The King cultivated a broad variety of interests and excelled in numerous fields, such as music he played the guitar , dance performing in ballets , and horse-riding Louis XIV was an excellent rider. He also loved hunting, promenades, fencing, shows and parlour games, and was a great fan of billiards. At the Palace of Versailles he staged the finest comedies, operas and tragedies and organised spectacular parties.
At the start of his reign, before turning to more political allegories, Louis XIV chose the sun as his personal emblem. The sun is the symbol of Apollo, god of peace and the arts; it is also the star which gives life to all things, rising and setting with unfailing regularity.
Like the god, Louis XIV was a warrior fighting to restore peace; he was also a patron of the arts and the source of all privileges. Though the unstinting regularity of his life and with the public getting-up and going-to-bed ceremonies, he hammered home the symbolic parallels. The Palace of Versailles is replete with representations and allegorical allusions to the sun god laurel wreathes, lyres, tripods combined with royal portraits and emblems.
To honour this pledge and preserve the religious unity of his kingdom, he cracked down on the Jansenists of Port-Royal and ordered the persecution of Protestants. The previous policy of religious tolerance was abandoned with the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in Protestants were forced to convert, and over two hundred thousand fled the country. From his base in Versailles, Louis XIV ruled over a centralised, absolutist state which revolved entirely around him. The King lived in the main wing of the palace, on the first floor, in a suite of three apartments reserved for his use.
He applied a strict etiquette at court, a set of rules and protocols by which his noble courtiers were obliged to abide. With the help of Colbert , he oversaw the administrative and financial reorganisation of his realm, and also set up manufactures and worked to boost trade.
With Louvois he reformed the army and enjoyed a string of military victories. British Broadcasting Corporation Home. Louis XIV, c. Louis was born on 5 September at St Germain-en-Laye. Louis's early years were marked by a series of rebellions against his mother and Mazarin, which were known as the 'Fronde'. These created in him a lifelong fear of rebellion, and a dislike of Paris, prompting him to spend more and more time in Versailles, southwest of Paris. When Mazarin died in , the year-old Louis decided to rule without a chief minister.
He regarded himself as an absolute monarch, with his power coming directly from God. Although emigration of Protestants was explicitly forbidden by the Edict of Fontainebleau, scores of people—estimates range from , to ,—fled in the decades that followed, settling in England, Switzerland, Germany and the American colonies, among other places.
His reign had lasted 72 years, longer than that of any other known European monarch, and left an indelible mark on the culture, history and destiny of France.
His 5-year-old great-grandson succeeded him as Louis XV. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. Louis, an African American, is perhaps best known for his legendary matchups against German boxer Max The young couple soon came to symbolize all of the excesses of the reviled French monarchy, and Marie Antoinette herself became the target of a great deal The French Revolution was a watershed event in modern European history that began in and ended in the late s with the ascent of Napoleon Bonaparte.
Few monarchs have ruled for longer. This marks him as both the longest-reigning French monarch in history and the longest-reigning Before the war, he worked to strengthen ties with Great Britain and Russia against the growing threat of To learn more about the life of the "Sun King," check out these seven surprising facts about the longest-reigning monarch in French history. Mazarin served as a surrogate father to his godson and taught the young king about everything from statesmanship and power to history and the arts.
Louis XIV was 15 years old at the time of his coronation in , but he did not wield absolute power over France until seven years later when Mazarin died. The marriage between the two first cousins ensured ratification of the peace treaty that Mazarin had sought to establish with Hapsburg Spain.
Louis XIV, however, had a healthy libido and fathered more than a dozen illegitimate children with a number of mistresses. Louis XIV eventually legitimized most of his children born to mistresses in the years following their births.
After the civil war known as the Fronde forced a young Louis XIV to flee his palace in Paris, the monarch took a dislike to the capital city. Beginning in , the king transformed the royal hunting lodge in Versailles where he played as a boy into a monument of royal opulence.
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