Louis XIV (1638-1715)Benedict Gombocz

Synopsis

Louis XIV was born on September 5, 1638 in Saint-Germaine-en-Laye, France.

In 1643, he became King of France.

He began reforming France in 1661.

Six years later, he conquered the Spanish Netherlands, and fought against the Dutch in the subsequent Franco-Dutch war of 1672-1678.

He caused open enmity by the 1680s.

In 1688, he presided over a war between France and the Grand Alliance.

He died in Versailles, France on September 1, 1715; he was 76.

Louis XIV led an absolute monarchy during the classical period; he rescinded the Edict of Nantes and is known for his belligerent foreign policy.

Childhood and Early Reign

Childhood and Early Reign Louis XIV was born in Saint-Germaine-en-Laye, France on September 5, 1638, and

was sanctified Louis-Dieudonné, which means “Gift of God” in French.

His mother was the Hapsburg Spanish queen Anne of Austria; his father was Louis XIII, who was the King of France when Louis XIV was born.

Louis XIV also had a brother, Philippe, who was two years his junior.

His father died on May 14, 1643, when Louis was only four and a half years old.

Nothing more than a toddler, Louis XIV inherited his father’s throne; he was now the King of 19 million French citizens and an extremely unsteady government.

During the course of his youth, Louis XIV was well-informed as a leader, and received a practical education instead of an academic one.

The Italian-born Chief Minister Cardinal Jules Mazarin, Louis XIV’s godfather, was tasked with educating the boy in history, politics, and the arts.

Nicolas de Neufville de Villeroy, Louis XIV’s governor, was assigned to watch the lad, but episodes like Louis XIV’s near drowning suggest that the monarch was disregarded as a kid, if not as a ruler in the making.

Louis XIV as a young child

King Louis XIII, Queen Anne of Austria, and their son Louis XIV with Cardinal Richelieu and the Duchesse de Chevreuse

Childhood and Early Reign – cont.

Childhood and Early Reign – cont.

In 1648, when Louis was barely ten, the Parliament of Paris revolted against his chief minister, Jules Mazarin.

In an effort to overthrow the crown, they conducted a civil war called the Forde to oppose the parliament’s supporters.

Louis XIV endured several hardships, such as poverty and starvation, during the long war.

Mazarin, to Louis XIV’s relief, finally defeated the rebels in 1653.

Following the end of the civil war, Mazarin began forming an elegant administration as Louis XIV looked on and watched his teacher; by now, Louis XIV reached adult status, even though he was still afraid of questioning Mazarin’s power.

France at the outbreak of the Forde

Battle of the Faubourg Saint Antoine by the walls of the Bastille in Paris, 1652

Childhood and Early Reign – cont.

Childhood and Early Reign – cont.

Louis XIV fell in love with Marie Mancini, Mazarin’s niece, a few years later.

However, he chose his responsibility over love, and instead married Marie-Thérèse (Maria Theresa) of Austria, the daughter of the King of Spain, in 1660; the marriage guaranteed that the treaty that Mazarin wanted to sign with Habsburg Spain would be approved.

Marie Mancini, Simon Vouet, c. 1665

Maria Theresa, Andreas Møller, c. 1727

Reforming France

Reforming France While Louis XIV’s mother, Anne, became his regent when he ascended to the throne

as a child, Chief Minister Mazarin held real power during Louis XIV’s early rule.

It was only, in fact, when Mazarin died in 1661, when Louis XIV was in his early 20s, that the young king formally assumed control over the French government.

Upon taking full responsibility for the kingdom, Louis XIV immediately sought to reform France how he envisioned it.

As absolute monarch, his first objective was to consolidate and rein in control of France.

With assistance from his finance minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Louis XIV introduced reforms that lowered France’s deficit and advanced industrial development.

Throughout his rule, Louis XIV was successful in reforming France’s disordered system of taxation and restrict earlier chaotic borrowing practices.

