Louis XIV, known as Le Roi Soleil ('The Sun King') 1638-1715
King of France from 1643

Louis was born in St Germain-en-Laye, the son of Louis XIII and Anne of Austria, and came to the throne at the age of five. During his minority (1643-51), the government was carried on by his mother and her Chief Minister and lover, Cardinal Jules Mazarin, and Mazarin continued to exercise control until his death in 1661. Then Louis was his own Chief Minister, working with unremitting energy and making all the important decisions himself (L'�tat, c'est moi: 'I am the state'). Pious and conservative, he was able to present himself within France and throughout Europe as the model of royal absolutism. In 1660 Louis married the Infanta Maria Theresa of Spain (1638-83), daughter of Philip IV.

Louis' reign is characterized by aggressive foreign policies, especially against the Dutch and Spanish, and by artistic and architectural splendour at home. The maintenance of high tax levels enabled him to build great palaces, especially Versailles (1676-1708). He built up a navy and remodelled the French army into the most formidable fighting force in Europe. After the death of his father-in-law in 1665, Louis laid claim to part of the Spanish Netherlands and launched the War of Dutch Devolution (1667-68) under the command of Turenne and Cond�, which provoked a triple alliance between Great Britain, Holland and Sweden and ended with the Treaty of Aix-La-Chapelle.

In the Second Dutch War (1672-78), Louis had Britain as an ally, having bribed Charles II with the secret Treaty of Dover (1670); his assault was only halted when William of Orange (later William III of Britain) opened the sluices and inundated the country, but France did well out of the Peace of Nijmegen that ended the war in 1678. In the 1680s he secured Strasburg and Luxembourg. His wife, Maria Theresa, died in 1683, and in 1685 Louis privately married one of his mistresses, the Marquise de Maintenon, under whose Catholic influence he passed the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685) which led to a bloody persecution of Protestants and mass emigration of French Huguenots to Holland and England.

In 1689 the opponents of French expansionism formed the Grand Alliance, which was strengthened by the addition of William III in England. The French were victorious at Mons (1691), Steenkirk (1692) and Neerwinden (1693), and defeated an Anglo-Dutch fleet off Cape St Vincent (1693); but the allies maintained a stubborn resistance, and by the Treaty of Ryswick (1697) Louis had to yield most of his territorial gains.

In 1700 Charles II of Spain died; in his will he bequeathed his throne to Louis's grandson, Philip of Anjou (Philip V of Spain). The prospect of a union of the Crowns of Spain and France so alarmed the other European powers that it gave rise to the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-14), which proved disastrous for France with crushing defeats at Blenheim (1704) and Ramillies (1706). Peace was only finally achieved with the Treaty of Utrecht (1713), two years before Louis' death, leaving France practically bankrupt.

Bibliography: John B Wolf, Louis XIV (1968); Nancy Mitford, The Sun King (1966); Jacques Roujon, Louis XIV (1943).