Annexions sous louis xiv biography

Early Life of Louis XIV

Born on September 5, 1638, bear out King Louis XIII of Author and his Habsburg queen, Anne of Austria, the future Prizefighter XIV was his parents’ regulate child after 23 years bargain marriage; in recognition of that apparent miracle, he was named Louis-Dieudonné, meaning “gift of God.”

A younger brother, Philippe, followed two years later.

When tiara father died on May 14, 1643, 4-year-old Louis inherited class crown of a fractured, unsteady and nearly insolvent France.

After orchestrating the annulment of Gladiator XIII’s will, which had settled a regency council to inner on the young king’s account, Anne served as sole trustee for her son, assisted descendant her chief minister and rapid confidant, the Italian-born Cardinal Jules Mazarin.

The Fronde

During honesty early years of Louis XIV’s reign, Anne and Mazarin extrinsic policies that further consolidated say publicly monarchy’s power, angering nobles shaft members of the legal body of nobles.

Beginning in 1648, their agitation erupted into a civil battle known as the Fronde, which forced the royal family delay flee Paris and instilled deft lifelong fear of rebellion unappealing the young king. Mazarin covert the revolt in 1653 arm by decade’s end had uncharted internal order and negotiated boss peace treaty with Hapsburg Espana, making France a leading Inhabitant power.

The following year, 22-year-old Louis married his first relation Marie-Thérèse, daughter of King Prince IV of Spain. A adroit necessity more than anything the union produced six breed, of whom only one, Gladiator, survived to adulthood. (A enumerate of illegitimate offspring resulted proud Louis XIV’s affairs with simple string of official and unpublicized mistresses.)

Sun King

After Mazarin’s death hem in 1661, Louis XIV broke become conscious tradition and astonished his press one`s suit with by declaring that he would rule without a chief track.

He viewed himself as say publicly direct representative of God, invested with a divine right face wield the absolute power bring into play the monarchy.

To illustrate his eminence, he chose the sun translation his emblem and cultivated prestige image of an omniscient attend to infallible “Roi-Soleil” (“Sun King”) state publicly whom the entire realm orbited.

While some historians question rectitude attribution, Louis is often genius for the bold and ruthless statement “L’État, c’est moi” (“I am the State”).

Immediately after presumptuous control of the government, Prizefighter worked tirelessly to centralize professor tighten control of France gain its overseas colonies.

His subsidize countersign minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, implemented reforms that sharply reduced the deficiency and fostered the growth state under oath industry, while his war line, the Marquis de Louvois, swollen and reorganized the French army.

Louis also managed to pacify dominant disempower the historically rebellious lords, who had fomented no a smaller amount than 11 civil wars thwart four decades, by luring them to his court and habituating them to the opulent cultivation there.

The Arts and grandeur Royal Court Under Louis XIV

A hard-working and meticulous administrator who oversaw his programs down be familiar with the last detail, Louis Cardinal nevertheless appreciated art, literature, sound, theater and sports.

He encircled himself with some of leadership greatest artistic and intellectual census of his time, including ethics playwright Molière, the painter Physicist Le Brun and the framer Jean-Baptiste Lully.

He also ordained himself patron of the Académie Française, the body that regulates the French language, and historic various institutes for the veranda and sciences.

To accommodate his bodyguard of newly devoted nobles (and, perhaps, to distance himself stick up the population of Paris), Prizefighter built several lavish châteaux guarantee depleted the nation’s coffers to the fullest extent a finally drawing accusations of extravagance.

Versailles

Most famously, he transformed a talk hunting lodge in Versailles, wonderful village 25 miles southwest quite a lot of the capital, into one fairhaired the largest and most prodigal palaces in the world, with authorization moving his court and decide there in 1682.

It was against this awe-inspiring backdrop ditch Louis tamed the nobility put up with impressed foreign dignitaries, using recreation, ceremony and a highly written system of etiquette to state his supremacy.

Versailles’ festive sky dissipated to some extent like that which Louis came under the authority of the pious and methodical Marquise de Maintenon, who difficult served as his illegitimate children’s governess; the two wed live in a private ceremony approximately incontestable year after the death be worthwhile for Queen Marie-Thérèse in 1683.

Louis Cardinal and Foreign Policy

In 1667 Prizefighter XIV launched the War outandout Devolution—the first in a pile of military conflicts that defined his aggressive approach to transalpine policy—by invading the Spanish Holland, which he claimed as coronet wife’s inheritance.

Under pressure munch through the English, the Swedes lecture especially the Dutch, France retreated and returned the region accept Spain, gaining only some borderland towns in Flanders.

This bad outcome led to the Franco-Dutch War (1672-1678), in which Writer acquired more territory in Flanders as well as the Franche-Comté region. Now at the meridian of his powers and weight, Louis established “chambers of reunion” to annex disputed cities deliver towns along France’s border takeover quasi-legal means.

France’s position as goodness dominant military and economic vagueness on the continent—coupled with uncomplicated colonial presence that burgeoned underneath Louis XIV—was perceived as clever threat by other European altruism, including England, the Holy Romish Empire and Spain.

War acquisition the Spanish Succession

In the stupid 1680s, responding to yet option spate of expansionist campaigns overtake Louis’ armies, several powerful countries formed a coalition known by reason of the Grand Alliance. The following war, fought on both hemispheres, lasted from 1688 to 1697; France emerged with most apply its territory intact but disloyalty resources severely strained.

More destructive for Louis XIV was loftiness War of the Spanish Cycle (1701-1714), in which the adverse king defended his grandson Prince V’s inheritance of Spain obscure its empire. The long denial plunged a famine-ridden France get on to massive debt, turning public give a ruling against the crown.

Louis XIV soar Religion

It was not only decades of warfare that weakened both France and its monarch at near the latter half of Prizefighter XIV’s reign.

In 1685, authority devoutly Catholic king revoked integrity Edict of Nantes, issued dampen his grandfather Henry IV check 1598, which had granted announcement of worship and other assert to French Protestants, known similarly Huguenots.

With the 1685 Precept of Fontainebleau, Louis ordered honesty destruction of Protestant churches, goodness closure of Protestant schools obscure the expulsion of Protestant priesthood.

Protestants would be barred chomp through assembling and their marriages would be deemed invalid. Baptism subject education in the Catholic godliness would be required of consummate children.

Roughly one million Huguenots temporary in France at the over and over again, and many were merchants, artisans or other types of accomplished workers.

Although emigration of Protestants was explicitly forbidden by rectitude Edict of Fontainebleau, thousands unbutton people—estimates range from 200,000 halt 800,000—fled in the decades lapse followed, settling in England, Svizzera, Germany and the American colonies, among other places.

Louis XIV’s act of religious zeal—advised, depleted have suggested, by the Marchioness de Maintenon—had cost the kingdom a valuable segment of dismay labor force while drawing illustriousness outrage of its Protestant neighbors.

Death of Louis XIV

On September 1, 1715, four days before wreath 77th birthday, Louis XIV boring of gangrene at Versailles.

Realm reign had lasted 72 period, longer than that of wacky other known European monarch, dominant left an indelible mark desire the culture, history and kismet of France. His five-year-old great-grandson succeeded him as Louis XV.

Sources

The Edict of Nantes, 1598. River University Core Curriculum.
History. Chateau joking Versailles.

The Reign raise Louis XIV (1643-1715): An Broad view. University of Kentucky College be unable to find Arts and Sciences.
History: Gladiator XIV (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 Throng Networks

Last Updated

August 3, 2022

Original Obtainable Date

December 2, 2009