He brought France to its highest splendor and made it a beacon of science, culture,
and arts.
It is under his reign, the longest reign in history, that France became the greatest power
in Europe and would come to dominate the continent for the whole century, a century Voltaire
would describe as “Le Grand Siècle” – the Great Century.
The face even of Absolutism, builder of Versailles, it is no surprise that you are known as The
Sun King, Louis XIV.
This video is part of a multi-channel collaboration known as Project France, which yours truly
hosts, you know, being France.
If you’re interested in learning more about the fascinating history of my country, make
sure to check out the playlist in the description.
Preferably, at the end of this video.
Louis XIV was born on the 5th of September 1638, to Louis XIII and Anne of Austria.
At his birth, he was named Louis Dieudonné, “the God-Given”, as his mother was close
to 40 years old and had already suffered four stillbirths.
This led to contemporaries believing that he was a miracle, a divine gift, a fact that
his mother often brought up, and which would largely affect Louis’ opinion of his divine
right to rule.
At only 5 years old, his father died of tuberculosis, making little Louis the new King of France,
under the regency of his mother.
His father’s will had asked for a regency council to govern the country until Louis
came of age, as he believed his wife incapable of doing so.
Ouch.
Nevertheless, she got the will annulled by the Parlement de Paris and became sole regent.
Although, to be fair, she did entrust most of the ruling to the chief minister, Cardinal
Mazarin, preferring instead to spend an unusual amount of time with her child, fostering in
him a love of theater and food, but also the belief in absolute and divine power of the
King.
Louis was definitely a mama’s boy.
Meanwhile, Mazarin had negotiated the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 which ended the 30 Years
War and granted independence to the Dutch after more than 80 years of revolt at the
mere cost of 20% of the German population.
The peace largely benefitted France as the imperial power of the Holy Roman Emperor was
significantly diminished while Austria relinquished all claims and territories it had in Alsace
to the Kingdom of France, which had now become the new leading power in Europe.
However, France was unable to use this great opportunity for expansion as that same year
it was struck by a series of civil wars.
It started with the fucking Parisians who were upset following tax increases, of course,
and the arrest of prominent members of the Parlement de Paris.
As a result, being France, they raised barricades and used slings to break the windows of any
store that supported Mazarin, hence why these civil wars are known as “La Fronde”, or
the sling.
The revolt did not last long as Le Grand Condé came back from fighting the Austrians and
swiftly put it down!
Before immediately changing side and starting a new revolt known as the Fronde of the Princes
in response to Mazarin and the Queen’s desire to continue the policies of Cardinal Richelieu,
one of France’s greatest chief minister and a certified bad-ass, policies that aimed
at further centralizing the French government and weakening the power and influence of the
nobility.
And thus followed a few unpleasant years as the country endured a series of half-assed
revolts and battles, the invasion of both the Holy Roman Emperor and Spain, the latter
of which was halted by the sheer will of angry peasants, and constant backstabbing and jealousy,
while Mazarin was forced into exile and Louis XIV and his mother were put under house arrest
after being forced to flee Paris.
The Fronde marked Louis’ teenage years and largely forged his distrust of the nobility
as well as his rightful distaste of Paris, possibly encouraging his later move of the
court to Versailles.
But eventually, as Louis XIV reached his majority, thus ending the regency of Queen Anne, the
Fronde gradually lost steam and ended in 1653 with the triumphant return of Cardinal Mazarin.
Ironically, the Fronde had done nothing but increase the absolute power of the King as
Louis XIV stressed in a letter addressed to the Parlement de Paris, where he referred
to himself in the third person, “All authority belongs to Us.
We hold it from God alone, and no person of whatever quality he may be, can pretend to
any part of it.”
Nevertheless, despite asserting his absolute power, the young King did little ruling and
still largely relied on Mazarin to take care of most of his affairs.
As such, he was forced to marry Maria-Theresa of Austria as part of the Treaty of the Pyrénées
signed in 1659, which ended the 14 years long Franco-Spanish war, an extension of the 30
years’ war, and cemented France’s borders with Spain.
