"L'Etat, c'est moi."Trivia Today: Identify A.) the French King, pictured above, who allegedly said "L'Etat, c'est moi" and b.) the English translation of said quote.
Monday's trivia: Port Salut, Gruyère etc are all types of French what?
Déjeuner: Fresh pizza
7th Grade: By the end of today you will be able to pronounce and identify many of our classroom objects by memory - and ask a very important question about them..."Qu'est-ce que c'est??"
- Do now: First 2 parts of little worksheet (save for tomorrow.)
- Check homework: Vocabulary Sheet/LOTTO card.
- Qu'est-ce que c'est dans la boîte?!?!?
- LOTTO
Homework: Blue Book pages 16-21 exercises B-D
8th Grade: By the end of today you will be able to translate all your phrases from French-English and English-French!
- Check homework (Reading and Culture Packet)/ review some questions (1o minutes)
- Computer Lab to use the online text flashcards for tomorrow's 'examen.'
Devoirs: Étudiez! Examen demain!!
64 comments:
a)Louis XIV
b)I am the state
Louis XIV (baptised as Louis-Dieudonné, "Louis-God-given") (September 5, 1638 – September 1, 1715) ruled as King of France and of Navarre. He acceded to the throne a few months before his fifth birthday, but did not assume actual personal control of the government until the death of his prime minister (Premier ministre), the Italian Jules Cardinal Mazarin, in 1661.[1] Louis would remain on the throne till his death just prior to his seventy-seventh birthday in 1715. His reign thus spanned seventy-two years, three months, and eighteen days, the longest documented of any European monarch to date.[2]
Louis XIV is also known as Louis the Great (in French Louis le Grand or, alternatively, le Grand Monarque, "the Great Monarch"), because, following his initial success in the Franco-Dutch War and the Treaty of Nijmegen, the Parlement de Paris decreed that all public inscriptions and statues of the king should carry that epithet attached to his name.[citation needed]
He is also popularly known as The Sun King (in French le Roi Soleil) because of the idea that, just as the planets revolve around the Sun, so too should France and the court revolve around him. As a result, he was commonly associated with Apollo Helios, the Greco-Roman god of the Sun. As a patron of the arts, this association was fitting because Louis was, like Apollo Musagetes, the "leader of the Muses".[citation needed]
During his reign, he increased the power and influence of France in Europe, engaging in three major wars—the Franco-Dutch War, the War of the League of Augsburg, and the War of the Spanish Succession—and two minor conflicts—the War of Devolution, and the War of the Reunions.
The political and military scene in France during his reign was filled with such illustrious names as Mazarin, Fouquet, Colbert, Michel Le Tellier, Le Tellier's son Louvois, le Grand Condé, Turenne, Vauban, Villars and Tourville. Under his reign, France achieved not only political and military pre-eminence, but also cultural dominance with various cultural figures such as Molière, Racine, Boileau, La Fontaine, Lully, Le Brun, Rigaud, Louis Le Vau, Jules Hardouin Mansart, Claude Perrault and Le Nôtre. The cultural achievements accomplished by these figures contributed to the prestige of France, its people, its language and its king.[citation needed]
Louis XIV worked successfully to create a centralized state governed from the capital in order to sweep away the fragmented feudalism which hitherto persisted in France, thus giving rise to the modern state. As a result of his efforts, which seemed absolutist, Louis XIV became the archetypal absolute monarch. The phrase "L'État, c'est moi" ("I am the State") is frequently attributed to him, though considered an inaccuracy by historians.[citation needed] Quite contrary to that apocryphal quote, Louis XIV is actually reported to have said on his death bed: "Je m'en vais, mais l'État demeurera toujours." ("I depart, but the State shall always remain").[3]
Contents [hide]
1 Early years
1.1 Birth and ancestry
1.2 Minority and the Fronde
2 End of war and marriage
3 Personal reign and reforms
4 Patronage of the arts
5 Early wars in the Low Countries
6 Height of power in the 1680s
6.1 Revocation of the Edict of Nantes
7 The League of Augsburg
7.1 Causes and conduct of the war
7.2 Treaty of Ryswick
8 The Spanish Succession
8.1 Causes and build-up to the war
8.2 Acceptance of the will and consequences
8.3 Commencement of fighting
8.4 Defeat of French invincibility
8.5 Turning point
8.6 Road to and conclusion of peace
9 Death
10 Legacy
11 Style and arms
12 Order of Saint Louis
13 Ancestors
14 Issue
15 In fiction
16 See also
17 Notes
18 Further reading
19 External links
[edit] Early years
[edit] Birth and ancestry
This section needs additional citations for verification.
Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (August 2008)
Louis XIV was born in the château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye on September 5, 1638 and bore the heir apparent's traditional title of Dauphin.[4] His birth came after the almost twenty-three years of childlessness of his estranged parents, Louis XIII and Anne of Austria. As a result, contemporaries regarded him as a divine gift and his birth as a miracle,[5][6][7] and, in a show of gratitude to God for the long-awaited arrival of an heir, he was named Louis-Dieudonné ("God-given").[citation needed]
His ancestors were figures from some of Europe's most noteworthy ruling houses.[8] His paternal grandparents were Henri IV of France and Marie de' Medici, who were French and Italian respectively; while both his maternal grandparents were Habsburgs, Philip III of Spain and Margaret of Austria. In this manner, he counted as his ancestors various historical figures, including Charles V and Frederick Barbarossa, both Holy Roman Emperors. He also found himself descended from the founder of Russia's first dynasty, Rurik the Viking, as well as Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, the poet Charles, Duke of Orléans, and Giovanni de' Medici, last of the great condottieri. Most importantly, he traced his paternal lineage, and hence his and his descendants' right to the throne, in unbroken legitimate male succession from Saint Louis, King of France, and through him, from Hugh Capet.
Louis XIII and Anne had a second child, Philippe I, duc d'Orléans in 1640. Unsure of Anne as regent, Louis XIII decreed that a regency council, of which she was named head, should rule in Louis' name in the event he succeeded to the throne before the age of majority, intending, by its existence, to prevent her from ruling as sole regent.[citation needed]
[edit] Minority and the Fronde
This section needs additional citations for verification.
Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (August 2008)
Nevertheless, on May 14, 1643, after Louis XIII died and his young son became Louis XIV, Anne had her husband's will annulled by the Parlement, did away with the regency council and became sole Regent. She entrusted power to Cardinal Mazarin, who was despised in most French political circles because of his foreign origin, despite having already become a naturalized French subject.[citation needed]
Europe after the Peace of Westphalia in 1648The Thirty Years' War, which had commenced in the previous reign, ended in 1648 with the Peace of Westphalia, made up of the Treaties of Münster and Osnabrück, the work of Mazarin. This Peace ensured Dutch independence from Spain, awarded a degree of autonomy to the various German princes and granted Sweden territories which gave her control of the mouths of the Oder, Elbe, and Weser, as well as seats on the Reichstag. It marked the apogee of Swedish power and influence in German and European affairs. However, it was France which had the most to gain from the terms of the Peace. Austria ceded to France all Habsburg lands and claims in Alsace; and the petty German states eager to dislodge themselves from Habsburg domination placed themselves under French protection, paving the way for the formation of the League of the Rhine in 1658 and leading to the further diminution of Imperial power. The Peace of Westphalia humiliated Habsburg ambitions in Europe and laid to rest any notion that the Empire held secular dominion over all of Christendom.[citation needed]
Louis XIV as a young childIn the closing years of the Thirty Years' War, a civil war, the Fronde, which effectively curbed France's ability to make good the advantages gained in the Peace of Westphalia, broke out. The Frondeurs originally sought to protect traditional feudal "liberties" from an increasingly centralized and centralizing royal government. On the other hand, Cardinal Mazarin had continued and would continue to follow the policies of centralization pursued by his predecessor, Cardinal Richelieu, seeking to augment the power of the Crown at the expense of the nobility and the Parlements. In 1648, he sought to levy a tax on the members of the Parlement de Paris, a judicial body composed mostly of nobles and high clergymen. The members of the Parlement not only refused to comply, but also ordered all of Cardinal Mazarin's earlier financial edicts burned. When Mazarin, strengthened by the news of the victory of Louis II de Bourbon, prince de Condé (le Grand Condé) at the Battle of Lens, arrested certain members of the Parlement in a show of force, Paris erupted in rioting and insurrection. A mob of angry Parisians broke into the royal palace and demanded to see their king. Led into the royal bedchamber, they gazed upon Louis XIV, who was feigning sleep, and quietly departed. Prompted by the possible danger to the royal family and the monarchy, Anne fled Paris with the king and his courtiers. Shortly thereafter, the signing of the Peace of Westphalia allowed the French army under Condé to return to the aid of Louis XIV and his royal court. By January 1649, Condé had started to besiege rebellious Paris; the subsequent Peace of Rueil temporarily ended the conflict.[citation needed]
After the first Fronde (Fronde parlementaire, 1648-1649) ended, the second Fronde, that of the nobles (Fronde des princes, 1650-1653) began. This second phase of upper-class insurrection, unlike that which preceded it, was characterized by tales of sordid intrigue and half-hearted warfare. It was conducted by aristocrats for whom it represented a protest against and an attempt to reverse the centralisation of France and their consequent demotion from vassals to courtiers. This Fronde was led by France's highest-ranking nobles, from Louis' uncle Gaston, duc d'Orléans, and first cousin, Anne d'Orléans, duchesse de Montpensier (known as la Grande Mademoiselle); to more distantly-related princes du sang such as Condé, his brother Armand de Bourbon, prince de Conti, and their sister Anne-Geneviève, duchesse de Longueville; to dukes of legitimated royal descent, like Henri II d'Orléans, duc de Longueville, and François de Bourbon-Vendôme, duc de Beaufort; and to princelings descended from foreign dynasties (known as princes étrangers), such as Frédéric Maurice de La Tour d'Auvergne, duc de Bouillon, and his brother, the famous Marshal of France, Henri, vicomte de Turenne, as well as Marie de Rohan-Montbazon, duchesse de Chevreuse; and scions of France's oldest families, like François VI, duc de La Rochefoucauld. Even the clergy was represented by Jean François Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz.[citation needed]
With the coming of age of Louis XIV and his subsequent coronation, the Frondeurs, who could hitherto have claimed to have been acting on his behalf and in his real interests against his Regent-mother and her first minister, had lost their pretext for revolt. The Fronde thus gradually lost steam until it ended in 1653, when Mazarin returned triumphant from abroad after having fled into exile on several occasions. The result of these tumultuous times, when the Queen Mother reputedly sold her jewels to feed her children, was a king filled with a permanent distrust for the nobility and the mob.[citation needed]
[edit] End of war and marriage
This section needs additional citations for verification.
Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (August 2008)
Despite the end of the Thirty Years' War and the Fronde, war with Spain continued. The French received aid in this military effort from England, then governed by Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell. The Anglo-French alliance achieved victory in 1658 with the Battle of the Dunes.[citation needed]
The subsequent Treaty of the Pyrenees, signed in 1659, fixed the border between France and Spain at the Pyrenees; according to its terms, Louis XIV pardoned Condé, who had gone into the service of Spain, against his king, while Spain ceded to France the whole of Roussillon, the northern half of Cerdanya and various provinces and towns in the Spanish Netherlands. The treaty signalled a change in the balance of power in Europe with the decline of Spain and the rise of France.[citation needed]
By the terms of the treaty, Louis XIV became engaged to marry the daughter of Philip IV of Spain, his double first cousin, Maria Theresa (Marie-Thérèse d'Autriche). The Spanish had understandably been ill-disposed to the idea of such a marriage since Marie-Thérèse had been heir presumptive for many years. Moreover, she appeared likely to return to that position since the latest heir apparent, her brother Philip Prospero (ultimately to die in 1661), was a toddler in an age of high infant mortality. The possibility of Marie-Thérèse's acceding to the Spanish throne therefore loomed large. This made the prospect of an eventual personal union between the two countries, resulting from a royal marriage, all too probable, and it was, in the eyes of Spanish diplomats, to be avoided.[citation needed]
To get around Spanish hesitation and intransigence, Mazarin, in the words of Bussy-Rabutin, "invited the Duchess of Savoy to meet Louis and his Court at Lyon and to bring the princesses her daughters with her, ostensibly for the purpose of marrying her eldest (Marguerite of Savoy) to the King".[9] According to Bluche, on hearing the news of the meeting at Lyon and the possibility of an impending Franco-Savoyard union, Philip IV reputedly exclaimed, "Esto no puede ser, y no será" ("This cannot be, and will not be").[10] The marquis de Pimentel was thus promptly dispatched to Lyon to commence negotiations for a Franco-Spanish marriage.[citation needed]
The wedding of Louis XIV and Marie-Thérèse at Saint-Jean-de-LuzThis resulted in a marriage contract and treaty stipulating an immense dowry of 500,000 gold écus, to be paid in three installments; its non-payment would later serve as a pretext for the War of Devolution[11] as well as that of the Spanish Succession. According to the terms of the marriage contract, as translated by Ian Dunlop, "that on condition (que moyennant) that the sums are made over to His Most Christian Majesty (Louis XIV)... the said most serene Infanta (Marie-Thérèse) will rest content with the said dowry and not thereafter sue for any other of her rights", and thus she would renounce for herself and her descendants all claims to the territories of the Spanish Monarchy.[12] Since the dowry was not fully paid, Spain being at the time bankrupt, the renunciation was theoretically void and was not recognized as binding by the French Crown.
Louis and Marie-Thérèse were married by proxy on June 3, 1660 at Hondarribia, on the Spanish side of the Basque Country, Don Luis de Haro representing Louis. On June 9, the actual marriage ceremony, officiated over by the Bishop of Bayonne, took place in Saint Jean-Baptiste Church in Saint-Jean-de-Luz on the French side of the Basque Country.[13][14]
[edit] Personal reign and reforms
This section needs additional citations for verification.
Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (August 2008)
Within France, upon the death of Cardinal Mazarin, his first minister, in 1661, Louis XIV assumed personal control of the reins of government. He was able to exploit the widespread public yearning for peace and order, which had resulted from the long foreign wars and domestic civil strife, caused by events such as the Fronde and abuses of the people perpetrated by some nobles, to consoliate central authority at the feudal aristocracy's expense. Trials such as the Grands Jours d'Auvergne were used to impose order by punishing some of the most outrageous abuses by nobles, to "lift the people up from the oppression of the powerful" in the words of the Procureur-Général Denis Talon, and to increase public support for Louis' policies.[citation needed]
At the same time, the French treasury stood close to bankruptcy. Louis XIV eliminated Nicolas Fouquet, the Surintendant des Finances, commuting the sentence of banishment, passed by the Parlement, to imprisonment for life, and abolished Fouquet's office. Jean-Baptiste Colbert was appointed as Contrôleur-Général des Finances in 1665. To be sure, Fouquet had committed no financial indiscretions which Mazarin had not committed before him and which Colbert would not commit afterward. Moreover, Fouquet had competently and loyally discharged his duties, but his growing ambition to succeed Richelieu and Mazarin in power was such that Louis had to rid himself of him if he was to rule alone.[citation needed]
The commencement of Louis' personal reign was marked by a series of administrative and fiscal reforms. Colbert reduced the national debt through more efficient taxation. His principal taxes included the aides, the douanes, the gabelle, and the taille. The aides and douanes were customs duties, the gabelle a tax on salt, and the taille a tax on land. While Colbert did not abolish the historic tax exemption enjoyed by the nobility and clergy, he did improve the methods of tax collection then in use.[citation needed]
Colbert also had wide-ranging plans to strengthen France through commerce and trade. His administration ordained new industries and encouraged manufacturers and inventors, such as the Lyon silk manufacturers and the Manufacture des Gobelins, which produced and still produces tapestries. He also brought professional manufacturers and artisans from all over Europe, such as glassmakers from Murano, ironworkers from Sweden, and shipbuilders from the United Provinces. In this manner, he sought to decrease French dependence on foreign imported goods while increasing French exports, and hence to decrease the flow of gold and silver out of France. Outside of France, Colbert supported and encouraged the development of colonies in the Americas, Africa and Asia not only to provide markets for French exports, but also to provide resources for French industries.[citation needed]
Colbert also made improvements to the navy to increase French naval prestige and to gain control of the high seas in times of war and of peace, improvements to the merchant marine to remove, at least partially, control of French commerce from Dutch hands, and improvements to the highways and the waterways of France which decreased the costs and time of transporting goods around the kingdom.[citation needed]
Silver coin of Louis XIV, dated 1674
Obverse. The Latin inscription is LVDOVICVS XIIII D[EI] GRA[TIA] ("Louis XIV, by the grace of God"). Reverse. The Latin inscription is FRAN[CIÆ] ET NAVARRÆ REX 1674 ("King of France and of Navarre, 1674").
While Colbert, his family, clients and allies at court, focused on the economy and maritime matters, another faction, led by Michel Le Tellier and his son François-Michel Le Tellier, marquis de Louvois, turned their attention to military matters.[citation needed]
Louis XIV sought to play these factions off against one another and thus create checks and balances, ensuring that no one group would attain such power and influence at court as to destabilize his reign.[citation needed]
Le Tellier and Louvois had an important role to play in government, curbing the independent spirit of much of the nobility at court and in the army. Gone were the days when army generals, without regard to the bigger political and diplomatic picture, protracted war at the frontiers and disobeyed orders coming from the capital, while quarrelling and bickering with each other over precedence. Gone too were the days when positions of seniority and rank in the army were the sole possession of the old military aristocracy (the noblesse d'épée). Louvois, in particular, pledged himself to modernizing the army, organizing it into a new professional, disciplined and well-trained force out of the old. He sought to contrive and direct campaigns and devoted himself to providing for the soldiers' material well-being and morale, and he did so successfully. Like Colbert and Louis XIV, Louvois was hardworking.[citation needed]
Louis XIV, King of FranceLouis also instituted various legal reforms. This is reflected in the sheer number of Great Ordinances enacted during his reign. The Grande Ordonnance de Procédure Civile of 1667, also known as Code Louis, was a comprehensive legal code regulating civil procedure in all of France in a uniform manner. It made it compulsory to record baptisms, marriages and burials in the registers of the State (as opposed to the registers of the Church). The Code Louis played an important part in France's legal history as it was the basis for Napoleon I's Code Napoléon, which is itself the basis for many of Western Europe's modern legal codes. It sought to provide France with a single system of law where there were two: customary law in the north, and Roman law in the south. Another important Great Ordinance was the Ordonnance Criminelle de 1670, which was an early attempt at the codification of criminal procedure in France.[citation needed]
One of Louis XIV's more infamous decrees was the Grande Ordonnance sur les Colonies of 1685, also known as Code Noir. It granted sanction to slavery, although it did extend a measure of humanity to the practice by prohibiting the separation of families. However, no person could own a slave in the French colonies unless he were a member of the Roman Catholic Church, and a Catholic priest had to baptise each slave. Another important legal text enacted under Louis XIV was the Code Forestier, which sought to control and oversee the forestry industry in France, protecting forests from destruction.[citation needed]
[edit] Patronage of the arts
This section needs additional citations for verification.
Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (August 2008)
The Sun King proved a generous spender, dispensing large sums of money to finance the royal court, and supported those who worked under him. He brought the Académie Française under his patronage, and became its "Protector". It was under his reign and indeed his patronage that Classical French literature flourished with such writers as Molière, Jean Racine and Jean de La Fontaine whose works still hold great influence to this day. The visual arts also found in Louis XIV their patron for he funded and commissioned various artists, such as Charles Le Brun, Pierre Mignard, Antoine Coysevox and Hyacinthe Rigaud whose works became famed throughout Europe. In music, composers and musicians like Jean-Baptiste Lully, Jacques Champion de Chambonnières and François Couperin thrived and influenced many others. Even in the art of gardening did Louis prove a patron with his support of André Le Nôtre.[citation needed]
The colonnade of the LouvreLouis XIV ordered the construction of the military complex known as the "hôtel des Invalides" to provide a home for the officers and soldiers who had served him loyally in the army, but who had been rendered infirm by either injury or age. While the practice of pharmacy was still quite elementary, les Invalides pioneered new treatments and set new standards for hospice treatment. Louis considered its construction one of the greatest achievements of his reign, which, along with the Palace of Versailles, is one of the largest and most extravagant monuments in Europe.[citation needed]
He also improved the Louvre, as well as many other royal residences. Originally, when planning additions to the Louvre, Louis XIV had hired Gian Lorenzo Bernini as architect. However, his plans for the Louvre would have called for the destruction of much of the existing structure, replacing it with an Italian summer villa in the centre of Paris. In Bernini's place, Louis chose the French architect Claude Perrault, whose work on the "Perrault Wing" of the Louvre is widely-celebrated.[citation needed]
In 1685, on the instruction of (his secret wife?) Madame de Maintenon, he created the Saint-Cyr college for the filles pauvres de la noblesse (poor noble girls), commonly known as les demoiselles de Saint-Cyr. This school took noble but poor children from the ages of 7-20, put them into 4 different coloured groups; red for the youngest, green for the early teens, yellow for the middle teens and blue for the almost adult late teens to 20. The School was not a convent, in fact some of the lessons were to prepare the girls for married life. Madame de Maintenon took great pleasure in this school and was to finally die there.[citation needed]
Monarchical Styles of
King Louis XIV
Par la grâce de Dieu, Roi de France et de Navarre
Reference style His Most Christian Majesty
Spoken style Your Most Christian Majesty
Alternative style Monsieur Le Roi
[edit] Early wars in the Low Countries
To comply with Wikipedia's quality standards, this section may need to be rewritten.
Reason: Edit for stylistic continuity; correction of grammatical and syntactical errors
Please help improve this article. The discussion page may contain suggestions. (August 2008)
This section needs additional citations for verification.
Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (August 2008)
Main article: War of Devolution
Main article: Franco-Dutch War
After Louis XIV's father-in-law and uncle, Philip IV of Spain, died in 1665, Philip IV's son (by his second wife) became Charles II of Spain. Louis XIV claimed that Brabant, a territory in the Low Countries ruled by the King of Spain, had "devolved" to his wife, Marie-Thérèse, Charles II's elder half-sister by their father's first marriage. He argued that the custom of Brabant required that a child should not suffer from his or her father's remarriage, hence having precedence in inheritance over children of the second or subsequent marriages. Louis personally participated in the campaigns of the ensuing War of Devolution, which broke out in 1667.[citation needed]
Problems internal to the Republic of the Seven United Provinces (the Netherlands) aided Louis XIV's designs on the Low Countries. The most prominent political figure in the United Provinces at the time, Johan de Witt, Grand Pensionary, feared the ambition of the young William III, Prince of Orange, who in seeking to seize control might thus deprive De Witt of supreme power in the Republic and restore the House of Orange to the influence it had hitherto enjoyed until the death of William II, Prince of Orange. Therefore, with the United Provinces in internal conflict between supporters of De Witt and those of William III, the "States faction" and the "Orange faction" respectively, and with England preoccupied in the Second Anglo-Dutch War with the Dutch, who were being supported, in accordance with the terms of the treaties signed between them, by their ally, Louis XIV, France easily conquered both Flanders and Franche-Comté.[citation needed]
Shocked by the rapidity of French successes and fearful of the future, the United Provinces turned on their former friends and put aside their differences with England and, when joined by Sweden, formed a Triple Alliance in 1668. Faced with the threat of escalation and having signed a secret treaty partitioning the Spanish succession with the Emperor, the other major claimant, Louis XIV agreed to make peace. Under the terms of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1668), France retained Flanders, including the great fortress of Lille, but returned Franche-Comté to Spain.[citation needed]
Louis XIV in 1673The Triple Alliance did not last very long. In 1670, Charles II, lured by French bribes and pensions, signed the secret Treaty of Dover, entering into an alliance with France; the two kingdoms, along with certain Rhineland German princes, declared war on the United Provinces in 1672, sparking off the Franco-Dutch War. The rapid invasion and occupation of most of the Netherlands precipitated a coup, which toppled De Witt and allowed William III to seize power. William III entered into an alliance with Spain, the Emperor and the rest of the Empire; and a treaty of peace with England was signed in 1674, the result of which was England's withdrawal from the war and the marriage between William III and Lady Mary, niece of the English King Charles II. Facing a possible Imperial advance on his flank while in the Low Countries in that year, Louis XIV ordered his army to withdraw to more defensible positions.[citation needed]
Despite these diplomatic and military reverses, the war continued with brilliant French victories against the overwhelming forces of the opposing coalition. In a matter of weeks in 1674, the Spanish territory of Franche Comté fell to the French armies under the eyes of the king; while Condé defeated a much larger combined army, with Austrian, Spanish and Dutch contingents, under the Prince of Orange, at the Battle of Seneffe, preventing them from descending on Paris. In the winter of 1674–1675, the outnumbered Turenne, through a most daring and brilliant campaign, inflicted defeat upon the Imperial armies under Raimondo Montecuccoli, drove them out of Alsace and back across the Rhine, and recovered the province for Louis XIV. Through a series of feints, marches and counter-marches towards the end of the war, Louis XIV led his army to besiege and capture Ghent, an action which dissuaded Charles II and his English Parliament from declaring war on France and which allowed Louis, in a very superior position, to force the allies to the negotiating table. After six years, Europe was exhausted by war, and peace negotiations commenced, being accomplished in 1678 with the Treaty of Nijmegen. While Louis XIV returned all captured Dutch territory, he gained more towns and associated lands in the Spanish Netherlands and retained Franche-Comté, which had been captured by Louis and his army in a matter of weeks. As he was in a position to make demands which were much more exorbitant, Louis' actions were celebrated as evidence of his moderation in victory.[citation needed]
Reception of Le Grand Condé at Versailles, by Jean-Léon Gérôme (1878)The Treaty of Nijmegen further increased France's influence in Europe, but did not satisfy Louis XIV. The King dismissed his foreign minister Simon Arnauld, marquis de Pomponne in 1679, viewed as timorous and as having compromised too much with the allies. Louis XIV also kept up his army but, instead of pursuing his claims through purely military action, utilised judicial processes to accomplish further territorial aggrandizement. Thanks to the ambiguous nature of treaties of the time, Louis was able to claim that the territories ceded to him in previous treaties ought to be ceded along with all their dependencies and lands which had formerly belonged to them, as had in fact been stipulated in the peace treaties, but had separated over the years. French Chambers of Reunion were appointed to ascertain which territories formally belonged to France; French troops later occupied them. The annexation of these territories was designed to give France a more defensible frontier, the pré carré suggested by Sébastien Le Prestre, seigneur de Vauban.[citation needed]
Louis sought to gain cities and territories such as Luxembourg, for its strategic offensive and defensive position on the frontier, as well as Casale, which would give him access to the Po river valley in the heart of Northern Italy. Louis also desired to gain Strasbourg, an important strategic outpost through which various Imperial armies had in the previous wars crossed over the Rhine to invade France. Strasbourg was a part of Alsace, but had not been ceded with the rest of Habsburg-ruled Alsace in the Peace of Westphalia. It was nonetheless occupied by the French in 1681 under Louis' new legal pretext, and, along with other occupied territories, such as Luxembourg and Casale, was ceded to France for a period of twenty years by the Truce of Ratisbon.[citation needed]
[edit] Height of power in the 1680s
This section needs additional citations for verification.
Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (August 2008)
Louis XIV in 1684By the early 1680s, Louis XIV had greatly augmented his and France's influence and power in Europe and the world. Louis XIV's famous minister, Colbert, who died in 1683, exercised a tremendous influence on the royal treasury and coffers, with royal revenue tripling under his supervision.[citation needed]
The princes of Europe began to imitate France and Louis XIV in everything from taste in art, food and fashion to political systems; many even took "maîtresses-en-titre" simply because it was done at Versailles.[citation needed]
In the sphere of foreign affairs outside Europe, French colonies were multiplying in the Americas, Asia and Africa, while diplomatic relations had been initiated with countries as far afield as Siam (through the embassy of Chaumont), India and Persia. For example, the explorer René Robert Cavelier, sieur de La Salle claimed and named, in 1682, the basin of the Mississippi River in North America, "Louisiane", in honour of Louis XIV, while French Jesuits and missionaries could be seen at the court of the Manchu Emperor Kangxi in China. In France, Louis XIV received the visit of a Chinese Jesuit named Michael Shen Fu-Tsung as early as 1684,[15] and a few years later he had a Chinese librarian and translator at his court, named Arcadio Huang.[16][17]
Siamese embassy of King Narai to Louis XIV in 1686, led by Kosa Pan. Painting by Nicolas Larmessin.Domestically, Louis XIV succeeded in establishing and increasing the influence and central authority of the King of France at the expense of the Church and aristocracy. He sought to reinforce traditional Gallicanism, a doctrine limiting the authority of the Pope in France, and convened an assembly of clergymen (the Assemblée du Clergé) in November 1681. Before it was dissolved in June 1682, it had agreed to the Declaration of the Clergy of France. The power of the King of France was increased in contrast to the power of the Pope, which was reduced. The Pope was not allowed to send papal legates to France without the king's consent; such legates as could enter France, furthermore, required further approval before they could exercise their power.[citation needed][1] Bishops were not to leave France without royal approval; no government officials could be excommunicated for acts committed in pursuance of their duties; and no appeal could be made to the Pope without the approval of the king. The king was allowed to enact ecclesiastical laws, and all regulations made by the Pope were deemed invalid in France without the assent of the monarch. The Declaration was not accepted by the Pope, which is not surprising given the infringements of the document upon papal authority.[1]
Louis also achieved immense control over the Second Estate, that is of the nobility, in France by attaching much of the higher nobility to his orbit at his palace at Versailles. He expected them to spend the majority of the year under his close watch instead of on their own estates and in their regional power-bases, where historically nobles waged local wars with neighbors or plotted resistance to royal authority. Only by being in constant attendance upon him were they able to gain the pensions and privileges necessary to lead lives considered appropriate to their rank. Louis entertained his permanent visitors with extravagant luxury and other distractions which helped him awe and domesticate his hitherto unruly nobility. Thus, Louis continued and perfected the work of the Cardinals Richelieu and Mazarin.[citation needed]
As a result of the Fronde, Louis believed that his power would prevail only if he filled high executive offices with commoners, or at least members of the relatively newer bureaucratic aristocracy (the noblesse de robe), because, he believed, while he could reduce a commoner to a nonentity by simply dismissing him, he could not destroy the entrenched influence of a great nobleman of ancient lineage as easily. Thus Louis XIV half-forced, half-seduced the noblesse d'épée into serving him ceremonially as courtiers, whilst he appointed commoners or newer nobles as ministers and regional intendants. As courtiers, the power of the great nobles grew ever weaker. The diminution of the power of the high aristocracy could be witnessed in the lack of such rebellions as the Fronde after Louis XIV.[citation needed]
In fact, the victory of the Crown over the nobles, finally achieved under Louis XIV, ensured that the Fronde was the last major civil war to plague France until the Revolution and the Napoleonic Age. Indeed, John A. Lynn has calculated that after Louis XIV there was a significant drop in years with internal civil war. The number of years dropped from a high of around 50 years out of 101 between 1560 and 1660 (50%), to six years out of 55 during Louis' personal reign from 1661 to 1715 (11%), to no civil wars till the Revolution in 1789.[18] Not until the Revolution, about a hundred years later, did civil war once again trouble France.
The Cour royale and the Cour de marbre of the château de VersaillesLouis XIV had the Palace of Versailles, outside Paris, originally a hunting lodge built by his father, converted into a spectacular royal palace in a series of four major and distinct building campaigns. By the end of the third building campaign, the château had taken on most of the appearance that it retains to this day, except for the current chapel built in the last decade of the reign. He officially moved there, along with the royal court, on May 6, 1682. Louis had several reasons for creating such a symbol of extravagant opulence and stately grandeur, and for shifting the seat of the monarch. The assertion that he did so because he hated Paris, however, is flawed as he did not cease to embellish his capital with glorious monuments while improving and developing it. On the other hand, contemporary writers such as Saint-Simon speculated that Louis viewed Versailles as an isolated power center where treasonous cabals could be more readily recognized.[19]
Versailles served as a dazzling and awe-inspiring setting for state affairs and for the reception of foreign dignitaries, where the attention was not shared with the capital and the people, but was assumed solely by the person of the king. Court life centered on munificence; courtiers lived lives of expensive luxury, appareled in suitable magnificence and constantly attended balls, dinners, performances, and celebrations.[citation needed] Thus, many noblemen had perforce either to give up the cachet and opportunites associated with sharing in the king's company, or to depend entirely on the king for the grants and subsidies necessary to do so in proper style.[19] Instead of exercising power and potentially creating trouble, the nobles vied for the honour of dining at the king's table or the privilege of carrying a candlestick as the king retired to his bedroom.
The Doge of Genoa at Versailles on the 15 May 1685
Reparation faite à Louis XIV par le Doge de Gênes.15 mai 1685 by Claude Guy Halle, Château de VersaillesBy 1685, Louis XIV stood at the apogee of his power. One of France's chief rivals, the Holy Roman Empire, was occupied in fighting the Ottoman Empire in the Great Turkish War, which began in 1683 and lasted till 1699. The Ottoman Grand Vizier had almost captured Vienna, but at the last moment John III Sobieski, King of Poland led an army of Polish and Imperial forces to victory at the Battle of Vienna in 1683. In the meantime, Louis XIV, by the Truce of Ratisbon, had acquired control of several territories which covered the frontier and protected France from foreign invasion. After repelling the Ottoman attack on Vienna, the Emperor was no longer in imminent danger from the Turks, nevertheless he did not attempt to regain the territories annexed by Louis XIV. Rather, he acquiesced to the fait accompli of the Truce.[citation needed]
After having his city bombarded by the French in 1685 from the sea as punishment for having supported the Spanish and having granted them use of Genoese ships in the Franco-Dutch War, the Doge of Genoa travelled to Versailles where he was received amidst courtly magnificence and made his apologies to and peace with Louis XIV.[citation needed]
Louis XIV's Queen, Marie-Thérèse, died in 1683. He remarked on her demise that on no other occasion had she ever caused him unease. Although he was said to have performed his marital duties nightly, he had not remained faithful to her for long after their union in 1660: his mistresses included Louise de la Vallière, duchesse de Vaujours; Françoise-Athénaïs de Rochechouart-Mortemart, marquise de Montespan; and Marie-Angélique de Scoraille, duchesse de Fontanges. As a result, he produced many illegitimate children, most of whom were joined in marriage with members of cadet branches of the royal family itself. These children, as well as their descendants, would go on to claim positions of power and influence in the next century.[citation needed]
He proved, however, more faithful to his second wife, Françoise d'Aubigné, marquise de Maintenon. The secret marriage between Louis XIV and Madame de Maintenon, which probably occurred in late 1685,[11] was an "open secret" as it was generally known but was never discussed or announced pubicly, and would last to his death. The marriage is sometimes described as an morganatic marriage but this is incorrect as morganatic marriages are not defined under French Law.[20]
[edit] Revocation of the Edict of Nantes
La Maintenon, once a Protestant, had converted to Roman Catholicism. It was once believed that she vigorously promoted the persecution of the Protestants, and that she urged Louis XIV to revoke the Edict of Nantes (1598), which granted a degree of religious freedom to the Huguenots. However, this view of her participation is now being questioned. It has been suggested that Marie-Thérèse, on her deathbed, had urged Louis on the subject, which, given her Spanish Catholic upbringing, is not surprising. Whatever the truth of such a proposition, Louis XIV himself clearly supported such a plan; he believed, along with the rest of Europe, Catholic or Protestant, that, in order to achieve national unity, he had to first achieve a religiously unified nation—specifically a Catholic one in his case. This was enshrined in the principle of "cuius regio, eius religio", which defined religious policy throughout Europe since its establishment, by the Peace of Augsburg, in 1555. He had already begun the persecution of the Huguenots by quartering soldiers in their homes, though it must be said that it was theoretically within his feudal rights, and hence legal, to do so with any of his subjects.
Louis continued his attempt to achieve a religiously united France by issuing an edict, in March 1685, which affected the French colonies, and expelled all Jews from them. The public practice of any religion except Roman Catholicism became prohibited. In October 1685, Louis XIV issued the Edict of Fontainebleau, revoking that of Nantes, on the pretext that the near-extinction of Protestantism and Protestants in France made any edict granting them privileges redundant.[1] The Edict decreed that "liberty is granted to the said persons of the Pretended Reformed Religion Protestantism ... on condition of not engaging in the exercise of the said religion, or of meeting under pretext of prayers or religious services." Thus, it precluded individuals from publicly practising or exercising the religion, but not from merely believing in it. It banished from the realm any Protestant minister who refused to convert to Roman Catholicism. Protestant schools and institutions were banned. Children born into Protestant families were to be forcibly baptised by Roman Catholic priests, and Protestant places of worship were demolished.
Although the Edict formally denied Huguenots permission to leave France, about 200,000 of them left in any case, taking with them their skills in commerce and trade. The Edict proved economically damaging to France,[11] though not ruinous; and while Vauban, one of Louis XIV's most influential generals, publicly condemned the measure, its proclamation was celebrated by many Catholics throughout the realm.
[edit] The League of Augsburg
To comply with Wikipedia's quality standards, this section may need to be rewritten.
Reason: The detail of this section is beyond the scope this article; the article is about Louis XIV, not the War of the League of Augsburg
Please help improve this article. The discussion page may contain suggestions. (August 2008)
This section needs additional citations for verification.
Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (August 2008)
Main article: War of the Grand Alliance
[edit] Causes and conduct of the war
The wider political and diplomatic result of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, however, was to provoke increased anti-French sentiment in Protestant countries. In 1686, both Catholic and Protestant rulers joined in the League of Augsburg, ostensibly a defensive pact to protect the Rhine, but really designed as an offensive alliance against France. The coalition included the Holy Roman Emperor and several of the German states that formed part of the Empire — most notably the Palatinate, Bavaria, and Brandenburg. The United Provinces, Spain and Sweden also adhered to the League.[citation needed]
In 1685, Charles II, Elector Palatine, the brother of Louis XIV's sister-in-law, Charlotte-Elizabeth, duchesse d'Orléans, had died. The palatine crown had gone, not to her, but to the junior Neuburg branch of the family. Louis had sought, through an ultimatum to the German princes, to have his sister-in-law's claims recognised. However, the expiry of this ultimatum and another to the German princes to ratify the Truce of Ratisbon and confirm Louis' possession of annexed territories, along with disputes over the succession to the Electorate of Cologne, lead to his sending troops into the Palatinate in 1688. Ostensibly, the army had the task of supporting the claims of Charlotte-Elizabeth to the Palatinate. The real aim, however, of the invasion was to apply pressure and force the Palatinate to leave, and thus weaken, the League of Augsburg. The troops under the command of Melac eventually executed Louis' order ("brûlez le Palatinat!") and devastated large areas of South Western Germany. This was done as a sort of scorched earth policy with the aim of preventing the larger gathering Imperial army from reaching the frontiers of France and invading Lorraine and Alsace.[citation needed]
Louis XIV's actions united the German princes behind the Holy Roman Emperor. Louis had expected that England, under the Catholic James II, would remain neutral. In 1688, however, the "Glorious Revolution" resulted in the deposition of James II and his replacement by his daughter, Mary II, who ruled jointly with her husband, William III, now King of England. As William III had developed an enmity against Louis XIV during the Franco-Dutch War, he pushed England into the League of Augsburg, which then became known as the Grand Alliance.[citation needed]
Louis XIV at the siege of NamurThe campaigns of the War of the Grand Alliance (1688–1697) generally proceeded favorably for France. The forces of the Holy Roman Emperor proved ineffective, as many Imperial troops were still occupied in the Balkans with the Great Turkish War, and because the Imperials generally took to the field much later than the French. Thus, France could accumulate a string of victories from Flanders in the north, to the Rhine valley in the east, to Italy and Spain in the south, as well as on the high seas and in the colonies.[citation needed]
Louis XIV aided James II in his attempt to regain the British crown, but the Stuart king was unsuccessful and was defeated at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. A year later, the last Jacobite stronghold, Limerick, fell to Williamite forces after the Battle of Aughrim, and James' dreams of returning to the throne dissipated. Williamite England could then devote more of her funds and troops to the war on the Continent.[citation needed]
Nonetheless, despite the size of the opposing coalition, which encompassed most of Europe, French forces in Flanders under the famous pupil of Condé, François Henri de Montmorency-Bouteville, duc de Luxembourg, nicknamed "le tapissier de Notre-Dame" for the number of captured enemy standards which he sent to decorate the Cathedral, crushed the allied armies at the Battle of Fleurus in the same year as the Battle of the Boyne, as well as at the Battle of Steenkerque two years later and the Battle of Landen a year after that.
Under the personal supervision of Louis XIV, the French army captured Mons in 1691 and the hitherto impregnable fortress of Namur in 1692; and with the capture of Charleroi by Luxembourg in 1693 after his victory at Landen, France gained the forward defensive line of the Sambre. At the Battles of Marsaglia and of Staffarde, France was victorious over the allied forces under Victor Amadeus, Duke of Savoy, overrunning his dominion and reducing the territory under his effective command to merely the area around Turin. In the southeast, along the Pyrenees, the Battle of Torroella opened Catalonia to French invasion. The French naval victory at the Battle of Beachy Head in 1690, however, was offset by the Anglo-Dutch naval victory at the Battles of Barfleur and La Hougue in 1692; but neither side was able to entirely defeat the opposing navy.[citation needed]
The war continued for four more years, until the Duke of Savoy signed a separate peace and subsequent alliance with France in 1696, the Treaty of Turin, undertaking to join with French arms in a capture of the Milanese and allowing French armies in Italy to reinforce others; one of these reinforced armies, that of Spain, captured Barcelona and hastened the arrival of peace.[citation needed]
[edit] Treaty of Ryswick
Marshal de LuxembourgThe War of the Grand Alliance eventually ended with the Treaty of Ryswick in 1697. Louis XIV surrendered Luxembourg and most of the other Réunion territories he had seized since the end of the Dutch War in 1679, but retained Strasbourg, assuring the Rhine as the border between France and the Empire. He also gained de jure recognition of his hitherto de facto possession of Saint-Domingue, as well as the return of Pondicherry and Acadia. Louis undertook to recognise William III and Mary II as joint sovereigns of Great Britain and Ireland, and assured them that he would no longer assist James II; at the same time he renounced intervention in the Electorate of Cologne and claims to the Palatinate, in return for financial compensation. Louis XIV returned Lorraine to her duke, but on terms which allowed French passage at any time and which severely restricted his political maneuverability. The Dutch were allowed to garrison forts in the Spanish Netherlands, the "Barrier", to protect themselves against possible French aggression. Spain recovered Catalonia and the many territories lost, both in this war and the previous one (War of the Reunions), in the Low Countries.[citation needed]
Of similar note, Louis secured the dissolution of the Grand Alliance by manipulating the rivalries and suspicions of its member states; in so doing, he divided his enemies and broke their power since no single state on its own was capable of taking on France. The generous terms of the treaty were seen as concessions to Spain designed to foster pro-French sentiment, which would eventually lead Charles II, King of Spain to declare as his heir, Louis' grandson Philippe, duc d'Anjou. Moreover, despite such seemingly disadvantageous terms in the Treaty of Ryswick, French influence was still at such a height in all of Europe that Louis XIV could offer his cousin, François Louis de Bourbon, prince de Conti, the Polish crown, duly have him elected by the Sejm and proclaimed as King of Poland by the Polish primate. However, Conti's own tardiness in proceeding to Poland to claim the throne allowed a rival, Augustus II the Strong, Elector of Saxony to have himself crowned king instead.[citation needed]
[edit] The Spanish Succession
To comply with Wikipedia's quality standards, this section may need to be rewritten.
Reason: The detail of this section is beyond the scope this article; the article is about Louis XIV, not the War of the Spanish Succession
Please help improve this article. The discussion page may contain suggestions. (August 2008)
Main article: War of the Spanish Succession
Europe on the eve of the War of the Spanish Succession (1700)
[edit] Causes and build-up to the war
The great matter of the succession to the Spanish throne dominated European foreign affairs following the Peace of Ryswick. The Spanish King Charles II, severely incapacitated, could not father an heir. The Spanish inheritance offered a much sought-after prize, for Charles II ruled not only Spain, but also Naples, Sicily, the Milanese, the Spanish Netherlands and a vast colonial empire—in all, twenty-two different realms and dominions, many of which were on the periphery of France.[citation needed]
France and Austria were the main claimants to the throne, both of which had close family ties to the Spanish royal family. Anjou (later Philip V of Spain), the French claimant, was the great-grandson of the eldest daughter of Philip III of Spain, Anne of Austria, and the grandson of the eldest daughter of Philip IV of Spain, Marie-Thérèse. The only bar to inheritance lay in their renunciations of claims to the throne, which in the case of Marie-Thérèse, however, was considered legally null and void as other terms of the marriage treaty had not been fulfilled by Spain.[citation needed]
Philip V, King of SpainCharles, Archduke of Austria (later Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor) and younger son of Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor by his third marriage (with Eleonore-Magdalena of Neuburg), claimed the throne through his paternal grandmother, Maria Anna of Spain, who was the youngest daughter of Philip III; this claim was not, however, tainted by any renunciation. Purely on the basis of the laws of primogeniture, however, France had the best claims since they were derived from the eldest daughters in each generation.[citation needed]
Many European powers feared that if either France or the Emperor came to control Spain, the balance of power in Europe would be threatened. Thus, both the Dutch and the English preferred another candidate, the Bavarian prince Joseph Ferdinand, who was the grandson of Leopold I, through his first wife Margaret Theresa of Spain, younger daughter of Philip IV. Under the terms of the First Partition Treaty, it was agreed that the Bavarian prince would inherit Spain, with the territories in Italy and the Low Countries being divided between the Houses of France and Austria. Spain, however, had not been consulted, and vehemently resisted the dismemberment of its empire. The Spanish court insisted on their empire indivisible. When the Treaty became known to Charles II in 1698, he settled on Joseph Ferdinand as his sole heir, assigning to him the entire Spanish inheritance.[citation needed]
The entire issue opened up again when smallpox claimed the Bavarian prince six months later. The Spanish court, seeking to keep the inheritance undivided, acknowledged that they could only succeed in doing so by granting the crown to a member from either the House of France, or of Austria. Charles II, under pressure from his German wife Maria Anna of Neuburg, chose the House of Austria and her nephew, settling on the Emperor's younger son, the Archduke Charles. Ignoring this, Louis and William III signed a second treaty, that of London, allowing the Archduke Charles to take Spain, the Low Countries and the Spanish colonies, whilst Louis XIV's eldest son and heir, le Grand Dauphin, would inherit the territories in Italy, with a mind to exchange them for Savoy or Lorraine.[citation needed]
[edit] Acceptance of the will and consequences
To comply with Wikipedia's quality standards, this section may need to be rewritten.
