Louis XIV of Bourbon, King of France

LOUIS XIV OF BOURBON, King of France. - Born at Saint-Germain-en-Laye on 5 September 1638 to King Louis XIII and Anne of Austria, daughter of Philip III, King of Spain; died at Versailles on 1 September 1715; married to Maria Theresa, daughter of Philip IV, King of Spain; in a second marriage he married secretly Mme de Maintenon (1683); his only legitimate son was the Grand Dauphin, who predeceased him in 1711. His childhood was sad, spent with parents who were not at all harmonious; king in name from 14 May 1643, proclaimed of age at 14 amid the flights and tumults of the Fronde, he did not exercise his authority until the death of Mazarin (9 March 1661), whose disappearance allowed him to begin in peace the organization of that absolute monarchy which, modified by circumstances and by the character of his successors, endured in its main outlines until 1789. In judging the work of L. XIV it is not right to forget the responsibility of the nation which, flattered in its pride, applauded its king in designs that later proved deplorable; for example, in ecclesiastical relations. L. XIV sometimes moderated, however, excessive proposals of the Parlements.

As soon as he took the reins of government, amid the incredulous astonishment of the Court, L. XIV made it known that from then on nothing was to be done in the kingdom without his order; the era of prime ministers was closed. In fact he exercised power personally; three ministers formed the Council of State or Conseil d'en haut, and these were at first the chancellor Michel Le Tellier, H. de Lionne, secretary for Foreign Affairs, and N. Fouquet, superintendent of Finances. The latter was shortly afterward replaced by Colbert, and in 1666 the chancellor was succeeded by his son the Marquis de Louvois, minister of War. With these three men of bourgeois origin the king took, in the first decades, the major decisions of foreign and domestic policy.

The best-known and most censured aspect of L. XIV's policy was certainly that directed at creating a primacy of France in Europe (as already with Henry IV, Richelieu and Mazarin) but with broader means, designs and men better prepared in arms and diplomacy, and in the face of a Europe at first quite weak, but which slowly organized resistance against this growing ambition, which would in the end be contained and humiliated. Moreover, already the Spanish marriage of L. XIV was, in its purpose and even in the formulas of the contract, in function of a probable succession; the first opportunity was offered by Flanders (which penetrated so deeply into the kingdom) under the pretext of the private right of devolution, used locally. On the death of Philip IV, in 1667, L. XIV occupied twelve cities (among them Lille) which in the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle (Apr. 1668), imposed by the Anglo-Dutch-Swedish alliance, he was able to keep, restoring Franche-Comté (Besançon), which had been easily conquered. The indignation of L. XIV and of France then turned against Holland, the author of the league; diplomatically isolated by England and Sweden, it was invaded in 1672 with the famous crossing of the Rhine (12 June) at Toll-Huys, exalted by poets and painters. The European reaction was vast and, more than against Holland, L. XIV had to struggle against the Empire and a strong European coalition; Messina, which had rebelled against Spain in 1674, was occupied and then abandoned to Spanish vengeance in the Peace of Nijmegen (Aug.-Sept. 1678 with Holland and Spain), in which L. XIV kept Franche-Comté and cities of Flanders (Cambrai, Valenciennes, etc.); conquests of French lands, but which aroused the deep resentment of the Dutch desi, who had flooded their territory to save Amsterdam and had placed at the head of their military forces as stadtholder William of Orange, the most implacable enemy of L. XIV, who checked and humbled his ambitious overbearance. The king did not perceive the slender foundation of his success and, remaining powerfully armed, with the famous Chambers of Reunion reclaimed and occupied the ancient dependencies (real or alleged) of his new lands, and among these Luxembourg and Strasbourg (1681), while in Italy he had the duke of Mantua cede to him the right of garrison in Casale Monferrato and bombarded Genoa (1684) because it was building ships for Spain. Europe did not dare to react, and in the Truce of Regensburg (15 Aug. 1684) with the Diet, the occupations were left to him for 20 years; the year before, the Turks were beneath Vienna, also through the suggestion of L. XIV, and only the arms of Sobieski saved the capital. European hostility, which the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685) rekindled in the Protestant countries, took definite shape in the League of Augsburg (1686); and in 1689 William of Orange became king of England in place of his father-in-law James II the Catholic. War now flared up and L. XIV opened it by turning the smiling Palatinate into a scorched land amid the horror of Europe. For France, already exhausted, defeats alternated with victories, and L. XIV, detaching Victor Amadeus of Savoy from the League by ceding him Pinerolo, was able to reach the Peace of Ryswick (1697), restoring many conquests and recognizing Orange as king of England.

The succession in Spain was imminent, and L. XIV, while negotiating with England the partition of the inheritance, by appealing to Spanish national pride succeeded in having his grandson Philip of Anjou designated sole heir of the entire monarchy. Acceptance was a provocation for the English and Dutch, but a refusal, which would have substituted Charles of Habsburg for Philip, was difficult and harmful. L. XIV's real fault was to have aggravated the tension, by driving the Dutch out of Flanders, where they held certain strongholds, sending French troops to Milan and recognizing James III Stuart as king of England. A European coalition was formed, and from 1701 the war was fought on three theatres: Germany, Italy and Flanders; already in 1704 Germany was lost, and in 1706 Italy and Flanders as well; in Spain the archduke Charles had landed. The condition of France, threatened with invasion, induced the king to ask for peace; but when it was demanded that he drive his grandson out of Spain, he refused, preferring to humble himself by appealing to his people. Salvation came from the danger that Spain and Austria might unite when, on the death of the emperor Leopold, he was succeeded by his brother Charles, the Spanish claimant. Holland and England concluded with L. XIV at Utrecht (1713) the peace on the basis of partition, and the following year the emperor Charles VI had to accommodate himself to it. The only advantage for France was that Spain was no longer an enemy, but there remained the threat, on its flank, of Austria installed in Belgium.

