Which King of England sold Dunkirk to Louis XIV of France?
TagMe TagMe TagMe Search
Kingdom_of_England.txt Sale_of_Dunkirk.txt Louis_XIV_of_France.txt Charles_II_of_England.txt
Kingdom of England Sale of Dunkirk Louis XIV of France Charles II of England
The Kingdom of England was a sovereign state on the island of Great Britain from the 10th century—when it emerged from various Anglo-Saxon kingdoms—until 1707, when it united with Scotland to form the Kingdom of Great Britain.

In the early 11th century the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, united by Æthelstan (r. 927–939), became part of the North Sea Empire of Cnut the Great, a personal union between England, Denmark and Norway.  The Norman conquest of England in 1066 led to the transfer of the English capital city and chief royal residence from the Anglo-Saxon one at Winchester to Westminster, and the City of London quickly established itself as England's largest and principal commercial centre. 

Histories of the kingdom of England from the Norman conquest of 1066 conventionally distinguish periods named after successive ruling dynasties: Norman 1066–1154,  Plantagenet 1154–1485,  Tudor 1485–1603 and Stuart 1603–1714 (interrupted by the Interregnum of  1649–1660).
Dynastically, all English monarchs after 1066 ultimately claim descent from the Normans; the distinction of the Plantagenets is merely conventional, beginning with Henry II (reigned 1154-1189) as from that time, the Angevin kings became "more English in nature"; the houses of Lancaster and York are both Plantagenet cadet branches, the Tudor dynasty claimed descent from Edward III via John Beaufort and James VI and I  of the House of Stuart claimed descent from Henry VII via Margaret Tudor.

The completion of the conquest of Wales by Edward I in 1284 put Wales under the control of the English crown. Edward III (reigned 1327–1377) transformed the Kingdom of England into one of the most formidable military powers in Europe; his reign also saw vital developments in legislation and government—in particular the evolution of the English parliament.  From the 1340s the kings of England also laid claim to the crown of France, but after the Hundred Years' War and the outbreak of the Wars of the Roses in 1455, the English were no longer in any position to pursue their French claims and lost all their land on the continent, except for Calais. After the turmoils of the Wars of the Roses, the Tudor dynasty ruled during the English Renaissance and again extended English monarchical power beyond England proper, achieving the full union of England and the Principality of Wales in 1542. Henry VIII oversaw the English Reformation, and his daughter Elizabeth I (reigned 1558–1603) the Elizabethan Religious Settlement, meanwhile establishing England as a great power and laying the foundations of the British Empire by claiming possessions in the New World.

From the accession of James I in 1603, the Stuart dynasty ruled England in personal union with Scotland and Ireland. Under the Stuarts, the kingdom plunged into civil war, which culminated in the  execution of Charles I in 1649. The monarchy returned in 1660, but the Civil War  established  the precedent that an English monarch cannot govern without the consent of Parliament, although this concept became legally established only as part of the Glorious Revolution of 1688.
From this time the kingdom of England, as well as its successor state the United Kingdom, functioned in effect as a constitutional monarchy.The Constitution of the United Kingdom, with the reservation that it is "uncodified", is taken to be based in the Bill of Rights 1689. On 1 May 1707, under the terms of the Acts of Union 1707, the kingdoms of England and Scotland united to form the Kingdom of Great Britain.  

Name

The Anglo-Saxons referred to themselves as the Engle  or the Angelcynn, originally names of the Angles. They called their land Engla land, meaning "land of the English", 
by Æthelweard Latinized Anglia, from an original Anglia vetus, the purported homeland of the Angles (called Angulus by Bede).  The name Engla land became England by haplology during the Middle English period (Engle-land, Engelond).  The Latin name was Anglia or Anglorum terra, the Old French and Anglo-Norman one Angleterre.  By the 14th century, England was also used in reference to the entire island of Great Britain.

The standard title for all monarchs from Æthelstan until the time of King John was ' ("King of the English"). Canute the Great, a Dane, was the first king to call himself "King of England". In the Norman period ' remained standard, with occasional use of ' ("King of England"). The Empress Matilda styled herself ' ("Lady of the English"). From the time of King John onwards all other titles were eschewed in favour of ' or '. In 1604 James I, who had inherited the English throne the previous year, adopted the title (now usually rendered in English rather than Latin) King of Great Britain. The English and Scottish parliaments, however, did not recognise this title until the Acts of Union of 1707.

History

Anglo-Saxon England

The kingdom of England emerged from the gradual unification of the early medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdoms  known as the Heptarchy: East Anglia, Mercia, Northumbria, Kent, Essex, Sussex, and Wessex. The Viking invasions of the 9th century upset the balance of power between the English kingdoms, and native Anglo-Saxon life in general. The English lands were unified in the 10th century in a reconquest completed by King Æthelstan in 927.

During the Heptarchy, the most powerful king among the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms might become acknowledged as Bretwalda, a high king over the other kings. The decline of Mercia allowed Wessex to become more powerful. It absorbed the kingdoms of Kent and Sussex in 825. The kings of Wessex became increasingly dominant over the other kingdoms of England during the 9th century. In 827, Northumbria submitted to Egbert of Wessex at Dore. Thus Egbert briefly became the first king to reign over a united England.

In 886, Alfred the Great retook London, which he apparently regarded as a turning point in his reign. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says that "all of the English people (all Angelcyn) not subject to the Danes submitted themselves to King Alfred."[http://www.gutenberg.org/files/657/657.txt The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle] Freely licensed version at Gutenberg Project. Note: This electronic edition is a collation of material from nine diverse extant versions of the Chronicle. It contains primarily the translation of Rev. James Ingram, as published in the Everyman edition. Asser added that "Alfred, king of the Anglo-Saxons, restored the city of London splendidly ... and made it habitable once more."  Alfred's "restoration" entailed reoccupying and refurbishing the nearly deserted Roman walled city, building quays along the Thames, and laying a new city street plan.  It is probably at this point that Alfred assumed the new royal style 'King of the Anglo-Saxons.'

During the following years Northumbria repeatedly changed hands between the English kings and the Norwegian invaders, but was definitively brought under English control by Eadred in 954, completing the unification of England. At about this time, Lothian, the northern part of Northumbria (Roman Bernicia), was ceded to the Kingdom of Scotland. On 12 July 927 the monarchs of Britain gathered at Eamont in Cumbria to recognise Æthelstan as king of the English. This can be considered England's 'foundation date', although the process of unification had taken almost 100 years.

England has remained in political unity ever since. During the reign of Æthelred the Unready (978–1016), a new wave of Danish invasions was orchestrated by Sweyn I of Denmark, culminating after a quarter-century of warfare in the Danish conquest of England in 1013. But Sweyn died on 2 February 1014, and Æthelred was restored to the throne. In 1015, Sweyn's son Cnut the Great launched a new invasion. The ensuing war ended with an agreement in 1016 between Canute and Æthelred's successor, Edmund Ironside, to divide England between them, but Edmund's death on 30 November of that year left England united under Danish rule. This continued for 26 years until the death of Harthacnut in June 1042. He was the son of Canute and Emma of Normandy (the widow of Æthelred the Unready) and had no heirs of his own; he was succeeded by his half-brother, Æthelred's son, Edward the Confessor. The Kingdom of England was once again independent.

Norman conquest

The peace lasted until the death of the childless Edward in January 1066. His brother-in-law was crowned King Harold, but his cousin William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy, immediately claimed the throne for himself. William launched an invasion of England and landed in Sussex on 28 September 1066. Harold and his army were in York following their victory against the Norwegians at the Battle of Stamford Bridge (25 September 1066) when the news reached him. He decided to set out without delay and confront the Norman army in Sussex so marched southwards at once, despite the army not being properly rested following the battle with the Norwegians. The armies of Harold and William faced each other at the Battle of Hastings (14 October 1066), in which the English army, or Fyrd, was defeated, Harold and his two brothers were slain, and William emerged as victor. William was then able to conquer England with little further opposition. He was not, however, planning to absorb the Kingdom into the Duchy of Normandy. As a mere duke, William owed allegiance to Philip I of France, whereas in the independent Kingdom of England he could rule without interference. He was crowned on 25 December 1066 in Westminster Abbey, London.

High Middle Ages

In 1092, William II led an invasion of Strathclyde, a Celtic kingdom in what is now southwest Scotland and Cumbria. In doing so, he annexed what is now the county of Cumbria to England; this final annexation established what would become the traditional borders of England, which have remained largely unchanged since then (except for occasional and temporary changes).

In 1124, Henry I ceded what is now southeast Scotland (called Lothian) to the Kingdom of Scotland, in return for the King of Scotland's loyalty. This area of land had been English since its foundation in 927 AD, and before that had been a part of the Anglian Kingdom of Northumbria. Lothian contained what later became the Scottish capital, Edinburgh. This arrangement was later finalised in 1237 by the Treaty of York.

The Duchy of Aquitaine came into personal union with the Kingdom of England upon the accession of Henry II, who had married Eleanor, Duchess of Aquitaine. The Kingdom of England and the Duchy of Normandy remained in personal union until John Lackland, Henry II's son and fifth-generation descendant of William I, lost the continental possessions of the Duchy to Philip II of France in 1204. A few remnants of Normandy, including the Channel Islands, remained in John's possession, together with most of the Duchy of Aquitaine.

Up until the  Norman conquest of England, Wales had remained for the most part independent of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, although some Welsh kings did sometimes acknowledge the Bretwalda. Soon after the Norman conquest of England, however, some Norman lords began to attack Wales. They conquered and ruled parts of it, acknowledging the overlordship of the Norman kings of England but with considerable local independence. Over many years these "Marcher Lords" conquered more and more of Wales, against considerable resistance led by various Welsh princes, who also often acknowledged the overlordship of the Norman kings of England.

Edward I defeated Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, and so effectively conquered Wales, in 1282. He created the title Prince of Wales for his eldest son, the future Edward II, in 1301. Edward I's conquest was brutal and the subsequent repression considerable, as the magnificent Welsh castles such as Conwy, Harlech, and Caernarfon attest; but this event re-united under a single ruler the lands of Roman Britain for the first time since the establishment of the Kingdom of the Jutes in Kent in the 5th century, some 700 years before. Accordingly, this was a highly significant moment in the history of medieval England, as it re-established links with the pre-Saxon past. These links were exploited for political purposes to unite the peoples of the kingdom, including the Anglo-Normans, by popularising Welsh legends.

The Welsh language—derived from the British language, with significant Latin influences—continued to be spoken by the majority of the population of Wales for at least another 500 years, and is still a majority language in parts of the country.

Late Middle Ages

Edward III was the first English king to have a claim to the throne of France. His pursuit of the claim resulted in the Hundred Years' War (1337–1453), which pitted five kings of England of the House of Plantagenet against five kings of France of the Capetian House of Valois. Though the English won numerous victories, they were unable to overcome the numerical superiority of the French and their strategic use of gunpowder weapons. England was defeated at the Battle of Formigny in 1450 and finally at the Battle of Castillon in 1453, retaining only a single town in France, Calais.

During the Hundred Years' War an English identity began to develop in place of the previous division between the Norman lords and their Anglo-Saxon subjects. This was a consequence of sustained hostility to the increasingly nationalist French, whose kings and other leaders (notably the charismatic Joan of Arc) used a developing sense of French identity to help draw people to their cause. The Anglo-Normans became separate from their cousins who held lands mainly in France, who mocked the former for their archaic and bastardised spoken French. English also became the language of the law courts during this period.

The kingdom had little time to recover before entering the Wars of the Roses (1455–1487), a series of civil wars over possession of the throne between the House of Lancaster (whose heraldic symbol was the red rose) and the House of York (whose symbol was the white rose), each led by different branches of the descendants of Edward III. The end of these wars found the throne held by the descendant of an initially illegitimate member of the House of Lancaster, married to the eldest daughter of the House of York: Henry VII and Elizabeth of York. They were the founders of the Tudor dynasty, which ruled the Kingdom from 1485 to 1603.

Tudor period

Wales had retained a separate legal and administrative system, which had been established by Edward I in the late 13th century. The country was divided between the Marcher Lords owing feudal allegiance to the crown and the Principality of Wales. Under the Tudor monarchy, Henry VIII replaced the laws of Wales with those of England (under the Laws in Wales Acts 1535–1542). Wales now was incorporated into the Kingdom of England, and henceforth was represented in the Parliament of England.

During the 1530s, Henry VIII overthrew the power of the Roman Catholic Church within the kingdom, replacing the pope as head of the English church and seizing the church's lands, thereby facilitating the creation of a new Protestant religion. This had the effect of aligning England with Scotland, which also gradually adopted a Protestant religion, whereas the most important continental powers, France and Spain, remained Roman Catholic.

In 1541, during Henry VIII's reign, the Parliament of Ireland proclaimed him king of Ireland, thereby bringing the Kingdom of Ireland into personal union with the Kingdom of England.

Calais, the last remaining continental possession of the Kingdom, was lost in 1558, during the reign of Philip and Mary I. Their successor, Elizabeth I, consolidated the new Protestant Church of England. She also began to build up the Kingdom's naval strength, on the foundations Henry VIII had laid down. In 1588, her new navy was strong enough to defeat the Spanish Armada, which had sought to invade England in order to put a Catholic monarch on the throne in her place.

Early Modern history

The House of Tudor ended with the death of Elizabeth I on 24 March 1603. James I ascended the throne of England and brought it into personal union with the Kingdom of Scotland. Despite the Union of the Crowns, the kingdoms remained separate and independent states: a state of affairs which lasted for more than a century.

Civil War and Interregnum

The Stuart kings overestimated the power of the English monarchy, and were cast down by Parliament in 1645 and 1688. In the first instance, Charles I's introduction of new forms of taxation in defiance of Parliament led to the English Civil War (1641–45), in which the king was defeated, and to the abolition of the monarchy under Oliver Cromwell during the interregnum of 1649–1660. Henceforth, the monarch could reign only at the will of Parliament.

After the trial and execution of Charles I in January 1649, the Rump Parliament passed an act declaring England to be a Commonwealth on 19 May 1649.  The monarchy and the House of Lords were abolished, and so the House of Commons became a unitary legislative chamber with a new body, the Council of State becoming the executive. However the Army remain the dominant institution in the new republic and the most prominent general was Oliver Cromwell. The Commonwealth fought wars in Ireland and Scotland which were subdued and placed under Commonwealth military occupation.

In April 1653 Cromwell and the other Grandees of the New Model Army, frustrated with the  members of the Rump Parliament who would not pass legislation to dissolve the Rump and to allow a new more representative parliament to be elected, stopped the Rumps session by force of arms and declared the Rump dissolved.

After an experiment with a Nominated Assembly (Barebone's Parliament), the Grandees in the Army, through the Council of State imposed a new constitutional arrangement under a written constitution called the Instrument of Government. Under the Instrument of Government executive power lay with a Lord Protector (an office be held for life of the incumbent) and there were to be triennial Parliaments, with each sitting for at least five months. Article 23 of the Instrument of Government stated that Oliver Cromwell was to be the first Lord Protector. The Instrument of Government was replaced by a second constitution (the Humble Petition and Advice) under which the Lord Protector could nominate his successor. Cromwell nominated his son Richard who became Lord Protector on the death of Oliver on 3 September 1658.

