Louis XIV - The Sun King Documentary

This video is brought to you by CuriosityStream, a subscription streaming service from the founder of the Discovery Channel, John Hendricks, that offers over 2,000 documentaries, non-fiction titles, and exclusive originals from some of the world's best filmmakers. Unlimited access starts at just $2.99 per month. However, you can receive instant access for the first 30 days free of charge by following the link in the video description and using the accompanying promo code, CuriosityStream. Learn, explore, and understand. Unknown to history as Louis XIV was born in the Château de Saint-Germain in Paris on the 5th of September 1638. His father was the reigning King of France, Louis XIII of the House of Bourbon, and his mother was the sister of the King of Spain and of Austria of the House of Habsburg, who had married Louis XIII in 1615. Anne would go on to have four stillbirths prior to the birth of Louis, which crippled her marriage with her husband and caused the nobility in France to lose confidence in her ability to produce an heir. Because of this, Louis was considered a divine gift from God by the French court and was given the name Louis the God-Given as a result. Anne then later gave birth to a second son named Philip, but producing an heir and a spare did not remedy her cold relationship with her husband, nor the distrust the French court had towards her, largely because she was a member of the Habsburg dynasty, who ruled two of France's continental rivals, Austria and Spain. When he was five, Louis' father began to fall ill, and fearing what would transpire after his death largely due to his distrust of his wife, the King decreed that a regency council would rule after his passing, until his son came of age. Following the death of Louis XIII in 1643, at the relatively young age of 41, a regency council ruled over France which was headed by Cardinal Mazarin and Anne of Austria, amongst others. At this time, the country was engaged in the Thirty Years' War fought between the Catholic France and its Protestant allies and the Habsburg Holy Roman and Spanish Empires. The war then officially ended in 1648 with the Peace of Westphalia which granted the United Provinces of the Netherlands independence from the Spanish Empire, as well as granting concessions in the Holy Roman Empire to both the kingdoms of Sweden and France. This treaty weakened the Habsburg Empire's encirclement of France, even though the war with Spain would continue for another decade. At the age of eight, the young King Louis was faced with a series of uprisings by the aristocracy, the French Parliament and citizen factions, who all feared the increasing authority of the French Crown and the Church, which had been actively eroding the influence of the lower classes. The decreasing power of Parliament, as well as the heavy taxes that followed the devastation of the war, then resulted in widespread unrest breaking out across the country, and in Paris, mass crowds used slingshots to break the windows of houses of government officials, prompting Louis to flee the capital, fearing for his safety. These uprisings were eventually put down however, and this experience would in many ways come to shape Louis XIV's rule, as he grew to distrust the nobility, and of course, the French Parliament. In 1651, Louis reached adulthood, ending the Regency of Queen Anne, and in 1654, he was crowned King of France at Reims Cathedral, which ended the uprisings against the French Crown, however, the kingdom he had inherited was still consumed with civil strife, and was also teetering on the verge of bankruptcy. The man in charge of managing the country's debts and court expenditures at the time was the very capable Nicolas Fouquet, who had been made Superintendent of Finances a year earlier by Cardinal Mazarin. Fouquet was a is evident by the substantial wealth he acquired during his lifetime, and it was his talent for the finding of funds and being able to satisfy Cardinal Mazarin's expensive tastes which lay at the heart of his success. But although his skill was met with praise by the French court and Mazarin, many envied Fouquet's wealth, position and popularity, one of whom was Mazarin's private secretary, Jean-Baptiste Colbert. King Louis then, in 1660, married his first wife, Marie-Theresa, the daughter of Philip IV of Spain, and the conditions of the union stated that she must give up any claim to the Spanish crown, in exchange for a hefty dowry that was promised to Louis, which was never paid. The Treaty of the Pyrenees, which the marriage of Louis and Marie were a part of, also granted the French the territories of Flanders, along with the northern provinces bordering Spain, and officially ended the two decade long war between France and its southern rival. The following year then saw the death of Louis' chief minister and father figure, Cardinal Mazarin, but this blow was soon largely forgotten when the Queen gave birth to a son named Louis, or the Grand Dauphin. 