Republic of the Philippines

Bicol University
COLLEGE OF EDUCATION
Daraga, Albay

WORLD HISTORY 2

THE REIGN OF
LOUIS XIV

Prepared by: Antito Carl R. Aplacador

Kyle R. Amatos
Jan Erika A. Balintong
Czyra Camille Y. Garganta

Adviser: Dr. Maribel M. Naz

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 THE REIGN OF LOUIS XIV
What is this lesson about?
The Reign of Louis XIV is often referred to as “Le Grand Siècle” (the Great
Century), forever associated with the image of an absolute monarch and a strong,
centralised state. Coming to the throne at a tender age, tutored by Cardinal Mazarin,
the Sun King embodied the principles of absolutism. In 1682 he moved the royal Court
to the Palace of Versailles, the defining symbol of his power and influence in Europe.
Louis was the son of Louis XIII and his Spanish queen, Anne of Austria. He
succeeded his father on May 14, 1643. At the age of four years and eight months, he
was, according to the laws of the kingdom, not only the master but the owner of the
bodies and property of 19 million subjects. Although he was saluted as “a visible
divinity,” he was, nonetheless, a neglected child given over to the care of servants. He
once narrowly escaped drowning in a pond because no one was watching him. Anne of
Austria, who was to blame for this negligence, inspired him with a lasting fear of
“crimes committed against God.

What will you learn?

At the end of discussion, you will be able to:
1. Describe how Louis XIV strengthened royal power in France.
2. Explain why Louis was afraid of the nobility and how he sought to control them.
3. Identify the successes and failures of Louis XIV.

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 Let’s Read!
LOUIS XIV EARLY LIFE
Louis was the son of Louis XIII and his Spanish queen, Anne of Austria. He
succeeded his father on May 14, 1643. At the age of four years and eight months, he
was, according to the laws of the kingdom, not only the master but the owner of the
bodies and property of 19 million subjects. Although he was saluted as “a visible
divinity,” he was, nonetheless, a neglected child given over to the care of servants.
Louis was nine years old when the nobles and the Paris Parlement (a powerful
law court), driven by hatred of the prime minister Jules Cardinal Mazarin, rose against
the crown in 1648. This marked the beginning of the long civil war known as the Fronde,
in the course of which Louis suffered poverty, misfortune, fear, humiliation, cold, and
hunger. These trials shaped the future character, behaviour, and mode of thought of the
young king. He would never forgive either Paris, the nobles, or the common people.
What do you think Louis XIV meant when he said "I am the State"?

“I Am the State” or “L’etat, c’est moi”

• Cardinal Mazarin died in 1661 and Louis resolved to take over the
government.
• “I have been pleased to entrust the government of my affairs to the late
cardinal,” he declared
• “It is now time that I govern them myself.”

THE SUN KING

⚫ Louis took the sun as his symbol of royal

power.
⚫ Just as the sun stands at the center of our
solar system, he argued, so the Sun King
stands at the center of our nation.
⚫ During his reign, Louis did not call a
meeting of the Estates-General, the medieval
council made up of representatives of all
French social classes.
⚫ In fact, the Estates-General did not meet
between 1614-1789.
⚫ The Estates-General played no role in
checking royal power.

After Mazarin’s death in 1661, Louis XIV broke with tradition and astonished his
court by declaring that he would rule without a chief minister. He viewed himself
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as the direct representative of God, endowed with a divine right to wield the
absolute power of the monarchy. To illustrate his status, he chose the sun as his
emblem and cultivated the image of an omniscient and infallible “Roi-Soleil”
(“Sun King”) around whom the entire realm orbited. While some historians
question the attribution, Louis is often remembered for the bold and infamous
statement “L’État, c’est moi” (“I am the State”).

