Louis XIV of France

Louis XIV (Louis-Dieudonné) (September 5, 1638 – September 1, 1715) ruled as King of France and of Navarre from May 14 1643 until his death just prior to his seventy-seventh birthday. 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 First Minister ("premier ministre"), Jules Cardinal Mazarin, in 1661. The reign of Louis XIV, known as The Sun King (in French Le Roi Soleil) or as Louis the Great (in French Louis le Grand, or simply Le Grand Monarque, "the Great Monarch") spanned seventy-two years—the longest reign of any major European monarch. Louis XIV increased the power and influence of France in Europe, fighting 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 by such names as Mazarin, Fouquet, Colbert, Michel le Tellier, his son Louvois, the Great 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. These cultural achievements contributed to the prestige of France, its people, its language and its king. One of France's greatest kings, Louis XIV worked successfully to create an absolutist and centralized state. Louis XIV became the archetype of an absolute monarch. The phrase "L'État, c'est moi" ("I am the State") is frequently attributed to him, though this is considered by historians to be a historical inaccuracy and is more likely to have been conceived by political opponents as a way of confirming the stereotypical view of the absolutism he represented. 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 am going away, but the State will always remain").

Early years

On his birth at the royal Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye in 1638, his parents, Louis XIII of France and Anne of Austria, who had been childless for twenty-three years, regarded him as a divine gift; hence he was christened "Louis-Dieudonné" ("Dieudonné" meaning "God-given"); he also received the titles premier fils de France ("First Son of France") as well as the more traditional title Dauphin.

Through Louis XIV's veins ran the blood of many of Europe's royal Houses. Indeed, according to François Bluche, Christian Carretier, in his work "Les cinq cents douze quartiers de Louis XIV", calculated to the tenth generation that Louis XIV's ancestry was approximately 28% French, 26% Spanish, 11% German and Austrian, 10% Portuguese, 8% Italian, 7% Slavic and 7% English. 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 like Charles Quint and Frederick Barbarossa, both Holy Roman Emperors. He also found himself descended from the founder of the Rurik dynasty, Rurik the Viking, as well as Charles I "le Téméraire", duc de Bourgogne, the poet Charles, duc d'Orléans, and Giovanni de' Medici, last of the great Condottieri. Most importantly, he traced his paternal lineage in unbroken male succession from Saint Louis, King of France.

Louis XIII and Anne had a second child, Philippe de France, duc d'Anjou (soon to be Philippe I, duc d'Orléans) in 1640. Louis XIII, however, did not trust in his wife's ability to govern France upon his demise. Thus he decreed that a regency council, of which Anne would be head, should rule in his son's name during his minority; this would have diminished the Queen Mother's power. Nevertheless, when Louis XIII died and his young son, Louis XIV, acceded on May 14, 1643, Anne had her husband's will annulled in the Parlement, did away with the Council and became sole Regent. She entrusted power to her chief minister, the Italian-born Cardinal Mazarin, who was despised in most French political circles because of his alien non-French background (although he had already become a naturalized French subject).

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 Cardinal Mazarin. This Peace ensured Dutch independence from Spain and the independence of the German princes in the Empire. It marked the apogee of Swedish power and influence in German and European affairs. However, it was France who 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, leading to the further dissolution of Imperial power. The Peace of Westphalia humiliated Habsburg ambitions in the Holy Roman Empire and Europe and laid rest to the idea of the Empire having secular dominion over the entire 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 the 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, Armand Jean du Plessis, 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, a court whose judges comprised mostly nobles or 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 Cardinal Mazarin, strengthened by the news of Condé's victory at 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 Louis II de Bourbon, prince de Condé to return to the aid of Louis XIV and his royal court. By January 1649, the prince de Condé had started besieging rebellious Paris; the subsequent Peace of Rueil temporarily ended the conflict.