1661 also marked the beginning of a personal project Louis had undertaken, which was the rebuilding of a hunting lodge his father had constructed on the outskirts of Versailles, which in time would be transformed into one of the most lavish and opulent palaces in Europe. Meanwhile, in Paris, Fouquet attempted to gain the king's favour by throwing extravagant balls and parties in order to woo Louis to obtain the now vacant title of chief minister, but this display of wealth and extravagance did nothing but offend Louis and also garnered the suspicion of the French court, who were suspicious as to how he was able to obtain such a massive amount of wealth. The king, then in an act that shocked the French court, decided that he would not appoint another chief minister, deciding instead to take personal control of day-to-day governance himself. Indeed, Louis' authoritarian rule would over the coming years become his greatest strength as well as his greatest weakness. The king then, along with the former private secretary of Mazarin, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, conspired to overthrow the powerful Fouquet on charges of embezzlement, resulting in him being imprisoned in Italy for the rest of his days. Louis then turned his attention once again to his pet building project of the Palace of Versailles, the construction of which began in earnest in 1664 and continued for the next four years. The palace which contained lavish living quarters for both the king and queen was also surrounded by sprawling landscaped gardens and the coming decades would see the king continually adding to and improving his new residence, with the construction of new chambers and features at great expense. Upon the death of the Spanish king Philip IV in 1665, the throne was taken by his son Charles or Carlos II, who was only five years of age at the time. However, the new Spanish king was a weak, sickly boy who had been born to his father Philip from his second marriage, making him Louis' wife Marie's younger step-brother. Although Louis XIV did not dispute the Spanish succession, he did invoke the law of the Spanish Netherlands, modern-day Belgium, which stated that his wife Marie-Theresa, being King Philip's eldest daughter, should retain the rights to inherit the properties over her younger step-brother. Louis claimed that this inheritance or property should devolve to earlier children, especially as the Spanish crown had not paid the 500,000 echoes dowry which was part of his marriage agreement to Marie, thusly making her agreement not to claim Spanish territories, null and void. The French king then rested his claims on parts of the Spanish Netherlands for his wife, and as the Spanish were bound to contest him, Louis prepared for what would be known as the War of Devolution against the Spanish Empire. To protect his northern border, Louis reinforced his support for his Dutch allies against the English in the Second Anglo-Dutch War, keeping England at bay so that the weakened and isolated Spain was forced to fight alone. The war then began when the French spearheaded an invasion of the Spanish Netherlands on the 24th of May 1667, culminating in the seizures of key towns in the region, and eventually, Spanish Flanders fell to Louis' forces. But the rapid French gains worried the English and the French's long-time Dutch allies, and following the end of the Second Anglo-Dutch War in 1667, the Dutch, English, and Swedish formed a triple alliance in the support of Charles II of Spain against Louis XIV's aggressive war in the Spanish Netherlands. At this time in European history, alliances were formed and dissolved rapidly, and as wars ebbed and flowed, countries would change sides or withdraw from conflicts when they felt their strategic aims had been met, or would often form coalitions against more powerful countries in order to maintain the balance of power. For Louis, the very thought of fighting all four powers at the same time convinced him to sue for peace with the Spanish, which was concluded in 1668, granting France many of the towns it had seized the previous year, but the majority of the Spanish Netherlands still remained in the hands of Charles II. Betrayed by the very nation France had supported against the Spanish for generations, Louis dedicated the next few years to dismantling the triple alliance and pacifying the German states, in order to set the stage for a war with the Dutch Republic. Louis' next step was to sign the Treaty of Dover with Charles II of England, which was ratified when Charles agreed to publicly convert to the Catholic faith and guaranteed English support to the French in the event of a war with the Dutch, in exchange for a hefty pension. The Franco-Dutch War then officially began in 1672, when an army of 50,000 French troops marched from the Chalois in tandem with Louis' German allies under the Lieutenant-General of Luxembourg, assembling in the German state of Westphalia. Outnumbered and outfunded, the Dutch in desperation then appointed the young William, Prince of Orange, to command a small 14,000-strong field army, and as riots began to cause chaos all throughout the Dutch Netherlands, William seized the executive authority of the Dutch Republic as Stadtholder, displacing the previously in-charge De Witt brothers, who were held responsible for the war with France. On the 12th of June, French troops led by the legendary French General Louis II, Prince of Conde, or the Great Conde, crossed the Rhine at Toulouse, which Louis would celebrate as one of his greatest military accomplishments. With the crossing of the Rhine and the subsequent surrender of the important city of