31.05.2011 - 16:48
Every person, regardless of their gender, religion, social status, dreams of being loved. There are no exceptions to this rule - even kings suffered from loneliness and were looking for a kindred spirit. But, as you know, no king can marry for love - politics is much more important than human feelings. True, sometimes fate presents true love as a gift to monarchs ...
Marriage of convenience
When the young King Louis XIV married the Spanish Infanta Maria Theresa, his heart and thoughts were occupied by another Maria - Mancini, the niece of Cardinal Mazarin. This girl could well be next to the king, but, alas, politics is stronger than love ...
The marriage of Louis XIV with Maria Theresa was beneficial from all points of view - both the long-awaited peace with Spain, and the reinforcement of the necessary connections, and a good dowry ...
And what will marriage with Maria Mancini give France? Nothing, except perhaps the strengthening of the power of Cardinal Mazarin. The choice of the mother of King Anna of Austria is unequivocal - only the Spanish Infanta! And Mazarin had to negotiate with the Spanish court about the marriage of Louis and Maria Theresa.
The young king relented and refused to marry the cardinal's much-desired niece. Maria was forced to leave Paris. But politics is politics, and love is love. The image of a black-eyed beauty with a tear-stained face, her tender words and farewell kisses lived in the heart of the king for a long time ...
Poor lame
After the wedding with his unloved wife, the king threw himself into the maelstrom of love affairs. The most beautiful women in France are ready to succumb to the desire of Louis, and he meets the second true love of his life. Modest, ugly, lame Louise de La Vallière suddenly won the heart of the king.
Alexandre Dumas described the girl dear to Louis in this way: “She was a blonde with brown expressive eyes, with wide white teeth; her mouth was rather large; there were some traces of smallpox on her face; she had neither beautiful breasts nor beautiful shoulders; her hands were thin, ugly; moreover, she limped a little due to a dislocation that happened and was poorly corrected in the seventh or eighth year, when she jumped to the ground from a pile of firewood. However, they said that she was very kind and sincere; at court she did not have a single admirer, except for the young Guiche, who, however, did not succeed in anything "...
But the king sincerely fell in love with the ugly Louise. They say that his love began with the fact that once the king, as in a fairy tale, overheard the conversations of several court ladies-in-waiting, discussing yesterday's ball and the beauty of the gentlemen present. And Louise suddenly said: “How can you talk about someone if the king himself was at the celebration ?!” ...
Touched to the core by such love and devotion, Louis reciprocated the girl and began to shower her with gifts. But the maid of honor needed only Louis himself and his love. She did not at all seek, like everyone else, to pull money and jewelry from Louis. Louise dreamed of only one thing - to become the legitimate wife of the king, give birth to children for him and be close to her any man ...
The king was touched to the core by such a sincere feeling. Once, when a young man and his lover were caught in the rain, Louis covered Louise with his hat for two hours .... For a woman, such an act proves the love of a man much more strongly than all the jewelry and gifts. But Louis did not skimp on them either. Louise was bought a whole palace in which the favorite was waiting for her king ...
But Louis was bound by family ties, duty, public policy considerations. Louise gave birth to his children, but the babies were taken away from her - why once again compromise the unfortunate maid of honor ... The king's heart was torn from the torment of poor Louise, but what could he do? And Louis began to take out his anger on Louise, and she only wept bitterly in response ...
Black mass
The queen's lady-in-waiting, the clever and insidious Francoise Athenais de Montespan, noticed that not everything was going well in the king's relationship with Louise, and decided that her hour had come. For the heart of Louis, she was going to fight seriously - both the usual female tricks and insidious intrigues are used.
Louise was at a loss, sobbed, did not know how to behave in such a cruel persecution. She became more and more pious and found consolation only in religion ... The king was getting more and more bored next to his mistress, and the witty and lively Françoise loomed next to her tidbit ...
Soon, Louis fell before the ardent charms of the beauty, and Louise had no choice but to retire to the Carmelite monastery, where she prayed for the king and his soul ...
But intrigues against Louise do not bring happiness to the Marquise. She receives rich gifts from the king, but her happiness seems so fragile. About the love of Louis for Françoise, such touching stories were not told, as about the feeling of the king for the lame Louise. No, the king was now constantly surrounded by beauties, and he showed signs of attention to each of them.
Montespan was angry and filled with hatred for the whole world. But if Louise de La Valliere sought solace in God, then the Marquise turned to the devil for help ... All Paris spoke in a whisper about her passion for black magic, about witchcraft means by which she warded off poor Louise from the king, about terrible bloody masses with the killing of babies ...
They say that there is not a single crime on Francoise’s conscience, that it was she who poisoned the beautiful red-haired girl Fontage, to whom the king was not indifferent at one time ... It is not known how it all really happened, but Louis is gradually moving away from Francoise de Montespan ...
Wise woman
... When the age of the king approached 40 years, Louis ceased to be attracted by constant easy connections, frivolous beauties. He was tired of women's tears, intrigues, accusations, quarrels between favorites and random mistresses ...
Increasingly, he repeats his famous words: “It would be easier for me to reconcile the whole of Europe than a few women” ...
He wanted only one thing - love and peace, a reliable girlfriend, such that she would help him and share with him all the difficulties and doubts. And such a woman was soon found ...
Enlightened, intelligent, mature Mrs. Francoise Scarron, widow of the famous poet Paul Scarron, has long been close to the king - but as a governess to his children. The king was very fond of his offspring - both those born in a legal marriage and bastards from favorites. After Francoise Scarron took up their upbringing, he notices that the children are becoming more and more intelligent and educated.
Louis became interested in their teacher. Long hours of conversation showed him that before him was a woman of extraordinary intelligence. Heart-to-heart conversations grew into a real feeling - Louis' last love ... To strengthen the position in society of his new favorite, he granted her the estate of Maintenon and the title of Marquise.
Françoise compares favorably with the frivolous coquettes surrounding Louis. Madame de Maintenon stands out for her high morality, religiosity and condemns the mores of the court. She wrote: “I see the most varied passions, betrayals, meanness, immeasurable ambitions, on the one hand, on the other, the terrible envy of people who have rabies in their hearts and who think only about destroying everyone. Women of our time are unbearable for me, their clothes are immodest, their tobacco, their wine, their rudeness, their laziness - all this I cannot endure.
In 1683, the legitimate wife of the king, Maria Theresa, dies. The king will say after her death: "This is the only worry in life that she has caused me" ...
Being a widower, after some time, Louis is married in secret to Madame Maintenon, but he is still afraid to proclaim her officially queen. But the position of the new wife of Louis is more than profitable - no woman before her had such an influence on the king of his affairs. All historians note how, under the influence of Madame de Mentonon, both the policy of France, and the life of the court, and the king himself changed - gradually he became a completely different person ...
Louis began to read religious books, talk with preachers, think about the punishment for sins and the Last Judgment ... But even in this world, God sends him one test after another. The son died, then the grandson and great-grandson ... The Bourbon dynasty is under the threat of extinction, and Louis lost the people dearest to him ...
Diseases begin to devour the king, and France is practically ruled by Madame Maintenon. In the early morning of September 1, 1715, Louis XIV died. Faithful Francoise de Maintenon hears his last words: “Why are you crying? Did you really think that I would live forever? ”... It is not known what the king thought in his last minutes, whether he remembered all the women that had passed through his life in succession - or did he see only one of them, shedding tears on the king’s face - his last love and affection, Francoise de Maintenon...
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1. The most brilliant of the kings of France was also the most "long-playing" monarch of Europe. He ruled for 72 years, and even the current Queen of England, Elizabeth, who ascended the throne in 1952, has not yet managed to “get around” the radiant Sun King.
2. Louis XIV believed that he was a kind of gift from God.
3. For more than twenty years, Queen Anne of Austria could not get pregnant from Louis XIII, when, finally, by incredible chance, this happened, Louis XIII, in joy, decided to dedicate the whole country to the Blessed Virgin and give himself and the kingdom under her heavenly protection.
4. The royal couple was lucky - on September 5, 1638, a boy was born. Moreover, the little dauphin was born on the most suitable day for this, on Sunday, the day of the sun. They also say that the divine manifestation of heavenly grace was the fact that Louis XIV was born immediately with two teeth in his mouth. Therefore, he immediately received the nickname Louis-Dieudonné, that is, "given by God."
5. The famous philosopher Tommaso Campanella, who lived in those years at the French court, wrote the once popular treatise “The City of the Sun”, connected his utopian city with the appearance of the heir of France on the day of the Sun, and confidently declared: “Like the sun, he will please with his warmth and light France and her friends.
King Louis 13
6. In 1643, Louis XIV ascended the throne as a four-year-old boy and began to build his future and the future of the country. As the era of the Sun King, people remember the reign of Louis XIV. And this is all thanks to the huge benefits received after the end of the 30-year war, the rich resources of the country, military victories and many more factors.
7. His father, Louis XIII, died on May 14, 1643 at the age of 41, when little Louis was 4 years and 8 months old. The throne automatically passed to him, but, of course, it was impossible to rule the state at such a tender age, so his mother, Anna of Austria, became regent. But in fact, Cardinal Mazarin managed the affairs of the state, who was not only the godfather of the king, but, in fact, for some time became his real stepfather and did not have a soul in him.
8. Louis XIV was officially crowned at the age of 15, but in fact, he did not rule the state for another seven years - until the death of Mazarin. By the way, then this story repeated itself with his great-grandson Louis XV, who ascended the throne at the age of 5, after the death of his brilliant grandfather.
9. 72 years of the reign of King Louis XIV received the name "Great Century" in French history.
10. When Louis was 10 years old, a virtual civil war broke out in the country, in which the opposition Fronde opposed the authorities. The young king had to endure a blockade in the Louvre, a secret flight, and many other things that were by no means royal.
Anna of Austria - mother of Louis 14
11. Louis XIV grew up, along with him the firm intention to rule the country independently grew, because in the period from 1648 to 1653 civil wars flared in France, and at that time the young monarch found himself in the wrong hands as a puppet. But he successfully defeated the rebellions and in 1661 took all power into his own hands after the death of the first minister Mazarin.
12. It was during these years that his character and his views were formed. Remembering the turmoil of childhood, Louis XIV was convinced that the country could flourish only with the strong, unrestricted power of the autocrat.
