Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
peter the great louis xiv
peter the great louis xiv
louis xiv peter the great
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: peter the great louis xiv
Louis XIV reigned as the King of France for seventy-two years, making him one of the longest ruling monarchs in the country of Europe. With his interest in the arts he changed France’s culture from medieval to exquisite. Louis wanted to have no remnants of feudalism, he wanted an absolute monarchy. His aim was to have monarchy be the most important political authority. Louis XIV was a very powerful monarch who symbolized absolute monarchy and helped France gain great power. Louis XIV was the first child of Louis XIII and Anne of Austria and was considered to be God-given. (Steingrad.) Since he was the first direct male heir to Louis XII, his father’s death allowed him to succeed the throne at just the age of four. Due to the fact that Louis was so young, his kingly responsibilities were taken up by his mother and Cardinal Joules Mazarin. His mother and Mazarin proposed a new plan to raise money, which would require that the magistrates of the high courts to give up four years' salary. (Steingrad.) The judges and nobles of the Parlement of France did not agree with these policies. In objection to their disagreement, the government arrested several members of the parlement. This then caused the Parisians to protest and blockade the streets. This was called the Fronde of the Parlement, which lasted throughout 1648 until the next year. After Cardinal Mazarin’s death in 1661, Louis XIV finally took personal control of the government. Louis would go on to rule France for fifty-four years after he was crowned in his early twenties. He decided not to have a first minister and he then took full responsibility of Mazarin’s rule. He replaced the Controller-General of Finances, Nicolas Fouquet, with Jean-Baptiste Colbert on suspicion... ... middle of paper ... ...lives rather than face starvation. Louis’s death was caused by gangrene, which spread throughout his body. He was in agony for three weeks before he died at Versailles just before his seventy-seventh birthday. (Bio.) His reign had lasted for seven decades, making it the longest of any European kings. His last words were towards his grandson which were, “Why are you weeping? Did you imagine that I was immortal?” (Bio.) The Sun King had a great influence in France and its power. He oversaw the construction of the Palace of Versailles, which was around 37,000 acres of land. He loved war and spent one out of every two years during his reign in war. Louis XIV made France one of the greatest powers in Europe. Unfortunately, his construction of the Palace left France in terrible debt. Because of his expenses and his bankruptcy, he may have been a contribution to rebellion.
Louis XIV is considered the “perfect absolutist” and he has been said to have been one of the greatest rulers in France’s history. He came up with several different strategic plans to gain absolute
Duc de Saint-Simon lived in the Palace of Versailles with King Louis XIV of France during the late seventeenth century. Louis did not move his court to Versailles until 1682, so it can be assumed that this document was written after. In his memoirs, he took detailed notes describing Louis’ attributes overwhelmingly positive, but seemingly accurate. This author creates a somewhat skewed look for the king of France with the immense positivity. Louis ruled with an absolute monarchy, Saint-Simon seems to be composing this to please the king and also for later to understand what life was truly like in the court and life at Versailles.
Louis XIV was an absolute monarch in France from 1643 to 1715. His father died when he was just four years old, making Louis XIV the throne’s successor at a very young age. Because of this, he ruled for seventy-two years, which made him “the longest monarch to rule a major country in European history” (Eggert). But it was when he was twenty-three years old when he decided to rule without a prime minister, believing it was his divine right. Translated by Louis de Rouvroy, Duc de Saint-Simon, the author of the book The Memoirs of Louis XIV: His Court and The Regency, King Louis XIV wrote, “The royal power is absolute. The royal throne is not the throne of a man, but the throne of God himself. Kings should be guarded as holy things, and whoever
Politically, Louis was corrupt because of his greed. He fought costly wars--in the high numbers of casualties and monetary encouragement--at the drop of a hat. His country was the most powerful, and was very populous. His armies were large in size at peacetime, and even larger in wartime. Their strength, though, was no match for the failure Louis faced in wars. His wars left France almost bankrupt. He wanted larger borders, went to any extent to get them, but lost all of the three times he tried.
King Louis developed and expanded his kingdom economically in many ways. He encouraged trade fairs and created helped to create jobs. This reorganization of the economy united France and also
The Palace of Versailles leads back to the regime of Louis XIV. Louis inherited the crown in 1643 at the young age of four, much too young to rule, especially in the midst of France’s chaos. Anne of Austria, his mother, and her Chief Minister, Cardinal Jules Mazarin, ruled on Louis’s behalf. Mazarin died in 1661,however, Louis took over with a revolutionary announcement: he would rule without a prime minister, thus all power will fall solely upon himself. He believed he was divinely appointed to lead France and used “L’Etat c’est moi” or “I am the State” as his motto. Louis chose the sun as his personal symbol of dominance, creating himself a legacy as the “Sun King” (History.com).