Restoration and Glorious Revolution

Richard proved to ineffectual and unable to maintain his rule. He resigned his title and retired into obscurity. The Rump Parliament was recalled and there was a second period where the executive power lay with the Council of state. But this restoration of Commonwealth rule similar to that before the Protectorate, proved to be unstable, and the exiled claimant, Charles II, was restored to the throne in 1660.

Following the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, an attempt by James II to reintroduce Roman Catholicism—a century after its suppression by the Tudors—led to the Glorious Revolution of 1688, in which he was deposed by Parliament. The Crown was then offered by Parliament to James II's Protestant daughter and son-in-law/nephew, William III and Mary II.

Union with Scotland

In the Scottish case, the attractions were partly financial and partly to do with removing English trade sanctions put in place through the Alien Act 1705. The English were more anxious about the royal succession. The death of William III in 1702 had led to the accession of his sister-in-law Anne to the thrones of England and Scotland, but her only surviving child had died in 1700, and the English Act of Settlement 1701 had given the succession to the English crown to the Protestant House of Hanover. Securing the same succession in Scotland became the primary object of English strategic thinking towards Scotland. By 1704, the Union of the Crowns was in crisis, with the Scottish Act of Security allowing for the Scottish Parliament to choose a different monarch, which could in turn lead to an independent foreign policy during a major European war. The English establishment did not wish to risk a Stuart on the Scottish throne, nor the possibility of a Scottish military alliance with another power.

A Treaty of Union was agreed on 22 July 1706, and following the Acts of Union of 1707, which created the Kingdom of Great Britain, the independence of the kingdoms of England and Scotland came to an end on 1 May 1707. The Acts of Union created a customs union and monetary union and provided that any "laws and statutes" that were "contrary to or inconsistent with the terms" of the Acts would "cease and become void."

The English and Scottish Parliaments were merged into the Parliament of Great Britain, located in Westminster, London. At this point England ceased to exist as a separate political entity, and since then has had no national government. The laws of England were unaffected, with the legal jurisdiction continuing to be that of England and Wales, while Scotland continued to have its own laws and law courts. This continued after the 1801 union between the kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland, forming the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. In 1922 the Irish Free State seceded from the United Kingdom, leading to the latter being renamed the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Territorial divisions

The counties of England were established for administration by the Normans, in most cases based on earlier  shires established by the Anglo-Saxons.  They ceased to be used for administration only with the creation of the administrative counties in 1889. 

Unlike the partly self-governing boroughs that covered urban areas, the counties of medieval England existed primarily as a means of enforcing central government power, enabling monarchs to exercise control over local areas through their chosen representatives – originally Sheriffs and later the Lord Lieutenants – and their subordinate Justices of the Peace. 
Counties were used initially for the administration of justice, collection of taxes and organisation of the military, and later for local government and electing parliamentary representation. 

Although all of England was divided into shires by the time of the Norman conquest, some counties were formed considerably later, up to the 16th century. Because of their differing origins the counties varied considerably in size. The county boundaries were fairly static between the 16th century Laws in Wales acts and the Local Government Act 1888.[http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/text/chap_page.jsp?t_id
Cen_Guide&c_id19&show
ALL Vision of Britain] — Census Geographies. Retrieved 19 October 2006. Each shire was responsible for gathering taxes for the central government; for local defence; and for justice, through assize courts.

The power of the feudal barons to control their landholding was considerably weakened in 1290 by the statute of Quia Emptores.   Feudal baronies became perhaps obsolete (but not extinct) on the abolition of feudal tenure during the Civil War, as confirmed by the Tenures Abolition Act 1660 passed under the Restoration which took away Knights service and other legal rights.
Tenure by knight-service was abolished and discharged and the lands covered by such tenures, including once-feudal baronies, were henceforth held by socage (i.e. in exchange for monetary rents).
The English Fitzwalter Case in 1670 ruled that barony by tenure had been discontinued for many years and any claims to a peerage on such basis, meaning a right to sit in the House of Lords, were not to be revived, nor any right of succession based on them.

The Statute of Rhuddlan in 1284 followed the conquest of Wales by Edward I of England.  It assumed the lands held by the Princes of Gwynedd under the title "Prince of Wales" as legally part of the lands of England, and established shire counties on the English model over those areas. The Marcher Lords were progressively tied to the English kings by the grants of lands and lordships in England. The Council of Wales and the Marches, administered from Ludlow Castle, was initially established in 1472 by Edward IV of England to govern the lands held under the Principality of Wales.William Searle Holdsworth, "A History of English Law," Little, Brown, and Company, 1912, pg. 502 Under the Laws in Wales Acts 1535–1542 introduced under Henry VIII, the jurisdiction of the marcher lords was abolished in 1536.  The Acts had the effect of annexing Wales to England and creating a single state and legal jurisdiction, commonly referred to as England and Wales. The  Sale of Dunkirk took place in 1662 when Charles II of England sold his sovereign rights to Dunkirk to his cousin Louis XIV of France.

English possession of Dunkirk
Dunkirk was occupied by English forces of The Protectorate in 1658 when it was captured from Spain by Anglo-French forces following the Battle of the Dunes. The Spanish forces at that battle included British Royalist Regiments: The (English) King's Guards(foot) under Wentworth; A Scottish Regiment under Newburgh; The Marquis of Ormond's (Irish) Regiment under Richard Grace; The Duke of York's (Irish) Regiment under Muskerry; The Duke of Gloucester's (Irish) Regiment under Taaffe; and Farrell's (Irish) Regiment under Lisagh Farrell. These regiments (except, perhaps, Ormond's) were seriously under-strength, and were all under the overall command of James, Duke of York. There was also a small contingent of James' own Life Guards. The English part of the Anglo-French force included regiments under William Lockhart, Thomas Morgan, Roger Alsop, Samuel Clark, Bryce Cochrane and Roger Lillingston. 

France (effectively ruled by Mazarin) had promised - as part of the Treaty of Paris (1657) - that Dunkirk and Mardyke, then in the Spanish Netherlands, would be ceded to England. Mazarin honoured that pledge after the victory at The Dunes, and Louis XIV himself delivered Dunkirk over to Lockhart (who was Cromwell's Ambassador to France) on or about 24 June 1658.  Cromwell appointed Lockhart Governor of the town. Lockhart's regiment (much reduced in the battle) and Alsop's garrisoned Dunkirk and Mardyke (taken in 1657), reinforced by Salmon's and Gibbon's regiments from England, while Morgan's, Clark's, Cochrane's and Lillingston's continued to serve with the French Army in Flanders. The Royalist regiments, even more reduced by the defeat, continued to serve with Spain. In early 1659, most of Salmon's regiment was sent back to England, as was Gibbon's, and three regiments of the Protectorate force (Morgan's, Clark's, Cochrane's) returned to England in August 1959 in response to (planned, but discovered) Royalist uprisings culminating in Booth's uprising.

The Treaty of the Pyrenees in November 1659 confirmed English possession of Dunkirk.

possession of the territory then passed to Charles following the Restoration in 1660. The merchant Edward Blackwell, who served as Treasurer of Dunkirk under both the Republican and Royal governments, was instrumental in the sale. 

Since 1660 Dunkirk had been garrisoned by an uneasy mixture of English former New Model Army troops of republican sympathies and several Royalist regiments who had served under Charles in exile, which included many Irish Catholics. Many of the garrison of Dunkirk were shipped to English Tangier, which had recently been acquired as part of the Marriage Treaty with Portugal where they formed most of the initial Tangier Garrison. Louis XIV (5 September 1638 - 1 September 1715), known as Louis the Great (') or the Sun King ('), was a monarch of the House of Bourbon who ruled as King of France from 1643 until his death in 1715.  His reign of 72 years and 110 days is the longest of any monarch of a major country in European history.   In this age of absolutism in Europe, Louis XIV's France was a leader in the growing centralization of power. 

Louis began his personal rule of France in 1661 after the death of his chief minister, the Italian Cardinal Mazarin. An adherent of the concept of the divine right of kings, which advocates the divine origin of monarchical rule, Louis continued his predecessors' work of creating a centralized state governed from the capital. He sought to eliminate the remnants of feudalism persisting in parts of France and, by compelling many members of the nobility to inhabit his lavish Palace of Versailles (formerly a hunting lodge belonging to Louis's father), succeeded in pacifying the aristocracy, many members of which had participated in the Fronde rebellion during Louis's minority. By these means he became one of the most powerful French monarchs and consolidated a system of absolute monarchical rule in France that endured until the French Revolution.

During Louis's reign, France was the leading European power and it fought three major wars: the Franco-Dutch War, the War of the League of Augsburg, and the War of the Spanish Succession. There were also two lesser conflicts: the War of Devolution and the War of the Reunions. Louis encouraged and benefited from the work of prominent political, military, and cultural figures such as Mazarin, Colbert, the Grand Condé, Turenne and Vauban, as well as Molière, Racine, Boileau, La Fontaine, Lully, Marais, Le Brun, Rigaud, Bossuet, Le Vau, Mansart, Charles and Claude Perrault, and Le Nôtre.

Upon his death just days before his 77th birthday, Louis was succeeded by his five-year-old great-grandson, Louis XV. All of his intermediate heirs predeceased him: his son Louis, le Grand Dauphin; the Dauphin's eldest son Louis, Duke of Burgundy; and Burgundy's eldest son Louis, Duke of Brittany (the elder brother of Louis XV).

Early years

Louis XIV was born on 5 September 1638 in the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye to Louis XIII and Anne of Austria. He was named Louis Dieudonné (Louis the God-given)  and also bore the traditional title of French heirs apparent: Dauphin.  At the time of his birth, his parents had been married for 23 years. His mother had experienced four stillbirths between 1619 and 1631. Leading contemporaries thus regarded him as a divine gift, and his birth a miracle of God.

Sensing imminent death, Louis XIII decided to put his affairs in order in the spring of 1643, when Louis XIV was four years old. In defiance of custom, which would have made Queen Anne the sole Regent of France, he decreed that a regency council would rule on his son's behalf. His lack of faith in Queen Anne's political abilities was the primary reason. He did, however, make the concession of appointing her head of the council.

Louis's relationship with his mother was uncommonly affectionate for the time. Contemporaries and eyewitnesses claimed that the Queen would spend all her time with Louis. Both were greatly interested in food and theatre, and it is highly likely that Louis developed these interests through his close relationship with his mother. This long-lasting and loving relationship can be evidenced by excerpts in Louis's journal entries:
"Nature was responsible for the first knots which tied me to my mother. But attachments formed later by shared qualities of the spirit are far more difficult to break than those formed merely by blood." 
It was his mother who gave Louis his belief in the absolute and divine power of his monarchical rule. 

In 1646 Nicolas V de Villeroy became the young king's tutor. Louis XIV became friends with his young children, particularly François de Villeroy, and divided his time between the Palais-Royal and the nearby Hotel de Villeroy.

Minority and the Fronde

Accession

On 13 May 1643, with Louis XIII dead, Queen Anne had her husband's will annulled by the Parlement de Paris (a judicial body comprising mostly nobles and high clergymen). This action abolished the regency council and made Anne sole Regent of France. Anne exiled some of her husband's ministers (Chavigny, Bouthilier) and she nominated Brienne as her minister of foreign affairs; she also nominated Saint Vincent de Paul as her spiritual advisor which helped her deal with religious policy and the Jansenism question. Anne kept the direction of religious policy strongly in her hand until 1661; her most important political decisions were to nominate Cardinal Mazarin as her chief minister and her decision to continue her husband's and Richelieu's policy, in spite of their persecution of her, for the sake of her son. Anne wanted to give her son an absolute authority and a victorious kingdom. Her choice of Mazarin was mainly because of his ability and his total dependence on her at least until 1653 when she was no longer regent. Anne protected Mazarin by arresting and exiling her followers who conspired against him in 1643: the Duke of Beaufort and Marie de Rohan.  She left the direction of the daily administration of policy to Cardinal Mazarin. The best example of Anne's statesmanship and the partial change in her heart towards her native Spain, is seen in her keeping of one of Richelieu's men the chancellor of France Pierre Séguier in his post. Séguier was the person who interrogated Anne in 1637, treating her like a "common criminal" as she herself described her treatment  following the discovery that she was giving military secrets and information to Spain. Anne was virtually under house arrest for a number of years during her husband's rule and was physically searched and almost insulted by the chancellor according to certain sources. By keeping him in his post, Anne was giving a sign that the interests of France and her son Louis were the guiding spirit of all her political and legal actions. Though not necessarily opposed to Spain, she sought to end the war with a French victory in order to establish a lasting peace between the Catholic nations; the queen also gave a partial Catholic orientation to France foreign policy which was felt by the Netherlands, the Protestant ally of France, which negotiated a separate peace with Spain in 1648.  In 1648, Anne and Mazarin successfully negotiated the Peace of Westphalia, which ended the Thirty Years' War in Germany. Its terms ensured Dutch independence from Spain, awarded some autonomy to the various German princes of the Holy Roman Empire, and granted Sweden seats on the Imperial Diet and territories to control the mouths of the Oder, Elbe, and Weser rivers. France, however, profited most from the settlement. Austria, ruled by the Habsburg Emperor Ferdinand III, ceded all Habsburg lands and claims in Alsace to France and acknowledged her de facto sovereignty over the Three Bishoprics of Metz, Verdun, and Toul. Moreover, eager to emancipate themselves from Habsburg domination, petty German states sought French protection. This anticipated the formation of the 1658 League of the Rhine, leading to the further diminution of Imperial power.
 
Early acts

As the Thirty Years' War came to an end, a civil war known as the ' (after the slings used to smash windows) erupted in France. It effectively checked France's ability to exploit the Peace of Westphalia. Anne and Mazarin had largely pursued the policies of Cardinal Richelieu, augmenting the Crown's power at the expense of the nobility and the '. Anne interfered much more in internal policy than foreign affairs; she was a very proud queen who insisted on the divine rights of the king of France. All this led her to advocate a forceful policy in all matters relating to the king's authority in a manner that was much more radical than the one proposed by Mazarin. The Cardinal depended totally on Anne support and had to use all his influence on the queen in order not to nullify but to restrain some of her radical actions. Anne imprisoned any aristocrat or member of parliament who challenged her will; her main aim was to transfer to her son an absolute authority in the matters of finance and justice. She went as far as jailing leaders of the Parlement of Paris and one of them even died in prison.     
The ', political heirs of a dissatisfied feudal aristocracy, sought to protect their traditional feudal privileges from an increasingly centralized royal government. Furthermore, they believed their traditional influence and authority was being usurped by the recently ennobled bureaucrats (the ', or "nobility of the robe") who administered the kingdom and on whom the monarchy increasingly began to rely. This belief intensified their resentment.