After the first Fronde (Fronde Parlementaire) ended, the second Fronde, that of the princes, began in 1650. This second phase of the Fronde, unlike that which preceded it, was characterized by tales of sordid intrigue and half-hearted warfare conducted by nobles to whom war was nothing but leisure. Nobles of all ranks, from princes of the Blood Royal and cousins of the king, like Gaston Jean-Baptiste, duc d'Orléans, his daughter, Anne-Marie-Louise d'Orléans, duchesse de Montpensier, Louis II de Bourbon, prince de Condé, Armand de Bourbon-Condé, prince de Conti, and Anne-Geneviève de Bourbon-Condé, duchesse de Longueville; to nobles of legitimated royal descent, like Henri II d'Orléans, duc de Longueville, and François de Vendôme, duc de Beaufort; and nobles of ancient families, like François VI, duc de La Rochefoucauld, Frédéric Maurice de La Tour d'Auvergne, duc de Bouillon, his brother, Henri de La Tour d'Auvergne, vicomte de Turenne, and Marie de Rohan-Montbazon, duchesse de Chevreuse, participated in the rebellion against royal rule. 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 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 been in exile on several multiple 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.

End of war and personal reign

War with Spain, however, 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 various provinces and towns to France in the Spanish Netherlands and the whole of Roussillon. 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, Maria Theresa (Marie-Thérèse d'Autriche), with an immense dowry (500,000 gold écus), to be paid in three installments. They were married on June 9, 1660. 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 the territories of the Spanish Monarchy. Since the dowry was not fully paid, Spain being at the time bankrupt, the renunciation was theoretically null and void and was never officially recognized by the French Crown.

The French treasury, after a long war, stood close to bankruptcy when Louis XIV assumed, upon the death of his Premier Ministre, Cardinal Mazarin, personal control of the reins of government in 1661. Louis XIV, after having eliminated Nicolas Fouquet and abolished his position of Surintendant des Finances, appointed Jean-Baptiste Colbert as Contrôleur-Général des Finances in 1665. While it is true that Fouquet had committed no other financial indiscretions which Mazarin had committed before him or Colbert would after and that he had, during the war with Spain and the Fronde, effectively performed his duties as Surintendant des Finances and had been a loyal supporter of the king, his growing ambition, that is to take the place of Richelieu and Mazarin as Premier Ministre, was such that Louis had to rid himself of him if he was to rule alone.

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 means of taxation 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. He 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 Lyons silk manufactures 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, or ironworkers from Sweden or ship-builders 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. 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. 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. He ranks as one of the fathers of the school of thought regarding trade and economics known as mercantilism — in fact, France calls "mercantilism" Colbertisme, and his policies effectively increased French State revenue for the king.

While Colbert, his family, clients and allies at Court, focussed on the economy and maritime matters, another faction at Court, with Michel Le Tellier and his son François-Michel Le Tellier, marquis de Louvois at its head, turned their attention to matters military. By creating these two opposing factions, Louis XIV sought to play them off against one another and thus create a sense of checks-and-balances ensuring that no one group would attain such power and influence at Court as to destabilize his reign. Le Tellier and Louvois had an important role to play in the government, curbing the spirit of independence 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 frontier and disobeyed orders coming from the capital, while quarrelling and bickering with each other over rank and status. Gone too were the days when positions of seniority and rank in the army were the sole possession of the old aristocracy. 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 admirably. Like Colbert and Louis XIV, Louvois was exceedingly hardworking. Louvois was one of the greatest of the rare class of great war ministers, comparable to Lazare Carnot.

Louis also instituted various legal reforms. The major legal code, both civil and criminal, formulated by Louis XIV, the Code Louis, or the ordonnances sur la réformation de la justice civile et criminelle, also played a large part in France's legal history as it was the basis for Napoleon I's Code Napoléon, which is itself the basis for the modern French 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. The Code forestier sought to control and oversee the forestry industry in France, protecting forests from destruction. The Code Noir granted sanction to slavery (though it did extend a measure of humanity to the practice such as prohibiting the separation of families), but no person could disown 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.

The Sun King proved an incredibly generous spender, dispensing large sums of money to finance the royal court, and generously supported those who worked under him. He brought the Académie Française under his patronage, and became its "Protector". He also operated as a patron of the arts, funding literary and cultural figures such as Molière, Charles Le Brun, and Jean-Baptiste Lully. It was under his reign and indeed patronage that Classical French literature flourished with such writers as Molière, who mastered the art of comic satire and whose works still have a major impact on modern French literature and culture, Jean Racine, whose stylistic elegance is considered exceptional in its harmony, simplicity and poetry, or Jean de La Fontaine, the most famous French fabulist whose works are to this day learnt by generations of French students. The visual arts also found in Louis XIV the ultimate patron for he funded and commissioned various artists, such as Charles Le Brun, Pierre Mignard, Antoine Coysevox, André Le Nôtre 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 occupied the scene. Lully introduced opera to France and founded French Opera and, with Molière, popularized the Comédie-Ballet, while Couperin's famous book L'Art de toucher le clavecin greatly influenced Bach, Strauss and Maurice Ravel.