Utrecht, the Dutch sued for peace, offering territory they had captured from the Spanish in Flanders, as well as a hefty €10 million in reparations. But Louis then became a victim of his own arrogance and overplayed his hand by demanding even more Dutch territory, which they were unwilling to accept, leading them to break off talks and continue the conflict. However, what the Dutch lacked in the field, they more than made up for on the high seas, as they continually ran rings around their enemy's naval forces, winning a major engagement against the Anglo-French fleet and preventing a blockade of the Netherlands. Also, the growing power of Louis XIV could now no longer be ignored by France's other neighbours, causing Spain, Brandenburg-Prussia and the Holy Roman Empire to mobilise their armies in support of the Dutch. The war then slowly shifted out of Louis' favour, when England backed out with the signing of the Treaty of Westminster with the Dutch Republic on 19 February 1674, largely due to the previously mentioned success of the Dutch Navy. To offset the loss of his English allies, Louis coaxed the Swedish into joining the war, but to counter the Swedes, the Dutch in turn convinced King Christian V of Denmark and Norway to declare war on his Scandinavian rivals. This meant that France and Sweden now found themselves fighting on multiple fronts and to make matters worse, the English regiments that had remained to fight alongside the French following the English withdrawal were now recalled back across the Channel. One of the officers in charge of these regiments was the future 1st Duke of Marlborough, John Churchill, who would in time become the scourge of Louis XIV and his armies in Europe, and effectively end the Sun King's chances of European domination. However, at this stage, Louis' fortunes had returned, as Marshal Turenne, who was engaged in a winter campaign against the armies of Emperor Leopold and the Great Elector of Brandenburg, Frederick William, inflicted several major defeats against both the Imperial and Prussian armies. This success was short-lived, however, as Marshal Turenne soon met his end during an artillery barrage by the Imperial forces and Louis' other trusted Marshal, de Conde, who was himself aging and tortured by gout, was recalled to Paris soon afterwards. The loss of these capable Marshals was a massive blow to French morale, and was followed by a string of defeats, prompting the King to take command of his main army himself, alongside his brother, the Duke of Orléans, in subsequent engagements. The final year of the war would see the toughest fighting, as with peace talks looming, Louis took to the offensive to obtain the strongest bargaining position possible. A peace treaty was then signed between France and the Dutch Republic on the 10th of August 1678, but fighting would continue when the Dutch and Spanish forces met a French army in the bloody Battle of Saint-Denis. A series of treaties were then signed in the Dutch city of Nijmegen between August 1678 and December 1679, concluding the Franco-Dutch War as well as the several other interconnected confrontations. In the treaty, France annexed significant portions of the Spanish Netherlands, which in turn marked the beginning of a major rivalry between Louis XIV and William of Orange, and the conflict between the two men over the coming years would go on to shape the destinies of Europe. With the conclusion of the Franco-Dutch War, France was the dominant power on the European continent, prompting Louis, who was now more powerful than ever, to take on the nickname of the Sun King, because of the idea that as planets revolve around the sun, so too should France and its court revolve around him. With his kingdom finally at peace, Louis continued the reconstruction of his Palace of Versailles, which had increasingly become a symbol of his absolute power, and in many ways was also a reflection of how he saw himself. By this time, courtiers and members of government would flock to be by the king's side and gain his approval, but the time Louis had spent in exile had caused the Sun King to distrust many of his nobles. The king often preferred to grant lands and titles to those of low birth, as they didn't have the power or the grounded recognition of noble families whose ancestors had ruled their lands for centuries. While much of the Sun King's time was spent spying on his subjects, Louis dedicated most of his attention at Versailles to art, music and dance, as he had always been a gifted guitar player since his youth, regarding it as his favourite instrument, and was also a lover of ballet, frequently taking part in performances. Indeed, part of the reason for his adoption of the name the Sun King came from when Louis starred as the sun god Apollo in the Ballet of the Night when he was a teenager, and one of his first edicts after becoming king was the foundation of the French Royal Academy of Dance. At Versailles during this period, Louis also oversaw the beginning of the construction of perhaps his most famous incorporation, the Hall of Mirrors, along with countless portraits, busts and statues of himself, which often portrayed him as a Roman Emperor or even the Sun God Apollo. Although she was the daughter of France's rivals, the Queen Marie-Theresa was by this time well liked at the French