In 1648 Anne and Mazarin attempted to tax members of the '. The members not only refused to comply, but also ordered all of his earlier financial edicts burned. Buoyed by the victory of  (later known as ') at the Battle of Lens, Mazarin, on  Queen Anne's insistence, arrested certain members in a show of force.  The most important arrest from Anne's point of view concerned Pierre Broussel, one of the most important leaders in the '. People in France were complaining about the expansion of royal authority, the high rate of taxation and the reduction of the authority of "the Parlement de Paris" and other regional representatives entities. Paris erupted in rioting as a result and Anne was forced under intense pressure to liberate Broussel. A mob of angry Parisians broke into the royal palace and demanded to see their king. Led into the royal bedchamber, they gazed upon Louis, who was feigning sleep, were appeased, and quietly departed. The threat to the royal family prompted Anne to flee Paris with the king and his courtiers. Shortly thereafter, the conclusion of the Peace of Westphalia allowed Condé's army to return to aid Louis and his court. Condé's family was close to Anne at that period of time and he agreed to help her in her attempt to restore the king's authority.  The queen's army, headed by Condé, attacked the rebels in Paris,; the rebels were under the political control of Anne's old friend Marie de Rohan. Beaufort who escaped from the prison where Anne imprisoned him 5 years before, was the military leader in Paris under the nominal control of Conti. After a few battles a political compromise was reached; the Peace of Rueil was signed and the court returned to Paris. Unfortunately for Anne, her partial victory depended on Conde who wanted to control the queen and to destroy the influence of Mazarin. It was Conde's sister who pushed him to turn against the queen. After striking a deal with her old friend Marie de Rohan who was able to impose the nomination of  as minister of justice; Anne arrested Conde, his brother Armand de Bourbon, Prince of Conti and the husband of their sister Anne Genevieve de Bourbon, duchess of Longueville. This situation did not last very long and the unpopularity of Mazarin led to the creation of a coalition who was headed mainly by Marie de Rohan and the duchess of Longueville. This aristocratic coalition was strong enough to liberate the princes, exile Mazarin and to impose a condition of virtual house arrest on Queen Anne. All these events would be witnessed by Louis and would largely explain his later distrust of Paris and the higher aristocracy     "In one sense, Louis' childhood came to an end with the outbreak of the Fronde. It was not only that life became insecure and unpleasant – a fate meted out to many children in all ages – but that Louis had to be taken into the confidence of his mother and Mazarin and political and military matters of which he could have no deep understanding".  "The family home became at times a near-prison when Paris had to be abandoned, not in carefree outings to other chateaux but in humiliating flights".  The royal family was driven out of Paris twice in this manner, and at one point Louis XIV and Anne were held under virtual arrest in the royal palace in Paris. The Fronde years planted in Louis a hatred of Paris and a consequent determination to move out of the ancient capital as soon as possible, never to return. 

Just as the first ' (the ' of 1648–1649) ended, a second one (the ' of 1650–1653) began. Unlike that which preceded it, tales of sordid intrigue and half-hearted warfare characterized this second phase of upper-class insurrection. To the aristocracy, this rebellion represented a protest against and a reversal of their political demotion from vassals to courtiers. It was headed by the highest-ranking French nobles, among them Louis's uncle Gaston, Duke of Orléans, and first cousin Anne Marie Louise d'Orléans, Duchess of Montpensier, known as '; Princes of the Blood such as Condé, his brother Armand, Prince of Conti, and their sister the Duchess of Longueville; dukes of legitimised royal descent, such as Henri, Duke of Longueville, and François, Duke of Beaufort; so-called "foreign princes" such as Frédéric Maurice, Duke of Bouillon, his brother Marshal Turenne, and Marie de Rohan, Duchess of Chevreuse; and scions of France's oldest families, such as François de La Rochefoucauld.

Queen Anne played the most important role in defeating the Fronde because she wanted to transfer absolute authority to her son. In addition, most of the princes refused to deal with Mazarin, who went into exile for a number of years. The ' claimed to act on Louis's behalf and in his real interest against his mother and Mazarin. Queen Anne had a very close relationship with the Cardinal, and many observers believed that Mazarin became Louis XIV's stepfather by a secret marriage to Queen Anne.  However, Louis's coming-of-age and subsequent coronation deprived them of the ' pretext for revolt. The ' thus gradually lost steam and ended in 1653, when Mazarin returned triumphantly from exile. From that time till his death, Mazarin was in charge of foreign and financial policy without the daily supervision of Anne, who was no longer regent.  During this period, Louis fell in love with Mazarin's niece Marie Mancini, but Anne and Mazarin ended the king's infatuation by sending Mancini away from court to be married in Italy. While Mazarin might have been tempted for a short period of time to marry his niece to the King of France, Queen Anne was absolutely against this; she wanted to marry her son to the daughter of her brother, Philip IV of Spain, for both dynastic and political reasons. Mazarin soon supported the Queen's position because he knew that her support for his power and his foreign policy depended on making peace with Spain from a strong position and on the Spanish marriage. In addition, Mazarin's relations with Marie Mancini were not good and he did not trust her to support his position. All of Louis' tears and his supplications to his mother did not make her change her mind; the Spanish marriage was very important not only for its role in ending the war between France and Spain but also in the fact that much of the claims and objectives of Louis' foreign policy in the next 50 years would be based on this marriage. 

Personal reign and reforms

Coming of age and early reforms

Louis XIV was declared to have reached the age of majority in 1654. On the death of Mazarin in March 1661, Louis assumed personal control of the reins of government and astonished his court by declaring that he would rule without a chief minister: "Up to this moment I have been pleased to entrust the government of my affairs to the late Cardinal. It is now time that I govern them myself. You [he was talking to the secretaries and ministers of state] will assist me with your counsels when I ask for them. I request and order you to seal no orders except by 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".  Louis was able to capitalize on the widespread public yearning for law and order that resulted from prolonged foreign wars and domestic civil strife to further consolidate central political authority and reform at the expense of the feudal aristocracy. Praising his ability to choose and encourage men of talent, the historian Chateaubriand noted that "it is the voice of genius of all kinds which sounds from the tomb of Louis". 

Louis began his personal reign with administrative and fiscal reforms. In 1661, the treasury verged on bankruptcy. To rectify the situation, Louis chose Jean-Baptiste Colbert as Controller-General of Finances in 1665. However, Louis first had to neutralize Nicolas Fouquet, the Superintendent of Finances, in order to give Colbert a free hand. Although Fouquet's financial indiscretions were not really very different from Mazarin before him or Colbert after him, his ambition was worrying to Louis. He had, for example, built an opulent château at Vaux-le-Vicomte where he entertained Louis and his court ostentatiously, as if he were wealthier than the king himself. The court was left with the impression that the vast sums of money needed to support his lifestyle could only have been obtained through embezzlement of government funds. Fouquet appeared eager to succeed Mazarin and Richelieu in assuming power, and he indiscreetly purchased and privately fortified the remote island of Belle Île. These acts sealed his doom. Fouquet was charged with embezzlement. The Parlement found him guilty and sentenced him to exile. However, Louis altered the sentence to life-imprisonment and abolished Fouquet's post.

With Fouquet dismissed, Colbert reduced the national debt through more efficient taxation. The principal taxes included the aides and douanes (both customs duties), the gabelle (a tax on salt), and the taille (a tax on land).The taille was reduced at first, financial officials were forced to keep regular accounts, auctioning certain taxes instead of selling them privately to a favored few, revising inventories and removing unauthorized exemptions (for example in 1661 only 10 per cent from the royal domain reached the King). Reform proved difficult because the taille was levied by officers of the Crown who had purchased their post at a high price: punishment of abuses necessarily lowered the value of the post. Nevertheless, excellent results were achieved, the deficit of 1661 turned into a surplus in 1666. The interest of the debt was reduced from 52 millions to 24 millions livres. The taille was reduced to 42 millions in 1661 and 35 millions in 1665; finally the revenue from indirect taxation progressed from 26 millions to 55 millions. The revenues of the royal domain were raised from 80,000 livres in 1661 to 5,5 million livres in 1671. In 1661 the receipts were equivalent to 26 millions British pounds of which 10 millions reached the treasury. The expenditure was around 18 million pounds leaving a deficit of 8 million. In 1667 the net receipts had risen to 20 million pounds sterling while expenditure had fallen to 11 millions leaving a surplus of 9 million pounds. To support the reorganized and enlarged army, the panoply of Versailles, and the growing civil administration, the king needed a good deal of money. Finance was always the weak spot in the French monarchy. Methods of collecting taxes were costly and inefficient. Direct taxes passed through the hands of many intermediate officials; indirect taxes were collected by private concessionaries called tax farmers who made a substantial profit. The state always received far less than what the taxpayers actually paid. But the main weakness arose from an old bargain between the French crown and nobility; the king might raise without consent if only he refrained from taxing the nobles. Only the "unprivileged" classes paid direct taxes, and these came to mean the peasants only, since many bourgeois in one way or others obtained exemptions. The system was outrageously unjust in throwing a heavy tax burden on the poor and helpless. Later after 1700, the French ministers who were supported by Madame De Maintenon were able to convince the King to change his fiscal policy. Louis was willing enough to tax the nobles but was unwilling to fall under their control, and only towards the close of his reign, under extreme stress of war, was he able, for the first time in French History, to impose direct taxes on the aristocratic elements of the population. This was a step toward equality before the law and toward sound public finance, but so many concessions and exemptions were won by nobles and bourgeois that the reform lost much of its value.  Louis and Colbert also had wide-ranging plans to bolster French commerce and trade. Colbert's mercantilist administration established new industries and encouraged manufacturers and inventors, such as the Lyon silk manufacturers and the Gobelins manufactory, a producer of tapestries. He invited manufacturers and artisans from all over Europe to France, such as Murano glassmakers, Swedish ironworkers, and Dutch shipbuilders. In this way, he aimed to decrease foreign imports while increasing French exports, hence reducing the net outflow of precious metals from France.

Louis instituted reforms in military administration through Michel le Tellier and his son François-Michel le Tellier, Marquis de Louvois. They helped to curb the independent spirit of the nobility, imposing order on them at court and in the army. Gone were the days when generals protracted war at the frontiers while bickering over precedence and ignoring orders from the capital and the larger politico-diplomatic picture. The old military aristocracy (the Noblesse d'épée, or "nobility of the sword") ceased to have a monopoly over senior military positions and rank. Louvois in particular pledged himself to modernizing the army and re-organizing it into a professional, disciplined and well-trained force. He was devoted to the soldiers' material well-being and morale, and even tried to direct campaigns.

Relations with the major colonies

Legal matters did not escape Louis's attention, as is reflected in the numerous "Great Ordinances" he enacted. Pre-revolutionary France was a patchwork of legal systems, with as many legal customs as there were provinces, and two co-existing legal traditions—customary law in the north and Roman civil law in the south.  The 'Grande Ordonnance de Procédure Civile' of 1667, also known as the Code Louis, was a comprehensive legal code attempting a uniform regulation of civil procedure throughout legally irregular France. Among other things, it prescribed baptismal, marriage, and death records in the state's registers, not the church's, and also strictly regulated the right of the Parlements to remonstrate.  The Code Louis played an important part in French legal history as the basis for the Napoleonic code, itself the origin of many modern legal codes.

One of Louis's more infamous decrees was the Grande Ordonnance sur les Colonies of 1685, also known as the Code Noir ("black code"). Although it sanctioned slavery, it did attempt to humanise the practice by prohibiting the separation of families. Additionally, in the colonies, only Roman Catholics could own slaves, and these had to be baptised.

Louis ruled through a number of councils:
Conseil d'en haut ("High Council", concerning the most important matters of state)- composed of the king, the crown prince, the minister of finance or the controleur general des finances and finally the secretaries of state in charge of various departments. The members of that council were called ministers of state.
Conseil des depeches ("Council of Messages", concerning notices and administrative reports from the provinces).
Conseil de Conscience ("Council of Conscience", concerning religious affairs and episcopal appointments).
Conseil royal des finances ("Royal Council of Finances") who was headed by the "chef du conseil des finances" (an honorary post in most cases), one of the few posts in the council who where opened to the high aristocracy. 

Early wars in the Low Countries

Spain

The death of King Philip IV of Spain in 1665 precipitated the War of Devolution. In 1660 Louis married Philip IV's eldest daughter, Maria Theresa, as one of the provisions of the 1659 Treaty of the Pyrenees. The marriage treaty specified that Maria Theresa was to renounce all claims to Spanish territory for herself and all her descendants. Mazarin and Lionne, however, made the renunciation conditional on the full payment of a Spanish dowry of 500,000 écus.  The dowry was never paid and would later play a part persuading Charles II of Spain to leave his empire to Philip, Duke of Anjou (later Philip V of Spain), the grandson of Louis and Maria Theresa.

The War of Devolution did not focus on the payment of the dowry. Rather, Louis's pretext for war was the "devolution" of land. In Brabant, children of first marriages traditionally were not disadvantaged by their parents’ remarriages and still inherited property. Louis's wife was Philip IV's daughter by his first marriage, while the new King of Spain, Charles II, was his son by a subsequent marriage. Thus, Brabant allegedly "devolved" on Maria Theresa. This excuse led to France's attack on the Spanish Netherlands.

Relations with the Dutch

Internal problems in the Dutch Republic aided Louis's designs. The most prominent politician in the Dutch Republic at the time, the "Grand Pensionary" Johan de Witt, feared the ambition of the young William III, Prince of Orange, specifically dispossession of his supreme power and the restoration of the House of Orange to the influence it had enjoyed before the death of William II, Prince of Orange. The Dutch were thus initially more preoccupied with domestic affairs than the French advance into Spanish territory. Moreover, the French were nominally their allies against the English in the ongoing Second Anglo-Dutch War. Shocked by the rapidity of French successes and fearful of the future, the Dutch decided to abandon their nominal allies and made peace with England. Joined by Sweden, the English and Dutch formed a Triple Alliance in 1668. The threat of an escalation of the conflict in the Low Countries and a secret treaty partitioning the Spanish succession with Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I, the other major claimant to the throne of Spain, induced Louis to make peace.

The Triple Alliance did not last very long. In 1670 French gold bought the adherence of Charles II of England to the secret Treaty of Dover. France and England, along with certain Rhineland princes, declared war on the Dutch Republic in 1672, igniting the Franco-Dutch War. The rapid invasion and occupation of most of the Netherlands precipitated a coup that toppled De Witt and brought William III to power.

