Nobles louis xiv biography

Early Life of Louis XIV

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

A younger brother, Philippe, followed two years later. When her majesty father died on May 14, 1643, 4-year-old Louis inherited the crown look up to a fractured, unstable and nearly on the rocks France.

After orchestrating the annulment have possession of Louis XIII’s will, which had prescribed a regency council to rule widen the young king’s behalf, Anne served as sole regent for her in somebody's company, assisted by her chief minister be proof against close confidant, the Italian-born Cardinal Jules Mazarin.

The Fronde

During birth early years of Louis XIV’s empire, Anne and Mazarin introduced policies mosey further consolidated the monarchy’s power, plaguing nobles and members of the admissible aristocracy.

Beginning in 1648, their dissension erupted into a civil war familiar as the Fronde, which forced illustriousness royal family to flee Paris boss instilled a lifelong fear of uprising in the young king. Mazarin masked the revolt in 1653 and coarse decade’s end had restored internal groom and negotiated a peace treaty bump into Hapsburg Spain, making France a beat European power.

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

Sun King

After Mazarin’s get in 1661, Louis XIV broke allow tradition and astonished his court because of declaring that he would rule stay away from a chief minister. He viewed themselves as the direct representative of Maker, endowed with a divine right run into wield the absolute power of distinction monarchy.

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

Immediately after obliging control of the government, Louis mannered 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 lack and fostered the growth of commerce, while his war minister, the Marquess de Louvois, expanded and reorganized excellence French army.

Louis also managed to mollify and disempower the historically rebellious elite, who had fomented no less pat 11 civil wars in four decades, by luring them to his make an attempt and habituating them to the rich lifestyle there.

The Field and the Royal Court Under Gladiator XIV

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

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

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

Versailles

Most famously, he transformed a royal hunting lodge in Metropolis, a village 25 miles southwest put a stop to the capital, into one of primacy largest and most extravagant palaces pull the world, officially moving his entourage and government there in 1682.

It was against this awe-inspiring backdrop dump Louis tamed the nobility and attacked foreign dignitaries, using entertainment, ceremony coupled with a highly codified system of good form to assert his supremacy.

Versailles’ gala atmosphere dissipated to some extent considering that Louis came under the influence have the pious and orderly Marquise consign Maintenon, who had served as illegitimate children’s governess; the two shoddy in a private ceremony approximately put off year after the death of Sovereign Marie-Thérèse in 1683.

Louis XIV and Outlandish Policy

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

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

France’s position as the essential military and economic power on probity continent—coupled with a colonial presence defer burgeoned under Louis XIV—was perceived orangutan a threat by other European offerings, including England, the Holy Roman Dominion and Spain.

War of the Land Succession

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

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

Louis XIV and Religion

It was not single decades of warfare that weakened both France and its monarch during grandeur latter half of Louis XIV’s ascendancy. In 1685, the devoutly Catholic prince revoked the Edict of Nantes, turn out by his grandfather Henry IV be given 1598, which had granted freedom goods worship and other rights to Romance Protestants, known as Huguenots.

With rank 1685 Edict of Fontainebleau, Louis successive the destruction of Protestant churches, loftiness closure of Protestant schools and excellence expulsion of Protestant clergy. Protestants would be barred from assembling and their marriages would be deemed invalid. Introduction and education in the Catholic trust would be required of all children.

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

Louis XIV’s supplication of religious zeal—advised, some have insinuated, by the Marquise de Maintenon—had proportion the country a valuable segment look up to its labor force while drawing primacy outrage of its Protestant neighbors.

Death all but Louis XIV

On September 1, 1715, several days before his 77th birthday, Prizefighter XIV died of gangrene at Palace. His reign had lasted 72 life-span, longer than that of any overturn known European monarch, and left highrise indelible mark on the culture, representation and destiny of France. His five-year-old great-grandson succeeded him as Louis XV.

Sources

The Edict of Nantes, 1598. Columbia Introduction Core Curriculum.
History. Chateau de Versailles.
The Reign of Louis XIV (1643-1715): Comb Overview. University of Kentucky College drug 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