The Enlightened Despots

Enlightened? I Think Not The Enlightenment was very interesting time period. The methods of ruling a country became drastically different. However, even though it seemed like rulers were thinking more for the people, they were actually either using the “Enlightened” methods to be selfish, or didn't know what they were doing. I personally believe that the Enlightenment was actually not all the Enlightened. There were three rulers who were known most for their “Enlightened” methods of ruling. They were called the Enlightened Despots. The first being King Friedrich II of Prussia. He actually didn't get off to such a great start. He came to power five years early by convincing Prussia that his father, Freidrich I, was crazy and didn't deserve …show more content…
He had good intentions, but didn't really have the best way of going about it. Joseph's goal was to have religious equality. He started by legalizing Protestanism and Judaism. He then followed that by basically taking a dump on the Catholics. Joseph tried to make them get rid of a third of their nuns and priests. They obviously refused, so he just took a third of their land. He sold most of the land, but kept the buildings to make things like hospitals. That actually sounds nice, except for the fact that the people back then didn't want or care about hospitals. People back then just wanted to have a church near them, which a lot of them no longer had. At this point, the people were not too happy with Joseph. To make it even worse, he ended serfdom. That seems like it would be a good thing, except people liked being serfs. Serfs got to have their own piece of land to do whatever they wanted with for free, and now they would have to find a way to actually make money. Joseph then created a completely new legal system. He ended torture and the death penalty. Okay, so now he's doing something right, right? Wrong. The nobles could no longer be killed for not listening to Joseph. Because of this, the nobles keep their serfs, nuns, preists, and monks. They then decide to fight Joseph because there's nothing he can do about it. Then, the Romans just went back to how they were. The only thing that actually stayed …show more content…
In Friedrich and Catherine's case, they used the “enlightened” methods to make the people believe they were doing good for them. They got the people to like them, but they were actually manipulating them for money. Prussians were forced to pay a bunch of taxes on land and, well just about everything. Russians were tricked into paying for their own troops so Catherine didn't have to. In Joseph's case, he just really didn't know what he was doing. He tried to have religion equality and reduce human cruelty, but completely screwed himself over in the end. As you can see, these rulers were either not very smart, or pretty sneaky. Either way, what they thought to be “enlightened,” was not actually very enlightened at