13. After the death of Cardinal Mazarin in 1661, the young king convened a Council of State, at which he announced that from now on he intended to rule independently, without appointing a first minister. Then he decided to build a large residence in Versailles, so as not to return to the unreliable Louvre.
14. In 1661, the 23-year-old King Louis XIV of France arrived at his father's small hunting castle, located near Paris. The monarch ordered the large-scale construction of his new residence to begin here, which was to become his stronghold and refuge. The dream of the Sun King came true. In Versailles, created at his request, Louis spent his best years, and here he ended his earthly journey.
15. In the period from 1661 to 1673, the monarch carried out the most productive reforms for France. Louis XIV carried out reforms in the social and economic spheres to reorganize all state institutions. Literature and art flourished in the country.
Versailles
16. The royal court moves to the Palace of Versailles, it is considered a monument of the era of Louis XIV. The monarch there surrounds himself with noble nobles and keeps them constantly under control, thus he excluded any possibility of political intrigues.
17. This king, as they say, worked great with frames. The actual head of government for two decades was Jean-Baptiste Colbert, a talented financier. Thanks to Colbert, the first period of the reign of Louis XIV was very successful from an economic point of view.
18. Louis XIV patronized science and art, because he considered it impossible for the prosperity of his kingdom without a high level of development of these areas of human activity.
19. If the king would only be engaged in the construction of Versailles, the rise of the economy and the development of the arts, then, probably, the respect and love of subjects for the Sun King would be limitless.
20. However, the ambitions of Louis XIV extended much beyond the borders of his state. By the early 1680s, Louis XIV had the most powerful army in Europe, which only whetted his appetites.
21. In 1681, he established the chambers of reunification to seek the rights of the French crown to certain areas, seizing more and more new lands in Europe and Africa.
22. Louis XIV became an absolute monarch and first of all put things in order in the treasury, created a strong fleet, and developed trade. By force of arms, he realizes territorial claims. So, as a result of hostilities, Franche-Comté, Metz, Strasbourg, a number of cities in the Southern Netherlands and some other cities retreat to France.
23. The military prestige of France rose high, which allowed Louis XIV to dictate his terms to almost all European courts. But this circumstance turned against Louis XIV himself, the enemies of France rallied, and the Protestants turned against Louis for the persecution of the Huguenots.
24. In 1688, the claims of Louis XIV to the Palatinate led to the fact that all of Europe took up arms against him. The so-called War of the League of Augsburg dragged on for nine years and led to the parties maintaining the status quo. But the huge expenses and losses incurred by France led to a new economic decline in the country and the depletion of funds.
25. But already in 1701, France was embroiled in a long conflict, called the War of the Spanish Succession. Louis XIV expected to defend the rights to the Spanish throne for his grandson, who was to become the head of two states. However, the war, which engulfed not only Europe, but also North America, ended unsuccessfully for France. According to the peace concluded in 1713 and 1714, the grandson of Louis XIV retained the Spanish crown, but its Italian and Dutch possessions were lost, and England, by destroying the Franco-Spanish fleets and conquering a number of colonies, laid the foundation for its maritime dominion. In addition, the project of uniting France and Spain under the hand of the French monarch had to be abandoned.
King Louis 15
26. This last military campaign of Louis XIV returned him to where he started - the country was mired in debt and groaning from the burden of taxes, and here and there rebellions broke out, the suppression of which required more and more resources.
27. The need to replenish the budget led to non-trivial solutions. Under Louis XIV, trade in public offices was put on stream, reaching its maximum scope in the last years of his life. To replenish the treasury, more and more new positions were created, which, of course, brought chaos and discord into the activities of state institutions.
28. The ranks of opponents of Louis XIV were joined by French Protestants, after the “Edict of Fontainebleau” was signed in 1685, repealing the Edict of Nantes by Henry IV, which guaranteed the Huguenots freedom of religion.
29. After that, more than 200,000 French Protestants emigrated from the country, despite severe penalties for emigration. The exodus of tens of thousands of economically active citizens dealt another painful blow to the power of France.
30. At all times and eras, the personal life of monarchs influenced politics. Louis XIV in this sense is no exception. Once the monarch remarked: "It would be easier for me to reconcile the whole of Europe than a few women."
Maria Theresa
31. His official wife in 1660 was a contemporary, the Spanish Infanta Maria Theresa, who was Louis' cousin both by father and mother.
32. The problem of this marriage, however, was not in the close family ties of the spouses. Louis simply did not like Maria Theresa, but dutifully agreed to a marriage that was of great political importance. The wife bore the king six children, but five of them died in childhood. Only the first-born survived, named, like his father, Louis and went down in history under the name of the Great Dauphin.
33. For the sake of marriage, Louis broke off relations with the woman he really loved - the niece of Cardinal Mazarin. Perhaps parting with his beloved also influenced the attitude of the king towards his lawful wife. Maria Theresa resigned herself to her fate. Unlike other French queens, she did not intrigue and did not get into politics, playing a prescribed role. When the queen died in 1683, Louis said: "This is the only worry in life that she has caused me."
Louise - Francoise de Lavaliere
34. The king compensated for the lack of feelings in marriage by relations with favorites. Louise-Francoise de La Baume Le Blanc, Duchess de La Vallière, became Louise-Francoise de La Baume Le Blanc, for nine years. Louise was not distinguished by dazzling beauty, besides, due to an unsuccessful fall from a horse, she remained lame for life. But the meekness, friendliness and sharp mind of Limps attracted the attention of the king.
35. Louise bore Louis four children, two of whom survived to adulthood. The king treated Louise quite cruelly. Becoming cool to her, he settled the rejected mistress next to the new favorite - the Marquise Francoise Athenais de Montespan. The heroine de Lavaliere was forced to endure the bullying of her rival. She endured everything with her usual meekness, and in 1675 she took the veil as a nun and lived for many years in a monastery, where she was called Louise the Merciful.
Françoise Athenais Montespan
36. In the mistress before Montespan there was not even a shadow of the meekness of her predecessor. A representative of one of the most ancient noble families of France, Francoise not only became an official favorite, but for 10 years she turned into a “true queen of France”.
37. Francoise loved luxury and did not like to count money. It was the Marquise de Montespan who turned the reign of Louis XIV from deliberate budgeting to unbridled and unlimited spending. Capricious, envious, imperious and ambitious Francoise knew how to subordinate the king to her will. New apartments were built for her in Versailles, she managed to arrange all her close relatives for significant government posts.
38. Francoise de Montespan bore Louis seven children, four of whom survived to adulthood. But the relationship between Françoise and the king was not as faithful as with Louise. Louis allowed himself hobbies in addition to the official favorite, which angered Madame de Montespan. To keep the king to herself, she became involved in black magic and even got involved in a high-profile case of poisoning. The king did not punish her with death, but deprived her of the status of a favorite, which was much more terrible for her. Like her predecessor, Louise le Lavaliere, the Marquise de Montespan changed her royal quarters to a convent.
39. The new favorite of Louis was the Marquise de Maintenon, the widow of the poet Scarron, who was the governess of the king's children from Madame de Montespan. This favorite of the king was called the same as her predecessor, Francoise, but the women differed from each other, like heaven and earth. The king had long conversations with the Marquise de Maintenon about the meaning of life, about religion, about responsibility before God. The royal court changed its luster to chastity and high morality.
40. After the death of his official wife, Louis XIV was married in secret to the Marquise de Maintenon. Now the king was occupied not with balls and festivities, but with masses and reading the Bible. The only entertainment he allowed himself was hunting.
Marquise de Maintenon
41. The Marquise de Maintenon founded and directed the first secular school for women in Europe, called the Royal House of Saint Louis. The school in Saint-Cyr has become an example for many such institutions, including the Smolny Institute in St. Petersburg. For her strict disposition and intolerance for secular entertainment, the Marquise de Maintenon was nicknamed the Black Queen. She survived Louis and after his death retired to Saint-Cyr, living the rest of her days in the circle of pupils of her school.
42. Louis XIV recognized his illegitimate children from both Louise de La Vallière and Francoise de Montespan. All of them received their father's surname - de Bourbon, and dad tried to arrange their lives.
43. Ludovic, the son of Louise, was promoted to French admiral at the age of two, and having matured, went on a military campaign with his father. There, at the age of 16, the young man died.
44. Louis-Auguste, the son of Francoise, received the title of Duke of Maine, became a French commander and, in this capacity, accepted Abram Petrovich Hannibal, godson of Peter I and great-grandfather of Alexander Pushkin, for military training.
45. Francoise-Marie, the youngest daughter of Louis, was married to Philip of Orleans, becoming the Duchess of Orleans. Possessing the character of a mother, Françoise-Marie plunged headlong into political intrigues. Her husband became the French regent under the infant king Louis XV, and the children of Francoise-Marie married the offspring of other royal dynasties of Europe. In a word, not many illegitimate children of ruling persons got such a fate, which fell to the lot of the sons and daughters of Louis XIV.
46. The last years of the king's life turned out to be a difficult test for him. The man who all his life defended the choice of God of the monarch and his right to autocratic rule, experienced not only the crisis of his state. His close people left one by one, and it turned out that there was simply no one to transfer power to.
On April 13, 1711, his son, the Grand Dauphin Louis, died. In February 1712, the eldest son of the Dauphin, the Duke of Burgundy, died, and on March 8 of the same year, the eldest son of the latter, the young Duke of Brittany. March 4, 1714 fell from a horse and a few days later died the younger brother of the Duke of Burgundy, the Duke of Berry. The only heir was the 4-year-old great-grandson of the king, the youngest son of the Duke of Burgundy. If this baby had died, the throne after the death of Louis would have remained vacant. This forced the king to add even his illegitimate sons to the list of heirs, which promised internal strife in France in the future.
48. When the French, along with their British competitors, were mastering the newly discovered America with might and main, Rene-Robert Cavelier de la Salle staked out land on the Mississippi River in 1682, naming them Louisiana, precisely in honor of Louis XIV. True, then France sold them.
49. Louis XIV built the most majestic palace in Europe. Versailles was born from a small hunting estate and became a real royal palace, causing the envy of many monarchs. Versailles had 2,300 rooms, 189,000 square meters, a park on 800 hectares of land, 200,000 trees and 50 fountains.
