All About - History - Hitler Versus Stain

Hero or Villain?
KING LOUIS XIV OF FRANCE
Louis XIV enjoyed an incredibly close
relationship with his mother, but was also
raised by a series of wet nurses including
Dame Longuet de La Giraudière pictured here
62
character began to form. He shocked every minister
and politician in Paris by imprisoning Mazarin’s
successor, corrupt finance minister Nicolas Fouquet
following a three-year-long trial, and then declaring
himself his own first minister. He had
made a very public statement to his
subjects: I am the king, and my
rule is absolute.
This self-assurance was
Louis in his purest form – a
man who saw himself as
the centre of his realm
in all matters. It was a
quality that manifested
itself as selfishness and
defiance in the early
years of his reign as he
began openly dismantling
many of the policies enacted
by Mazarin and his mother.
Louis was a true reformist
monarch, one that relished the desire
to oversee all aspects of his nation. He was
also a debauched creature, one who embraced wine,
women and excess with wanton abandon, but he
proved early on he was a shrewd soul who refused to
be cajoled by his ministers.
Defining
moment
The expansion of the Palace
of Versailles
When Louis assumed absolute control of
the crown in his early 20s, the young monarch
knewthepopularityandpoliticalinfluenceof
the crown was waning in Paris, so he moved
theseatofFrenchpowertoVersailles.Not
only was the expansive Palace of Versailles
agrandarchitecturalstatement,it
representedanexplicitstatementof
the king’s absolute rule.
1661-1710
In the decade that followed, Louis began reforming
French law and practices with a never-before-seen
fervour. With Fouquet removed, he appointed Jean-
Baptiste Colbert as controller-general of finances
in 1665 and oversaw the reduction of the
national debt through a much more
efficient approach to taxation.
Another surprising move was
his decision to make all
nobles exempt from taxes
– it seemed ludicrous to
the common man, but it
was a stroke of political
genius. The nobility were
now bound to the whim
of the king, having to
prove their status without
angering the crown.
Louis wasn’t willing to
bow to any section of his
kingdom, especially those that
had revolted against his protectors
in his youth, but the endlessly confident
and self-assured monarch understood that a balance
would need to be established. He knew ministers in
Paris believed that they were above the king’s edicts,
so he upended their machinations by unofficially
moving the political seat of power to Versailles, a
simple royal hunting lodge that Louis revitalised into
an opulent palace to rival any in Europe. Eventually
the true seat of power would be moved from Paris to
Versailles as Louis literally re-sculpted the kingdom
around himself.
He also made a controversial decision on
something that many of his predecessors had ignored
– supporting a key component of the fast-forming
middle class of France. By building the Hôtel national
des Invalides in Paris, which served as a hospital and
retirement home for French war veterans, Louis was
one of the first French kings to use royal influence
to acknowledge and protect those that had sacrificed
so much in his family’s name. Whether it was a
solely political move or one made out of Louis’s
own compassion, it made a growing faction of the
burgeoning bourgeoisie a powerful new supporter.
His reforms also extended to the cultural, as
a result of his own passion for sculpture, theatre
and literature. During his rule, Louis brought the
Académie Française under his patronage and used
it to turn Versailles into the cultural epicentre of
Europe. His royal protection of writers, poets, painters
and composers ushered in a golden age for the arts –
soon everything from fashion to dance choreography
was influencing the entire continent. Louis wanted to