In 1674, when France lost the assistance of England, which sued for peace by the Treaty of Westminster, William III received the help of Spain, the Emperor Leopold I, and the rest of the Holy Roman Empire. Despite these diplomatic reversals, the French continued to triumph against overwhelming opposing forces. Within a few weeks, French forces led by Louis captured all of the Spanish-held Franche-Comté in 1674. Despite being greatly outnumbered, Condé trounced William III's coalition army of Austrians, Spaniards, and Dutchmen at the Battle of Seneffe, and prevented him from descending on Paris. Another outnumbered general, Turenne, conducted a daring and brilliant campaign in the winter of 1674–1675 against the Imperial armies under Raimondo Montecuccoli, driving them back across the Rhine river out of Alsace, which had been invaded. Through a series of feints, marches, and counter-marches in 1678, Louis besieged and captured Ghent. By placing Louis in a military position far superior to his enemies, these victories brought the war to a speedy end. Six years of war had exhausted Europe, and peace negotiations were soon concluded in 1678 with the Treaty of Nijmegen. Although Louis returned all Dutch territory he captured, he retained the Franche-Comté and gained more land in the Spanish Netherlands.

The conclusion of a general peace permitted Louis to intervene in the Scanian War in 1679 on behalf of his ally Sweden. He forced Brandenburg-Prussia to the peace table at the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye and imposed peace on Denmark-Norway by the Treaty of Fontainebleau and the Peace of Lund, all concluded in 1679.

The successful conclusion of the Treaty of Nijmegen enhanced French influence in Europe, but Louis was still not satisfied. In 1679 he dismissed his foreign minister Simon Arnauld, marquis de Pomponne, because he was seen as having compromised too much with the allies. Louis maintained the strength of his army, but in his next series of territorial claims, Louis avoided using military force alone. Rather, he combined it with legal pretexts in his efforts to augment the boundaries of his kingdom. Contemporary treaties were intentionally phrased ambiguously. Louis established the Chambers of Reunion to determine the full extent of his rights and obligations under those treaties.

Cities and territories such as Luxembourg and Casale were prized for their strategic position on the frontier and access to important waterways. Louis also sought Strasbourg, an important strategic crossing on the left bank of the Rhine and heretofore a Free Imperial City of the Holy Roman Empire, annexing it and other territories in 1681. Although a part of Alsace, Strasbourg was not part of Habsburg-ruled Alsace and was thus not ceded to France in the Peace of Westphalia. Following these annexations, Spain declared war, precipitating the War of the Reunions. However, the Spanish were rapidly defeated because the Emperor (distracted by the Great Turkish War) abandoned them, and the Dutch only supported them minimally. By the Truce of Ratisbon in 1684, Spain was forced to acquiesce in French occupation of most of the conquered territories for 20 years.  Louis's policy of the Réunions may have raised France to its greatest size and power during his reign, but it alienated much of Europe. This poor public opinion was compounded by French actions off the Barbary Coast and at Genoa. First, Louis had Algiers and Tripoli, two Barbary pirate strongholds, bombarded to obtain a favourable treaty and the liberation of Christian slaves. Next, in 1684, a punitive mission was launched against Genoa in retaliation for its support for Spain in previous wars. Although the Genoese submitted and the Doge led an official mission of apology to Versailles, France gained a reputation for brutality and arrogance. European apprehension at growing French might and the realisation of the extent of the dragonnades' effect (discussed below) led many states to abandon their alliance with France.  Accordingly, by the late 1680s, France became increasingly isolated in Europe.

Non-European relations and the colonies

French colonies multiplied in the Americas, Asia, and Africa during Louis's reign, and French explorers made important discoveries in North America. Louis Jolliet and Jacques Marquette discovered the Mississippi River in 1673. In 1682, René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, followed the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico and claimed the vast Mississippi basin in Louis's name, calling it Louisiane. French trading posts were also established in India at Chandernagore and Pondicherry, and in the Indian Ocean at Île Bourbon.

Meanwhile, diplomatic relations were initiated with distant countries. In 1669, Suleiman Aga led an Ottoman embassy to revive the old Franco-Ottoman alliance.  Then, in 1682, after the reception of the Moroccan embassy of Mohammed Tenim in France, Moulay Ismail, Sultan of Morocco, allowed French consular and commercial establishments in his country.  Louis once again received a Moroccan ambassador, Abdallah bin Aisha, in 1699. He also received a Persian embassy led by Mohammad Reza Beg in 1715.

From farther afield, Siam dispatched an embassy in 1684, reciprocated by the French magnificently the next year under Alexandre, Chevalier de Chaumont. This, in turn, was succeeded by another Siamese embassy under Kosa Pan superbly received at Versailles in 1686. Louis then sent another embassy in 1687 under Simon de la Loubère, and French influence grew at the Siamese court, which granted Mergui as a naval base to France. However, the death of Narai, King of Ayutthaya, the execution of his pro-French minister Constantine Phaulkon and the Siege of Bangkok in 1688 ended this era of French influence. 

France also attempted to participate actively in Jesuit missions to China. To break the Portuguese dominance there, Louis sent Jesuit missionaries to the court of the Kangxi Emperor in 1685: Jean de Fontaney, Joachim Bouvet, Jean-François Gerbillon, Louis Le Comte, and Claude de Visdelou).  Louis also received a Chinese Jesuit, Michael Shen Fu-Tsung, at Versailles in 1684.  Furthermore, Louis's librarian and translator Arcadio Huang was Chinese.  

Height of power

Centralisation of power

By the early 1680s Louis had greatly augmented French influence in the world. Domestically, he successfully increased the influence of the crown and its authority over the church and aristocracy, thus consolidating absolute monarchy in France.

Louis initially supported traditional Gallicanism, which limited papal authority in France, and convened an Assembly of the French clergy in November 1681. Before its dissolution eight months later, the Assembly had accepted the Declaration of the Clergy of France, which increased royal authority at the expense of papal power. Without royal approval, bishops could not leave France and appeals could not be made to the Pope. Additionally, government officials could not be excommunicated for acts committed in pursuance of their duties. Although the king could not make ecclesiastical law, all papal regulations without royal assent were invalid in France. Unsurprisingly, the pope repudiated the Declaration.

By attaching nobles to his court at Versailles, Louis achieved increased control over the French aristocracy. Apartments were built to house those willing to pay court to the king.  However, the pensions and privileges necessary to live in a style appropriate to their rank were only possible by waiting constantly on Louis. For this purpose, an elaborate court ritual was created where the king became the centre of attention and was observed throughout the day by the public. With his excellent memory, Louis could then see who attended him at court and who was absent, facilitating the subsequent distribution of favours and positions. Another tool Louis used to control his nobility was censorship, which often involved the opening of letters to discern their author's opinion of the government and king. Moreover, by entertaining, impressing, and domesticating them with extravagant luxury and other distractions, Louis not only cultivated public opinion of him, but also ensured the aristocracy remained under his scrutiny. Louis' extravagance at Versailles extended far beyond the scope of elaborate court rituals. In an excerpt from Diderot's Encyclopédie, Louis-Jean-Marie Daubenton recounts a story in which Louis took delivery of an African elephant as a gift.  This, along with the prohibition of private armies, prevented them from passing time on their own estates and in their regional power-bases, from which they historically waged local wars and plotted resistance to royal authority.  Louis thus compelled and seduced the old military aristocracy (the "nobility of the sword") into becoming his ceremonial courtiers, further weakening their power. In their place, Louis raised commoners or the more recently ennobled bureaucratic aristocracy (the "nobility of the robe"). He judged that royal authority thrived more surely by filling high executive and administrative positions with these men because they could be more easily dismissed than nobles of ancient lineage with entrenched influence. It is believed that Louis's policies were rooted in his experiences during the Fronde, when men of high birth readily took up the rebel cause against their king, who was actually the kinsman of some. This victory over the nobility may have then in fact ensured the end of major civil wars in France until the French Revolution about a century later.

Revocation of the Edict of Nantes

It has traditionally been suggested that the devout Madame de Maintenon pushed Louis to persecute Protestants and revoke the 1598 Edict of Nantes, which awarded Huguenots political and religious freedom, but her influence in the matter is now being questioned.  Louis himself saw the persistence of Protestantism as a disgraceful reminder of royal powerlessness. After all, the Edict was the pragmatic concession of his grandfather Henry IV to end the longstanding French Wars of Religion. An additional factor in Louis's thinking was the prevailing contemporary European principle to assure socio-political stability was cuius regio, eius religio ("whose realm, his religion"), the idea that the religion of the ruler should be the religion of the realm (as originally confirmed in central Europe in the Peace of Augsburg of 1555). 

Responding to petitions, Louis initially excluded Protestants from office, constrained the meeting of synods, closed churches outside Edict-stipulated areas, banned Protestant outdoor preachers, and prohibited domestic Protestant migration. He also disallowed Protestant-Catholic intermarriages where third parties objected, encouraged missions to the Protestants, and rewarded converts to Catholicism.  This discrimination did not encounter much Protestant resistance, and a steady conversion of Protestants occurred, especially among the noble elites.

In 1681, Louis dramatically increased his persecution of Protestants. The principle of cuius regio, eius religio generally had also meant that subjects who refused to convert could emigrate, but Louis banned emigration and effectively insisted that all Protestants must be converted. Secondly, following the proposal of René de Marillac and the Marquis of Louvois, he began quartering dragoons in Protestant homes. Although this was within his legal rights, the dragonnades inflicted severe financial strain on Protestants and atrocious abuse. Between 300,000 and 400,000 Huguenots converted, as this entailed financial rewards and exemption from the dragonnades. 

On 15 October 1685, Louis issued the Edict of Fontainebleau, which cited the redundancy of privileges for Protestants given their scarcity after the extensive conversions. The Edict of Fontainebleau revoked the Edict of Nantes, and repealed all the privileges that arose therefrom. By his edict, Louis no longer tolerated Protestant groups, pastors, or churches to exist in France. No further churches were to be constructed, and those already existing were to be demolished. Pastors could choose either exile or a secular life. Those Protestants who had resisted conversion were now to be baptised forcibly into the established church. 

Writers have debated Louis's reasons for issuing the Edict of Fontainebleau. He may have been seeking to placate Pope Innocent XI, with whom relations were tense and whose aid was necessary to determine the outcome of a succession crisis in the Electorate of Cologne. He may also have acted to upstage Emperor Leopold I and regain international prestige after the latter defeated the Turks without Louis's help. Otherwise, he may simply have desired to end the remaining divisions in French society dating to the Wars of Religion by fulfilling his coronation oath to eradicate heresy.  

Many historians have condemned the Edict of Fontainebleau as gravely harmful to France. In support, they cite the emigration of about 200,000 Huguenots (roughly one-fourth of the Protestant population, or 1% of the French population) who defied royal decrees, fled France for various Protestant states, and took their skills with them. On the other hand, there are historians who view this as an exaggeration. They argue that most of France's preeminent Protestant businessmen and industrialists converted to Catholicism and remained.  What is certain is that reaction to the Edict was mixed. Even while French Catholic leaders exulted, Pope Innocent XI still argued with Louis over Gallicanism and criticised the use of violence. Protestants across Europe were horrified at the treatment of their co-religionists, but most Catholics in France applauded the move. Nonetheless, what is sure is that Louis's public image in most of Europe, especially in Protestant regions, was dealt a severe blow.

In the end, however, despite renewed tensions with the Camisards of south-central France at the end of his reign, Louis may have helped ensure that his successor would experience fewer instances of the religion-based disturbances that had plagued his forebears. French society would sufficiently change by the time of his descendant Louis XVI to welcome toleration in the form of the 1787 Edict of Versailles, also known as the Edict of Tolerance. This restored to non-Catholics their civil rights and the freedom to worship openly. 

League of Augsburg

Causes and conduct of the war

The War of the League of Augsburg, which lasted from 1688 to 1697, initiated a period of decline in Louis's political and diplomatic fortunes. The conflict arose from two events in the Rhineland. First, in 1685, the Elector Palatine Charles II died. All that remained of his immediate family was Louis's sister-in-law, Elizabeth Charlotte. German law ostensibly barred her from succeeding to her brother's lands and electoral dignity, but it was unclear enough for arguments in favour of Elizabeth Charlotte to have a chance of success. Conversely, the princess was quite clearly entitled to a division of the family's personal property. Louis pressed her claims to land and chattels, hoping that the latter at least would be given to her.  Then, in 1688, Maximilian Henry of Bavaria, Archbishop of Cologne, an ally of France, died. The archbishopric had traditionally been held by the Wittelsbachs of Bavaria. However, the Bavarian claimant to replace Maximilian Henry, Prince Joseph Clemens of Bavaria, was at that time not more than 17 years old and not even ordained. Louis sought instead to install his own candidate, William Egon of Fürstenberg, to ensure the key Rhenish state remained an ally. 

In light of his foreign and domestic policies during the early 1680s, which were perceived as aggressive, Louis's actions fostered by the succession crises of the late 1680s created concern and alarm in much of Europe. This led to the formation of the 1686 League of Augsburg by the Holy Roman Emperor, Spain, Sweden, Saxony, and Bavaria. Their stated intention was to return France to at least the borders agreed to in the Treaty of Nijmegen.  Emperor Leopold I's persistent refusal to convert the Truce of Ratisbon into a permanent treaty fed Louis's fears that the Emperor would turn on France and attack the Reunions after settling his affairs in the Balkans. 

Another event that Louis found threatening was the Glorious Revolution of 1688 in England. Although King James II was Catholic, his two Anglican daughters, Mary and Anne, ensured the English people a Protestant succession. However, when James II's son James was born, he took precedence in the succession over his elder sisters. This seemed to herald an era of Catholic monarchs in England. Protestant lords took up arms and called on the Dutch Prince William III of Orange, grandson of Charles I of England, to come to their aid. He sailed for England with troops despite Louis's warning that France would regard it as a provocation. Witnessing numerous desertions and defections, even among those closest to him, James II fled England. Parliament declared the throne vacant, and offered it to James's daughter Mary II and his son-in-law and nephew William. Vehemently anti-French, William (now William III of England) pushed his new kingdoms into war, thus transforming the League of Augsburg into the Grand Alliance. Before this happened, Louis expected William's expedition to England to absorb his energies and those of his allies, so he dispatched troops to the Rhineland after the expiry of his ultimatum to the German princes requiring confirmation of the Truce of Ratisbon and acceptance of his demands about the succession crises. This military manoeuvre was also intended to protect his eastern provinces from Imperial invasion by depriving the enemy army of sustenance, thus explaining the pre-emptive scorched earth policy pursued in much of southwestern Germany (the "Devastation of the Palatinate"). 

French armies were generally victorious throughout the war because of Imperial commitments in the Balkans, French logistical superiority, and the quality of French generals such as Condé's famous pupil, François Henri de Montmorency-Bouteville, duc de Luxembourg. His triumphs at the Battles of Fleurus in 1690, Steenkerque in 1692, and Landen in 1693 preserved northern France from invasion. 
 Although an attempt to restore James II failed at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690, France accumulated a string of victories from Flanders in the north, Germany in the east, and Italy and Spain in the south, to the high seas and the colonies. Louis personally supervised the captures of Mons in 1691 and Namur in 1692. Luxembourg gave France the defensive line of the Sambre by capturing Charleroi in 1693. France also overran most of the Duchy of Savoy after the battles of Marsaglia and Staffarde in 1693. While naval stalemate ensued after the French victory at the Battle of Beachy Head in 1690 and the Allied victory at Barfleur-La Hougue in 1692, the Battle of Torroella in 1694 exposed Catalonia to French invasion, culminating in the capture of Barcelona. Although the Dutch captured Pondichéry in 1693, a French raid on the Spanish treasure port of Cartagena in 1697 yielded a fortune of 10 000 000 livres.

