The New International Encyclopædia/Louis XIV.

​LOUIS XIV. (1638–1715). King of France from 1643 to 1715, called ‘the Great.’ He was the son of Louis XIII. and Anne of Austria, and was born at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, September 15 (16?), 1638. He became King of France at the age of five by the death of his father, May 14, 1643. The Queen mother, Anne of Austria, held the regency, but the virtual control of affairs was in the hands of Mazarin, the chief minister, who was more solicitous for the continuance of his own power than for the education of the young King. The discontent of the nobles under the administration of Mazarin brought on the civil wars of the Fronde (q.v.) fomented by Spain, but the rebellion was put down in 1652. The war with Spain, a legacy from the preceding reign, was terminated by the Peace of the Pyrenees in 1659, which gave France part of the Spanish Netherlands and confirmed her in the possession of Roussillon. In 1660 Louis married the Infanta Maria Theresa of Spain, a princess lacking attractive qualities of mind or person. Mazarin died March 9, 1661, and at once the young King showed to what purpose he had studied the example of his father’s subserviency to Richelieu and the experience of his own tutelage under Mazarin. He surprised the Court by his prompt assertion of the intention to be his own chief minister. Richelieu and Mazarin had established firmly the foundations of royal power by putting down the nobles and Huguenots and by the foreign policy which had made France the greatest power in Europe. Louis XIV. built on this foundation a structure of the most complete despotism. The young King brought to the task a zest for work which had not been destroyed by a neglected education or the pleasures of a frivolous Court. Lacking in surpassing intellectual qualities himself, he had the gift of recognizing talents in others, and he gathered around him a group of advisers of exceptional ability, whose activity he knew how to subordinate to his own purposes. The brilliant services which they rendered France, far from eclipsing the reputation of the King, redounded only to his own glory. From the Grand Monarque alone emanated that vivifying power under the influence of which the national life of France, its industry and commerce, its military strength, its political influence in Europe, attained an unprecedented development. The Court of Louis XIV. was the most magnificent in Europe, and it became the model for European sovereigns. Handsome in person and stately in bearing, with just enough kindliness in his manner to make condescension seem gracious, the monarch moved among a brilliant crowd of soldiers, politicians, prelates, and men of letters, whose unrestrained adulation was probably as sincere as any courtiers’ praises in history. His most influential adviser was Colbert (q.v.), his bourgeois Minister of Finance (1661–83), a man of reasonable ambitions and great business ability, and in touch with the people. He restored the finances of the Kingdom, which had been impoverished by Mazarin and pilfered by the pleasure-loving Fouquet (q.v.), fostered industries, and by a drastic application of the protective principle of State encouragement, made France a self-supporting and highly productive country. Louvois, who succeeded his father, Le Tellier, as Minister of War, brought the army to a pitch of efficiency which made it the first in Europe. Thus the means were provided for the foreign wars, almost continuous through the King’s long reign, which were a necessary accompaniment to his ambitious plans. Foreign conquest for France meant expansion at the cost of Spain, whose possessions in the Netherlands were Louis’s first point of attack. After the death of Philip IV. of Spain (1665) Louis laid claim in the name of his wife to certain portions of the Netherlands, as well as Luxemburg and Franche-Comté, basing his claim on various laws of succession prevailing in those provinces. There followed the so-called War of Devolution. In May, 1667, an army of 50,000 men under Turenne invaded the Spanish Netherlands and within three months overran a great part of the country. The Dutch, in alarm, concluded an alliance with England and Sweden to put a stop to the encroachments of France, and in May, 1668, peace was signed at Aix-la-Chapelle, the French King giving back Franche-Comté, but retaining possession of French Flanders. Louis adhered tenaciously to his purpose, however, and, having effected alliances with the Archbishop of Cologne and the Bishop of Münster, whose territories lay to the east of the Netherlands, and having bought off Charles II. of England, he seized Lorraine in 1670, and invaded Holland in 