If the personal power of King L. XIV took precise form in 1661 with the Conseil d'en haut, in which every important affair was decided, centralization was organized little by little in the following decade at the center and in the country, especially with the development of the provincial intendants. Finances constituted the murkiest and most delicate sector, and L. XIV, having harshly rid himself of Fouquet, imprudent in flaunting ill-gotten wealth, found in G. B. Colbert (who, however, was only controller general) the honest and capable man who gave the administration its new character. The Council of Finances met twice a week around the king, who verified the registers of revenues and expenditures and signed the accounts. In the provinces the intendants controlled the municipal administrations, at first to settle their debts and remedy their bad management, then for a complete control which, though beneficial at bottom, suppressed the ancient autonomies. Thus absolutism penetrated deeply into the country to establish an order which in fact did not exist, eliminating local resistances and abuses.

In ecclesiastical policy L. XIV, both in internal relations and with the papacy, followed the same absolutist mentality. With the popes he had two conflicts over local causes: the first, in 1662, over the Corsican guard, in which Pope Alexander VII had to submit to a humiliating Treaty (Pisa, 12 Feb. 1664); the other with Pope Innocent XI, who wanted abolished the "liberty of the quarter" which the French ambassadors claimed to preserve, while the others renounced it. But the real clash of a properly ecclesiastical character occurred over the right of regalia (administration of vacant dioceses), which L. XIV in 1673-75 extended to all of France. Only in 1678-80 did Pope Innocent XI protest publicly, and the king made use of the Assembly of the Clergy, which complained that the Pope was intervening in a civil affair, and, at new protests of the Pontiff, in another assembly of March 1682 the famous 4 articles of the so-called "Gallican liberties" were voted, harmful to the full papal authority, which L. XIV ordered to be professed by all and taught in the universities and seminaries. Proceeding with the same absolutist spirit, he imposed conversion on the Huguenots, more by vexations than by persuasion, and when Calvinism seemed routed through emigration or forced conversion, he revoked the Edict of Nantes as superfluous. In Catholic France not all were in agreement with this violent proceeding, and in Rome the Pope, while celebrating the conversion of the heretics, doubted that the alleged "liberties" would not lead France to a schism. Innocent XI refused investiture to the new bishops who had taken part in the assembly of 1682, and, when the archbishopric of Cologne became vacant, opposed the French candidate. The outbreak of the war and its harshness forced L. to seek an accommodation, after Pope Alexander VIII had in 1691 condemned the 4 propositions with a bull. Only with Innocent XII, in 1693, was an agreement reached in which the Pope tolerated the regalia; but he obtained that the new bishops disavow the Gallican propositions and that the king withdraw the order to teach them. In the disputes with the Jansenists, however, the king supported the papal action; for quietism he solicited from the Pope its condemnation. During the last war of the Spanish succession the papacy, threatened, indeed assailed, by the Emperor, was on better terms with the King.

The death of L. XIV was received as a relief in the kingdom after the last years of fearful sufferings; disorders were even feared. Thus ended the king, once the idol of France, to which he had nevertheless assured, if not an impossible political primacy, cultural supremacy in European civilization, which even disasters could not erase. Unfortunately L. XIV, in creating absolute monarchy, instilled in it a fatal germ with the exaggeration of sovereign arbitrariness, which in him had some check in his constant personal intervention in affairs, something that no longer occurred in his successors, poor in will. The mania for absolutism was aggravated by his isolating himself, settling with the court at Versailles, where he certainly also worked seriously, but where instead it seemed that only the pomp of his royalty was celebrated, against the background of a mass of courtiers, in a heavy etiquette that separated him from the country and made him, together with his successors, a prisoner of those privileged classes with which the monarchy would end by plunging to ruin. - See pl. CXV.

Studies: For a general assessment, in addition to the famous Sicile de Louis XIV by Voltaire, see the general histories of France by Michelet, Martin and Lavisse, the Französische Geschichte im XVI. und XVII. Jahrb. by L. Ranke, Leipzig 1869; L. Bertrand, Louis XIV, Paris 1923; for court life, P. de Nolbec, Versailles résidence de Louis XIV, ibid. 1923, and Mme St-René-Taillandier, Le grand roi et sa cour, ibid. 1930; for relations with the papacy see Pastor, XIV and XV, see index; M. D'Angelo, L. XIV e la S. Sede (1689-93), Rome 1914; J. Orcibal, Louis XIV contre Innocent XI, Paris 1949; L. O'Brien, Innocent XI and the revocation of the edict of Nantes, Berkeley (California) 1930. On domestic policy: G. Pagès, La monarchie d'ancien régime en France, Paris 1928; Marquis de Roux, Louis XIV et les provinces conquises, ibid. 1938. On foreign policy: E. Waldteufel, La politique étrangère de Louis XIV, ibid. 1898; G. C. Picavet, La diplomatie française au temps de Louis XIV, ibid. 1922; on the revolt of Messina, E. Laloy, La révolte de Messine, l'exhibition de Sicile et la politique française en Italie, 3 vols., ibid. 1929-31; see also P. Gazotte, La France de Louis XIV, ibid. 1946; Ph. De Vries, Het beeld van Lodewijk XIV in de Franse geschiedt-schrijning, Amsterdam 1948; Ph. Sagnac-A. de St-Léger, Louis XIV (1661-1715), 3rd ed., Paris 1949; L. André, Louis XIV et l'Europe, ibid. 1950; J. E. King, Science and rationalism in the government of Louis XIV, Baltimore 1950.

Luigi Simeoni