Louis XIV (1638-1715) reigned as King of France from 1643 to 1715. Known as Le Roi Soleil ('the Sun King'), he fervently believed in the concept of the 'divine right' of kings and is remembered for ruling as an absolute monarch. His 72-year reign saw several wars and crises, such as the Fronde, the Nine Years' War, and the War of the Spanish Succession. It also saw the construction of the glorious Palace of Versailles, the expansion of France's colonial empire, and the emergence of France as the dominant military, economic, and cultural power in Europe. Louis XIV was arguably one of the most important rulers in European history, who shaped the destiny of the continent heading into the 18th century.
Early Life & Minority: 1638-1651
Louis XIV was born on 5 September 1638 in the Château de Saint-Germain, 19 kilometers outside Paris. His was a long-awaited birth. The marriage of his parents, King Louis XIII of France and Anne of Austria, had been rocky in many respects, but had been particularly unlucky regarding childbirth. Each of Anne's four previous pregnancies had resulted in miscarriage, leaving Louis XIII to fear that he would never have a son and that the French throne would pass to his detested younger brother, Gaston. The ultimate birth of a healthy heir, or Dauphin, was therefore regarded as a divine miracle, and, indeed, the baby was christened Louis-Dieudonné ("Louis the God-Given"). Two years later, Anne gave birth to another son, Philippe de France, shoring up the line of succession. The arrival of the proverbial 'heir and the spare' came not a moment too soon. Louis XIII had been battling a disease – probably tuberculosis – for years and finally succumbed to it on 14 May 1643. At only four years old, Louis XIV was King of France.
With the weight of the crown upon his small head, Louis did not enjoy any kind of traditional childhood. He was often observed to be mature beyond his years, a fact that an envoy from Venice noticed while attending the boy-king's fifth birthday:
He is of sturdy build and has an animated if rather serious expression, but it is a seriousness full of charm. He rarely laughs, even at play. He insists that his three-year-old brother, the duc d'Anjou, shall show him respect and obedience. He knows and understands that he is King and intends to be treated as such. And when, occasionally, the Queen his mother reproves him, he replies that the time is coming when he will be master…in short, unless his life and education play him false, he promises to be a great King.
(quoted in Wilkinson, 22)
Promising as Louis may have been, he was still only a child and was vulnerable to the intrigues of rival claimants at court. He did, however, have one powerful supporter: his mother. Anne doted on her son, getting from him the affection she had never received in her loveless marriage. Far more than other queen mothers of the time, she raised him herself; one eyewitness remembered, "the Queen hardly leaves him. She takes great pleasure in playing with him and in taking him out in her carriage" (quoted in Mansel, 19). Anne was therefore determined to do anything to protect Louis and secure his place on the throne. On 18 May 1643, only four days after her husband's death, Anne proclaimed herself regent and packed the court with loyal friends. Her most significant appointment was Cardinal Jules Mazarin as chief minister. A protégé of the late Cardinal Richelieu, Mazarin became Anne's trusted right-hand man, responsible for running her government. He also oversaw Louis's education, which, along with the academic subjects of history, writing, and arithmetic, included lessons in fencing, horsemanship, and dancing.
As regent, Anne sought to increase crown authority as much as possible, to leave her son in a strong position when he came of age. To this end, she and Mazarin raised taxes, imprisoned aristocrats who opposed them, and worked to diminish the power of the nobility and the parlements (regional courts). This led to widespread discontent and sparked a period of civil war known as the Fronde (1648-1653). During these tumultuous years, Louis found that he was often at the mercy of the great lords and even the common people of Paris. On the night of 9 February 1651, an angry mob broke into the Palais Royal and burst into the royal bedchamber, where the 12-year-old king pretended to be asleep. Although the mob peacefully dispersed, Louis would never forget the traumatic incident, nor the humiliation that accompanied it. He would forever after hate the prideful nobility and the entire city of Paris, which he itched to get away from. By 1653, the last of the Fronde rebellions was defeated, confirming the absolute power of the king.
Sunrise: 1651-1678
Though Louis XIV celebrated his coming of age in September 1651, his mother and Mazarin still tended to matters of policy. Still a teenager, Louis was content with this arrangement and focused his attention on pursuing his passions. One of these passions was ballet. In 1653, Louis danced in the Ballet Royal de Nuit in the role of Apollo, the Greek god of the sun. It was a magnificent show that took 13 hours to perform. Two years later, he performed a variety of roles in the Ballet des Plaisirs.
Aside from ballet, Louis adored art and literature. Throughout his reign, he commissioned works from artists such as Charles Le Brun, music from composers like Jean-Baptiste Lully, and protected writers like Molière from censorship and imprisonment. Another of his passions was Marie Mancini, the niece of Cardinal Mazarin, with whom he fell in love. This was problematic for Anne and Mazarin, who were trying to secure a marriage for Louis and did not want this love affair to complicate negotiations. In 1658, Mazarin sent Mancini away, leaving the lovestruck king in a state of "extreme depression" (quoted in Wilkinson, 93). On 9 June 1660, Louis married Infanta Maria Teresa of Spain, who adopted the francophone version of her name, Marie-Thérèse.
