Louis XIV

Painting: Hyacinthe Rigaud
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Louis XIV (1638-1715), also known as The Sun King (Roi du soleil) or Louis the Great, was the king of France from 1643 to 1715. His reign, the longest in French history, was superficially splendid but basically disastrous for France because of expensive foreign wars.

The third monarch of the Bourbon family, Louis ruled France for 72 years, the longest reign in European history, and dominated European cultural and political affairs. During his reign, Louis typified the absolute monarchy of the Neoclassical age, established a sumptuous court at Versailles, and fought most of Europe in four wars. Louis XIV dominated French culture by gaining international recognition of French arts, literature, and science, drastically changing the country from its former Medieval ways into a more refined, sophisticated style of life.

Biography

Early Life

Louis XIV was born to Louis XIII and Anne of Austria at the royal Château Saint-Germain-en-Laye on September 5, 1638 and was christened Louis Dieudonné ("gift of God"}, as his parents had been childless for twenty-two years. Even so, he was a neglected child and was kept under the care of servants. He succeeded his father on the throne at the age of four on May, 14 1643. His mother served as a regent, ruling France in in his place with the assistance of Italian-born Cardinal Mazarin, who had been chief minister and tutor of five-year-old Louis. In 1648, the Thirty Years' War was brought to a successful conclusion in the Peace of Westphalia by Mazarin. The treaty ensured Dutch independence from Spain and the independence of German princes in the Holy Roman Empire. But France gained the most out of the treaty. All Habsburg claims in Alsace were ceded to France, as well as German states under Habsburg rule. The Peace of Westphalia severely weakened both the Holy Roman Empire and the Habsburgs. In the closing years of the Thirty Years' War, the Fronde (1648-53) broke out, in which the aristocrats of Paris launched a major revolt in reaction the policies of centralization pursued by Cardinal Richelieu and Mazarin. The royal court was twice driven out of the kingdom. Louis, nine-years-old at the time, faced hunger, poverty, fear, and misfortune during the revolts. The revolts caused the young king to develop a fear of rebellion that he would keep for the rest of his life. He also would never forgive Paris and the nobles and would live in the royal palace of Versailles outside of Paris for much of his reign.

Mazarin, having been victorious over the rebels in 1653, sought to teach the young king his knowledge of foreign policies and diplomatic relations. The Thirty Years' War had ended for the most part, except for the war between France and Spain, whose outcome would transfer hegemony from the Habsburgs to the Bourbons. In 1658, Louis had fallen in love with Mazarin's niece, Marie Mancini. But he instead married for diplomatic reasons, marrying Marie-Thérèse, daughter of the king of Spain, in 1660 in order to bring peace to the two warring countries and conclude the Peace of the Pyrenees.

Absolute Monarchy

Mazarin died on March 9, 1661. By the time of his death, Louis had become an astute military commander and was known for being an excellent horseman, a great musician, and a conversationalist. Yet the king possessed little skill in governing and it was expected for Mazarin to most likely be succeeded by minister Michel Le Tellier. But Louis did what nobody had anticipated and declared that he would rule France without a chief minister and would rule as an absolute monarch. Louis wielded unlimited authority and made all key decisions. Even the greatest of ministers were controlled by the king. His ministers that backed him included Jean-Baptiste Colbert for home affairs, the Marquis de Louvois for war, and Hugues de Lionne for diplomacy.

Beik (2005) examines differing historical theories concerning the limits of power of Louis XIV as an absolute monarch. In the 1970s, the dominant historiography concluded Louis' government was a form of collaboration between the king and various groups. One view of collaboration stressed the common interests of the state and other groups in society. Another perceived the collaboration as arising from the necessity of the state to cooperate with local authorities due to a lack of general interest on the part of the king. However, a minority of historians since the late 1980s have challenged the consensus and argued that there was little collaboration between the king and other powerful entities. These historians argue that the majority of the decisions affecting the country were made by either the king or one of his appointed agents. Although this alternative interpretation sheds new light on the working of the French state, Beik concludes it fails to consider the substantial evidence of collaboration.