In July 1695, the city of Namur, occupied for three years by the French, was besieged by an allied army led by William III. Louis XIV ordered the surprise destruction of a Flemish city to divert the attention of these troops. This led to the bombardment of Brussels, in which 4-5000 buildings were destroyed, including the entire city-center. The strategy failed, as Namur fell three weeks later, but harmed Louis XIV's reputation: a century later, Napoleon deemed the bombardment "as barbarous as it was useless." 

Peace was broached by Sweden in 1690. And, by 1692, both sides evidently wanted peace, and secret bilateral talks began, but to no avail.  Louis tried to break up the alliance against him by dealing with individual opponents, but this did not achieve its aim until 1696, when the Savoyards agreed to the Treaty of Turin and switched sides. Thereafter, members of the League of Augsburg rushed to the peace table, and negotiations for a general peace began in earnest, culminating in the Treaty of Ryswick of 1697. 

Treaty of Ryswick

The Treaty of Ryswick ended the War of the League of Augsburg and disbanded the Grand Alliance. By manipulating their rivalries and suspicions, Louis divided his enemies and broke their power.

The treaty yielded many benefits for France. Louis secured permanent French sovereignty over all of Alsace, including Strasbourg, and established the Rhine as the Franco-German border to this day. Pondichéry and Acadia were returned to France, and Louis's de facto possession of Saint-Domingue was recognised as lawful. However, he returned Catalonia and most of the Reunions. French military superiority might have allowed him to press for more advantageous terms. Thus, his generosity to Spain with regard to Catalonia has been read as a concession to foster pro-French sentiment and may ultimately have induced King Charles II to name Louis's grandson Philip, Duke of Anjou, as heir to the throne of Spain.  In exchange for financial compensation, France renounced its interests in the Electorate of Cologne and the Palatinate. Lorraine, which had been occupied by the French since 1670, was returned to its rightful Duke Leopold, albeit with a right of way to the French military. William and Mary were recognised as joint sovereigns of the British Isles, and Louis withdrew support for James II. The Dutch were given the right to garrison forts in the Spanish Netherlands that acted as a protective barrier against possible French aggression. Though in some respects, the Treaty of Ryswick may appear a diplomatic defeat for Louis since he failed to place client rulers in control of the Palatinate or the Electorate of Cologne, he did in fact fulfil many of the aims laid down in his 1688 ultimatum.  In any case, peace in 1697 was desirable to Louis, since France was exhausted from the costs of the war.

War of the Spanish Succession

Causes and build-up to the war

By the time of the Treaty of Ryswick, the Spanish succession had been a source of concern to European leaders for well over forty years. King Charles II ruled a vast empire comprising Spain, Naples, Sicily, Milan, the Spanish Netherlands, and numerous Spanish colonies. He produced no children, however, and consequently had no direct heirs.

The principal claimants to the throne of Spain belonged to the ruling families of France and Austria. The French claim derived from Louis XIV's mother Anne of Austria (the older sister of Philip IV of Spain) and his wife Maria Theresa (Philip IV's eldest daughter). Based on the laws of primogeniture, France had the better claim as it originated from the eldest daughters in two generations. However, their renunciation of succession rights complicated matters. In the case of Maria Theresa, nonetheless, the renunciation was considered null and void owing to Spain's breach of her marriage contract with Louis. In contrast, no renunciations tainted the claims of the Emperor Leopold I's son Charles, Archduke of Austria, who was a grandson of Philip III's youngest daughter Maria Anna. The English and Dutch feared that a French or Austrian-born Spanish king would threaten the balance of power and thus preferred the Bavarian Prince Joseph Ferdinand, a grandson of Leopold I through his first wife Margaret Theresa of Spain (the younger daughter of Philip IV).

In an attempt to avoid war, Louis signed the Treaty of the Hague with William III of England in 1698. This agreement divided Spain's Italian territories between Louis's son le Grand Dauphin and the Archduke Charles, with the rest of the empire awarded to Joseph Ferdinand. William III consented to permitting the Dauphin's new territories to become part of France when the latter succeeded to his father's throne.  The signatories, however, omitted to consult the ruler of these lands, and Charles II was passionately opposed to the dismemberment of his empire. In 1699, he re-confirmed his 1693 will that named Joseph Ferdinand as his sole successor. 

Six months later, Joseph Ferdinand died. Therefore, in 1700, Louis and William III concluded a fresh partitioning agreement, the Treaty of London. This allocated Spain, the Low Countries, and the Spanish colonies to the Archduke. The Dauphin would receive all of Spain's Italian territories.  Charles II acknowledged that his empire could only remain undivided by bequeathing it entirely to a Frenchman or an Austrian. Under pressure from his German wife, Maria Anna of Neuburg, Charles II named the Archduke Charles as his sole heir.

Acceptance of the will of Charles II and consequences

 

On his deathbed in 1700, Charles II unexpectedly changed his will. The clear demonstration of French military superiority for many decades before this time, the pro-French faction at the court of Spain, and even Pope Innocent XII convinced him that France was more likely to preserve his empire intact. He thus offered the entire empire to the Dauphin's second son Philip, Duke of Anjou, provided it remained undivided. Anjou was not in the direct line of French succession, thus his accession would not cause a Franco-Spanish union. If Anjou refused, the throne would be offered to his younger brother Charles, Duke of Berry. If the Duke of Berry declined it, it would go to the Archduke Charles, then to the distantly related House of Savoy if Charles declined it. 

Louis was confronted with a difficult choice. He might agree to a partition of the Spanish possessions and avoid a general war, or accept Charles II's will and alienate much of Europe. Initially, Louis may have been inclined to abide by the partition treaties. However, the Dauphin's insistence persuaded Louis otherwise.  Moreover, Louis's foreign minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, marquis de Torcy, pointed out that war with the Emperor would almost certainly ensue whether Louis accepted the partition treaties or Charles II's will. He emphasised that, should it come to war, William III was unlikely to stand by France since he "made a treaty to avoid war and did not intend to go to war to implement the treaty". Indeed, in the event of a war, it might be preferable to be already in control of the disputed lands. Eventually, therefore, Louis decided to accept Charles II's will. Philip, Duke of Anjou, thus became Philip V, King of Spain.

Most European rulers accepted Philip as king, though some only reluctantly. Depending on one's views of the war as inevitable or not, Louis acted reasonably or arrogantly.  He confirmed that Philip V retained his French rights despite his new Spanish position. Admittedly, he may only have been hypothesising a theoretical eventuality and not attempting a Franco-Spanish union. But his actions were certainly not read as being disinterested. Moreover, Louis sent troops to the Spanish Netherlands to evict Dutch garrisons and secure Dutch recognition of Philip V. In 1701, Philip transferred the asiento (the right to supply slaves to Spanish colonies) to France, alienating English traders. As tensions mounted, Louis decided to acknowledge James Stuart, the son of James II, as king of England on the latter's death, infuriating William III. These actions enraged Britain and the Dutch Republic.  With the Holy Roman Emperor and the petty German states, they formed another Grand Alliance and declared war on France in 1702. French diplomacy, however, secured Bavaria, Portugal, and Savoy as Franco-Spanish allies. 

Commencement of fighting

Even before war was officially declared, hostilities began with Imperial aggression in Italy. When finally declared, the War of the Spanish Succession would last almost until Louis's death, at great cost to him and the kingdom of France.

The war began with French successes, however the joint talents of John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, and Eugene of Savoy checked these victories and broke the myth of French invincibility. The duo allowed the Palatinate and Austria to occupy Bavaria after their victory at the Battle of Blenheim. Maximilian II Emanuel, Elector of Bavaria, had to flee to the Spanish Netherlands. The impact of this victory won the support of Portugal and Savoy. Later, the Battle of Ramillies delivered the Low Countries up to the Allies, and the Battle of Turin forced Louis to evacuate Italy, leaving it open to Allied forces. Marlborough and Eugene of Savoy met again at the Battle of Oudenarde, which enabled them to mount an invasion of France.

Defeats, famine, and mounting debt greatly weakened France. Between 1693 and 1710, over two million people died in two famines, made worse as foraging armies seized food supplies from the villages.   In his desperation, Louis XIV even ordered a disastrous invasion of the English island of Guernsey in the autumn of 1704 with the aim of raiding their successful harvest. By the winter of 1708–1709, Louis was willing to accept peace at nearly any cost. He agreed that the entire Spanish empire should be surrendered to the Archduke Charles, and he also consented to return to the frontiers of the Peace of Westphalia, giving up all the territories he had acquired over sixty years of his reign. He could not speak for his grandson, however, and could not promise that Philip V would accept these terms. Thus, the Allies demanded that Louis single-handedly attack his own grandson to force these terms on him. If he could not achieve this within the year, the war would resume. Louis could not accept these terms. 

Turning point

The final phases of the War of the Spanish Succession demonstrated that the Allies could not maintain the Archduke Charles in Spain just as surely as France could not retain the entire Spanish inheritance for King Philip V. The Allies were definitively expelled from central Spain by the Franco-Spanish victories at the Battles of Villaviciosa and Brihuega in 1710. French forces elsewhere remained obdurate despite their defeats. The Allies suffered a Pyrrhic victory at the Battle of Malplaquet with 21,000 casualties, twice that of the French.  Eventually, France recovered its military pride with the decisive victory at Denain in 1712.

French military successes near the end of the war took place against the background of a changed political situation in Austria. In 1705, the Emperor Leopold I died. His elder son and successor, Joseph I, followed him in 1711. His heir was none other than the Archduke Charles, who secured control of all of his brother's Austrian land holdings. If the Spanish empire then fell to him, it would have resurrected a domain as vast as that of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V in the sixteenth century. To the maritime powers of Great Britain and the Dutch Republic, this would have been as undesirable as a Franco-Spanish union. 

Conclusion of peace

As a result of the fresh British perspective on the European balance of power, Anglo-French talks began that culminated in the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht between Louis, Philip V of Spain, Anne, Queen of Great Britain, and the Dutch Republic. In 1714, after losing Landau and Freiburg, the Holy Roman Emperor also made peace with France in the Treaties of Rastatt and Baden.

In the general settlement, Philip V retained Spain and its colonies, whereas Austria received the Spanish Netherlands and divided Spanish Italy with Savoy. Britain kept Gibraltar and Minorca. Louis agreed to withdraw his support for James Stuart, son of James II and pretender to the throne of Great Britain, and ceded Newfoundland, Rupert's Land, and Acadia in the Americas to Anne. Britain gained most from the Treaty of Utrecht, but the final terms were much more favourable to France than what was being discussed in peace negotiations in 1709 and 1710. France retained Île-Saint-Jean and Île Royale, and Louis did acquire a few minor European territories, such as the Principality of Orange and the Ubaye Valley, which covered transalpine passes into Italy. Thanks to Louis, his allies the Electors of Bavaria and Cologne were restored to their pre-war status and returned their lands. 

Personal life

Marriages and children

Louis and his wife Maria Theresa of Spain had six children from the marriage contracted for them in 1660. However, only one child, the eldest, survived to adulthood: Louis, le Grand Dauphin, known as Monseigneur. Maria Theresa died in 1683, whereupon Louis remarked that she had never caused him unease on any other occasion.

Despite evidence of affection early on in their marriage, Louis was never faithful to Maria Theresa. He took a series of mistresses, both official and unofficial. Among the better documented are Louise de La Vallière (with whom he had 6 children; 1661–67), Bonne de Pons d'Heudicourt (1665), Catherine Charlotte de Gramont (1665), Françoise-Athénaïs, marquise de Montespan (with whom he had 7 children; 1667–80), Anne de Rohan-Chabot (1669-75), Claude de Vin des Œillets (1 child born in 1676), Isabelle de Ludres (1675–78), and Marie Angélique de Scorailles (1679–81), who died at age 19 in childbirth. Through these liaisons, he produced numerous illegitimate children, most of whom he married to members of cadet branches of the royal family.

Louis proved relatively more faithful to his second wife, Françoise d'Aubigné, marquise de Maintenon.  He first met her through her work caring for his children by Madame de Montespan, noting the care she gave to his favorite, Louis Auguste, Duke of Maine.  He was at first put off by her strict religious practice, but warmed to her through the care for his children.  When he legitimized his children by Madame de Montespan on 20 Dec 1673, Françoise became the royal governess at Saint-Germain.  As governess, she was one of very few people who were permitted to speak to him as an equal, without limits.  It is believed that they were married secretly at Versailles on or around 10 October 1683Buckley, Veronica. Madame de Maintenon: The Secret Wife of Louis XIV. London: Bloomsbury, 2008 or January 1684. This marriage, though never announced or publicly discussed, was an open secret and lasted until his death. 

Piety and religion

Louis was a pious and devout king who saw himself as the head and protector of the Gallican Church. Louis made his devotions daily regardless of where he was, following the liturgical calendar regularly.  Under the influence of his very religious second wife, he became much stronger in the practice of his Catholic faith.  This included the banning of opera and comedy performances during Lent.  Towards the middle and the end of his reign, the centre for the King's religious observances was usually the Chapelle Royale at Versailles. Ostentation was a distinguishing feature of daily Mass, annual celebrations, such as those of Holy Week, and special ceremonies.  Louis established the Paris Foreign Missions Society, but his informal alliance with the Ottoman Empire was criticised for undermining Christendom. 

Patronage of the arts

Louis generously supported the royal court of France and those who worked under him. He brought the Académie Française under his patronage and became its "Protector". He allowed Classical French literature to flourish by protecting such writers as Molière, Racine and La Fontaine, whose works remain greatly influential to this day. Louis also patronised the visual arts by funding and commissioning various artists, such as Charles Le Brun, Pierre Mignard, Antoine Coysevox and Hyacinthe Rigaud, whose works became famous throughout Europe. In music, composers and musicians such as Jean-Baptiste Lully, Jacques Champion de Chambonnières, and François Couperin thrived. In 1661 he founded the Académie Royale de Danse and in 1669 the Académie d'Opéra, important driving events in the evolution of ballet.

Over the course of four building campaigns, Louis converted a hunting lodge built by Louis XIII into the spectacular Palace of Versailles. With the exception of the current Royal Chapel (built near the end of Louis's reign), the palace achieved much of its current appearance after the third building campaign, which was followed by an official move of the royal court to Versailles on 6 May 1682.