court and became close friends with Louis' mother, Anne of Austria, before her death in 1666. Perhaps another reason for her good favour was the fact that she spent little time in the affairs of politics, instead preferring to play cards and gamble with French nobility and simply enjoy the wealth and luxury her marriage had given her. While the Sun King kept several mistresses, his marriage did gift him six legitimate children, but only one of them, his son and heir Louis the Grand Dauphin, reached adulthood. The king also fathered a number of illegitimate children with his many mistresses, and when Marie-Theresa eventually fell ill and passed away in July 1683, Louis secretly married his favourite mistress, Françoise d'Aubigne. Following the Treaty of Nijmegen, Louis commenced a series of diplomatic and military annexations of neighbouring states known as the Reunions, which were largely from the French perspective, centred around the capture of the strategically vital cities of Strasbourg and Luxembourg on France's eastern frontier. An idea of a French identity also arose following the Thirty Years' War, which was itself shaped by Louis seeking strong, naturally defensive borders for France, stretching from the Pyrenees Mountains in the south to the River Rhine and the Italian Alps in the east. The reason for this was that the Sun King saw the French borders as vulnerable to attack, which was a mindset he had developed from his military experience, prompting him to create an impenetrable wall of forts and natural defences to hold France's enemies at bay. France had also maintained a large standing army after the Franco-Dutch War, which was unusual for the time, but this gave Louis the confidence or arrogance to blockade and besiege cities that he felt belonged to France with no real legal right. France's advances, however, would go mostly unchallenged at this time, as the Holy Roman Empire was occupied with the Ottoman Empire in the east, which in turn may have been encouraged by Louis XIV to keep the Austrian Habsburgs busy. Louis had, however, recalled the siege of Luxembourg as to not appear as if he was aiding the Islamic Ottoman Empire against the Christian Habsburg Empire, but the French would besiege Luxembourg once again following the Ottoman defeat outside the walls of Vienna in September 1683. Shortly afterwards, bolstered by the now freed-up imperial forces and with the support of the Republic of Genoa, the Spanish crown declared war on France in what would be known as the War of the Reunions, which would itself prove to be a short but destructive conflict, initially involving Spanish raiding parties crossing into French territory, pillaging and burning villages as they went. Louis responded to this by ordering his officers to burn 50 villages for every one burned on French soil, and after this the city of Luxembourg finally surrendered to the French after a massive bombardment of over 3,000 mortar shells. The Sun King then convinced the Dutch to mediate a 20-year-long truce signed between himself, Charles II and Emperor Leopold I in the Bavarian town of Ratisbonne, wherein the French demanded the territory captured during the reunions, including Strasbourg and Luxembourg, while surrendering Spanish towns seized during the war. This truce marked the height of Louis' territorial ambitions in what is often considered his most successful war, as the French kingdom under the Sun King now dominated the European continent. Louis had learned the hard lesson during the Franco-Dutch war that his ports and shores were vulnerable to great maritime powers, namely the Dutch Republic and the Kingdom of England, prompting him to order the seizure and arming of mercantile vessels to reinforce his naval power. The Sun King's strengthened fleet then set out to the Mediterranean Sea to intimidate and bombard pirate strongholds, situated on the North African Barbary coast as retribution for the centuries of raids on French ports and merchant shipping. The French king then tested the might of his fleet once again when he ordered an expedition to set sail to the Republic of Genoa, who had been funding the Spanish campaigns against the French as a result of their close economic ties. A French bombardment would commence on the 18th of May 1684 and continue for ten days, concluding with a Genoese surrender, bringing them into the French sphere of influence. While it can be argued that Louis' foreign affairs were unnecessarily aggressive and driven by arrogance and self-glorification, there is a rationale behind his motivations, as under his rule, France reached the zenith of its prestige and power, which would not be matched until the reign of Napoleon Bonaparte over 100 years later. However, the Sun King's most questionable actions would be in his dealings with the religious minorities within his own country, as even though Louis' Protestant and Huguenot subjects had proven their loyalty to the Bourbon monarchy many times over since the last Huguenot revolt in 1629, the king would soon resort to using brutal methods in order to persecute them. The Huguenots specifically did not pose a threat to the civil order, but Louis, a devout Catholic, sought to unite France under a single religion. Protestants, as well as other religious minorities, had been given extended rights and tolerance since