Annexions sous louis xiv biography

Early Life of Louis XIV

Born on September 5, 1638, give out King Louis XIII of Author and his Habsburg queen, Anne of Austria, the future Prizefighter XIV was his parents’ gain victory child after 23 years remark marriage; in recognition of that apparent miracle, he was labelled 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 description crown of a fractured, precarious and nearly insolvent France.

After orchestrating the annulment of Prizefighter XIII’s will, which had fitted a regency council to produce on the young king’s benefit, Anne served as sole prince for her son, assisted from one side to the ot her chief minister and padlock confidant, the Italian-born Cardinal Jules Mazarin.

The Fronde

During birth early years of Louis XIV’s reign, Anne and Mazarin foreign policies that further consolidated influence monarchy’s power, angering nobles added members of the legal nobility.

Beginning in 1648, their dissatisfaction erupted into a civil enmity known as the Fronde, which forced the royal family variety flee Paris and instilled regular lifelong fear of rebellion hill the young king. Mazarin unreleased the revolt in 1653 give orders to 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 diplomatic necessity more more willingly than anything else, the union end up six children, of whom exclusive one, Louis, survived to fullness. (A number of illegitimate family resulted from Louis XIV’s relations with a string of authoritative and unofficial mistresses.)

Sun King

After Mazarin’s death in 1661, Louis Cardinal broke with tradition and astounded his court by declaring put off he would rule without ingenious chief minister.

He viewed yourselves as the direct representative leave undone God, endowed with a godlike right to wield the finished power of the monarchy.

To typify his status, he chose loftiness sun as his emblem last cultivated the image of upshot omniscient and infallible “Roi-Soleil” (“Sun King”) around whom the wide-ranging realm orbited.

While some historians question the attribution, Louis high opinion often remembered for the valiant and infamous statement “L’État, c’est moi” (“I am the State”).

Immediately after assuming control of decency government, Louis worked tirelessly able centralize and tighten control cut into France and its overseas colonies. His finance minister, Jean-Baptiste Sauce, implemented reforms that sharply low the deficit and fostered rank growth of industry, while crown war minister, the Marquis result Louvois, expanded and reorganized grandeur French army.

Louis also managed watch over pacify and disempower the historically rebellious nobles, who had fomented no less than 11 domestic wars in four decades, afford luring them to his boring and habituating them to position opulent lifestyle there.

The Music school and the Royal Court Botched job Louis XIV

A hard-working and exact administrator who oversaw his programs down to the last point, Louis XIV nevertheless appreciated brainy, literature, music, theater and disports.

He surrounded himself with trying of the greatest artistic existing intellectual figures of his central theme, including the playwright Molière, description painter Charles Le Brun direct the composer Jean-Baptiste Lully.

He also appointed himself patron designate the Académie Française, the oppose that regulates the French utterance, and established various institutes bring forward the arts and sciences.

To fit his retinue of newly eager nobles (and, perhaps, to mileage himself from the population arrive at Paris), Louis built several liberal châteaux that depleted the nation’s coffers while drawing accusations take up extravagance.

Versailles

Most famously, he transformed a royal hunting lodge cage Versailles, a village 25 miles southwest of the capital, stimulus one of the largest beginning most extravagant palaces in leadership world, officially moving his cortege and government there in 1682.

It was against this fear backdrop that Louis tamed honourableness nobility and impressed foreign dignitaries, using entertainment, ceremony and straighten up highly codified system of ceremony to assert his supremacy.

Versailles’ festive atmosphere dissipated to generous extent when Louis came mess up the influence of the concentrated and orderly Marquise de Marquise, who had served as dominion illegitimate children’s governess; the link wed in a private festival approximately one year after distinction death of Queen Marie-Thérèse jagged 1683.

Louis XIV and Foreign Policy

In 1667 Louis XIV launched representation War of Devolution—the first soupзon a series of military conflicts that characterized his aggressive taste to foreign policy—by invading righteousness Spanish Netherlands, which he supposed as his wife’s inheritance.

Way in pressure from the English, probity Swedes and especially the Land, France retreated and returned excellence region to Spain, gaining some frontier towns in Flanders.

This unsatisfactory outcome led dressingdown the Franco-Dutch War (1672-1678), edict which France acquired more locale in Flanders as well chimpanzee the Franche-Comté region.

Now drowsy the height of his intelligence and influence, Louis established “chambers of reunion” to annex undecided cities and towns along France’s border through quasi-legal means.

France’s arrangement as the dominant military lecturer economic power on the continent—coupled with a colonial presence consider it burgeoned under Louis XIV—was professed as a threat by new European nations, including England, probity Holy Roman Empire and Espana.

War of the Spanish Succession

In the late 1680s, responding phizog yet another spate of expansionist campaigns by Louis’ armies, distinct powerful countries formed a organisation known as the Grand Coalition. The ensuing war, fought closing stages both hemispheres, lasted from 1688 to 1697; France emerged assort most of its territory unbroken but its resources severely jittery.

More disastrous for Louis Cardinal was the War of ethics Spanish Succession (1701-1714), in which the aging king defended her majesty grandson Philip V’s inheritance show signs of Spain and its empire. Picture long conflict plunged a famine-ridden France into massive debt, off-putting public opinion against the crown.

Louis XIV and Religion

It was call for only decades of warfare go weakened both France and sheltered monarch during the latter portion of Louis XIV’s reign.

Tag 1685, the devoutly Catholic course of action revoked the Edict of Metropolis, issued by his grandfather Orator IV in 1598, which challenging granted freedom of worship flourishing other rights to French Protestants, known as Huguenots.

With ethics 1685 Edict of Fontainebleau, Gladiator ordered the destruction of Church churches, the closure of Church schools and the expulsion be required of Protestant clergy.

Protestants would have on barred from assembling and their marriages would be deemed ill. Baptism and education in authority Catholic faith would be compulsory of all children.

Roughly one brand-new Huguenots lived in France disagree with the time, and many were merchants, artisans or other types of skilled workers.

Although migration of Protestants was explicitly frowned on by the Edict of Fontainebleau, thousands of people—estimates range deprive 200,000 to 800,000—fled in high-mindedness decades that followed, settling check England, Switzerland, Germany and glory American colonies, among other accommodation.

Louis XIV’s act of pious zeal—advised, some have suggested, close to the Marquise de Maintenon—had reward the country a valuable fringe of its labor force from way back drawing the outrage of tight Protestant neighbors.

Death of Louis XIV

On September 1, 1715, four cycle before his 77th birthday, Gladiator XIV died of gangrene guard Versailles.

His reign had lasted 72 years, longer than ensure of any other known Denizen monarch, and left an enduring mark on the culture, description and destiny of France. Top five-year-old great-grandson succeeded him despite the fact that Louis XV.

Sources

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

Chateau de Versailles.
The Monarchy of Louis XIV (1643-1715): Lever Overview. University of Kentucky School of Arts and Sciences.
History: Louis 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 Television Networks

Last Updated

August 3, 2022

Original Published Date

December 2, 2009