Louis XIV is popularly known as the Sun King (French: le Roi Soleil)

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Louis XIV

Louis XIV (5 September 1638 – 1 September 1715) ruled as King of France and of Navarre. He ascended the throne a few months before his fifth birthday, but did not assume actual personal control of the government until the death of his prime minister (Premier ministre), the Italian Jules Cardinal Mazarin, in 1661. Louis remained on the throne until his death in September 1715, four days before his seventy-seventh birthday. His reign lasted seventy-two years, three months, and eighteen days, the longest documented for any European monarch to date.

Palace of Versailles: Home of The Sun King

Louis XIV is popularly known as the Sun King (French: le Roi Soleil). Louis believed in the Divine Right of Kings, a theory which received one of its most classic expressions in “On the Duties of Kings”, a sermon preached by Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet in Louis’ presence in 1662. (Louis was so impressed with Bossuet that in 1670, he appointed Bossuet as tutor to Louis’ son and heir.)

For much of Louis’s reign, France stood as the leading power in Europe, engaging in three major wars—the Franco-Dutch War, the War of the League of Augsburg, and the War of the Spanish Succession—and two minor conflicts—the War of Devolution, and the War of the Reunions. Men who featured prominently in the political and military life of France during this period include Mazarin, Nicolas Fouquet, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Michel Le Tellier, Le Tellier’s son Louvois, le Grand Condé, Turenne, Vauban, Villars and Tourville. French culture likewise flourished during this era, producing a number of figures of great renown, including Molière, Racine, Boileau, La Fontaine, Lully, Le Brun, Rigaud, Louis Le Vau, Jules Hardouin Mansart, Claude Perrault and Le Nôtre.

Moliere dining with Louis XIV 1857 Jean Auguste Ingres

the court of the Sun King

Louis XIV continued the work of his predecessors to create a centralized state governed from the capital in order to sweep away the remnants of feudalism which had persisted in parts of France. He succeeded in breaking the power of the provincial nobility, much of which had risen in revolt during his minority, and forced many leading nobles to live with him in his lavish Palace of Versailles. Consequently, he has long been considered the archetypal absolute monarch of early modern Europe. Louis is reported to have said on his death bed: “Je m’en vais, mais l’État demeurera toujours.” (“I depart, but the State shall always remain”)

the sun king by cemax

The Beatles Sun King with Rare Abbey Road Pictures

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