Versailles became a dazzling, awe-inspiring setting for state affairs and the reception of foreign dignitaries. At Versailles, the king alone commanded attention. Several reasons have been suggested for the creation of the extravagant and stately palace, as well as the relocation of the monarchy's seat. For example, the memoirist Saint-Simon speculated that Louis viewed Versailles as an isolated power center where treasonous cabals could be more readily discovered and foiled. Alternatively, there has been speculation that the revolt of the Fronde caused Louis to hate Paris, which he abandoned for a country retreat. However, his sponsorship of many public works in Paris, such as the establishment of a police and street-lighting,  lend little credence to this theory. As a further example of his continued care for the capital, Louis constructed the Hôtel des Invalides, a military complex and home to this day for officers and soldiers rendered infirm either by injury or old age. While pharmacology was still quite rudimentary in his day, the Invalides pioneered new treatments and set new standards for hospice treatment. The conclusion of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1668 also induced Louis to demolish the northern walls of Paris in 1670 and replace them with wide tree-lined boulevards. 

Louis also renovated and improved the Louvre and other royal residences. Gian Lorenzo Bernini was originally to plan additions to the Louvre, however his plans would have meant the destruction of much of the existing structure, replacing it with an Italian summer villa in the centre of Paris. Bernini's plans were eventually shelved in favour of Perrault's elegant colonnade. With the relocation of the court to Versailles, the Louvre was given over to the arts and the public. 
During his visit from Rome, Bernini also executed a renowned portrait bust of the king.

Image and depiction

Few rulers in world history have commemorated themselves in as grand a manner as Louis.  Louis used court ritual and the arts to validate and augment his control over France. With his support, Colbert established from the beginning of Louis's personal reign a centralised and institutionalised system for creating and perpetuating the royal image. The King was thus portrayed largely in majesty or at war, notably against Spain. This portrayal of the monarch was to be found in numerous media of artistic expression, such as painting, sculpture, theatre, dance, music, and the almanacs that diffused royal propaganda to the population at large.

Evolution of royal portraiture

Over his lifetime, Louis commissioned numerous works of art to portray himself, among them over 300 formal portraits. The earliest portrayals of Louis already followed the pictorial conventions of the day in depicting the child king as the majestically royal incarnation of France. This idealisation of the monarch continued in later works, which avoided depictions of the effect of the smallpox that Louis contracted in 1647. In the 1660s, Louis began to be shown as a Roman emperor, the god Apollo, or Alexander the Great, as can be seen in many works of Charles Le Brun, such as sculpture, paintings, and the decor of major monuments.

The depiction of the King in this manner focused on allegorical or mythological attributes, instead of attempting to produce a true likeness. As Louis aged, so too did the manner in which he was depicted. Nonetheless, there was still a disparity between realistic representation and the demands of royal propaganda. There is no better illustration of this than in Hyacinthe Rigaud's frequently-reproduced Portrait of Louis XIV of 1701, in which a 63-year-old Louis appears to stand on a set of unnaturally young legs. 

Rigaud's portrait exemplified the height of royal portraiture in Louis's reign. Although Rigaud crafted a credible likeness of Louis, the portrait was neither meant as an exercise in realism nor to explore Louis's personal character. Certainly, Rigaud was concerned with detail and depicted the King's costume with great precision, down to his shoe buckle.  However, Rigaud's intention was to glorify the monarchy. Rigaud's original, now housed in the Louvre, was originally meant as a gift to Louis's grandson, Philip V of Spain. However, Louis was so pleased with the work that he kept the original and commissioned a copy to be sent to his grandson. That became the first of many copies, both in full and half-length formats, to be made by Rigaud, often with the help of his assistants. The portrait also became a model for French royal and imperial portraiture down to the time of Charles X over a century later. In his work, Rigaud proclaims Louis's exalted royal status through his elegant stance and haughty expression, the royal regalia and throne, rich ceremonial fleur-de-lys robes, as well as the upright column in the background, which, together with the draperies, serves to frame this image of majesty.

Other works of art

In addition to portraits, Louis commissioned at least twenty statues of himself in the 1680s to stand in Paris and provincial towns as physical manifestations of his rule. He also commissioned "war artists" to follow him on campaigns to document his military triumphs. To remind the people of these triumphs, Louis erected permanent triumphal arches in Paris and the provinces for the first time since the decline of the Roman Empire. Louis's reign marked the birth and infancy of the art of medallions. Sixteenth-century rulers had often issued medals in small numbers to commemorate the major events of their reigns. Louis, however, struck more than 300 to celebrate the story of the King in bronze that were enshrined in thousands of households throughout France. He also used tapestries as a medium of exalting the monarchy. Tapestries could be allegorical, depicting the elements or seasons, or realist, portraying royal residences or historical events. They were among the most significant means to spread royal propaganda prior to the construction of the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. 

Ballet

Louis loved ballet and frequently danced in court ballets during the early half of his reign. In general, Louis was an eager dancer who performed 80 roles in 40 major ballets. This approaches the career of a professional ballet dancer.. Fulltext: Ebsco His choices were strategic and varied. He danced four parts in three of Molière's comédies-ballets, which are plays accompanied by music and dance. Louis played an Egyptian in Le Mariage forcé in 1664, a Moorish gentleman in Le Sicilien in 1667, and both Neptune and Apollo in Les Amants magnifiques in 1670.

He sometimes danced leading roles which were suitably royal or godlike (such as Neptune, Apollo, or the Sun). At other times, he would adopt mundane roles before appearing at the end in the lead role. It is considered that, at all times, he provided his roles with sufficient majesty and drew the limelight with his flair for dancing. For Louis, ballet may not have merely been a tool for manipulation in his propaganda machinery. The sheer number of performances he gave as well as the diversity of roles he played may serve to indicate a deeper understanding and interest in the art form.

Unofficial image

Besides the official depiction and image of Louis, his subjects also followed a non-official discourse consisting mainly of clandestine publications, popular songs, and rumors that provided an alternative interpretation of Louis and his government. They often focused on the miseries arising from poor government, but also carried the hope for a better future when Louis escaped the malignant influence of his ministers and mistresses and took the government into his own hands. On the other hand, petitions addressed either directly to Louis or to his ministers exploited the traditional imagery and language of monarchy. These varying interpretations of Louis abounded in self-contradictions that reflected the people's amalgamation of their everyday experiences with the idea of monarchy. 

In fiction

Alexandre Dumas portrayed Louis in his two sequels to The Three Musketeers: first as a child in Twenty Years After, then as a young man in The Vicomte de Bragelonne, in which he is a central character.  The final part of the latter novel recounts the legend that a mysterious prisoner in an iron mask was actually Louis's twin brother and has spawned numerous film adaptations generally titled The Man in the Iron Mask.

In 1910, the American historical novelist Charles Major wrote "The Little King: A Story of the Childhood of King Louis XIV". Louis is a major character in the 1959 historical novel "Angélique et le Roy" ("Angélique and the King"), part of the Angelique Series. The protagonist, a strong-willed lady at Versailles, rejects the King's advances and refuses to become his mistress. A later book, the 1961 "Angélique se révolte" ("Angélique in Revolt") details the dire consequences of her defying this powerful monarch.

A character based on Louis plays an important role in The Age of Unreason, a series of four alternate history novels written by American science fiction and fantasy author Gregory Keyes.

While The Taking of Power by Louis XIV, directed by Roberto Rossellini in 1966, shows Louis's rise to power after the death of Cardinal Mazarin, Le Roi Danse (The King Dances), directed by Gérard Corbiau in 2000, reveals Louis through the eyes of Jean-Baptiste Lully, his court musician. Julian Sands portrayed Louis in Roland Jaffe's Vatel in 2000.

Louis features significantly in Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, specifically The Confusion, the greater part of which takes place at Versailles.

In the 39 Clues series universe, it has been noted that Louis was part of the Cahill branch, Tomas.

The 15-year-old Louis XIV, as played by the Irish actor Robert Sheehan, was a major character of the short-lived historical fantasy series Young Blades from January to June 2005.

George Blagden portrayed Louis XIV in the Canal+ series Versailles.

Health and death

Despite the image of a healthy and virile king that Louis sought to project, evidence exists to suggest that Louis's health was not all that good. He had many ailments, for example, that are symptomatic of diabetes, as confirmed in reports of suppurating periostitis in 1678, dental abscesses in 1696, along with recurring boils, fainting spells, gout, dizziness, hot flushes, and headaches (cephalalgias). From 1647 to 1711, the three chief physicians to the king (Antoine Vallot, Antoine d'Aquin, and Guy-Crescent Fagon) recorded all of his health problems in the Journal de Santé du Roi (Journal of the King's Health), a daily report of his health. On 18 November 1686, Louis underwent a painful operation for an anal fistula that was performed by the surgeon Charles Felix de Tassy, who prepared a specially shaped curved scalpel for the occasion. The wound took more than two months to heal. 

After 72 years on the throne, Louis died of gangrene at Versailles on 1 September 1715, four days before his 77th birthday. Enduring much pain in his last days, he finally "yielded up his soul without any effort, like a candle going out" while reciting the psalm Domine, ad adjuvandum me festina (O Lord, make haste to help me).  His body was laid to rest in Saint-Denis Basilica outside Paris. It remained there undisturbed for about 80 years until revolutionaries exhumed and destroyed all the remains to be found in the Basilica. 

Succession

Louis outlived most of his immediate legitimate family. His last surviving son, the Dauphin, died in 1711. Barely a year later, the Duke of Burgundy, the eldest of the Dauphin's three sons and then heir to Louis, followed his father. Burgundy's elder son, Louis, Duke of Brittany, joined them a few weeks later. Thus, on his deathbed, Louis's heir was his five year old great-grandson, Louis, Duke of Anjou, Burgundy's youngest son.

Louis foresaw a minority and sought to restrict the power of his nephew Philip II, Duke of Orléans who, as closest surviving legitimate relative in France, would become the prospective Louis XV's regent. Accordingly, he created a regency council as Louis XIII did in anticipation of his own minority with some power vested in his illegitimate son Louis-Auguste de Bourbon, Duke of Maine. 

Orléans, however, had Louis's will annulled by the Parlement of Paris after his death and made himself sole regent. He stripped Maine and his brother, Louis-Alexandre, Count of Toulouse, of the rank of Prince of the Blood, which Louis had granted them, and significantly reduced Maine's power and privileges. 

Legacy

Reputation

According to Philippe de Dangeau's Journal, Louis on his deathbed advised his heir with these words: Do not follow the bad example which I have set you; I have often undertaken war too lightly and have sustained it for vanity. Do not imitate me, but be a peaceful prince, and may you apply yourself principally to the alleviation of the burdens of your subjects 

Some historians point out that it was a customary demonstration of piety in those days to exaggerate one's sins. Thus they do not place much emphasis on Louis's deathbed declarations in assessing his accomplishments. Rather, they focus on military and diplomatic successes such as how he placed a French prince on the Spanish throne. This, they contend, ended the threat of an aggressive Spain that historically interfered in domestic French politics. These historians also emphasise the effect of Louis's wars in expanding France's boundaries and creating more defensible frontiers that preserved France from invasion until the Revolution. Arguably, Louis also applied himself indirectly to "the alleviation of the burdens of [his] subjects." For example, Louis patronised the arts, encouraged industry, fostered trade and commerce, and sponsored the founding of an overseas empire. Moreover, the significant reduction in civil wars and aristocratic rebellions are seen by these historians as the result of Louis's consolidation of royal authority over feudal elites.  In their opinion, his early reforms centralised France and marked the birth of the modern French state. They regard the political and military victories as well as numerous cultural achievements as the means by which Louis helped raise France to a preeminent position in Europe.  Europe came to admire France for its military and cultural successes, power, and sophistication. Europeans generally began to emulate French manners, values, goods, and deportment. French became the universal language of the European elite.

Louis's detractors have argued that his considerable foreign, military, and domestic expenditure impoverished and bankrupted France. His supporters, however, distinguish the state, which was impoverished, from France, which was not. As evidence in support, they cite the literature of the time, such as the social commentary in Montesquieu's Persian Letters. 

Alternatively, Louis's critics attribute the social upheaval culminating in the French Revolution to his failure to reform French institutions while the monarchy was still secure. But, other scholars opine that there was little reason to reform institutions which largely worked well under him. They also maintain that events occurring almost eighty years after his death were not reasonably foreseeable to Louis and that in any case his successors had sufficient time to initiate reforms of their own. 

Louis has often been criticised for his vanity. The memoirist Saint-Simon, who claimed that Louis slighted him, criticised him thus: There was nothing he liked so much as flattery, or, to put it more plainly, adulation; the coarser and clumsier it was, the more he relished it. For his part, Voltaire saw Louis's vanity as the cause for his bellicosity:It is certain that he passionately wanted glory, rather than the conquests themselves. In the acquisition of Alsace and half of Flanders, and of all of Franche-Comté, what he really liked was the name he made for himself.; 

Nonetheless, Louis has also received praise. The anti-Bourbon Napoleon described him not only as "a great king," but also as "the only King of France worthy of the name."  Leibniz, the German Protestant philosopher, commended him as "one of the greatest kings that ever was."  And Lord Acton admired him as "by far the ablest man who was born in modern times on the steps of a throne."  The historian and philosopher Voltaire wrote "His name can never be pronounced without respect and without summoning the image of an eternally memorable age".  Voltaire's history, The Age of Louis XIV, named Louis' reign as not only one of the four great ages in which reason and culture flourished, but the greatest ever.  

In 1848 at Nuneham House, a piece of Louis' mummified heart, taken from his tomb and kept in a silver locket by Lord Harcourt, Archbishop of York, was shown to the Dean of Westminster, William Buckland, who ate it. 

Quotes

Numerous quotes have been attributed to Louis XIV by legend. He supposedly said: "I am the state" (l'état, c'est moi).  He did say, "Every time I appoint someone to a vacant position, I make a hundred unhappy and one ungrateful."     Louis is recorded by numerous eyewitnesses as having said on his deathbed: "" ("I depart, but the State shall always remain.") 

Titles, styles, honours and arms

Titles and styles

*5 September 1638 – 14 May 1643 His Royal Highness The Dauphin of France
*14 May 1643 – 1 September 1715 His Majesty The King
Louis's formal style was "Louis XIV, par la grâce de Dieu, roi de France et de Navarre", or "Louis XIV, by the Grace of God, King of France and of Navarre".

Arms

Order of Saint Louis

On 5 April 1693, Louis also founded the Royal and Military Order of Saint Louis (), a military Order of Chivalry.   He named it after Louis IX and intended it as a reward for outstanding officers. It is notable as the first decoration that could be granted to non-nobles and is roughly the forerunner of the Légion d'honneur, with which it shares the red ribbon (though the Légion d'honneur is awarded to military personnel and civilians alike).

Family 

Ancestors 

Patrilineal descent 

Issue 

Legitimate children of Louis XIV of France

Illegitimate children of Louis XIV of France

Note: This is an incomplete list of Louis XIV's illegitimate children. He reputedly had more, but the difficulty in fully documenting all such births restricts the list only to the better-known and legitimised. Charles II (29 May 1630 – 6 February 1685) was monarch of the three kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland.