the signing of the Edict of Nantes by Louis' grandfather, King Henry IV, in 1598, but these rights had been slowly stripped away since prior to Louis' ascension to the throne, Cardinal Mazarin had ordered the creation of a commission that closed Huguenot churches and other institutions. Under the Sun King, who was influenced by demands made by the country's Catholic clergy who funded Louis' campaigns, twelve edicts were proposed against the Protestant Huguenots between 1661 and 1678. These offered compensation for those who converted to the Catholic faith, but forbade them from leaving the country without special permission, which were enforced by extreme punishments. Force was also used by the military to coerce French Huguenots into recanting their religion, and it soon became common practice to quarter military personnel in citizen homes in return for compensation due to so few towns and fortresses boasting enough barracks to house the kingdom's soldiers. It was also not uncommon for unsupervised soldiers to treat the homes and occupants roughly, including the abuse of wives, daughters, and serving girls, and the quartering soldiers quickly became burdensome and unpopular amongst the French public. Knowing this, Louis ordered garrisons to find lodgings in towns with large Huguenot populations, and offered a two-year relief of quartering if the household converted to Catholicism. While extreme, this method was a resounding success with conversions happening in hundreds of thousands, which itself only encouraged the Sun King, prompting him to ban the practice of the Protestant faith altogether. Then, on the 22nd of October 1685, after nearly a century of religious tolerance, Louis issued the Edict of Fontainebleau, as well as the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, which banned Protestant religious gatherings and ordered the destruction of all Protestant churches. In response to these laws of intolerance, the Elector of Brandenburg, Frederick William, issued the Edict of Potsdam, welcoming all Protestants fleeing religious persecution, which was followed by a mass exodus of Huguenot Protestants to friendly other countries. However, as with the persecutions and emigrations from Nazi Germany in the 1930s, Louis paid a high price for his policy of intolerance, as the immigration of France's Protestant population resulted in a brain drain of thousands of skilled labourers, scholars and artists. Not even the army was safe, as French Huguenots were banned from enlisting, resulting in the loss of some 500 officers, 10,000 regular soldiers and 8,000 sailors, many of whom ended up fighting for the enemies of France in the coming years. Indeed, even a number of Louis' most veteran commanders would also flee to join up against him, namely the Marshal Schomburg, who would retire from the service of the Sun King and join the armies of Louis' greatest rival, William of Orange. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes also ultimately alienated the German states that had previously taken up arms alongside the Sun King, which combined with the subsequent weakening of the French economy, also dealt a severe blow to Louis' image across the continent. Louis XIV had found a great amount of success in his past campaigns and political gambles, as he expanded the French kingdom to its greatest extent in the reunions, shifted the balance of power in Europe to the French side, and brought much of northern Italy and western Germany under his influence. However, the Sun King's gains would not be permanent, as tensions were still simmering between France and Spain, and with the end of Austrian-Habsburg war with the Ottoman Empire being in sight, Louis would soon once again find himself threatened and encircled by a growing alliance of powerful enemies. The French king had sought lasting peace within Europe in order to cement his hold on the territory gained by the spilling of so much French blood, but the stability of Europe was soon tested once again by the first of three succession crises that threatened to plunge the continent into war. The first occurred in the Rhineland, in the Holy Roman Empire, with the death of the Elector Palatine Charles II, the father of Louis' sister-in-law Elizabeth, wife of Philip, Duke of Orleans. Elizabeth was the last living relative of the late Elector, but by German law was barred from inheriting her father's lands and titles, but the Sun King, however, pressed her claims to her father's properties, in order to increase his family's lands and influence. The second came in the shape of Archbishop Maximilian Henry of Bavaria, who had formerly been an ally of France, but had died, leaving the Archbishopric vacant, prompting Louis to put forward his own candidate, Cardinal William Egon von Fürstenberg, to succeed the late Maximilian of Bavaria. The final and most bothersome crisis took place in England, when the Catholic King, James II, inherited the English throne in February of 1685. The prospect of a Catholic inheritance in the predominantly Protestant nation was intolerable, and alienated the English Parliament and the Church of England, who feared civil war, and members of Parliament then attempted to avert crisis by opening a dialogue with James II's Protestant son-in-law, William of Orange, who was married to the King's daughter, Mary, to