Reason: Need for links to Wikipedia articles
Please help improve this article. The discussion page may contain suggestions. (August 2008)
In 1700, as he lay upon his deathbed, Charles II unexpectedly interfered in the affair. He sought to prevent Spain from uniting with either France or the Empire, but, based on his past experience of French superiority in arms, considered France as more capable of preserving his empire in its entirety. The whole of the Spanish inheritance was thus offered to Anjou, the Dauphin's second son, on condition he kept it undivided. In the event of his refusal or inability to accept the inheritance, it would be offered to the Dauphin's youngest son, Charles, duc de Berry, and thereafter to the Archduke Charles.[21] If all these princes refused the Crown, it would be offered to the House of Savoy, distantly related to the Spanish Royal Family.[citation needed]
Louis XIV thus faced a difficult choice: he could have agreed to a partition and to possible peace in Europe, or he could have accepted the whole Spanish inheritance but alienated the other European nations. Louis originally assured William III that he would fulfill the terms of their previous treaty and partition the Spanish dominions. However, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, marquis de Torcy, the nephew of Colbert, advised Louis that even if France accepted a portion of the Spanish inheritance, a war with the Empire would almost certainly ensue; and William III had made it very clear that he had signed the Partition Treaties to avoid war, not make it, and hence would not assist France in a war to obtain the territories granted her by those treaties. Louis agreed that if a war had to occur, it would be more profitable to accept the whole of the Spanish inheritance and to fight a defensive war. Consequently, when Charles II died on November 1, 1700, Philippe, duc d'Anjou became Philip V, King of Spain.[citation needed]
Most of the rest of Europe accepted Philip V as King of Spain, albeit reluctantly. Louis, however, acted too precipitously. In 1701, he transferred the Asiento, a permit to sell slaves to the Spanish colonies, to France, with potentially damaging consequences for British trade. Moreover, Louis ceased to acknowledge William III as King of Great Britain and Ireland upon the death of James II, instead acclaiming as King James II's son, James Francis Edward Stuart (the "Old Pretender"). Furthermore, Louis sent forces into the Spanish Netherlands to secure its loyalty to Philip V and to garrison the Spanish forts, which had been garrisoned by Dutch troops as part of the "Barrier" protecting the United Provinces from potential French aggression. The result was the further alienation of both Britain and the United Provinces, both then ruled by William III. Consequently, another Grand Alliance was formed between Great Britain, the United Provinces, the Emperor and many of the petty states within the Holy Roman Empire. French diplomacy, however, secured Bavaria, Portugal and Savoy as allies for Louis and Philip.[citation needed]
[edit] Commencement of fighting
The subsequent War of the Spanish Succession continued for most of the remainder of the reign and proved costly for Louis. It began with Imperial aggression in Italy even before war was officially declared. France had some initial success, nearly capturing Vienna, but the victories of Marlborough and Eugene of Savoy showed that the myth of French invincibility was broken.[citation needed]
[edit] Defeat of French invincibility
Following Marlborough and Eugene of Savoy's victory at the Battle of Blenheim, Bavaria was flung out of the war, being partitioned between the Palatinate and Austria, and her elector, Maximilian II Emanuel, forced to flee to the Spanish Netherlands. Another consequence of Blenheim was the subsequent defection of Portugal and Savoy to the opposing side. With the Battle of Ramillies and that of Oudenarde, Franco-Spanish forces were driven ignominiously out of the Spanish Netherlands; while the Battle of Turin forced Louis to evacuate what few forces remained to him in Italy.[citation needed]
Such military defeats, coupled with famine and mounting debt, forced France into a defensive posture. By 1709, Louis' position was grievously weakened, and he was willing to sue for peace at nearly any cost, even to return all lands and territories ceded to him during his reign and to return to the frontiers of the Peace of Westphalia, signed more than sixty years prior. Nonetheless, the terms dictated by the allies were so harsh, including demands that he attack his own grandson alone to force the latter to accept the humiliating peace terms, that war continued.[citation needed]
[edit] Turning point
Whilst it became clear that France could not retain the entire Spanish inheritance, it also seemed evident that its opponents could not overthrow Philip V in Spain after the definitive Franco-Spanish victory of the Battle of Almansa, and those of Villaviciosa and Brihuega, which drove the allies out of the central Spanish provinces. Furthermore, the Battle of Malplaquet in 1709 showed that it was neither easy nor cheap to defeat and invade France, for while the allies gained the field, they did so at an abominable cost, losing 25 000 men, twice that of the French, led by their capable general, Claude Louis Hector, duc de Villars. The Battle of Denain in 1712 turned the war in favour of Louis XIV, when Villars led French forces to a decisive victory over the allies under Eugene of Savoy, recovering much lost territory and pride.[citation needed]
Map of France after the death of Louis XIVThe death of Joseph I, Holy Roman Emperor, who had succeeded his father Leopold I in 1705, made the prospect of an empire as large as that of Charles V being ruled by the Archduke Charles, now the Emperor, dangerously possible. This was, to Great Britain, as undesirable as a union of France and Spain.[citation needed]
[edit] Road to and conclusion of peace
Thus, preliminaries were signed between Great Britain and France in the pursuit of peace. Louis XIV and Philip V eventually made peace with Great Britain and the United Provinces in 1713 with the Treaty of Utrecht. Peace with the Emperor and the Holy Roman Empire came with the Treaty of Rastatt and that of Baden in 1714 respectively. The crucial interval between Utrecht and Rastatt-Baden allowed Louis XIV to capture Landau and Freiburg, permitting him to negotiate from a comparatively better position, if not from one of strength, with the Emperor and the Empire.[citation needed]
The general settlement recognised Philip V as King of Spain and ruler of the Spanish colonies. Spain's territory in the Low Countries and Italy were partitioned between Austria and Savoy, while Gibraltar and Minorca were retained by Great Britain.[citation needed]
Louis XIV, furthermore, agreed to end his support for the Old Pretender's claims to the throne of Great Britain. France was also obliged to cede the colonies and possessions of Newfoundland, Rupert's Land and Acadia in the Americas to Great Britain, while retaining Île-Saint-Jean (now Prince Edward Island) and Île Royale (now Cape Breton Island); however, most of those Continental territories lost in the devastating defeats in the Low Countries were returned to her, despite allied persistence and pressure to the contrary, and she also received further territories to which she had a claim such as the Principality of Orange, as well as the Ubaye Valley, which covered the passes through the Alps from Italy.[citation needed]
The efforts of the allies to curb and diminish French power in Europe came to naught. Moreover, France was shown to be able to protect her allies with the rehabilitation and restoration of the Elector of Bavaria, Maximilian II Emanuel, to his lands, titles and dignities.[citation needed]
[edit] Death
To comply with Wikipedia's quality standards, this section may need to be rewritten.
Reason: Edit to correct grammatical and syntactical errors; addition of Wiki links
Please help improve this article. The discussion page may contain suggestions. (August 2008)
Drugstore of Louis XIV, with details. Muséum national d'histoire naturelle, Paris.Louis XIV died on September 1, 1715, of gangrene, a few days before his seventy-seventh birthday. Almost all of Louis XIV's legitimate children had died during childhood. The only one to survive to adulthood, his eldest son, Louis de France, known as "Le Grand Dauphin", had predeceased Louis XIV in 1711, leaving three children. The eldest of these children, Louis, duc de Bourgogne, had died in 1712, soon to be followed by Bourgogne's elder son, Louis, duc de Bretagne. Thus, at Louis XIV's death, his five-year-old great-grandson Louis, duc d'Anjou, the youngest son of Bourgogne, and the Dauphin upon the death of his grandfather, father and elder brother, succeeded to the throne as Louis XV.
It was to this young child that Louis XIV was alleged, according to Philippe de Courcillon, marquis de Dangeau in his Memoirs, to have said, in the manner of baroque piety:
"Do not follow the bad example which I have set you; I have often undertaken war too lightly and have sustained it for vanity. Do not imitate me, but be a peaceful prince, and may you apply yourself principally to the alleviation of the burdens of your subjects".
This same Dangeau noted of his death that "he yielded up his soul without any effort, like a candle extinguishing". Louis died while saying the words of the psalm Domine, ad adjuvandum me festina (O Lord, make haste to help me).[citation needed]
Louis XIV with Louis le Grand Dauphin, Louis, duc de Bourgogne, and Louis, duc de BretagneLouis XIV, noting his own old age and the youth of his heir, had anticipated a regency and had sought to restrict the power of his nephew, Philippe II, duc d'Orléans, who as closest surviving legitimate relative in France would become Regent for the prospective Louis XV. Thus, he transferred some power to his illegitimate son by Madame de Montespan, Louis-Auguste de Bourbon, duc du Maine and created a regency council like that established by Louis XIII in anticipation of Louis XIV's own minority.[citation needed]
Louis XIV's will provided that Maine would act as the guardian of Louis XV, superintendent of the young king's education and Commander of the Royal Guards.[citation needed]
Orléans, however, obtained the annulment of Louis XIV's will in the Parlement de Paris after the latter's death. Maine was stripped of the rank of "prince du sang", which had been given him and his brother, Louis-Alexandre de Bourbon, comte de Toulouse, by Louis, and of the command of the Royal Guards, but retained his position as superintendent, while Orléans was to rule as sole Regent. Toulouse, by remaining aloof from these court intrigues, managed to retain his privileges (save that of "prince du sang"), unlike his brother.[citation needed]
Louis XIV's body lies in the Saint Denis Basilica in Saint Denis, a suburb of Paris. He reigned for 72 years, making his the longest reign in the recorded history of Europe.
[edit] Legacy
This section needs additional citations for verification.
Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (August 2008)
To comply with Wikipedia's quality standards, this section may need to be rewritten.
Reason: Edit to cleanup grammatical and syntactical errors; addition of Wiki links
Please help improve this article. The discussion page may contain suggestions. (August 2008)
Louis XIV placed a member of the House of France on the throne of Spain, effectively ending the centuries-old threat and menace that had arisen from that quarter of Europe since the days of Charles V. The House of Bourbon retained the crown of Spain for the remainder of the eighteenth century, but experienced overthrow and restoration several times after 1808. Nonetheless, to this day, the Spanish monarch is descended from Louis XIV.
Louis' numerous wars effectively bankrupted the State (though it must also be said that France was able to recover in a matter of years), forcing him to incur large State debts from various financiers and to levy higher taxes on the peasants as the nobility and clergy had exemption from paying these taxes and contributing to public funds. Yet, it must be emphasized that it was the State and not the country which was impoverished. The wealth and prosperity of France, as a whole, could be noted in the writings of the social and political thinker and commentator Montesquieu in his satirical epistolary novel, Lettres Persanes. While the work mocks and ridicules French political, cultural and social life, it also portrays and describes the wealth, elegance and opulence of France between the end of the War of the Spanish Succession and Louis XIV's death.[citation needed]
Growth of France under Louis XIV (1643–1715)On the whole, nevertheless, Louis XIV strengthened the power of the Crown relative to the traditional feudal elites, marking the beginning of the era of the modern State, and placed France in the predominant and preeminent position in Europe, giving her ten new provinces and an overseas empire, as well as cultural and linguistic influence all over Europe. Even with several great European alliances opposing him, he continued to triumph and to increase French territory, power and influence. As a result of these military victories as well as cultural accomplishments, Europe would admire France, her power, culture, exports, values and way-of-life. The French language would become the lingua franca for the entire European elite as faraway as Romanov Russia; various German princelings would seek to copy his mode of life to their great expense. Europe of the Enlightenment would look to Louis XIV's reign as an example, studying his strategic use of power, emulating his elegance, and admiring his successes.[citation needed]
Saint-Simon, who felt slighted by Louis XIV, offered the following assessment:
"There was nothing he liked so much as flattery, or, to put it more plainly, adulation; the coarser and clumsier it was, the more he relished it ... His vanity, which was perpetually nourished–for even preachers used to praise him to his face from the pulpit–was the cause of the aggrandisement of his Ministers".
However, even the German philosopher Leibniz, who was a Protestant and had no cause for flattery, could call him "one of the greatest kings that ever was"; and Napoleon, hardly a friend of the Bourbons, would describe Louis XIV as "the only King of France worthy of the name" and "a great king."[22] Voltaire, the apostle of the Enlightenment, compared him to Augustus and called his reign an "eternally memorable age", dubbing the Age of Louis XIV "le Grand Siècle" (the "Great Century").[citation needed]
[edit] Style and arms
This section needs additional citations for verification.
Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (August 2008)
Louis XIV had the formal style: "Louis XIV, par la grâce de Dieu, roi de France et de Navarre", or "Louis XIV, by the Grace of God, King of France and of Navarre". He bore the arms Azure three fleurs-de-lis Or (for France) impaling Gules on a chain in cross saltire and orle Or an emerald Proper (for Navarre).[citation needed]
[edit] Order of Saint Louis
To comply with Wikipedia's quality standards, this section may need to be rewritten.
Reason: Edit to cleanup grammatical and syntactical errors; addition of Wiki links
Please help improve this article. The discussion page may contain suggestions. (August 2008)
The Royal and Military Order of Saint Louis (French: Ordre Royal et Militaire de Saint-Louis) was a military Order of Chivalry founded on April 5, 1693 by Louis XIV[23][24] and named after Louis IX. It was intended as a reward for exceptional officers, and is notable as the first decoration that could be granted to non-nobles. It is roughly the forerunner of the Légion d'honneur, with which it shares the red ribbon (though the Légion d'honneur is awarded to military personnel and civilians alike).
[edit] Ancestors
Ancestors of Louis XIV of France[show]
32. François, Count of Vendôme
16. Charles de Bourbon,
Duke of Vendôme
33. Marie de Luxembourg
8. Antoine de Bourbon,
Duke of Vendôme,
King of Navarre
34. René of Alençon
17. Françoise d'Alençon,
Duchess of Vendôme
35. Marguerite of Lorraine
4. Henri IV,
King of France and of Navarre
36. John III of Navarre
18. Henri II d'Albret,
King of Navarre
37. Catherine I of Navarre
9. Jeanne III d'Albret,
Queen of Navarre
38. Charles, Count of Angoulême
19. Marguerite d'Angoulême,
Queen of Navarre
39. Louise of Savoy
2. Louis XIII,
King of France and of Navarre
40. Giovanni dalle Bande Nere
20. Cosimo I de' Medici,
Grand Duke of Tuscany
41. Maria Salviati
10. Francesco I de' Medici,
Grand Duke of Tuscany
42. Pedro Álvarez de Toledo
21. Eleonora di Toledo,
Grand Duchess of Tuscany
43. Maria Osorio Pimentel
5. Marie de' Medici,
Queen of France and of Navarre
44. Philip I of Castile
22. Ferdinand I,
Archduke of Austria,
King of Bohemia and of Hungary,
Holy Roman Emperor
45. Joanna I of Castile
11. Johanna of Austria,
Archduchess of Austria,
Grand Duchess of Tuscany
46. Vladislaus II of Bohemia and Hungary
23. Anna Jagellonica of Bohemia and Hungary,
Queen of Bohemia and of Hungary,
Holy Roman Empress
47. Anne de Foix
1. Louis XIV,
King of France and of Navarre
48. Philip I of Castile
24. Charles V,
King of Spain,
Holy Roman Emperor
49. Joanna I of Castile
12. Philip II/I,
King of Spain and of Portugal
50. Manuel I of Portugal
25. Isabel of Portugal,
Queen of Spain,
Holy Roman Empress
51. Maria of Aragon
6. Philip III/II,
King of Spain and of Portugal
52. Ferdinand I,
Archduke of Austria, King of Bohemia and of Hungary,
Holy Roman Emperor
26. Maximilian II,
King of Bohemia and of Hungary,
Holy Roman Emperor
53. Anna Jagellonica of Bohemia and Hungary,
Queen of Bohemia and of Hungary,
Holy Roman Empress
13. Anna of Austria,
Archduchess of Austria,
Queen of Spain and of Portugal
54. Charles V,
King of Spain,
Holy Roman Emperor
27. Maria of Spain,
Infanta of Spain,
Queen of Bohemia and of Hungary,
Holy Roman Empress
55. Isabel of Portugal,
Queen of Spain,
Holy Roman Empress
3. Anne of Austria,
Infanta of Spain and of Portugal,
Queen of France and of Navarre
56. Philip I of Castile
28. Ferdinand I,
Archduke of Austria,
King of Bohemia and of Hungary,
Holy Roman Emperor
57. Joanna I of Castile
14. Charles II,
Archduke of Austria,
Archduke of Inner Austria
58. Vladislaus II of Bohemia and Hungary
29. Anna Jagellonica of Bohemia and Hungary,
Queen of Bohemia and of Hungary,
Holy Roman Empress
59. Anne de Foix
7. Margarita of Austria,
Archduchess of Austria,
Queen of Spain and of Portugal
60. William IV, Duke of Bavaria
30. Albert V,
Duke of Bavaria
61. Marie of Baden-Sponheim
15. Maria Anna of Bavaria,
Archduchess of Inner Austria
62. Ferdinand I,
Archduke of Austria, King of Bohemia and of Hungary,
Holy Roman Emperor
31. Anna of Austria,
Duchess of Bavaria
63. Anna Jagellonica of Bohemia and Hungary,
Queen of Bohemia and of Hungary,
Holy Roman Empress
[edit] Issue
Legitimate Children of Louis XIV of France[show]
Main article: Descendants of Louis XIV of France
Name Birth Death Notes
By Marie-Thérèse d'Autriche, Infanta of Spain, Queen of France and of Navarre (20 September 1638 - 30 July 1683)
Louis de France, le Grand Dauphin November 1, 1661 April 14, 1711 Fils de France. Dauphin of France (1661-1711). Had issue. Father of Louis, duc de Bourgogne (later Dauphin of France), Philippe, duc d'Anjou (later King of Spain) and Charles, duc de Berry. Grandfather of Louis, duc d'Anjou (later Dauphin, and then King of France)
Anne-Élisabeth de France November 18, 1662 December 30, 1662 Fille de France. Died in infancy.
Marie-Thérèse de France January 2, 1667 March 1, 1672 Fille de France. Known as Madame Royale and la Petite Madame
Philippe-Charles de France, duc d'Anjou August 5, 1668 July 10, 1671 Fils de France.
Louis-François de France, duc d'Anjou June 14, 1672 November 4, 1672 Fils de France. Died in infancy.
Illegitimate Children of Louis XIV of France[show]
Main article: List of descendants of Louis XIV of France
Note: This is an incomplete list of the illegitimate children of Louis XIV (he is known to have had more) due to the difficulty in fully documenting all such births. As such, the list only notes those who are better known or were legitimated.
Name Birth Death Notes
By Louise-Françoise de La Baume Le Blanc, duchesse de La Vallière et de Vaujours (6 August 1644 - 6 June 1710)
Charles December 19, 1663 July 15, 1665 Not legitimated.
Philippe January 7, 1665 1666 Not legitimated.
Marie-Anne de Bourbon, Mlle de Blois, duchesse de La Vallière, princesse de Conti October 2, 1666 May 3, 1739 Legitimated on 14 May 1667. Married Louis-Armand I de Bourbon-Conti, prince de Conti.
Louis de Bourbon, comte de Vermandois October 3, 1667 November 18, 1683 Legitimated on 20 February 1669. Held the office of Admiral of France.
By Françoise-Athénaïs de Rochechouart de Mortemart, marquise de Montespan (5 October 1641 - 27 May 1707)
Louise Françoise de Bourbon at the end of March, 1669 February 23, 1672
Louis-Auguste de Bourbon, duc du Maine March 31, 1670 May 14, 1736 Legitimated on 20 December 1673. Held numerous offices, of which: Colonel-Général des Suisses et des Grisons, Governor of Languedoc, Général des Galères, and Grand-Maître de l'Artillerie. Was also duc d'Aumale, comte d'Eu and prince de Dombes. Had issue. Founder of the House of Bourbon du Maine.
Louis-César de Bourbon, comte de Vexin, abbé de Saint-Denis et de Saint-Germain-des-Prés June 20, 1672 January 10, 1683 Legitimated on 20 December 1673.
Louise-Françoise de Bourbon, Mlle de Nantes, duchesse de Bourbon, princesse de Condé June 1, 1673 June 16, 1743 Legitimated on 20 December 1673. Married Louis III de Bourbon-Condé, duc d'Enghien, (later duc de Bourbon, and then prince de Condé). Had issue.
Louise-Marie-Anne de Bourbon, Mlle de Tours November 12, 1674 September 15, 1681 Legitimated in January 1676.
Françoise-Marie de Bourbon, Mlle de Blois, duchesse d'Orléans February 9, 1677 February 1, 1749 Legitimated in November 1681. Married Philippe II d'Orléans, duc de Chartres, (later duc d'Orléans), the Regent of France under Louis XV. Had issue.
Louis-Alexandre de Bourbon, comte de Toulouse June 6, 1678 December 1, 1737 Legitimated on 22 November 1681. Held numerous offices, of which: Admiral of France, Governor of Guyenne, Governor of Brittany, and Grand-Veneur de France. Was also duc de Damville, de Rambouillet et de Penthièvre. Had issue. Founder of the House of Bourbon-Toulouse.
[edit] In fiction
Louis XIV is depicted in two of Alexandre Dumas' novels, first as a child in Twenty Years After, then as a young man in The Vicomte de Bragelonne, in which he is a central character. French academic Jean-Yves Tadié has argued that the beginning of Louis XIV's personal rule is the latter novel's real subject[25]. Most film versions of the Man in the iron mask's story are based on the legend that the mysterious prisoner was actually Louis XIV's twin brother. This legend is also depicted in Dumas' novel, on which most film versions are loosely based.
[edit] See also
List of French monarchs
French Baroque and Classicism
Gallican Church
Autocracy
Mazarin
[edit] Notes
^ a b c d "Louis XIV". Catholic Encyclopedia (2007). Retrieved on 2008-01-19.
^ "Louis XIV". MSN Encarta (2008). Retrieved on 2008-01-20.
^ (French) Marquis de Dangeau. "Mémoire sur la mort de Louis XIV (on page 24)". Retrieved on 2007-10-05.
^ François Bluche (translated by Mark Greengrass (1990). Louis XIV. New York: Franklin Watts, p. 11.
^ (French) Henri Bremond. La Provence mystique au XVIIe siècle. Paris: Plon-Nourrit, 1908. pp. 381, 382.
^ (French) René Laurentin. Le Vœu de Louis XIII. Paris: FX de Guibert, 1988. pp. 62, 63.
