LOUIS XIV, king of France: b. Saint German-en-Laye, 5 Sept. 1638; d. Versailles, 1 Sept. 1715. He was only five years old when he succeeded to the throne, but his mother, Anne of Austria, was made regent during his nonage which ended in 1651, when he was 13. Cardinal Mazarin was then Prime Minister, and the French army under the leadership of Conde and Turenne was gaining much glory in the war with Spain and the emperor. But inter nally the nation was in the throes of a civil war; Mazarin's avarice and the peculations of Fouquet had disgusted the Parisians, who were moreover incensed with Anne of Austria's con duct of the regency and the supremacy of her agent the cardinal. The king and his mother were compelled with the unpopular Prime Min ister to flee from the capital, and the Spanish armies streamed over the northeast boundaries from Holland and held their way victoriously through Champagne and Lorraine. When war broke out between England and Holland, Louis threw his strength on the side of the latter; but the conflict was largely confined to the sea, and after a few sea fights the war was ended by the Peace of Breda in 1667. Mazarin had died in 1661, Fouquet was condemned to per petual imprisonment after being compelled to disgorge his ill-gotten gains and when the king was asked who was to be referred to on mat ters of public business he astonished his cour tiers by saying And indeed he reigned as absolute monarch to the end of his days. He appointed Colbert to take charge of the public exchequer, and the consequence was a multitude of needed reforms. He had forced the court of Spain as well as Pope Alexander VII to submit to his personal dictation and make ample reparation for the wrongs suffered by French ambassadors at the hands of Span iards and Italians in foreign capitals; the king of England was his pensioner. All Europe was impressed by his bold self-assertion, and his well-known saying °L'itat c'est moi,a °I am the state,* was felt to be literally true.
But the great desire of Louis was the at tainment of military glory. When a child his chief amusement had been to turn his play mates into soldiers and engage in a mimic war. After his victorious campaign in Holland, closed by the Treaty of Nimeguen in 1678, he was acknowledged to be the leading sovereign in Europe. He had the most numerous, the best drilled, the best equipped army in the world. His diplomacy had triumphed in every court, and the French nation led Europe in art, science and letters, while trade and indus try were amazingly flourishing;, and he success fully established the liberties of the Galilean Church (1682). Louis shone among his min isters, generals and literary courtiers as the sun among the stars, an ideal king, a paragon of learning, strength and wisdom. At Ver sailles he built himself a palace at a cost of 150,000,000 francs. Here the splendor of his surroundings was the envy and admiration of all other monarchs. But his wisdom and polit ical sagacity were much criticised when in 1685, under the influence of Madame de Main tenon, he revoked the Edict of Nantes by which the policy of Henry IV had made cer tain indulgences to Calvinists of France. By unsheathing the sword of religious persecution he drove away many citizens whose industrial skill and steady lives formed one of the sta blest and most precious elements in. French national life. Soon after this half of :Europe formed a league against France. Holland, Germany and Spain joined their forces in an attempt to humble the overweening arrogance of a monarchy whose greatness was a menace to each of them. In 1688 the Dauphin took Philipsburg on the Rhine,_ but was forced to evacuate and retreat before the overwhelming forces of the allies. The war continued with
varied fortunes until the Peace of Ryswicic, 1697. The death of Charles II of Spain, the last of the house of Hapsburg (1700), brought on the war of the Spanish Succession. He left his crown to Philip of France, Duke of Anjou, who assumed the title of Philip V, but his claim was disputed by the Archduke Charles, who had the support of the emperor, as well as of Holland and England. In 1704 Prince Eugene and Marlborough routed the French forces at Blenheim, Barcelona surrendered to the Arch duke Charles, Marlborough won the battle of Ramillies in 1706, and in 1708 that of Oude narde. The fatal defeat of Malplaquet the fol lowing year decided the struggle in favor of the allies and the Peace of Utrecht (1713) completed the humiliation of France and added to the power and ascendancy of England. The treaty inflicted a heavy blow on French power in America, as under it Newfoundland, Acadia and Hudson Bay were ceded to England. France was, however, saved from dismember ment, mainly through the boldness and vigor of Louis and his counsellors, and the principal foreign conquests of the king were not for feited. For the two remaining years of his reign the country enjoyed tranquillity. Louis in his declining years expressed regret for the distress he had brought on his well-loved coun try by his love of foreign conquest and war like glory. His unworthy private life had some part in rousing the remorse which tortured his last days, and caused him to show that spirit of piety and devotion which Lesage ridiculed as hypocrisy. His mistresses, La ValRre, Montespan, Fontanges and others had made his court a by-word of scandal. Madame de Main tenon, who was married to him a year after the death of his queen, Maria Theresa (1683), was influential in rousing his sense of past licentiousness. In this she was aided by the eloquence of Bossuet.
The reign of Louis le Grand was made bril liant by the great soldiers, sailors, literary men, artists and men of science who were his con temporaries. His reign has indeed been aptly styled the Augustan or golden age of France. Among his sea commanders were Chateau-Re nand, Duquesne and Tourville; Vauban was his military engineer; Perault, Mansart and Blondel architects; among his painters were Claude Lorraine, Poussin and Lebrun; among poets and writers of his reign were Corneille, Racine, Moliere; among his great preachers were Massillon, Bossuet and Flechier. He was worthy of the title of the Great Monarch • for his strong and astute statecraft, the magnifi cence of his court, his dignity and munificence, and he fixed for the French monarchy that type of absolutism which Balzac has declared to be in France the safest and best foundation on which national greatness was to be devel oped.
Consult Barine, 'Louis XIV et La Grande Mademoiselle' (Paris 1905) ; Blennerhassett, 'Louis XIV and Madame de Maintenon) (London 1910) ; Bourgeois, E., 'The Century of Louis XIV' (Eng. trans. by Hoey, ib. 1895) ; Gerin, 'Louis XIV et le Saint-Siege) (Paris 1894) ; Hassall, 'Louis XIV and the Zenith of the French Monarchy' (New York 1895); Lavisse, 'Histoire de France' (Vol. VIII, Paris 1906) ; Ormesson, 'De l'administration de Louis XIV' (ib. 1850) ; Pardoe, J., 'Louis XIV and the Court of France in the 17th Century) (3 vols., London 1886) ; Philippson, Was Zeitalter Ludwigs des Vierzehnten' (Berlin 1879) ; Voltaire, (Siecle de Louis XIV' (Eng. trans., ed. Masson and Prothero, 3 vols., Cam bridge 1882-1912) ; and 'Cambridge Modern History' (Vol. V, Cambridge 1908). An an notated edition of his letters and other docu ments was published at Paris in six volumes in 1806.