Louis XIV ordered the construction of the military complex known as the Hôtel des Invalides to provide a home for officers and soldiers who had served him loyally in the army, but whom either injury or age had rendered infirm. While methods of pharmaceuticals at the time were quite elementary, the Hôtel des Invalides pioneered new treatments frequently and set a new standard for the rather barbarous hospice treatment styles of the period. Louis XIV considered its construction one of the greatest achievements of his reign, which, along with the Chateau de Versailles, is one of the largest and most extravagant monuments in Europe, extolling a king and his country.

He also improved the Palais du 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 a most awkward-looking Italian summer villa in the centre of Paris. In his place, Louis chose the French architect Claude Perrault, whose work on the "Perrault Wing" of the Louvre is widely-celebrated. Against a shadowed void, and with pavilions at either end, the simplicity of the ground-floor basement is set off by the rhythmically paired Corinthian columns and crowned by a distinctly non-French classical roof. Through the centre rose a pedimented triumphal arch entrance. Perrault's restrained classicizing baroque Louvre would provide a model for grand edifices throughout Europe and America for ages.

War in the Low Countries

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.

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 of Orange, 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 the spread of war 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.

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, Prince of Orange, 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, Prince of Orange, and the Princess 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.

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, preventing them from descending on Paris. In the winter of 1674–1675, the outnumbered Turenne, through a most daring and brilliant of campaigns, inflicted defeat upon the Imperial armies under 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 upon France and which allowed him, 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 virtues of moderation in victory.

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, as he was viewed as having compromised too much with the allies and for being too much of a pacifist. Louis XIV also kept up his army, but instead of pursuing his claims through purely military action, he 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, but had separated over the years, as had in fact been stipulated in the peace treaties. French Chambers of Reunion were appointed to ascertain which territories formally belonged to France; the French troops later occupied them. The annexation of these lesser territories was designed to give France a more defensible frontier, the "pré carré" suggested by Vauban. Louis sought to gain cities 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.

Height of power in the 1680s

By the early 1680s, Louis XIV had greatly augmented his and France's influence and power in Europe and the world. Louis XIV's most famous minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, who died in 1683, exercised a tremendous influence on the royal treasury and coffers — the royal revenue had tripled under his supervision. 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 official mistresses simply because it was done at Versailles. Outside Europe, French colonies abroad were multiplying in the Americas, Asia and Africa, while diplomatic relations had been initiated with countries as far afield as Siam, India and Persia. For example, the explorer René Robert Cavelier de La Salle claimed and named, in 1682, the basin of the Mississippi River in North America "Louisiane" in honour of Louis XIV (Both the Louisiana Territory and the State of Louisiana in the United States formed part of Louisiane), while French Jesuits and missionaries could be seen at the Manchu Court in China.

In France too, Louis XIV succeeded in establishing and increasing the influence and central authority of the King of France at the expense of the Church and the nobles. Louis sought to reinforce traditional Gallicanism, a doctrine limiting the authority of the Pope in France. He convened an assembly of clergymen (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. 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 for obvious reasons.

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, requiring them to spend the majority of the year under his close watch instead of in their own local communities and power-bases plotting rebellion and insurrection. It was only in this way were they able to gain pensions and privileges necessary to their rank. He entertained his permanent visitors with extravagant parties and other distractions, which were significant factors contributing to Louis' power and control over his hitherto unruly nobility. Thus, Louis was continuing the work of the Cardinals Richelieu and Mazarin. He, as a result of the experiences derived from the Fronde, believed that his power would prevail only if he filled the high executive offices with commoners, or at least members of the relatively newer 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 influence of a great nobleman of ancient lineage as easily. Thus Louis XIV forced the older aristocracy to serve 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.

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 6 years out of 55 during Louis' personal reign from 1661 to 1715 (11%), to no civil wars till the Revolution in 1789. Not until the Revolution, about a hundred years later, did civil war once again trouble France.