50. At the age of 76, Louis remained active, active and, as in his youth, regularly went hunting. During one of these trips, the king fell and injured his leg. Doctors found that the injury had provoked gangrene and suggested amputation. The Sun King refused: it is unacceptable for royal dignity. The disease progressed rapidly, and soon the agony began, stretching for several days. At the moment of clearing his mind, Louis looked around those present and uttered his last aphorism: - Why are you crying? Did you think that I would live forever? On September 1, 1715, at about 8 o'clock in the morning, Louis XIV died in his palace in Versailles, four days before his 77th birthday. France said goodbye to the great monarch. There was a growing threat from the growing strength of Britain.
King of France from the Bourbon dynasty, who ruled from 1643-1715. Son
Louis XIII and Anne of Austria. Woman: 1) 1660 Maria Theresa, daughter of the king
Philip IV of Spain (b. 1638; died 1683); 2) from 1683 Francoise
Saint-Germain-aux-Laye. Prior to that, for twenty-two years, the marriage of his parents
was fruitless and seemed to remain so in the future. Therefore, contemporaries
greeted the news of the birth of the long-awaited heir with expressions
liveliest joy. The common people saw in this a sign of God's mercy and called
the newborn Dauphin Bogodanny. There is very little information about him
early childhood. He hardly remembered his father well, who had died in
1643, when Louis was only five years old. Queen Anne shortly after
left the Louvre and moved to the former Richelieu Palace, renamed
at the Palais Royal. Here, in a very simple and even wretched environment, the young king
spent his childhood. Queen Dowager Anne was considered the ruler
France, but in fact all affairs were managed by her favorite, Cardinal Mazarin. He
was very stingy and almost did not care at all about delivering pleasure
child-king, deprived him not only of games and amusements, but even of the objects of the first
necessity: the boy received only two pairs of dresses a year and was forced
to walk in patches, and huge holes were noticed in his sheets.
The childhood and adolescence of Louis fell on the turbulent events of the civil
war known in history as the Fronde. In January 1649 the royal
the family, accompanied by several courtiers and ministers, fled to
Saint Germain from revolted Paris. Mazarin, against whom,
mainly, and discontent was directed, had to seek asylum still
inner world. But in the following years, until his death, Mazarin
firmly held the reins of government in his hands. In foreign policy, he
achieved significant success. In November 1659, the Peace of the Pyrenees was signed
with Spain, ending years of war between the two kingdoms.
The treaty was sealed by the marriage alliance of the French king with his cousin,
Spanish Infanta Maria Theresa. This marriage was the last act
almighty Mazarin. In March 1661 he died. Until death, despite
the fact that the king had long been considered an adult, the cardinal remained
full ruler of the state, and Louis obediently followed his
instructions. But as soon as Mazarin was gone, the king hastened to free himself from all
guardianship. He abolished the position of the first minister and, having convened the State
advice, announced in an imperious tone that he decided from now on to be his first
Minister and does not want anyone on his behalf to sign even the most
minor ordinance.
Very few at this time were familiar with the real character
Louis. This young king, who was only 22 years old, before that
pores attracted attention only by a penchant for panache and amorous
intrigues. It seemed to be created solely for idleness and pleasure.
But it didn't take long to find out otherwise. AT
as a child, Louis received a very poor upbringing - he was barely taught to read and
write. However, by nature he was gifted with common sense, a wonderful
ability to understand the essence of things and firm determination to maintain their
royal dignity. According to the Venetian envoy, "nature itself
tried to make Louis XIV such a person who was destined for his
personal qualities to become the king of the nation.” He was tall and very handsome.
There was something masculine or heroic in all his movements. He
possessed a very important ability for a king to express himself concisely, but clearly, and
say no more and no less than what was necessary. All his life he diligently
engaged in state affairs, from which he could not be torn off by
entertainment, nor old age. “They reign by labor and for labor,” he loved
repeat Louis, and to desire one without the other would be ingratitude and
disrespect for the Lord." Unfortunately, his innate greatness and
industriousness served as a cover for the most shameless selfishness. No one
the French king had never before been distinguished by such monstrous pride and
selfishness, no European monarch so obviously exalted himself above
around and did not smoke with such pleasure the incense of his own greatness.
This is clearly seen in everything that concerned Louis: in his court and
public life, in his domestic and foreign policy, in his love
hobbies and in his buildings.
All the former royal residences seemed to Louis unworthy of his
persons. From the first days of his reign, he was preoccupied with the idea of building
new palace, more appropriate to its grandeur. For a long time he did not know what
from royal castles to turn into a palace. Finally, in 1662, his choice fell
to Versailles (under Louis XIII it was a small hunting castle). However
more than fifty years passed before the new magnificent palace was ready
in its main parts. The construction of the ensemble cost about 400
million francs and absorbed annually 12-14% of all state
expenses. For two decades, while construction was going on, the royal
the court did not have a permanent seat: until 1666 it was located in
mainly in the Louvre, then, in 1666-- 1671. -- at the Tuileries, within the next
ten years - alternately in Saint-Germain-aux-Laye and Versailles under construction. Finally, in
1682 Versailles became the permanent seat of the court and government. After
until his death, Louis visited Paris only 16 times with short
visits.
The extraordinary splendor of the new apartments corresponded
complicated rules of etiquette established by the king. Everything here has been thought of
little things. So, if the king wanted to quench his thirst, then it took "five people
and four bows" to bring him a glass of water or wine. Usually
leaving his bedroom, Louis went to church (the king regularly
observed church rites: every day he went to mass, and when he
took medicine or was unwell, then he ordered mass to be served in his
room; he received communion on major feasts at least four times a year and
strictly observed the posts). From the church, the king went to the Council, whose meetings
continued until lunchtime. On Thursdays he gave an audience to everyone
who wished to speak with him and always listened to petitioners with patience and
courtesy. At one o'clock the king was served dinner. It was always abundant and consisted of
three great meals. Louis ate them alone in the presence of the courtiers. And
even the princes of the blood and the dauphin were not entitled to a chair at this time. Only brother
king, the Duke of Orleans, was given a stool on which he could sit down
behind Louis. The meal was usually followed by a general silence.
After dinner, Louis retired to his study and fed
hunting dogs. Then came the walk. At this time, the king was poisoning the deer,
shot at the menagerie or visited works. Sometimes he made appointments with the ladies
and picnics in the forest. In the afternoon, Louis worked alone with
secretaries of state or ministers. If he was sick, the Council
met in the king's bedroom, and he presided over it while lying in bed.
The evening was devoted to pleasure. By the appointed time to Versailles
a large court society gathered. When Louis finally
settled in Versailles, he ordered the minting of a medal with the following inscription:
"The Royal Palace is open to public entertainment" Indeed, life under
the courtyard was distinguished by festivities and outward splendor. The so-called "big
apartments", that is, the salons of Plenty, Venus, Mars, Diana, Mercury and
Apollo, served as something like hallways for a large Mirror Gallery,
which was 72 meters long, 10 meters wide, 13 meters high and,
according to Madame Sevigne, it was distinguished by the only royal splendor in the world.
On the one hand, the Salon of War served as a continuation for her, on the other hand
Salon of the World. All this presented a splendid spectacle when the decorations from
colored marble, trophies of gilded copper, large mirrors, paintings by Le
Brena, furniture made of solid silver, toilets of ladies and courtiers were illuminated
thousands of candelabra, girandoles and torches. In the entertainments of the yard were
fixed rules are set. In the winter three times a week there was a meeting
the whole courtyard in large apartments, lasting from seven to ten o'clock. AT
in the halls of Abundance and Venus, sumptuous buffets were held. In Diana's room
there was a game of billiards. In the salons of Mars, Mercury and Apollo stood
tables for playing landsknecht, riversy, ombre, pharaoh, portico and
other. The game became an indomitable passion both at court and in the city. "On the
thousands of louis were scattered on the green table, wrote Madame Sevignet,
there were at least five, six or seven hundred louis." Louis himself refused
from a big game after losing 600,000 in six months in 1676
livres, but to please him, one had to risk huge
amounts. Comedies were presented on the other three days. First Italian comedies
alternated with French, but the Italians allowed themselves such
obscenities that were removed from the court, and in 1697, when the king became
obey the rules of piety, are expelled from the kingdom. french
comedy performed on the stage the plays of Corneille, Racine and especially Molière,
who has always been the royal playwright's favorite. Louis was very fond of
dance and many times performed roles in the ballets of Benserade, Cinema and Molière. He
refused this pleasure in 1670, but the court did not stop
dance. Maslenitsa was the season for masquerades. Sundays were not
no entertainment. During the summer months, entertainment events were often held.
trips to Trianon, where the king dined with the ladies and rode in gondolas along
channel. Sometimes Marley was chosen as the final destination of the journey,
Compiegne or Fontaine-lo. Dinner was served at 10 o'clock. This ceremony was less
stiff. Children and grandchildren usually shared a meal with the king, sitting at one
table. Then, accompanied by bodyguards and courtiers, Louis passed
to your office. He spent the evening with his family, but they could sit with him
only princesses and the Prince of Orleans. Around 12 o'clock the king was feeding the dogs,
wished good night and went to his bedroom, where, with many ceremonies
went to sleep. On the table beside him, sleeping food and drink were left for
In his youth, Louis was distinguished by an ardent disposition and was very not indifferent to
pretty women. Despite the beauty of the young queen, he did not
was not in love with his wife for a minute and was constantly looking for amorous entertainment
on the side. In March 1661, Louis' brother, Duke of Orleans, married
daughter of the English king Charles 1, Henri-te. First the king showed
keenest interest in his daughter-in-law and began to visit her often in Saint-Germain, but then
was carried away by her lady-in-waiting, the seventeen-year-old Louise de la Vallière. According to
contemporaries, this girl, gifted with a lively and tender heart, was very
limped and was a little pockmarked, but had beautiful blue eyes and
blond hair. Her love for the king was sincere and deep. According to
Voltaire, she gave Louis that rare happiness that he was loved only
for your own sake. However, the feelings that the king had for de la Vallière
also had all the properties of true love. In support of this, reference is made to
many cases. Some of them seem so unusual that with
hard to believe in them. So one day, while walking, a thunderstorm broke out,
and the king, hiding with de la Vallière under the protection of a branched tree,
stood in the rain for two hours, covering it with his hat. Louis
bought for La Vallière the palace of Biron, and visited her daily there. Communication with her
lasted from 1661 to 1667. During this time, the favorite gave birth to the king of four
children, of whom two survived. Louis legitimized them under the names of Count
Vermandois and the Maidens de Blois. In 1667 he granted his mistress
ducal title and since then began to gradually move away from her.
