("I depart, but the State shall always remain.")[133]. With Fouquet dismissed, Colbert reduced the national debt through more efficient taxation. This portrayal of the monarch was to be found in numerous media of artistic expr… He also used tapestries as a medium of exalting the monarchy. [citation needed] France retained Île-Saint-Jean and Île Royale, and Louis acquired a few minor European territories, such as the Principality of Orange and the Ubaye Valley, which covered transalpine passes into Italy. The Dutch captured Pondichéry in 1693, but a 1697 French raid on the Spanish treasure port of Cartagena, Spain, yielded a fortune of 10,000,000 livres. Additionally, in the colonies, only Roman Catholics could own slaves, and these had to be baptised. Few rulers in world history have commemorated themselves in as grand a manner as Louis. The King appeared destined to be a roi fainéant. Louis also sought Strasbourg, an important strategic crossing on the left bank of the Rhine and theretofore a Free Imperial City of the Holy Roman Empire, annexing it and other territories in 1681. This seemed to herald an era of Catholic monarchs in England. All these events were witnessed by Louis and largely explained his later distrust of Paris and the higher aristocracy. This was felt by the Netherlands, France's Protestant ally, which negotiated a separate peace with Spain in 1648.[13]. By the early 1680s, Louis had greatly augmented French influence in the world. Its weaknesses included an inefficient financial system that was hard-pressed to pay for its military adventures, and the tendency of most other powers to gang up against it. [89] The king was, at first, put off by her strict religious practice, but he warmed to her through her care for his children. The memoirist Saint-Simon, who claimed that Louis slighted him, criticised him thus: 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. [99] This had several implications. But he could promise that Philip V would accept these terms, so the Allies demanded that Louis single-handedly attack his grandson to force these terms on him. Protestants across Europe were horrified at the treatment of their co-religionists, but most Catholics in France applauded the move. If he could not achieve this within the year, the war would resume. Maximilian II Emanuel, Elector of Bavaria, had to flee to the Spanish Netherlands. [101], Rigaud's portrait exemplified the height of royal portraiture during Louis' reign. . The impact of this victory won the support of Portugal and Savoy. From that time until his death, Mazarin was in charge of foreign and financial policy without the daily supervision of Anne, who was no longer regent. An additional factor in Louis' thinking was the prevailing contemporary European principle to assure socio-political stability, cuius regio, eius religio ("whose realm, his religion"), the idea that the religion of the ruler should be the religion of the realm (as originally confirmed in central Europe in the Peace of Augsburg of 1555).[56]. All of Louis' tears and his supplications to his mother did not make her change her mind. In May 1672, France invaded the Republic, supported by Münster and the Electorate of Cologne. [89] As governess, she was one of very few people permitted to speak to him as an equal, without limits. They often focused on the miseries arising from poor government, but also carried the hope for a better future when Louis escaped the malignant influence of his ministers and mistresses, and took the government into his own hands. Those Protestants who had resisted conversion were now to be baptised forcibly into the established church. During his early reign, the kingdom affairs were mostly run by his mother and the Chief Minister, Cardinal Jules Mazarin. Eventually, therefore, Louis decided to accept Charles II's will. Once finally declared, the War of the Spanish Succession lasted almost until Louis's death, at great cost to him and France. In their analysis, his early reforms centralised France and marked the birth of the modern French state. Although the Genoese submitted, and the Doge led an official mission of apology to Versailles, France gained a reputation for brutality and arrogance. From Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository. As Louis aged, so too did the manner in which he was depicted. [72] Louis tried to break up the alliance against him by dealing with individual opponents, but did not achieve his aim until 1696, when the Savoyards agreed to the Treaty of Turin and switched sides. Louis then sent another embassy in 1687, under Simon de la Loubère, and French influence grew at the Siamese court, which granted Mergui as a naval base to France. Though not necessarily opposed to Spain, she sought to end the war with a French victory, in order to establish a lasting peace between the Catholic nations. Secondly, following the proposal of René de Marillac and the Marquis of Louvois, he began quartering dragoons in Protestant homes. [80] Moreover, Louis's foreign minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, marquis de Torcy, pointed out