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"Louis XIV, Sun king" by Marco Crosetto

The life of the French sovereign who knew how to not only change the European history, but also its artistic taste, technology and, in general, culture.

He was born in Saint-German-en-Laye on September 5 1638, child of Louis XIII and Ann of Austria, ruled directly in 1661 when Mazarino died, and began his kingdom promising peace, prosperity and vengeance against Spain. The glorious politics of expansion, the emphasis of the sacred role of his power contributed to create the myth of the Sun king. Louis XIV had, but above all he wanted, to decrease the political power of the Parisian parliament and the French nobility. The parliament was working in France, since 1239, as organ of royal administration of the justice; it was therefore the supreme French judicial court in modern age; its main prerogative consisted in the right of opposition to the royal edicts and the monarchic absolutism. The Sun king didn't agree at all on the parliamentary ideas, and it is for this that the parliament during his kingdom lost notably power and prestige.

The nobility in Paris during XVII century was divided into several categories: there were for instance the officials or high officials of State, holders of a position acquired thanks to payment of a huge amount of money; they were private representatives of a public office, their affairs were often in contrast with the State, above all with the monarch, who during the century granted less and less honors, titles and positions superimposing to them the figure of the superintendent ,who during '600 and 700 was an official of royal nomination who had the duty to control the peripheral administrations with competences that were also extended to judicial and fiscal field, and to public order too; this office developed an extremely important role, but above all, unlike the officials, the superintendent was respected by the king and the French State.

Louis XIV, decided, some time after his crowning, to move the capital and, at the same time, the real residence from Paris to Versailles where he was surrounded by the nobility, to which wanted to remove, with the so-called appanages, the political decisional power too. He was surrounded also by great artists, painters, sculptors, and musicians; this because he wanted to make his prestige public and indelible: all this splendor was, however, expensive. In fact, the palace of Versailles was a real town with shops, artisans, pastimes of every kind, in a wonderful park realized by Le Notre, an architect born in 1613 in Paris, (among his works, besides the park of Versailles, we remember the gardens of Vaux-le-Vicomte and those of Clagny). Le Notres was for over thirty years the supervisor of the park preparation of the king's palace, from place lacking natural resources and poor of influxes of water, he succeeded in drawing groves, a theater of water, a labyrinth and hundreds of art works inspired to the myth of Apollo, to which more than 6000 horses and over 38000 workers worked every day and served for the samptious parties that the king organized every week. At that court, great artists lived, among whom Jean Racine. Been Born on December 22 1639, he was poet and playwright; he studied classical subjects at the school of Port-Royal, with whom he interrupted any contacts in 1666 without abandoning his faith of Jansenist. His tragedies that had mythological content and biblical inspiration, are among the highest six hundred theater expressions. Racine, on the occasion of Louis XIV's marriage with Mary Theresa, wrote "La Nymphe de la Seine à la Reine" (The Nymph of the Seine to the queen) and with this work he gained the favor of her majesty.

From Versailles, Louis XIV ruled France. The first problem he met was the religious one. In fact, he wanted to free his country from all the Protestants. For this reason, he emanated on October 18 1685 the edict of Fontainebleu with which he revoked the edict of Nantes (1598) and forced around 300000 Protestants to the exile in Holland, England, Sweden and in Northern America. Subsequently, the French sovereign asked pope Clemente XI, on March 27 1708, a Papal bull with which closed all protestant schools and destroyed the monastery of Port-Royal-des-Champs. The Papal bull, really issued in October 1707, was backdated to March 27, because Louis XIV had not accepted a first document that had been judged too benevolent. Port-Royal, reformed by Arnauld, was the place in which a group of researchers of moral doctrines was located. This group followed the ideas of the Jansenists; among its members they were St-Cyran, Arnauld, Nicole and Pascal. Center of great influence on the literary and religious life, the monastery was actually object of persecutions up to its complete and definitive destruction.

Then, Louis XIV had strong expansionistic politics. This intent was possible, both for the wealths of France, even if they were continually squandered by the king, and thanks to the army that succeeded in threating other great European powers: the Army forces, in fact, passed from 65000 units in 1665 to 400000 in 1705. However, the war expenses grew too since the troops were equipped with very expensive new weapons and the fortresses were strengthened as much as the war harbors were developed.

