Henry IV “The Great” “The Good King” (1589-1610)
With the deaths of all of Henry II’s heirs –culminating in the assassination of Henry III– the House of Valois found itself in a succession crisis as the crown passed to a distant relative, Henry III’s named successor, his ninth cousin, Henry of Navarre. However, these were still dark times in France as the religious wars between Huguenots and Catholics continued to rock the nation, and Henry of Navarre was Protestant, a fact which many Frenchman (especially Parisians) found utterly intolerable. Thus, in 1589 Henry realized that he needed to conquer his new kingship in order to solidify his crown. He mustered his army and quickly won battles against the Catholic League at Arques in 1589 and then at Ivry (now known as Ivry-la-Bataille) in 1590, but he was beaten back at Paris and forced to accept his fate –if he truly wanted to become king of France, he needed to bend the knee and convert to Catholicism. After four years of consideration and discussion with his mistress, Gabrielle d’Estress, he reasoned: “Paris vaut bien une messe” (or “Paris is well worth a mass”). Henry relented to the pope in order to gain the submission of France. He was officially crowned king on February 27, 1594 –not in the tradition of Rheims, which was still strongly under the control of the Catholic League, but rather at the Cathedral of Chartres.
Henry quickly began his efforts to unify and pacify France, particularly with his signing of the Edict of Nantes. Of this period, John Julius Norwich writes:
“But the Catholics, even though they reluctantly came to accept Henry as their rightful king, were still unhappy, and still bitterly hostile to the Huguenots. In many a city and town, life for the latter remained hard indeed; and it was in an effort to improve the lot of his former co-religionists that in April 1598 the king set his signature to the Edict Nantes. In it he went as far as he dared: the Protestants were no longer to be treated as heretics or schismatics but would be granted all civil rights, including the right to work for the state and to bring any legitimate grievances directly to him. In fact the Edit pleased neither party: the Catholics deeply resented the recognition of Protestantism as a permanent element in French society, while the Protestants still felt themselves to be second-class citizens. None the less it marked a significant step forward, and –most important of all—it achieved its primary purpose: it brought to an end the wars which had plagued France for the best part of half a century” (147).
Gradually, Henry’s subjects came to love him for his charm, his thick Gascon accent, and his insatiable love of women (in total, he had over fifty-five mistresses). His first marriage to Henry III’s sister Margaret was a failure. Having not borne him any children, Henry wanted the marriage annulled so that he could marry his beloved mistress Gabrielle instead (she had already borne him three children). The matter was morbidly resolved in 1599 when Margaret died after giving birth to a stillborn son. That same year, Henry married another woman, twenty-nine-year-old and corpulent Marie de’ Medici, sixth daughter of Francesco I, Grand Duke of Tuscany. Despite bearing two sons and three daughters (including the future Queen of England, Charles I’s wife Henrietta Maria) their marriage was often mired in domestic strife as Marie was often found bickering with the revolving door of women her husband was bedding.
Nevertheless, Henry was undeterred in his efforts to rebuild civilization in France after it had been so savagely torn apart by the Christian sectarian wars of the last half century. All across the country, farms lay idle, buildings were in a state of disrepair, and the spirit of the commoners tended toward the barbaric rather than the virtuous after having lived through so much bloodshed. Together, with Henry’s right-hand man Maximilien de Bethune, he set about to revitalize the French land. Often rising early and working late into the evening, they built bridges and highways, drained swamps, dug canals, and replanted vast areas left desolate by the religious wars. In Paris, they constructed the Grand Galerie de Louvre along the right bank of the Seine, connecting the old palace with the new one built by Catherine de’ Medici at the Tuileries Palace and Garden. Also in Paris, they finished construction of the Pont Neuf (originally approved by Henry III), the oldest of the Seine bridges which still proudly displays to this day Giambologna’s equestrian statue of Henry IV standing over the point where it crosses the Île de la Cité (commissioned by Marie de’ Medici after her husband’s death). It was erected just beside the Place Dauphine, named in honor of the king’s young son, the dauphin Louis (the future King Louis XIII). The statue of Henry IV was tragically destroyed in 1792 during the French Revolution but it was later reconstructed using a surviving cast of the original during the revival of the Bourbon monarchy in 1818.