Louis XIV had the Château 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 Royal Chapel 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. 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 magnificence; courtiers lived lives of expensive luxury, dressed with suitable magnificence and constantly attended balls, dinners, performances, and celebrations. Thus, many noblemen had perforce either to give up all influence, or to depend entirely on the king for grants and subsidies. 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 War of the Holy League, which began in 1683 and lasted till 1699. The Ottoman Grand Vizier had almost captured Vienna, but at the last moment King John III Sobieski of Poland led an army of Polish, German and Austrian forces to final victory at the Battle of Vienna in 1683. In the meantime, Louis XIV, by the Truce of Ratisbon, had acquired control of several territories, including Luxembourg and Strasbourg, which covered the frontier and protected France from foreign invasion. After repelling the Ottoman attack on Vienna, the Holy Roman Empire was no longer in grave imminent danger from the Turks, but the Emperor nevertheless did not attempt to regain the territories annexed by Louis XIV, but rather acquiesced to the fait accompli of the Truce. 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 and peace to Louis XIV.

Louis XIV's Queen, Marie-Thérèse, died in 1683. He remarked on her demise that that was the only one occasion in which she had caused him anguish. Although he was said to have performed his marital duties every night, he had not remained utterly faithful to her for long after their union in 1660: his mistresses included Louise de la Valliere, duchesse de Vaujours; Françoise-Athénaïs de Rochechouart de Mortemart, marquise de Montespan; and Marie-Angelique de Scoraille, duchesse de Fontanges. As a result, he produced many illegitimate children, later intermarrying them into families of the highest pedigree, even into branches of the Royal family itself. Many scions of these resultant illegitimate royal cadet branches would go on to claim positions of power and influence in the next century. He proved, however, more faithful to his second wife, Françoise d'Aubigné, marquise de Maintenon. The marriage between Louis XIV and Madame de Maintenon, which probably occurred in late 1685, was secret and morganatic, and would last to his death.

Madame de 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. Louis XIV himself 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 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. The Edict 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. The new edict 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. The Edict precluded individuals from publicly practising or exercising the religion, but not from merely believing in it. The Edict provided "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." 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 though not ruinous; and while Sébastien Le Prestre, seigneur de Vauban, one of Louis XIV's most influential generals, publicly condemned the measure, its proclamation was widely celebrated throughout France.

The League of Augsburg

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.

Louis XIV sent his troops into the Palatinate in 1688 after the expiry of an ultimatum to the German princes to ratify the Truce of Ratisbon and confirm his possession of annexed territories, as well as to recognise his sister-in-law's claims. Ostensibly, the army had the task of supporting the claims of Louis XIV's sister-in-law, Charlotte-Elizabeth, duchesse d'Orléans, to the Palatinate. (The duchesse d'Orléans's brother, Charles II, Elector Palatine had died in 1685, and the comital Crown had gone, not to her, but to the junior Neuburg branch of the family.) The invasion had the real aim of applying diplomatic pressure and forcing the Palatinate to leave the League of Augsburg, and thus weakening it.

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 of England, who ruled jointly with her husband, William III of England (the Prince of Orange). As William III had developed an enmity against Louis XIV during the Dutch War, he pushed England into the League of Augsburg, which then became known as the Grand Alliance.

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 still concentrated on fighting the Ottoman Empire and 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. Louis XIV aided James II in his attempt to regain the British crown, but the Stuart king was unsuccessful, losing his last stronghold in Ireland a year after the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. Williamite England could then devote more of her funds and troops to the war on the continent. Nonetheless, despite the size of the opposing coalition, which encompassed most of Europe, French forces in Flanders under the famous pupil of the Great Condé, François Henri de Montmorency-Bouteville, duc de Piney (called the duc de Luxembourg), 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 (1692) and the Battle of Neerwinden (1693). 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 Neerwinden, France gained the forward defensive line of the Sambre. At the battles of Marsaglia and 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 the Ter 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. The war continued for four more years, until the Duke of Savoy signed a separate peace and subsequent alliance with France in 1696, 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.

The War of the Grand Alliance eventually ended with the Treaty of Ryswick in 1697. Louis XIV surrendered Luxembourg and all 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 Haiti, 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. However, he 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 one state on its own was capable of taking on France. Spain recovered Catalonia and the many territories lost, both in this war and the previous one (War of the Reunions), in the Low Countries. Louis XIV returned Lorraine to her duke, but on terms which allowed French passage at any time and which severely restricted the Duke's political manoeuvrability. The Dutch were allowed to garrison forts in the Spanish Netherlands, the "Barrier", to protect themselves against possible French aggression. 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 dec