^ (French) September 5, 1638 - The birth of the future "Sun King" and This happened on ... August 15 - The feast of Assumption, the website Herodote.net. Retrieved on 2008-02-19;
"Louis XIV". MSN Encata (2008). Retrieved on 2008-01-20.
^ Genealogist C. Carretier calculated Louis XIV's ancestry to the eighth generation, with his blood being approximately 28% French, 36% Spanish, 11% German and 8% Italian, the rest being Slavic, English, Savoyard and Lorrainer. ((French) Carretier, Christian (1980). Les Cinq Cent Douze Quartiers de Louis XIV. Angers-Paris. )
^ Dunlop, Ian (2001). Louis XIV. Pimlico London, p.48
^ Lavisse, Ernest (1911). Histoire de France illustrée..., vol. VII (1st and 2nd parts) and vol. VIII (1st part). Paris
^ a b c Columbia Encyclopedia (2007). "Louis XIV, king of France". Retrieved on 2008-01-19.
^ (French) "Contrat de mariage entre Louis XIV, roi de France, et Marie-Thérèse, infante d'Espagne (Ile des Faisans)". Base Choiseul, Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, France (1659).
^ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basque_Country_%28historical_territory%29
^ Philippe Erlanger, Louis XIV, translated from the French by Stephen Cox, Praeger Publishers, New York, 1970, pp. 88-90.
^ The Meeting of Eastern and Western Art Page 98 by Michael Sullivan (1989) ISBN 0520212363 [1]
^ Barnes, Linda L. (2005) Needles, Herbs, Gods, and Ghosts: China, Healing, and the West to 1848 Harvard University Press ISBN 0674018729, p.85
^ Mungello, David E. (2005) The Great Encounter of China and the West, 1500-1800 Rowman & Littlefield ISBN 074253815X, p.125
^ John A. Lynn (1999). The Wars of Louis XIV (1667-1714). Longman New York. p.364.
^ a b Louis de Rouvroy, duc de Saint-Simon. "Historical Memoirs of the Duc de Saint-Simon, volume 1 1691-1709: The Court of Louis XIV".
^ "Morganatic and Secret Marriages in the French Royal Family". Retrieved on 2008-07-10.
^ Kamen, Henry. (2001) Philip V of Spain: The King who Reigned Twice Published by Yale University Press. ISBN 0300087187. p. 6
^ Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon’s Notes on English History made on the Eve of the French Revolution, illustrated from Contemporary Historians and referenced from the findings of Later Research by Henry Foljambe Hall. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1905, 258.
^ Hamilton, Walter. "Dated Book-plates (Ex Libris) with a Treatise on Their Origin", P37. Published 1895. A.C. Black
^ Edmunds, Martha. "Piety and Politics", P274. Published 2002. University of Delaware Press. ISBN 0874136938
^ J-Y Tadié's annotations to The Vicomte de Bragelonne, Gallimard, 1997
[edit] Further reading
Acton, J. E. E., 1st Baron. (1906). Lectures on Modern History. London: Macmillan and Co.
Beik, William. "The Absolutism of Louis XIV as Social Collaboration: Review Article", Past and Present, no. 188 (Aug 2005), pp. 195–224.
Bluche, François, Louis XIV, Paris: Hachette Littératures, 1986. (English translation by Mark Greengrass; published in 1990 by Franklin Watts.)
Burke, Peter En kung blir till (Swedish translation of The fabrication of a king, 1992)
Cambridge Modern History vol 5 The Age of Louis XIV (1908)]
Carretier, Christian, "Les cinq cent douze quartiers de Louis XIV", Angers-Paris, 1980
Church, William F. (ed.). The Greatness of Louis XIV. London: D.C. Heath and Company, 1972.
Cronin, Vincent. Louis XIV. London: HarperCollins, 1996 (ISBN 0002720728)
Dunlop, Ian. Louis XIV. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000 (hardcover, ISBN 0312261969)
Erlanger, Philippe, Louis XIV, Librairie Arthème Fayard, Paris 1965, reprinted by Librairie Académique Perrin, Paris, 1978, (French).
Erlanger, Philippe, Louis XIV, translated from the French by Stephen Cox, Praeger Publishers, New York, 1970, (English).
Fraser, Antonia. Love and Louis XIV: The Women in the Life of the Sun King. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2006 (hardcover, ISBN 0-297-82997-1); New York: Nan A. Talese, 2006 (hardcover, ISBN 0385509847)
Goyau, G. (1910). "Louis XIV". The Catholic Encyclopedia. (Volume IX). New York: Robert Appleton Company.
Holt, Mack P., "Louis XIV." The New Book of Knowledge. Scholastic Library Publishing, 2005.
Jordan, David. The King's Trial: Louis XVI vs. the French Revolution. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004 (paperback, ISBN 0520236971)
Lynn, John A., "The Wars of Louis XIV, 1667-1714", New York: Longman, 1999
Rubin, David Lee, ed. Sun King: The Ascendancy of French Culture during the Reign of Louis XIV. Washington: Folger Books and Cranbury: Associated University Presses, 1992.
Steingrad, E. (2004). "Louis XIV."
Thompson, Ian. The Sun King's Garden: Louis XIV, André Le Nôtre And the Creation of the Gardens of Versailles. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2006 (hardcover, ISBN 1582346313).
Wolf, J. B. (1968). Louis XIV. New York: Norton.
[edit] External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to:
Louis XIV of FranceChronology Louis XIV
List of films dedicated to Louis XIV and period[1] Of particular interest: Documentary on Versailles—The Visit.
Memoirs of Louis XIV and His Court and of the Regency
Full text of marriage contract (PDF), France National Archives transcription (French)
"Le siècle de Louis XIV" by Voltaire, 1751
Louis XIV of France
House of Bourbon
Cadet branch of the Capetian dynasty
Born: September 5 1638 Died: September 1 1715
Regnal titles
Preceded by
Louis XIII King of France and Navarre
May 14, 1643 – September 1, 1715 Succeeded by
Louis XV
French royalty
Preceded by
Louis XIII Dauphin of France
September 5, 1638 – May 14, 1643 Succeeded by
Louis
"le Grand Dauphin"
[show]v • d • eChronology of French monarchs
Medieval France (987–1328)
House of Capet Hugh (987–996) • Robert II (996–1031) • Henry I (1031–1060) • Philip I (1060–1108) • Louis VI (1108–1137) • Louis VII (1137–1180) • Philip II (1180–1223) • Louis VIII (1223–1226) • Louis IX (1226–1270) • Philip III (1270–1285) • Philip IV (1285–1314) • Louis X (1314–1316) • John I (1316) • Philip V (1316–1322) • Charles IV (1322–1328)
Medieval France (1328–1498)
House of Valois Philip VI (1328–1350) • John II (1350–1364) • Charles V (1364–1380) • Charles VI (1380–1422) • Charles VII (1422–1461) • Louis XI (1461–1483) • Charles VIII (1483–1498)
Early Modern France (1498–1515)
House of Valois-Orléans Louis XII (1498–1515)
Early Modern France (1515–1589)
House of Valois-Angoulême Francis I (1515–1547) • Henry II (1547–1559) • Francis II (1559–1560) • Charles IX (1560–1574) • Henry III (1574–1589)
Early Modern France (1589–1792)
House of Bourbon Henry IV (1589–1610) • Louis XIII (1610–1643) • Louis XIV (1643–1715) • Louis XV (1715–1774) • Louis XVI (1774–1792) • Louis XVII (de jure, 1792–1795)
First Empire (1804–1814)
House of Bonaparte Napoleon I (1804–1814, 1815) • Napoleon II (1815)
Bourbon Restoration (1814, 1815–1830)
House of Bourbon Louis XVIII (1814–1815, 1815–1824) • Charles X (1824–1830) • Louis XIX (1830)(disputed) • Henry V (1830)(disputed)
July Monarchy (1830–1848)
House of Orléans Louis-Philippe (1830–1848)
Second Empire (1852–1870)
House of Bonaparte Napoleon III (1852–1870)
[show]v • d • eList of rulers who were termed the Great
The Greats in Asia Ramkhamhaeng · Naresuan · Narai · Taksin · Buddha Yodfa Chulaloke · Chulalongkorn · Bhumibol Adulyadej · Sejong the Great · Ashoka the Great · Kanishka · Mengrai · Akbar the Great · Yu the Great · Parākramabāhu I · Raja Raja Chola I · Gwanggaeto the Great · Anawrahta · Bayinnaung
The Greats in Europe Alfred the Great · Peter I of Russia · Catherine II of Russia · Frederick William the Great Elector · Frederick II of Prussia · Alfonso III of León · Henry IV of France · Herod the Great · Casimir III of Poland · Charlemagne · Tigranes the Great · Stephen III of Moldavia · Peter III of Aragon · Ivan III of Russia · John I of Portugal · Pompey · Justinian I · Canute the Great · Ferdinand I of León · Hugh the Great · Antiochus III the Great · Llywelyn the Great · Louis I of Hungary · Louis XIV of France · Theodosius I · William V of Aquitaine · Boleslaw I of Poland · Sancho III of Navarre · Theodoric the Great · Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden · Vytautas the Great
The Greats in the Middle East and Africa Ramesses II · Alexander the Great · Cyrus the Great · Darius I of Persia · Xerxes I of Persia · Shah Abbas the Great of Persia · Reza Shah · Mubarak Al-Sabah · Askia Mohammad I · Mithridates II of Parthia · Shapur II · Timur · Umar
The Greats in America Kamehameha I
Persondata
NAME Louis XIV of France
ALTERNATIVE NAMES The Sun King, Louis the Great
SHORT DESCRIPTION King of France and of Navarre
DATE OF BIRTH September 5, 1638(1638-09-05)
PLACE OF BIRTH Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France
DATE OF DEATH September 1, 1715
PLACE OF DEATH Château de Versailles, Versailles, France
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_XIV_of_France"
Categories: Louis XIV of France | House of Bourbon | Kings of France | Dauphins of Viennois | Dauphins of France | Roman Catholic monarchs | Anti-Protestantism | People from Ile-de-France | 1638 births | 1715 deaths | Princes of Andorra | Modern child rulers | People of the Nine Years' War
Hidden categories: Wikipedia articles needing rewrite | Cleanup from August 2008 | All articles with unsourced statements | Articles with unsourced statements since August 2008 | Articles with unsourced statements since July 2008 | Articles needing additional references from August 2008ViewsArticle Discussion Edit this page History Personal toolsLog in / create account Navigation
Main page
Contents
Featured content
Current events
Random article
Search
Interaction
About Wikipedia
Community portal
Recent changes
Contact Wikipedia
Donate to Wikipedia
Help
Toolbox
What links here
Related changes
Upload file
Special pages
Printable version
Permanent link
Cite this page
Languages
Anglo-Saxon
العربية
Беларуская
Bosanski
Brezhoneg
Български
Català
Česky
Cymraeg
Dansk
Deutsch
Eesti
Ελληνικά
Español
Esperanto
Euskara
فارسی
Français
Gaeilge
Galego
한국어
Hrvatski
Ido
Bahasa Indonesia
Íslenska
Italiano
עברית
ქართული
Kiswahili
Latina
Latviešu
Lëtzebuergesch
Lietuvių
Magyar
Македонски
Bahasa Melayu
Nederlands
日本語
Norsk (bokmål)
Norsk (nynorsk)
Occitan
Piemontèis
Polski
Português
Română
Runa Simi
Русский
Sicilianu
Simple English
Slovenčina
Slovenščina
Српски / Srpski
Srpskohrvatski / Српскохрватски
Suomi
Svenska
ไทย
Tiếng Việt
Türkçe
Українська
West-Vlams
Žemaitėška
中文
This page was last modified on 29 September 2008, at 18:30. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details.)
Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a U.S. registered 501(c)(3) tax-deductible nonprofit charity.
Privacy policy About Wikipedia Disclaimers
Ya boi=A+N+D+R+E
louis xiv of france
i am the state
Whats Poppin??
That cute man is named Louis XIV of France. He is also known as Louis the Great because, following his initial success in the Franco-Dutch war and something else..
He is also popularly known as The Sun King because of the idea that, just as the planets revolve around the Sun, so too should France and the court revolve around him. Louis worked successfully to create a centralized state, and stuff like that.
The second question means:
"I am the State"
^^^ he gets it poppin!
yeah i know its annoying reading all this dookie but i didn't know what exactly i needed so.. whateva. LOL JUST PLAYIN. no just kidding, so gimme dat ticket!
-Erika OC
The King's name is Louis XIV of France. L'Etat c'est moi means the country is me
Vachel
(Anthony Carl)
King Louis XIV said,"L'Etatt, c'est moi." The English translation for this is "I am the state."
?????Rain Stegemoller?????
A.) The French King pictured above is Louis XIV ((which is like...the 14th? I'm not too good with Roman numerals))
B.) The quote translates to, "I am the State"
The portrait shows King Louis XIV of France who said the phrase,"L'État, c'est moi" which means I am the state.
<3Marijane
Louis XIV(who was baptized Louis-Dieudonné or "Louis-God-given" was born on September 5th 1638 to Louis XIII and Anne of Austria and was the ruler of France and Navarre until two years of his death on September 1st 1715 at the age of 76. He was known as Louis the Great or alternativly the Great Monarch becase after his success in the Franco-Dutch war and the Treaty of Nijmegen the Parisian Parliament decreed that all statues and inscriptions should carry the nicknames. He was also popularly known as the Sun King because just like planets revolve around the sun, France and the court should revolve around him. This made him associated with Apolo Helios, the Greco-Roman god of the sun.
Louis XIV was also a supporter of the Divine Right of Kings theory, which was largely due to his tutor, Bishop Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet. Bossuet preached that kings were appointed by God, but also have a responsibility to act as such. During his reign, he increased the power and influence of France in Europe, engaging in three major wars—the Franco-Dutch War, the War of the League of Augsburg, and the War of the Spanish Succession—and two minor conflicts—the War of Devolution, and the War of the Reunions.
The political and military scene in France during his reign was filled with such illustrious names as Mazarin, Fouquet, Colbert, Michel Le Tellier, Le Tellier's son Louvois, le Grand Condé, Turenne, Vauban, Villars and Tourville. Under his reign, France achieved not only political and military pre-eminence, but also cultural dominance with various cultural figures such as Molière, Racine, Boileau, La Fontaine, Lully, Le Brun, Rigaud, Louis Le Vau, Jules Hardouin Mansart, Claude Perrault and Le Nôtre. The cultural achievements accomplished by these figures contributed to the prestige of France, its people, its language and its king.
Louis XIV worked successfully to create a centralized state governed from the capital in order to sweep away the fragmented feudalism which hitherto persisted in France, thus giving rise to the modern state. As a result of his efforts, which seemed absolutist, Louis XIV became the archetypal absolute monarch. The phrase "L'État, c'est moi" ("I am the State") is frequently attributed to him, though considered an inaccuracy by historians.[citation needed] Quite contrary to that apocryphal quote, Louis XIV is actually reported to have said on his death bed: "Je m'en vais, mais l'État demeurera toujours." ("I depart, but the State shall always remain").
Louis XIV was born in the château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye on September 5, 1638 and bore the heir apparent's traditional title of Dauphin.[4] His birth came after the almost twenty-three years of childlessness of his estranged parents, Louis XIII and Anne of Austria. As a result, contemporaries regarded him as a divine gift and his birth as a miracle,[5][6][7] and, in a show of gratitude to God for the long-awaited arrival of an heir, he was named Louis-Dieudonné ("God-given").[citation needed]
His ancestors were figures from some of Europe's most noteworthy ruling houses.[8] His paternal grandparents were Henri IV of France and Marie de' Medici, who were French and Italian respectively; while both his maternal grandparents were Habsburgs, Philip III of Spain and Margaret of Austria. In this manner, he counted as his ancestors various historical figures, including Charles V and Frederick Barbarossa, both Holy Roman Emperors. He also found himself descended from the founder of Russia's first dynasty, Rurik the Viking, as well as Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, the poet Charles, Duke of Orléans, and Giovanni de' Medici, last of the great condottieri. Most importantly, he traced his paternal lineage, and hence his and his descendants' right to the throne, in unbroken legitimate male succession from Saint Louis, King of France, and through him, from Hugh Capet.
Louis XIII and Anne had a second child, Philippe I, duc d'Orléans in 1640. Unsure of Anne as regent, Louis XIII decreed that a regency council, of which she was named head, should rule in Louis' name in the event he succeeded to the throne before the age of majority, intending, by its existence, to prevent her from ruling as sole regent.
Nevertheless, on May 14, 1643, after Louis XIII died and his young son became Louis XIV, Anne had her husband's will annulled by the Parlement, did away with the regency council and became sole Regent. She entrusted power to Cardinal Mazarin, who was despised in most French political circles because of his foreign origin, despite having already become a naturalized French subject.[citation needed]
The Thirty Years' War, which had commenced in the previous reign, ended in 1648 with the Peace of Westphalia, made up of the Treaties of Münster and Osnabrück, the work of Mazarin. This Peace ensured Dutch independence from Spain, awarded a degree of autonomy to the various German princes and granted Sweden territories which gave her control of the mouths of the Oder, Elbe, and Weser, as well as seats on the Reichstag. It marked the apogee of Swedish power and influence in German and European affairs. However, it was France which had the most to gain from the terms of the Peace. Austria ceded to France all Habsburg lands and claims in Alsace; and the petty German states eager to dislodge themselves from Habsburg domination placed themselves under French protection, paving the way for the formation of the League of the Rhine in 1658 and leading to the further diminution of Imperial power. The Peace of Westphalia humiliated Habsburg ambitions in Europe and laid to rest any notion that the Empire held secular dominion over all of Christendom.
In the closing years of the Thirty Years' War, a civil war, the Fronde, which effectively curbed France's ability to make good the advantages gained in the Peace of Westphalia, broke out. The Frondeurs originally sought to protect traditional feudal "liberties" from an increasingly centralized and centralizing royal government. On the other hand, Cardinal Mazarin had continued and would continue to follow the policies of centralization pursued by his predecessor, Cardinal Richelieu, seeking to augment the power of the Crown at the expense of the nobility and the Parlements. In 1648, he sought to levy a tax on the members of the Parlement de Paris, a judicial body composed mostly of nobles and high clergymen. The members of the Parlement not only refused to comply, but also ordered all of Cardinal Mazarin's earlier financial edicts burned. When Mazarin, strengthened by the news of the victory of Louis II de Bourbon, prince de Condé (le Grand Condé) at the Battle of Lens, arrested certain members of the Parlement in a show of force, Paris erupted in rioting and insurrection. A mob of angry Parisians broke into the royal palace and demanded to see their king. Led into the royal bedchamber, they gazed upon Louis XIV, who was feigning sleep, and quietly departed. Prompted by the possible danger to the royal family and the monarchy, Anne fled Paris with the king and his courtiers. Shortly thereafter, the signing of the Peace of Westphalia allowed the French army under Condé to return to the aid of Louis XIV and his royal court. By January 1649, Condé had started to besiege rebellious Paris; the subsequent Peace of Rueil temporarily ended the conflict.
After the first Fronde (Fronde parlementaire, 1648-1649) ended, the second Fronde, that of the nobles (Fronde des princes, 1650-1653) began. This second phase of upper-class insurrection, unlike that which preceded it, was characterized by tales of sordid intrigue and half-hearted warfare. It was conducted by aristocrats for whom it represented a protest against and an attempt to reverse the centralisation of France and their consequent demotion from vassals to courtiers. This Fronde was led by France's highest-ranking nobles, from Louis' uncle Gaston, duc d'Orléans, and first cousin, Anne d'Orléans, duchesse de Montpensier (known as la Grande Mademoiselle); to more distantly-related princes du sang such as Condé, his brother Armand de Bourbon, prince de Conti, and their sister Anne-Geneviève, duchesse de Longueville; to dukes of legitimated royal descent, like Henri II d'Orléans, duc de Longueville, and François de Bourbon-Vendôme, duc de Beaufort; and to princelings descended from foreign dynasties (known as princes étrangers), such as Frédéric Maurice de La Tour d'Auvergne, duc de Bouillon, and his brother, the famous Marshal of France, Henri, vicomte de Turenne, as well as Marie de Rohan-Montbazon, duchesse de Chevreuse; and scions of France's oldest families, like François VI, duc de La Rochefoucauld. Even the clergy was represented by Jean François Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz.
With the coming of age of Louis XIV and his subsequent coronation, the Frondeurs, who could hitherto have claimed to have been acting on his behalf and in his real interests against his Regent-mother and her first minister, had lost their pretext for revolt. The Fronde thus gradually lost steam until it ended in 1653, when Mazarin returned triumphant from abroad after having fled into exile on several occasions. The result of these tumultuous times, when the Queen Mother reputedly sold her jewels to feed her children, was a king filled with a permanent distrust for the nobility and the mob.
Despite the end of the Thirty Years' War and the Fronde, war with Spain continued. The French received aid in this military effort from England, then governed by Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell. The Anglo-French alliance achieved victory in 1658 with the Battle of the Dunes.
The subsequent Treaty of the Pyrenees, signed in 1659, fixed the border between France and Spain at the Pyrenees; according to its terms, Louis XIV pardoned Condé, who had gone into the service of Spain, against his king, while Spain ceded to France the whole of Roussillon, the northern half of Cerdanya and various provinces and towns in the Spanish Netherlands. The treaty signalled a change in the balance of power in Europe with the decline of Spain and the rise of France.
By the terms of the treaty, Louis XIV became engaged to marry the daughter of Philip IV of Spain, his double first cousin, Maria Theresa (Marie-Thérèse d'Autriche). The Spanish had understandably been ill-disposed to the idea of such a marriage since Marie-Thérèse had been heir presumptive for many years. Moreover, she appeared likely to return to that position since the latest heir apparent, her brother Philip Prospero (ultimately to die in 1661), was a toddler in an age of high infant mortality. The possibility of Marie-Thérèse's acceding to the Spanish throne therefore loomed large. This made the prospect of an eventual personal union between the two countries, resulting from a royal marriage, all too probable, and it was, in the eyes of Spanish diplomats, to be avoided.
To get around Spanish hesitation and intransigence, Mazarin, in the words of Bussy-Rabutin, "invited the Duchess of Savoy to meet Louis and his Court at Lyon and to bring the princesses her daughters with her, ostensibly for the purpose of marrying her eldest (Marguerite of Savoy) to the King".[9] According to Bluche, on hearing the news of the meeting at Lyon and the possibility of an impending Franco-Savoyard union, Philip IV reputedly exclaimed, "Esto no puede ser, y no será" ("This cannot be, and will not be").[10] The marquis de Pimentel was thus promptly dispatched to Lyon to commence negotiations for a Franco-Spanish marriage.
This resulted in a marriage contract and treaty stipulating an immense dowry of 500,000 gold écus, to be paid in three installments; its non-payment would later serve as a pretext for the War of Devolution[11] as well as that of the Spanish Succession. According to the terms of the marriage contract, as translated by Ian Dunlop, "that on condition (que moyennant) that the sums are made over to His Most Christian Majesty (Louis XIV)... the said most serene Infanta (Marie-Thérèse) will rest content with the said dowry and not thereafter sue for any other of her rights", and thus she would renounce for herself and her descendants all claims to the territories of the Spanish Monarchy.[12] Since the dowry was not fully paid, Spain being at the time bankrupt, the renunciation was theoretically void and was not recognized as binding by the French Crown.
