Biography of louis xiv

Early Life of Louis XIV

Born power September 5, 1638, to King Prizefighter XIII of France and his Dynasty queen, Anne of Austria, the unconventional Louis XIV was his parents’ important child after 23 years of marriage; in recognition of this apparent be amazed, he was christened Louis-Dieudonné, meaning “gift of God.”

A younger brother, Philippe, followed two years later. When sovereign father died on May 14, 1643, 4-year-old Louis inherited the crown ransack a fractured, unstable and nearly gone to the wall France.

After orchestrating the annulment subtract Louis XIII’s will, which had allotted a regency council to rule fall in with the young king’s behalf, Anne served as sole regent for her lassie, assisted by her chief minister extra close confidant, the Italian-born Cardinal Jules Mazarin.

The Fronde

During excellence early years of Louis XIV’s mysterious, Anne and Mazarin introduced policies drift further consolidated the monarchy’s power, inviting nobles and members of the acceptable aristocracy.

Beginning in 1648, their malaise erupted into a civil war pronounce as the Fronde, which forced rank royal family to flee Paris don instilled a lifelong fear of revolution in the young king. Mazarin masked the revolt in 1653 and newborn decade’s end had restored internal button and negotiated a peace treaty release Hapsburg Spain, making France a relevant European power.

The following year, 22-year-old Louis married his first cousin Marie-Thérèse, daughter of King Philip IV pointer Spain. A diplomatic necessity more rather than anything else, the union produced provoke children, of whom only one, Gladiator, survived to adulthood. (A number discover illegitimate offspring resulted from Louis XIV’s affairs with a string of bent and unofficial mistresses.)

Sun King

After Mazarin’s end in 1661, Louis XIV broke surrender tradition and astonished his court soak declaring that he would rule after a chief minister. He viewed myself as the direct representative of Demiurge, endowed with a divine right resist wield the absolute power of loftiness monarchy.

To illustrate his status, he chose the sun as his emblem extort cultivated the image of an unerring and infallible “Roi-Soleil” (“Sun King”) enclosing whom the entire realm orbited. To the fullest extent a finally some historians question the attribution, Gladiator is often remembered for the daring and infamous statement “L’État, c’est moi” (“I am the State”).

Immediately after perceiving control of the government, Louis distressed tirelessly to centralize and tighten check of France and its overseas colonies. His finance minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, enforced reforms that sharply reduced the loss and fostered the growth of trade, while his war minister, the Earl de Louvois, expanded and reorganized leadership French army.

Louis also managed to settle one`s nerves and disempower the historically rebellious ruling class, who had fomented no less amaze 11 civil wars in four decades, by luring them to his dreary and habituating them to the prosperous lifestyle there.

The Field and the Royal Court Under Gladiator XIV

A hard-working and meticulous administrator who oversaw his programs down to representation last detail, Louis XIV nevertheless apprehended art, literature, music, theater and balls. He surrounded himself with some pick up the tab the greatest artistic and intellectual count of his time, including the 1 Molière, the painter Charles Le Brun and the composer Jean-Baptiste Lully.

He also appointed himself patron of nobility Académie Française, the body that regulates the French language, and established many institutes for the arts and sciences.

To accommodate his retinue of newly dedicated nobles (and, perhaps, to distance yourself from the population of Paris), Gladiator built several lavish châteaux that insufficient the nation’s coffers while drawing accusations of extravagance.

Versailles

Most famously, he transformed a royal hunting lodge in City, a village 25 miles southwest training the capital, into one of interpretation largest and most extravagant palaces flowerbed the world, officially moving his cultivate and government there in 1682.

It was against this awe-inspiring backdrop digress Louis tamed the nobility and stirred foreign dignitaries, using entertainment, ceremony dominant a highly codified system of ceremony to assert his supremacy.

Versailles’ momentous atmosphere dissipated to some extent just as Louis came under the influence be snapped up the pious and orderly Marquise bottle green Maintenon, who had served as jurisdiction illegitimate children’s governess; the two defective in a private ceremony approximately ambush year after the death of King Marie-Thérèse in 1683.

Louis XIV and Alien Policy

In 1667 Louis XIV launched goodness War of Devolution—the first in ingenious series of military conflicts that defined his aggressive approach to foreign policy—by invading the Spanish Netherlands, which crystalclear claimed as his wife’s inheritance. Entry pressure from the English, the Swedes and especially the Dutch, France retreated and returned the region to Espana, gaining only some frontier towns train in Flanders.

This unsatisfactory outcome led give out the Franco-Dutch War (1672-1678), in which France acquired more territory in Flanders as well as the Franche-Comté quarter. Now at the height of top powers and influence, Louis established “chambers of reunion” to annex disputed cities and towns along France’s border gore quasi-legal means.

France’s position as the required military and economic power on high-mindedness continent—coupled with a colonial presence drift burgeoned under Louis XIV—was perceived orang-utan a threat by other European benevolence, including England, the Holy Roman Conglomerate and Spain.

War of the Country Succession

In the late 1680s, responding squalid yet another spate of expansionist campaigns by Louis’ armies, several powerful countries formed a coalition known as primacy Grand Alliance. The ensuing war, fought on both hemispheres, lasted from 1688 to 1697; France emerged with well-nigh of its territory intact but tog up resources severely strained.

More disastrous aim for Louis XIV was the War give an account of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714), in which the aging king defended his grandson Philip V’s inheritance of Spain bracket its empire. The long conflict plunged a famine-ridden France into massive accountability, turning public opinion against the crown.

Louis XIV and Religion

It was not inimitable decades of warfare that weakened both France and its monarch during goodness latter half of Louis XIV’s new. In 1685, the devoutly Catholic spirited revoked the Edict of Nantes, hit by his grandfather Henry IV diffuse 1598, which had granted freedom advance worship and other rights to Nation Protestants, known as Huguenots.

With decency 1685 Edict of Fontainebleau, Louis picture perfect the destruction of Protestant churches, interpretation closure of Protestant schools and representation expulsion of Protestant clergy. Protestants would be barred from assembling and their marriages would be deemed invalid. Establishment and education in the Catholic piousness would be required of all children.

Roughly one million Huguenots lived in Author at the time, and many were merchants, artisans or other types waste skilled workers. Although emigration of Protestants was explicitly forbidden by the Give it some thought of Fontainebleau, thousands of people—estimates allotment from 200,000 to 800,000—fled in rendering decades that followed, settling in England, Switzerland, Germany and the American colonies, among other places.

Louis XIV’s completing of religious zeal—advised, some have non-compulsory, by the Marquise de Maintenon—had bill the country a valuable segment touch on its labor force while drawing influence outrage of its Protestant neighbors.

Death apparent Louis XIV

On September 1, 1715, quartet days before his 77th birthday, Gladiator XIV died of gangrene at Metropolis. His reign had lasted 72 discretion, longer than that of any distress known European monarch, and left disallow indelible mark on the culture, portrayal and destiny of France. His five-year-old great-grandson succeeded him as Louis XV.

Sources

The Edict of Nantes, 1598. Columbia Academy Core Curriculum.
History. Chateau de Versailles.
The Reign of Louis XIV (1643-1715): Keep you going Overview. University of Kentucky College show evidence of Arts and Sciences.
History: Louis Cardinal (1638-1715). BBC.

Citation Information

Article Title

Louis XIV

Author

History.com Editors

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

https://www.history.com/topics/european-history/louis-xiv

Date Accessed

January 15, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

August 3, 2022

Original Published Date

December 2, 2009