sail to London and lay claim to the English throne. Fearing the freeing up of imperial forces in the East following an Ottoman capitulation, Louis published a manifesto to the Emperor, demanding that the gains made in the reunions become permanent, and that his candidate succeeded to the Archbishopric of Cologne, giving Leopold I three months to agree. The French King then sent an envoy to The Hague in the Dutch Republic, threatening military intervention should William of Orange land troops in England, and as the Spanish were still weakened by previous wars with the French, William of Orange's attention was turned towards England, and the Austrians were still fighting the Ottomans. The Sun King saw this as his time to strike. He then turned his attention to securing the Rhine by besieging the town of Philipsburg, which was the last obstacle to bringing the frontier under French control, and hoped that the Emperor Leopold would accept his previously mentioned manifesto terms instead of turning the imperial army westward against the French. Rapid successes were then made along the Rhine down the Swiss border, but Louis' hopes for an early victory would be shattered when an alliance comprising of Brandenburg Prussia, Austria, and a number of German states including Bavaria and Saxony declared war on France. With control secure over the river frontier, Louis initiated a scorched-earth policy whereby the French army devastated the Rhineland in order to prevent hostile armies from maintaining them with local supplies. Another of Louis' miscalculations was to happen across the English Channel, as he expected civil war to erupt in England following William of Orange's landing in the country, which he predicted would divert the majority of Dutch resources away from the main front on the continent. But William of Orange was soon crowned King William III of England, Scotland, and Ireland alongside his wife Mary II in a bloodless invasion, forcing James II to flee to France, which in turn freed up the Dutch forces in England to sail back to the Netherlands along with tens of thousands of British troops. To counteract this, Louis funded an expedition led by James II in which he sailed to Catholic Ireland in 1689, however this proved to be a As the war carried into the next year, Louis focused his attention on the Spanish Netherlands, which resulted in heavy fighting on the River Sambre along France's modern-day border with Belgium. But the Sun King by this time simply had too many enemies to deal with, as his forces were slowly being worn down, which combined with a particularly harsh winter and famine between 1693 and 1694 only exasperated the supply demands of France's half a million strong army, not to mention those of the country's population as a whole. The death toll of this famine is estimated to have reached around one and a half million, making up over 5% of the total French population, and as its armies were steadily weakened by successive Allied victories, peace talks begun in Italy in 1696, leading to a wider peace being agreed the following year. The Sun King, who was by this time weighed down by old age and exhaustion, no longer sought the expansion or glory that had driven him in his youth, but rather looked to keep the gains he had fought so hard for in the War of the Reunions and to also maintain a prosperous and peaceful France. But his arrogance in thinking the war would last no longer than a year led to his nation's underpreparedness for what developed into a nine-year battle of attrition which plunged France into an economic crisis and exhausted the once invincible French army. The war was not just confined to the European continent either, as it also spread to the American colonies as well as into Asia in what was one of the earliest instances of global conflict. Even before the signing of the peace treaty, one thing was on the mind of every ruler in Europe, that being the sickly king of Spain Charles II, who had been a source of concern throughout Europe for decades, as while he ruled over an empire stretching from the Americas all the way to the south of Italy and Low Countries, he had no direct heir to replace him. As the ill king's death neared, claimants began to pop up in all corners of the empire, backed by various European rulers. The strongest claimants were Louis XIV and his sons, as the Sun King's mother Anne and wife Marie were King Philip IV of Spain's eldest sister and eldest daughter respectively, but the French crown also faced competition for the Spanish throne in the shape of the Holy Roman Emperor Leopold's son, Archduke Charles of Austria, whose great-grandfather was King Philip III of Spain. A treaty was then drafted between France and Austria in 1698, dividing the Italian territories between Louis' heir, the Grand Dauphin, and Charles of Austria, meaning that the rest of the Spanish Empire was granted to the third strongest claimant, the grandson of Emperor Leopold I, Joseph Ferdinand, whose maternal grandmother was Charles II of Spain's sister Margaret Theresa. However, matters were then complicated further, as shortly before his death, Charles II of Spain, under pressure from pro-French factions and the Pope, decided to name Louis' grandson, Philip the Duke of Anjou, the sole heir to the entire Spanish Empire, as he now wanted his kingdom to