I will give the last word on Henry IV to John Julius Norwich:
“Much of Henry’s magic was due to the simple fact that he genuinely loved his people; and that love he was to express in his famous dictum: ‘If God keeps me alive, I will ensure that no peasant in my kingdom will lack the means to have a chicken in the pot on Sundays.’ Alas, God failed to keep His side of the bargain. Henry, now fifty-six, had already survived two assassination attempts; but the third proved fatal. On 14 May 1610, when his coach was held up by traffic congestion in the Rue de la Ferronnerie, a Catholic fanatic named Francois Ravaillac wrenched open the door and plunged a knife into his chest, binging to an abrupt close the life of one of the greatest kings that France ever produced. Few had been more hated, or more violently attacked, than Henry IV at the beginning of his reign; none, after their death, has been more deeply loved” (149).
Louis XIII (1610-1643)
For the next 164 years there were to be only three kings of France, all named Louis. After the assassination of Henry IV, the crown fell to his young son, Louis XIII, who was not yet nine-years-old and suffered with a severe stutter. With this in mind, a regency was put in place, it was the boy’s mother, Marie de’ Medici, who unfortunately came to rely on the guidance of two somewhat sinister compatriots to govern the kingdom –Leonora Galigaï (whom the queen brought with her from Florence) and her husband Concino Concini, both of whom were obvious careerists and social climbers. These two quickly drew the ire of the court and the public for their private machinations, not least of which included their apparent influence over Marie’s decision to marry her son the king to Anne of Austria, daughter of Philip III of Spain and great-granddaughter of the Emperor Charles V. Needless to say, Protestants were outraged.
When Louis XIII turned sixteen in 1617, he finally reclaimed his throne from his mother and her unpopular two allies. But he didn’t stop there. Under the direction of his oldest friend, Charles d’Albert, Grand Falconer of France, Louis very likely ordered Concini’s assassination, three months later his widow, Leonora Galigaï, was tried for witchcraft and “Judaizing,” she was condemned, beheaded, and her corpse was then burnt at the stake. Louis then exiled his mother to Blois and appointed d’Albert to Duke of Luynes, he thereafter became the king’s chief counselor, guiding him through his personal fears of women, social ineptitudes, and wild suspicions of his inner circle. However, when Luynes died of “crimson fever” in 1621, he was replaced with the man whose name has become permanently associated with Louis XIII, Armand du Plessis, Cardinal de Richelieu. Originally an aid to the exiled queen, Richelieu somehow managed to find his way into the good graces of the king. He came to the king’s court after the death of Luynes. He was appointed a cardinal by Pope Gregoy XV, and two years later he was made chief minister to the king. “…descriptions abound by those who knew him and who wrote of his magnificent presence, of that arched nose, goatee beard and those dark-brown eyes. Certainly there is no other French statesman so instantly recognizable or so immediately impressive. He too, even more than his master, radiated confidence” (151).
The Thirty Years’ War
In 1618, “there began a war which was to tear apart the whole of central Europe. The Thirty Years’ War was the deadliest and most brutal upheaval the continent had ever seen –the French Wars of Religion, now vastly magnified and transferred to the European stage. By its close in 1648, over eight million men lay dead” (151).
The Thirty Years’ War began when Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II attempted to force Roman Catholicism on his subjects, leading to a rebellion of the Protestant princes in north Germany who had previously been protected by Ferdinand’s great-uncle Charles V when he permitted them to practice their own religion at the Peace of Augsburg some sixty years prior. Before long Bavaria, Bohemia, England, Hungary, Saxony, Scotland, Sweden, Spain, and the Dutch Republic had all joined the fray. But despite having a Catholic king and a Hapsburg queen, France surprisingly joined the fight on the side of the Protestants, perhaps owing to the French contempt for the Holy Roman Empire which had effectively surrounded France for so long. The decision was largely made by Richelieu who, despite being a Catholic himself, much preferred a French Huguenot to a Spanish Catholic. He also knew that Protestantism had gained a strong foothold in France after the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, particularly in autonomous, heavily-fortified, highly populous refugee cities like La Rochelle, which enjoyed a cozy relationship with the King of England. The Huguenots were a powder-keg just waiting for a lit fuse. And this was of further concern during a time of war, and so the Protestant enclaves were heavily brutalized. Once La Rochelle was eventually starved and subdued by the king’s forces, Richelieu (ever the autocrat), turned his eye toward subjugating the nobility –particularly the two queens and the king’s brother, Gaston Duke of Orleans, who was ceaselessly maneuvering against his heir-less brother, the king. Thus, in the early years of the war, Richelieu moved tactfully, building up and strengthening alliances where he could. For example, when King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden needed money to continue the fight, Richelieu sent him a million livres per year.
