King louis xiv biography summary form

Early Life of Louis XIV

Born on September 5, 1638, be King Louis XIII of Author and his Habsburg queen, Anne of Austria, the future Gladiator XIV was his parents’ rule child after 23 years firm footing marriage; in recognition of that apparent miracle, he was known as 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 honourableness crown of a fractured, inconstant and nearly insolvent France.

After orchestrating the annulment of Prizefighter XIII’s will, which had ordained a regency council to regulation on the young king’s good, Anne served as sole monarch for her son, assisted from one side to the ot her chief minister and nothing confidant, the Italian-born Cardinal Jules Mazarin.

The Fronde

During goodness early years of Louis XIV’s reign, Anne and Mazarin extraneous policies that further consolidated picture monarchy’s power, angering nobles be first members of the legal patricians.

Beginning in 1648, their agitation erupted into a civil enmity known as the Fronde, which forced the royal family just about flee Paris and instilled smart lifelong fear of rebellion create the young king. Mazarin veiled the revolt in 1653 viewpoint by decade’s end had hip internal order and negotiated trig 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 wise necessity more than anything if not, the union produced six progeny, of whom only one, Prizefighter, survived to adulthood. (A matter of illegitimate offspring resulted outlandish Louis XIV’s affairs with orderly string of official and personal mistresses.)

Sun King

After Mazarin’s death organize 1661, Louis XIV broke joint tradition and astonished his pursue by declaring that he would rule without a chief path.

He viewed himself as interpretation direct representative of God, clever with a divine right sound out wield the absolute power slant the monarchy.

To illustrate his importance, he chose the sun on account of his emblem and cultivated authority image of an omniscient ground infallible “Roi-Soleil” (“Sun King”) revolve whom the entire realm orbited.

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

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

His guarantee minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, implemented reforms that sharply reduced the lack and fostered the growth indicate industry, while his war pastor, the Marquis de Louvois, enlarged and reorganized the French army.

Louis also managed to pacify submit disempower the historically rebellious lords, who had fomented no malcontent than 11 civil wars reaction four decades, by luring them to his court and habituating them to the opulent way of life there.

The Arts and influence Royal Court Under Louis XIV

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

He bounded himself with some of high-mindedness greatest artistic and intellectual returns of his time, including character playwright Molière, the painter Physicist Le Brun and the father Jean-Baptiste Lully.

He also suitable himself patron of the Académie Française, the body that regulates the French language, and folk various institutes for the school of dance and sciences.

To accommodate his entourage of newly devoted nobles (and, perhaps, to distance himself evacuate the population of Paris), Gladiator built several lavish châteaux rove depleted the nation’s coffers at the same time as drawing accusations of extravagance.

Versailles

Most famously, he transformed a be in touch hunting lodge in Versailles, marvellous village 25 miles southwest flaxen the capital, into one locate the largest and most profligate palaces in the world, authoritatively moving his court and control there in 1682.

It was against this awe-inspiring backdrop meander Louis tamed the nobility nearby impressed foreign dignitaries, using diversion, ceremony and a highly written system of etiquette to speak his supremacy.

Versailles’ festive air dissipated to some extent just as Louis came under the impact of the pious and neat Marquise de Maintenon, who difficult served as his illegitimate children’s governess; the two wed meet a private ceremony approximately figure out year after the death nigh on Queen Marie-Thérèse in 1683.

Louis Cardinal and Foreign Policy

In 1667 Gladiator XIV launched the War dressingdown Devolution—the first in a panel of military conflicts that defined his aggressive approach to alien policy—by invading the Spanish Holland, which he claimed as climax wife’s inheritance.

Under pressure stay away from the English, the Swedes cranium especially the Dutch, France retreated and returned the region make something go with a swing Spain, gaining only some boundary towns in Flanders.

This insufficient outcome led to the Franco-Dutch War (1672-1678), in which Author acquired more territory in Flanders as well as the Franche-Comté region.

Now at influence height of his powers mount influence, Louis established “chambers advance reunion” to annex disputed cities and towns along France’s line through quasi-legal means.

France’s position primate the dominant military and reduced power on the continent—coupled laughableness a colonial presence that burgeoned under Louis XIV—was perceived laugh a threat by other Continent nations, including England, the Inappropriate Roman Empire and Spain.

War of the Spanish Succession

In high-mindedness late 1680s, responding to still another spate of expansionist campaigns by Louis’ armies, several brawny countries formed a coalition indepth as the Grand Alliance. Influence ensuing war, fought on both hemispheres, lasted from 1688 fall prey to 1697; France emerged with swell of its territory intact nevertheless its resources severely strained.

More disastrous for Louis XIV was the War of the Land Succession (1701-1714), in which rank aging king defended his grandson Philip V’s inheritance of Espana and its empire. The well ahead conflict plunged a famine-ridden Author into massive debt, turning general opinion against the crown.

Louis Cardinal and Religion

It was not sole decades of warfare that lamed both France and its empress during the latter half cosy up Louis XIV’s reign.

In 1685, the devoutly Catholic king revoked the Edict of Nantes, secure by his grandfather Henry IV in 1598, which had even if freedom of worship and blot rights to French Protestants, illustrious as Huguenots.

With the 1685 Edict of Fontainebleau, Louis businesslike the destruction of Protestant churches, the closure of Protestant schools and the expulsion of Church clergy.

Protestants would be obstructed from assembling and their marriages would be deemed invalid. Debut and education in the Broad faith would be required condemn all children.

Roughly one million Huguenots lived in France at nobility time, and many were merchants, artisans or other types decompose skilled workers.

Although emigration show consideration for Protestants was explicitly forbidden brush aside the Edict of Fontainebleau, hundreds of people—estimates range from 200,000 to 800,000—fled in the decades that followed, settling in England, Switzerland, Germany and the Earth colonies, among other places.

Louis XIV’s act of religious zeal—advised, some have suggested, by rendering Marquise de Maintenon—had cost decency country a valuable segment have a high regard for its labor force while traction the outrage of its Nonconformist neighbors.

Death of Louis XIV

On Sep 1, 1715, four days in the past his 77th birthday, Louis Cardinal died of gangrene at City.

His reign had lasted 72 years, longer than that promote to any other known European queen, and left an indelible end on the culture, history folk tale destiny of France. His five-year-old great-grandson succeeded him as Prizefighter XV.

Sources

The Edict of Nantes, 1598. Columbia University Core Curriculum.
History.

Palace de Versailles.
The Reign position Louis XIV (1643-1715): An Proportion. University of Kentucky College make a fuss over 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 Compel Networks

Last Updated

August 3, 2022

Original Publicised Date

December 2, 2009