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Louis XIV (Louis-Dieudonné) ( 5 September 1638– 1 September 1715) reigned as King of France and King of Navarre from 14 May 1643 until his death. He was a minor when he inherited the Crown; he did not actually assume personal control of the government until the death of his chief minister, Jules Cardinal Mazarin, in 1661. Louis, who is known as "The Sun King" ( French: Le Roi Soleil) and as "Louis the Great" (French: Louis le Grand), ruled France for seventy-two years— a longer reign than any other French or other major European monarch.
Louis attempted to increase the power of France in Europe, fighting four major wars—the War of Devolution, the Dutch War, the War of the Grand Alliance and the War of the Spanish SuccessionThe War of the Spanish Succession ( 1702 1713) was a European war; the North American portion of this war was Queen Anne's War. The war was fought over the European balance of power; the Spanish King Charles II had willed his kingdom to Philip V, a grands. He worked successfully to create an absolutistAbsolutism is a political theory which argues that one person (generally, a monarch) should hold all power. This is often referred to as the " Divine Right of Kings", implying that a ruler's authority stems directly from God. Prominent theorists associate and centralised state; he is often cited as an example of an enlightened despotEnlightened absolutism (also known as enlightened despotism) is the absolutist rule of an enlightened monarch . This is a reference to the so-called Enlightenment, a historical period of the 18th and early 19th centuries. The main Enlightenment-era propon. He is supposed to have once remarked, "L'État, c'est moi!" (I am the state!), but this quotation is most likely apocryphal. He's a great example of an absolute monarchThis article treats the generic title monarch . For the origins of the word king and its English use, see Germanic king. For other meanings of the word, see Monarch (disambiguation A monarch is a type of ruler or head of state. The word derives from Greek.
Born at Saint-Germain-en-LayeSaint-Germain-en-Laye is a city west of Paris, in the departement of Yvelines (of which it is a sous-prefecture , in the region of Ile-de-France, in France. Saint-Germain-en-Laye was founded in 1020 when King Robert the Pious ruled 996- 1031 founded a con, Louis was regarded as a divine gift by his parents, Louis XIIILouis XIII ( September 27 1601 May 14 1643) was King of France from 1610 to 1643. Born at the Chateau de Fontainebleau, Louis was the first child of Henri IV and Marie de Medicis. He ascended to the throne at age nine after the assassination of his father and Anne of AustriaAnne of Austria ( September 22, 1601 January 20, 1666) was Queen Consort of France and Regent for her son, Louis XIV of France. During her relatively brief reign, Cardinal Mazarin served as France's chief minister. She was born in Valladolid, Spain, as th, who had been childless for twenty-three years. (These circumstances have led some to theorise that Louis XIII was not the boy's biological father.) He was christened "Louis-Dieudonné" (the latter word meaning "God-given"), and received the titles premier fils de France ("First Son of France") and the more traditional title Dauphin de Viennois.
Louis XIII and Anne had a second child, Philippe I, Duc d'Orléans, in 1640. Louis XIII, however, mistrusted his wife; he sought to prevent her from gaining influence over the realm after his death. Nevertheless, when Louis XIII died and the four-year old Louis XIV ascended the Throne on 14 May 1643, Anne became Regent. She entrusted all power to her chief minister, the Italian Cardinal Mazarin, who was despised in part because he was not French.
France in 1643 was involved in the Thirty Years' War, a religious conflict on German battlefields that involved several nations in Europe. Cardinal Mazarin began to work towards a peace. As a consequence of the Peace of Westphalia (1648), France made territorial gains—it received Metz, Toul, Verdun and most of Alsace.
At the same time as the Thirty Years' War ended, a French civil war, known as the Fronde, began. Cardinal Mazarin continued the centralisation policies of his predecessor, Armand Cardinal Richelieu. He attempted to augment the power of the Crown at the expense of the nobility. In 1648, he levied a tax on the members of the Parlement, a court whose judges were mostly nobles or high clergymen. The members of the Parlement not only refused to pay, but also pronounced all of Cardinal Mazarin's earlier financial edicts void. When Cardinal Mazarin arrested the members of the Parlement, Paris broke into rioting and insurrection. Louis and his courtiers were forced to flee from Paris. Shortly thereafter, the Peace of Westphalia was signed, and the French army under Louis II de Bourbon, Prince de Condé were free to return to the aid of Louis and his royal court. By January 1649, the Prince de Condé was besieging Paris; the subsequent Peace of Rueil temporarily ended the conflict.
The peace ended in January 1650, when Cardinal Mazarin arrested the Prince de Condé and other senior courtiers, whom he feared were becoming too powerful. But the rebel army was mostly defeated by the end of 1650; by April 1651, the rebellion had entirely collapsed. The Fronde presumably had an effect on Louis XIV, perhaps aiding in the development of his autocratic stance against the nobility.
France continued to be involved in war, however, against Spain. The French were aided in their efforts by England, which was at the time under the military dictator Oliver Cromwell. The Anglo-French alliance was victorious in 1648. The subsequent Treaty of the Pyrenees ( 1649) fixed the border between France and Spain at the Pyrenees. Under the same treaty, Louis XIV was to marry the daughter of Philip IV of Spain, Maria Theresa (Marie Thérèse). The marriage occurred in 1660; under the treaty, Maria agreed to renounce all claim to the Spanish Throne. Spain had agreed to pay a large dowry (50,000 gold écus), but failed to fulfill such a promise.
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