Biography of Louis XIV (1638-1715)
The King of France who was known as the "Sun King"
Born on the 5th September 1638, at St Germain-en-Laye. Louis became king at the age of four on the death of his father, Louis XIII. His mother, Anne of Austria, served as regent until her son came of age, she was assisted by Louis XIII's chief minister, Cardinal Mazarin. There were unsubstantiated rumours that he was also Anne's lover.
Mazarin's reputation for avarice made him few friends and he was heavy-handed with taxation. In 1648 the tax on bonds came up for renewal and the Paris Parlement protested vigorously. Anne in her capacity as regent ordered the arrest of three of the leading troublemakers in Parlement. One was an elder called Pierre Broussel. He enjoyed singular popularity with the Parisians. On learning of his arrest, angry demonstrators forced Anne and Louis to take refuge in the Palais-Royal.
Louis' early years were marked by this and other rebellions against his mother and Mazarin, known as the fronde. It created a lifelong fear of rebellion and a dislike for Paris, prompting him to spend more and more time in Versailles, south west of Paris.
In 1660, Louis married Maria Theresa, the daughter of Philip IV of Spain.
The "Sun King"
When Mazarin died in 1661, twenty three year old Louis decided to rule without a chief minister. He regarded himself as an absolute monarch, his power coming directly from God. He carefully cultivated his image and took the sun as his emblem.
Between 1661 and 1689 Louis built the magnificent palace at Versailles and moved his government there from Paris in 1682.
In the early part of his reign, Louis worked with chief finance minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert. To tighten central control over the country, reviving the use of regional royal officials and carrying out other financial and administrative reorganisation.
Foreign Policies of LouisXIV
Louis's reign marked aggressive French foreign policies. After the death of his father-in-law, Louis claimed part of the Spanish Netherlands and launched the War of the Dutch Devolution(1667-1668). In the Second Dutch War, he failed to crush the Dutch, led by William of Orange, but made significant territorial gains.
In 1685, Louis, a devout Catholic, revoked the Edict of Nantes. This had allowed freedom of worship to French Protestants-Huguenots. Around 200,000 Huguenots, many of them skilled craftsmen, fled to Holland and England.
The last three decades of Louis' reign were marked by almost constant warfare. France was now a dominant power on the continent and other European nations felt threatened by its supremacy. The War of the League of Augsburg (1688-97), followed by the War of Spanish Succession (1701-14), severely strained French resources. In the War of Spanish Succession for the first time in nearly a century, France consistently lost battles, most notably at Blenheim in 1704 and Ramillies in 1706.
Louis died on 1st September 1715, shortly after the Peace of Utrecht which ended the War of Spanish Succession. As his eldest son and grandson had died before him, his great-grandson succeeded him as Louis XV.
Louis XIV was held to have been the greatest monarch of his age, he made France into a dominant power and built the magnificent palace of Versailles
Versailles
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