Summary of Louis XIV
“Le Roi de Soleil,” the French called him; “The Sun King,” as he was known to the English. Only by the combined efforts of all of Europe’s armies was he forced to relent in his conquests, but even then he still possessed all of the ferocity of a cornered tiger. With the mighty military of France, he managed to reshape the map of Europe and curve the ambitions of over-ambitious monarchs. Who was this man who raised himself to the dizzying heights of power and in a fell swoop devoured his foes like a falcon in the dive? He was the one, the only, Louis XIV.
Contrary to what many people might think about the birth of a king, Louis XIV did not enter this world in the pleasantest of circumstances. His parents, King Louis XIII of France and Anna of Austria, had a miserable marriage, which was why it was only after their twenty-second year together, on 5 September 1638, that they conceived Louis; for this reason their son was often referred to as “Louis the God-Given.” When Louis XIII died on 14 May 1643, his unpopular and detested wife became regent of France in place of the four year old Louis XIV, along with Cardinal Jules Marazin, the king’s chief advisor and successor of Cardinal Richelieu, who was detested in his own right as a foreign intriguer.
With the accession of new leaders, France entered into a chaotic state of revolt known as the La Fronde, spanning from 1648 to 1653. During this time, both the nobility and peasantry rebelled, the former over the centralization of the king’s power under the recently deceased Cardinal Richelieu, and the latter over the crippling famine. Several times Louis was forced to flee France, and once in 1651 a Parisian mob even stormed his bedroom. The memories of these early years of his life would have a lasting effect on Louis, who grew to distrust and fear both the nobility and the peasantry.
In a dazzling coronation ceremony in the Cathedral of Reims in 1654, Louis officially obtained the position of regent and king of France. Within a few short years he would make a political alliance with Spain to ratify the peace achieved at the end of the Thirty Years’ War [1618-48] through his marriage to King Philip IV’s daughter Marie Thérèse on 9 June 1660. As part of the arrangement, Louis’ new wife had to forfeit her claims to the Spanish throne upon the payment of her dowry; however, Spain was bankrupt at the time and never managed to pay the dowry. Consequently, Louis now technically had rightful claims on Philip IV’s throne, which would help set the stage for future wars between France and Spain.
One of the defining aspects of Louis’ career had occurred that very same year, exactly three months previous: the death of Cardinal Marazin on 9 March. In accordance with the cardinal’s pre-mortem wishes and his own will, Louis, with the support of several key ministers, declared for the first time since Henry IV [r. 1589-1610] that the king would reign alone, without a chief advisor. Now the stage was set for Louis to establish his long-held belief of Absolute Monarchy, wherein the monarch is responsible to God alone and wields unlimited authority in all decisions; however, the actions of the monarch would still have to be justified to the clergy and nobility. “L’Etat, c’est moi!” exclaimed Louis to his court, “I am the state!” At the age of twenty-three, Louis XIV was the untested ruler of the most powerful nation in the world.
Wishing to further consolidate his power, Louis attempted to centralize the state’s religion, choosing as the religion Catholicism. On 22 October 1685 he issued the famous Edict of Fontainebleau, revoking the Edict if Nantes, which had granted the Huguenots freedom, and actively persecuted them, destroying their churches and closing their schools; however, this new edict caused many Huguenots, among them some of the France’s most studious and skilled citizens, to flee the country, many of them escaping to England. From now on, France would be the object of slander and scorn in surrounding Protestant countries. Despite his moves against the Protestant, he did not hold the favor of the papacy. Louis believed in Gallicanism, meaning that he would personally control the Church in France, including appointing his own ministers. To the surprise of no one, this issue erupted into what almost appeared to be a second schism between the Churches of Louis XIV and Pope Innocent XI; however, in 1689, after the death of Innocent, there was reconciliation with the new pope, Alexander VIII.
One of the things that Louis was famous for was his creation of the nearly Elysian styled Palace of Versailles. For over the past century, the Royal Families of France had occupied the Tuileries Palace during their reigns; now Louis IX made the bold decision to leave the capital of Paris and relocate himself to just outside the city. Originally Versailles was but a hunting lodge, but Louis took the initiative to transform it into a most radiant and splendid palace fit for one of his power. Surrounding the grand Palace itself were magnificent and intricate gardens and courtyards. The Palace of Versailles came to stand as a symbol both of Louis’ absolute monarchy and during post-Revolutionary France of the pomp of the Ançien Régime.
Concerning Louis’ government, the significant changes came in the shape of redefining the structure of society. High ranking nobles no longer directly shared control with the king; actually, their roll in the administration was gradually being depreciated. Louis replaced them with lower nobles, especially those from the lower classes. Although they still possessed much control in the immense jungle of local bureaucracy, they were now becoming, as was Louis’ aim, more court figures than political ones. Apart from an increase in trade and the building of several new roads, the administration itself was hardly more progressive than that of preceding kings.
