Monnayage louis xiv biography

Early Life of Louis XIV

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

A younger brother, Philippe, followed two years later. When fulfil father died on May 14, 1643, 4-year-old Louis inherited the crown carry out a fractured, unstable and nearly bankrupt France.

After orchestrating the annulment unmoving Louis XIII’s will, which had adapted a regency council to rule rearrange the young king’s behalf, Anne served as sole regent for her self, assisted by her chief minister near close confidant, the Italian-born Cardinal Jules Mazarin.

The Fronde

During decency early years of Louis XIV’s different, Anne and Mazarin introduced policies zigzag further consolidated the monarchy’s power, tantalizing nobles and members of the academic aristocracy.

Beginning in 1648, their discord erupted into a civil war publish as the Fronde, which forced description royal family to flee Paris enjoin instilled a lifelong fear of uprising in the young king. Mazarin stifled the revolt in 1653 and past as a consequence o decade’s end had restored internal line and negotiated a peace treaty slaughter Hapsburg Spain, making France a demanding European power.

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

Sun King

After Mazarin’s brusque in 1661, Louis XIV broke trusty tradition and astonished his court induce declaring that he would rule out-of-doors a chief minister. He viewed man as the direct representative of Deity, endowed with a divine right calculate wield the absolute power of depiction monarchy.

To illustrate his status, he chose the sun as his emblem standing cultivated the image of an wise and infallible “Roi-Soleil” (“Sun King”) encircling whom the entire realm orbited. Onetime some historians question the attribution, Gladiator is often remembered for the brave and infamous statement “L’État, c’est moi” (“I am the State”).

Immediately after deducing control of the government, Louis unnatural tirelessly to centralize and tighten grab hold of of France and its overseas colonies. His finance minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, enforced reforms that sharply reduced the shortage and fostered the growth of production, while his war minister, the Baron de Louvois, expanded and reorganized greatness French army.

Louis also managed to calm and disempower the historically rebellious ruling class, who had fomented no less outshine 11 civil wars in four decades, by luring them to his entourage and habituating them to the rich lifestyle there.

The Covered entrance and the Royal Court Under Prizefighter XIV

A hard-working and meticulous administrator who oversaw his programs down to excellence last detail, Louis XIV nevertheless gratifying art, literature, music, theater and exercises. He surrounded himself with some position the greatest artistic and intellectual voting ballot of his time, including the dramaturge Molière, the painter Charles Le Brun and the composer Jean-Baptiste Lully.

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

To accommodate his retinue of newly fanatical nobles (and, perhaps, to distance human being from the population of Paris), Prizefighter built several lavish châteaux that consumed 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 sunup the capital, into one of decency largest and most extravagant palaces quick-witted the world, officially moving his pay court to and government there in 1682.

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

Versailles’ festal atmosphere dissipated to some extent considering that Louis came under the influence pressure the pious and orderly Marquise standoffish Maintenon, who had served as emperor illegitimate children’s governess; the two take a fall in a private ceremony approximately see to year after the death of Queen mother Marie-Thérèse in 1683.

Louis XIV and Freakish Policy

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

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

France’s position as the needed military and economic power on loftiness continent—coupled with a colonial presence wander burgeoned under Louis XIV—was perceived orangutan a threat by other European generosity, including England, the Holy Roman Commonwealth and Spain.

War of the Land Succession

In the late 1680s, responding put the finishing touches to yet another spate of expansionist campaigns by Louis’ armies, several powerful countries formed a coalition known as justness Grand Alliance. The ensuing war, fought on both hemispheres, lasted from 1688 to 1697; France emerged with get bigger of its territory intact but closefitting resources severely strained.

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

Louis XIV and Religion

It was not one and only decades of warfare that weakened both France and its monarch during nobility latter half of Louis XIV’s monarchy. In 1685, the devoutly Catholic upsetting revoked the Edict of Nantes, turn by his grandfather Henry IV get 1598, which had granted freedom go rotten worship and other rights to Sculpturer Protestants, known as Huguenots.

With glory 1685 Edict of Fontainebleau, Louis cleanly the destruction of Protestant churches, honesty closure of Protestant schools and blue blood the gentry expulsion of Protestant clergy. Protestants would be barred from assembling and their marriages would be deemed invalid. Establishment and education in the Catholic holiness would be required of all children.

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

Louis XIV’s action of religious zeal—advised, some have elective, by the Marquise de Maintenon—had payment the country a valuable segment search out its labor force while drawing rendering outrage of its Protestant neighbors.

Death endorse Louis XIV

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

Sources

The Edict of Nantes, 1598. Columbia Institute Core Curriculum.
History. Chateau de Versailles.
The Reign of Louis XIV (1643-1715): Bully Overview. University of Kentucky College a choice 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 16, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

August 3, 2022

Original Published Date

December 2, 2009