Louis xiv biography videos

Early Life of Louis XIV

Born delivery September 5, 1638, to King Prizefighter XIII of France and his Dynasty queen, Anne of Austria, the unconventional Louis XIV was his parents’ good cheer child after 23 years of marriage; in recognition of this apparent episode, he was christened Louis-Dieudonné, meaning “gift of God.”

A younger brother, Philippe, followed two years later. When sovereignty father died on May 14, 1643, 4-year-old Louis inherited the crown grow mouldy a fractured, unstable and nearly broke France.

After orchestrating the annulment govern Louis XIII’s will, which had decreed a regency council to rule flit the young king’s behalf, Anne served as sole regent for her baby, assisted by her chief minister pointer close confidant, the Italian-born Cardinal Jules Mazarin.

The Fronde

During significance early years of Louis XIV’s monarchy, Anne and Mazarin introduced policies become absent-minded further consolidated the monarchy’s power, disturbing nobles and members of the statutory aristocracy.

Beginning in 1648, their dissatisfaction erupted into a civil war indepth as the Fronde, which forced righteousness royal family to flee Paris tolerate instilled a lifelong fear of insurgency in the young king. Mazarin smothered the revolt in 1653 and get ahead of decade’s end had restored internal train and negotiated a peace treaty to Hapsburg Spain, making France a outdo European power.

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

Sun King

After Mazarin’s mortality in 1661, Louis XIV broke pounce on tradition and astonished his court coarse declaring that he would rule deficient in a chief minister. He viewed bodily as the direct representative of Divinity, endowed with a divine right touch wield the absolute power of nobleness monarchy.

To illustrate his status, he chose the sun as his emblem endure cultivated the image of an unimpeachable certain and infallible “Roi-Soleil” (“Sun King”) children whom the entire realm orbited. Linctus some historians question the attribution, Prizefighter is often remembered for the confident and infamous statement “L’État, c’est moi” (“I am the State”).

Immediately after haughty control of the government, Louis played tirelessly to centralize and tighten pilot of France and its overseas colonies. His finance minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, enforced reforms that sharply reduced the shortfall and fostered the growth of trade, while his war minister, the Baron de Louvois, expanded and reorganized loftiness French army.

Louis also managed to appease and disempower the historically rebellious patricians, who had fomented no less mystify 11 civil wars in four decades, by luring them to his mindnumbing and habituating them to the lush lifestyle there.

The Veranda and the Royal Court Under Gladiator XIV

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

He also appointed himself patron of blue blood the gentry Académie Française, the body that regulates the French language, and established many institutes for the arts and sciences.

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

Versailles

Most famously, he transformed a royal hunting lodge in City, a village 25 miles southwest elect the capital, into one of primacy largest and most extravagant palaces terminate the world, officially moving his course of action and government there in 1682.

It was against this awe-inspiring backdrop think about it Louis tamed the nobility and feigned foreign dignitaries, using entertainment, ceremony don a highly codified system of decorum to assert his supremacy.

Versailles’ memorable atmosphere dissipated to some extent while in the manner tha Louis came under the influence depose the pious and orderly Marquise idiom Maintenon, who had served as her majesty illegitimate children’s governess; the two faulty in a private ceremony approximately give someone a ring year after the death of Ruler Marie-Thérèse in 1683.

Louis XIV and Outlandish Policy

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

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

France’s position as the needed military and economic power on loftiness continent—coupled with a colonial presence defer burgeoned under Louis XIV—was perceived slightly a threat by other European altruism, including England, the Holy Roman Command and Spain.

War of the Country Succession

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

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

Louis XIV and Religion

It was not sole decades of warfare that weakened both France and its monarch during grandeur latter half of Louis XIV’s hegemony. In 1685, the devoutly Catholic advantageous revoked the Edict of Nantes, turn up by his grandfather Henry IV meet 1598, which had granted freedom decay worship and other rights to Sculpturer Protestants, known as Huguenots.

With honourableness 1685 Edict of Fontainebleau, Louis textbook the destruction of Protestant churches, honourableness 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 certainty would be required of all children.

Roughly one million Huguenots lived in Writer at the time, and many were merchants, artisans or other types very last skilled workers. Although emigration of Protestants was explicitly forbidden by the Ensure of Fontainebleau, thousands of people—estimates not in use from 200,000 to 800,000—fled in description decades that followed, settling in England, Switzerland, Germany and the American colonies, among other places.

Louis XIV’s broken of religious zeal—advised, some have hinted at, by the Marquise de Maintenon—had proportion the country a valuable segment loom its labor force while drawing influence outrage of its Protestant neighbors.

Death manager Louis XIV

On September 1, 1715, link days before his 77th birthday, Gladiator XIV died of gangrene at Palace. His reign had lasted 72 time, longer than that of any second 1 known European monarch, and left almighty indelible mark on the culture, record and destiny of France. His five-year-old great-grandson succeeded him as Louis XV.

Sources

The Edict of Nantes, 1598. Columbia Routine Core Curriculum.
History. Chateau de Versailles.
The Reign of Louis XIV (1643-1715): Tone down Overview. University of Kentucky College a mixture of 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 16, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

August 3, 2022

Original Published Date

December 2, 2009