Immediately after assuming control of the government, Louis worked tirelessly to

centralize and tighten control of France and its overseas colonies. His finance
minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert (1619-1683), implemented reforms that sharply
reduced the deficit and fostered the growth of industry, while his war minister, the
Marquis de Louvois (1641-1691), expanded and reorganized the French army.
Louis also managed to pacify and disempower the historically rebellious nobles,
who had fomented no less than 11 civil wars in four decades, by luring them to
his court and habituating them to the opulent lifestyle there.

The Arts and the Royal Court Under Louis XIV

A hard-working and meticulous ruler
who oversaw his programs down to the
last detail, Louis XIV nevertheless
appreciated art, literature, music, theater
and sports. He surrounded himself with
some of the greatest artistic and
intellectual figures of his time, including the
playwright Molière (1622-1673), the
painter Charles Le Brun (1619-1690) and
the composer Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632-
1687). He also appointed himself patron of
the Académie Française, the body that
regulates the French language, and established various institutes for the arts and
sciences.

To accommodate his retinue of newly devoted nobles (and, perhaps, to

distance himself from the population of Paris), Louis built several lavish châteaux
that depleted the nation’s coffers while drawing accusations of extravagance.
Most famously, he transformed a royal hunting lodge in Versailles, a village 25
miles southwest of the capital, into one of the largest palaces in the world,
officially moving his court and government there in 1682. It was against this awe-
inspiring backdrop that Louis tamed the nobility and impressed foreign
dignitaries, using entertainment, ceremony and a highly codified system of
etiquette to assert his supremacy. Versailles’ festive atmosphere dissipated to
some extent when Louis came under the influence of the pious and orderly
Marquise de Maintenon (1635-1719), who had served as his illegitimate
children’s governess; the two wed in a private ceremony approximately one year
after the death of Queen Marie-Thérèse in 1683.

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STRENGHTENING ROYAL POWER AND THE ARMY
• Louis spent many hours each day attending to government affairs.
• To strengthen the state, he followed the policies of Cardinal Richelieu.
• He expanded the bureaucracy and appointed intendants (royal officials)
• The office of intendant and other governmental jobs went to wealthy
middle-class men.
• The intendants recruited soldiers, collected taxes, and carried out
government policies.
• By using intendants, Louis cemented ties between himself and the middle
class.
• As with all absolute monarchs, Louis created a permanent standing army.
• The French army became the strongest in Europe.
• The state paid, fed, trained, and supplied up to 300,000 soldiers.
• Louis used this army to enforce his policies at home and abroad.

To increase royal power, Louis XIV developed a standing army of 300,000

soldiers during the war. To achieve his goals he waged wars. Louis' wars brought
France to bankruptcy. Because of this, Louis had to tax the peasants more
heavily and borrow the state from various financiers.

Colbert and the Economy (Mercantilism)

Jean-Baptiste Colbert presided over the economic policy of France under
Louis XIV from 1661 to his death in 1683. Colbert believed in
the Mercantilist doctrine that the expansion of commerce (and the maintenance
of a favorable balance of trade) was the key to State wealth. His policies -- what
became known as Colbertisme -- were all geared in this direction. Colbert doted
on his charter companies, set up chambers of commerce, redirected capital to
export and import-substitution industries, set up a protective system of tariffs and
duties, blocked foreigners from trading in French colonies, etc.

By and large, Colbert was not interested in internal commerce which, in his
view, did nothing for State wealth. French farmers and small manufacturers were
left locked in the stifling embrace of Medieval town crafts and merchant
guilds. Restrictions and internal tariffs on the movement of goods and labor
between regions remained in place. France's incredibly regressive tax system
was reinforced. With the privileged landowning gentry and clergy exempt from
taxation and Colbert's new big merchant capitalists coddled with subsidies, the
burden of taxes fell even heavier upon the luckless French farmers and small
town craftsmen. Colbert's encouragement of export industries, notably wine,
transformed land-use patterns, leaving some areas of France dangerously close
to food-insufficiency. Like the Duke of Sully before him, Colbert recognized the
need for a good internal transportation network, but only because it was
necessary to connect the ports to French export industries. Colbert revived the

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hated corvée, the unpaid labor-time owed by peasants to their feudal lords (and
now the State) and forced local farmers and their draught-animals to work on
road maintenance. The Colbertiste system created a paradox. It generated a
"progressive" external economy while allowing the internal economy to
stagnate. Indeed, by the very set-up of the system, the promotion of the former
often meant greater burdens for the latter. Later commentators like the Maréchal
de Vauban, Claude Jacques Herbert, Pierre le Pesant de Boisguilbert and
Vincent de Gournay raised their voices and called for the reform of the fiscal and
commercial system set up by Colbert.