The European Wars

In his foreign relations Louis' policies were erratic, shifting back and forth. His permanent acquisitions were therefore meager compared with an almost superhuman expenditure of blood and treasure; indeed, the French absolute monarchy did not long survive him, for "he used it up." Louis was not concerned with national defense, but with glory and personal revenge. The revenge was against his hereditary enemy Leopold of Hapsburg, against the Dutch, whom he regarded as upstart "cheese merchants," and against the English, the heretic nation which, by its Revolution of 1688, overthrew his cousin and pensionary James II. It was Louis' capriciousness in the use of overwhelming force that impressed the alarmed contemporaries. Moreover, since he ruled by the theory of the divine right of kings, which made him responsible to God alone, he was arrogant and menacing to all, even to the papacy. This attitude on the part of the King has been expressed in the apocryphal remark attributed to him, L'étatL'etat c'est moi. "I am the state."

The War of Devolution, 1667-1668

Louis' first important international venture was his seizure in 1667 of a part of the Spanish succession lands. His weak justification was that his wife Maria Theresa should receive all territory in the Spanish Netherlands in which, by local law or custom, private property devolved on a daughter by a first marriage in preference to a son by a second. Before there was time to object that laws about division of private property had nothing to do with succession to national territory, Louis sent Turenne with 35,000 troops to invade the Spanish Netherlands; Turenne captured a series of important cities (May 1667). Against this threat to the stability of Europe the Triple Alliance was formed in January 1668 by England, the Dutch United Provinces, and Sweden. But within a few weeks the French general CondéConde and his army captured Franche-Comté,Franche-Comte, on the eastern border of France. At the same time Louis signed a secret treaty with the Emperor Leopold dividing the Spanish possessions between them, to be carried into effect on the death of Charles II of Spain. With this trump card up his sleeve Louis accepted the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (May 1668), by which he surrendered Franche-ComtéFranche-Comte but retained some of his Flemish conquests, including Lille.

The Dutch War, 1672-1678

Meanwhile England and France were drawn together by resentment at the commercial success of the Dutch, who were exploiting the produce of the French and English colonies. Colbert's project for a commercial treaty between the two monarchies, directed against the trade of the Dutch republic, fell through (1669). At this point Louis arranged the secret Treaty of Dover (May 1670) with Charles II of England by which the two kings undertook to wage a war of extermination against the Dutch. Louis' motives were personal rather than national: the humiliation of the Dutch, and a close alliance with Charles (based on French subsidies); the latter would promote the cause of Roman Catholicism in England.

In June 1672, without even a declaration of war, Louis' armies of about 120,000 men invaded Dutch territory. A revolution in the United Provinces removed the De Witt brothers by massacre and placed William of Orange in supreme command. By dogged determination William wore down the French offensive and, on the withdrawal of the French in 1674, Louis was obliged to conduct a long series of indecisive campaigns which lasted until the signing of a general peace at Nijmwegen in 1678. In these campaigns Louis did win back Franche-Comté,Franche-Comte, which he was allowed to retain at the peace settlement; he had, however, stirred European anger by a systematic devastation of the Rhenish Palatinate, where the population was mainly Protestant. What was to have been a short, quick war turned out to be a weary succession of campaigns and sieges, a comparative failure which increased the irritation of the King.

War of the League of Augsburg, 1688-1697

In the years immediately following, Louis' foreign relations appeared quiescent, but he actually maintained a continual state of tension in Europe; on pretexts as flimsy as his "devolution" claims he took over a number of cities, including Colmar and Strasbourg. These were confirmed to him in August 1684 by the Emperor and the Spanish government in the Treaty of Ratisbon, which was an attempt at appeasement. This marked the high point of Louis' career, since he could now seize territories, not by the prowess of his armies, but because of the fears of his enemies. Ratisbon was soon followed by disquieting events--the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685), which antagonized Protestant rulers, and a poorly-founded claim to territory in the Rhenish Palatinate.

Europe's alarm was expressed in the formation of the League of Augsburg in July 1686, whereby the Emperor allied himself with several Protestant and Catholic princes for their common defense. William of Orange, though not a signatory to this League, was the guiding spirit behind it. With the flight of James II and the success of the Glorious Revolution of 1688, he became William III of England and took the lead against Louis with the resources of England behind him and with the active help of the Emperor, Spain, and Brandenburg, and the tacit support of the pope.

