ouis XIV (1638-1715), king of France - the "Grand Monarch" - was the son of Louis XIII. His reign saw the French monarchy reach and pass its zenith. The bureaucratic machinery of central government was rearranged, and the monarchy became more absolute than ever. Then France became involved in a long series of wars. In 1700 the War of the Spanish Succession broke out, in which Louis fought to secure the crown of Spain for his grandson. Louis obtained wonderfully favorable terms in the Peace of Utrecht (1713); but he had thrown away the internal prosperity of his country, and all share of the New World and chance of colonial empire. [World Wide Illustrated Encyclopedia, 1935]

Louis XIV (1638-1715), king of France (1643-1715), known as the Sun King, who imposed absolute rule on France and fought a series of wars trying to dominate Europe. His reign, the longest in European history, was marked by a great flowering of French culture.

Louis was born on September 5, 1638, at Saint Germain-en-Laye. His parents, King Louis XIII and Anne of Austria, grateful for an heir after 20 barren years of marriage, christened him Louis Dieudonné (literally, the "gift of God").

Early Reign

In 1643 Louis XIII died. Anne of Austria, aided by her minister, Cardinal Mazarin, ruled France as regent. His father’s death spared Louis XIV the beatings and abuse usually given French princes; kindly but mediocre tutors gave him a feeble education. His mother formed his rules of conscience, teaching him a simple kind of Roman Catholicism laced with superstition. Mazarin instructed him in court ceremony, war, and the craft of kingship. The Fronde—two rebellions against the Crown between 1648 and 1653—impressed upon Louis the need to bring order, stability, and reform to France and also fostered in him a deep suspicion of the nobility. In accordance with the Franco-Spanish Treaty of the Pyrenees (1659), Louis married his Spanish cousin, Marie-Thérèse, in 1660. When Mazarin died the following year, Louis shocked France by refusing to name a first minister; he decided to rule alone and select Jean Baptiste Colbert as his financial adviser. Colbert encouraged domestic industry and foreign exports and rebuilt the French navy.

Despite his rakish youth, Louis XIV proved a hardworking king. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday he presided at a council meeting in which he and a select group of ministers formulated policies that affected the lives of his 20 million subjects. Louis developed two effective new instruments of power: a corps of professional diplomats and a standing, uniformed army. After 1682 the king spent most of his time at Versailles, near Paris, where he had built a magnificent palace that became the showplace of Europe.

Foreign Wars

In foreign affairs, Louis’s consistent aim was to glorify France, to gird its defenses on the northern and eastern frontiers, and to prevent any resurgence of the power of the Habsburg dynasty, which had formerly threatened France on two sides by its control over Spain and Germany. In four wars he displayed before all of Europe his prowess as a military leader. In 1667, claiming his wife’s right of inheritance (jus devolutionis), Louis invaded the Spanish Netherlands. His quick victories prompted England, Holland, and Sweden to check France and force the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle (1668). Louis gained 12 fortresses in Flanders and soon isolated the Dutch by buying English and Swedish neutrality. In 1672 he hurled an army against Holland. For six years the Dutch, aided by Spain and Austria, staved off French attacks. The treaties signed at Nijmegen (1678) did not dismantle Holland but gave Louis the Franche-Comté region and more forts in Flanders.

While his armies were battling Dutch Protestants, Louis had been denying religious liberty to the Protestants (Huguenots) of France and tightening control over his Roman Catholic clergy. In 1685, determined to force conversion of the Huguenots, he revoked their charter of liberties, the Edict of Nantes, forcing more than 200,000 into exile and igniting the Camisards’ revolt. Although applauded by his Roman Catholic subjects, the revocation stiffened resistance to Louis in Protestant Europe. Overconfident and ill-advised, he sent an army into the Rhineland in 1688 to claim the Palatinate for his sister-in-law Elizabeth Charlotte of Bavaria. This War of the League of Augsburg (1688-97) revealed serious deficiencies in Louis’s army. Despite the devastation of the Rhineland, the Peace of Ryswick (1697) did not improve French defenses or add to the glory of the monarchy.

Louis’s last military venture, the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-13), stemmed from his acceptance of the Spanish throne on behalf of his grandson, Philip. Louis’s armies, opposed by an alliance of the European powers, lost most of the major battles, but won control of Spain. The Treaty of Utrecht (1713), which awarded several French territories in North America to the British, also recognized Philip as king of Spain. Louis ruled a war-weary France until his health broke in 1715. Suffering from fever and gangrene, he mustered enough strength to say, "I depart, France remains," before dying on September 1, 1715, at Versailles.

Achievements

Parallel to Louis’s quest for glory in war was his patronage of glory in the arts. Molière and Jean Baptiste Racine wrote plays performed at his court. Paintings by French masters ornamented his palaces, where the music of Jean Baptiste Lully charmed his guests. Louis founded the academies of Painting and Sculpture (1655), Science (1666), and Architecture (1671), and in 1680 he established the Comédie Française. His grand palace at Versailles afforded the ideal setting for his lavish court.

After Queen Marie-Thérèse’s death in 1683, Louis secretly married a pious and previously obscure woman, Françoise d’Aubigné, known as Madame de Maintenon; she urged him to suppress spectacles and sin. Louis’s interest in improving Paris, however, never waned. He razed the city’s medieval walls, built the Invalides as a home for disabled veterans, planned the great avenue of the Champs-Élysées, and refurbished the Cathedral of Notre Dame.

Louis XIV was never able to resolve the tensions between a governing elite committed to efficiency and a society organized by rank, birth, and privilege, which explains many of the failures of his reign. His personal example of long, dedicated rule, however, made France the bureaucratic model for 18th-century, absolutist Europe.

Contributed By: Philip F. Riley [Microsoft Encarta 98 Encyclopedia]

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