II.

Early Years and Private Life of Louis XIV

Louis was born on September 5, 1638, at Saint-Germain-en-Laye. His parents, King Louis XIII and Anne of Austria, grateful for an heir after 20 barren years of marriage, christened him Louis Dieudonné (literally, the “gift of God”).

On May 14, 1643, when Louis was four-and-a-half years old, Louis XIII died. His mother Anne, aided by Cardinal Jules Mazarin as her first minister, ruled France as regent. His father’s death spared Louis the beatings and abuse usually meted out to French princes, and his education by kindly but mediocre tutors—first, the Marshal of Villeroy, and second, Hardouin de Péréfixe, the future archbishop of Paris—was feeble and more practical than intellectual. His mother formed his rules of conscience, teaching him a simple kind of Roman Catholicism laced with superstition. Mazarin, who was also Louis’s godfather, instructed him in court ceremony, war, and the craft of kingship.

The years between 1648 and 1653 were dominated by the Fronde—two rebellions by the aristocracy against the Crown. They marked the last insurrection of the French nobility against the monarchy, and at one point, in January 1649, forced the royal family and the court to leave Paris for Saint-Germain-en-Laye. On September 7, 1651, Louis officially came of age, and in December 1652 he arrested Paul de Gondi, the future Cardinal de Retz, one of the leaders of the Fronde, and the rebellion began to collapse. Although the power of the king was reinforced, the Fronde impressed upon Louis the need of bringing order, stability, and reform to France and also fostered in him a deep suspicion of the nobility.

The nation’s military situation also improved at this time. Mazarin brought the Thirty Years’ War to a successful conclusion, weakening the Habsburg dynasty of Austria and gaining Alsace for France. In 1659 the Treaty of the Pyrenees, which ended the war with Spain that had begun in 1635, won France the provinces of Artois and Roussillon.

In 1660, in accordance with the Treaty of the Pyrenees, Louis married his Spanish cousin, Marie-Thérèse, thereby providing France with a claim on Spain’s empire. With his queen, Louis had six children, the only one to survive into adulthood being Louis de France, “Le Grand Dauphin” (1661-1711). Louis also conducted affairs with several women, including Louise de la Vallière, duchesse de Vaujours, Françoise Athénaïs de Rochechouart, marquise de Montespan, and Marie-Angelique de Scoraille, duchesse de Fontanges. As a result, he produced many illegitimate children, later marrying them into families of the highest nobility, and even into branches of the royal family itself. Louis’s marriage to Marie-Thérèse would last until her death in 1683. After this he secretly married a pious and previously obscure woman, Françoise d'Aubigné, marquise de Maintenon, who was governess of his illegitimate children. As the leader of the French court, she was known for her beauty and wit, and she exerted a great influence on the king in religious and political matters. She also introduced an atmosphere of excessive austerity to the court, and urged Louis to suppress the immorality that was rife there.