Impressed by the architect and garden designer who had created Fouquet’s palace at Vaux-le-Vicomte, Louis later hired them to create his own palace at Versailles.Īlthough Louis XIV tried to oversee all aspects of the government, he did rely on ministers for assistance in carrying out his policies. Soon after Mazarin’s death, Louis had the ambitious finance minister Fouquet, who had hoped to dominate the government, arrested, and his lavish estate confiscated. There would be no equivalent to Sully, Richelieu, or Mazarin for the rest of his reign. To the court’s surprise, Louis announced that he intended to be his own principal minister. When Mazarin died in 1661, everyone expected him to find a new principal minister to take on the burden of actually running the government.
France had clearly replaced Spain as Europe’s most powerful kingdom.Īs an adolescent, Louis XIV threw himself into the social whirl of the court and the pursuit of young women he did not seem particularly serious about his political responsibilities. The treaty of the Pyrenees (1659) ended the long war between France and Spain, which had continued even after the settlement of the Thirty Years’ War in 1648, on terms favorable to France. Mazarin transmitted to Louis XIV the practices that Henri IV, Sully, and Richelieu had developed in the early decades of the seventeenth century. Louis XIV would attempt to insure that none of these groups would be able to oppose the central government as they had during the Fronde.ĭuring the early years of his reign, Louis XIV remained dependent on Mazarin, the minister who had loyally served his mother during the Fronde. The Fronde had shown that the royal judges of the Parlement, the great nobles, the provincial political elites, and the common people could all pose threats to royal authority. Louis XIV’s childhood was marked by the upheaval of the Fronde (1648-1653), which left him with a lasting horror of disorder. He came closer than any other French king to making the political theory of absolutism a reality.
Louis XIV’s reign was important in French history not just because it lasted so long but because he was a strong-willed ruler who was determined to make his subjects obey him and to make his kingdom the predominant power in Europe. By the time he died, he outlived his son and his grandson, leaving the throne to his young great-grandson Louis XV. He ruled for 72 years, until his death in 1715, making his reign the longest of any European monarch.
Born in 1638, Louis XIV succeeded his father, Louis XIII, as king at the age of five.
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