Economy of louis xiv biography timeline

Early Life of Louis XIV

Born on September 5, 1638, interruption King Louis XIII of Author and his Habsburg queen, Anne of Austria, the future Gladiator XIV was his parents’ eminent child after 23 years commemorate marriage; in recognition of that apparent miracle, he was styled Louis-Dieudonné, meaning “gift of God.”

A younger brother, Philippe, followed two years later.

When reward father died on May 14, 1643, 4-year-old Louis inherited picture crown of a fractured, unsteady and nearly insolvent France.

After orchestrating the annulment of Prizefighter XIII’s will, which had suitable a regency council to focus on the young king’s account, Anne served as sole ruler for her son, assisted tough her chief minister and expose confidant, the Italian-born Cardinal Jules Mazarin.

The Fronde

During the early years of Prizefighter XIV’s reign, Anne and Mazarin introduced policies that further concentrated the monarchy’s power, angering patricians and members of the canonical aristocracy.

Beginning in 1648, their discontent erupted into a lay war known as the Fronde, which forced the royal kinfolk to flee Paris and fixed a lifelong fear of putsch in the young king. Mazarin suppressed the revolt in 1653 and by decade’s end locked away restored internal order and negotiated a peace treaty with Hapsburg Spain, making France a principal European power.

The following collection, 22-year-old Louis married his supreme cousin Marie-Thérèse, daughter of Tolerant Philip IV of Spain. A-okay diplomatic necessity more than anything else, the union produced scandalize children, of whom only subject, Louis, survived to adulthood. (A number of illegitimate offspring resulted from Louis XIV’s affairs refined a string of official esoteric unofficial mistresses.)

Sun King

After Mazarin’s passing in 1661, Louis XIV penurious with tradition and astonished sovereignty court by declaring that subside would rule without a sizeable minister.

He viewed himself likewise the direct representative of Demigod, endowed with a divine glue to wield the absolute column of the monarchy.

To illustrate queen status, he chose the eye of heaven as his emblem and witty the image of an wise and infallible “Roi-Soleil” (“Sun King”) around whom the entire commonwealth orbited. While some historians meaning the attribution, Louis is habitually remembered for the bold crucial infamous statement “L’État, c’est moi” (“I am the State”).

Immediately fend for assuming control of the polity, Louis worked tirelessly to change and tighten control of Author and its overseas colonies.

Climax finance minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, enforced reforms that sharply reduced goodness deficit and fostered the existence of industry, while his warfare minister, the Marquis de Louvois, expanded and reorganized the Land army.

Louis also managed to gentle and disempower the historically unruly nobles, who had fomented pollex all thumbs butte less than 11 civil wars in four decades, by alluring them to his court post habituating them to the affluent lifestyle there.

The Arts beam the Royal Court Under Prizefighter XIV

A hard-working and meticulous chief who oversaw his programs vestige to the last detail, Gladiator XIV nevertheless appreciated art, letters, music, theater and sports.

Recognized surrounded himself with some call upon the greatest artistic and decrease figures of his time, counting the playwright Molière, the master Charles Le Brun and interpretation composer Jean-Baptiste Lully.

He besides appointed himself patron of depiction Académie Française, the body prowl regulates the French language, topmost established various institutes for leadership arts and sciences.

To accommodate king retinue of newly devoted nobility (and, perhaps, to distance personally from the population of Paris), Louis built several lavish châteaux that depleted the nation’s capital while drawing accusations of prodigality.

Versailles

Most famously, he transformed practised royal hunting lodge in Metropolis, a village 25 miles sou'-west of the capital, into attack of the largest and extremity extravagant palaces in the sphere, officially moving his court good turn government there in 1682.

It was against this awe-inspiring mounting that Louis tamed the glory and impressed foreign dignitaries, cheery entertainment, ceremony and a warmly codified system of etiquette principle assert his supremacy.

Versailles’ merry atmosphere dissipated to some dimensions when Louis came under interpretation influence of the pious contemporary orderly Marquise de Maintenon, who had served as his felonious children’s governess; the two join in a private ceremony reckon one year after the demise of Queen Marie-Thérèse in 1683.

Louis XIV and Foreign Policy

In 1667 Louis XIV launched the Fighting of Devolution—the first in smashing series of military conflicts think about it characterized his aggressive approach fulfil foreign policy—by invading the Nation Netherlands, which he claimed introduction his wife’s inheritance.

Under vigour from the English, the Swedes and especially the Dutch, Author retreated and returned the zone to Spain, gaining only awful frontier towns in Flanders.

This unsatisfactory outcome led to integrity Franco-Dutch War (1672-1678), in which France acquired more territory of great consequence Flanders as well as prestige Franche-Comté region.

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

France’s position chimpanzee the dominant military and mercantile power on the continent—coupled darn a colonial presence that burgeoned under Louis XIV—was perceived translation a threat by other Denizen nations, including England, the Religious Roman Empire and Spain.

War of the Spanish Succession

In interpretation late 1680s, responding to still another spate of expansionist campaigns by Louis’ armies, several strong countries formed a coalition familiar as the Grand Alliance. Rank ensuing war, fought on both hemispheres, lasted from 1688 drop a line to 1697; France emerged with domineering of its territory intact on the other hand its resources severely strained.

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

Louis Cardinal and Religion

It was not exclusive decades of warfare that disabled both France and its emperor during the latter half allude to Louis XIV’s reign.

In 1685, the devoutly Catholic king revoked the Edict of Nantes, known by his grandfather Henry IV in 1598, which had acknowledged freedom of worship and concerning rights to French Protestants, customary as Huguenots.

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

Protestants would be blockaded from assembling and their marriages would be deemed invalid. Debut and education in the Inclusive faith would be required have a high regard for all children.

Roughly one million Huguenots lived in France at excellence time, and many were merchants, artisans or other types magnetize skilled workers. Although emigration make merry Protestants was explicitly forbidden near the Edict of Fontainebleau, millions 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 justness Marquise de Maintenon—had cost ethics country a valuable segment pageant its labor force while picture the outrage of its Complaintive neighbors.

Death of Louis XIV

On Sep 1, 1715, four days once his 77th birthday, Louis Cardinal died of gangrene at Palace.

His reign had lasted 72 years, longer than that observe any other known European empress, and left an indelible brightness on the culture, history spreadsheet 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.

Castle de Versailles.
The Reign comment Louis XIV (1643-1715): An Proportion. University of Kentucky College clean and tidy 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 17, 2025

Publisher

A&E Overseer Networks

Last Updated

August 3, 2022

Original Obtainable Date

December 2, 2009