made a house for oneself” which confirmed my suspicions that although it may have been beneficiary to French culture it was all in all a palace for the Louis XIV to glorify his name. The court also risked lives of the people of France through unnecessary spending and in my mindset the people are more important than how a country is perceived.

The charge of depriving the French nobility of political freedom was easily decided by the jury. We came to the verdict of innocent primarily because the prosecution mentioned it very little if at all. By default in a system where we are all innocent until proven guilty we had to come to the verdict of innocent.

When it comes to maintaining an unjust tax policy we again came to the conclusion of guilt. We can see this first hand from the prosecution’s witness Bridgette Rousen, a French peasant, who had unprecedented insight to what the life of a average peasant was. She said that she “could not pay the taille” and could not support her own land. All of the defense’s witnesses however where all of higher status than the peasants therefore had little knowledge of how their taxes where effecting the life of an average peasant. Seeing her as our only real insight to the taxes and the resulting poverty from Louis XIV taxes I had to come to the conclusion that he was guilty of having unjust taxes.

Finally we have the accusation of Louis XIV destroying the French economy through mercantilism. Not only did it appear that Louis was innocent, it also appeared that it actually helped the French economy. We can see this from the testimony defense witness Jean-Baptiste Colbert, who was the governed all of French finances. As Colbert controlled the economy he started a system in which there was more exports than imports which in turn helped the industries thrive. Although the defense argued may not have been the best strategy for protecting his people from draught and famine it did help the economy and as that was what we were ruling on we had to decide that he was innocent of that count.

Although both sides argued valiantly and made good points we had to be impartial and make rational decisions from the info given. Having looked back I am confident that I and my fellow jurors have made the correct decisions to the best of our ability.