When Colbert died in 1683, his steady restraining hand on the king was
released. King Louis XIV launched a series of expensively, ruinous wars for the
next three decades. By the time Louis XIV died in 1715, the French state was
bankrupt, reviving a nostalgia for Colbert. After the failed experiment of
John Law to rescue French finances, Cardinal Fleury and Philibert Orry
reinstituted Colbert's policies in the late 1720s and presided over a high period of
Neo-Colbertisme in French state policy.

PALACE OF VERSAILLES
Louis XIV ruled France for 72 years, and in that time transformed Versailles
by encompassing Louis XIII's chateau with a palace that contained north and
south wings, as well as nearby buildings housing ministries.

Versailles was built to impress.

"The most important message Louis
XIV sent through the architecture of
Versailles was his ultimate power,"
said Tea Gudek Snajdar, an
Amsterdam-based art historian,
museum docent and a blogger
at Culture Tourist. "He is an absolute
monarch, untouchable and distant.
But, even more then that, he is the
Sun King. That symbolism of the Sun
King is very visible in the architecture
of the Versailles. The painter Lebrun, who designed the iconographic program of
the Palace, focused paintings, sculptures and the architecture to one goal only —
celebrating the King." A series of gardens, created in a formal style, stood to the
west of the palace (one of them today is in the shape of a star) and contained
sculptures as well as the pressurized fountains capable of launching water high
into the air. The formality and grandeur of the gardens symbolized Louis XIV's
absolute power, even over nature, according to Gudek Snajder.

"From the outset Louis attached a supreme importance to these water effects.

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Their virtuosity formed the star turn of a tour of the gardens," writes Tony
Spawforth, a professor at Newcastle University, in his book "Versailles: A
Biography of a Palace" (St. Martin's Press, 2008). "The effects were the work of
engineers whose machines made Versailles a hydraulic as much as an artistic
wonder." Unfortunately, Spawforth notes, problems supplying water meant that
the fountains could only be turned on during special occasions.

In addition a grand canal, constructed to the west of the garden and running
about a mile long, was used for naval demonstrations and had gondolas,
donated by the Republic of Venice, steered by gondoliers. Building such a lavish
complex was an important part of Louis XIV's style of rule and beliefs about
monarchy, which we would call absolutism, said Schmidt. "As king of France he
was the embodiment of France — and his palace was meant to display the
wealth and power of his nation," she said. "Furthermore, it was vital to him to
enhance France's status in Europe; not just by military feats but in the arts as
well. For instance, when the Hall of Mirrors was built, mirrors were usually
imported from Italy at a great cost. Louis XIV wanted to show that France could
produce mirrors just as fine as those produced in Italy, and consequently, all the
mirrors of that hall were made on French soil."

Louis also insisted on moving the French government to Versailles. Scholars

have suggested a number of factors that led him to build a great palace complex
at Versailles and move the French government there. It's been noted that by
keeping the king's residence some distance from Paris, it offered him protection
from any civil unrest going on in the city. It also forced the nobles to travel to
Versailles and seek lodging in the palace, something that impeded their ability to
build up regional power bases that could potentially challenge the king. As the
French government moved into Versailles, and the king found himself swamped
by work in his palace, he built himself the Grand (also called Marble) Trianon, a
more modest palatial structure, about a mile (1.6 kilometers) to the northwest of
the palace as a private retreat where only he and those invited could visit.