Louis and Marie-Thérèse were married by proxy on June 3, 1660 at Hondarribia, on the Spanish side of the Basque Country, Don Luis de Haro representing Louis. On June 9, the actual marriage ceremony, officiated over by the Bishop of Bayonne, took place in Saint Jean-Baptiste Church in Saint-Jean-de-Luz on the French side of the Basque Country.
Within France, upon the death of Cardinal Mazarin, his first minister, in 1661, Louis XIV assumed personal control of the reins of government. He was able to exploit the widespread public yearning for peace and order, which had resulted from the long foreign wars and domestic civil strife, caused by events such as the Fronde and abuses of the people perpetrated by some nobles, to consoliate central authority at the feudal aristocracy's expense. Trials such as the Grands Jours d'Auvergne were used to impose order by punishing some of the most outrageous abuses by nobles, to "lift the people up from the oppression of the powerful" in the words of the Procureur-Général Denis Talon, and to increase public support for Louis' policies.[citation needed]
At the same time, the French treasury stood close to bankruptcy. Louis XIV eliminated Nicolas Fouquet, the Surintendant des Finances, commuting the sentence of banishment, passed by the Parlement, to imprisonment for life, and abolished Fouquet's office. Jean-Baptiste Colbert was appointed as Contrôleur-Général des Finances in 1665. To be sure, Fouquet had committed no financial indiscretions which Mazarin had not committed before him and which Colbert would not commit afterward. Moreover, Fouquet had competently and loyally discharged his duties, but his growing ambition to succeed Richelieu and Mazarin in power was such that Louis had to rid himself of him if he was to rule alone.[citation needed]
The commencement of Louis' personal reign was marked by a series of administrative and fiscal reforms. Colbert reduced the national debt through more efficient taxation. His principal taxes included the aides, the douanes, the gabelle, and the taille. The aides and douanes were customs duties, the gabelle a tax on salt, and the taille a tax on land. While Colbert did not abolish the historic tax exemption enjoyed by the nobility and clergy, he did improve the methods of tax collection then in use.[citation needed]
Colbert also had wide-ranging plans to strengthen France through commerce and trade. His administration ordained new industries and encouraged manufacturers and inventors, such as the Lyon silk manufacturers and the Manufacture des Gobelins, which produced and still produces tapestries. He also brought professional manufacturers and artisans from all over Europe, such as glassmakers from Murano, ironworkers from Sweden, and shipbuilders from the United Provinces. In this manner, he sought to decrease French dependence on foreign imported goods while increasing French exports, and hence to decrease the flow of gold and silver out of France. Outside of France, Colbert supported and encouraged the development of colonies in the Americas, Africa and Asia not only to provide markets for French exports, but also to provide resources for French industries.[citation needed]
Colbert also made improvements to the navy to increase French naval prestige and to gain control of the high seas in times of war and of peace, improvements to the merchant marine to remove, at least partially, control of French commerce from Dutch hands, and improvements to the highways and the waterways of France which decreased the costs and time of transporting goods around the kingdom.[citation needed] While Colbert, his family, clients and allies at court, focused on the economy and maritime matters, another faction, led by Michel Le Tellier and his son François-Michel Le Tellier, marquis de Louvois, turned their attention to military matters.[citation needed]
Louis XIV sought to play these factions off against one another and thus create checks and balances, ensuring that no one group would attain such power and influence at court as to destabilize his reign.[citation needed]
Le Tellier and Louvois had an important role to play in government, curbing the independent spirit of much of the nobility at court and in the army. Gone were the days when army generals, without regard to the bigger political and diplomatic picture, protracted war at the frontiers and disobeyed orders coming from the capital, while quarrelling and bickering with each other over precedence. Gone too were the days when positions of seniority and rank in the army were the sole possession of the old military aristocracy (the noblesse d'épée). Louvois, in particular, pledged himself to modernizing the army, organizing it into a new professional, disciplined and well-trained force out of the old. He sought to contrive and direct campaigns and devoted himself to providing for the soldiers' material well-being and morale, and he did so successfully. Like Colbert and Louis XIV, Louvois was hardworking.
Louis also instituted various legal reforms. This is reflected in the sheer number of Great Ordinances enacted during his reign. The Grande Ordonnance de Procédure Civile of 1667, also known as Code Louis, was a comprehensive legal code regulating civil procedure in all of France in a uniform manner. It made it compulsory to record baptisms, marriages and burials in the registers of the State (as opposed to the registers of the Church). The Code Louis played an important part in France's legal history as it was the basis for Napoleon I's Code Napoléon, which is itself the basis for many of Western Europe's modern legal codes. It sought to provide France with a single system of law where there were two: customary law in the north, and Roman law in the south. Another important Great Ordinance was the Ordonnance Criminelle de 1670, which was an early attempt at the codification of criminal procedure in France.[citation needed]
One of Louis XIV's more infamous decrees was the Grande Ordonnance sur les Colonies of 1685, also known as Code Noir. It granted sanction to slavery, although it did extend a measure of humanity to the practice by prohibiting the separation of families. However, no person could own a slave in the French colonies unless he were a member of the Roman Catholic Church, and a Catholic priest had to baptise each slave. Another important legal text enacted under Louis XIV was the Code Forestier, which sought to control and oversee the forestry industry in France, protecting forests from destruction.
The Sun King proved a generous spender, dispensing large sums of money to finance the royal court, and supported those who worked under him. He brought the Académie Française under his patronage, and became its "Protector". It was under his reign and indeed his patronage that Classical French literature flourished with such writers as Molière, Jean Racine and Jean de La Fontaine whose works still hold great influence to this day. The visual arts also found in Louis XIV their patron for he funded and commissioned various artists, such as Charles Le Brun, Pierre Mignard, Antoine Coysevox and Hyacinthe Rigaud whose works became famed throughout Europe. In music, composers and musicians like Jean-Baptiste Lully, Jacques Champion de Chambonnières and François Couperin thrived and influenced many others. Even in the art of gardening did Louis prove a patron with his support of André Le Nôtre.[citation needed]
Louis XIV ordered the construction of the military complex known as the "hôtel des Invalides" to provide a home for the officers and soldiers who had served him loyally in the army, but who had been rendered infirm by either injury or age. While the practice of pharmacy was still quite elementary, les Invalides pioneered new treatments and set new standards for hospice treatment. Louis considered its construction one of the greatest achievements of his reign, which, along with the Palace of Versailles, is one of the largest and most extravagant monuments in Europe.[citation needed]
He also improved the Louvre, as well as many other royal residences. Originally, when planning additions to the Louvre, Louis XIV had hired Gian Lorenzo Bernini as architect. However, his plans for the Louvre would have called for the destruction of much of the existing structure, replacing it with an Italian summer villa in the centre of Paris. In Bernini's place, Louis chose the French architect Claude Perrault, whose work on the "Perrault Wing" of the Louvre is widely-celebrated.[citation needed]
In 1685, on the instruction of (his secret wife?) Madame de Maintenon, he created the Saint-Cyr college for the filles pauvres de la noblesse (poor noble girls), commonly known as les demoiselles de Saint-Cyr. This school took noble but poor children from the ages of 7-20, put them into 4 different coloured groups; red for the youngest, green for the early teens, yellow for the middle teens and blue for the almost adult late teens to 20. The School was not a convent, in fact some of the lessons were to prepare the girls for married life. Madame de Maintenon took great pleasure in this school and was to finally die there.
After Louis XIV's father-in-law and uncle, Philip IV of Spain, died in 1665, Philip IV's son (by his second wife) became Charles II of Spain. Louis XIV claimed that Brabant, a territory in the Low Countries ruled by the King of Spain, had "devolved" to his wife, Marie-Thérèse, Charles II's elder half-sister by their father's first marriage. He argued that the custom of Brabant required that a child should not suffer from his or her father's remarriage, hence having precedence in inheritance over children of the second or subsequent marriages. Louis personally participated in the campaigns of the ensuing War of Devolution, which broke out in 1667.[citation needed]
Problems internal to the Republic of the Seven United Provinces (the Netherlands) aided Louis XIV's designs on the Low Countries. The most prominent political figure in the United Provinces at the time, Johan de Witt, Grand Pensionary, feared the ambition of the young William III, Prince of Orange, who in seeking to seize control might thus deprive De Witt of supreme power in the Republic and restore the House of Orange to the influence it had hitherto enjoyed until the death of William II, Prince of Orange. Therefore, with the United Provinces in internal conflict between supporters of De Witt and those of William III, the "States faction" and the "Orange faction" respectively, and with England preoccupied in the Second Anglo-Dutch War with the Dutch, who were being supported, in accordance with the terms of the treaties signed between them, by their ally, Louis XIV, France easily conquered both Flanders and Franche-Comté.
Shocked by the rapidity of French successes and fearful of the future, the United Provinces turned on their former friends and put aside their differences with England and, when joined by Sweden, formed a Triple Alliance in 1668. Faced with the threat of escalation and having signed a secret treaty partitioning the Spanish succession with the Emperor, the other major claimant, Louis XIV agreed to make peace. Under the terms of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1668), France retained Flanders, including the great fortress of Lille, but returned Franche-Comté to Spain.[citation needed]
The Triple Alliance did not last very long. In 1670, Charles II, lured by French bribes and pensions, signed the secret Treaty of Dover, entering into an alliance with France; the two kingdoms, along with certain Rhineland German princes, declared war on the United Provinces in 1672, sparking off the Franco-Dutch War. The rapid invasion and occupation of most of the Netherlands precipitated a coup, which toppled De Witt and allowed William III to seize power. William III entered into an alliance with Spain, the Emperor and the rest of the Empire; and a treaty of peace with England was signed in 1674, the result of which was England's withdrawal from the war and the marriage between William III and Lady Mary, niece of the English King Charles II. Facing a possible Imperial advance on his flank while in the Low Countries in that year, Louis XIV ordered his army to withdraw to more defensible positions.[citation needed]
Despite these diplomatic and military reverses, the war continued with brilliant French victories against the overwhelming forces of the opposing coalition. In a matter of weeks in 1674, the Spanish territory of Franche Comté fell to the French armies under the eyes of the king; while Condé defeated a much larger combined army, with Austrian, Spanish and Dutch contingents, under the Prince of Orange, at the Battle of Seneffe, preventing them from descending on Paris. In the winter of 1674–1675, the outnumbered Turenne, through a most daring and brilliant campaign, inflicted defeat upon the Imperial armies under Raimondo Montecuccoli, drove them out of Alsace and back across the Rhine, and recovered the province for Louis XIV. Through a series of feints, marches and counter-marches towards the end of the war, Louis XIV led his army to besiege and capture Ghent, an action which dissuaded Charles II and his English Parliament from declaring war on France and which allowed Louis, in a very superior position, to force the allies to the negotiating table. After six years, Europe was exhausted by war, and peace negotiations commenced, being accomplished in 1678 with the Treaty of Nijmegen. While Louis XIV returned all captured Dutch territory, he gained more towns and associated lands in the Spanish Netherlands and retained Franche-Comté, which had been captured by Louis and his army in a matter of weeks. As he was in a position to make demands which were much more exorbitant, Louis' actions were celebrated as evidence of his moderation in victory.[citation needed]
The Treaty of Nijmegen further increased France's influence in Europe, but did not satisfy Louis XIV. The King dismissed his foreign minister Simon Arnauld, marquis de Pomponne in 1679, viewed as timorous and as having compromised too much with the allies. Louis XIV also kept up his army but, instead of pursuing his claims through purely military action, utilised judicial processes to accomplish further territorial aggrandizement. Thanks to the ambiguous nature of treaties of the time, Louis was able to claim that the territories ceded to him in previous treaties ought to be ceded along with all their dependencies and lands which had formerly belonged to them, as had in fact been stipulated in the peace treaties, but had separated over the years. French Chambers of Reunion were appointed to ascertain which territories formally belonged to France; French troops later occupied them. The annexation of these territories was designed to give France a more defensible frontier, the pré carré suggested by Sébastien Le Prestre, seigneur de Vauban.[citation needed]
Louis sought to gain cities and territories such as Luxembourg, for its strategic offensive and defensive position on the frontier, as well as Casale, which would give him access to the Po river valley in the heart of Northern Italy. Louis also desired to gain Strasbourg, an important strategic outpost through which various Imperial armies had in the previous wars crossed over the Rhine to invade France. Strasbourg was a part of Alsace, but had not been ceded with the rest of Habsburg-ruled Alsace in the Peace of Westphalia. It was nonetheless occupied by the French in 1681 under Louis' new legal pretext, and, along with other occupied territories, such as Luxembourg and Casale, was ceded to France for a period of twenty years by the Truce of Ratisbon.
By the early 1680s, Louis XIV had greatly augmented his and France's influence and power in Europe and the world. Louis XIV's famous minister, Colbert, who died in 1683, exercised a tremendous influence on the royal treasury and coffers, with royal revenue tripling under his supervision.[citation needed]
The princes of Europe began to imitate France and Louis XIV in everything from taste in art, food and fashion to political systems; many even took "maîtresses-en-titre" simply because it was done at Versailles.[citation needed]
In the sphere of foreign affairs outside Europe, French colonies were multiplying in the Americas, Asia and Africa, while diplomatic relations had been initiated with countries as far afield as Siam (through the embassy of Chaumont), India and Persia. For example, the explorer René Robert Cavelier, sieur de La Salle claimed and named, in 1682, the basin of the Mississippi River in North America, "Louisiane", in honour of Louis XIV, while French Jesuits and missionaries could be seen at the court of the Manchu Emperor Kangxi in China. In France, Louis XIV received the visit of a Chinese Jesuit named Michael Shen Fu-Tsung as early as 1684,[15] and a few years later he had a Chinese librarian and translator at his court, named Arcadio Huang.[16][17]
Domestically, Louis XIV succeeded in establishing and increasing the influence and central authority of the King of France at the expense of the Church and aristocracy. He sought to reinforce traditional Gallicanism, a doctrine limiting the authority of the Pope in France, and convened an assembly of clergymen (the Assemblée du Clergé) in November 1681. Before it was dissolved in June 1682, it had agreed to the Declaration of the Clergy of France. The power of the King of France was increased in contrast to the power of the Pope, which was reduced. The Pope was not allowed to send papal legates to France without the king's consent; such legates as could enter France, furthermore, required further approval before they could exercise their power.[citation needed][1] Bishops were not to leave France without royal approval; no government officials could be excommunicated for acts committed in pursuance of their duties; and no appeal could be made to the Pope without the approval of the king. The king was allowed to enact ecclesiastical laws, and all regulations made by the Pope were deemed invalid in France without the assent of the monarch. The Declaration was not accepted by the Pope, which is not surprising given the infringements of the document upon papal authority.[1]
Louis also achieved immense control over the Second Estate, that is of the nobility, in France by attaching much of the higher nobility to his orbit at his palace at Versailles. He expected them to spend the majority of the year under his close watch instead of on their own estates and in their regional power-bases, where historically nobles waged local wars with neighbors or plotted resistance to royal authority. Only by being in constant attendance upon him were they able to gain the pensions and privileges necessary to lead lives considered appropriate to their rank. Louis entertained his permanent visitors with extravagant luxury and other distractions which helped him awe and domesticate his hitherto unruly nobility. Thus, Louis continued and perfected the work of the Cardinals Richelieu and Mazarin.[citation needed]
As a result of the Fronde, Louis believed that his power would prevail only if he filled high executive offices with commoners, or at least members of the relatively newer bureaucratic aristocracy (the noblesse de robe), because, he believed, while he could reduce a commoner to a nonentity by simply dismissing him, he could not destroy the entrenched influence of a great nobleman of ancient lineage as easily. Thus Louis XIV half-forced, half-seduced the noblesse d'épée into serving him ceremonially as courtiers, whilst he appointed commoners or newer nobles as ministers and regional intendants. As courtiers, the power of the great nobles grew ever weaker. The diminution of the power of the high aristocracy could be witnessed in the lack of such rebellions as the Fronde after Louis XIV.[citation needed]
In fact, the victory of the Crown over the nobles, finally achieved under Louis XIV, ensured that the Fronde was the last major civil war to plague France until the Revolution and the Napoleonic Age. Indeed, John A. Lynn has calculated that after Louis XIV there was a significant drop in years with internal civil war. The number of years dropped from a high of around 50 years out of 101 between 1560 and 1660 (50%), to six years out of 55 during Louis' personal reign from 1661 to 1715 (11%), to no civil wars till the Revolution in 1789.[18] Not until the Revolution, about a hundred years later, did civil war once again trouble France.
Louis XIV had the Palace of Versailles, outside Paris, originally a hunting lodge built by his father, converted into a spectacular royal palace in a series of four major and distinct building campaigns. By the end of the third building campaign, the château had taken on most of the appearance that it retains to this day, except for the current chapel built in the last decade of the reign. He officially moved there, along with the royal court, on May 6, 1682. Louis had several reasons for creating such a symbol of extravagant opulence and stately grandeur, and for shifting the seat of the monarch. The assertion that he did so because he hated Paris, however, is flawed as he did not cease to embellish his capital with glorious monuments while improving and developing it. On the other hand, contemporary writers such as Saint-Simon speculated that Louis viewed Versailles as an isolated power center where treasonous cabals could be more readily recognized.[19]
Versailles served as a dazzling and awe-inspiring setting for state affairs and for the reception of foreign dignitaries, where the attention was not shared with the capital and the people, but was assumed solely by the person of the king. Court life centered on munificence; courtiers lived lives of expensive luxury, appareled in suitable magnificence and constantly attended balls, dinners, performances, and celebrations.[citation needed] Thus, many noblemen had perforce either to give up the cachet and opportunites associated with sharing in the king's company, or to depend entirely on the king for the grants and subsidies necessary to do so in proper style.[19] Instead of exercising power and potentially creating trouble, the nobles vied for the honour of dining at the king's table or the privilege of carrying a candlestick as the king retired to his bedroom.
By 1685, Louis XIV stood at the apogee of his power. One of France's chief rivals, the Holy Roman Empire, was occupied in fighting the Ottoman Empire in the Great Turkish War, which began in 1683 and lasted till 1699. The Ottoman Grand Vizier had almost captured Vienna, but at the last moment John III Sobieski, King of Poland led an army of Polish and Imperial forces to victory at the Battle of Vienna in 1683. In the meantime, Louis XIV, by the Truce of Ratisbon, had acquired control of several territories which covered the frontier and protected France from foreign invasion. After repelling the Ottoman attack on Vienna, the Emperor was no longer in imminent danger from the Turks, nevertheless he did not attempt to regain the territories annexed by Louis XIV. Rather, he acquiesced to the fait accompli of the Truce.[citation needed]
After having his city bombarded by the French in 1685 from the sea as punishment for having supported the Spanish and having granted them use of Genoese ships in the Franco-Dutch War, the Doge of Genoa travelled to Versailles where he was received amidst courtly magnificence and made his apologies to and peace with Louis XIV.[citation needed]
Louis XIV's Queen, Marie-Thérèse, died in 1683. He remarked on her demise that on no other occasion had she ever caused him unease. Although he was said to have performed his marital duties nightly, he had not remained faithful to her for long after their union in 1660: his mistresses included Louise de la Vallière, duchesse de Vaujours; Françoise-Athénaïs de Rochechouart-Mortemart, marquise de Montespan; and Marie-Angélique de Scoraille, duchesse de Fontanges. As a result, he produced many illegitimate children, most of whom were joined in marriage with members of cadet branches of the royal family itself. These children, as well as their descendants, would go on to claim positions of power and influence in the next century.[citation needed]
He proved, however, more faithful to his second wife, Françoise d'Aubigné, marquise de Maintenon. The secret marriage between Louis XIV and Madame de Maintenon, which probably occurred in late 1685,[11] was an "open secret" as it was generally known but was never discussed or announced pubicly, and would last to his death. The marriage is sometimes described as an morganatic marriage but this is incorrect as morganatic marriages are not defined under French Law.
La Maintenon, once a Protestant, had converted to Roman Catholicism. It was once believed that she vigorously promoted the persecution of the Protestants, and that she urged Louis XIV to revoke the Edict of Nantes (1598), which granted a degree of religious freedom to the Huguenots. However, this view of her participation is now being questioned. It has been suggested that Marie-Thérèse, on her deathbed, had urged Louis on the subject, which, given her Spanish Catholic upbringing, is not surprising. Whatever the truth of such a proposition, Louis XIV himself clearly supported such a plan; he believed, along with the rest of Europe, Catholic or Protestant, that, in order to achieve national unity, he had to first achieve a religiously unified nation—specifically a Catholic one in his case. This was enshrined in the principle of "cuius regio, eius religio", which defined religious policy throughout Europe since its establishment, by the Peace of Augsburg, in 1555. He had already begun the persecution of the Huguenots by quartering soldiers in their homes, though it must be said that it was theoretically within his feudal rights, and hence legal, to do so with any of his subjects.
Louis continued his attempt to achieve a religiously united France by issuing an edict, in March 1685, which affected the French colonies, and expelled all Jews from them. The public practice of any religion except Roman Catholicism became prohibited. In October 1685, Louis XIV issued the Edict of Fontainebleau, revoking that of Nantes, on the pretext that the near-extinction of Protestantism and Protestants in France made any edict granting them privileges redundant.[1] The Edict decreed that "liberty is granted to the said persons of the Pretended Reformed Religion Protestantism ... on condition of not engaging in the exercise of the said religion, or of meeting under pretext of prayers or religious services." Thus, it precluded individuals from publicly practising or exercising the religion, but not from merely believing in it. It banished from the realm any Protestant minister who refused to convert to Roman Catholicism. Protestant schools and institutions were banned. Children born into Protestant families were to be forcibly baptised by Roman Catholic priests, and Protestant places of worship were demolished.
Although the Edict formally denied Huguenots permission to leave France, about 200,000 of them left in any case, taking with them their skills in commerce and trade. The Edict proved economically damaging to France,[11] though not ruinous; and while Vauban, one of Louis XIV's most influential generals, publicly condemned the measure, its proclamation was celebrated by many Catholics throughout the realm.