Charles II's father, Charles I, was executed at Whitehall on 30 January 1649, at the climax of the English Civil War. Although the Parliament of Scotland proclaimed Charles II King on 5 February 1649, England entered the period known as the English Interregnum or the English Commonwealth, and the country was a de facto republic, led by Oliver Cromwell. Cromwell defeated Charles II at the Battle of Worcester on 3 September 1651, and Charles fled to mainland Europe. Cromwell became virtual dictator of England, Scotland and Ireland, and Charles spent the next nine years in exile in France, the Dutch Republic, and the Spanish Netherlands.

A political crisis that followed the death of Cromwell in 1658 resulted in the restoration of the monarchy, and Charles was invited to return to Britain. On 29 May 1660, his 30th birthday, he was received in London to public acclaim. After 1660, all legal documents were dated as if he had succeeded his father as king in 1649.

Charles's English parliament enacted laws known as the Clarendon Code, designed to shore up the position of the re-established Church of England. Charles acquiesced to the Clarendon Code even though he favoured a policy of religious tolerance. The major foreign policy issue of his early reign was the Second Anglo-Dutch War. In 1670, he entered into the secret treaty of Dover, an alliance with his first cousin King Louis XIV of France. Louis agreed to aid him in the Third Anglo-Dutch War and pay him a pension, and Charles secretly promised to convert to Catholicism at an unspecified future date. Charles attempted to introduce religious freedom for Catholics and Protestant dissenters with his 1672 Royal Declaration of Indulgence, but the English Parliament forced him to withdraw it. In 1679, Titus Oates's revelations of a supposed "Popish Plot" sparked the Exclusion Crisis when it was revealed that Charles's brother and heir (James, Duke of York) was a Catholic. The crisis saw the birth of the pro-exclusion Whig and anti-exclusion Tory parties. Charles sided with the Tories, and, following the discovery of the Rye House Plot to murder Charles and James in 1683, some Whig leaders were executed or forced into exile. Charles dissolved the English Parliament in 1681, and ruled alone until his death on 6 February 1685. He was received into the Roman Catholic Church on his deathbed.

Charles was popularly known as the Merry Monarch, in reference to both the liveliness and hedonism of his court and the general relief at the return to normality after over a decade of rule by Oliver Cromwell and the Puritans. Charles's wife, Catherine of Braganza, bore no live children, but Charles acknowledged at least twelve illegitimate children by various mistresses. He was succeeded by his brother James.

Early life, civil war, and exile 

Charles was born in St James's Palace on 29 May 1630. His parents were Charles I (who ruled the three kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland) and Henrietta Maria (the sister of the French king Louis XIII). Charles was their second son and child. Their first son was born about a year before Charles but died within a day. England, Scotland and Ireland were respectively predominantly Anglican, Presbyterian and Roman Catholic. Charles was baptised in the Chapel Royal on 27 June by the Anglican Bishop of London, William Laud, and brought up in the care of the Protestant Countess of Dorset, though his godparents included his maternal uncle and grandmother, Marie de' Medici, both of whom were Catholics.  At birth, Charles automatically became Duke of Cornwall and Duke of Rothesay, along with several other associated titles. At or around his eighth birthday, he was designated Prince of Wales, though he was never formally invested with the Honours of the Principality of Wales.

During the 1640s, when Charles was still young, his father fought Parliamentary and Puritan forces in the English Civil War. Charles accompanied his father during the Battle of Edgehill and, at the age of fourteen, participated in the campaigns of 1645, when he was made titular commander of the English forces in the West Country.  By Spring 1646, his father was losing the war, and Charles left England due to fears for his safety, setting off from Falmouth after staying at Pendennis Castle, going first to the Isles of Scilly, then to Jersey, and finally to France, where his mother was already living in exile and his first cousin, eight-year-old Louis XIV, was king. 

In 1648, during the Second English Civil War, Charles moved to The Hague, where his sister Mary and his brother-in-law William II, Prince of Orange, seemed more likely to provide substantial aid to the royalist cause than the Queen's French relations. However, the royalist fleet that came under Charles's control was not used to any advantage, and did not reach Scotland in time to join up with the royalist Engagers army of the Duke of Hamilton, before it was defeated at the Battle of Preston by the Parliamentarians.

At The Hague, Charles had a brief affair with Lucy Walter, who later falsely claimed that they had secretly married.  Her son, James Crofts (afterwards Duke of Monmouth and Duke of Buccleuch), was one of Charles's many illegitimate children who became prominent in British society.

Charles I surrendered in 1646. He escaped and was recaptured in 1648. Despite his son's diplomatic efforts to save him, Charles I was beheaded in January 1649, and England became a republic. On 5 February, the Covenanter Parliament of Scotland had proclaimed Charles II "King of Great Britain, France and Ireland" at the Mercat Cross, Edinburgh, but refused to allow him to enter Scotland unless he accepted Presbyterianism throughout Britain and Ireland.

 When negotiations stalled, Charles authorised General Montrose to land in the Orkney Islands with a small army to threaten the Scots with invasion, in the hope of forcing an agreement more to his liking. Montrose feared that Charles would accept a compromise, and so chose to invade mainland Scotland anyway. He was captured and executed. Charles reluctantly promised that he would abide by the terms of a treaty agreed between him and the Scots Parliament at Breda, and support the Solemn League and Covenant, which authorised Presbyterian church governance across Britain. Upon his arrival in Scotland on 23 June 1650, he formally agreed to the Covenant; his abandonment of Episcopal church governance, although winning him support in Scotland, left him unpopular in England. Charles himself soon came to despise the "villainy" and "hypocrisy" of the Covenanters. 

On 3 September 1650, the Covenanters were defeated at the Battle of Dunbar by a much smaller force led by Oliver Cromwell. The Scots forces were divided into royalist Engagers and Presbyterian Covenanters, who even fought each other. Disillusioned by the Covenanters, in October Charles attempted to escape from them and rode north to join with an Engager force, an event which became known as "the Start", but within two days the Presbyterians had caught up with and recovered him.  Nevertheless, the Scots remained Charles's best hope of restoration, and he was crowned King of Scotland at Scone Abbey on 1 January 1651. With Cromwell's forces threatening Charles's position in Scotland, it was decided to mount an attack on England. With many of the Scots (including Lord Argyll and other leading Covenanters) refusing to participate, and with few English royalists joining the force as it moved south into England, the invasion ended in defeat at the Battle of Worcester on 3 September 1651, after which Charles eluded capture by hiding in the Royal Oak at Boscobel House. Through six weeks of narrow escapes Charles managed to flee England in disguise, landing in Normandy on 16 October, despite a reward of £1,000 on his head, risk of death for anyone caught helping him and the difficulty in disguising Charles, who, at over 6 ft, was unusually tall. 

Cromwell was appointed Lord Protector of England, Scotland and Ireland, effectively placing the British Isles under military rule. Impoverished, Charles could not obtain sufficient support to mount a serious challenge to Cromwell's government. Despite the Stuart family connections through Henrietta Maria and the Princess of Orange, France and the Dutch Republic allied themselves with Cromwell's government from 1654, forcing Charles to turn for aid to Spain, which at that time ruled the Southern Netherlands. Charles raised a ragtag army from his exiled subjects; this small, underpaid, poorly equipped, and ill-disciplined force formed the nucleus of the post-Restoration army.

Restoration 

After the death of Cromwell in 1658, Charles's chances of regaining the Crown at first seemed slim as Cromwell was succeeded as Lord Protector by his son, Richard. However, the new Lord Protector had no power base in either Parliament or the New Model Army. He was forced to abdicate in 1659 and the Protectorate was abolished. During the civil and military unrest which followed, George Monck, the Governor of Scotland, was concerned that the nation would descend into anarchy. Monck and his army marched into the City of London and forced the Rump Parliament to re-admit members of the Long Parliament excluded in December 1648 during Pride's Purge. The Long Parliament dissolved itself and for the first time in almost 20 years, there was a general election.  The outgoing Parliament defined the electoral qualifications so as to ensure, as they thought, the return of a Presbyterian majority.

The restrictions against royalist candidates and voters were widely ignored, and the elections resulted in a House of Commons which was fairly evenly divided on political grounds between Royalists and Parliamentarians and on religious grounds between Anglicans and Presbyterians. The new so-called Convention Parliament assembled on 25 April 1660, and soon afterwards received news of the Declaration of Breda, in which Charles agreed, amongst other things, to pardon many of his father's enemies. The English Parliament resolved to proclaim Charles king and invite him to return, a message that reached Charles at Breda on 8 May 1660. In Ireland, a convention had been called earlier in the year, and on 14 May it declared for Charles as King.

He set out for England from Scheveningen, arrived in Dover on 25 May 1660 and reached London on 29 May, his 30th birthday. Although Charles and Parliament granted amnesty to Cromwell's supporters in the Act of Indemnity and Oblivion, 50 people were specifically excluded. In the end nine of the regicides were executed: they were hanged, drawn and quartered; others were given life imprisonment or simply excluded from office for life. The bodies of Oliver Cromwell, Henry Ireton, and John Bradshaw were subjected to the indignity of posthumous decapitations.

Charles agreed to the abolition of feudal dues; in return, the English Parliament granted him an annual income to run the government of £1.2 million, generated largely from customs and excise duties. The grant, however, proved to be insufficient for most of Charles's reign. The sum was only an indication of the maximum the King was allowed to withdraw from the Treasury each year; for the most part, the actual revenue was much lower, which led to mounting debts, and further attempts to raise money through poll taxes, land taxes and hearth taxes.

In the later half of 1660, Charles's joy at the Restoration was tempered by the deaths of his youngest brother, Henry, and sister, Mary, of smallpox. At around the same time, Anne Hyde, the daughter of the Lord Chancellor, Edward Hyde, revealed that she was pregnant by Charles's brother, James, whom she had secretly married. Edward Hyde, who had not known of either the marriage or the pregnancy, was created Earl of Clarendon and his position as Charles's favourite minister was strengthened. 

Clarendon Code 

The Convention Parliament was dissolved in December 1660, and, shortly after the coronation, the second English Parliament of the reign assembled. Dubbed the Cavalier Parliament, it was overwhelmingly Royalist and Anglican. It sought to discourage non-conformity to the Church of England, and passed several acts to secure Anglican dominance. The Corporation Act 1661 required municipal officeholders to swear allegiance; the Act of Uniformity 1662 made the use of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer compulsory; the Conventicle Act 1664 prohibited religious assemblies of more than five people, except under the auspices of the Church of England; and the Five Mile Act 1665 prohibited expelled non-conforming clergymen from coming within five miles (8 km) of a parish from which they had been banished. The Conventicle and Five Mile Acts remained in effect for the remainder of Charles's reign. The Acts became known as the "Clarendon Code", after Lord Clarendon, even though he was not directly responsible for them and even spoke against the Five Mile Act.

The Restoration was accompanied by social change. Puritanism lost its momentum. Theatres reopened after having been closed during the protectorship of Oliver Cromwell, and bawdy "Restoration comedy" became a recognisable genre. Theatre licences granted by Charles required that female parts be played by "their natural performers", rather than by boys as was often the practice before; and Restoration literature celebrated or reacted to the restored court, which included libertines like John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester. Of Charles II, Wilmot supposedly said:
We have a pretty witty king,
Whose word no man relies on,
He never said a foolish thing,
And never did a wise one" 
to which Charles supposedly riposted, "That's true, for my words are my own, but my actions are those of my ministers".

Great Plague and Great Fire 

In 1665, Charles was faced with a great health crisis: the Great Plague of London. The death toll reached a peak of 7,000 per week in the week of 17 September. Charles, with his family and court, fled London in July to Salisbury; Parliament met in Oxford. All attempts by London public health officials to contain the disease failed, and the plague spread rapidly.

Adding to London's woes, but marking the end of the plague, was what later became known as the Great Fire of London, which started on 2 September 1666. The fire consumed about 13,200 houses and 87 churches, including St Paul's Cathedral. Charles and his brother James joined and directed the fire-fighting effort. The public blamed Catholic conspirators for the fire,  although it had actually started in a bakehouse in Pudding Lane.

Foreign and colonial policy 

Since 1640, Portugal had been fighting a war against Spain to restore its independence after a dynastic union of sixty years between the crowns of Spain and Portugal. Portugal had been helped by France, but in the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659 Portugal was abandoned by its French ally. Negotiations with Portugal for Charles's marriage to Catherine of Braganza began during his father's reign and upon the restoration, Queen Luísa of Portugal, acting as regent, reopened negotiations with England that resulted in an alliance. On 23 June 1661, a marriage treaty was signed, Catherine's dowry securing to England Tangier (in North Africa) and the Seven islands of Bombay (the latter having a major influence on the development of the British Empire in India), together with trading privileges in Brazil and the East Indies, religious and commercial freedom in Portugal and two million Portuguese crowns (about £300,000); while Portugal obtained military and naval support against Spain and liberty of worship for Catherine. Catherine journeyed from Portugal to Portsmouth on 13–14 May 1662, but was not visited by Charles there until 20 May. The next day the couple were married at Portsmouth in two ceremonies – a Catholic one conducted in secret, followed by a public Anglican service.

In an unpopular move, also in 1662, Charles sold Dunkirk to his first cousin King Louis XIV of France for about £375,000. The channel port, although a valuable strategic outpost, was a drain on Charles's limited finances.

Before Charles's restoration, the Navigation Acts of 1650 had hurt Dutch trade by giving English vessels a monopoly, and had started the First Dutch War (1652–1654). To lay foundations for a new beginning, envoys of the States General appeared in November 1660 with the Dutch Gift. The Second Dutch War (1665–1667) was started by English attempts to muscle in on Dutch possessions in Africa and North America. The conflict began well for the English, with the capture of New Amsterdam (renamed New York in honour of Charles's brother James, Duke of York) and a victory at the Battle of Lowestoft, but in 1667 the Dutch launched a surprise attack on the English (the Raid on the Medway) when they sailed up the River Thames to where a major part of the English fleet was docked. Almost all of the ships were sunk except for the flagship, Royal Charles, which was taken back to the Netherlands as a trophy. The Second Dutch War ended with the signing of the Treaty of Breda.

As a result of the Second Dutch War, Charles dismissed Lord Clarendon, whom he used as a scapegoat for the war. Clarendon fled to France when impeached for high treason (which carried the penalty of death). Power passed to five politicians known collectively by a whimsical acronym as the Cabal—Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley (afterwards Earl of Shaftesbury) and Lauderdale. In fact, the Cabal rarely acted in concert, and the court was often divided between two factions led by Arlington and Buckingham, with Arlington the more successful. 

In 1668, England allied itself with Sweden, and with its former enemy the Netherlands, to oppose Louis XIV in the War of Devolution. Louis made peace with the Triple Alliance, but he continued to maintain his aggressive intentions towards the Netherlands. In 1670, Charles, seeking to solve his financial troubles, agreed to the Treaty of Dover, under which Louis XIV would pay him £160,000 each year. In exchange, Charles agreed to supply Louis with troops and to announce his conversion to Catholicism "as soon as the welfare of his kingdom will permit". Louis was to provide him with 6,000 troops to suppress those who opposed the conversion. Charles endeavoured to ensure that the Treaty—especially the conversion clause—remained secret.  It remains unclear if Charles ever seriously intended to convert. 