that war with the Emperor would almost certainly ensue whether Louis accepted the partition treaties or Charles II's will. Queen Anne played the most important role in defeating the Fronde because she wanted to transfer absolute authority to her son. In 1681, Louis dramatically increased his persecution of Protestants. Louis pressed her claims to land and chattels, hoping the latter, at least, would be given to her. The Dauphin would receive all of Spain's Italian territories. Leopold viewed French expansion into the Rhineland as an increasing threat, especially after their seizure of the strategic Duchy of Lorraine in 1670. Louis initially supported traditional Gallicanism, which limited papal authority in France, and convened an Assembly of the French clergy in November 1681. The Parlement found him guilty and sentenced him to exile. After the civil war known as the Fronde forced a … He claimed descent from Charlemagne, but the story goes that his father, as a young page of Louis XIII., gained favour with his royal master by his skill in holding the stirrup, and was finally made a … Although an attempt to restore James II failed at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690, France accumulated a string of victories from Flanders in the north, Germany in the east, and Italy and Spain in the south, to the high seas and the colonies. [50] However, the pensions and privileges necessary to live in a style appropriate to their rank were only possible by waiting constantly on Louis. In 1669, Suleiman Aga led an Ottoman embassy to revive the old Franco-Ottoman alliance. However, Rigaud's intention was to glorify the monarchy. The depiction of the king in this manner focused on allegorical or mythological attributes, instead of attempting to produce a true likeness. Louis and Colbert also had wide-ranging plans to bolster French commerce and trade. Her rationales for choosing Mazarin were mainly his ability and his total dependence on her, at least until 1653 when she was no longer regent. He could agree to a partition of the Spanish possessions and avoid a general war, or accept Charles II's will and alienate much of Europe. Contemporaries and eyewitnesses claimed that the Queen would spend all her time with Louis. In the general settlement, Philip V retained Spain and its colonies, while Austria received the Spanish Netherlands and divided Spanish Italy with Savoy. In addition to portraits, Louis commissioned at least 20 statues of himself in the 1680s, to stand in Paris and provincial towns as physical manifestations of his rule. This, along with the prohibition of private armies, prevented them from passing time on their own estates and in their regional power bases, from which they historically waged local wars and plotted resistance to royal authority. Acceptance of the will of Charles II and consequences, See also Louis' commissioned academy of dance, discussed in, sfn error: no target: CITEREFAnselme1726 (, Louis had no children; he died aged 10 in 1795. With his support, Colbert established from the beginning of Louis' personal reign a centralised and institutionalised system for creating and perpetuating the royal image. Louis' wife was Philip IV's daughter by his first marriage, while the new king of Spain, Charles II, was his son by a subsequent marriage. From farther afield, Siam dispatched an embassy in 1684, reciprocated by the French magnificently the next year under Alexandre, Chevalier de Chaumont. Through these liaisons, he produced numerous illegitimate children, most of whom he married to members of cadet branches of the royal family. [60][61], Many historians have condemned the Edict of Fontainebleau as gravely harmful to France. This anticipated the formation of the 1658 League of the Rhine, leading to the further diminution of Imperial power. By attaching nobles to his court at Versailles, Louis achieved increased control over the French aristocracy. The final phases of the War of the Spanish Succession demonstrated that the Allies could not maintain the Archduke Charles in Spain just as surely as France could not retain the entire Spanish inheritance for Philip V. The Allies were definitively expelled from central Spain by the Franco-Spanish victories at the Battles of Villaviciosa and Brihuega in 1710. As tensions mounted, Louis decided to acknowledge James Stuart, the son of James II, as king of England on the latter's death, infuriating William III. [113] Orléans, however, had Louis' will annulled by the Parlement of Paris after his death and made himself sole regent. Louis sought instead to install his own candidate, Wilhelm Egon von Fürstenberg, to ensure the key Rhenish state remained an ally. His supporters, however, distinguish the state, which was impoverished, from France, which was not. The expenditure was around 18 million pounds, leaving a deficit of 8 million. Do not imitate me, but be a peaceful prince, and may you apply yourself principally to the alleviation of the burdens of your subjects. They also maintain that events occurring almost 80 years after his death were not reasonably foreseeable to Louis, and that in any case, his successors had sufficient time to initiate reforms of their own.