By 1636, Richelieu realized France could wait no longer and he declared war on the Empire, joining Sweden and the German princes. France was then immediately invaded by Spanish troops, but shortly thereafter France regained its own territories, extending its military lines to its natural boundaries –the Scheldt, the Rhine, the Alps, and the Pyrenees. Then another miracle occurred in 1638. After twenty-three years of marriage and four stillbirths, the thirty-seven-year-old queen gave birth to a son. Suddenly, the king’s brother, the Duke of Orleans, saw his hopes of succession dashed. Two years later came the death of Cardinal Richelieu at the age of fifty-seven, a man who had come to embody the French state and its centralization efforts (one of his great achievements was founding the French Academie which started to regulate all aspects of the French language).
Louis XIII did not long survive his chief counselor, Cardinal Richelieu. After years of suffering from digestive issues and ulcerated intestines, the king died likely of tuberculosis at the age of forty-one on May 14, 1643.
Of Louis XIII, John Julius Norwich writes:
“His personal achievements are hard to define. He was a fine musician and lutenist, and he also seems to have been responsible for the introduction –for the first time in French history—of the wig, which he began to affect when he found himself going prematurely bald in his thirties. His portraits show it to have been quite a luxuriant affair, though not a patch on the tumbling locks which we associate with the following generation. For the rest, it was his fate to be utterly overshadowed –first by the dazzling cardinal who stole so much of his thunder, and second by his son, le roi soleil, who was also to overshadow everyone else” (155-156).
Louis XIV “The Great” “The Sun King” (1638-1715)
Louis XIV came to the throne at the age of four and would rule for the next seventy-two years –the longest reign of any monarch in European history (Queen Elizabeth II had the second-longest tenure after reigning for seventy years). Prior to King Louis XIII’s death, the king allowed for his wife, Queen Anne of Austria, to be appointed regent but she had to answer to a regency council filled with Richelieu cronies who significantly limited her power. Once she successfully petitioned for the council to be dissolved, she nevertheless chose as one of her chief ministers one of Richelieu’s most trusted associates, Giulio Mazarino (or simply “Mazarin”). His family descended from the lesser Italian nobility and he studied under the Jesuits (though he never joined the Order) before the pope appointed him as Papal Nuncio to France which brought him to the attention of Richelieu. Mazarin was quickly put to the task of carrying out several diplomatic missions for France, often coupled with his penchant for gambling. One particularly risky evening brought him closer to the queen (some even speculated it was he who fathered the dauphin). From the time Louis XIII recommended that he be appointed a cardinal until his death in 1661, Mazarin was effectively co-ruler of France and a necessary moderating influence on Queen Anne.
Louis XIV was officially crowned on June 7, 1654. He was nearly sixteen-years-old and determined to govern France as he saw fit. He was a hard-worker, often slogging for six hours a day, and he was known to keenly take advice from his key ministers. He was also observed to be a well-mannered and kindly king, never failing to tip his hat to passing ladies, including the palace chambermaids. But, as John Julius Norwich notes, “he remained, however – and let this never be forgotten – an absolute despot. When he remarked that he was the State – ‘L’Etat c’est moi’ – he spoke no more than the truth. Ultimate decisions were taken by him, and by him alone” (162).
The Treasury under Louis XIV was in the hands of the Superintendent of Finance, Nicolas Fouquet, who built for himself a splendid chateau at Vaux-le-Vicomte where he threw lavish parties which soon led to public scrutiny. How did he earn all his wealth? Answers soon became clear. He was tried for embezzlement and imprisoned for life in the fortress of Pignerol (Pinerolo) in Piedmont. It was left to his successor to face the full scorn of the king for attempting to manage the king’s finances, particularly with respect to the Palace at Versailles. The king had been a frequent visitor to the small village of Versailles, largely for his own privacy so he could conduct affairs with his mistresses without scrutiny (this had become impossible at the Louvre, before he made the Palace at Versailles his official residency in 1682). Very soon, the aristocracy of France relocated to Versailles, with some 5,000 people living there, though many of them were unaccustomed to such a “rugged” existence (unlike in England, the French aristocracy did not have large country estates to retire to for fear of losing their coveted position within the royal court where everything depended on the king’s constant favor).