The new hobby of the king was the Marquise de Montespan. Both in appearance and
in character, the marquise was the exact opposite of la Vallière: ardent,
black-haired, she was very beautiful, but completely devoid of languor and
tenderness that was characteristic of her rival. With clear and
practical, smart, she knew well what she needed, and prepared very
it's not cheap to sell your caresses. For a long time the king, blinded by the love of la
Vallière, did not notice the merits of her rival. But when the old feelings
lost their sharpness, the marquise's beauty and her lively mind did their due
impression on Louis. The military campaign of 1667 in
Belgium, which has turned into a pleasure tour of the court through places
military actions. Noticing the indifference of the king, the unfortunate la Valliere once
dared to reproach Louis. The enraged king threw her on her knees
little dog and, saying: "Take it, ma'am, this is enough for you!"
He went to Madame de Montespan's room, which was nearby. Making sure
that the king had completely fallen out of love with her, la Vallière did not interfere with the new
favorite, retired to the Carmelite monastery and got tonsured there in 1675.
Marquise de Montespan, as a woman of intelligence and highly educated,
patronized all the writers who glorified the reign of Louis XIV,
but at the same time she did not for a moment forget about her interests: rapprochement
the marquise with the king began with the fact that Louis gave her family 800 thousand
livres to pay debts, and in addition 600 thousand to the Duke of Vivonne with his
marriage. This golden rain did not fail in the future.
The connection of the king with the Marquise de Montespan lasted sixteen years. Behind
during this time, Louis had many other affairs, more or less
serious. In 1674, Princess Soubise gave birth to a son who looked very much like the king.
Then Madame de Ludre, the Countess of Grammont and the girl
Gedam. But these were all fleeting hobbies. A more serious opponent
the marquise met in the person of the girl Fontange (Louis granted her as a duchess),
who, in the words of the abbe Choisely, "was as good as an angel, but before
extremely stupid." The king was very much in love with her in 1679. But the poor
burned her ships too quickly - she did not know how to maintain a fire in
the heart of a sovereign, already satiated with voluptuousness. emergency pregnancy
disfigured her beauty, the birth was unhappy, and in the summer of 1681 Mrs.
Fontange died suddenly. She was like a meteor that flashed
in the court sky. The Marquise of Montespan did not hide her malevolent joy,
however, her time of favor also came to an end.
While the king was indulging in sensual pleasures, the Marchioness of Montespan
For many years she remained the uncrowned Queen of France. But when
Louis began to cool off for love adventures, his heart was seized
a woman of a completely different stock. It was Madame d "Aubigne, daughter of the famous
Agrippa d "Aubigne and the widow of the poet Scarron, known in history under the name
Marquise de Maintenon. Before becoming the favorite of the king, she
for a time she was a governess with his side children (from 1667 to 1681.
Marquise de Montespan bore Louis eight children, of which four
reached adulthood). All of them were given to the education of Mrs. Scarron.
The king, who loved his children very much, did not pay attention to them for a long time.
teacher, but one day, talking with the little Duke of Maine, he remained
very pleased with his well-aimed answers. "Sir," the boy answered him, "do not
marvel at my sensible words: I am brought up by a lady who can
called embodied reason". This review made Louis more attentively
look at my son's governess. Talking with her, he more than once had the opportunity
be convinced of the truth of the words of the Duke of Maine. Assessing Ms. Scarron on
merit, the king in 1674 granted her the estate of Maintenon with the right to wear
this is the name and title of the Marchioness. Since then, Madame Maintenon began the fight for the heart
king and every year more and more tidied up Louis to her hands. King
talked for hours with the Marquise about the future of her pupils, visited her,
when she was ill, and soon became almost inseparable from her. From 1683, after
the removal of the Marquise de Montespan and the death of Queen Maria Theresa, Madame de
Maintenon acquired boundless influence over the king. Their rapprochement ended
secret marriage in January 1684. Approving all the orders of Louis, Madame de
Maintenon gave him advice and guidance on occasion. The king fed
the Marquise the deepest respect and trust; under her influence he became very
religious, renounced all love affairs and began to lead more
moral way of life. However, most contemporaries believed that
Louis went from one extreme to another and turned from debauchery to
hypocrisy. Be that as it may, in old age the king completely abandoned the noisy
gatherings, festivals and performances. They were replaced by sermons, reading moral
books and soul-saving conversations with the Jesuits. Through this influence of Madame Maintenon
on the affairs of state and especially religious was huge, but not
always beneficial.
The constraints to which from the very beginning of the reign of Louis were subjected
Huguenots, crowned in October 1685 with the repeal of the Edict of Nantes.
Protestants allowed to stay in France but banned publicly
perform their services and raise their children in the Calvinist faith.
Four hundred thousand Huguenots preferred exile to this humiliating condition.
Many of them fled military service. During the mass emigration from France
60 million livres were exported. Trade has declined and
the enemy fleets entered the service of thousands of the best French sailors.
The political and economic situation of France, which at the end of the 17th century and
so it was far from brilliant, worsened even more.
The brilliant atmosphere of the Versailles court often made us forget
how hard the regime of that time was for the common people, and especially for
peasants, on whom lay the burden of state duties. None
former sovereign, France did not conduct such a large number of large-scale
wars of conquest, as under Louis XIV. They started with the so-called
Devolutionary war. After the death of the Spanish King Philip IV, Louis
in his wife's name declared a claim to part of the Spanish inheritance and
tried to conquer Belgium. In 1667 the French army captured
Armantière, Charleroi, Berg, Fürn and the entire southern part of the seaside
Flanders. The besieged Lille surrendered in August. Ludovic showed there a personal
courage and inspired everyone with his presence. To stop
offensive movement of the French, Holland in 1668 united with Sweden
and England. In response, Louis moved troops into Burgundy and Franche-Comté. Were
Besançon, Salin and Grey are taken. In May, under the terms of the Treaty of Aachen,
the king returned Franche-Comté to the Spaniards, but retained the conquests made during
Flanders.
But this peace was only a respite before the big war with Holland.
It began in June 1672 with a surprise invasion by French troops. To
to stop the invasion of the enemy, Stadtholder William of Orange ordered to open
locks of dams and flooded the whole country with water. On the side of Holland soon stood
Emperor Leopold, Protestant German princes, King of Denmark and King
Spanish. This coalition was called the Great Union. War activities
fought partly in Belgium, partly on the banks of the Rhine. In 1673 the French took
Mastricht, in 1674 they captured Franche-Comté. The Dutch were defeated in
bloody battle at Senef. Marshal Turenne, commander of the French
army, defeated the imperial troops in three battles, forced them to retreat behind
Rhine and captured the whole of Alsace. In the following years, despite the defeat at
Consarbrücke, the French advances continued. Conde, Valenciennes were taken,
Bouchin and Combray. William of Orange was defeated at Kassel
(1675-1677). At the same time, the French fleet scored several victories over
Spaniards and began to dominate the Mediterranean Sea. However
the continuation of the war was very ruinous for France. Come down to
extreme poverty, the population raised uprisings against excessive taxes. AT
1678--1679 Peace treaties were signed at Nimwegen. Spain conceded
Louis Franche-Comte, Eure, Kassel, Ypres, Cambrai, Bu-shen and some others
cities in Belgium. Alsace and Lorraine remained with France.
The reason for a new European war was the capture by the French in 1681 of
Strasbourg and Casale. The Spanish king declared war on Louis. French people
won several victories in Belgium and took Luxembourg. According to the Regensburg
Strasbourg, Kehl, Luxembourg and a number of other fortresses were transferred to France by a truce.
This was the time of the highest power of Louis. But it wasn't
lengthy. In 1686, through the efforts of William of Orange, a new
coalition against France known as the League of Augsburg. It included
Austria, Spain, Holland, Sweden and several German principalities. War
began in October 1687 with the Dauphin's invasion of the Palatinate, the capture
Philippsburg, Mannheim and some other cities. Many of them, including
including Speyer, Worms, Bingen and Oppenheim, were razed to the ground. These
senseless devastation caused a wave of hatred throughout Germany. Between
Meanwhile, a revolution took place in England, ending with the deposition of James II.
William of Orange became in 1688 the English king and immediately turned on
his new subjects into the League of Augsburg. France had to go to war
against all of Europe. Louis tried to raise a Catholic uprising in
Ireland in support of the deposed James II. The English fleet was defeated
two battles: in the Bay of Bantry and near Cape Beachy Ged. But in the battle
On the banks of the Boyonna, William inflicted a decisive defeat on the Irish army. To
1691 all of Ireland was re-conquered by the British. In 1692
French squadron suffered heavy damage during the battle in Cherbourg
harbor, after which the Anglo-Dutch fleet began to dominate the sea. On the
on land, the war went on simultaneously on the banks of the Moselle, the Rhine, in the Alps and eastern
Pyrenees. In the Netherlands, French Marshal Luxembourg won a victory near
Fleurus, and in 1692 defeated William of Orange near Steinkerke and on
Neerwinden Plain. Another French marshal Catina defeated in 1690.
army of the Duke of Savoy at Staffard. The next year he took possession of Nice,
Montmelian and the county of Savoy. In 1692 the Duke of Savoy invaded
Alps, but retreated in great disorder. In Spain in 1694 was taken
Girona, and in 1697 - Barcelona. However, fighting without any allies with
numerous enemies, Louis soon exhausted his funds. Ten years
wars cost him 700 million livres. In 1690 the king was forced
send the magnificent furniture of his palace to the mint for melting down
from solid silver, as well as tables, candelabra, stools, washstands,
incense burners and even your throne. Everything began to collect taxes every year
harder. In one of the reports of 1687 it was said: "Everywhere it is significantly
the number of families decreased. Poverty dispersed the peasants in different directions; they
went to beg and then died in hospitals. In all areas
a significant decrease in people and almost universal ruin is noticeable.