1672. The States-General made an alliance with Spain, Brandenburg, and the German Emperor (1673), to which Louis retorted by seizing Imperial cities in Alsace. Four great armies were put into the field. Condé carried on the campaign on the Meuse, Turenne overran Alsace and Lorraine, Schomberg was intrusted with the defense of Roussillon, while Louis in person with the great engineer Vauban led an army into Franche-Comté, which was speedily and definitely conquered (1674). In the Netherlands, Condé won a victory over the Dutch, Germans, and Spanish at Seneffe (August 11th). After a number of reverses in 1675, occasioned by the death of Turenne, the French armies entered once more upon a series of victories in the Spanish Netherlands, and in March, 1678, Ghent and Ypres were taken. The treaties of Nimeguen (1678–79) restored the territory taken from Holland, under a guarantee of neutrality, but left to France fourteen cities in Flanders, Franche-Comté, and Freiburg in the Breisgau, and imposed such onerous conditions on the Duke of Lorraine that that prince allowed his State to remain in the hands of the French rather than accede to them. Louis was now at the height of his power, and his arrogant ambition knew no bounds. He established at Metz, Breisach, Besançon, and Tournay French courts of claims (chambres de réunion), which proceeded ex parte to determine what territories ​belonged to France under the last four international treaties. The chambers decided that with the cities and principalities conquered by France went all territorial possessions which at any time might have been theirs. French armies executed the decisions, adding Strassburg and many border towns to France. France was now dominant in Europe, and its power felt even in Northern Africa, where the depredations of the Barbary pirates led to the bombardment of Tripoli (1681 and 1685) and Algiers (1682 and 1683) by a French fleet. At home Louis ruled like an Oriental despot. The patriotic ambition of the nobility had been strangled along with their unruliness, and they were for the most part content to be mere satellites of the King. The provinces were governed by royal intendants, and every detail of government was rigidly watched by the King. The power of the Church was also brought under the control of the King. The liberties of the Gallican Church as against the Pope were asserted in the National Council of 1682 (see Gallican Church), but at the same time uniformity of belief was enforced by the suppression of the Jansenists and the enactment of stringent measures against the Huguenots, who, protected by the Edict of Nantes, were living peacefully in the Kingdom. Arrogant and obstinate as he was, Louis was restrained in many things by the counsel of Colbert while that minister lived. But Colbert died in September, 1683; his death had been preceded by that of the Queen, and in 1684 Louis privately married Madame de Maintenon (q.v.), who for a long time had been his spiritual guide. The Huguenots were gradually subjected to more and more pressure (see Dragonnades), and in 1685 the King finally revoked the Edict of Nantes. The exercise of the Reformed religion in France was prohibited, and children were to be educated in the Catholic faith. (See Huguenots.) On the death of the Elector Palatine, in 1685, Louis claimed the territory of the Palatinate in right of the Elector’s sister, the Duchess of Orleans. In 1688 he invaded the Palatinate and the neighboring regions. Early in 1689 the Minister of War, Louvois, doubting the possibility of defending the Palatinate against the Imperial Forces, ordered the devastation of that region—an act of inexcusable cruelty, which reduced half a million of people to utter misery. A new coalition was now formed against France, guided by the energy and wisdom of William of Orange, just called to the throne of England. This league, the Grand Alliance, ultimately included England, Holland, Savoy, the Emperor, Brandenburg, Sweden, Spain, Saxony, Bavaria, and the Palatinate. The succeeding campaigns were largely waged in the Netherlands, while Marshal Catinat reduced Savoy. On July 1, 1690, Marshal Luxembourg defeated the Prince of Waldeck at Fleurus; on August 3, 1692, he gained a decisive victory over William III. at Steenkerke, and on July 29,1693, won a second victory at Neerwinden. At sea the French under Tourville gained a great success over the English and Dutch off Dieppe (July, 1690), but this was counterbalanced by the crushing defeat of the French at La Hogue in May, 1692. The Fabian tactics of William III. checked the advance of the French, who were now under the command of the incapable Villeroi; in 1695 the English King took Namur, and thus hastened