Spawforth notes that the palace

contained about 350 living units varying in
size, from multi-room apartments to
spaces about the size of an alcove. The
size and location of the room a person got
depended on their rank and standing with
the king. While the crown prince (known
as the dauphin) got a sprawling apartment
on the ground floor, a servant may have
nothing more than a space in an attic or a
makeshift room behind a staircase.

Louis XIV's bedroom was built on the upper floor and located centrally along
the east-west axis of the palace. It was the most important room and was the

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location of two important ceremonies where the king would wake up (lever) and
go to sleep (coucher) surrounded by his courtiers. The king also had a ceremony
for putting on and taking off his hunting boots. These practices were symbols of
Louis XIV's moniker of Sun King. "His court was seen as microcosms of the
universe and the king is the sun that shines over everything. Each action he
would took (having a meal, strolling through the garden) became symbolic
metaphor for his divine presence," explained Gudek Snajdar. "The 'Escalier des
Ambassadeurs' was the first and the most important Baroque ceremonial
staircase. The interaction between the visitor and the king could be directed here
in the most careful fashion."

The importance of the courtiers' presence at these ceremonies continued into

the reigns of Louis XV and XVI. Spawforth notes that a courtier in 1784 wrote
that "most of the people who come to the court are persuaded that, to make their
way there, they must show themselves everywhere, be absent as little possible
at the king's lever, removal of the boots, and coucher, show themselves
assiduously at the dinners of the royal family. In short, must ceaselessly work at
having themselves noticed."

COURT CEREMONIES DURING THE REIGN OF KING LOUIS XIV

The famous memorialist the Duke of Saint-Simon wrote of Louis XIV: “With an
almanach and a watch, one could, from 300 leagues away, say with accuracy
what he was doing”. The king’s day was timed to the minute to allow the officers
in his service to plan their own work accordingly. From morning to evening his
day ran like clockwork, to a schedule that was just as strictly ordered as life in the
Court. In theory the Sun King’s daily schedule continued during the reigns
of Louis XV and Louis XVI, but neither of the later sovereigns could stand the
oppressive ceremonial rituals. As often as possible they took refuge in their
private apartments or nearby royal residences. Over the years, the public getting-
up and going-to-bed ceremonies became rarer, and the courtiers complained that
they never saw the king, in contrast to the time of Louis XIV.

MORNINGS

8.30 am: the First Valet de Chambre woke the king

with “Sire, it’s time to get up”. After a visit from the
First Doctor and First Surgeon, the first getting-up
ceremony began. Members of the entourage, those
with important roles and certain friends who enjoyed
the privilege of attending such moments successively
entered the King’s Bedchamber while the sovereign
was washed, combed and shaved. Then the Officers of the Chamber and of the
Clothes Storehouse entered for the grand getting-up ceremony, during which the
king was dressed and drank soup for breakfast. As well as the most important

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members of the Court, the closest royal servants were allowed to watch this
ceremony. The number of spectators, all male, was probably around 100.

10 am: a procession formed in the Hall of Mirrors at the exit of the King’s
Apartments, and the king crossed the State Apartments followed by his courtiers.
At this point the crowd that had gathered along the way could finally see the king.
Some could speak briefly to him or slip him a written note. The king sat down in
the tribune in the Royal Chapel for mass, which lasted half an hour. The “Chapel
Music” choir, which was famous throughout Europe, sang a new piece every
day, composed by Lully, de Lalande, and others.

11 am: upon returning to his apartment, the

king held council in his chamber. On Mondays
(every two weeks), Wednesdays, Thursdays
and Sundays, the State Council, or “High
Council”, was held. On Tuesdays and Saturdays
it was the Financial Council, while Fridays were
taken up with the Council of Conscience
(religious affairs). Last but not least, the
Dispatch Council (which dealt with national affairs) met once a fortnight on
Mondays when there was no State Council meeting. On these days the king
could also decide to examine the progress of works projects. Five or six ministers
worked with the monarch, who spoke little, listened closely, and always made the
final decision.