Louis began to seek peace. In 1696 he signed an agreement with Savoy
duke, returning to him all the conquered areas. The following year was signed
general Ryswick Treaty, difficult for France and personally humiliating for
Louis. He recognized William as king of England and promised not to render any
support for the Stuarts. All the cities beyond the Rhine were returned to the emperor.
Lorraine, occupied in 1633 by the Duke of Richelieu, went to her former Duke
Leopold. Spain regained Luxembourg and Catalonia. Thus this
the bloody war ended with the holding of one Strasbourg.
However, the most destructive for France was the war for the Spanish
inheritance. In October 1700, the childless Spanish King Charles II announced
his heir to the grandson of Louis XIV, Philip of Anjou, with the fact, however,
condition that the Spanish possessions never join the French
crown. Louis accepted this will, but kept it for his grandson (who
after his coronation in Spain, he took the name Philippa V) the rights to French
throne and introduced French garrisons to some of the Belgian cities.
In view of this, England, Austria and Holland began to prepare for war. In September
1701 they restored the Grand Coalition 1689 The war began in the summer of that
the same year from the invasion of imperial troops under the command of Prince Eugene in
Duchy of Milan (which belonged to Philip as King of Spain).
At first, hostilities in Italy developed successfully for France, but
betrayal in 1702 by the Duke of Savoy brought the advantage to the Austrians. In Belgium
An English army landed, led by the Duke of Marlborough. Simultaneously
a war began in Spain, complicated by the fact that the Portuguese king crossed
on the side of the coalition. This allowed the British and the emperor's son Charles to begin
successful actions against Philip directly in his state.
The fourth theater of operations was Zareinskaya Germany. French people
occupied Lorraine, entered Nancy, and in 1703 advanced to the banks of the Danube
and began to threaten Vienna itself. Marlborough and Prince Eugene rushed to the rescue
Emperor Leopold. In August 1704, a decisive battle took place at
Gechstadt, in which the French were completely defeated. All southern Germany
after that was lost by them, and a long series of failures began,
haunted the great king until his death. Sadness reigned in Versailles
the influence of unpleasant news, constantly received from all sides. In May
1706 the French were defeated at Ramilly, near Brussels and must
were to clear Belgium. Antwerp, Ostend and Brussels surrendered to the duke
Marlboro without any resistance. The French were defeated in Italy
near Turin from Prince Eugene and retreated, leaving all their artillery.
The Austrians took possession of the duchies of Milan and Mantua, entered into
Neapolitan territory and were well received by the local population.
The British took possession of Sardinia, Minorca and the Balearic Islands. In June 1707
40,000 Austrian army crossed the Alps, invaded Provence and
besieged Toulon for five months, but, having not achieved success, retreated in a big
mess. At the same time, things were going badly in Spain: Philip was
expelled from Madrid, the northern provinces seceded from him, and he held on
throne only thanks to the courage of the Castilians. In 1708 the allies won
victory at Oudenard and after a two-month siege they took Lille. There was no war
the end is in sight, and meanwhile the French began to experience terrible hardships. hunger and
poverty was intensified by the unprecedentedly harsh winter of 1709. Only in Ile-de-France
about 30 thousand people died. Versailles began to be besieged by crowds of beggars who asked
alms. All the gold royal utensils were sent to be melted down, and
even at Madame de Maintenon's table black bread was served instead of white.
In the spring there was a fierce battle at Malplaque, in which both sides
more than 30 thousand people died. The French again retreated and surrendered to the enemy
Mons. However, the advance of the enemy into the depths of French territory cost
him more and more sacrifices. In Spain, Philip managed to turn the tide of the war in his
benefit, and he won several important victories. Because of this, the British
bow to the world. Negotiations began, but hostilities continued.
In 1712, Prince Eugene made another invasion of France, which ended
a bloody defeat at Denain. This battle ended the war and
allowed Louis to complete it on fairly acceptable terms. In July
In 1713 a peace treaty was signed in Utrecht. Peace terms with Austria
agreed the following year at the Rishtadt Castle. French losses were
not very significant. Spain lost much more, having lost in this
the war of all their European possessions outside the Iberian Peninsula. Except
Moreover, Philip V renounced all claims to the French throne.
Foreign policy failures were accompanied by family misfortunes.
In April 1711, in Meudon, the son of the king, the great
Dauphin Louis. His eldest son, the Duke, was declared heir to the throne.
Burgundy. The next 1712 year, preceding the conclusion of the Utrecht
world, became a year of heavy losses for the royal family. Early February
the wife of the new Dauphin, the Duchess of Burgundy, suddenly died. After her death
opened the correspondence that she had with the heads of hostile powers, issuing
them all French secrets. Soon the Duke of Burgundy himself fell ill with a fever.
and died ten days after the death of his wife. By law, the dauphin's successor
should have been his eldest son, the Duke of Brittany, but this child
Duke of Anjou, at that time an infant. But misfortune is not on this
ceased - soon this heir also fell ill with some kind of malignant
rash associated with thinness and signs of dryness. The doctors were expecting him
death from hour to hour. When he nevertheless recovered, it was perceived
like a miracle. But the series of deaths did not stop there: the second grandson of Louis
XIV, Duke of Berry, died suddenly in May 1714
After the death of his children and grandchildren, Louis became sad and gloomy. Breaking
all the laws of etiquette, he adopted the lazy habits of the old man: he got up late,
took and ate while lying in bed, sat for whole hours, immersed in his
large chairs, despite all the efforts of Madame Maintenon and the doctors to stir up
him - he could no longer resist his decrepitude. The first signs of senility
an incurable disease was found in the king in August 1715 on the 24th
the patient's left leg showed stains of Antonov's fire. It became obvious
that his days are numbered. On the 27th, Louis gave his last dying
orders. The footmen who were with him in the room wept. "Why are you crying?
The king said. When to die, if not at my age. Or did you think
let out his last breath.
(1715-09-01 ) (76 years old)Palace of Versailles, Versailles, Kingdom of France
sons: Louis the Great Dauphin, Philippe, Louis-Francois
daughters: Anna Elizabeth, Maria Anna, Maria Theresa
many illegitimate children, some legitimized
Louis XIV de Bourbon, who received at birth the name Louis-Dieudonné ("God-given", fr. Louis-Dieudonne), also known as "sun king"(fr. Louis XIV Le Roi Soleil), also Louis Great(fr. Louis le Grand), (September 5 ( 16380905 ) , Saint-Germain-en-Laye - September 1, Versailles) - King of France and Navarre since May 14. Reigned 72 years - longer than any other European king in history (of the monarchs of Europe, only some rulers have been in power longer petty principalities of the Holy Roman Empire).
Louis, who survived the wars of the Fronde in his childhood, became a staunch supporter of the principle of absolute monarchy and the divine right of kings (he is credited with the expression “The State is me!”), He combined the strengthening of his power with the successful selection of statesmen for key political posts. The reign of Louis - a time of significant consolidation of the unity of France, its military power, political weight and intellectual prestige, the flourishing of culture, went down in history as the Great Age. At the same time, the long-term military conflicts in which France participated during the reign of Louis the Great led to higher taxes, which placed a heavy burden on the shoulders of the population and caused popular uprisings, and as a result of the adoption of the Edict of Fontainebleau, which repealed the Edict of Nantes on religious tolerance within the kingdom, about 200,000 Huguenots emigrated from France.
Biography
Childhood and early years
Louis XIV as a child
Louis XIV came to the throne in May 1643, when he was not yet five years old, therefore, according to his father's will, the regency was transferred to Anna of Austria, who ruled in close tandem with the first minister, Cardinal Mazarin. Even before the end of the war with Spain and the House of Austria, the princes and the highest aristocracy, supported by Spain and in alliance with the Parlement of Paris, began unrest, which received the general name of the Fronde (1648-1652) and ended only with the submission of the Prince de Condé and the signing of the Pyrenean Peace (7 November).
Secretaries of State - There were four main positions of secretaries (for foreign affairs, for the military department, for the maritime department, for "reformed religion"). Each of the four secretaries received a separate province for administration. The posts of secretaries were sold and, with the permission of the king, they could be inherited. The positions of secretaries were very well paid and influential. Each subordinate had his own clerks and clerks, appointed at the personal discretion of the secretaries. There was also the position of Secretary of State for the King's Household, which was an adjoining one, held by one of the four Secretaries of State. Adjacent to the positions of secretaries was often the position of controller general. There was no exact division of posts. State Advisors - Members of the State Council. There were thirty of them: twelve ordinary, three military, three spiritual and twelve semester. The hierarchy of councilors was headed by a dean. The positions of advisers were not for sale and were for life. The position of an adviser gave a title of nobility.provincial government
The heads of the provinces were usually governors
(gouverneurs). They were appointed by the king from noble families of dukes or marquises for a certain time, but often this post could be inherited with the permission (patent) of the king. The duties of the governor included: to keep the province in obedience and peace, to protect it and keep it ready for defense, to promote justice. Governors had to reside in their provinces for at least six months of the year, or be at the royal court, unless otherwise authorized by the king. Governors' salaries were very high.
In the absence of governors, they were replaced by one or more lieutenant generals, who also had deputies, whose positions were called as royal governors. In fact, none of them ruled the province, but only received a salary. There were also positions of chiefs of small districts, cities, citadels, to which the military was often appointed.
Simultaneously with the governors, they were engaged in management quartermasters
(intendants de justice police et finances et commissaires departis dans les generalites du royaume pour l`execution des ordres du roi) in territorially separate units - regions (generalites), which in turn numbered 32 and whose borders did not coincide with the borders of the provinces. Historically, the positions of intendants arose from the positions of petitioners who were sent to the provinces to deal with complaints and requests, but remained to exercise constant control. The tenure of the position has not been determined.
Subordinate to the quartermasters were the so-called subdelegates (elections), appointed from employees of lower institutions. They had no right to make any decisions and could only act as speakers.
Along with the gubernatorial and commissary administration, in many regions the estate administration was preserved in the person of assemblies of estates
, which included representatives of the church, the nobility, the middle class (tiers etat). The number of representatives from each estate varied depending on the region. Meetings of estates dealt mainly with taxes and taxes.