On 9 March 1661, Mazarin died after a long illness. Though Louis was genuinely distraught by the loss of his mentor and father figure, he recognized the moment for the opportunity it was – a chance to finally begin his personal rule. The next day, he summoned his courtiers and informed them that he would not appoint a new chief minister. Instead, he would assume the responsibility for the rule of the kingdom himself. This came as quite a shock, since kings traditionally relied on their chief ministers to run the government. But Louis firmly believed in the notion of the 'divine right' of kings, whereby he had been given a mandate from God to rule with absolute authority. This unnerved many of Louis's powerful nobles, including the powerful Superintendent of Finances, Nicolas Fouquet, who had been expecting to succeed Mazarin as chief minister. Flexing his newfound power, Louis arrested Fouquet on 5 September 1661 on charges of embezzlement. The hapless Fouquet was sentenced to life imprisonment and lived out the rest of his days in the sordid prison fortress of Pignerol.
Despite his intention to rule alone, Louis was pragmatic enough to know that he still needed help. He therefore surrounded himself with talented ministers who were answerable only to him. Perhaps the most notable was Jean-Baptiste Colbert, named Controller-General of Finances in 1665. Colbert worked tirelessly to reduce the national debt, which he did by introducing new taxes such as the gabelle (salt tax) and taille (land tax). He also fostered commerce and overseas trade, pursued mercantilist policies, and promoted the growth of industry and manufacturing in France. These financial reforms succeeded in filling the coffers of the French treasury. Some of this money was spent on reorganizing the military. With the help of his war minister, the Maquis de Louvois, Louis increased the size of his army to 340,000 men. Officers could no longer purchase their ranks, which could now only be earned through merit. Soldiers were better trained, better supplied, and better disciplined. The navy, too, was expanded to include 116 men-of-war and 83 other vessels by 1677, transforming it into the largest navy in Europe.
It would not take long for Louis to put his new and improved military to the test. In 1667, he invaded the Spanish Netherlands, claiming these lands on behalf of his wife. In the ensuing War of Devolution, the French army under Marshal Turenne proved its effectiveness and captured several key cities. This alarmed many of the other European nations, who feared Louis's territorial ambitions. In January 1668, England, Sweden, and the Dutch Republic formed the Triple Alliance to counter French aggression and pressured Louis to end the war, forcing him to relinquish most of his conquests.
For the next few years, Louis bided his time, waiting for an opportunity to weaken the Triple Alliance. He invaded the Dutch Republic in May 1672, a year referred to in Dutch history as the Rampjaar ("Disaster Year"), since by December, the French had overrun almost all the Netherlands. But the rapid French invasion soon fizzled out into a stagnant war of attrition, and Louis's best general, Turenne, was killed by a cannonball. To make matters worse, the Dutch were supported by a new anti-French coalition funded by Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor. A Dutch counterattack led by William, Prince of Orange, reclaimed most of the country, and the Franco-Dutch War came to an end in 1678. Though France had failed to conquer the Dutch Republic, it had demonstrated its military might and had shown itself to be the dominant power on the continent.
Zenith: 1680-1700
In 1680, the 42-year-old Louis XIV was at the height of his power. At the start of his reign, he had taken the sun as his personal emblem, and, indeed, it seemed as if the whole world was touched by his rays. France's colonial empire was stronger than it ever had been. In the Americas, the population of New France (Canada) was steadily expanding, while the explorer Sieur de La Salle claimed the Mississippi River basin for France and named it Louisiana after his gracious king. In India, French trading posts were founded at Chandernagore and Pondicherry, and the French East India Company was established to compete with English and Dutch trade in Asia. Closer to home, Louis XIV continued to exercise his power by centralizing authority. He placed tighter control over the doings of the Church, so that all papal regulations would require a seal of royal approval to go into effect in France. He cracked down on the nobility, who were now required to show proof of their family's pedigree to continue to qualify for their privileges, lest they be forced to pay their taxes like anyone else. Truly, the radiance of Louis's rule was such that he seemed to personify Apollo, the god he had once imitated in ballet, taking the mantle of the Sun King.
But if Louis was to live as Apollo incarnate, he would need to find his own Mount Olympus. The location he chose was Versailles, a modest hunting lodge about 20 kilometers (12 mi) west of Paris. Initially, few could have dreamt that Versailles would become the site of the most splendid palace in Europe; one eyewitness described it as "the most thankless of places; without view, without woods, without water, without soil, for all is either sand or bog, and consequently with an air that cannot be pure" (quoted in Wilkinson, 160). But Louis, determined to move the seat of power away from Paris, could not be happier with the secluded location. Construction began in 1661 and would continue intermittently for the rest of Louis's reign.