AFTERNOONS

1 pm: the king ate alone in his bedchamber, seated at a table facing the
windows. In principle this meal was taken in private, but Louis XIV had the habit
of admitting all the men of the Court, generally those present at the getting-up
ceremony.

2 pm: the king gave his orders and announced his plans in the morning. If he
went on a walk, it would be in the gardens on foot or in a Barouche with the
ladies. If he decided to go hunting, the favourite sport of the Bourbons, the
monarch would go to the park if he chose to hunt with weapons, and to the
surrounding forest when hunting on horseback.

6 pm or 7 pm: Louis XIV often left his son in

charge of indoor entertainment, such as
Evening Gatherings. In the meantime the king
would sign the numerous letters prepared by
his secretary, then go to the apartments of Mme
de Maintenon, where he studied important
paperwork with one of his four Secretaries of

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State.

EVENINGS

10 pm: the crowd would hurry into the King’s Antechamber to attend the dinner
at the Royal Table. The king sat down to dinner with the members of the royal
family. Once the meal was over, the monarch crossed the room and entered the
salon to greet the ladies of the court. He then retired to his cabinet to converse
more freely with his family and a few close friends.

11.30 pm: the going-to-bed ceremony. This public ritual, when the king retired
to his bedchamber, was the exact reverse of the getting-up ceremony.

WAR OF THE SPANISH SUCCESSION

⚫ In the late 1690s, the declining health of childless King Charles II of Spain
deepened the ongoing dispute over his succession. The main rivals for the
Spanish inheritance were the descendants of Louis XIV of France and the
Austrian Habsburg Holy Roman Emperor, Leopold I, but the matter was of
the utmost importance to Europe as a whole.
⚫ In 1698 and 1700, Louis XIV and William III of England attempted to partition
Spain in the effort to avoid a war. Charles II of Spain opposed partition and
on his deathbed offered the empire to Philip, Duke of Anjou and Louis’s
grandson, who became King Philip V Spain.
⚫ Although most European rulers accepted Philip as king, tensions mounted,
mostly because of a series of Louis’s decisions. Britain, the Dutch Republic,
the Holy Roman Emperor, and the
petty German states formed another Grand Alliance and declared war on
France in 1702.
⚫ With losses, victories, and significant financial costs on both sides, as well as
a fragile Grand Alliance, French and British ministers prepared the
groundwork for a peace conference, and in 1712 Britain ceased combat
operations.
⚫ By the terms of the Treaty of Utrecht (1713) and the Treaty of
Rastatt (1714), the Spanish empire was partitioned between the major and
minor powers. The Austrians received most of Spain’s former European
realms, but the Duke of Anjou retained peninsular Spain and Spanish
America, where, after renouncing his claim to the French succession, he
reigned as King Philip V.
⚫ The partition of the Spanish Monarchy had secured the balance of power and
the conditions imposed at Utrecht helped to regulate the relations between
the major European powers over the coming century.

KEY TERMS:

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⚫ Treaty of London: A 1700 treaty, known also as the Second Partition Treaty,
attempting to restore the Pragmatic Sanction following the death of Duke
Joseph Ferdinand of Bavaria. The Pragmatic Sanction had undermined the
First Partition Treaty (the Treaty of Hague). Under the new treaty, Archduke
Charles (later Charles VI), the second son of Emperor Leopold I, was to
become king of Spain when Charles II died, and acquire her oversees
colonies.

⚫ Treaty of Utrecht: A series of individual peace treaties, rather than a single

document, signed by the belligerents in the War of the Spanish Succession in
the Dutch city of Utrecht in 1713. The treaties between several European
states, including Spain, Great Britain, France, Portugal, Savoy, and the Dutch
Republic, helped end the war.