City management
Managed cities city corporation or council (corps de ville, conseil de ville), consisting of one or more burgomasters (maire, prevot, consul, capitoul) and advisers or chefs (echevins, conseilers). The positions were initially elective until 1692, and then purchased with a lifetime replacement. The requirements for compliance with the position to be occupied were set independently by the city and varied from region to region. The city council handled the affairs of the city, respectively, and had limited autonomy in the affairs of the police, trade and market.
taxes
Jean Baptiste Colbert
Inside the state, the new fiscal system had in mind only an increase in taxes and taxes for the growing military needs, which fell heavily on the shoulders of the peasantry and the petty bourgeoisie. Particularly unpopular was the filing of sol-gabel, which caused several unrest throughout the country. The decision to impose a stamp paper tax in 1675 during the Dutch War caused a powerful Stamp Rebellion in the rear of the country, in the west of France, primarily in Brittany, partly supported by the regional parliaments of Bordeaux and Rennes. In the west of Brittany, the uprising developed into anti-feudal peasant uprisings, which were suppressed only by the end of the year.
At the same time, Louis, as the “first nobleman” of France, spared the material interests of the nobility that had lost political significance and, as a faithful son of the Catholic Church, did not demand anything from the clergy.
As figuratively formulated by the intendant of finance of Louis XIV - J. B. Colbert: “ Taxation is the art of plucking a goose in such a way as to obtain the maximum feathers with the minimum squeak.»
Trade
Jacques Savary
In France, during the reign of Louis XIV, the first codification of commercial law was carried out and the Ordonance de Commerce - the Commercial Code (1673) was adopted. The significant merits of the Ordinance of 1673 are due to the fact that its publication was preceded by very serious preparatory work based on the opinions of knowledgeable persons. The chief worker was Savary, so this ordinance is often referred to as Savary's code.
Migration
On emigration issues, the edict of Louis XIV, issued in 1669 and valid until 1791, was in effect. The edict decreed that all persons who left France without special permission from the royal government would be subject to confiscation of their property; those who enter into foreign service as shipbuilders are subject, upon their return to their homeland, to the death penalty.
“The connections of birth,” the edict said, “connecting natural subjects with their sovereign and fatherland, are the closest and most inseparable of all that exist in civil society.”
State positions:
A specific phenomenon of French public life was the venality of government posts, both permanent (offices, charges) and temporary (commissions).
A person was appointed to a permanent position (offices, charges) for life and could only be removed from it by a court for a serious violation.
Regardless of whether an official was removed or a new position was established, any person suitable for it could acquire it. The cost of the position was usually approved in advance, and the money paid for it was also a pledge. In addition, the approval of the king or a patent (lettre de provision) was still required, which was also produced for a certain cost and certified by the seal of the king.
For persons holding one position for a long time, the king issued a special patent (lettre de survivance), according to which this position could be inherited by the son of an official.
The situation with the sale of posts in the last years of Louis XIV's life reached the point that in Paris alone, 2,461 newly created posts were sold for 77 million French livres. Officials, however, mainly received salaries from taxes than from the state treasury (for example, overseers of slaughterhouses demanded 3 livres for each bull imported to the market, or, for example, brokers and commissioners for the wine part, who received a duty on each bought and sold barrels of wine).
Religious policy
He tried to destroy the political dependence of the clergy on the pope. Louis XIV even intended to form a French patriarchate independent of Rome. But, thanks to the influence of the famous Bishop of Moss, Bossuet, the French bishops refrained from breaking with Rome, and the views of the French hierarchy received official expression in the so-called. statement of the Gallican clergy (declaration du clarge gallicane) of 1682 (see Gallicanism).
In matters of faith, the confessors of Louis XIV (Jesuits) made him an obedient instrument of the most ardent Catholic reaction, which was reflected in the merciless persecution of all individualistic movements among the church (see Jansenism).
A number of harsh measures were taken against the Huguenots: churches were taken away from them, priests were deprived of the opportunity to baptize children according to the rules of their church, perform marriages and burials, and conduct worship. Even mixed marriages between Catholics and Protestants were forbidden.
The Protestant aristocracy was forced to convert to Catholicism so as not to lose their social advantages, and restrictive decrees were launched against Protestants from among other classes, culminating in the dragonades of 1683 and the repeal of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. These measures, despite severe penalties for emigration, forced more than 200 thousand hardworking and enterprising Protestants to move to England, Holland and Germany. An uprising even broke out in the Cévennes. The growing piety of the king was supported by Madame de Maintenon, who, after the death of the queen (1683), was united with him by secret marriage.
War for the Palatinate
Even earlier, Louis legitimized his two sons from Madame de Montespan - the Duke of Maine and the Count of Toulouse, and gave them the surname Bourbons. Now, in his will, he appointed them members of the regency council and declared their eventual right to succession to the throne. Louis himself remained active until the end of his life, firmly maintaining court etiquette and the decor of his “great century” was already beginning to fade.
Marriages and children
- (from June 9, 1660, Saint-Jean de Lutz) Maria Theresa (1638-1683), Infanta of Spain
- Louis the Great Dauphin (1661-1711)
- Anna Elizabeth (1662-1662)
- Maria Anna (1664-1664)
- Maria Theresa (1667-1672)
- Philip (1668-1671)
- Louis Francois (1672-1672)
- (from June 12, 1684, Versailles) Francoise d'Aubigne (1635-1719), Marquise de Maintenon
- Vnebr. connection Louise de La Baume Le Blanc (1644-1710), Duchess de Lavalière
- Charles de La Baume Le Blanc (1663-1665)
- Philippe de La Baume Le Blanc (1665-1666)
- Marie-Anne de Bourbon (1666-1739), Mademoiselle de Blois
- Louis de Bourbon (1667-1683), Comte de Vermandois
- Vnebr. connection Françoise-Athenais de Rochechouart de Mortemart (1641-1707), marquise de Montespan
Mademoiselle de Blois and Mademoiselle de Nantes
- Louise-Francoise de Bourbon (1669-1672)
- Louis-Auguste de Bourbon, Duke of Maine (1670-1736)
- Louis Cesar de Bourbon (1672-1683)
- Louise-Francoise de Bourbon (1673-1743), Mademoiselle de Nantes
- Louise-Marie-Anne de Bourbon (1674-1681), Mademoiselle de Tours
- Françoise-Marie de Bourbon (1677-1749), Mademoiselle de Blois
- Louis-Alexandre de Bourbon, Count of Toulouse (1678-1737)
- Vnebr. connection(1678-1680) Marie-Angelique de Skoray de Roussil (1661-1681), Duchess de Fontanges
- N (1679-1679), stillborn child
- Vnebr. connection Claude de Ven (c.1638 - 8 September 1686), Mademoiselle des Hoyers
- Louise de Maisonblanche (1676-1718)
The history of the nickname Sun King
In France, the sun acted as a symbol of royal power and the king personally even before Louis XIV. The luminary became the personification of the monarch in poetry, solemn odes and court ballets. The first mention of solar emblems dates back to the reign of Henry III, it was used by the grandfather and father of Louis XIV, but only under him did solar symbolism become truly widespread.
When Louis XIV began to rule independently (), the court ballet genre was put at the service of state interests, helping the king not only create his representative image, but also manage the court society (however, like other arts). The roles in these productions were distributed only by the king and his friend, the Comte de Sainte-Aignan. Princes of the blood and courtiers, dancing next to their sovereign, depicted various elements, planets and other beings and phenomena subject to the Sun. Louis himself continues to appear before his subjects in the form of the Sun, Apollo and other gods and heroes of Antiquity. The king left the stage only in 1670 .
But the emergence of the nickname of the Sun King was preceded by another important cultural event of the Baroque era - the Tuileries Carousel of 1662. This is a festive carnival cavalcade, which is a cross between a sports festival (in the Middle Ages, these were tournaments) and a masquerade. In the 17th century, the Carousel was called "equestrian ballet", since this action was more like a performance with music, rich costumes and a fairly consistent script. On the Carousel of 1662, given in honor of the birth of the first-born of the royal couple, Louis XIV pranced in front of the audience on a horse dressed as a Roman emperor. In the hand of the king was a golden shield with the image of the Sun. This symbolized that this luminary protects the king and, with him, all of France.
According to the historian of the French Baroque F. Bossan, “it was on the Great Carousel of 1662 that, in a way, the Sun King was born. He was given his name not by politics and not by the victories of his armies, but by equestrian ballet.
Image of Louis XIV in popular culture
Louis XIV is one of the main historical characters in the trilogy about the musketeers by Alexandre Dumas. In the last book of the Vicomte de Bragelonne trilogy, an impostor (allegedly the twin brother of King Philip) is involved in a conspiracy, with whom they are trying to replace Louis.
In 1929, the film The Iron Mask was released, based on Dumas père's novel The Vicomte de Bragelonne, where Louis and his twin brother were played by William Blackwell. Louis Hayward played twins in the 1939 film The Man in the Iron Mask. Richard Chamberlain played them in the 1977 film adaptation and Leonardo DiCaprio in the 1998 remake of that film. In the 1962 French film The Iron Mask, these roles were played by Jean-Francois Poron.
For the first time in modern Russian cinema, the image of King Louis XIV was performed by the artist of the Moscow New Drama Theater Dmitry Shilyaev, in Oleg Ryaskov's film "The Servant of the Sovereigns".
The musical The Sun King was staged in France about Louis XIV.
see also
Notes
Literature
The best sources for getting acquainted with the character and way of thinking of L. are his "Oeuvres", containing "Notes", instructions to the Dauphin and Philip V, letters and reflections; they were published by Grimoird and Grouvelle (P., 1806). A critical edition of Mémoires de Louis XIV was compiled by Dreyss (P., 1860). An extensive literature on L. opens with the work of Voltaire: "Siècle de Louis XIV" (1752 and more often), after which the name "century L. XIV" came into common use to refer to the end of the 17th and beginning of the 18th centuries.