[119]. . Anjou was not in the direct line of French succession, thus his accession would not cause a Franco-Spanish union. [citation needed]. Louis' relationship with his mother was uncommonly affectionate for the time. Nonetheless, there was still a disparity between realistic representation and the demands of royal propaganda. French society would sufficiently change by the time of his descendant, Louis XVI, to welcome tolerance in the form of the 1787 Edict of Versailles, also known as the Edict of Tolerance. Tapestries could be allegorical, depicting the elements or seasons, or realist, portraying royal residences or historical events. The wound took more than two months to heal. Louis XIV (1643–1715) Jean-Baptiste Colbert (1619–1683) 9 March 1661 6 … Jean-Baptiste Colbert's reforms. In 1643, Louis XIV became king at the age of four. This poor public opinion was compounded by French actions off the Barbary Coast and at Genoa. That became the first of many copies, both in full and half-length formats, to be made by Rigaud, often with the help of his assistants. Enduring much pain in his last days, he finally "yielded up his soul without any effort, like a candle going out", while reciting the psalm Domine, ad adjuvandum me festina (O Lord, make haste to help me). The Cardinal depended totally on Anne's support and had to use all his influence on the Queen to avoid nullifying, but to restrain some of her radical actions. WhileCardinal Mazarin was in exile, Louis' trust in Colbert grew. Louvois, in particular, pledged to modernize the army and re-organize it into a professional, disciplined, well-trained force. Condé's family was close to Anne at that time, and he agreed to help her attempt to restore the king's authority. Additionally, government officials could not be excommunicated for acts committed in pursuance of their duties. In 1910, the American historical novelist, Louis is a major character in the 1959 historical novel, A character based on Louis plays an important role in, The 15-year-old Louis XIV, as played by the Irish actor, Louis XIV, King of France and Navarre, 1638–1715, Gabrielle Angelique, Duchess of La Valette and Epernon, This page was last edited on 13 January 2021, at 20:50. [114], Line of succession to the French throne upon the death of Louis XIV in 1715. Unfortunately for Anne, her partial victory depended on Condé, who wanted to control the queen and destroy Mazarin's influence. the image of Louis XIV in the menu is taken from PC-Game "Versailles II" created by Cryo Interactive Entertainment. This portrayal of the monarch was to be found in numerous media of artistic expression, such as painting, sculpture, theatre, dance, music, and the almanacs that diffused royal propaganda to the population at large. Most European rulers accepted Philip as king, some reluctantly. Both were greatly interested in food and theatre, and it is highly likely that Louis developed these interests through his close relationship with his mother. Before its dissolution eight months later, the Assembly had accepted the Declaration of the Clergy of France, which increased royal authority at the expense of papal power. Louis XIV (1624–1715) As ruler of France for 72 years, Louis XIV had a tremendous impact on his nation’s domestic institutions. Meanwhile, diplomatic relations were initiated with distant countries. During the 1660s the King of France Louis XIV's most trusted minister was the son of a fabric merchant, named Jean-Baptiste Colbert. Louis' detractors have argued that his considerable foreign, military, and domestic expenditure impoverished and bankrupted France. In defiance of custom, which would have made Queen Anne the sole Regent of France, the king decreed that a regency council would rule on his son's behalf. He also enforced uniformity of religion under the Gallican Catholic Church. On 18 November 1686, Louis underwent a painful operation for an anal fistula that was performed by the surgeon Charles Felix de Tassy, who prepared a specially shaped curved scalpel for the occasion. According to the political doctrine of the era, France was an absolutist, divine right monarchy. In his will Louis XIV designates his childhood friend from the times spent at the VB mansion, François de Villeroy (on the left in the painting) to become the tutor of Louis XV. Nonetheless, it is indisputable that Louis' public image in most of Europe, especially in Protestant regions, was dealt a severe blow. French colonies multiplied in Africa, the Americas, and Asia during Louis' reign, and French explorers made important discoveries in North America. While Mazarin might have been tempted for a short period of time to marry his niece to the King of France, Queen Anne was absolutely against this; she wanted to marry her son to the daughter of her brother, Philip IV of Spain, for both dynastic and political reasons. [120], Nonetheless, Louis has also received praise. This, in turn, was succeeded by another Siamese embassy under Kosa Pan, superbly received at Versailles in 1686. Over