The wider political and diplomatic result of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, however, was to provoke increased anti-French sentiment in Protestant countries. In 1686, both Catholic and Protestant rulers joined in the League of Augsburg, ostensibly a defensive pact to protect the Rhine, but really designed as an offensive alliance against France. The coalition included the Holy Roman Emperor and several of the German states that formed part of the Empire — most notably the Palatinate, Bavaria, and Brandenburg. The United Provinces, Spain and Sweden also adhered to the League.[citation needed]
In 1685, Charles II, Elector Palatine, the brother of Louis XIV's sister-in-law, Charlotte-Elizabeth, duchesse d'Orléans, had died. The palatine crown had gone, not to her, but to the junior Neuburg branch of the family. Louis had sought, through an ultimatum to the German princes, to have his sister-in-law's claims recognised. However, the expiry of this ultimatum and another to the German princes to ratify the Truce of Ratisbon and confirm Louis' possession of annexed territories, along with disputes over the succession to the Electorate of Cologne, lead to his sending troops into the Palatinate in 1688. Ostensibly, the army had the task of supporting the claims of Charlotte-Elizabeth to the Palatinate. The real aim, however, of the invasion was to apply pressure and force the Palatinate to leave, and thus weaken, the League of Augsburg. The troops under the command of Melac eventually executed Louis' order ("brûlez le Palatinat!") and devastated large areas of South Western Germany. This was done as a sort of scorched earth policy with the aim of preventing the larger gathering Imperial army from reaching the frontiers of France and invading Lorraine and Alsace.[citation needed]
Louis XIV's actions united the German princes behind the Holy Roman Emperor. Louis had expected that England, under the Catholic James II, would remain neutral. In 1688, however, the "Glorious Revolution" resulted in the deposition of James II and his replacement by his daughter, Mary II, who ruled jointly with her husband, William III, now King of England. As William III had developed an enmity against Louis XIV during the Franco-Dutch War, he pushed England into the League of Augsburg, which then became known as the Grand Alliance.[citation needed]
The campaigns of the War of the Grand Alliance (1688–1697) generally proceeded favorably for France. The forces of the Holy Roman Emperor proved ineffective, as many Imperial troops were still occupied in the Balkans with the Great Turkish War, and because the Imperials generally took to the field much later than the French. Thus, France could accumulate a string of victories from Flanders in the north, to the Rhine valley in the east, to Italy and Spain in the south, as well as on the high seas and in the colonies.[citation needed]
Louis XIV aided James II in his attempt to regain the British crown, but the Stuart king was unsuccessful and was defeated at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. A year later, the last Jacobite stronghold, Limerick, fell to Williamite forces after the Battle of Aughrim, and James' dreams of returning to the throne dissipated. Williamite England could then devote more of her funds and troops to the war on the Continent.[citation needed]
Nonetheless, despite the size of the opposing coalition, which encompassed most of Europe, French forces in Flanders under the famous pupil of Condé, François Henri de Montmorency-Bouteville, duc de Luxembourg, nicknamed "le tapissier de Notre-Dame" for the number of captured enemy standards which he sent to decorate the Cathedral, crushed the allied armies at the Battle of Fleurus in the same year as the Battle of the Boyne, as well as at the Battle of Steenkerque two years later and the Battle of Landen a year after that.
Under the personal supervision of Louis XIV, the French army captured Mons in 1691 and the hitherto impregnable fortress of Namur in 1692; and with the capture of Charleroi by Luxembourg in 1693 after his victory at Landen, France gained the forward defensive line of the Sambre. At the Battles of Marsaglia and of Staffarde, France was victorious over the allied forces under Victor Amadeus, Duke of Savoy, overrunning his dominion and reducing the territory under his effective command to merely the area around Turin. In the southeast, along the Pyrenees, the Battle of Torroella opened Catalonia to French invasion. The French naval victory at the Battle of Beachy Head in 1690, however, was offset by the Anglo-Dutch naval victory at the Battles of Barfleur and La Hougue in 1692; but neither side was able to entirely defeat the opposing navy.[citation needed]
The war continued for four more years, until the Duke of Savoy signed a separate peace and subsequent alliance with France in 1696, the Treaty of Turin, undertaking to join with French arms in a capture of the Milanese and allowing French armies in Italy to reinforce others; one of these reinforced armies, that of Spain, captured Barcelona and hastened the arrival of peace.[citation needed]
The War of the Grand Alliance eventually ended with the Treaty of Ryswick in 1697. Louis XIV surrendered Luxembourg and most of the other Réunion territories he had seized since the end of the Dutch War in 1679, but retained Strasbourg, assuring the Rhine as the border between France and the Empire. He also gained de jure recognition of his hitherto de facto possession of Saint-Domingue, as well as the return of Pondicherry and Acadia. Louis undertook to recognise William III and Mary II as joint sovereigns of Great Britain and Ireland, and assured them that he would no longer assist James II; at the same time he renounced intervention in the Electorate of Cologne and claims to the Palatinate, in return for financial compensation. Louis XIV returned Lorraine to her duke, but on terms which allowed French passage at any time and which severely restricted his political maneuverability. The Dutch were allowed to garrison forts in the Spanish Netherlands, the "Barrier", to protect themselves against possible French aggression. Spain recovered Catalonia and the many territories lost, both in this war and the previous one (War of the Reunions), in the Low Countries.[citation needed]
Of similar note, Louis secured the dissolution of the Grand Alliance by manipulating the rivalries and suspicions of its member states; in so doing, he divided his enemies and broke their power since no single state on its own was capable of taking on France. The generous terms of the treaty were seen as concessions to Spain designed to foster pro-French sentiment, which would eventually lead Charles II, King of Spain to declare as his heir, Louis' grandson Philippe, duc d'Anjou. Moreover, despite such seemingly disadvantageous terms in the Treaty of Ryswick, French influence was still at such a height in all of Europe that Louis XIV could offer his cousin, François Louis de Bourbon, prince de Conti, the Polish crown, duly have him elected by the Sejm and proclaimed as King of Poland by the Polish primate. However, Conti's own tardiness in proceeding to Poland to claim the throne allowed a rival, Augustus II the Strong, Elector of Saxony to have himself crowned king instead.[citation needed]
The great matter of the succession to the Spanish throne dominated European foreign affairs following the Peace of Ryswick. The Spanish King Charles II, severely incapacitated, could not father an heir. The Spanish inheritance offered a much sought-after prize, for Charles II ruled not only Spain, but also Naples, Sicily, the Milanese, the Spanish Netherlands and a vast colonial empire—in all, twenty-two different realms and dominions, many of which were on the periphery of France.[citation needed]
France and Austria were the main claimants to the throne, both of which had close family ties to the Spanish royal family. Anjou (later Philip V of Spain), the French claimant, was the great-grandson of the eldest daughter of Philip III of Spain, Anne of Austria, and the grandson of the eldest daughter of Philip IV of Spain, Marie-Thérèse. The only bar to inheritance lay in their renunciations of claims to the throne, which in the case of Marie-Thérèse, however, was considered legally null and void as other terms of the marriage treaty had not been fulfilled by Spain.[citation needed]
Charles, Archduke of Austria (later Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor) and younger son of Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor by his third marriage (with Eleonore-Magdalena of Neuburg), claimed the throne through his paternal grandmother, Maria Anna of Spain, who was the youngest daughter of Philip III; this claim was not, however, tainted by any renunciation. Purely on the basis of the laws of primogeniture, however, France had the best claims since they were derived from the eldest daughters in each generation.[citation needed]
Many European powers feared that if either France or the Emperor came to control Spain, the balance of power in Europe would be threatened. Thus, both the Dutch and the English preferred another candidate, the Bavarian prince Joseph Ferdinand, who was the grandson of Leopold I, through his first wife Margaret Theresa of Spain, younger daughter of Philip IV. Under the terms of the First Partition Treaty, it was agreed that the Bavarian prince would inherit Spain, with the territories in Italy and the Low Countries being divided between the Houses of France and Austria. Spain, however, had not been consulted, and vehemently resisted the dismemberment of its empire. The Spanish court insisted on their empire indivisible. When the Treaty became known to Charles II in 1698, he settled on Joseph Ferdinand as his sole heir, assigning to him the entire Spanish inheritance.[citation needed]
The entire issue opened up again when smallpox claimed the Bavarian prince six months later. The Spanish court, seeking to keep the inheritance undivided, acknowledged that they could only succeed in doing so by granting the crown to a member from either the House of France, or of Austria. Charles II, under pressure from his German wife Maria Anna of Neuburg, chose the House of Austria and her nephew, settling on the Emperor's younger son, the Archduke Charles. Ignoring this, Louis and William III signed a second treaty, that of London, allowing the Archduke Charles to take Spain, the Low Countries and the Spanish colonies, whilst Louis XIV's eldest son and heir, le Grand Dauphin, would inherit the territories in Italy, with a mind to exchange them for Savoy or Lorraine.[citation needed]
In 1700, as he lay upon his deathbed, Charles II unexpectedly interfered in the affair. He sought to prevent Spain from uniting with either France or the Empire, but, based on his past experience of French superiority in arms, considered France as more capable of preserving his empire in its entirety. The whole of the Spanish inheritance was thus offered to Anjou, the Dauphin's second son, on condition he kept it undivided. In the event of his refusal or inability to accept the inheritance, it would be offered to the Dauphin's youngest son, Charles, duc de Berry, and thereafter to the Archduke Charles.[21] If all these princes refused the Crown, it would be offered to the House of Savoy, distantly related to the Spanish Royal Family.[citation needed]
Louis XIV thus faced a difficult choice: he could have agreed to a partition and to possible peace in Europe, or he could have accepted the whole Spanish inheritance but alienated the other European nations. Louis originally assured William III that he would fulfill the terms of their previous treaty and partition the Spanish dominions. However, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, marquis de Torcy, the nephew of Colbert, advised Louis that even if France accepted a portion of the Spanish inheritance, a war with the Empire would almost certainly ensue; and William III had made it very clear that he had signed the Partition Treaties to avoid war, not make it, and hence would not assist France in a war to obtain the territories granted her by those treaties. Louis agreed that if a war had to occur, it would be more profitable to accept the whole of the Spanish inheritance and to fight a defensive war. Consequently, when Charles II died on November 1, 1700, Philippe, duc d'Anjou became Philip V, King of Spain.[citation needed]
Most of the rest of Europe accepted Philip V as King of Spain, albeit reluctantly. Louis, however, acted too precipitously. In 1701, he transferred the Asiento, a permit to sell slaves to the Spanish colonies, to France, with potentially damaging consequences for British trade. Moreover, Louis ceased to acknowledge William III as King of Great Britain and Ireland upon the death of James II, instead acclaiming as King James II's son, James Francis Edward Stuart (the "Old Pretender"). Furthermore, Louis sent forces into the Spanish Netherlands to secure its loyalty to Philip V and to garrison the Spanish forts, which had been garrisoned by Dutch troops as part of the "Barrier" protecting the United Provinces from potential French aggression. The result was the further alienation of both Britain and the United Provinces, both then ruled by William III. Consequently, another Grand Alliance was formed between Great Britain, the United Provinces, the Emperor and many of the petty states within the Holy Roman Empire. French diplomacy, however, secured Bavaria, Portugal and Savoy as allies for Louis and Philip.[citation needed]
The subsequent War of the Spanish Succession continued for most of the remainder of the reign and proved costly for Louis. It began with Imperial aggression in Italy even before war was officially declared. France had some initial success, nearly capturing Vienna, but the victories of Marlborough and Eugene of Savoy showed that the myth of French invincibility was broken.[citation needed]
Following Marlborough and Eugene of Savoy's victory at the Battle of Blenheim, Bavaria was flung out of the war, being partitioned between the Palatinate and Austria, and her elector, Maximilian II Emanuel, forced to flee to the Spanish Netherlands. Another consequence of Blenheim was the subsequent defection of Portugal and Savoy to the opposing side. With the Battle of Ramillies and that of Oudenarde, Franco-Spanish forces were driven ignominiously out of the Spanish Netherlands; while the Battle of Turin forced Louis to evacuate what few forces remained to him in Italy.[citation needed]
Such military defeats, coupled with famine and mounting debt, forced France into a defensive posture. By 1709, Louis' position was grievously weakened, and he was willing to sue for peace at nearly any cost, even to return all lands and territories ceded to him during his reign and to return to the frontiers of the Peace of Westphalia, signed more than sixty years prior. Nonetheless, the terms dictated by the allies were so harsh, including demands that he attack his own grandson alone to force the latter to accept the humiliating peace terms, that war continued.[citation needed]
Whilst it became clear that France could not retain the entire Spanish inheritance, it also seemed evident that its opponents could not overthrow Philip V in Spain after the definitive Franco-Spanish victory of the Battle of Almansa, and those of Villaviciosa and Brihuega, which drove the allies out of the central Spanish provinces. Furthermore, the Battle of Malplaquet in 1709 showed that it was neither easy nor cheap to defeat and invade France, for while the allies gained the field, they did so at an abominable cost, losing 25 000 men, twice that of the French, led by their capable general, Claude Louis Hector, duc de Villars. The Battle of Denain in 1712 turned the war in favour of Louis XIV, when Villars led French forces to a decisive victory over the allies under Eugene of Savoy, recovering much lost territory and pride.[citation needed]
The death of Joseph I, Holy Roman Emperor, who had succeeded his father Leopold I in 1705, made the prospect of an empire as large as that of Charles V being ruled by the Archduke Charles, now the Emperor, dangerously possible. This was, to Great Britain, as undesirable as a union of France and Spain.[citation needed]
Thus, preliminaries were signed between Great Britain and France in the pursuit of peace. Louis XIV and Philip V eventually made peace with Great Britain and the United Provinces in 1713 with the Treaty of Utrecht. Peace with the Emperor and the Holy Roman Empire came with the Treaty of Rastatt and that of Baden in 1714 respectively. The crucial interval between Utrecht and Rastatt-Baden allowed Louis XIV to capture Landau and Freiburg, permitting him to negotiate from a comparatively better position, if not from one of strength, with the Emperor and the Empire.[citation needed]
The general settlement recognised Philip V as King of Spain and ruler of the Spanish colonies. Spain's territory in the Low Countries and Italy were partitioned between Austria and Savoy, while Gibraltar and Minorca were retained by Great Britain.[citation needed]
Louis XIV, furthermore, agreed to end his support for the Old Pretender's claims to the throne of Great Britain. France was also obliged to cede the colonies and possessions of Newfoundland, Rupert's Land and Acadia in the Americas to Great Britain, while retaining Île-Saint-Jean (now Prince Edward Island) and Île Royale (now Cape Breton Island); however, most of those Continental territories lost in the devastating defeats in the Low Countries were returned to her, despite allied persistence and pressure to the contrary, and she also received further territories to which she had a claim such as the Principality of Orange, as well as the Ubaye Valley, which covered the passes through the Alps from Italy.[citation needed]
The efforts of the allies to curb and diminish French power in Europe came to naught. Moreover, France was shown to be able to protect her allies with the rehabilitation and restoration of the Elector of Bavaria, Maximilian II Emanuel, to his lands, titles and dignities.
Louis XIV died on September 1, 1715, of gangrene, a few days before his seventy-seventh birthday. Almost all of Louis XIV's legitimate children had died during childhood. The only one to survive to adulthood, his eldest son, Louis de France, known as "Le Grand Dauphin", had predeceased Louis XIV in 1711, leaving three children. The eldest of these children, Louis, duc de Bourgogne, had died in 1712, soon to be followed by Bourgogne's elder son, Louis, duc de Bretagne. Thus, at Louis XIV's death, his five-year-old great-grandson Louis, duc d'Anjou, the youngest son of Bourgogne, and the Dauphin upon the death of his grandfather, father and elder brother, succeeded to the throne as Louis XV.
It was to this young child that Louis XIV was alleged, according to Philippe de Courcillon, marquis de Dangeau in his Memoirs, to have said, in the manner of baroque piety:
"Do not follow the bad example which I have set you; I have often undertaken war too lightly and have sustained it for vanity. Do not imitate me, but be a peaceful prince, and may you apply yourself principally to the alleviation of the burdens of your subjects".
This same Dangeau noted of his death that "he yielded up his soul without any effort, like a candle extinguishing". Louis died while saying the words of the psalm Domine, ad adjuvandum me festina (O Lord, make haste to help me).[citation needed]
Louis XIV, noting his own old age and the youth of his heir, had anticipated a regency and had sought to restrict the power of his nephew, Philippe II, duc d'Orléans, who as closest surviving legitimate relative in France would become Regent for the prospective Louis XV. Thus, he transferred some power to his illegitimate son by Madame de Montespan, Louis-Auguste de Bourbon, duc du Maine and created a regency council like that established by Louis XIII in anticipation of Louis XIV's own minority.[citation needed]
Louis XIV's will provided that Maine would act as the guardian of Louis XV, superintendent of the young king's education and Commander of the Royal Guards.[citation needed]
Orléans, however, obtained the annulment of Louis XIV's will in the Parlement de Paris after the latter's death. Maine was stripped of the rank of "prince du sang", which had been given him and his brother, Louis-Alexandre de Bourbon, comte de Toulouse, by Louis, and of the command of the Royal Guards, but retained his position as superintendent, while Orléans was to rule as sole Regent. Toulouse, by remaining aloof from these court intrigues, managed to retain his privileges (save that of "prince du sang"), unlike his brother.[citation needed]
Louis XIV's body lies in the Saint Denis Basilica in Saint Denis, a suburb of Paris. He reigned for 72 years, making his the longest reign in the recorded history of Europe.
Louis XIV placed a member of the House of France on the throne of Spain, effectively ending the centuries-old threat and menace that had arisen from that quarter of Europe since the days of Charles V. The House of Bourbon retained the crown of Spain for the remainder of the eighteenth century, but experienced overthrow and restoration several times after 1808. Nonetheless, to this day, the Spanish monarch is descended from Louis XIV.
Louis' numerous wars effectively bankrupted the State (though it must also be said that France was able to recover in a matter of years), forcing him to incur large State debts from various financiers and to levy higher taxes on the peasants as the nobility and clergy had exemption from paying these taxes and contributing to public funds. Yet, it must be emphasized that it was the State and not the country which was impoverished. The wealth and prosperity of France, as a whole, could be noted in the writings of the social and political thinker and commentator Montesquieu in his satirical epistolary novel, Lettres Persanes. While the work mocks and ridicules French political, cultural and social life, it also portrays and describes the wealth, elegance and opulence of France between the end of the War of the Spanish Succession and Louis XIV's death.[citation needed]
On the whole, nevertheless, Louis XIV strengthened the power of the Crown relative to the traditional feudal elites, marking the beginning of the era of the modern State, and placed France in the predominant and preeminent position in Europe, giving her ten new provinces and an overseas empire, as well as cultural and linguistic influence all over Europe. Even with several great European alliances opposing him, he continued to triumph and to increase French territory, power and influence. As a result of these military victories as well as cultural accomplishments, Europe would admire France, her power, culture, exports, values and way-of-life. The French language would become the lingua franca for the entire European elite as faraway as Romanov Russia; various German princelings would seek to copy his mode of life to their great expense. Europe of the Enlightenment would look to Louis XIV's reign as an example, studying his strategic use of power, emulating his elegance, and admiring his successes.[citation needed]
Saint-Simon, who felt slighted by Louis XIV, offered the following assessment:
"There was nothing he liked so much as flattery, or, to put it more plainly, adulation; the coarser and clumsier it was, the more he relished it ... His vanity, which was perpetually nourished–for even preachers used to praise him to his face from the pulpit–was the cause of the aggrandisement of his Ministers".
However, even the German philosopher Leibniz, who was a Protestant and had no cause for flattery, could call him "one of the greatest kings that ever was"; and Napoleon, hardly a friend of the Bourbons, would describe Louis XIV as "the only King of France worthy of the name" and "a great king."[22] Voltaire, the apostle of the Enlightenment, compared him to Augustus and called his reign an "eternally memorable age", dubbing the Age of Louis XIV "le Grand Siècle" (the "Great Century").[citation needed]
Louis XIV had the formal style: "Louis XIV, par la grâce de Dieu, roi de France et de Navarre", or "Louis XIV, by the Grace of God, King of France and of Navarre". He bore the arms Azure three fleurs-de-lis Or (for France) impaling Gules on a chain in cross saltire and orle Or an emerald Proper (for Navarre).[citation needed]AND insme pictures he looks like Captain Hook!!!!!!!!!!!!!
L'etat c'est moi means I am the state
Chantal
(ana flores)
The translation of L'Etat, c'est moi in english is I am the state
Sara Flores
Great blog Lucy(covered bridge)!!!
Hey, stop stealing my thunder!!!
D. Terner
The pictured French king is Louis XII. Louis was born 9/5/1638. Louis was baptized as Louis- Dieudonne (which meant "Gift of God". He was born in Saint-Germain-en-Laye. Louis was the "unexpected" child of Anne of Austria and King Louis XIII of France. In 1643 before his 5 birthday, Louis father, Louis XIII died sending the crown of France to young Louis. While Louis was a child, his mother served as regent, ruling France in his place. She was assisted by Jules Cardinal Mazarin. Mazarin was an Italian financer that had been Louis XIII's principal minister. Mazarin helped to guide France through some parts of the 30 Year War(1618-1648). Louis XIV served a reign of 72 years, the longest reign of any European king. For 54 of those 72 years, he personaly controlled the French government. He was the third monarch of the Bourban family. Louis was known as Le Roi Soliel, english for The Sun King. At one point he said L' Etat, cest moi (I am the State). In order to ratify a peace treaty ending the war between France and Spain that began in 1635, Louis married Marie Therese of Austria, the daughter of the king of Spain in 1660. He ruled France and Navarre. Louis is considered one of the most remarkable monarchs in history. Louis died 4 days before his birthday, 9/1/1715.
Doug D. (I cant get the French accents to work on my computer)
Louis XIV said "L'Etat, c'est moi" which means i am the state in english
-lucy
Louis XIV is the dude and the translation for L'Etat, c'est moi is I am the state!
in your face david!!!
a)Louis XIV
b)"I am the state"
-erin murphy =]
king Louis XIV said " I am the state" and not "bush"
Mastro(flobee)
Louis XIV
I am the state.
-Jordyn Ross.
Louis XIV is the king in the picture.
i think; well thats what wikipedia said; so if its wrong; im blaming them :p
The saying "L'Etat, c'est moi" means "i ma the state".
That is the answers i got from google; so if its wrong; im going to track down who ever wrote it and suee them "re-re's" :]
i always use google; so i can complain :]
so; im sitting next to tori while shes saying "im a RE-RE" :]
and you just hit alexxiss for be stupid :]
Louis XIV (baptised as Louis-Dieudonné, "Louis-God-given") (September 5, 1638 – September 1, 1715) ruled as King of France and of Navarre. He acceded to the throne a few months before his fifth birthday, but did not assume actual personal control of the government until the death of his prime minister (Premier ministre), the Italian Jules Cardinal Mazarin, in 1661.[1] Louis would remain on the throne till his death just prior to his seventy-seventh birthday in 1715. His reign thus spanned seventy-two years, three months, and eighteen days, the longest documented of any European monarch to date.[2]
Louis XIV is also known as Louis the Great (in French Louis le Grand or, alternatively, le Grand Monarque, "the Great Monarch"), because, following his initial success in the Franco-Dutch War and the Treaty of Nijmegen, the Parlement de Paris decreed that all public inscriptions and statues of the king should carry that epithet attached to his name.[citation needed]
He is also popularly known as The Sun King (in French le Roi Soleil) because of the idea that, just as the planets revolve around the Sun, so too should France and the court revolve around him. As a result, he was commonly associated with Apollo Helios, the Greco-Roman god of the Sun. As a patron of the arts, this association was fitting because Louis was, like Apollo Musagetes, the "leader of the Muses".[citation needed]
Louis XIV was also a supporter of the Divine Right of Kings theory, which was largely due to his tutor, Bishop Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet. Bossuet preached that kings were appointed by God, but also have a responsibility to act as such.
During his reign, he increased the power and influence of France in Europe, engaging in three major wars—the Franco-Dutch War, the War of the League of Augsburg, and the War of the Spanish Succession—and two minor conflicts—the War of Devolution, and the War of the Reunions.
