By moving his court and government to Versailles, Louis XIV
hoped to extract more control of the government from the
nobility, and to distance himself from the population of Paris.
All the power of France emanated from this centre: there were
government offices here, as well as the homes of thousands of
courtiers, their retinues, and all the attendant functionaries
of court. By requiring that nobles of a certain rank and
position spend time each year at Versailles, Louis prevented
them from developing their own regional power at the expense of
his own and kept them from countering his efforts to centralise
the French government in an absolute monarchy. The meticulous
and strict court etiquette that Louis established, which
overwhelmed his heirs with its petty boredom, was epitomised in
the elaborate ceremonies and exacting procedures that
accompanied his rising in the morning, known as the Lever,
divided into a petit lever for the most important and a grand
lever for the whole court. Like other French court m