The peace was actually signed on Pheasant Island, which has since been co-ruled by Spain
and France in six months intervals.
A fact that must be shared by all respectable trivia or geography YouTube channel.
Funny how I covered this in 10 seconds, and not 5 minutes.
In pure royal tradition, the wedding was the result of inbreeding as Louis XIV and Maria-Theresa
were cousins, twice cousins in fact.
Louis XIV’s mother was sister with the King of Spain while Maria-Theresa’s mother was
the sister of Louis XIII.
The marriage was a true heartbreak for Little Louis who had fallen deeply in love with one
of the nieces of Mazarin, but his tears and pleas changed nothing, and the King married
his cousin.
An important marriage that became the basis for the claims and objectives of Louis’
foreign policy in the fifty years to come.
Despite having been coronated in 1654, at the age of 15, Louis XIV only truly gained
power following the death of Cardinal Mazarin in 1661.
One of the first things he did with said power was to delete the role of chief minister,
making the following statement to his ministers of state and secretaries, “Up to this moment
I have been pleased to entrust the government of my affairs to the late Cardinal.
It is now time that I govern them myself.
You will assist me with your counsels when I ask for them.
I request and order you to seal no orders except by my command . . . I order you not
to sign anything, not even a passport . . . without my command; to render account to me personally
each day and to favor no one".
The Sun King had finally risen.
That same year, his son was born, also named Louis but better known as “Le Grand Dauphin”
as he died without ever being king.
Le Grand Dauphin was the first of six legitimate children, although all his siblings died in
their childhood.
In the end, Louis XIV would end up having an additional sixteen illegitimate children
with 5 different women, ranging from a mere gardener to his famous mistress, Madame de
Montespan.
But I digress.
Louis XIV started his personal reign with administrative and fiscal reform as his treasury
was on the verge of bankruptcy.
A common theme in French history.
He started by imprisoning the current minister of finance, whose main crime was to appear
wealthier than the king himself, and replaced him with a much more efficient minister who
successfully improved the country’s finances as well as greatly invested in domestic industries.
In only four years, the crown’s deficit had turned into a surplus and the debt was
halved.
But despite all this, Louis XIV’s reign marks a period of French history where the
Kingdom always tethered on the brink of bankruptcy.
Among the culprits were Louis XIV’s numerous grand works, most famous of which are the
Palais des Invalides, a hospital in Paris for aged and unwell soldiers, and where Napoléon’s
remains now rest, and above all, a small hunting lodge that Louis’ father had built and which
he would greatly expand into what would become the ultimate symbol of his absolutism, the
center of European culture and politics, and the French court, Versailles!
But Louis XIV also suffered from another addiction that was prejudicial to France’s financial
health, war.
In fact, most of his peace time was spent preparing for the next war and Louis had instructed
his diplomats to focus on creating tactical and strategic advantages for the French military.
Advantages that would come in handy during his first major conflict, the War of the Devolution.
Following the death in 1655 of King Philip the Fourth of Spain, whose only redeemable
feature was not being nearly as hideous as his son, Louis XIV felt entitled to Spanish
territory in Belgium through his wife’s claims.
Now, the treaty of the Pyrénées had stipulated that Maria Theresa would renounce any claim
to Spanish territories, but it also promised that Spain would give France 500,000 gold
coins.
Thing that Spain never did!
And so, Louis XIV felt perfectly entitled to declare war once more.
As the English were busy fighting the Dutch and the Spanish were ruled by, well, this guy,
Louis’ advance was swift, and he soon captured most of the Spanish-Netherlands as
well as la Franche-Comté.
However, the ungrateful Dutch Republic, who were all too happy to gain independence with
French support, now felt threatened by the fact that France was
in its sphere of influence.
As such, it formed a triple alliance with Sweden and the United Kingdom against France,
which forced Louis XIV to relinquish most of his conquests.