The political and military scene in France during his reign was filled with such illustrious names as Mazarin, Fouquet, Colbert, Michel Le Tellier, Le Tellier's son Louvois, le Grand Condé, Turenne, Vauban, Villars and Tourville. Under his reign, France achieved not only political and military pre-eminence, but also cultural dominance with various cultural figures such as Molière, Racine, Boileau, La Fontaine, Lully, Le Brun, Rigaud, Louis Le Vau, Jules Hardouin Mansart, Claude Perrault and Le Nôtre. The cultural achievements accomplished by these figures contributed to the prestige of France, its people, its language and its king.[citation needed]
Louis XIV worked successfully to create a centralized state governed from the capital in order to sweep away the fragmented feudalism which hitherto persisted in France, thus giving rise to the modern state. As a result of his efforts, which seemed absolutist, Louis XIV became the archetypal absolute monarch. The phrase "L'État, c'est moi" ("I am the State") is frequently attributed to him, though considered an inaccuracy by historians.[citation needed] Quite contrary to that apocryphal quote, Louis XIV is actually reported to have said on his death bed: "Je m'en vais, mais l'État demeurera toujours." ("I depart, but the State shall always remain").[3]
JENNIFER MARTINEZ
Louis XIV
I am the state.
Jordan Polacco (=
Louis XIV said "L'Etat, c'est moi." It means i am the state.
Cortney!
louis xiv and the state shall always remain
epsilon
Nikolai
...also popularly known as The Sun King (in French ... The phrase "L'État, c'est moi" ("I am the State ... is actually reported to have said on his death bed.
=) Laura =)
Raftery
<3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3
Louis XIV (September 5, 1638 – September 1, 1715) ruled as King of France and of Navarre. He acceded to the throne a few months before his fifth birthday, but did not assume actual personal control of the government until the death of his prime minister (Premier ministre), the Italian Jules Cardinal Mazarin, in 1661. Louis would remain on the throne till his death just prior to his seventy-seventh birthday in 1715. His reign thus spanned seventy-two years, three months, and eighteen days, the longest documented of any European monarch to date.
Louis XIV is also known as Louis the Great (in French Louis le Grand or, alternatively, le Grand Monarque, "the Great Monarch"), The Sun King (in French le Roi Soleil)
During his reign, he increased the power and influence of France in Europe, engaging in three major wars—the Franco-Dutch War, the War of the League of Augsburg, and the War of the Spanish Succession—and two minor conflicts—the War of Devolution, and the War of the Reunions.
Louis XIV worked successfully to create a centralized state governed from the capital in order to sweep away the fragmented feudalism which hitherto persisted in France, thus giving rise to the modern state. As a result of his efforts, which seemed absolutist, Louis XIV became the archetypal absolute monarch. The phrase "L'État, c'est moi" ("I am the State") is frequently attributed to him, though considered an inaccuracy by historians. Quite contrary to that apocryphal quote, Louis XIV is actually reported to have said on his death bed: "Je m'en vais, mais l'État demeurera toujours." ("I depart, but the State shall always remain")
-Remy☻
P.S. Dear David,
This is a 'long' comment but I am not a so-called "Terner wanabes". I have extra time during this french class and I doubt this 'long' comment will happen again.
the thingy quote thing was said by Louis XIV of France. and his qoute thingy that he said translated is "i am the state. (: i feel smart. :p
So; the answer to the question is
a)Louis XIV
B)I am the State.
Supposidllyy.
Google is annoying; haha
heyy iff you care i got poison ivyy and my leg is swollen haha.
So yeahh as you know;
Tori Went to jupiter and back in one dreamm; Get it got it good.
Blehh I'm cool.
I'm putting alot of spaces so it looks like David Turner
END OF STORYYY!!!!!!
Well, I am going to be like David Turner. :D
It seems that the name of the King in the picture is "King Louis XIV"
And "L'Etat, c'est moi" means "Ia m the state" hehe.
But yes David is "going down"
And i just saw you hit harli :D
THATS ABUSEE!!
im sueinggg!!!
haha.
Au revoir :P
love lexiii <3
hi mrs. b
i kinda for got to put down the guys name.
sorry about that.
so idk if i can do it again.
but louis xiv?
and i am the state?
megan diamond
Louis XIV
i am the state
james L.
A). Man in tights is Louis XIV who said the quote.
B). "L'Etat, c'est moi." is French for "I Am The State."
-Kenny VanDemark
Louis XIV
"L'Etat, c'est moi." means ` The State, it is me.
KELLY MARTINEZ `
Lucy, I am going to kill you (the rabid rooster)
Sincerely yours,
D. Terner
LouisXIV
and his quote "L'Etat, c'est moi"
means
"The state, it's me?
i dont really know.
little rose(:
Louis XIV, France's Sun King, had the longest reign in European history (1643-1715). During this time he brought absolute monarchy to its height, established a glittering court at Versailles, and fought most of the other European countries in four wars. The early part of his reign (1643-61), while Louis was young, was dominated by the chief minister Cardinal Mazarin. In the middle period (1661-85) Louis reigned personally and innovatively, but the last years of his personal rule (1685-1715) were beset by problems.
Louis XIV, baby
Louis XIII
Anne of Austria
Louis XIV, 10 years old
Minority
Born on Sept. 5, 1638, Louis was the first, regarded as "god-given," child of the long-married Louis XIII and his Habsburg wife, Anne of Austria. He succeeded his father on the throne at the age of four. However, he was also a neglected child, cared for by servants. Once he almost drowned in a pond because no one was watching him. However, his mother, Anne of Austria who caused the neglect, instilled in him a lasting fear of "crimes committed against God". While his mother was regent the great nobles and the judges of the parlement of Paris launched a major but uncoordinated revolt (the Fronde of 1648-53) in reaction to the centralizing policies of Louis XIII's minister Cardinal Richelieu and his successor, Mazarin. The royal family was twice driven out of Paris, and at one point Louis XIV and Anne were held under virtual arrest in the royal palace in Paris. This civil war brought Louis XIV poverty, misfortune, fear, humiliation, cold and hunger. This shaped his character and he would never forgive either Paris, the nobles, or the common people. Cardinal Mazarin was victorious in 1653 and constructed an extraordinary administration for the kingdom.
Mazarin finally suppressed the Fronde and restored internal order. The Peace of Westphalia (1648), which ended the Thirty Years' War, together with the Peace of the Pyrenees (1659), which concluded prolonged warfare with Spain, made France the leading European power. The latter treaty was sealed by Louis XIV's marriage (1660) to Marie Therese (1638-83), the daughter of Philip IV of Spain.
Personal Administration
On Mazarin's death in 1661, Louis astounded his court by becoming his own chief minister, thereby ending the long "reign of the cardinal-ministers." A sensational 3-year trial (1661-64) of the powerful and corrupt finance minister Nicolas Fouquet sent the would-be chief minister to prison for life. The king thereafter controlled his own government until his death, acting through his high state council (conseil d'en haut) and a few select ministers, whom he called or dismissed at will. The most famous and powerful of the ministers were Jean Baptiste Colbert in internal affairs and the marquis de Louvois in military matters.
Breaking with tradition, Louis excluded from his council members of his immediate family, great princes, and others of the old military nobility (noblesse d'epee); his reliance on the newer judicial nobility (noblesse de robe) led the duc de Saint-Simon to call this, mistakenly, "the reign of the lowborn bourgeoisie." Local government was increasingly placed under removable intendants.
Marie-Therese
Sun King
Cardinal Mazarin
Period of Glory
The early personal reign of Louis was highly successful in both internal and foreign affairs. At home the parlements lost their traditional power to obstruct legislation; the judicial structure was reformed by the codes of civil procedure (1667) and criminal procedure (1669), although the overlapping and confusing laws were left untouched. Urban law enforcement was improved by creation (1667) of the office of lieutenant general of police for Paris, later imitated in other towns. Under Colbert commerce, industry, and overseas colonies were developed by state subsidies, tight control over standards of quality, and high protective tariffs. As controller general of finances, Colbert sharply reduced the annual treasury deficit by economies and more equitable, efficient taxation, although tax exemptions for the nobility, clergy, and some members of the bourgeoisie continued.
Colbert and the king shared the idea of glorifying the monarch and monarchy through the arts. Louis was a discriminating patron of the great literary and artistic figures of France's classical age, including Jean Baptiste Moliere, Charles Le Brun, Louis Le Vau, Jules Mansart, and Jean Baptiste Lully. His state established or developed in rapid succession academies for painting and sculpture (1663), inscriptions (1663), French artists at Rome (1666), and science (1666), followed by the Paris Observatory (1667) and the academies of architecture (1671) and music (1672). The literary Academie Francaise also came under formal royal control in 1671.
Money was lavished on buildings. In Paris the Louvre was essentially completed with the classical colonnade by Claude Perrault. In Versailles, Louis XIII's hunting lodge was transformed into a remarkable palace and park, which were copied by Louis's fellow monarchs across Europe. When the king moved permanently to Versailles in 1682, an elaborate court etiquette was established that had the aristocracy, including former rebel princes, vying to participate in Louis's rising (leve) and retiring (couche). These ceremonies led to the saying that, at a distance, one could tell what was happening at the palace merely by glancing at an almanac and a watch.
In foreign affairs, the young Louis XIV launched the War of Devolution (1667-68) against the Spanish Netherlands, claiming that those provinces had "devolved" by succession to his Spanish wife rather than to her half brother Charles II, who had inherited the Spanish crown. The war brought him some valuable frontier towns in Flanders. Louis turned next against the United Provinces of the Netherlands in the third Anglo-Dutch War (1672-78). The intent this time was to take revenge against Dutch intervention in the previous war and to break Dutch trade. By the Peace of Nijmegen (1678-79) he gained more territory in Flanders, and the formerly Spanish Franche-Comte was added to France's eastern frontier, now fortified by the great siege expert, Sebastien Le Prestre de Vauban. Now at the height of his power, the king set up "courts of reunion" to provide legal pretexts for the annexation of a series of towns along the Franco-German border. More blatantly, he seized both the Alsatian city of Strasbourg and Casale, in northern Italy, in 1681.
Period of Decline
The turning point in Louis's reign between the earlier grandeur and the later disasters came after Colbert's death (1683). In 1685 the king took the disastrous step of revoking the Protestant (Huguenot) minority's right to worship by his Edict of Fontainebleau, often called the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Many Huguenots--who constituted an industrious segment of French society--left the country, taking with them considerable capital as well as skills. In addition Louis's display of religious intolerance helped unite the Protestant powers of Europe against the Sun King.
In September 1688, Louis sent French troops into the Palatinate, hoping to disrupt his enemies who had formed the League of Augsburg against him. The 9-year war of the Grand Alliance ensued. France barely held its own against the United Provinces and England, both under William III, as well as Austria, Spain, and minor powers; but the Treaty of Rijswijk (1697) preserved Strasbourg and Louis's "reunion" acquisitions along the Franco-German border.
The aging ruler was almost immediately drawn into the disastrous War of the Spanish Succession (1701-14), in which he defended his grandson Philip V's inheritance of Spain and its empire on the death of Charles II. The genius of the English general the duke of Marlborough and his Austrian counterpart, Eugene of Savoy, was almost too much for the ducs de Villars, Berwick, and Vendome, who were Louis's principal generals. The terrible French winter of 1709 and near fiscal collapse also took their toll. Nonetheless, France rallied. By the Peace of Utrecht France retained most of its earlier conquests, and the Spanish empire was divided between Philip V, who received Spain and its overseas colonies, and Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI, who acquired the Spanish Netherlands and Spain's Italian possessions. Louis was forced to agree that the crowns of France and Spain would remain separate despite the dynastic connection.
During the post-1685 period the once personal monarchy became increasingly bureaucratized. A long and bitter quarrel (1673-93) with the pope was concluded when the king withdrew the French clergy's Four Gallican Articles of 1682, in which they had claimed quasi-independence from the papacy for the French church (see Gallicanism). Reconciliation with the papacy aided Louis's attempt to suppress Jansenism. The Jansenist convents of Port-Royal were closed (1709-10), and in 1713 the pope issued, at Louis's request, the anti-Jansenist bull Unigenitus.
After a series of celebrated liaisons with mistresses, notably Louise de la Valliere and Madame de Montespan, Louis settled down to a more sedate life with Madame de Maintenon, whom he secretly married about 1683. She shared with Louis the grief of lost battles and the successive deaths of all but two of his direct descendants. The two who survived him were his grandson Philip V of Spain and a great-grandson who became Louis XV when the Sun King died on Sept. 1, 1715.
Death of Louis XIV
(1638-1715). Louis, the greatest king of France's grand siècle, was only a small boy when he succeeded his father in 1643. Because of his youth, real power passed to his mother Anne of Austria as regent and to the Italian-born first minister, Cardinal Mazarin. When Mazarin died in 1661, Louis refused to appoint another first minister and instead grasped the reins of government himself, never to relinquish them so long as he lived. During this ‘personal reign’, France exercised pre-eminent power on the continent of Europe.
Louis, who adopted the sun as his symbol to become the ‘Sun King’, displayed the splendour of his reign by constructing his opulent and vast palace at Versailles. There his dazzling court strutted and bickered, while Louis reserved real authority for himself. Louis is reputed to have claimed ‘I am the state’, and although this statement may be apocryphal, his will was, indeed, the will of the state in matters of military matters and foreign policy.
During the second half of the 17th century, French troops proved themselves virtually invincible on the battlefield. Phenomenal growth of his army multiplied its effect. French forces during the League of Augsburg war climbed above 400, 000 men on paper, and may have attained 340, 000 in reality. Administrative reforms carried out by war ministers Michel Le Tellier and his son, the Marquis de Louvois, provided a more regular provision of food, equipment, and pay, making such large forces possible.
Louis regarded being a soldier as an essential attribute of kingship, and he devoted himself very much to military affairs. During wartime, he regularly went to the field until the infirmities of age kept him from doing so, yet he never commanded in battle. He had a penchant for sieges and attended over twenty of them. In contrast to his identification with the army, Louis never harboured equal concern for his navy. Although it expanded mightily by 1690, he later allowed it to decline in order to concentrate resources on land.
As befitted the tone of the age, Louis cared much for his gloire, best translated as fame or reputation, but that does not mean that his foreign policy was vainglorious. Historians have often argued that the wars he fought during his personal reign, like those of Napoleon a century later, resulted from a desire to annex much of the continent. Yet Louis's goals were more modest and reasonable.
Early in his personal reign, the young king lusted to establish his reputation as a warrior-king by conquest. His Spanish wife had renounced her claims to the domains of her father, Philip IV, contingent upon delivery of a huge dowry which was never paid. Therefore, when Philip died in 1665, Louis insisted that parts of the Spanish Netherlands should go to, or ‘devolve’ upon, his wife, setting off the War of Devolution (1667-8). An alliance led by the Dutch imposed an end to this brief struggle, and although Louis received twelve important fortress towns, he believed himself cheated. In the Dutch war (1672-8), Louis intended to punish the Dutch and gain a free hand in the Spanish Netherlands. French armies invaded the Dutch Netherlands, but failed to impose their terms. As the alliance against Louis grew, he had to withdraw south in 1674.
At mid-course during the Dutch war, Louis gave up his dream of adding the Spanish Netherlands to his kingdom and, instead, came to associate his gloire less with conquering more territory than with protecting what he already held. Vauban, Louis's great military engineer, urged Louis to create a double line of fortresses, known as the pré carré, to seal off his northern border. But he also advocated creating a more defensible frontier to the east by seizing additional strong points. After the close of the Dutch war, which netted him more fortresses in the Netherlands plus the entire province of Franche-Comté, Louis resolved to take still other key towns, particularly Strasbourg and Luxembourg, in a series of land grabs known as the ‘Reunions’. The climax of this process was the brief and profitable war of that name (1683-4).
When Louis demanded European recognition of all his territorial gains—and did so by invading German lands to compel such recognition—he precipitated the League of Augsburg war in which he faced the ‘Grand Alliance’ of the English, Dutch, Spanish, and Austria, along with several lesser German states and Savoy. During this war Louis's army won all its major battles and enjoyed the upper hand in siege warfare, but the struggle so exhausted France that Louis sacrificed some of his earlier acquisitions to secure a peace settlement.
Louis's last great war came with the inevitability of sunset, when Charles II, the childless king of Spain, died in 1700. Before Charles's death, Louis tried to hammer out an agreement with other rulers to avoid a major war by dividing the Spanish inheritance. However, all prior arrangements dissolved when Charles stipulated on his deathbed that everything should go to Louis's grandson, Philip of Anjou. Louis really had little choice but to accept the dying declaration, but he should have avoided the series of ill-considered acts that alarmed his foes, who once again formed a Grand Alliance to oppose him in a final cataclysm, the War of the Spanish Succession. Two brilliant allied commanders, Marlborough and Prince Eugène of Savoy, won a series of battles and sieges that nearly exhausted Louis's strength. But he refused to capitulate and eventually outlasted his enemies. When Queen Anne removed Marlborough from command and British forces from the war, Louis's armies reasserted French power, defeated Eugène, and established a settlement that did not require Louis to sacrifice territory and that also left his grandson Philip on the Spanish throne.
When Louis XIV came to the throne as a five-year-old boy (actually four years, eight months) on 14 May 1643, the Thirty Years' War was still in progress, and Cardinal Richelieu, the French éminent grise, had died the preceding year. The situation did not look good for France, but the young boy became one of the world's great monarchs and the embodiment of the divine-right, absolute monarch ("L'état, c'est moi"). Louis (5 September 1638-1 September 1715) ruled France for seventy-two years, one of the longest reigns in recorded history, and dominated European cultural and political affairs.
The roi du soleil (sun king) was the son of Louis XIII and Anne of Austria, born at the royal chateau in Saint-Germain-en-Laye in 1638. Since his parents had been married for twenty-two years without a child, they called him "Louis the God-Given." When his father died, the regency fell to the hands of the intensely-disliked queen and Cardinal Jules Mazarin.
Mazarin (Giulio Mazarini, 1602-1661) played a role similar to that of Cardinal Richelieu, who had been the chief advisor (sometimes called l'eminent grise) to King Louis XIII. Mazarin, a Sicilian by birth, had studied in Spain and then in Rome before embarking on a career as a captain of an infantry regiment and then later as a diplomat for the pope. While serving in France, he came to the attention of Richelieu and, around 1638, accepted the cardinal's offer to work for France. As regent, although careless about state finances-especially at his profit-and antagonistic towards the nobles, Mazarin did steer France through the torturous problems of war, civil war, the negotiations at Westphalia and internal chaos.
The first major challenge for Mazarin was La Fronde (1648-1653), a confused revolt that included many different groups.
Nobles
Parisian bourgeoisie
The Parlement of Paris
There were a variety of complaints, such as the noble's suspicions of the growing power of the king and the Parisian mob's unrest because of famine, but the key unifying ground of all the discontents was hatred for Mazarin as a foreign intriguer. The Fronde left a deep impression on young Louis, who had to flee Paris on a number of occasions for his safety--In 1651, rebels even entered the king's bedroom; Mazarin had to flee France twice. Louis felt humiliated by the nobles and threatened by Parisians, and he never forgot it.
In order to ratify the peace treaty ending the war that had begun in 1635 between France and Spain, in 1660 Louis XIV married Marie Thérèse of Austria, daughter of the King of Spain-despite his love for Mazarin's niece, Marie Mancini. When Mazarin, his godfather and prime minister, died on 9 March 1661, the 23-year-old king seized the moment and announced that he himself would govern-something that had not happened since the reign of Henry IV. He obtained support from key ministers, such as Jean-Baptiste Colbert (1619-1683), the Marquis de Louvois (1639-91), Hugues de Lionne (1611-1671) and Michel Le Tellier (1603-85)--all expert administrators who had been groomed by Mazarin.
Louis was dignified and imposing with charming manners, but he was also hard working, patient and self-disciplined with an iron physical constitution. He maintained a strict routine of official business, every day. Short of height, he was of modest intelligence (not much helped by his upbringing undertaken largely by his servants) and lacking of a sense of humor. Possessed of a colossal pride, he loved grandeur, glory, military reviews and petty details (uniforms, equipment, drill).
Louis was the epitome of the absolute monarch and embodied the idea of divine right monarchy. As God's representative on earth, he felt that he was due respect and that his word was law; he was responsible to God alone. As an absolute monarch, Louis XIV wielded unlimited authority with all decisions made by him; however, it was not despotism nor arbitrary power, as kings still had to justify their actions to churchmen, entrepreneurs and nobles.
Having taken the reigns of government, Louis now had to contend with the nobility, church, bureaucracy and the rest of Europe to achieve his idea of France.
The chief opposition to the central monarchy was the French, feudal nobility. The king continued the process of destroying the nobility as a class by increasing the use of commoners to run the state and by establishing Versailles as a seventeenth-century "Disneyland" to keep the nobility occupied with non-political amusements after the court moved there in 6 May 1682.
To solidify support from the church, Louis acted in a highly favorable manner. In 1685, the L'Edit de Fountainbleau revoked the Edict of Nantes, and Huguenots, forbidden to practice, left France in droves. On one hand, this created religious unity within France and secured the friendship of the church, but, on the other hand, it aroused the implacable hatred of Protestant states and deprived France of some of its most industrious citizens.
To create a more responsive and effective bureaucracy, Louis instituted new administrative methods to strengthen his control.
Weekly ministerial conferences
Continuity in the top four ministries (finance, army, navy, public works), only sixteen ministers in fifty-four years of his personal reign
Ministers chosen by ability not birth
Intendants continued to rule the 36 generalités (provinces)--but they never served where they were born
Financial reform of taxes
Colbert, as controller general, worked to improve the French economy through a policy called mercantilism--state intervention to create a self-sustaining economy. Colbert used an aggressive tariff policy to manipulate the import of raw materials and the export of manufactured goods to improve the balance of payments. He also fostered domestic trade and industry by improving communications (roads and canals), eliminating internal tolls, expanding the navy, increasing colonial trade through the East India Company and by subsidizing certain industries (tapestries and furniture).
The economic gains wrought by Colbert and the administrative improvements allowed Louis to pursue an activist foreign policy. Over the course of his long reign, the Sun King essentially confronted all of Europe at one time or another over his ambitions to secure the "natural" boundaries (Alps, Pyrenees, Rhine, Atlantic Ocean) of France. At his disposal, Louis had the largest and best standing army of the day (increased from a peacetime force of 20,000 to a wartime machine of 400,000 professionally-organized men).
The War of Devolution (1667-68) was an attempt to gain the Spanish Netherlands (Belgium). Louis had married Marie Thérèse, the daughter of King Philip IV of Spain, and when her brother died, Louis claimed that his wife should inherit the Netherlands, based on the custom of "Devolution" (Property passes to the children of a first marriage in precedence of later marriages). After a brilliant military campaign, Louis had to retreat in the face of English and Dutch pressure--He never forgave the Dutch-and in the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1668), Louis did get part of Belgium, including Charleroi, Tournai and Lille.
The Dutch War, 1672-78, resulted from Louis' irritation with Dutch commercial power, the perceived Dutch treachery in the War of Devolution and Dutch Protestantism. The long war ended with the Treaties of Nijmegen (1678) in which Spain gave France the Franche Comté (the area to the northeast of Switzerland), and France kept the province of Lorraine.
