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10 ihipertal'I@rces at the Battle ot Venain combined to end
5s the war. The treaties of Utrecht, Rastatt, and Baden,
a signed in 1713~14, cost France its hegemony but left it

territorially intact. It retained its recent conquests in
Flanders and on the Rhine, which were so much in the
order of things that neither later defeats nor revolutions
would cause it to lose them.

Louis XIV died on September 1, 1715, at the age of 77.
His body was borne, amid the jeers of the populace, to
the Saint-Denis basilica.

His heir, the last son of the Duc de Bourgogne, was a
five-year-old child who was not expected to live. Louis
had distrusted his nephew, the Duc d’Orléans, and wanted
to leave actual power in the hands of the Duc du Maine,
his son by Madame de Montespan. In attempting to ac-
complish this, he had drawn up a will that was to help
destroy the monarchy. The Parlement of Paris, convened
to nullify the will after his death, rediscovered a political
power that it used to prevent all reforms during the en-
suing reigns, thus making the Revolution inevitable.

Evaluation. During his lifetime, Louis was flattered
ceaselessly by his subjects, while foreign journals com-
pared him to a bloodthirsty tiger. Voltaire portrayed his
grandeur in his Age of Louis XIV. The Duc de Saint-Si-
mon, a member of his court whose Mémoires show equal
proportions of literary genius and insincerity, dealt with
him quite harshly, without denying his admiration for
him. Later judgments of Louis varied according to the
author’s political views.

Louis XIV was the foremost example of the monarchy

that brought France to its pinnacle. He has been accused
of having dug the grave of that monarchy, particularly
through his religious policy, his last will, and his isolation
of the court from the people. These mistakes could have
been corrected. His irremediable error was to have con-
zentrated all the machinery of the state in his own person,
‘hus making of the monarchy a burden beyond human
strength.
His reign, compared by Voltaire to that of the Roman
‘mperor Augustus, had both its strong and its weak
20ints. Despite his victories and conquests, France lost
ier primacy under him. Yet the brilliance of his reign
nade up for his mititary policies. The aristocracy of
zurope adopted the language and customs of the France
vhere the Sun King had shone, although resentments
ingered for a long time.
The King identified with his office to such an extent that
t is difficult to find the individual. His harshness and
‘ourage, despotism and stoicism, prodigious pride and
»assion for order, megalomania and religion, intolerance
ind love of beauty can be understood only as a function
if the exigencies of governing. He wanted France to be
»owerful, prosperous, and magnificent but was not overly
oncerned with the well-being of the French people. His
«mies committed atrocities, but the horrors of today
have eclipse ; i
wh ations reduced to slavery, mass deportations;
enocide. When an Italian chemist offered him the first
bacteriological weapon, he gave him a pension on con-
dition that he never divulge his invention.
Louts was sometimes a tyrant, but in the words of Vol-
tatre? i i re-
spect and without summoning the image of an eternally
memorable age.”

BIBLIOGRAPHY. Louis xiv, Mémoires (Eng. trans., Mem-
oirs of Lewis the Fourteenth, Written by Himself and Ad-
dressed to His Son, 2 vol., 1806), is very important for an
understanding of the psychology of Louis XIV. There are
many French editions of this work. Contemporary accounts
include: the DUCHESS D’ORLEANS (Madame Palatine), Cor-
respondance compléte, 2 vol. (1857); Mémoires of the puc
DE SAINT-SIMON; the Journal of DANGEAU; reports of the Ve-
netian ambassadors and of the marquis de Saint Maurice,
ambassador from Savoy; and EZECHIEL SPANHEIM, Relation
de la cour de France en 1690 (1704; Eng. trans., Account of
the Court of France, 1900). voLTatRE, La Siécle de Louis
XIV, 2 vol. (1751; Eng. trans., The Age of Louis XIV), an
admirably written and well-documented study, remains an
important source. JACQUES ROUJON, Louis XIV (1943), is
a very objective and complete work. Two of the best books
written on this period in the past century are PHILIPPE ER-
LANGER, Louis XIV (1965; Eng. trans., 1970); and JOHN B.
wotr, Louis XIV (1968).

  
      
  

   
 

(P.Er.)

Louis XIV of France 123

Louis XIV
and the
French
monarchy