Louis XIV (Louis-Dieudonné; 5 September 1638 – 1 September 1715), known as the "Sun King", was King of France from 14 May 1643 until his death in 1715. He is the longest-reigning monarch in history, reigning for 72 years and 110 days. His reign brought about a golden age in French history, marked by a great expansion of the French colonial empire and a flourishing of French culture throughout Europe. As an absolute monarch, Louis expanded monarchical rule and diminished the power of the nobility, developing a strong centralised state ruled from the Palace of Versailles that persisted until the French Revolution.
Louis became king upon his father Louis XIII's death in 1643. Since he was too young to rule independently, he required a chief minister to rule in his place. His mother and regent, Anne of Austria, thus picked Cardinal Mazarin, who trained him in diplomacy and statecraft. Upon Mazarin's death in 1661, Louis had grown up and decided not to appoint a new chief minister. A believer in the divine right of kings, he sought to eliminate the remnants of feudalism persisting in parts of France by compelling many members of the nobility to reside at his lavish Palace of Versailles. In doing so, he succeeded in pacifying the aristocracy, many of whom had participated in the Fronde rebellions during his minority. Louis enforced uniformity of religion under the Catholic Church. His revocation of the Edict of Nantes abolished the rights of the Huguenot Protestant minority and subjected them to a wave of dragonnades, effectively forcing Huguenots to emigrate or convert, virtually destroying the French Protestant community.
During Louis' long reign, France emerged as the leading European power and regularly declared war. A conflict with Spain marked his entire childhood, while during his personal rule, Louis fought three major continental conflicts, each against powerful foreign alliances: the Franco-Dutch War, the Nine Years' War, and the War of the Spanish Succession. In addition, France contested shorter wars such as the War of Devolution and the War of the Reunions. Warfare defined Louis's foreign policy, impelled by his personal ambition for glory and power: "a mix of commerce, revenge, and pique". His wars strained France's resources to the utmost, while in peacetime he concentrated on preparing for the next war. He taught his diplomats that their job was to create tactical and strategic advantages for the French military. Upon his death in 1715, Louis XIV left his great-grandson and successor, Louis XV, a powerful but war-weary kingdom, in major debt after the War of the Spanish Succession that had raged on since 1701.
Some of his other notable achievements include the construction of the 240 km (150 mi) Canal du Midi in Southern France, the patronage of artists (the playwrights Molière, Racine, the man of letters Boileau, the composer and dancer Lully, the painter Le Brun and the landscape architect Le Nôtre, all contributed to the apogee of French classicism, described during his lifetime as the "Grand Siècle", or even "the century of Louis XIV"), and the founding of the French Academy of Sciences.
Louis XIV was born on 5 September 1638 in the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, to Louis XIII and Anne of Austria. He was named Louis Dieudonné (Louis the God-given) and bore the traditional title of French heirs apparent: Dauphin. At the time of his birth, his parents had been married for 23 years. His mother had experienced four stillbirths between 1619 and 1631. Leading contemporaries thus regarded him as a divine gift and his birth a miracle.
Louis' relationship with his mother was uncommonly affectionate for the time. Contemporaries and eyewitnesses claimed that the Queen would spend all her time with Louis. Both were greatly interested in food and theatre. This long-lasting and loving relationship can be evidenced by excerpts in Louis' journal entries, such as:
Nature was responsible for the first knots which tied me to my mother. But attachments formed later by shared qualities of the spirit are far more difficult to break than those formed merely by blood.
It was his mother who gave Louis his belief in the absolute and divine power of his monarchical rule.
During his childhood, he was taken care of by the governesses Françoise de Lansac and Marie-Catherine de Senecey. In 1646, Nicolas V de Villeroy became the young king's tutor. 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.
Sensing imminent death in the spring of 1643, King Louis XIII decided to put his affairs in order for his four-year-old son Louis XIV. Not trusting the judgement of his Spanish wife Queen Anne, who would normally have become the sole regent of France, the king decreed that a regency council would rule on his son's behalf, with Anne at its head.
Louis XIII died on 14 May 1643. On 18 May Queen Anne had her husband's will annulled by the Parlement of Paris, a judicial body of nobles and high-ranking clergy, and she became sole regent. She exiled her husband's ministers Chavigny and Bouthilier and appointed the Count of Brienne as her minister of foreign affairs. Anne kept the direction of religious policy strongly in hand until her son's majority in 1661.
She appointed Cardinal Mazarin as chief minister, giving him the daily administration of policy. She continued the policies of her late husband and Cardinal Richelieu, despite their persecution of her, in order to win absolute authority in France and victory abroad for her son. Anne protected Mazarin by exiling her followers the Duke of Beaufort and Marie de Rohan, who conspired against him in 1643.
The best example of Anne's loyalty to France was her treatment of one of Richelieu's men, the Chancellor Pierre Séguier. Séguier had brusquely interrogated Anne in 1637 (like a "common criminal", as she recalled) following the discovery that she was giving military secrets to her father in Spain, and Anne was virtually under house arrest for years. By keeping the effective Séguier in his post, Anne sacrificed her own feelings for the interests of France and her son Louis.
The Queen sought a lasting peace between Catholic nations, but only after a French victory over her native Spain. She also gave a partial Catholic orientation to French foreign policy. This was felt by the Netherlands, France's Protestant ally, which negotiated a separate peace with Spain in 1648.
In 1648, Anne and Mazarin successfully negotiated the Peace of Westphalia, which ended the Thirty Years' War in which France had actively taken part to further its interests. Its terms formally confirmed the extensive autonomy that the various states of the Holy Roman Empire had enjoyed before the war. It granted Sweden seats on the Imperial Diet and territories controlling the mouths of the Oder, Elbe, and Weser Rivers. France, however, profited most from the settlement. Austria, ruled by the Habsburg Emperor Ferdinand III, ceded all Habsburg lands and claims in Alsace to France and acknowledged her de facto sovereignty over the Three Bishoprics of Metz, Verdun, and Toul. Moreover, many petty German states sought French protection, eager to emancipate themselves from Habsburg domination. This anticipated the formation of the 1658 League of the Rhine, which further diminished Imperial power.
As the Thirty Years' War came to an end, a civil war known as the Fronde erupted in France. It effectively checked France's ability to exploit the Peace of Westphalia. Anne and Mazarin had largely pursued the policies of Cardinal Richelieu, augmenting the Crown's power at the expense of the nobility and the Parlements. Anne was more concerned with internal policy than foreign affairs; she was a very proud queen who insisted on the divine rights of the King of France.
All this led her to advocate a forceful policy in all matters relating to the King's authority, in a manner that was much more radical than the one proposed by Mazarin. The Cardinal depended totally on Anne's support and had to use all his influence on the Queen to temper some of her radical actions. Anne imprisoned any aristocrat or member of parliament who challenged her will; her main aim was to transfer to her son an absolute authority in the matters of finance and justice. One of the leaders of the Parlement of Paris, whom she had jailed, died in prison.