The greatest and most memorable contribution Louis made to French history was in the realm of military power. During intermittent periods of peace during his reign there were about 20,000 men in the service, but when war beckoned his army grew to an astounding force of 400,000 professionally trained soldiers, rivaling the size of Napoleon’s own Grande Armée at its peak. His ultimate and admittedly ambitious goal was to secure what is often referred to as France’s “natural borders,” meaning as far west as the Pyrenées Mountains and the Atlantic Ocean and as far east as the Rhine River and French Alps.
After the death of the son of Philip IV of Spain, Louis claimed that his wife Thérèse should rightfully inherit the Spanish possession of the Netherlands, roughly equivalent to modern Belgium, under the custom of Devolution, where property passes to children of a first marriage before those of later ones. The resulting conflict in 1667, known as the War of Devolution, was Louis’ attempt to forcibly seize the Spanish Netherlands. Stunning French victories under the command of Prince de Condé in the campaign against Spain caused the Dutch Republic to panic and form a Triple Alliance with Sweden and England. This coalition warned Louis that if he did not cease, they would join lots with Spain. After temporarily occupying the Franche-Comté, Louis relented and signed the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle on 2 May 1668. Although France gained part of the Spanish Netherlands, King Louis was furious that the Dutch would dare to oppose him.
Avenging his sense of injustice against the Dutch Republic, as well as condemning Dutch Protestantism and commercial power, King Louis waged war again in 1672. During this Dutch War, the Holy Roman Empire and Spain allied themselves with the Dutch. By 1678 the end was at hand with the signing of the Treaties of Nijmegen, the terms of which were largely dictated by Louis XIV himself. France had maintained control over Lorraine, and gained the provinces of Franche-Comté and Artois in addition to parts of Flanders and Hainaut. On top of all that, the French navy was now equal to those of England and Holland. In effect, Louis had defeated the whole of the European continent. Every major power, with the exception of the Russias, came head-on against France, and yet King Louis managed to rise above them all; yet again in this period of history, dubbed by the philosopher Voltaire as the “Age of Louis XIV,” France proved its superiority, especially in terms of its military. Throughout the rest of his reign there would be further wars, but Louis always emerged victorious. His military career ended after the War of Spanish Succession, which began in 1701, where even in the face of a grand alliance between England, Holland, Savoy, Brandenburg-Prussia, Hannover, the Palatinate, Portugal and the Holy Roman Empire, he still managed to press onwards to victory, sealed in the treaties of Utrecht, Rastatt, and Baden in 1714.
1 September 1715, King Louis XIV, just under seventy-seven years of age, entered immortality after reigning as king for seventy-two years, longer than any other European monarch in history. His throne, after the death of his children and many of his possible male heirs, passed on to his great-grandson. Louis XIV’s effect on the society of his time is clear. The peasantry of France was greatly depopulated and stripped of most freedoms, in addition to being buried under a cumbersome wave of taxation, and the state was bankrupt; however, the strength of the monarchy was greatly improved, the Bourbon monarchy was now at the head of Spain and promised never to be reunited under the rule of the French king, the Hapsburgs were no longer the dominant line of European rulers, France’s borders were greatly broadened and neared what they are in present-day, Catholicism was much more deeply rooted in France, the bureaucracy and administration of France were greatly improved, and France had now clearly shown that it was the superior power on the Continent.
King Louis XIV’s effect on future societies is just as clear as his effect on his own time. From his time on, the peasants would only continue to be abused by the future Kings Louis XV and XVI, with no improvements made to help them. With the nobles and clergy less absorbed in the political realm, they were free to pursue greater abuses of their own. These conditions would help prime France for one of the most just and glorious periods of all history: the French Revolution. During the Revolution, the high nobility and clergy were stripped of their powers, the king was humbled, liberal demands forced to be enacted, and the voice of the people was made heard. Furthermore, Louis and the Revolution would pave the path for the reign of one of the greatest men of all time: Napoleon Bonaparte. Napoleon would be the one to fully undo most of Louis XIV’s changes, making France fully into a Republic, spreading the governing powers of state to a wider group, empowering local governments to enforce laws while simultaneously centralizing the government, and offering peace instead of war. Still, he would imitate the Sun King, who was so named due to his adoption of the symbol of the sun which was associated with Apollo (Greek god of peace and the arts), in his military success, even exceeding the gains made by his predecessor, and defended France from numerous allied coalitions. In conclusion, Louis set the stage for the overthrow of the Bourbon monarchy in France, demonstrated the famous French élan, modeled the principle of absolute monarchy, and helped establish France as the world’s top superpower.
