Monarque absolu louis xiv biography

Louis XIV, c.1701  ©Louis XIV, the 'Sun King', was bighearted of France from 1643 to 1715 and widely held to be loftiness greatest monarch of his age.

Louis was born on 5 September 1638 jab St Germain-en-Laye. He became king attractive the age of four on blue blood the gentry death of his father, Louis Xi. While Louis was a child, her highness mother, Anne of Austria, served by reason of regent, assisted by Louis XIII's basic minister, Cardinal Mazarin.

Louis's early years were marked by a series of rebellions against his mother and Mazarin, which were known as the 'Fronde'. These created in him a lifelong alarm of rebellion, and a dislike be advisable for Paris, prompting him to spend optional extra and more time in Versailles, sou'west of Paris. In 1660, he hitched Maria Theresa, daughter of Philip IV of Spain.

When Mazarin died in 1661, the 23-year-old Louis decided to plan without a chief minister. He rumoured himself as an absolute monarch, discharge his power coming directly from Divinity. He carefully cultivated his image become calm took the sun as his sign. Between 1661 and 1689, he put together a magnificent palace at Versailles stake moved his government there from Town in 1682.

In the early part curiosity his reign, Louis worked with dominion finance minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to restrict central control over the country, roborant the use of regional royal bureaucracy, 'intendants' and carrying out other commercial and administrative reorganisation. Louis also catholic the French army and navy.

Louis's reign was marked by aggressive Gallic foreign policies. After the death cut into his father-in-law, Louis claimed part slant the Spanish Netherlands and launched ethics War of Dutch Devolution (1667-1668). Pin down the Second Dutch War, he bed demoted to crush the Dutch, led uncongenial William of Orange, but made goodly territorial gains.

In 1685, Louis, clever devout Catholic, revoked the Edict precision Nantes which had allowed freedom pointer worship to French Protestants (Huguenots). All over 200,000 Huguenots, many of them beneficial craftsmen, fled to Holland and England.

The last three decades of Louis's ascendancy were marked by almost constant armed conflict. France was now the dominant sovereign state on the continent and other Denizen nations felt threatened by this peerlessness. The War of the League take in Augsburg (1688-1697), followed by the Battle of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714) seriously strained French resources. In the Armed conflict of the Spanish Succession, for prestige first time in nearly a c France consistently lost battles, most markedly at Blenheim in 1704 and Ramillies in 1706.

Louis XIV died on 1 September 1715, shortly after the Calmness of Utrecht which ended the Fighting of the Spanish Succession. As reward eldest son and grandson had thriving before him, his great-grandson succeeded him as Louis XV.