The war which followed, commonly called the War of the League of Augsburg, was fought on land and at sea, in Flanders, in northern Italy, and on the Rhine, and was inaugurated by the second devastation of the Palatinate (1689). The only decisive battles were the Battle of the Boyne (July 1690), by which William expelled James II from Ireland, and the naval battle of La Hogue (May 1692), in which the British destroyed a large part of the French fleet. The war ended in a draw; by the Treaty of Ryswick (September 1697) Louis restored his conquests, recognized the sovereignty of William, and undertook not to give further assistance to the dethroned Stuart house of England.

War of the Spanish Succession, 1701-1714

Five years of uneasy peace followed; Louis and William failed in their attempts to settle the Spanish succession question by treaties of partition. Charles II of Spain died in November 1700 and by his will he left the entire succession to Philip, Duc d'Anjou, a younger grandson of Louis, a solution which was acceptable to war-weary Europe. But, like a true dictator, Louis could never leave well enough alone. The will stipulated that the crowns of France and Spain should never be united. Louis flouted this by a decree that the contingent rights of the Duc d'Anjou to the French throne were inviolable; at the same time he filled the garrisons of the Flemish frontier towns with French troops. On the death of the Stuart James II in September 1701, Louis publicly recognized his son James, the "Old Pretender," as his successor. Meanwhile, in the summer of that year, William organized the Grand Alliance of The Hague, consisting mainly of Britain, the Emperor, and the Dutch, to resist the renewed French threats.

In May 1702 Queen Anne, William's successor, declared war on Louis. The War of the Spanish Succession differed markedly from Louis' earlier wars in that the forces opposing France were now under the command of a great leader, John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough; instead of the old spectacular sieges and aimless marches, there ensued a war of swift movement, directed by an overall strategy. The allies won a number of great battles, including Blenheim (1704), Ramillies (1706), Oudenarde (1708), and Malplaquet (1709). By contrast, in Spain, the French victory at Almanza (1707) served to place the Duc d'Anjou on the Spanish throne, where he ruled thereafter as Philip V. A change of ministry in England in 1710 displaced the party in favor of continuing the war, and the Tories, pledged to peace, signed the Treaty of Utrecht in April 1713.

By this treaty Louis recognized the Hanoverian succession in England, which was to follow upon Anne's death, and surrendered parts of the French possessions in Canada. The Dutch were protected by a line of barrier forts, and the southern Netherlands was transferred from the rule of Spain to that of the Austrian Emperor. The French northeastern frontier was left little changed, but Lille and Strasbourg remained French. Philip surrendered all contingent claims to the French throne and recognized the British conquest of Gibraltar. In view of his many defeats Louis got off very lightly, mainly because of disagreement among the allies. His fortitude during the disasters of this war had served to rally the patriotism of his subjects, but France was left impoverished and disillusioned.

Bibliography

• Ashley, Maurice P. Louis XIV And The Greatness Of France (1965) excerpt and text search
• Beik, William. Louis XIV and Absolutism: A Brief Study with Documents (2000) excerpt and text search
• Burke, Peter. The Fabrication of Louis XIV (1994) excerpt and text search
• Dunlop, ian. Louis XIV (2000) excerpt and text search
• Goubert, Pierre. Louis XIV and Twenty Million Frenchmen (1972), social history from Annales School
• Lewis, W. H. The Splendid Century: Life in the France of Louis XIV (1997) excerpt and text search; also online complete edition
• Lynn, John A. The Wars of Louis XIV, 1667-1714 (1999) excerpt and text search
• Mitford, Nancy. The Sun King(1995), popular excerpt and text search
• Rowlands, Guy. The Dynastic State and the Army under Louis XIV: Royal Service and Private Interest, 1661-1701 (2002) online edition
• Shennan, J. H. Louis XIV (1993) online edition
• Wilkinson, Rich. Louis XIV (2007)
• Wolf, John B. Louis XIV (1968), the standard scholarly biography online edition