But in those days, alliances were formed and broken as frequently as France revolted, and
it didn’t take much to get Sweden to remain neutral and England to ally with France against
the Dutch.
And so, in 1672, a year the Dutch would later name the “Disaster Year”, Louis XIV invaded
the Netherlands.
Recent reforms by the Secretary of State for War had drastically improved French logistics
and created standing armies, a rare feat in those times, which allowed France to quickly
raise an army 250,000 strong of professional soldiers, led by talented generals like le
Grand Condé and Turenne.
As a result, France quickly took over the low countries, and consequently, the leader
of the Dutch Republic was deposed and then lynched by a mob in favor of William of Orange.
Thankfully for the Dutch, seeing France’s growing importance in the region and the (seizing)
of the Duchy of Lorraine, Prussia formed an anti-French coalition along with Spain and
the Holy Roman Emperor while England, who could only tolerate an alliance with France
for so long, decided to sue for peace with the Netherlands.
France was therefore forced to retreat once more but still held a strong position and
was able to secure a favorable peace in 1678.
Just in time for Louis XIV to enter yet another war with its ally Sweden against the Danes.
But while Louis XIV was warring all over Europe, he also sought to expand France’s influence
in the rest of the world.
As such, he expanded his colonial interests in North America by claiming the entire Mississippi
basin in 1862, which was named La Louisiane in his honor.
He then further encouraged French colonial development in the Americas by sponsoring
the “King’s Daughters”, a series of voyages that brought more than 800 women to
Québec in order to help populate the local area and add a feminine touch to the cold,
brutal place that is the great north.
It is often believed that these women were prostitutes, but that is a myth.
A myth Montreal more than made up for by becoming America’s strip club.
Louis’ reach was truly international – he received diplomats from the Ottomans, reviving
the long-standing French-Ottoman alliance, but also Persia, China and even Siam, or current
day Thailand.
In fact, one of Louis’ own librarian and linguist was Chinese, which I think is pretty
cool.
But in the end, what mattered to him was the glory of France and to that end, he found
a new way to expand his kingdom, legalese.
In those times, treaties were purposefully kept vague, likely to create reasons for future
wars and so Louis established the Chambers of Reunions, whose sole goal was to decipher
these treaties to find the full extents of Louis’ rights and claims.
With this method, Louis XIV was able to gain claims for a few major cities including the
important free City of Strasbourg, which he annexed in 1681 allowing France to take control
over the rest of Alsace, and Luxembourg.
However, Louis was forced to stop the siege of Luxembourg as the Ottomans had launched
their largest assault on the Austrians yet and it would have been political suicide to
attack a Christian nation while it was under threat of Turkish infidels.
Nevertheless, the Turks were eventually defeated in 1683 by the famous Winged Hussars at the
Battle of Vienna, and so Louis promptly started his annexations once more.
Spain did not take that kindly and, allied with the Holy Roman Emperor and the ungrateful
Dutch, declared war once more, and was promptly defeated in the War of the Reunions.
Following that, Louis XIV went on a few more wars where he bombed Algiers and Tripoli to
stop barbary pirate attacks and to free some Christian slaves, and then swiftly carried
out a punitive attack against Genoa as it had dared support the Spaniards during the
War of the Reunions!
Of course, France won, and the Doge of Genoa was forced to travel to Versailles to say
sorry.
Louis’ constant warmongering had made France increasingly powerful, but at the cost of
uniting his opponents.
A union that only grew along with his expansions.
But he did not mind antagonizing his neighbors, in fact, he had recently fired his foreign
minister for being too lenient with his foes during peace negotiations.
The King was quite vain after all, as Voltaire wrote, “It is certain that he passionately
wanted glory, rather than the conquests themselves.
In the acquisition of Alsace and half of Flanders, and of all of Franche-Comté, what he really
liked was the name he made for himself.”
And while this vanity had helped France reach the height of its power and to extend itself
like it has never extended before, it had also given France a reputation as a brutal
and arrogant state, which to be fair, it still upholds to this day.