“Louis XIV, as we know, liked to think of himself as the sun – the dazzling light that irradiated around him. Light there may have been; but there was very little warmth. Let no one imagine that life at Versailles was fun; it was for the most part bitterly cold, desperately uncomfortable, poisonously unhealthy, and of a tedium probably unparalleled. The most prevalent emotion was fear: fear of the king himself, fear of his absolute power, fear of the single thoughtless word or gesture that might destroy one’s career or even one’s life. And what was one’s life anyway? A ceaseless round of empty ceremonial leading absolute nowhere, offering the occasional mild amusement but no real pleasure; as for happiness, it was not even to be thought of. Of course there were lavish entertainments – balls, masques, operas, – how else was morale to be maintained? But absentees were noted at once, and the reasons for their absence made the subject of exhaustive enquiries. Social death – or worse – could easily result” (164).
Unfortunately for Louis, he never found himself a satisfactory queen. In 1660, he married Maria Theresa, the eldest daughter of King Philip IV of Spain, but she tragically had the mentality of a fifteen-year-old, barely able to handle court appointments, always playing with her lapdogs, and never able to read a book. She reportedly was unattractive, with short legs and black teeth from eating too much chocolate and garlic. The king would treat her in a sort of fatherly way, but they were known to make love twice per month, afterward she would enjoy being teased about it, rubbing her hands together and winking her large blue eyes on the way to Communion. She was also not a particularly good mother. Her only son, the dauphin, died at age fifty, four years before his father. Therefore, with a queen like this, the king turned his attention elsewhere for romance, such as to Louise de la Valliere, a maid of honor to the Duchess of Orleans, the daughter of Charles I of England who was married to “Monsieur” (as he was called), the king’s openly homosexual brother Philip. Louise loved Louis and bore him five children, asking for nothing in return, but as time passed, the king sought romance elsewhere (she was replaced from 1667 onward by the domineering Françoise-Athénaïs, Marquise de Montespan). The Marquise began her affair with the king at age twenty-five and gave Louis seven children (naturally, they were raised by another woman, a widow named Madame Scarron who would soon share the king’s bed, as well). The affair ended in 1677 in l’affaire des poisons during a major witchcraft scare in which hundreds of alchemists and fortune tellers were rounded up and tortured until they agreed to release their clientele, one of whom was named: Madame de Montespan. From there, rumors quickly spread of elite black masses, human sacrifices, conspiracies, and murdered babies –all of this naturally had more than a shade of antisemitism as these vulgar religious conspiracies often do. People were imprisoned and also burnt at the stake. It was clear at this point that the king could no longer be romantically involved with the Marquise, but by this point his eye had strayed to another courtly beauty anyway, the Duchess of Fontagnes. Meanwhile, racked with guilt over their ‘sinful lives’ as a mistresses of the king, both the Marquise and Louise retired to convents where they spent the rest of their lives. Then in 1683, the queen began urgently complaining of an abscess in her arm after a long campaign of travel with the king, and it quickly shortened her breath, sparked a fever, and ended her life in a most painful fashion.
In the early years of his kingship, Louis was ensconced in peace negotiations over the Thirty Years’ War which ended with the defeat of the Empire and its Catholic allies. The peace conference, which was to determine the future of Europe, was convened in 1644 but did not end until 1648 with the signing of the Treaty of Westphalia. This close of the war meant that France was as strong as she ever would be, while Germany was left in tatters, it was reduced to some three hundred and fifty independent states, each of which subscribed to the principle of cujus regio, ejio religio –every man must adopt the religion of his sovereign or else migrate elsewhere.
Despite this strong position of France, thanks largely to Mazarin’s handiwork, the people were dissatisfied. Paris rose up against its king, resentful of being governed by a Spaniard and an Italian, angry with the cardinals, dismayed by the increased taxes to fund the war effort. At the same time, rebellion was in the air across Europe. In 1647, the Neapolitans, led by the fisherman Masaniello, overthrew their king, and the English were about to decapitate their own in Oliver Cromwell’s revolution. The same movement in France was called the “fronde” (meaning “sling”), a reference to a succession of violent but ultimately unsuccessful uprisings that occurred from 1648 to 1653. The fronde could rightly be interpreted as a series of “sinister forerunners to the events of the following century.” The directionless anger of the people in France was sometimes fired toward the haute bourgeoisie, other times at the Church, or the nobility, and even the government more broadly. The two main phases of this chaotic frenzy consisted of the “fronde parlementaire” which was launched in response to a tax levied on the judicial officers of the Paris Parlement, and when the people refused to pay the tax, the leader of the movement (Pierre Broussel) was arrested and freed which didn’t stop an mob of angry Parisians burst into the royal palace demanding to see their young king (then ten-years-old). The boy king pretended to be asleep in his bed, and as the mob watched their tender young king sleep, they were pacified and quietly departed. But this invasion greatly shook the court. The king was relocated to the safety of Rueil (then a village, now a western suburb of Paris).