He also appropriately exempted members of the aristocracy from paying taxes; ironically, this made them even more fiscally reliant on the crown.

Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Philippe de Champaigne,1666

Reforming France – cont.

Reforming France – cont. Louis XIV obliged local nobles to abandon their former political influence

by executing governmental reforms toward a more orderly and stable French government; he established a more integrated administration with the bourgeoisie, or the middle class, as its basis.

In addition to his reforms to the government, Louis XIV set up numerous programs and institutions to permeate more of the arts in French culture; in this manner, the Academy of Inscriptions and Belle-Lettres and the Royal Academy of Music were founded in 1663 and 1666, respectively.

Louis XIV also assigned Colbert to supervise the construction of the Paris Observatory between 1667-1672.

Academy of Inscriptions and Belle-Lettres

Royal Academy of Music

Foreign Relations

Foreign Relations Louis XIV is infamous for his aggressive method of foreign policy.

He invaded the Spanish Netherlands in 1667, considering it his wife’s legal inheritance.

The War of Devolution , as the conflict would be known as, lasted a year; it ended with France’s surrender and returned the land to Spain.

Occupying a few towns in Flanders was France’s only successes.

Unhappy with the result, Louis XIV fought against the Dutch in a six-year Franco-Dutch war (1672-1678), during which France took more land in Flanders and theFranche-Comté, a victory that rose France to the status of a dominant European power; this status, along with Louis XIV’s campaigns to continually multiply territorial gains by way of military force, made France a danger to other European states.

By the end of the 1680s, those states, including Spain, England, and the Holy Roman Empire, responded by engaging in what would become known as the Grand Alliance.

In 1688, a war erupted between France and the Grand Alliance; it was fought for all of a decade, and it would be known as the Nine Yeas’ War.

Louis XIV crosses the Rhine at Lobith, 12 June 1672

War of Devolution and French occupation of Flanders

War of Devolution French occupation of Flanders

Rhine campaign, 1688-1689 and Siege of Namur, 1695

Rhine campaign, 1688-1689 Siege of Namur, 1695

Spanish Netherlands campaign, 1689-1697

Decline and Death

Decline and Death By the 1680s, Louis XIV began to invite open hostility; part of it was due to his attempts to

establish religious uniformity in France.

The king was a devoted Catholic, and his oppression of the Huguenots began with his 1685 withdrawal of the Edict of Nantes, which officially gave the Huguenots rights as a religious majority.

Under the Edict of Fontainebleau, Louis XIV ordered the demolition of Protestant churches and schools in France; he also forced all children to be educated and baptized as Catholics.

The withdrawal of the Edict of Nantes and the edict that replaced it were committed to isolate Protestants, who felt obligated to leave France and find religious autonomy elsewhere in Europe.

France kept most of its original land after the war against the Grand Alliance, but its resources were considerably weak.

The War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714) only facilitated Louis XIV’s fall as a leader; during this war, Louis XIV appeared to many of his people to put his own personal interests before his country’s because his objective was to protect the right of his grandson, Phillip V, to ascend to the throne of the Spanish Empire.

The long war was so expensive for France that it led to famine and put the country deep in debt.

The public went from welcoming Louis XIV as a hero to blaming him for France’s financial devastation.

War of the Spanish Succession

Map of the Spanish War of Succession

Decline and Death – cont.

Decline and death – cont. Louis XIV died of an infection in Versailles, France on September 1, 1715,

four days short of his 77th birthday.

After his death, his five-year-old great-grandson, Louis XV, the last male of the Duc de Bourgogne, assumed the throne.

Ludwig XV as a child

Basilica of Saint Denis, where Louis XIV is buried

Sources

Sources Sources:

http://www.biography.com/people/louis-xiv-9386885#decline-and-death

Other links:

http://www.louis-xiv.de/index.php?id=31

http://www2.stetson.edu/~psteeves/classes/louisxiv.html

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/frde/hd_frde.htm

France flag map