Louis XIV inherited the throne in 1643 when he was only five (Cairns 103). From the moment he entered power and his reign began he had greedy intentions and enormous ideas of divine rule (Cairns 112). In 1661, Louis chief advisor Cardinal Jules Mazarin died and Louis then decided that he would be the only ruler of France (Spielvagel 1). Louis once expressed, “It is now time that I govern them myself. I request and order you to seal no orders except my command,… I order you not to sign anything, not even a passport… without my command; to render account to me personally each day and to favor no one” (Spielvagel 1). This quote reveals Louis’s desire to have power over everything and control everyone around him. Louis used the sun as his symbol of power. He often quoted, “I am the state” (Cairns 35). Exposed in this quote is Louis mindset that he had all power. Using the sun as his symbol of power enforced his belief that he was the center of all things. Author of “Court Described by Duc De Saint Simon,” Elena Steingrad, stated the following when referring to King Louis’s life, “… he compelled his courtiers to live beyond their income, and gradually reduced then to depend on his bounty for the means of subsistence. This was a plague which became a scourge to the whole country…” (4). The quote shows Louis’ greedy intentions, which eventually led to widespread confusion and an economic drop to the country of France (Steingrad 4). Louis XIV in the beginning of his reign was starting to show signs of his enormous, greedy intentions and his belief in divine rule. It was the start of his reign that France began to slowly crumble.
...c de Bourgogne, was a sickly five-year-old child. Louis had distrusted his nephew, the Duc d'Orleans, and wanted to leave actual power in the hands of the Duc du Maine. He left orders in his will to make it so. The Parliament of Paris convened to fight the will and, in doing so, rediscovered its own power. This would set in motion a series of events that would lead to revolution. Though praised within his country, outside of France Louis had a vicious reputation. Although credited with bringing France to the status it achieved, his policies concerning religion, his isolation of the throne at Versailles, and his last will combined to lead to the downfall of the monarchy. Though seen as a strong ruler, France lost power under him. He wanted France to prosper, and its citizens suffered. Still considering him infallible, he only saw the glorious image of France.
Louis XIV communicated absolute power through divine right theory and the palace of Versailles: which included, symbols and paintings. Jacques Bossuet said “His divine majesty, delegated by His providence to execute His design….” divine right theory. The divine right theory is God put King Louis XIV on this earth to serve as a ruler of France. There is no doubt in his mind that thats his sole purpose, in which that should be accepted as the truth. This theory was very useful to Louis XIV because he was able to gain the trust of the people. With Bossuet being a well know law professor, attorney, and legal official much trust from the people was given to him. When he published his book that had this belief on it the people
...s was from a military stand point, which was rare for him. In 1667, Louis attacked a portion of the Netherlands that was owned by the Spanish. This resulted in the gaining of 12 towns, which encouraged Louis to attack the Dutch Netherlands, which did gain him a few wealthy port towns, before ending in disaster. Louis’ last great success was the building of the Palace of Versailles, which as described earlier was a feat never before matched by a ruler.
... move, defunding any revolts they might plan, and preoccupying their time with petty social matters instead of matters of the state. If Louis’ reign was not supported by the enabling qualities of the Palace of Versailles, his reign would certainly not be as absolute as it was.
For the first portion of his quote, “one king”, Louis consolidated his power in many ways. France, as well as many other countries throughout the middle ages and early renaissance, had their power balanced between the nobles and the dynastic ruling class, where nobles controlled their individual provinces and the king would have to rely on his nobles to spread his royal decrees. This was highly demonstrated throughout the Holy Roman Empire during the 16th and parts of the 17th century, where the polygot of cultures, religions, and languages lead Charles V to have to rely on the nobles, confederacy, and a decentralization of government to rule. Because of these sacrifices, Charles V never really ruled his country, nor did he achieve any of his goals. He died a white haired old man, giving his domains to his son and brother. Louis XIV actually achieved his goal in a very different way, by defeating the power of the noble class, while strenghening the middle class, or the bourgeois. Louis built an internal beauracracy within France, and believed that a countries power came from it’s unification and military prowess. These beliefs were largely based on the early years of his rule. Louis XIV became king when he was only 5 years old, so his mother. Anne of Austria, and Cardinal Mazarin, rumored to be her lover, ruled in his place as a child. Mazarin was the ideological heir to Richelieu, w...
When Louis the XIV began his rule in 1643, his actions immediately began to suggest and absolute dictatorship. Because of the misery he had previously suffered, one of the first things he did was to decrease the power of the nobility. He withdrew himself from the rich upper class, doing everything secretly. The wealth had no connection to Louis, and therefore all power they previously had was gone. He had complete control over the nobles, spying, going through mail, and a secret police force made sure that Louis had absolute power. Louis appointed all of his officials, middle class men who served him without wanting any power. Louis wanted it clear that none of his power would be shared. He wanted "people to know by the rank of the men who served him that he had no intention of sharing power with them." If Louis XIV appointed advisors from the upper classes, they would expect to gain power, and Louis was not willing to give it to them. The way Louis XIV ruled, the sole powerful leader, made him an absolute ruler. He had divine rule, and did not want to give any power to anyone other than himself. These beliefs made him an absolute ruler.
Louis XIV died on September 1, 1715 of gangrene, only a few days before his seventy-seventh birthday. His reign lasted for 72 years, which made this the longest reign in the recorded history of Europe. Almost all of Louis XIV's children died during childhood. The only one to survive to adulthood, his eldest son, Louis, Dauphin de Viennois, died four years before his father in 1711, and left three children. Therefore, Louis XIV's five-year-old great-grandson Louis, Duc d'Anjou, the younger son of the Duc de Bourgogne and Dauphin upon the death of his grandfather, father and elder brother, succeeded to the throne and was to reign as Louis XV of France.