Amidst a squabble between Mazarin and Conde for control of the crown, it’s no wonder that Louis XIV developed a deep dislike of Paris and an equally deep distrust of the aristocracy. He left the capital as soon as he could for Versailles. In 1650, came the second phase of the frondeurs known as the fronde des princes as the nobility found itself at odds with the king, united in a hatred of Mazarin –the leaders of this ire were the king’s uncle (the Duke of Orleans), the generals Conde and Turenne, and the duke’s daughter, Mademoiselle de Montpensier, the “Grande Mademoiselle.” It was she who, in 1651, donned armor and led an army through the streets of Paris, opening the gates to welcome the forces of Conde in a minor civil war. A mob rose up, the Hotel de Ville was left in flames, and the Bastille was fired upon before Conde retreated. The king’s court then hastily retreated to Rueil again. After this, and five years of wayward anarchy, the people grew disgusted with the princes, the merchants sent a delegation to plead with the king to return to Paris. The fronde was finally over, ending in a total failure.
“The king was once again seen as standing for order and responsible government –and the way was cleared for the absolutism for which he was to be famous. He had learned several valuable lessons. He had seen for himself the mob surging through the royal palace, and had understood all too well the potential dangers of an unpopular and over-powerful minister. In future he would govern by himself. He kept Mazarin on out of deep friendship and gratitude; but the cardinal’s sails had been quietly and drastically trimmed” (161).
The great mistake of Louis XIV’s reign was revoking the Edict of Nantes, an edict which had been signed by Henry IV in 1598 granting substantial rights to the Huguenots and effectively ending the religious wars. But now, Louis once again declared Protestantism illegal, with Protestant churches demolished, leading to a mass exodus of Protestants totaling some four-hundred-thousand Frenchmen and women, who fled to places like England, Switzerland, Prussia, and the Dutch Republic. “Not only did this irrevocable damage the reputation of Louis abroad; more serious still, it dealt the national economy a serious blow by depriving France of many of her most skilled craftsmen. Freedom of worship and civil rights for non-Catholics were to be restored only in 1787, two months before the end of the ancient regime” (167).
The War of the Spanish Succession
In 1688, William of Orange and his Queen Mary Stuart came to power in England, and they wasted no time in organizing an alliance against Louis, known as the League of Augsburg, it consisted of England, Holland, the Empire, Spain, and Sweden. What followed was a nine-year war, that lasted until 1697 at Ryswick when Louis agreed to return Lorraine to its duke and recognize William as King of England. Then in November 1700, the frail, feeble King Charles II of Spain (son of Philip IV) died leaving behind no heirs. This left a vacuum of power which was claimed by the two greatest dynasties in Europe. Charles’s youngest sister Margaret was married to Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I and her small grandson, Joseph Ferdinand, was the Hapsburg claimant to the crown until he suddenly died in 1699. There was now great fear among the key trading partners with Spain (France and Holland) that France would capture the throne of Spain. But shortly before Charles II died, and facing pressure from the Church under Pope Innocent XII and the hierarchy in Spain amidst the backdrop of the Inquisition, he signed his will, granting all of his dominions to Louis XIV’s grandson seventeen-year-old grandson Philip, Duke of Anjou. Wasting no time, Louis packed his grandson off to Madrid along with a bevy of French courtiers to fill key Spanish government positions, but much of the rest of Europe found this development utterly intolerable. On September 7, 1701, England, Holland, and the Empire signed the Grand Alliance –Leopold wished to recover all the lost Spanish lands in Italy, while England and Holland sought to preserve the balance of power in Europe in preventing Louis from uniting the kingdoms of France and Spain under a single monarch. Then when the exiled James II of England died and Louis sent French troops to occupy the Spanish Netherlands, the buffer region between Spain and the Dutch Republic, The War of the Spanish Succession had already begun.