In March 1682, Louis transferred the seat of government to Versailles. By then, the grounds consisted of a massive palace – soon to include the famous Hall of Mirrors – elegant gardens, and even a small town. By moving the French court to Versailles, any aristocrat who wanted to be near the seat of power had to move there as well. There, the king could keep a close eye on them, all while keeping them distracted with strict courtly etiquette and lavish lifestyles. As the nobles were pacified at Versailles, they were replaced with bureaucrats loyal only to the king. Having set up his Mount Olympus where life necessarily revolved around him, Louis had killed the last vestiges of feudalism.
By defanging the nobility, Louis XIV was asserting his 'divine right' to rule with absolute power. But even still, there were reminders all around him of how fragile and illusory that power really was. As King of France, Louis held the title of 'His Most Christian Majesty' and was charged with defending the Catholic Church in France (Gallican Church). As such, Louis detested the Edict of Nantes of 1598, which had granted liberties to French Protestants, or Huguenots, in the aftermath of the French Wars of Religion. Louis viewed the edict as a failure of royal authority and vowed to rectify the error. Beginning in 1681, he placed more restrictions on the Huguenots, forbidding them from serving in public office or marrying Catholics and restricting their travel within the kingdom. Then, in 1685, he issued the Edict of Fontainebleau. With this, Louis XIV and the revocation of the Edict of Nantes stripped the Huguenots of almost all their rights, triggering a mass exodus of nearly 200,000 of them from France. The edict also increased tensions with neighboring Protestant nations, who were already growing concerned with the resumption of Louis's expansionist behaviors.
In 1681, Louis's armies captured and annexed Strasbourg, a free Imperial city that guarded a key crossing over the Rhine. Three years later, the French seized Luxembourg as well. Emboldened by these victories, Louis led an army across the Rhine in September 1688, with the intent of seizing additional territories in the Palatinate. For the other European powers, this was the final straw. Louis's old enemy, the Prince of Orange, had ascended to the English throne in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Now reigning as King William III of England, he moved to counter French aggression by forming the League of Augsburg with Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor. In 1689, the League of Augsburg declared war on France, triggering the Nine Years' War. Despite its earlier successes, the French army was unprepared for a conflict of this scale and was forced to fight defensively. After years of tedious siege warfare and attrition, both sides agreed that further fighting was futile, and a general peace was reached at the Treaty of Rijswijk in late 1697. None of the underlying issues were resolved, however, promising that another conflict lay just over the horizon.
Family & Lovers
Just as France reached the height of power during Louis's reign, so too did the House of Bourbon achieve its own zenith. In November 1661, Queen Marie-Thérèse delighted her husband with the birth of a healthy heir, who would become known as Louis le Grand Dauphin. Though none of the queen's other children would reach adulthood, the king proved more than capable of producing children of his own with his many mistresses; a prolific lover, Louis's most famous mistresses included Louise de La Vallière and Madame de Montespan, with the king fathering twelve illegitimate children between the two of them.
In 1680, the 19-year-old Dauphin married Maria Anna Victoria of Bavaria and would go on to have three sons of his own, securing the future of the Bourbon dynasty for at least three generations. Shortly thereafter, Queen Marie-Thérèse died of a fever. Louis waited a few months before marrying another of his lovers, Françoise d'Aubigné, in secret. Though Françoise was never recognized as queen, Louis proved more faithful to her than he had been to his first wife.
Sunset: 1700-1715
In November 1700, another European crisis was triggered when the sickly King Charles II of Spain died without children. One of Louis's grandsons, Philip of Anjou, was crowned king of Spain, much to the horror of the League of Augsburg, which feared the expansion of Bourbon power. Realizing he stood on the precipice of another war, Louis once again invaded the Low Countries in 1701, sparking the War of the Spanish Succession. Initially, the French armies performed well on the battlefields of Italy and Flanders, but the tide of war turned at the Battle of Blenheim (13 August 1704), when a French army was defeated by an Allied force led by the Duke of Marlborough. In 1709, the French once again suffered a major defeat at the Battle of Malplaquet, one of the bloodiest battles of the entire 18th century. Louis refused to concede defeat and kept on fighting until a peace was negotiated in 1714. His grandson was allowed to continue ruling as King Philip V of Spain in return for renouncing his claims to the French throne.
By now, Louis XIV was an old man and was worried about the line of succession, which was no longer as secure as it once was. The Grand Dauphin died of smallpox in 1711, leaving his 28-year-old son, the Duke of Burgundy, as heir to the throne. But less than a year later, Burgundy too had died of measles; by 1715, Louis XIV's heir was his five-year-old great-grandson. Though this was problematic, there was little the Sun King could do, as it was apparent his own health was fading. After suffering from gangrene, he died at Versailles on 1 September 1715, four days before his 77th birthday. He had ruled as King of France for 72 years and 110 days, and to this day, he holds the record as the longest-reigning monarch in history. He had ushered France into a new era, transforming it into the most powerful state in Europe. Now, it was up to his 5-year-old heir, King Louis XV of France, to uphold what his great-grandfather had built and guide the kingdom through the turbulent years ahead.