The Spanish succession war

On November 1 1700, Charles II, last Hapsburg of the Spanish branch, died without direct heirs. Already two years before the greatest interested powers had tried to settle the matter of the succession among the several pretenders, pointing out as future king of Spain the child of the elector prince of Bavaria, Joseph Ferdinand, whose fatherly grandmother was sister of the Spanish sovereign. In this way, the European powers wanted to avoid the chance that the inheritance went to other indirect descendants of that dynasty, like Louis XIV of France or the emperor Leopold I of Hapsburg. Otherwise, the European equilibrium would have been compromised.

In the agreement, there were important territorial remunerations for those two monarchs. In 1699, however, the death of the young Bavarian prince forced the greatest powers to stipulate a new agreement for the second-born son of the emperor, Charles of Hapsburg, to which Spain and the colonies of America would have been assigned, while the dolphin of France would have received Naples, Sicily and the Dukedom of Lorene and the duke of Lorene would have received the Dukedom of Milan. This division was arranged without the consent of Charles II, who, one month before dying, nominated as his heir the duke Phillip of Borbone, Louis XIV's nephew, but only if he had renounced for himself and for his successors to the rights of the French crown. The Sun king decided to denounce the previously stipulated agreement and to accept the succession for his nephew. Some political and military initiatives, taken immediately after that decision, revealed his intention to interfere in the Spanish business: French troops were sent to Mantua and in the Low Countries, so that Phillip was surrounded by French advisers and granted commercial privileges and advantages to French companies while trading with the Spanish colonies in America.

Great Britain and Holland allied with the emperor Leopold I to prevent that under the king of France a new universal monarchy was created. The Great Alliance included several German princes, among which the elector of Brandeburg, who was rewarded in 1701 with the title of king of Prussia. The duke of Savoia, in a first time allied with France, passed in 1703 into the enemy field, getting as reward the region called Monferrato; the same change of field was done by the king of Portugal, that with the accord of Methuen-Alegrete undersigned a commercial agreement with Great Britain very favorable for that country.

The Spanish succession mobilized larger armies than every other conflict of the previous century: around 600.000 men fought on the most important fronts. After some initial successes for France, the operations on several fronts were in favor of the Great Alliance that had the Anglo-Dutch navy superiority and the financial resources in London and Amsterdam. The great military abilities of Eugene of Savoia and John Churchill, duke of Marlborough, were decisive in the important victory achieved from the allied army at Blenheim, in Bavaria, in August 1704. In the meantime, the French troops invaded Piedmont and besieged Turin: in 1706 they suffered however a heavy defeat from the army of Eugene of Savoia who conquered Milan on behalf of the archduke Charles, who had been nominated Charles III king of Spain just in 1705. The duke of Marlborough advanced into the Flanders, defeating the French army at Ramillies. The conquest of Gibraltar (1704) was followed from the occupation of Minorca and Sardinia (1708) by the English fleet, while another imperial army occupied Naples in 1707. In 1708 the Anglo-imperial troops entered the French territory by conquering Lille and threatening Paris.

The conditions of the peace

During 1709 winter, an exceptional frost destroyed the French crops and caused a serious demographic, economic and financial crisis. Louis XIV unofficially asked for peace. The conditions imposed by the Allies were so humiliating (among these, the duty for the king of France to send his nephew away from Madrid) to force him to ask the country a further effort to continue the war. In September 1709, marshal Villers stopped the advance of the Allies at Malplaquet; however, the attempts to install Charles III on the Spanish throne failed because Phillip V succeeded in uniting his cause to that of the national independence. In 1710, the English whig government fell, replaced by a Tory one, more sensitive to the protests of the land owners against the weight of the taxes for the war.

In 1711 the premature death of the new emperor Joseph I, brother of Charles, opened the problem of the succession to the Austrian hereditary states and imperial dignity and threated upsetting, in case of recognition of Charles as king of Spain too, the European equilibrium. The Great Alliance disappeared and the dissents among the former allies brought to two separated peace agreement: that of Utrecht, signed in 1713 from France with Great Britain and Holland and that of Rastatt, signed the following year with the Austrian monarchy. The former foresees the transfer of large part of Canada to the English crown that got in the Mediterranean sea both Gibraltar and Minorca, besides the recognition of the Asiento, the contract for the supply of African slaves in the Spanish colonies; the latter brought the former Spanish Low Countries, as well as the Dukedom of Milan and the kingdoms of Naples and Sardinia under the Austrian dominion.