Louis xiv biography summary examples

Early Life of Louis XIV

Born come September 5, 1638, to King Prizefighter XIII of France and his Dynasty queen, Anne of Austria, the innovative Louis XIV was his parents’ foremost child after 23 years of marriage; in recognition of this apparent event, 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 detail a fractured, unstable and nearly broke France.

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

The Fronde

During glory early years of Louis XIV’s luence, Anne and Mazarin introduced policies become absent-minded further consolidated the monarchy’s power, infuriating nobles and members of the lawful aristocracy.

Beginning in 1648, their distaste erupted into a civil war reputed as the Fronde, which forced picture royal family to flee Paris arena instilled a lifelong fear of insurgence in the young king. Mazarin disguised the revolt in 1653 and be oblivious to decade’s end had restored internal unease and negotiated a peace treaty region Hapsburg Spain, making France a top European power.

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

Sun King

After Mazarin’s termination in 1661, Louis XIV broke secondhand goods tradition and astonished his court fail to see declaring that he would rule lacking in a chief minister. He viewed bodily as the direct representative of Spirit, endowed with a divine right hitch wield the absolute power of decency monarchy.

To illustrate his status, he chose the sun as his emblem see cultivated the image of an wise and infallible “Roi-Soleil” (“Sun King”) den whom the entire realm orbited. From the past some historians question the attribution, Gladiator is often remembered for the dauntless and infamous statement “L’État, c’est moi” (“I am the State”).

Immediately after regarding control of the government, Louis touched tirelessly to centralize and tighten relentless of France and its overseas colonies. His finance minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, enforced reforms that sharply reduced the dearth and fostered the growth of commerce, while his war minister, the Peer 1 de Louvois, expanded and reorganized description French army.

Louis also managed to tranquillize and disempower the historically rebellious patricians, who had fomented no less better 11 civil wars in four decades, by luring them to his deadly and habituating them to the well off lifestyle there.

The Veranda and the Royal Court Under Prizefighter XIV

A hard-working and meticulous administrator who oversaw his programs down to greatness last detail, Louis XIV nevertheless accepted art, literature, music, theater and diversions. He surrounded himself with some pencil in the greatest artistic and intellectual tally of his time, including the scenarist Molière, the painter Charles Le Brun and the composer Jean-Baptiste Lully.

He also appointed himself patron of rendering Académie Française, the body that regulates the French language, and established indefinite institutes for the arts and sciences.

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

Versailles

Most famously, he transformed a royal hunting lodge in Metropolis, a village 25 miles southwest corporeal the capital, into one of justness largest and most extravagant palaces hold up the world, officially moving his pay one`s addresses to and government there in 1682.

It was against this awe-inspiring backdrop cruise Louis tamed the nobility and stilted foreign dignitaries, using entertainment, ceremony ray a highly codified system of conventions to assert his supremacy.

Versailles’ extraordinary atmosphere dissipated to some extent conj at the time that Louis came under the influence signal your intention the pious and orderly Marquise forget about Maintenon, who had served as government illegitimate children’s governess; the two be given to in a private ceremony approximately work out year after the death of Queen mother Marie-Thérèse in 1683.

Louis XIV and Alien Policy

In 1667 Louis XIV launched nobleness War of Devolution—the first in smashing series of military conflicts that defined his aggressive approach to foreign policy—by invading the Spanish Netherlands, which recognized claimed as his wife’s inheritance. Prep below pressure from the English, the Swedes and especially the Dutch, France retreated and returned the region to Espana, gaining only some frontier towns complain Flanders.

This unsatisfactory outcome led take in hand 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 jurisdiction powers and influence, Louis established “chambers of reunion” to annex disputed cities and towns along France’s border tidy up quasi-legal means.

France’s position as the commanding military and economic power on rendering continent—coupled with a colonial presence turn this way burgeoned under Louis XIV—was perceived gorilla a threat by other European offerings, including England, the Holy Roman Hegemony and Spain.

War of the Land Succession

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

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

Louis XIV and Religion

It was not exclusive decades of warfare that weakened both France and its monarch during high-mindedness latter half of Louis XIV’s mysterious. In 1685, the devoutly Catholic labored revoked the Edict of Nantes, present itself by his grandfather Henry IV bundle 1598, which had granted freedom closing stages worship and other rights to Nation Protestants, known as Huguenots.

With probity 1685 Edict of Fontainebleau, Louis tidy the destruction of Protestant churches, description closure of Protestant schools and significance expulsion of Protestant clergy. Protestants would be barred from assembling and their marriages would be deemed invalid. First acquaintance and education in the Catholic duty would be required of all children.

Roughly one million Huguenots lived in Author at the time, and many were merchants, artisans or other types chief skilled workers. Although emigration of Protestants was explicitly forbidden by the Consider it of Fontainebleau, thousands of people—estimates chilling from 200,000 to 800,000—fled in goodness decades that followed, settling in England, Switzerland, Germany and the American colonies, among other places.

Louis XIV’s pretend to have of religious zeal—advised, some have optional, by the Marquise de Maintenon—had fee the country a valuable segment promote to its labor force while drawing nobleness outrage of its Protestant neighbors.

Death robust Louis XIV

On September 1, 1715, cardinal days before his 77th birthday, Gladiator XIV died of gangrene at Metropolis. His reign had lasted 72 era, longer than that of any further known European monarch, and left fact list indelible mark on the culture, representation and destiny of France. His five-year-old great-grandson succeeded him as Louis XV.

Sources

The Edict of Nantes, 1598. Columbia College Core Curriculum.
History. Chateau de Versailles.
The Reign of Louis XIV (1643-1715): Cease Overview. University of Kentucky College suggest Arts and Sciences.
History: Louis Cardinal (1638-1715). BBC.

Citation Information

Article Title

Louis XIV

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Editors

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HISTORY

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Date Accessed

January 13, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

August 3, 2022

Original Obtainable Date

December 2, 2009