Meanwhile, by a series of five charters, Charles granted the East India Company the rights to autonomous government of its territorial acquisitions, to mint money, to command fortresses and troops, to form alliances, to make war and peace, and to exercise both civil and criminal jurisdiction over the its possessions in the Indies. Earlier in 1668 he leased the islands of Bombay for a nominal sum of £10 paid in gold. The Portuguese territories that Catherine brought with her as a dowry proved too expensive to maintain; Tangier was abandoned in 1684. In 1670, Charles granted control of the entire Hudson Bay drainage basin to the Hudson's Bay Company by royal charter, and named the territory Rupert's Land, after his cousin Prince Rupert of the Rhine, the company's first Governor. 

Conflict with Parliament 

Although previously favourable to the Crown, the Cavalier Parliament was alienated by the king's wars and religious policies during the 1670s. In 1672, Charles issued the Royal Declaration of Indulgence, in which he purported to suspend all penal laws against Catholics and other religious dissenters. In the same year, he openly supported Catholic France and started the Third Anglo-Dutch War. 

The Cavalier Parliament opposed the Declaration of Indulgence on constitutional grounds by claiming that the King had no right to arbitrarily suspend laws passed by Parliament. Charles withdrew the Declaration, and also agreed to the Test Act, which not only required public officials to receive the sacrament under the forms prescribed by the Church of England, but also later forced them to denounce certain teachings of the Catholic Church as "superstitious and idolatrous". Clifford, who had converted to Catholicism, resigned rather than take the oath, and committed suicide shortly after. By 1674 England had gained nothing from the Anglo-Dutch War, and the Cavalier Parliament refused to provide further funds, forcing Charles to make peace. The power of the Cabal waned and that of Clifford's replacement, Lord Danby, grew.

Charles's wife Queen Catherine was unable to produce an heir; her four pregnancies had ended in miscarriages and stillbirths in 1662, February 1666, May 1668 and June 1669. Charles's heir presumptive was therefore his unpopular Catholic brother, James, Duke of York. Partly to assuage public fears that the royal family was too Catholic, Charles agreed that James's daughter, Mary, should marry the Protestant William of Orange.  In 1678, Titus Oates, who had been alternately an Anglican and Jesuit priest, falsely warned of a "Popish Plot" to assassinate the King, even accusing the Queen of complicity. Charles did not believe the allegations, but ordered his chief minister Lord Danby to investigate. While Lord Danby seems to have been rightly sceptical about Oates's claims, the Cavalier Parliament took them seriously. The people were seized with an anti-Catholic hysteria; judges and juries across the land condemned the supposed conspirators; numerous innocent individuals were executed.

Later in 1678, Lord Danby was impeached by the House of Commons on the charge of high treason. Although much of the nation had sought war with Catholic France, Charles had secretly negotiated with Louis XIV, trying to reach an agreement under which England would remain neutral in return for money. Lord Danby had publicly professed that he was hostile to France, but had reservedly agreed to abide by Charles's wishes. Unfortunately for him, the House of Commons failed to view him as a reluctant participant in the scandal, instead believing that he was the author of the policy. To save Lord Danby from the impeachment trial, Charles dissolved the Cavalier Parliament in January 1679.

The new English Parliament, which met in March of the same year, was quite hostile to Charles. Many members feared that he had intended to use the standing army to suppress dissent or impose Catholicism. However, with insufficient funds voted by Parliament, Charles was forced to gradually disband his troops. Having lost the support of Parliament, Lord Danby resigned his post of Lord High Treasurer, but received a pardon from the King. In defiance of the royal will, the House of Commons declared that the dissolution of Parliament did not interrupt impeachment proceedings, and that the pardon was therefore invalid. When the House of Lords attempted to impose the punishment of exile—which the Commons thought too mild—the impeachment became stalled between the two Houses. As he had been required to do so many times during his reign, Charles bowed to the wishes of his opponents, committing Lord Danby to the Tower of London. Lord Danby would be held there for another five years. 

Later years 

Charles faced a political storm over the succession to the Throne. The prospect of a Catholic monarch was vehemently opposed by Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury (previously Baron Ashley and a member of the Cabal, which had fallen apart in 1673). Shaftesbury's power base was strengthened when the House of Commons of 1679 introduced the Exclusion Bill, which sought to exclude the Duke of York from the line of succession. Some even sought to confer the Crown to the Protestant Duke of Monmouth, the eldest of Charles's illegitimate children. The Abhorrers—those who thought the Exclusion Bill was abhorrent—were named Tories (after a term for dispossessed Irish Catholic bandits), while the Petitioners—those who supported a petitioning campaign in favour of the Exclusion Bill—were called Whigs (after a term for rebellious Scottish Presbyterians). 

Fearing that the Exclusion Bill would be passed, and bolstered by some acquittals in the continuing Plot trials, which seemed to him to indicate a more favourable public mood towards Catholicism, Charles dissolved the English Parliament, for a second time that year, in the summer of 1679. Charles's hopes for a more moderate Parliament were not fulfilled, within a few months he had dissolved Parliament yet again, after it sought to pass the Exclusion Bill. When a new Parliament assembled at Oxford in March 1681, Charles dissolved it for a fourth time after just a few days.  During the 1680s, however, popular support for the Exclusion Bill ebbed, and Charles experienced a nationwide surge of loyalty. Lord Shaftesbury was prosecuted (albeit unsuccessfully) for treason in 1681 and later fled to Holland, where he died. For the remainder of his reign, Charles ruled without Parliament.

Charles's opposition to the Exclusion Bill angered some Protestants. Protestant conspirators formulated the Rye House Plot, a plan to murder the King and the Duke of York as they returned to London after horse races in Newmarket. A great fire, however, destroyed Charles's lodgings at Newmarket, which forced him to leave the races early, thus, inadvertently, avoiding the planned attack. News of the failed plot was leaked. Protestant politicians such as Arthur Capell, 1st Earl of Essex, Algernon Sydney, Lord William Russell and the Duke of Monmouth were implicated in the plot. Lord Essex slit his own throat while imprisoned in the Tower of London; Sydney and Russell were executed for high treason on very flimsy evidence; and the Duke of Monmouth went into exile at the court of William of Orange. Lord Danby and the surviving Catholic lords held in the Tower were released and the King's Catholic brother, James, acquired greater influence at court.  Titus Oates was convicted and imprisoned for defamation.

Death 

Charles suffered a sudden apoplectic fit on the morning of 2 February 1685, and died aged 54 at 11:45 am four days later at Whitehall Palace.  The suddenness of his illness and death led to suspicion of poison in the minds of many, including one of the royal doctors; however, a more modern medical analysis has held that the symptoms of his final illness are similar to those of uraemia (a clinical syndrome due to kidney dysfunction).  In the days between his collapse and his death, Charles endured a variety of torturous treatments including bloodletting, purging and cupping in hopes of effecting a recovery. 

On his deathbed Charles asked his brother, James, to look after his mistresses: "be well to Portsmouth, and let not poor Nelly starve", and told his courtiers: "I am sorry, gentlemen, for being such a time a-dying". On the last evening of his life he was received into the Catholic Church, though the extent to which he was fully conscious or committed, and with whom the idea originated, is unclear. He was buried in Westminster Abbey "without any manner of pomp" on 14 February.

Charles was succeeded by his brother, who became James II of England and Ireland and James VII of Scotland.

Posterity and legacy 

Charles had no legitimate children, but acknowledged a dozen by seven mistresses, including five by the notorious Barbara Villiers, Lady Castlemaine, for whom the Dukedom of Cleveland was created. His other mistresses included Moll Davis, Nell Gwyn, Elizabeth Killigrew, Catherine Pegge, Lucy Walter, and Louise de Kérouaille, Duchess of Portsmouth. As a result, in his lifetime he was often nicknamed "Old Rowley", the name of one of his horses which was notable at the time as a stallion.

His subjects resented paying taxes that were spent on his mistresses and their children, many of whom received dukedoms or earldoms. The present Dukes of Buccleuch, Richmond, Grafton and St Albans descend from Charles in unbroken male line. Diana, Princess of Wales, was descended from two of Charles's illegitimate sons: the Dukes of Grafton and Richmond. Diana's son, Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, second in line to the British throne, is likely to be the first British monarch descended from Charles II.

Charles's eldest son, the Duke of Monmouth, led a rebellion against James II, but was defeated at the Battle of Sedgemoor on 6 July 1685, captured and executed. James was eventually dethroned in 1688, in the course of the Glorious Revolution. He was the last Catholic monarch to rule Britain.

Looking back on Charles's reign, Tories tended to view it as a time of benevolent monarchy whereas Whigs perceived it as a terrible despotism. Today it is possible to assess him without the taint of partisanship, and he is seen as more of a lovable rogue—in the words of his contemporary John Evelyn, "a prince of many virtues and many great imperfections, debonair, easy of access, not bloody or cruel". John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester, wrote more lewdly of Charles:

Charles, a patron of the arts and sciences, founded the Royal Observatory and supported the Royal Society, a scientific group whose early members included Robert Hooke, Robert Boyle and Sir Isaac Newton. He was the personal patron of Sir Christopher Wren, the architect who helped rebuild London after the Great Fire and who constructed the Royal Hospital Chelsea, which Charles founded as a home for retired soldiers in 1682.

The anniversary of the Restoration (which was also Charles's birthday)—29 May—was recognised in England until the mid-nineteenth century as Oak Apple Day, after the Royal Oak in which Charles hid during his escape from the forces of Oliver Cromwell. Traditional celebrations involved the wearing of oak leaves but these have now died out. Charles II is commemorated by statues in London's Soho Square, in Edinburgh's Parliament Square, in Three Cocks Lane in Gloucester, and near the south portal of Lichfield Cathedral, and is depicted extensively in literature and other media. Charleston, South Carolina, and South Kingstown, Rhode Island, are named after him.

Titles, styles, honours and arms 

Titles and styles 

* 29 May 1630 – May 1638: The Duke of Cornwall
* May 1638 – 30 January 1649: The Prince of Wales
* 30 January 1649 – 6 February 1685: His Majesty The King

The official style of Charles II was "Charles the Second, by the Grace of God, King of England, Scotland, France and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, etc."  The claim to France was only nominal, and had been asserted by every English monarch since Edward III, regardless of the amount of French territory actually controlled.

Honours 

* KG: Knight of the Garter, 21 May 1638

Arms 

As Prince of Wales, Charles's coat of arms was the royal arms (which he later inherited), differenced by a label of three points Argent. His arms as monarch were: Quarterly, I and IV Grandquarterly, Azure three fleurs-de-lis Or (for France) and Gules three lions passant guardant in pale Or (for England); II Or a lion rampant within a double tressure flory-counter-flory Gules (for Scotland); III Azure a harp Or stringed Argent (for Ireland).

Issue 

By Marguerite or Margaret de Carteret
# Letters claiming that she bore Charles a son named James de la Cloche in 1646 are dismissed by historians as forgeries. 
By Lucy Walter (c. 1630 – 1658)
# James Crofts, later Scott (1649–1685), created Duke of Monmouth (1663) in England and Duke of Buccleuch (1663) in Scotland. Ancestor of Sarah, Duchess of York. Monmouth was born nine months after Walter and Charles II first met, and was acknowledged as his son by Charles II, but James II suggested that he was the son of another of her lovers, Colonel Robert Sidney, rather than Charles. Lucy Walter had a daughter, Mary Crofts, born after James in 1651, but Charles II was not the father, since he and Walter parted in September 1649.
By Elizabeth Killigrew (1622–1680), daughter of Sir Robert Killigrew, married Francis Boyle, 1st Viscount Shannon, in 1660
# Charlotte Jemima Henrietta Maria FitzRoy (1650–1684), married firstly James Howard and secondly William Paston, 2nd Earl of Yarmouth
By Catherine Pegge
# Charles FitzCharles (1657–1680), known as "Don Carlo", created Earl of Plymouth (1675)
# Catherine FitzCharles (born 1658; she either died young or became a nun at Dunkirk)
By Barbara née Villiers (1641–1709), wife of Roger Palmer, 1st Earl of Castlemaine; created Duchess of Cleveland in her own right
# Lady Anne Palmer (Fitzroy) (1661–1722), married Thomas Lennard, 1st Earl of Sussex. She may have been the daughter of Roger Palmer, but Charles accepted her. Sarah, Duchess of York, descends from Anne by both parents.
# Charles Fitzroy (1662–1730), created Duke of Southampton (1675), became 2nd Duke of Cleveland (1709)
# Henry Fitzroy (1663–1690), created Earl of Euston (1672), Duke of Grafton (1675), also 7-greats-grandfather of Diana, Princess of Wales
# Charlotte Fitzroy (1664–1717), married Edward Lee, 1st Earl of Lichfield
# George Fitzroy (1665–1716), created Earl of Northumberland (1674), Duke of Northumberland (1678)
# Barbara (Benedicta) Fitzroy (1672–1737) – She was probably the child of John Churchill, later Duke of Marlborough, who was another of Cleveland's many lovers, and was never acknowledged by Charles as his own daughter.
By Nell Gwyn (1650–1687)
# Charles Beauclerk (1670–1726), created Duke of St Albans (1684)
# James, Lord Beauclerk (1671–1680)
By Louise Renée de Penancoet de Kérouaille (1649–1734), created Duchess of Portsmouth in her own right (1673)
# Charles Lennox (1672–1723), created Duke of Richmond (1675) in England and Duke of Lennox (1675) in Scotland. Ancestor of Diana, Princess of Wales; Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall; and Sarah, Duchess of York.
By Mary 'Moll' Davis, courtesan and actress of repute
# Lady Mary Tudor (1673–1726), married Edward Radclyffe, 2nd Earl of Derwentwater; after Edward's death, she married Henry Graham, and upon his death she married James Rooke.
Other probable mistresses:
# Christabella Wyndham 
# Hortense Mancini, Duchess of Mazarin 
# Winifred Wells – one of the Queen's Maids of Honour 
# Jane Roberts – the daughter of a clergyman
# Mrs Knight – a famous singer 
# Elizabeth Berkeley, née Bagot, Dowager Countess of Falmouth – the widow of Charles Berkeley, 1st Earl of Falmouth
# Elizabeth Fitzgerald, Countess of Kildare

Ancestry 

Notes
King Charles the Second Charles the Second Charles ii Charles II Charles Ii Charles 6 Charles 2 Charles II (disambiguation) King Charles II
king charles second king charles ii charles ii charles second charles 6 charles 2 charles ii disambiguation
charles ii
WikipediaEntity
Charles II
 which King of England sold Duncan to lure the Fort of France. 

 I think you meant so which King of England King Daniel is a wide range of context and famous England is a part of the Fort Fort T to a adapt and right right full where you like to make to learn or any questions questions about conversation I may have so far make you stumbled on its like or any other questions and we we can can start in area can diagnose or project that started I couldn't will involve the ask