Louis XIV was at his peak. He had defeated a formidable coalition (Spain and the Holy Roman emperor had joined the Dutch against him) and dictated terms to the enemy. He had extended the frontier of France in the north and in the east. His fleet now equaled those of England and Holland.
Meanwhile, great changes had taken place in his private affairs. In 1680 the Marquise de Montespan, who had replaced Mme de La Vallière as Louis's mistress in 1667, was implicated in the Affair of the Poisons, a scandal in which a number of prominent people were accused of sorcery and murder. Fearful for his reputation, the King dismissed Mme de Montespan and imposed piety on his entourage. Although the king openly renounced pleasure, he still found solace in the arms of his newest favorite, the pious Mme de Maintenon, widow of the satirist Paul Scarron and former governess of the king's illegitimate children. In 1682 the court moved to Versailles. The following year, the Queen died, and the Louis secretly married Mme de Maintenon, to whom he remained devoted for the rest of his life.
The War of the League of Augsberg (1688-97) resulted from the formation in 1686 of the League of Augsberg by Emperor Leopold (Holy Roman Empire) with Spain, Sweden and some German princes to resist further French expansion. When in September 1688, Louis invaded the Palatinate on a trumped up claim and occupied Cologne, the English, Dutch and the League united in a grand alliance to resist the French in a war lasting almost nine years. In the Treaty of Ryswick (1697), Louis gave up all lands, including the Palatinate, that he had seized, except Strasbourg, with Lorraine restored to its duke.
This set the stage for the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-14). When Charles II, the last Habsburg king of Spain and Louis' brother-in-law, died in 1700, the nearest male heir was Leopold of Austria, who wanted the Spanish throne for his son the Archduke Charles. Having foreseen the forthcoming conflict over succession to the Spanish throne, European diplomats had earlier worked out an agreement for Prince Joseph of Bavaria, a grandnephew of Leopold, to inherit the throne, but Prince Joseph died in 1699 before Charles II. French diplomats then persuaded Charles II to name a French heir, and a month before his death, Charles II did so, agreeing to leave his undivided lands intact to Philip of Anjou (Philip V), the grandson of Louis XIV. After brief hesitation, Louis accepted on Philip's behalf even though he knew the decision meant war (Louis did not have many options with both England and the Holy Roman Empire already hostile to France.).
A new grand alliance of England, Holland, Savoy, Brandenburg-Prussia, Hannover, the Palatinate, Portugal and the Holy Roman Empire united against France. Although the French army fought bravely, the tide began to turn at Blenheim (13 August 1704) on the Danube River, the first major French defeat in decades. By 1709, France had come perilously close to losing all the advantages gained over the preceding century, but a French victory at the Battle of Denain combined with the Tories coming to power in England led to the end the war. According to the far-reaching treaties of Utrecht, Rastatt, and Baden (1713-14), Philip became king of Spain on the condition that the French and Spanish crowns never unite. France retained its conquests in Flanders and on the Rhine.
The wars had cost France an enormous sum in both financial and human terms. There was bankruptcy, depression, heavy taxation and dissatisfaction. Moreover, a series of deaths in the royal family deprived the king of his son (the Grand Dauphin), two of his grandsons (the Ducs de Bourgogne and Berry), his great grandson (the Duc de Bretagne) and the Duchesse de Bourgogne.
When Louis XIV died in 1715, at the age of seventy-seven, there was great rejoicing in France that he was finally gone. His heir, Louis' great-grandson, was a five-year-old child not expected to live long. Louis had wanted to leave actual power in the hands of the Duc du Maine, his son by Mme de Montespan and had drawn up a will to that effect, but the Parlement of Paris nullified the will after his death, thus setting in motion the course of events that led to the revolution of 1789.
Under Louis XIV, France, had, at a heavy price, become a modern state with an effective armed forces, able bureaucracy and a practical theory of politics. France had added territory and supplanted Spain as the most powerful continental power. In addition, Louis encouraged an extraordinary blossoming of French culture that ensured French cultural predominance for centuries
The Master of Versailles
The enchanting chateau of the king's youth became the official residence of the court and government of France on May 6, 1682. By providing enough space to house the courtiers, the chateau and its outbuildings helped to domesticate the nobility. Under the king's ever watchful eye, great lords no longer plotted - they remained with the army or at court, ready to please and serve. Intimidating, majestic, and fully informed by his spies, the king controlled everything. If he was heard to say of you, "I know him not," you were doomed forever.
'L'Etat, c'est moi'
Louis XIV immersed himself completely in what he called 'the trade of kingship', identifying himself totally with the state in the famous phrase, 'I am the State'. Devoting himself to his people, he put himself constantly on public show - Versailles was open to everyone, not just courtiers. Access to the monarch was governed by court ceremonial, and the immutable rites of the Sun King's day drove the entire 'court mechanism'. Elsewhere, the wheels of the new administration established during the early part of the reign ran smoothly: at the centre, king and council decided; in the provinces, intendants executed his orders.
The Most Christian King
Monarch by divine right, the king was God's lieutenant on earth. During his coronation, he swore to defend the Catholic faith. To honour this oath and preserve the religious unity of his kingdom, Louis XIV launched the struggle against Jansenists at the Port-Royal monastery, and persecuted Protestants. Forced conversions and the emigration of 200,000 Protestants ultimately led him in 1685 to rescind of the Edict of Nantes (which had decreed religious tolerance).
A Change of Heart
Once young and gay, the court became more austere. Festivities became rarer as war sapped finances; love affairs faded because Madame de Maintenon (whom the king secretly married immediately after the queen's death in 1683) required strict, Christian, constant devotion. The generation that contributed to the glory of the Sun King also gave way to a new entourage who executed the designs of absolutist government.
The Final Years
The final fifteen years began triumphantly enough in 1700 when one of Louis XIV's grandsons was proclaimed king of Spain by right of succession. Europe, however, balked at such hegemony, and a long and painful war broke out. Furthermore, a series of deaths in the royal family meant that by 1715 the heir to the throne was the king's great-grandson, a five-year-old lad. The king displayed remarkable courage during those difficult years, more than ever earning his nickname of Louis the Great (Louis le Grand).
Louis XIV was called the Grand Monarch or Sun King. His 72-year reign was the longest in modern European history.
Louis was the son of Louis XIII, whom he succeeded at the age of five. During his childhood France was ruled by his mother, and her chief minister, Cardinal Mazarin. In 1660 Louis married Maria Theresa, the daughter of Philip IV of Spain.
In 1661 he assumed sole responsibility for government. He initiated an aggressive foreign, particularly against the Dutch; but his major political rivals were the Austrian Habsburgs. From 1665 Louis tried to take possession of the Spanish Netherlands, but later tried to acquire the whole Spanish inheritance, which led to the War of the Spanish Sucession.
Louis XIV brought France to its peak of absolute power and his words 'L'etat c'est moi' ('I am the state') express the spirit of a rule in which the king held all political authority. His absolutism brought him into conflict with the Huguenots and the papacy, with damaging repercussions.
His many foreign wars became a financial burden, yet his long reign is associated with the greatest age of French culture, symbolized by the Palace of Versailles
With these immortal lines, King Louis XIV of France provided a standard for those in government or in business, who believe that their individual leadership is the essential ingredient in the success of the enterprise. In keeping with this general line of thinking Saturday's edition of the (sub. req'ed) Financial Times featured an article by US business editor Francesco Guerrera titled "Forget the Salary Packages, Look at the Size of Their Egos."
Guerrara reports on a new study from Penn State professors Arijit Chatterjee and Don Hambrick titled, "It's All About Me; Narcissistic CEOs and Their Effects on Company Strategy and Performance." The professors argue that "corporate chieftains with super sized egos favor grandiose and higher-risk strategies...acquisitions, large-scale product launches and aggressive international expansion...they can hit big but they can also miss big." The professors claim that the size of the CEO photo in the annual report, the number of times "I" is used in the shareholder letter and even the CEO's entry in the Who's Who directory are key variables for determining ego.
Guerrara contends that in the current "gloomy" business environment, "new opportunities are hard to come by for established players in developed economies…that companies long admired for their strategic prowess (BP, Dell) suggest that being the darlings of management consultants is no protection against operational pitfalls...(this) calls for CEOs with steady nerves a willingness to do the boring bits and downsizeable egos; more bashfulness and less BHAGs(Big Hairy Audacious Goals)."
Despite Guerrara"s cogent argument about the dangers of the ego-driven CEO, companies need real leaders who communicate constantly, in a real tone (without the message triangles and staged settings), and are willing to listen to stakeholders. For CEOs and their harried PR directors attempting to offer counsel in a tumultuous and increasingly looking to strike the right balance, here are a few observations:
1) Nobody achieves true success by daring only modestly. Great companies continue to evolve and to take risk. Using a sports analogy, you cannot win unless you throw the ball down field in American football. Lee Scott's embrace of the environment as a potential competitive advantage for Wal-Mart is intelligent strategy daringly implemented.
2) Communicating the goals of the corporation can no longer be done by one person. The PR director should work against the tendency of the media to personalize the company culture in the form of the CEO. The dispersion of authority to employee bloggers, the baristas at Starbucks and other credible sources means that the company is secure in its values and able to share its successes.
3) Though Wall Street pushes companies to make short term numbers, the company's long term mantra needs to remain fixed. Look at P&G's A.G. Lafley's emphasis on serving the consumer; he fits everything from R&D to marketing under that rubric.
4) Companies need allies in the constant pursuit of credibility. The GE Eco-Imagination program was embraced by the company's former opponents in civil society, the NGOs, because they had input to the initiative and felt that it validated the "green can be green" thesis.
Mr. Guerra, it is the wrong message to tell CEOs to be more bashful. They should be out in the marketplace selling the company narrative. They should empower customers and employees to speak out. They should be passionate advocates on issues like intellectual property protection, catalyzing public support for their lobbying efforts with government. In a world of "continuous partial attention," this is what is required of successful leaders.
In this context, I want to acknowledge the (sub. req'ed) PRWeek editorial of Aug. 28th concerning Edelman's decision to stand down from the Council of PR Firms. We have the utmost respect for our competitors that remain members of Council. We have an abiding and shared interest in the issues facing the PR industry, from diversity to ethics. However, we disagree with the Council on a few fundamental points. Nevertheless, we will continue to be advocates for the PR industry to help all of us achieve the full potential of the business.
Technorati Tags:
CEO, PR, Public Relations
Posted by Edelman at August 29, 2006 10:51 AM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.edelman.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/236
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference L'Etat, C'Est Moi (The State, That's Me):
» The ego of a CEO: Noble Narcissist? from Ian Griffin's Blog
He that is proud eats up himself: pride is his own glass, his own trumpet, his own chronicle; and whatever praises itself but in the deed, devours the deed in the praise. Shakespeare: Troilus and Cressida: II, iii The main task of a CEO is to c... [Read More]
Tracked on September 2, 2006 1:08 AM
Comments
You should rename your blog post, "The PR Industry, That's Me". Just like the egotist CEOs of old, the big PR agency honchos -- like you -- are also on their way out. As for your decision with the Council -- Edelman couldn't take the heat. It shows just how bankrupt your agency is when it comes to ethics.
Anonymouse ask who wrote this and I shall tell thy people who I am thank u
no applauses
PS MUAAA MUAA MUAAeiiiiiii
I BEET YOU DAVID TURNER
(this took me 5 hours to write)
louis xiv
the state is me
SARA F
your 8 period class
The answer is Louis the 14th/ the "sun king" and the famous quote exclaimes by his person literally meant "I am the state"9 refering to that he, himself, was the French government.
Louis XIV was born in the château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye on September 5, 1638 and bore the heir apparent's traditional title of Dauphin.[4] His birth came after the almost twenty-three years of childlessness of his estranged parents, Louis XIII and Anne of Austria. As a result, contemporaries regarded him as a divine gift and his birth as a miracle,[5][6][7] and, in a show of gratitude to God for the long-awaited arrival of an heir, he was named Louis-Dieudonné
His paternal grandparents were Henri IV of France and Marie de' Medici, who were French and Italian respectively( his mother from the famousFlorencetian family that got the Western Renessaince going).
The Thirty Years' War, which had commenced in the previous reign, ended in 1648 with the Peace of Westphalia, made up of the Treaties of Münster and Osnabrück, the work of Mazarin. This Peace ensured Dutch independence from Spain, awarded a degree of autonomy to the various German princes and granted Sweden territories which gave her control of the mouths of the Oder, Elbe, and Weser, as well as seats on the Reichstag. It marked the apogee of Swedish power and influence in German and European affairs. However, it was France which had the most to gain from the terms of the Peace. Austria ceded to France all Habsburg lands and claims in Alsace; and the petty German states eager to dislodge themselves from Habsburg domination placed themselves under French protection, paving the way for the formation of the League of the Rhine in 1658 and leading to the further diminution of Imperial power. The Peace of Westphalia humiliated Habsburg ambitions in Europe and laid to rest any notion that the Empire held secular dominion over all of Christendom. Interestingly, King Louis the 14th was also in the Habsburg lineage.
In the closing years of this complicated war, France encountered civil war that eventualy (spelled wrong) was brought to the king's doorsteps, litterally.A mob of angry Parisians broke into the royal palace and demanded to see their king. Led into the royal bedchamber, they gazed upon Louis XIV, who was feigning sleep, and quietly departed. Prompted by the possible danger to the royal family and the monarchy, Anne fled Paris with the king and his courtiers. Shortly thereafter, the signing of the Peace of Westphalia allowed the French army under Condé to return to the aid of Louis XIV and his royal court. By January 1649, Condé had started to besiege rebellious Paris; the subsequent Peace of Rueil temporarily ended the conflict.
Despite the end of the Thirty Years' War and the Fronde, war with Spain continued. The French received aid in this military effort from England, then governed by Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell. The Anglo-French alliance achieved victory in 1658 with the Battle of the Dunes.(oliver Cromwell made England nto a republican Commonwealth, w/ a king)
The subsequent Treaty of the Pyrenees, signed in 1659, fixed the border between France and Spain at the Pyrenees; according to its terms, Louis XIV pardoned Condé, who had gone into the service of Spain, against his king, while Spain ceded to France the whole of Roussillon, the northern half of Cerdanya and various provinces and towns in the Spanish Netherlands. The treaty signalled a change in the balance of power in Europe with the decline of Spain and the rise of France. The royal marriage however, would lead to other wars,the War of Devolution and the Spanish Succession.
In 1661the French treasury stood close to bankruptcy. Louis XIV eliminated Nicolas Fouquet, the Surintendant des Finances, commuting the sentence of banishment, passed by the Parlement, to imprisonment for life, and abolished Fouquet's office. Jean-Baptiste Colbert was appointed as Contrôleur-Général des Finances in 1665. To be sure, Fouquet had committed no financial indiscretions which Mazarin had not committed before him and which Colbert would not commit afterward. Moreover, Fouquet had competently and loyally discharged his duties, but his growing ambition to succeed Richelieu and Mazarin in power was such that Louis had to rid himself of him if he was to rule alone.
Colbert also had wide-ranging plans to strengthen France through commerce and trade. His administration ordained new industries and encouraged manufacturers and inventors, such as the Lyon silk manufacturers and the Manufacture des Gobelins, which produced and still produces tapestries. He also brought professional manufacturers and artisans from all over Europe, such as glassmakers from Murano, ironworkers from Sweden, and shipbuilders from the United Provinces. In this manner, he sought to decrease French dependence on foreign imported goods while increasing French exports, and hence to decrease the flow of gold and silver out of France. Outside of France, Colbert supported and encouraged the development of colonies in the Americas, Africa and Asia not only to provide markets for French exports, but also to provide resources for French industries.Colbert also made improvements to the navy to increase French naval prestige and to gain control of the high seas in times of war and of peace, improvements to the merchant marine to remove, at least partially, control of French commerce from Dutch hands, and improvements to the highways and the waterways of France which decreased the costs and time of transporting goods around the kingdom.
Louis XIV sought to play these factions off against one another and thus create checks and balances, ensuring that no one group would attain such power and influence at court as to destabilize his reign.He certainly was an interesting character.
Despite these matters of state, King Louis the 14th was a patron of the arts.The Sun King proved a generous spender, dispensing large sums of money to finance the royal court, and supported those who worked under him. He brought the Académie Française under his patronage, and became its "Protector". It was under his reign and indeed his patronage that Classical French literature flourished with such writers as Molière, Jean Racine and Jean de La Fontaine whose works still hold great influence to this day. The visual arts also found in Louis XIV their patron for he funded and commissioned various artists, such as Charles Le Brun, Pierre Mignard, Antoine Coysevox and Hyacinthe Rigaud whose works became famed throughout Europe. In music, composers and musicians like Jean-Baptiste Lully, Jacques Champion de Chambonnières and François Couperin thrived and influenced many others. Even in the art of gardening did Louis prove a patron with his support of André Le Nôtre.He also improved the Louvre, as well as many other royal residences.( The rest of this topic would ruin tommorow's trivia).
The following years were stricken with European wars. In all of these the French proved to be invincible, but the War of Spanish Succesion took it's toll on the French.Following Marlborough and Eugene of Savoy's victory at the Battle of Blenheim, Bavaria was flung out of the war, being partitioned between the Palatinate and Austria, and her elector, Maximilian II Emanuel, forced to flee to the Spanish Netherlands. Another consequence of Blenheim was the subsequent defection of Portugal and Savoy to the opposing side. With the Battle of Ramillies and that of Oudenarde, Franco-Spanish forces were driven ignominiously out of the Spanish Netherlands; while the Battle of Turin forced Louis to evacuate what few forces remained to him in Italy.Such military defeats, coupled with famine and mounting debt, forced France into a defensive posture. By 1709, Louis' position was grievously weakened, and he was willing to sue for peace at nearly any cost, even to return all lands and territories ceded to him during his reign and to return to the frontiers of the Peace of Westphalia, signed more than sixty years prior. Nonetheless, the terms dictated by the allies were so harsh, including demands that he attack his own grandson alone to force the latter to accept the humiliating peace terms, that war continued. When the war was concluded,the efforts of the allies to curb and diminish French power in Europe came to naught. Moreover, France was shown to be able to protect her allies with the rehabilitation and restoration of the Elector of Bavaria, Maximilian II Emanuel, to his lands, titles and dignities.
Louis XIV died on September 1, 1715, of gangrene, a few days before his seventy-seventh birthday. Almost all of Louis XIV's legitimate children had died during childhood. The only one to survive to adulthood, his eldest son, Louis de France, known as "Le Grand Dauphin", had predeceased Louis XIV in 1711, leaving three children. The eldest of these children, Louis, duc de Bourgogne, had died in 1712, soon to be followed by Bourgogne's elder son, Louis, duc de Bretagne. Thus, at Louis XIV's death, his five-year-old great-grandson Louis, duc d'Anjou, the youngest son of Bourgogne, and the Dauphin upon the death of his grandfather, father and elder brother, succeeded to the throne as Louis XV.
Louis XIV's body lies in the Saint Denis Basilica in Saint Denis, a suburb of Paris. He reigned for 72 years, making his the longest reign in the recorded history of Europe.
Thank you for your time and effort.
Scincerely,
D. Terner
(Ha! Take that wanabees!)
ps. That means you Alex!
hi i♥u miss b
hey tacher u rock the world of rock
lotto is awsome cant wait to play
i cant wait to get the mmouse pad loooooove iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiitttttttttt
Louis XIV
King of France and Navarre
The phrase "L'État, c'est moi" ("I am the State")
:] happy face for you to make you happy. ;>
HEY HI HOLA SALUT BONJOUR ABIENTO
I ♥ YOUR CLOTHE TODAY got ta have it
Louis XIV (Louis the Great) and the quote means i am the state ..
Chantal
(ana flores)
First may i say Mr.Turner... YOU GOT NOTHING ON ME... :D im gona leave the answer on here later so no one can beat me >:) and i will beat u "david turner"
a)Louis XIV
b)"I am the state"
Garlor
louis the 14th said "I am the state" or L'Etat c'est moi meaning I rule!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!*****************:)!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I think this will beat him -FOX NEWZZO
Louis the 14th said that, and it translates to "The state is me."
Haha, I can't wait to see the essay David writes!
a). Louis xiv of france
b).i am the state
jo e riccio
umm sory 2 burst your bubble but u r not the rabid rooster david! and u don't even know what i did!
Louis XIV of France
it means "I am the state."
-Jenn Brocco.
later, yo.
A] He was Louis XIV
B] It means "L' state, it's me"
megan schneider
show Brooke this in class tommarow and u should make the whole class say this ""une corbeille a papier"".
sinserly yours Brooke's une corbeille a papier annoying person :) ;}
It was said by Louis XlV, it means " I am the state."
-Darsen Hover
L'Etat, c'est moi means I am the state. Louis XIV is the person who said this.Louis XIV was born in the château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye on September 5, 1638.His birth came after the almost twenty-three years of childlessness of his estranged parents, Louis XIII and Anne of Austria. As a result, contemporaries regarded him as a divine gift and his birth as a miracle,and, in a show of gratitude to God for the long-awaited arrival of an heir, he was named Louis-Dieudonné ("God-given").His ancestors were figures from some of Europe's most noteworthy ruling houses. His paternal grandparents were Henri IV of France and Marie de' Medici, who were French and Italian respectively; while both his maternal grandparents were Habsburgs, Philip III of Spain and Margaret of Austria. Louis XIV was baptised as Louis-Dieudonné. He acceded to the throne a few months before his fifth birthday, but did not assume actual personal control of the government until the death of his prime minister in 1661. Louis would remain on the throne till his death just prior to his seventy-seventh birthday in 1715. Louis XIV is also known as Louis the Great. He is also popularly known as The Sun King because of the idea that, just as the planets revolve around the Sun, so too should France and the court revolve around him.Louis XIII and Anne had a second child, Philippe I, duc d'Orléans in 1640. Unsure of Anne as regent, Louis XIII decreed that a regency council, of which she was named head, should rule in Louis' name in the event he succeeded to the throne before the age of majority, intending, by its existence, to prevent her from ruling as sole regent.
P.S Excuse the spelling mistakes
And I hope this is better than David Turners Answer..David your going down HAHA
No, I mean the sheep thing.
D. Terner
Both A&B are Louis-Dieudonné
Jolie<3
[Tiffani Whitney]
King Louis XIV : Faunia Simon
said: "L'Etat, c'est moi"
the state is me
I am the country I am the state.
A note to the general public:
The day's post was a rather long one, even for me.In the future expect shorter posts.
Thanks,
D. Terner
hey miss b is it "the state, it is I Leroy Flores period 7 ps i bet i didnt beat david turner aww man
Yo Andre! you copied the whole wikiepedia article, word for word. I mean, look: you still have the words "citaion needed' or edit or even the little numbers like [2]. Come on
In anguish,
D. Tener
Lucy! you did the same thing as Andre! Ms. B, where's my post regarding the trivia?
D. Terner
Oh. Woww. I thought it was David's comment that said it took him 5 hours to write it. Oopsss. Who wrote that one, thoughhh? They didn't leave a name.
Post a Comment