remain intact. Given the difficult choice of avoiding war by accepting the partition of the Spanish Empire, or either accepting Charles II's will, which would have effectively formed a Franco-Spanish superpower, the Sun King chose the latter, eventually sparking the conflict which we know today as the War of the Spanish Succession. Louis then issued letters recognising his grandson as the King of Spain, while at the same time recognising Philip's future right to also succeed the French throne, which would have effectively created the gigantic Franco-Spanish Empire that the rest of Europe so greatly feared. These actions in the eyes of the Sun King's enemies confirmed his desire to throw away the balance of power in Europe in favour of French domination, and these suspicions were later confirmed when Louis moved to eject the Dutch from the Spanish Netherlands, further enraging William III in the process and inciting the creation of a new anti-French coalition. On the 7th of September 1701, an alliance of Great Britain, the Dutch Republic, the Holy Roman Empire and now the Kingdom of Prussia was formed, which declared war on France the following year. The first years of the war shook the previously entrenched confidence in French military pre-eminence to its core, as fighting quickly spread from Italy, north to the Rhineland, to the lowlands of the Netherlands and even to Spain itself. In 1703, Louis' grandson, now Philip V of Spain, arrived in Madrid to claim his throne and raise troops, while Charles of Austria was himself crowned King Carlos III of Spain in Vienna and sailed from England to Portugal in 1704, in order to oppose Philip by opening the Spanish theatre of the conflict. The French then suffered their first major military defeat at Blenheim on the 13th of August 1704, at the hands of the Duke of Marlborough and Eugene of Savoy, which in a single day ended France's perception of invincibility. Things only got worse after this, as the next few years saw the French forces being pushed out of the Spanish Netherlands and an invasion of France itself was then commenced, threatening the key cities such as Toulon and Madrid, the capital of Spain, fell to the Allies shortly afterwards. To make matters worse, another famine broke out in France, killing half a million, and this string of disasters soon combined to effectively break the Sun King's will and force him to sue for a humiliating peace, whereby he had to secede all territory he had gained since ascending to the throne and also give up the Spanish throne to Charles of Austria, should Philip V accept. Sensing his desperation and weakness, the Allied nations even demanded that Louis declare war on his grandson to forcefully remove him from the Spanish throne, which the Sun King rejected out of hand, meaning that a chance for peace was lost. The war then turned to France's favour, as the Allied armies were expelled from Spain to behind the Portuguese border, whilst the fighting in the Low Countries came to a standstill as French resistance became more and more determined. The political landscape also changed at this time, as Emperor Leopold I died in 1705, leaving the throne to his son Joseph I, who in 1711 would also die, passing the Habsburg Empire to his brother and claimant to the Spanish Empire, Charles of Austria, who then became Charles VI of the Holy Roman Empire. This chain of events pulled Britain and the Dutch out of the war, as the prospect of seeing the ruler of the Holy Roman Empire inherit the Spanish Empire was as undesirable to them as a Franco-Spanish union itself. The conflict would eventually end in 1713, with the Treaty of Utrecht and with the partition of the Spanish Empire, in which Philip V would retain the Spanish thrones and its colonies, but lose all claims on the French throne for himself and his heirs. By this time, the Sun King's health had all but evaporated, and there are records of his ailments which include boils, abscesses, gout and possibly diabetes, all of which inevitably took their toll, culminating in the king's death just four days before his 77th birthday of gangrene on the 1st of September, 1715. Louis XIV is widely considered today to be one of the most important and controversial kings in the history of France, and indeed, Europe as a whole. In Versailles, he built a palace which is widely regarded as one of the most beautiful and opulent ever constructed in Europe, and his reign is also seen as a high-water mark of French art and culture. On the other hand, his persecution of his country's Protestant population is widely condemned, as it was not only inhumane in the extreme, but also did nothing but swell the ranks of France's enemies and weaken its economy. Despite this, many see his reign as being one of the golden eras in French history, as at least in the early to middle stages of his life, the Sun King's realm was arguably the most powerful on Earth. The flip side to this is that Louis is criticised for perhaps overextending himself in his military campaigns and is even seen as a tyrant by many historians, who would have placed Europe and the world as a whole under his heel if he had been allowed. Ultimately, Louis XIV, the Sun King of France, was a complex and fascinating man, whose decisions and actions divided opinion in his lifetime, as they still do to this very day.