Louis XIV
Louis XIV (Louis-Dieudonné; 5 September 1638 – 1 September 1715), known as the "Sun King", was King of France from 14 May 1643 until his death in 1715. He is the longest-reigning monarch in history, reigning for 72 years and 110 days. His reign brought about a golden age in French history, marked by a great expansion of the French colonial empire and a flourishing of French culture throughout Europe. As an absolute monarch, Louis expanded monarchical rule and diminished the power of the nobility, developing a strong centralised state ruled from the Palace of Versailles that persisted until the French Revolution.
Louis became king upon his father Louis XIII's death in 1643. Since he was too young to rule independently, he required a chief minister to rule in his place. His mother and regent, Anne of Austria, thus picked Cardinal Mazarin, who trained him in diplomacy and statecraft. Upon Mazarin's death in 1661, Louis had grown up and decided not to appoint a new chief minister. A believer in the divine right of kings, he sought to eliminate the remnants of feudalism persisting in parts of France by compelling many members of the nobility to reside at his lavish Palace of Versailles. In doing so, he succeeded in pacifying the aristocracy, many of whom had participated in the Fronde rebellions during his minority. Louis enforced uniformity of religion under the Catholic Church. His revocation of the Edict of Nantes abolished the rights of the Huguenot Protestant minority and subjected them to a wave of dragonnades, effectively forcing Huguenots to emigrate or convert, virtually destroying the French Protestant community.
During Louis' long reign, France emerged as the leading European power and regularly declared war. A conflict with Spain marked his entire childhood, while during his personal rule, Louis fought three major continental conflicts, each against powerful foreign alliances: the Franco-Dutch War, the Nine Years' War, and the War of the Spanish Succession. In addition, France contested shorter wars such as the War of Devolution and the War of the Reunions. Warfare defined Louis's foreign policy, impelled by his personal ambition for glory and power: "a mix of commerce, revenge, and pique". His wars strained France's resources to the utmost, while in peacetime he concentrated on preparing for the next war. He taught his diplomats that their job was to create tactical and strategic advantages for the French military. Upon his death in 1715, Louis XIV left his great-grandson and successor, Louis XV, a powerful but war-weary kingdom, in major debt after the War of the Spanish Succession that had raged on since 1701.
Some of his other notable achievements include the construction of the 240 km (150 mi) Canal du Midi in Southern France, the patronage of artists (the playwrights Molière, Racine, the man of letters Boileau, the composer and dancer Lully, the painter Le Brun and the landscape architect Le Nôtre, all contributed to the apogee of French classicism, described during his lifetime as the "Grand Siècle", or even "the century of Louis XIV"), and the founding of the French Academy of Sciences.
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