LOUIS XIV. (1638-1715), king of France, was born at Saint-Germain-en-Laye on Sept. 5, 1638, the son of Louis XIII. and Anne of Austria. The death of his father made the child of five king on May 14, 1643. Power lay in the hands of the queen mother and of her minister, Cardinal Mazarin, who had to face the domestic troubles of the Fronde and the last stages of the Thirty Years' War. Twice the court had to flee from Paris ; once when there was a rumour of intended flight the populace was admitted to see the king in his bed. The memory of these humilia tions played their part in developing later the autocratic ideas of Louis. Mazarin triumphed alike over his domestic and his foreign opponents. The Fronde was at an end by 1653 ; the peace of Westphalia (1648) and the peace of the Pyrenees (1659) marked the success of the arms and of the diplomacy of France. Louis XIV. was now twenty-one years of age. The peace of the Pyrenees was cemented by the marriage of Louis to his cousin, the Infanta Maria Theresa.
The marriage took place at once, and the king entered Paris in triumph in 166o. Mazarin died in the next year; and the king at once announced his intention of being his own first minister. He built up a thoroughly personal system of government, and pre sided constantly over the council and many of its committees.
Even the greatest of his ministers found themselves controlled by the king. Fouquet, the finance minister, was overthrown and condemned to perpetual imprisonment. Those who had most of the king's confidence afterwards were Colbert for home affairs; Lionne for diplomacy, Louvois for war ; but as his reign pro ceeded he became more intolerant of independence of judgment in his ministers.
His court was brilliant. In art and in literature, the great period, which is usually called by the king's name, had in some respects passed its zenith when he began to reign. But France was unquestionably the first state in Europe both in arms and arts, and within France the authority of the king was practically undisputed. The nation, proud of its pre-eminence and weary of civil war, saw in the king its true representative and the guarantee of its unity and success. Louis played the role of Grand Monarque
to perfection. His wife Maria Theresa bore him children but there was no community of tastes between them, and the chief influence at court is to be found not in the queen but in the suc cession of avowed mistresses : Louise de la Valliere, Madame de Montespan and Madame de Maintenon (q.v.), who ruled, how ever, not as mistress but as wife. Through her influence the king was reconciled to his wife, and, when Maria Theresa died in 1683, Madame de Maintenon shortly afterwards (in 1684) be came the king's wife, though this was never officially declared. Under her influence the court lost most of its gaiety, and religion came to exercise much control over the life and the policy of the king.
The first years of the king's rule were marked by the great schemes of Colbert for the financial, commercial, industrial and naval reorganization of France, and in these schemes Louis took a deep interest. But in 1667 began the long series of wars, which lasted with little real intermission to the end of the reign. (See FRANCE.) The War of Devolution (or the Queen's War) in 1667 68 to enforce the queen's claim to certain districts in the Spanish Netherlands, led to the Dutch War (1672-78), and in both these wars the supremacy of the French armies was clearly apparent. The next decade (1678-88) was the real turning point in the history of the reign, and the strength of France was seriously diminished. The chief cause of this is to be found in the revoca tion of the Edict of Nantes. The French Huguenots found their privileges decreased, and then, in 1685, the edict was altogether withdrawn. The results were ruinous to France, which lost many thousands of her best citizens and, also, Protestant alliances in Europe which had been in the past her great diplomatic support. The English Revolution of 1688 changed England from a waver ing ally into the most determined of the enemies of France.