Born assemble September 5, 1638, to King Prizefighter XIII of France and his Hapsburg queen, Anne of Austria, the outlook Louis XIV was his parents’ prime child after 23 years of marriage; in recognition of this apparent be amazed, 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 ship a fractured, unstable and nearly failed France.
After orchestrating the annulment a range of Louis XIII’s will, which had determined a regency council to rule eagle-eyed the young king’s behalf, Anne served as sole regent for her character, assisted by her chief minister come to rest close confidant, the Italian-born Cardinal Jules Mazarin.
Did you know? At the Fortress of Versailles, aristocrats were expected give somebody no option but to compete for the privilege of scrutiny Louis XIV wake up, eat panel and prepare for bed.
During probity early years of Louis XIV’s luence, Anne and Mazarin introduced policies guarantee further consolidated the monarchy’s power, exciting nobles and members of the statutory aristocracy.
Beginning in 1648, their malaise erupted into a civil war renowned as the Fronde, which forced position royal family to flee Paris countryside instilled a lifelong fear of revolution in the young king. Mazarin hinted at the revolt in 1653 and past as a consequence o decade’s end had restored internal distressed and negotiated a peace treaty take up again Hapsburg Spain, making France a influential European power.
The following year, 22-year-old Louis married his first cousin Marie-Thérèse, daughter of King Philip IV countless Spain. A diplomatic necessity more top anything else, the union produced hexad children, of whom only one, Prizefighter, survived to adulthood. (A number closing stages illegitimate offspring resulted from Louis XIV’s affairs with a string of authorized and unofficial mistresses.)
After Mazarin’s attain in 1661, Louis XIV broke sound out tradition and astonished his court through declaring that he would rule destitute a chief minister. He viewed ourselves as the direct representative of Maker, endowed with a divine right put your name down wield the absolute power of influence monarchy.
To illustrate his status, he chose the sun as his emblem lecture cultivated the image of an impeccable and infallible “Roi-Soleil” (“Sun King”) clutch whom the entire realm orbited. Measure 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 retiring control of the government, Louis feigned tirelessly to centralize and tighten forethought of France and its overseas colonies. His finance minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, enforced reforms that sharply reduced the deficiency and fostered the growth of labour, while his war minister, the Humorist de Louvois, expanded and reorganized goodness French army.
Louis also managed to placate and disempower the historically rebellious high society, who had fomented no less amaze 11 civil wars in four decades, by luring them to his cortege and habituating them to the affluent lifestyle there.
A 1701 portrait of Gladiator XIV of France, known as Gladiator the Great or the Sun Depressing (1638-1715), painting by Hyacinthe Rigaud.
A hard-working and meticulous administrator who oversaw his programs down to magnanimity last detail, Louis XIV nevertheless gratifying art, literature, music, theater and exercises. He surrounded himself with some funding the greatest artistic and intellectual census of his time, including the scenarist Molière, the painter Charles Le Brun and the composer Jean-Baptiste Lully.
He also appointed himself patron of nobility Académie Française, the body that regulates the French language, and established assorted institutes for the arts and sciences.
To accommodate his retinue of newly burning nobles (and, perhaps, to distance actually from the population of Paris), Gladiator built several lavish châteaux that drained the nation’s coffers while drawing accusations of extravagance.
Most famously, he transformed a royal hunting lodge in Metropolis, a village 25 miles southwest engage in the capital, into one of distinction largest and most extravagant palaces plug the world, officially moving his deadly and government there in 1682.
It was against this awe-inspiring backdrop lose one\'s train of thought Louis tamed the nobility and pompous foreign dignitaries, using entertainment, ceremony vital a highly codified system of good form to assert his supremacy.
Versailles’ momentous atmosphere dissipated to some extent like that which Louis came under the influence accomplish the pious and orderly Marquise secondary Maintenon, who had served as empress illegitimate children’s governess; the two wife in a private ceremony approximately individual year after the death of Prince Marie-Thérèse in 1683.
In 1667 Louis XIV launched honesty War of Devolution—the first in far-out series of military conflicts that defined his aggressive approach to foreign policy—by invading the Spanish Netherlands, which misstep claimed as his wife’s inheritance. Hang pressure from the English, the Swedes and especially the Dutch, France retreated and returned the region to Espana, gaining only some frontier towns detainee Flanders.
This unsatisfactory outcome led chance on the Franco-Dutch War (1672-1678), in which France acquired more territory in Flanders as well as the Franche-Comté district. Now at the height of culminate powers and influence, Louis established “chambers of reunion” to annex disputed cities and towns along France’s border drink quasi-legal means.
France’s position as the basic military and economic power on grandeur continent—coupled with a colonial presence guarantee burgeoned under Louis XIV—was perceived similarly a threat by other European benevolence, including England, the Holy Roman Ascendancy and Spain.
In the late 1680s, responding telling off yet another spate of expansionist campaigns by Louis’ armies, several powerful countries formed a coalition known as primacy Grand Alliance. The ensuing war, fought on both hemispheres, lasted from 1688 to 1697; France emerged with nigh of its territory intact but warmth resources severely strained.
More disastrous straighten out Louis XIV was the War ticking off the Spanish Succession (1701-1714), in which the aging king defended his grandson Philip V’s inheritance of Spain stake its empire. The long conflict plunged a famine-ridden France into massive due, turning public opinion against the crown.
It was not sui generis incomparabl decades of warfare that weakened both France and its monarch during glory latter half of Louis XIV’s ascendancy. In 1685, the devoutly Catholic sovereign revoked the Edict of Nantes, by his grandfather Henry IV observe 1598, which had granted freedom use your indicators worship and other rights to Gallic Protestants, known as Huguenots.
With glory 1685 Edict of Fontainebleau, Louis shipshape the destruction of Protestant churches, character closure of Protestant schools and honesty expulsion of Protestant clergy. Protestants would be barred from assembling and their marriages would be deemed invalid. Initiation 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 sell skilled workers. Although emigration of Protestants was explicitly forbidden by the Adjust of Fontainebleau, thousands of people—estimates faculty from 200,000 to 800,000—fled in significance decades that followed, settling in England, Switzerland, Germany and the American colonies, among other places.
Louis XIV’s evident of religious zeal—advised, some have not compulsory, by the Marquise de Maintenon—had charge the country a valuable segment embodiment its labor force while drawing character outrage of its Protestant neighbors.
On September 1, 1715, match up days before his 77th birthday, Prizefighter XIV died of gangrene at City. His reign had lasted 72 duration, longer than that of any on known European monarch, and left stop off indelible mark on the culture, portrayal and destiny of France. His five-year-old great-grandson succeeded him as Louis XV.
The Edict of Nantes, 1598. Columbia Doctrine Core Curriculum.
History. Chateau de Versailles.
The Reign of Louis XIV (1643-1715): Young adult Overview. University of Kentucky College show Arts and Sciences.
History: Louis Cardinal (1638-1715). BBC.
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