During the war, Louis had mustered an army totaling a quarter million, vastly outnumbering those of England, Holland, and the Empire combined, but on the seas, the Grand Alliance dominated. Louis assumed supreme command with his most important Foreign Minister the Marquis de Torcy and the king’s grandson Louis Duke of Burgundy, while on the other side, John Churchill, the Duke of Marlborough was joined by Prince Eugene of Savoy. The early years of the war saw French victories, though that changed after 1706, but all this time Philip continued to cement his rule over Spain. The tide of the war turned years later in April 1711 when Emperor Joseph I died in Austria and all of Europe was changed overnight. He was succeeded by his brother Charles VI. When the prior Emperor Leopold had died, Emperor Joseph I continued the war against France, hoping to win the crown of France for his younger brother Charles, and now Charles continued his brother’s advances. From his perspective, the whole Grand Alliance had been formed with the implicit goal of weaking the House of Bourbon, thereby regaining the united dominions of the Hapsburg Empire as in the days of his great-great-great-great-uncle Charles V. But realizing the Empire’s ambitions, England made peace with France. The end of the war between England and France came on New Year’s Day 1712 with the Treaty of Utrecht. It recognized Philip V as King of Spain, but in return he was to renounce the succession of the Spanish throne for any of his descendants, France lost Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, while Britain gained Gibraltar and Menorca, but France retained its primary national boundaries. Then peace with Charles VI and the Empire came a couple years later in 1714 at Rastatt and Baden. After over a decade of fighting and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of men, Philip kept the crown of Spain, despite losing the Italian regions and the Spanish Netherlands, but he managed to hang onto Spanish America and all the wealth it brought to him for the next thirty years. Despite nearly bankrupting his kingdom, Louis had succeeded in placing his grandson on the Spanish throne –but at great cost.
“King Louis XIV, who was almost certainly a diabetic in the last years of his reign, died of gangrene at Versailles on September 1, 1715 four days before his seventy-seventh birthday. It was the end of an epoch: there can have been few people in France who remembered the reign of his father. It was also, from the cultural point of view, a Golden Age: the age of France’s greatest playwrights, Corneille, Racine and Moliere; of philosophers like Pascal and moralists like La Rochefoucauld and La Bruyere; of diarists like Saint-Simon and letter-writers like Madame Mansart, of gardeners like Le Notre. But there was a downside too: even Louis’s younger contemporary the Duc de Saint-Simon wrote that when he died ‘the provinces, in despair at their own ruin and prostration, trembled with joy. The people, bankrupt, overwhelmed, disconsolate, thanked God with scandalous rejoicing for a release for which it had forsworn all hope’, and a popular prayer went into circulation: ‘Our Father who art in Versailles, thy name is no longer hallowed; thy kingdom is diminished; thy will is no longer done on earth or on the waves. Give us our bread, which is lacking…’ By the time Voltaire wrote La Siecle de Louis XIV (“The Century of Louis VIX”) in 1751, few historians had a good word to say about the Sun King. Even Versailles itself had been a dangerous mistake: the emasculation of the nobility by bringing it wholesale to the palace and reducing it to impotence had dealt what was almost a death blow to local government in the provinces. Moreover the king’s incurable extravagance had twice – for the first time in 1690 and then again in 1709 – reduced his kingdom to the point where he himself had to watch while his gold and silver, his plate and even his throne were melted down into bullion… But civilization must, in the long run, be more important than economics; and the civilization of France in the age of Louis XIV is among the most brilliant the world has ever known. No civilization, obviously can be ascribed to a single ma, or even to a single cause; but the fact that France two highest point to date coincided with its almost dazzling rulers, Francis I and Louis XIV, surely suggests that there may be some connection: that the effulgence of a great monarch may somehow fertilise and irradiate the genius of his subjects. Louis, who owes his fame exclusively to his position, cannot possibly be accounted a great man; neither, however, can there be any doubt that his fore of character, his energy and his unshakable self-confidence made him a great king. He set his stamp on his country in a way that no monarch had ever done before. In all its history Europe had never seen such majesty, such splendour; nor would it ever be seen again.”
House of Bourbon (1589-1715)
- Henry IV ‘The Great” (1589-1610)
- Louis XIII (1610-1643)
- Louis XIV “The Sun King” (1643-1715)
For this reading I used John Julius Norwich’s A History of France (2018), one of his final books before his death.