Domestic affairs of louis xiv biography
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Born in , Louis XIV succeeded his father, Louis XIII, as king at the age of five. He ruled for 72 years, until his death in , making his reign the longest of any European monarch. By the time he died, he outlived his son and his grandson, leaving the throne to his young great-grandson Louis XV. 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 underkasta him and to man his kingdom the predominant power in Europe. He came closer than any other French king to making the political theory of absolutism a reality.
Louis XIV’s childhood was marked by the upheaval of the Fronde (), which left him with a lasting horror of disorder. The Fronde had shown that the royal judges of the Parl
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Louis XIV
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King of France (–). On his father's death in , his mother Anne of Austria became regent and Mazarin chief minister. Louis survived the Fronde, was proclaimed of age in , and married the Infanta Maria Theresa of Spain in He took over the government on Mazarin's death in and embarked on a long period of personal rule.
Domestic policy was aimed at creating and maintaining a system of absolute rule: the king ruled unhampered by challenges from representative institutions but with the aid of ministers and councils subject to his will. The States‐General was not summoned, the Parlement largely ignored, the great nobles were generally excluded from political office, and loyal bourgeois office‐holders were promoted. Jean‐Baptiste Colbert expanded the merchant marine and the navy, and encouraged manufacturing industries and trade, though he largely failed in his attempts to improve the tax system. In the provinces the intendants established much firmer royal control. The F
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Louis XIV ()
Louis XIV, c ©Louis XIV, the 'Sun King', was king of France from to and widely held to be the greatest monarch of his age.
Louis was born on 5 September at St Germain-en-Laye. He became king at the age of four on the death of his father, Louis XIII. While Louis was a child, his mother, Anne of Austria, served as regent, assisted by Louis XIII's chief minister, Cardinal Mazarin.
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. In , he married Maria Theresa, daughter of Philip IV of Spain.
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. He carefully cultivated his image and took the sun as his emblem. Between and , he