the approach of peace, of which France, exhausted by the vast campaigns, stood in great need. In 1697 the Peace of Ryswick provided for a mutual restoration of conquests and the garrisoning of the forts in the Spanish Netherlands by Dutch troops as a barrier between France and Holland. Louis was forced to recognize William III. as lawful King of Great Britain and to abstain from lending aid to the exiled Stuarts. Meanwhile Louis was able to maintain his rule at home in the face of growing discontent only by a rigid police espionage, administered by Count d’Argenson. The national finances, restored by the somewhat artificial system of Colbert, were again in a deplorable condition, and the people were threatened with want. The last years of Louis were a period of misfortune as signal as his previous successes had been. The question of the succession to the throne of Spain, left vacant by the childless Charles II., led to the tremendous struggle of the War of the Spanish Succession. (See Succession Wars.) William revived the Grand Alliance in 1701 to combat the plans of Louis for placing his grandson, Philip of Anjou, upon the Spanish throne. The allies took the field under the able generalship of Marlborough and Prince Eugene and won the great battles of Blenheim (1704), Ramillies (1706), and Oudenarde (1708). After these French disasters negotiations for peace were entered upon, but though Louis was willing to comply with all the demands of the allies in regard to the restoration of his early conquests and to recognize the Austrian Archduke Charles as King of Spain, he would not consent to join the allies in driving his grandson out of Spain. Hostilities were resumed and Marlborough and Prince Eugene inflicted a bloody defeat on the French at Malplaquet (1709). Fortune, however, favored the French King. The death of the Emperor Joseph I. and the accession of the Archduke Charles (Charles VI.) in the Austrian dominions and the German Empire created dissensions in the ranks of the allies; the fall of Marlborough (1712) removed Louis’s greatest enemy. The treaties of Utrecht (1713) and Rastadt (1714) brought the war to a close. Philip of Anjou retained the Spanish crown, which, however, was shorn of its possessions in Italy and the Netherlands. France ceded Acadia to England. The obstinate policy of aggrandizement by despotic methods and of the repression of the natural tendencies of the people had its result after a period of factitious glory in a decline of the French power. The looseness and immorality of society, to which the King gave the tone, was another cause of decay. Domestic misfortunes embittered the last years of the King’s life. Within the space of a year (1711–12) death carried off the Dauphin Louis, the heir to the throne, together with his two sons, the Dukes of Burgundy and Berry, and the Duke of Burgundy’s elder son, the Duke of Brittany. Upon Louis, the second son of the Duke of Burgundy, a sickly child whose life was for a time despaired of, fell the succession to the crown. By his mistress, Madame de Montespan, Louis had two sons, who bore the titles of Duke of Maine and Count of Toulouse. On September 1, 1715, the aged King died at Versailles. His reign had lasted seventy-two years. The epigrammatic statement, L’état c’est moi, attributed to him, well described his rôle in French history. He had been France. His life was identified with the zenith of the French power, ​and his reign witnessed an extraordinary development in letters and arts. Among those whose names adorn this so-called Augustan Age are Corneille, Racine, Molière, Pascal, Boileau, Bossuet, Fénelon, La Fontaine, La Rochefoucauld, Poussin, Claude Lorrain, Mansart, and Claude Perrault. The glory of the French monarchy passed away with Louis XIV.’s death.

Consult: Œuvres de Louis XIV. (6 vols., Paris, 1806), annotated edition of historical, political, and military papers and letters of Louis XIV., prepared during the reign of Louis XVI.; Saint-Simon, Mémoires, 22 vols., ed. by Chéruel and Regnier, and a useful abridged English trans. by Saint-John in 3 vols. (London, 1876 and 1883); in connection with the foregoing, Chéruel, Saint-Simon considéré comme historien de Louis XIV. (Paris, 1865), and Boissier, Saint-Simon (Paris, 1892); Gaillardin, Histoire du règne de Louis XIV. (Paris, 1871–75); Voltaire, Siècle de Louis XIV.; Bourgeois, France Under Louis XIV., trans. from the French (New York, 1897); Hassall, Louis XIV. and the Zenith of the French Monarchy (New York, 1895); Philippson, Das Zeitalter Ludwigs des Vierzehnten, in the “Oncken Series” (Berlin, 1879); Gérin, Louis XIV. et le Saint-Siège (Paris, 1894); for bibliography, Lavisse and Rambauld, Histoire générale, vol. vi.