⚫ Treaty of the Hague: A 1698 treaty, known also as the First Partition Treaty,
between England and France. The accord attempted to resolve who would
inherit the Spanish throne, proposing that Duke Joseph Ferdinand of
Bavaria be the heir. Moreover, the agreement proposed that Louis, le Grand
Dauphin, would get Naples, Sicily, and Tuscany, and Archduke Charles, the
younger son of Emperor Leopold I, would get the Spanish Netherlands.
Leopold, Duke of Lorraine, would take Milan, which in turn ceded
Lorraine and Bar to the Dauphin.

⚫ Treaties of Rastatt and Baden: Two peace treaties that in 1714 ended
ongoing European conflicts following the War of the Spanish Succession.
The first treaty, signed between France and Austria in the city of Rastatt,
followed the earlier Treaty of Utrecht of 1713, which ended hostilities
between France and Spain on the one hand, and Britain and the Dutch
Republic on the other hand. The second treaty, signed in Baden, was
required to end the hostilities between France and the Holy Roman Empire.

⚫ Grand Alliance: A European coalition consisting (at various times) of Austria,

Bavaria, Brandenburg, the Dutch Republic, England, the Holy Roman
Empire, Ireland, the Palatinate of the Rhine, Portugal, Savoy, Saxony,
Scotland, Spain, and Sweden. The organization was founded in 1686 as the
League of Augsburg in an attempt to halt Louis XIV of France’s expansionist
policies. After the Treaty of Hague was signed in 1701, it went into a second
phase as the Alliance of the War of Spanish Succession.

PERSECUTION OF THE HUGUENOTS

⚫ Louis saw France’s protestant minority as a threat to religious and political

unity.
⚫ Jansenism Threat, In 1685, he revoked the Edict of Nantes. More than
100,000 Huguenots fled France.

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⚫ The persecution of the Huguenots was perhaps the king’s most costly
blunder.
⚫ The Huguenots had been among the most hard-working and prosperous of
Louis’ subjects. Their loss was a serious blow to the French economy, just as
the expulsion of Jews and Muslims had been in Spain.

RANDOM FACTS ABOUT LOUIS XIV

⚫ Louis outlived his sons and grandsons. When he died in 1715, his five year
old great grandson inherited the throne as Louis XV. The prosperity nurtured
by Colbert evaporated under heavy taxation, poor harvests, and bad
decisions.

⚫ Louis XV was too weak a king to deal with such problems. • He devoted his
days to pleasure and ignored the pleas for reform.

⚫ He often quoted an old proverb, “after us, the deluge.” As you will see later
on, the deluge came during the reign of the next king. Louis XV.

⚫ A clock at the palace of King Louis XIV stopped at 7:45am, the time of his
death. The clock has not been fixed since that day, and to this day still reads
a quarter to eight.

⚫ When Louis XVI of France was a child, an astrologer warned him to be

always on his guard on the twenty-first day of every month.

⚫ His date of death is January 21st, 1793. Now that's scary.

⚫ Louisiana was named in honor of Louis XIV

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How Much Have You Learned?
To find out more how much you have learned from this lesson, try and answer the
question below. Write your answer on the space provided.
1. Who is King Louis XIV and why is he known as the “Sun King”?

2. What was King Louis XIV greatest achievement and contribution to his nation?

3. What was France likely when King Louis XIV assumed the throne?

4. What were the problems faced by King Louis XIV during his reign and How did he
manage to surpass all this challenges and problems?

5. What do you think would happen if King Louis XIV was not appointed King?

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Let’s Apply What You’ve Learned
Essay
1. Do you think that King Louis XIV was able to portray his roles and duties as
King? Explain and elaborate facts in your answer.

2. How did King Louis XIV able to consolidate power and who were the people that
helped and guided King Louis XIV in taking this path?

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Suggested Readings and Websites
References:

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Louis-XIV-king-of-France
https://www.jstor.org/stable/40785099
https://www.history.com/topics/france/louis-xiv
https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/ap-art-history/early-europe-and-colonial-
americas/medieval-europe-islamic-world/a/blanche-of-castile-and-king-louis-ix-of-
france
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5Njjd6R6d0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gqG-kdouqw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYPAFqQgbqE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrKysG9aiic

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