the course of four building campaigns, Louis converted a hunting lodge built by Louis XIII into the spectacular Palace of Versailles. The Frondeurs claimed to act on Louis' behalf, and in his real interest against his mother and Mazarin. He sought to eliminate the remnants of feudalism persisting in parts of France and, by compelling many members of the nobility to inhabit his lavish Palace of Versailles, succeeded in pacifying the aristocracy, many members of which had participated in the Fronde rebellion during his minority. [45] Louis also received a Chinese Jesuit, Michael Shen Fu-Tsung, at Versailles in 1684. Louis established the Chambers of Reunion to determine the full extent of his rights and obligations under those treaties. See the description of that game under "Software" for more information. [24] Louis was able to capitalize on the widespread public yearning for law and order, that resulted from prolonged foreign wars and domestic civil strife, to further consolidate central political authority and reform at the expense of the feudal aristocracy. Additionally, Mazarin's relations with Marie Mancini were not good, and he did not trust her to support his position. First, in 1685, the Elector Palatine Charles II died. He danced four parts in three of Molière's comédies-ballets, which are plays accompanied by music and dance. Jump to navigation Jump to search ... Louis Phélypeaux de Pontchartrain‎ (1 C, 8 F) [65] Then, in 1688, Maximilian Henry of Bavaria, Archbishop of Cologne, an ally of France, died. [86] Eventually, France recovered its military pride with the decisive victory at Denain in 1712. [118], Alternatively, Louis' critics attribute the social upheaval culminating in the French Revolution to his failure to reform French institutions while the monarchy was still secure. On the other hand, petitions addressed either directly to Louis or to his ministers exploited the traditional imagery and language of monarchy. Remembered for his probably apocryphal assertion, “I am the state,” Louis oversaw an absolutist regime that was the envy of monarchs across the continent, many of whom sought to emulate the French king. He taught his diplomats that their job was to create tactical and strategic advantages for the French military.[5]. William and Mary were recognised as joint sovereigns of the British Isles, and Louis withdrew support for James II. This line can be traced back more than 1,200 years from Robert of Hesbaye to the present day, through Kings of France & Navarre, Spain and Two-Sicilies, Dukes of Parma and Grand-Dukes of Luxembourg, Princes of Orléans and Emperors of Brazil. Moreover, the significant reduction in civil wars and aristocratic rebellions during his reign are seen by these historians as the result of Louis' consolidation of royal authority over feudal elites. Anne interfered much more in internal policy than foreign affairs; she was a very proud queen who insisted on the divine rights of the King of France. [121] Leibniz, the German Protestant philosopher, commended him as "one of the greatest kings that ever was". For nearly thirty years, your principal Ministers have destroyed and reversed all the ancient customs of the state in order to raise your authority to its highest level. Louis XIV was born on 5 September 1638 in the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, to Louis XIII and Anne of Austria. This aristocratic coalition was strong enough to liberate the princes, exile Mazarin, and impose a condition of virtual house arrest on Queen Anne. In 1661, the treasury verged on bankruptcy. Their stated intention was to return France to at least the borders agreed to in the Treaty of Nijmegen. Rather, they focus on military and diplomatic successes, such as how he placed a French prince on the Spanish throne. It effectively checked France's ability to exploit the Peace of Westphalia. The well-known "I am the state" ("L'état, c'est moi.") Even while French Catholic leaders exulted, Pope Innocent XI still argued with Louis over Gallicanism and criticised the use of violence. France also overran most of the Duchy of Savoy after the battles of Marsaglia and Staffarde in 1693. Led into the royal bedchamber, they gazed upon Louis, who was feigning sleep, were appeased, and then quietly departed. These acts sealed his doom. The taille was reduced to 42 million in 1661 and 35 million in 1665; finally the revenue from indirect taxation progressed from 26 million to 55 million. One of the leaders of the Parlement of Paris, whom she had jailed, died in prison. Louis XIV became friends with Villeroy's young children, particularly François de Villeroy, and divided his time between the Palais-Royal and the nearby Hotel de Villeroy. In 1660, Louis had married Philip IV's eldest daughter, Maria Theresa, as one of the provisions of the 1659 Treaty of the Pyrenees. As supporting evidence, they cite the literature of the time, such as the social commentary in Montesquieu's Persian Letters. without my command; to render account to me personally each day and to favor no one". 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