- Saint-Simon, "Mémoires complets et authentiques sur le siècle de Louis XIV et la régence" (P., 1829-1830; new ed., 1873-1881);
- Depping, "Correspondence administrative sous le regne de Louis XIV" (1850-1855);
- Moret, "Quinze ans du règne de Louis XIV, 1700-1715" (1851-1859); Chéruel, "Saint-Simon considéré comme historien de Louis XIV" (1865);
- Noorden, "Europä ische Geschichte im XVIII Jahrh." (Dusseld. and Lpts., 1870-1882);
- Gaillardin, "Histoire du règne de Louis XIV" (P., 1871-1878);
- Ranke, Franz. Geschichte” (vols. III and IV, Lpts., 1876);
- Philippson, "Das Zeitalter Ludwigs XIV" (B., 1879);
- Chéruel, "Histoire de France pendant la minorité de Louis XIV" (P., 1879-80);
- "Mémoires du Marquis de Sourches sur le règne de Louis XIV" (I-XII, P., 1882-1892);
- de Mony, "Louis XIV et le Saint-Siège" (1893);
- Koch, "Das unumschränkte Königthum Ludwigs XIV" (with an extensive bibliography, V., 1888);
- Koch G. "Essays on the history of political ideas and public administration" St. Petersburg, edition of S. Skirmunt, 1906
- Gurevich Ya. "The meaning of the reign of L. XIV and his personality";
- Le Mao K. Louis XIV and the Parliament of Bordeaux: a very moderate absolutism // French Yearbook 2005. M., 2005. P. 174-194.
- Trachevsky A. "International politics in the era of Louis XIV" ("J. M. N. Pr., 1888, No. 1-2).
Links
- // Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron: In 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - St. Petersburg. , 1890-1907.
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The birth of this child was all the more long-awaited because the King of France, Louis XIII and Anne of Austria, after their marriage in 1615, had no children for 22 years.
On September 5, 1638, an heir was finally born to the queen. It was such an event that the famous philosopher, a monk of the Dominican order Tomaso Campanella, was invited to predict the future to the royal baby, and Cardinal Mazarin himself became his godfather.
The future king was taught horseback riding, fencing, playing the spinet, the lute and the guitar. Like Peter I, Louis built a fortress in the Palais Royal, where he disappeared every day, arranging "amusing" battles. For several years he did not experience serious health problems, but at the age of nine he suffered a real test.
On November 11, 1647, Louis suddenly felt a sharp pain in his lower back and lower spine. The first doctor of the king, Francois Voltier, was called to the child. The next day was marked by a fever, which, according to the customs of the time, was treated with bloodletting from the cubital vein. Bloodletting was repeated on November 13, and on the same day the diagnosis was clear: the child's body was covered with smallpox pustules.
On November 14, 1647, a council of doctors Voltier, Geno and Vallot and the first doctors of the queen, uncle and nephew Séguin gathered at the bedside of the patient. The venerable Areopagus prescribed observation and mythical heart remedies, while the child grew feverish and delirious. Within 10 days, he underwent four venesections, which had little effect on the course of the disease - the number of rashes "increased a hundredfold."
Dr. Vallot insisted on the use of a laxative, based on the medieval medical postulate "Give an enema, then bleed, then purify (apply emetic)". The nine-year-old majesty is given calomel and an infusion of the Alexandrian leaf. The child behaved courageously, since he endured these painful, unpleasant and bloody manipulations. And it wasn't over yet.
The life of Louis is surprisingly reminiscent of the biography of Peter I: he is fighting the noble Fronde, fighting the Spaniards, the Holy Empire, the Dutch, and at the same time creating the General Hospital in Paris, the royal Invalides, the national manufactory "Gobelins", academies, an observatory, rebuilds the Louvre Palace, builds the gates of Saint-Denis and Saint-Martin, the Royal Bridge, the ensemble of Place Vendôme, etc.
In the midst of hostilities, on June 29, 1658, the king fell seriously ill. He was transferred to Calais in a very serious condition. For two weeks everyone was sure that the monarch would die. Dr. Antoine Vallot, who 10 years ago treated smallpox with the king, considered the causes of his illness to be unfavorable air, polluted water, overwork, colds on his legs and refusal to preventive bloodletting and intestinal lavages.
The disease began with fever, general lethargy, severe headache, loss of strength. The king hid his condition, walked, although he already had a fever. On July 1, in Calais, in order to free the body from the “poison” “accumulated in it, poisoning the bodily fluids and violating their proportions,” the king is given an enema, then bloodletting, and heart remedies are given.
The fever, which doctors determine by touch, by pulse and changes in the nervous system, does not subside, so Ludovik is again bled and the intestines are washed several times. Then they do two bloodlettings, several enemas and cardiac remedies. On July 5, the doctors' fantasy dries up - the crowned bearer is given an emetic and a blister patch is applied.
On July 7 and 8, venesection is repeated and heart remedies are given, then Antoine Vallot mixes a few ounces of emetic wine with a few ounces of antimony salt (the most powerful laxative of the time) and gives the king a third of this mixture to drink. It worked so well: the king was swept 22 times and vomited twice four or five hours after taking this potion.
Then he was bled three more times and given enemas. In the second week of treatment, the fever subsided, only weakness remained. It is most likely that the king this time was ill with typhus or relapsing fever - one of the frequent companions of crowding people during hostilities ("war typhus").
At that time, during protracted positional hostilities, sporadic cases often arose, and more often epidemic outbreaks of “camp” or “military” fever, the losses from which were many times greater than from bullets or cannonballs. During his illness, Louis also received a lesson in statesmanship: not believing in his recovery, the courtiers began to openly show affection to his brother, who was the heir to the throne.
Having recovered from his illness (or from treatment?), Louis travels around France, concludes the Peace of the Pyrenees, marries the Spanish infanta Maria Theresa, changes favorites and favorites, but most importantly, after the death of Cardinal Mazarin, in April 1661, he becomes sovereign king.
Achieving the unity of France, he creates an absolute monarchy. With the help of Colbert (the French version of Menshikov), he is reforming public administration, finance, the army, building a fleet more powerful than the English one.
The extraordinary flourishing of culture and science is not complete without his participation: Louis patronizes the writers Perro, Corneille, Lafontaine, Boileau, Racine, Moliere, lures Christian Huygens to France. Under him, the Academy of Sciences was founded, the Academy of Dance, Arts, Literature and Inscriptions, the royal garden of rare plants, the "Scientists' Newspaper" begins to appear, which is still being published.
It was at this time that the French ministers of science carried out the first successful blood transfusion from animal to animal. The king gives the nation the Louvre Palace - it soon became the most famous collection of works of art in Europe. Louis was an avid collector.
Under him, the baroque is replaced by classicism, and Jean-Baptiste Molière lays the foundations for the Comédie Francaise. Pampered, adoring ballet, Louis is seriously engaged in the reform of the army and is the first to begin to assign military ranks. Pierre de Montesquiou D "Artagnan (1645-1725) becomes Marshal of France at this very time. And at the same time, the king is seriously ill ...
Unlike many other heads of state (and Russia above all), the state of health of the first person of France was not raised to the level of a state secret. The king's doctors did not hide from anyone that every month, and then every three weeks, Louis was prescribed laxatives and enemas.
In those days, it was generally rare for the gastrointestinal tract to work normally: people walked too little and ate not enough vegetables. The king, having fallen from his horse in 1683 and dislocated his arm, began to go hunting in a light carriage, which he himself drove.
From 1681, Louis XIV began to suffer from gout. Vivid clinical symptoms: acute arthritis of the I metatarsophalangeal joint, which appeared after meals richly flavored with wine, prodrome - "the rustle of gout", an acute pain attack in the middle of the night, "to the crowing of a rooster" - were already too well known to doctors, but they did not know how to treat gout , and the empirically used colchicine has already been forgotten.
The sufferer was offered the same enemas, bloodletting, vomiting ... Six years later, the pain in his legs became so intense that the king began to move around the Versailles castle in a chair with wheels. He even traveled to meetings with diplomats in a chair pushed by hefty servants. But in 1686, another problem appeared - hemorrhoids.
The king did not benefit from numerous enemas and laxatives. Frequent exacerbations of hemorrhoids ended in the formation of an anal fistula. In February 1686, the king had a swelling on his buttock, and the doctors, without thinking twice, took up the lancets. The court surgeon Carl Felix de Tassi cut open the tumor and cauterized it to widen the wound. Suffering from this painful wound and from gout, Louis could not only ride a horse, but also be in public for a long time.
There were rumors that the king was about to die or had already died. In March of the same year, a new “small” incision was made and a new useless cauterization, on April 20 another cauterization, after which Ludovic fell ill for three days. Then he went to be treated with mineral water at the Barezh resort, but this did not help much.
The king held out until November 1686 and finally ventured into a "big" operation. C. de Tassi, who has already been mentioned, in the presence of Bessieres, "the most famous surgeon of Paris", the favorite minister of King Francois-Michel Letelier, Marquis de Louvois, who during the operation held the king's hand, and the old favorite of the king, Madame de Maintenon, without anesthesia operates the king.
Surgical intervention ends with profuse bloodletting. On December 7, the doctors saw that the wound was “in a bad condition” and “hardenings that prevent healing” had formed in it. A new operation followed, the indurations were removed, but the pain experienced by the king was unbearable.
The incisions were repeated on December 8 and 9, 1686, but a month passed before the king finally recovered. Just think, France could lose the "sun king" because of the banal hemorrhoids! As a sign of solidarity with the monarch, Philippe de Courcillon, Marquis da Danjo in 1687, Louis-Joseph, Duke of Vendôme in 1691 underwent the same operation.
One can only marvel at the courage of the spoiled and pampered king! I will mention the main doctors of Louis XIV: Jacques Cousino (1587-1646), Francois Voltier (1580-1652), Antoine Vallot (1594-1671), Antoine d "Aken (1620-1696), Guy-Chrissan Fagon (1638-1718).
Can Louis's life be called happy? Probably, it is possible: he did a lot, saw great France, was loved and loved, forever remained in history ... But, as often happens, the end of this long life was overshadowed.
In less than a year - from April 14, 1711 to March 8, 1712 - death took the son of Louis Monseigneur, the king's daughter-in-law the Duchess of Bourbon, Princess of Savoy, his grandson, the Duke of Burgundy, the second heir, and a few days later the eldest of his great-grandchildren - the Duke of Brittany, third heir.
