LOUIS 



3508 



LOUIS 



religious and superstitious, and utterly despised 

 the trappings of royalty ; but royalty in France 

 owed perhaps as much to him as to any of its 

 kings. 



Louis XII (1462-1515), the son of Charles, 

 Duke of Orleans. He headed insurrections 

 against Charles VIII, and was defeated and 

 thrown into prison, but was restored to the 

 throne. His chief ambition was to gain posses- 

 sion of Milan, to which he laid claim by de- 

 scent, and several times he led an army into 

 Italy. For a time the French were victorious, 

 but in 1512 they were defeated and driven out 

 of Italy; and in the next year they were de- 

 feated by Henry VIII of England in the Battle 

 of the Spurs. According to the treaty concluded 

 in 1514, Louis took as his third wife Henry's 

 sister, Mary, but he did not long survive his 

 marriage. 



France was prosperous under Louis, who, 

 while he had no great virtues and little force of 

 character, was gentle and kindly, and won from 

 his subjects the title of "Father of His People." 

 He left no male heirs and was succeeded by his 

 son-in-law, Francis I. 



Louis XIII (1601-1643), the son of Henry IV 

 and Marie de Medici. He succeeded to the 

 throne on the assassination of his father in 1610, 

 but as he was a minor his mother acted as re- 

 gent, and this position she retained until 1617. 

 The young king was given practically no edu- 

 cation, and when he came to the throne allowed 

 himself to be dominated by one favorite after 

 another. In 1624 Cardinal Richelieu entered 

 the Council, and from that time on the reign 

 was that of Richelieu rather than of the king. 

 Louis might have thwarted his great minister 

 many times, but he appreciated his genius and 

 loyalty, and always gave him support. 



The destruction of the political power of the 

 Huguenots, the strengthening of the royal au- 

 thority and the weakening of the influence of 

 the Hapsburgs were the work of Richelieu and 

 not of the king. By his wife, Anne of Austria, 

 Louis had two sons, the elder of whom suc- 

 ceeded as Louis XIV, who became known to 

 the world as the "Grand Monarch." 



Louis XIV (1638-1715), called the GRAND 

 MONARCH, and THE GREAT, was looked upon as 

 the perfect type of an absolute monarch. His 

 exclamation, L'etat c'est moi ("lam the state"), 

 not only shows his character but accurately de- 

 scribes the conditions of affairs in France in 

 his time. Louis was a monarch for seventy- 

 two years, a longer time than any other ruler 

 in the history of the world, although Victoria 



of England, who ruled sixty-four years, enjoyed 

 longer responsible reign. 



He was the son of Louis XIII and Anne of 

 Austria, and became king when but five years 

 of age. His mother and her great minister, 

 Mazarin, during the early years held the su- 

 preme power, and exercised it in a way to make 

 the administration very unpopular. The troubles 

 of the Fronde arose and were with difficulty put 

 down, and twice the court was obliged to flee 

 from Paris. Little attention was paid to the 

 king's education and little was known about his 

 character, and thus it came as a surprise when 

 on the death of Mazarin in 1661 he declared 

 that he would henceforth be his own chief min- 

 ister. He kept his word. Recognizing ability 

 in others, he chose wise counselors, whose work 

 in some instances, as that of Colbert with the 

 finances, was of the utmost importance ; but no 

 matter how many brilliant men he gathered 

 about him, Louis was always the -dominating 

 figure. He surrounded himself with all the gor- 

 geous trappings of royalty, and his court remains 

 famous as an example of all that is splendid. 

 His wife, the Infanta Maria Theresa of Spain, 

 had little influence over him, but he was swayed 

 by a succession of mistresses until he came un- 

 der the influence of Madame de Maintenon, 

 whom he married secretly in 1685. 



His Conquests. Louis's greatest ambition was 

 for foreign conquest, and his subjects, who dur- 

 ing the early prosperous years of his reign re- 

 garded as perfectly right anything which their 

 sovereign wished, entered enthusiastically into 

 his plans. A valid reason for aggression was 

 never necessary to Louis if he wished a 

 tain territory he could always find basis for 

 claim to it. Attacks on the Spanish Nethei 

 lands began in 1667, and by the war with Span 

 which followed he gained French Flander 

 Alliances of German states against France fc 

 lowed, and these were constantly changing ui 

 til at the outbreak of the War of the Spanisl 

 Succession they took definite form as the 

 under the leadership of William III of Englanc 

 which finally succeeded in defeating Louis's ai 

 bitious plans. 



Alienated Protestantism. The great mistal 

 which Louis made in the administration 

 public affairs was his attitude toward the Hi 

 guenots, culminating in 1685 in the revocatic 

 of the Edict of Nantes. This was disastr 

 for France, not only because it drove from 

 country many of the most prosperous and ii 

 dustrious citizens, but because it finally aliei 

 atc-d the Protestant countries of Europe, not 