In 1713 the Duke of Alençon, the king's great-grandson, died, in 1741 his grandson, the Duke of Berry. The king's son died of smallpox, his daughter-in-law and grandson died of measles. The deaths of all the princes in a row plunged France into horror. They assumed poisoning and blamed Philip II of Orleans for everything, the future regent of the throne, whom each death brought closer to the crown.
The king fought back with all his might, buying time for his minor heir. For a long time, he really struck everyone with a fortress of health: back in 1706 he slept with open windows, was not afraid of "neither heat nor cold", continued to use the services of favorites. But in 1715, on August 10, in Versailles, the king suddenly felt unwell and with great difficulty walked from his office to his prayer bench.
The next day, he still held a meeting of the cabinet of ministers, gave audiences, but on August 12, the king had a severe pain in his leg. Guy-Cressan Fagon makes a diagnosis, which in modern interpretation sounds like “sciatica”, and prescribes routine treatment. The king still leads his usual way of life, but on August 13 the pain intensifies so much that the monarch asks to be transferred to the church in an armchair, although at the ensuing reception of the Persian ambassador he stood on his feet throughout the ceremony.
History has not preserved the course of the doctors' diagnostic search, but they made a mistake from the very beginning and kept their diagnosis like a flag. Note that the flag is black...
On August 14, pain in the foot, lower leg and thigh no longer allowed the king to walk, he was carried everywhere in an armchair. Only then G. Fagon showed the first signs of anxiety. He himself, the attending physician Boudin, the pharmacist Biot, the first surgeon Georges Marechal stay overnight in the king's chambers in order to be at hand at the right moment.
Louis spent a bad, very restless night, tormented by pain and bad forebodings. On August 15, he receives visitors lying down, sleeps badly at night, he is tormented by pain in his leg and thirst. On August 17, a tremendous chill joined the pain, and - an amazing thing! - Fagon does not change the diagnosis.
The doctors are completely confused. Now we cannot imagine life without a medical thermometer, but then doctors did not know this simple instrument. Fever was determined by placing a hand on the forehead of the patient or by the qualities of the pulse, because only a few doctors had a “pulse clock” (a prototype of a stopwatch), invented by D. Floyer.
They bring bottles of mineral water to Ludovik and even give him a massage. On August 21, a council gathers at the bedside of the king, which probably seemed ominous to the patient: the doctors of that time walked in black robes, like the priests, and the visit of the priest in such cases did not mean anything good ...
Completely bewildered, the venerable doctors give Louis a mixture of cassia and a laxative, then add quinine with water, donkey milk to the treatment, and finally bandage his leg, which was in a terrible state: "all covered with black grooves, which was very similar to gangrene."
The king suffered until August 25, the day of his name day, when in the evening unbearable pain pierced his body and terrible convulsions began. Louis lost consciousness and his pulse disappeared. Having come to his senses, the king demanded the communion of the Holy Mysteries ... Surgeons came to him to make an already unnecessary dressing. On August 26, at about 10 am, the doctors bandaged his leg and made several incisions down to the bone. They saw that gangrene had affected the muscles of the leg to the full thickness and realized that no medicine would help the king.
But Louis was not destined to calmly depart for a better world: on August 27, a certain Monsieur Bren showed up at Versailles, who brought with him a "most effective elixir" that could overcome gangrene, even "internal". The doctors, already resigned to their helplessness, took medicine from the charlatan, dripped 10 drops into three tablespoons of Alicante wine and gave the king this drug, which had a disgusting smell, to drink.
Louis dutifully poured this abomination into himself, saying: "I am obliged to obey the doctors." The nasty swill began to be regularly given to the dying, but the gangrene "has advanced very much," and the king, who was in a semi-conscious state, said that he was "disappearing."
On August 30, Louis fell into a stupor (he was still reacting to calls), but, waking up, he still found the strength to read “Ave Maria” and “Credo” together with the prelates ... Four days before his 77th birthday, Louis “gave God his soul without the slightest effort, like a candle that goes out...
History knows at least two episodes similar to the case of Louis XIV, who undoubtedly suffered from obliterating atherosclerosis, the level of the lesion was the iliac artery. This is the disease of I. B. Tito and F. Franco. They could not be helped even 250 years later.
Epicurus once said: “The ability to live well and die well is one and the same science,” but Z. Freud corrected him: “Physiology is destiny.” Both aphorisms seem to apply to Louis XIV. He lived, of course, sinfully, but beautifully, but he died terribly.
But the history of the king's illness is not interesting at all for this. On the one hand, it demonstrates the level of medicine of that time. It would seem that William Harvey (1578-1657) has already made his discovery - by the way, it was the French doctors who met him most hostilely, very soon a revolutionary in diagnostics L. Auenbrugger would be born, and French doctors are in the dogmatic captivity of medieval scholasticism and alchemy.
Louis XIII, the father of Louis XIV, had 47 bloodlettings within 10 months, after which he died. Contrary to the popular version of the death of the great Italian artist Rafael Santi at the age of 37 from an excess of love passion for his beloved Fornarina, he most likely died from an excessive amount of bloodletting, which was prescribed to him as an "anti-phlogistic" remedy for an unknown febrile illness.
From an excess of bloodletting, the famous French philosopher, mathematician and physicist R. Descartes died; the French philosopher and physician J. La Mettrie, who considered the human body as a self-winding watch; the first US President D. Washington (although there is another version - diphtheria).
Completely bled Moscow doctors (already in the middle of the XIX century) Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol. It is not clear why doctors clung so stubbornly to the humoral theory of the origin of all diseases, the theory of "spoilage of juices and fluids", which are the basis of life. It seems that even simple worldly common sense contradicted this.
After all, they saw that a bullet wound, or a prick with a sword, or a blow with a sword did not immediately lead a person to death, and the picture of the disease was always of the same type: inflammation of the wound, fever, clouded consciousness of the patient and death. After all, he treated wounds with an infusion of hot oil and bandages Ambroise Pare. He did not think that this would somehow change the movement and quality of the body's juices!
But this method was used by Avicenna, whose works were considered classics in Europe. No, everything went along some kind of shamanic path.
The case of Louis XIV is also interesting in that he, no doubt, suffered from damage to the venous system (he probably had varicose veins), a particular case of which is hemorrhoids, and atherosclerosis of the arteries of the lower extremities. As for hemorrhoids, everything is, in general, clear: the rectum is located the lowest in any position of the body, which, other things being equal, the difficulty of blood circulation, added the influence of gravity.
Blood stasis also develops due to the pressure of the contents of the intestine, and the king, as already mentioned, suffered from constipation. Hemorrhoids have always been a dubious "property" of scientists, officials and musicians, that is, people leading a predominantly sedentary lifestyle.
And besides, the king, who was sitting all the time on a soft one (even the throne was upholstered in velvet), always had a warming compress in the area of the rectum! And this leads to a chronic expansion of her veins. Although hemorrhoids can not only be "incubated", but also "insist" and "find", Ludovic just instilled it.
However, in the time of Louis, doctors still adhered to the theory of Hippocrates, who considered hemorrhoids to be a tumor of the vessels of the rectum. Hence the barbarous operation that Louis had to endure. But the most interesting thing is that bloodletting in cases of venous plethora alleviate the condition of patients, and here the doctors hit the mark.
Very little time will pass, and leeches will come to the place of bloodletting, which France bought from Russia in millions of pieces. “Bleedings and leeches shed more blood than Napoleon’s wars,” says a well-known aphorism. A curious thing is how French doctors liked to portray doctors.
J.-B. Molière, a talented contemporary of the "Sun King", doctors look like shameless and limited charlatans, Maupassant portrayed them as helpless but bloodthirsty vultures, "contemplators of death." They look prettier in O. de Balzac, but their appearance by a whole council at the bedside of the patient - in black clothes, with gloomy concentrated faces - did not bode well for the patient. One can only imagine what Louis XIV felt at the sight of them!
As for the king's second illness, gangrene, the cause was undoubtedly atherosclerosis. Doctors of that time, no doubt, knew the aphorism of C. Galen, an outstanding Roman physician from the time of gladiator fights: , are arranged by nature so wonderfully that they never lack the blood necessary for absorption, and are never overloaded with blood.
W. Harvey, an English physician, showed what these channels are, and it would seem that it should be clear that if you block the channel, moisture will no longer enter the garden (blood in the tissues). The average life expectancy of ordinary French people in those days was not great, but, of course, there were old people, and doctors could not help but pay attention to changes in their arteries.
“A person is as old as his arteries,” doctors say. But it has always been so. The quality of the arterial wall is inherited and depends on the hazards to which a person exposed it during his life
The king, no doubt, moved little, ate well and plentifully. There is a well-known aphorism by D. Cheyne, who lost weight from 160 kg to the norm: “Every prudent person over fifty years of age should at least reduce the amount of his food, and if he wants to continue to avoid important and dangerous diseases and keep his feelings to the end and ability, then every seven years he must moderate his appetite in a gradual and sensitive way and finally pass out of life in the same way as he entered it, even if he had to go on a children's diet.
Of course, Louis did not plan to change anything in his lifestyle, but gout acted on his blood vessels much worse than the diet.
A long time ago, doctors noticed that blood vessels were affected in patients with gout, often angina pectoris and other signs of atherosclerotic vascular lesions. Metabolic toxins can cause degenerative changes in the middle and outer shells of the arteries, doctors thought not so long ago
Gout leads to kidney damage, this causes hypertension and secondary atherosclerosis, we say now. But still, there are more reasons to think that Louis had a so-called. "senile arteriosclerosis": large arteries are dilated and tortuous and have thin and unyielding walls, and small arteries turn into unyielding tubes.
It is in such arteries that atherosclerotic plaques and blood clots are formed, one of which, probably, killed Louis XIV.
I am convinced that Louis had no prior "intermittent claudication". The king hardly walked, so what happened was a bolt from the blue. Only a “guillotine”, one-stage amputation of a (high) hip could have saved him, but without painkillers and anesthesia, this would have been a death sentence.
And bloodletting in this case only increased the anemization of an already bloodless limb. Louis XIV was able to build a lot, but even the “sun king” could not transfer modern medicine to him a century ahead, in the time of Larrey or N.I. Pirogov ...
Nikolai Larinsky, 2001-2013
Louis XIV de Bourbon, who received at birth the name Louis-Dieudonnet ("God-given",
