80 Fun Facts About Louis XIV

By what nickname is Louis XIV best known?

He cultivated the image of le Roi Soleil as the centre of the universe 'without equal'.

How many years did he reign, the longest of any sovereign monarch in history?

He came to the throne in May 1643 and died in September 1715, four days short of his 77th birthday.

In which château was he born on 5 September 1638?

He was named Louis-Dieudonné, 'Louis the God-given'.

For how many years had his parents been married when he was born?

His mother had suffered four stillbirths, so contemporaries treated his birth as a miracle.

Who was his mother, who ruled as sole regent during his minority?

She had her husband's will annulled within days of his death so she could rule alone.

How old was he when he became king in May 1643?

His dying father had tried to bind him to a regency council rather than trust his Spanish-born queen.

Which cardinal ran the government as chief minister until his death in 1661?

Many believed he had secretly married the queen mother and become the king's stepfather.

The 1648 Peace of Westphalia, negotiated during his minority, ended which war?

France gained Habsburg Alsace and recognition of its hold on Metz, Verdun and Toul.

What are the 1648–53 civil wars that twice drove the royal family out of Paris during his childhood called?

The experience left him with a lifelong distrust of Paris and the great nobles.

What did the twelve-year-old king do when a Paris mob entered his bedchamber in 1651?

The crowd gazed at him, were appeased and left quietly; the court fled the city soon after.

With which niece of his chief minister did the young king fall in love before she was married off in Italy?

His tears and pleading did not move his mother, who wanted a Spanish match.

Whom did he marry in 1660 under the terms of the Treaty of the Pyrenees?

She was his first cousin, the eldest daughter of Philip IV; when she died in 1683 he remarked that she had never caused him unease on any other occasion.

How large was the unpaid Spanish dowry Louis XIV used to void his wife's renunciation of her claims?

The unpaid sum eventually helped deliver the Spanish throne to his grandson.

On taking personal control of government in March 1661, what did he astonish his court by announcing?

He was 22 and consolidated central authority at the expense of the feudal aristocracy.

Which Superintendent of Finances did he have arrested in 1661 and imprisoned for life?

The Parlement had sentenced him only to exile; the king made it life imprisonment.

At which opulent château did the doomed finance superintendent lavishly entertain the king, flaunting his wealth?

He had also privately fortified the island of Belle Île, which sealed his fate.

Whom did he make Controller-General of Finances in 1665, turning the 1661 deficit into a surplus by 1666?

His mercantilist policies lured Murano glassmakers, Swedish ironworkers and Dutch shipbuilders to France.

What was the gabelle, one of the principal taxes of his reign?

The land tax was the taille, and only the 'unprivileged' classes paid direct taxes at all.

Michel le Tellier and his son the Marquis de Louvois reorganised which institution into a professional force?

Faster spring mobilisation let French forces strike before opponents were ready.

His 1667 ordinance imposing uniform civil procedure across the kingdom later became the basis for what?

It also moved baptism, marriage and death records from the church's registers to the state's.

His Code Noir of 1685 regulated what in the French colonies?

It sanctioned the practice but forbade separating families, and allowed only Catholics to own slaves.

The 1667 War of Devolution was his attempt to seize territory in which region?

He argued that Brabant's inheritance customs made the land 'devolve' to his wife.

With which English king did he sign the Secret Treaty of Dover in 1670, an alliance against the Dutch?

The alliance was deeply unpopular in England, which made a separate peace in 1674.

Which member of the 1668 Triple Alliance did he pay to stay neutral before invading the Dutch Republic?

France invaded in May 1672 with support from Münster and Cologne.

Which 1678 settlement ended the Franco-Dutch War, largely in France's favour?

France kept Franche-Comté but its two main aims, destroying the Dutch Republic and conquering the Low Countries, both failed.

Which Free Imperial City on the Rhine did he annex in 1681?

The 1697 peace later confirmed French sovereignty over all of Alsace including the city.

La Salle claimed the Mississippi basin for France in 1682 and gave it what name in the king's honour?

Jolliet and Marquette had reached the Mississippi nine years earlier.

Embassies from which Asian kingdom were received at Versailles in 1684 and 1686?

French influence there ended with the 1688 execution of the pro-French minister Constantine Phaulkon.

To whose court in China did he send five Jesuit missionaries in 1685?

He had received a Chinese Jesuit, Michael Shen Fu-Tsung, at Versailles the year before.

The king of which country sent him an African elephant as a gift?

Versailles was described as a combination of marriage market, employment agency and entertainment capital.

Which pope may Louis have hoped to placate by revoking the Edict of Nantes?

The pope still quarrelled with him over Gallicanism and criticised the use of violence.

By what name is the 1685 act that revoked his grandfather's toleration decree known?

Existing Protestant churches were to be demolished and pastors given the choice of exile or secular life.

Which grandfather of his had issued the Edict of Nantes in 1598 to end the Wars of Religion?

He saw surviving Protestantism as a disgraceful reminder of royal powerlessness.

What were the dragonnades used against Protestants from 1681?

The quartered dragoons brought financial ruin and abuse; conversion bought exemption.

Roughly how many skilled Huguenots defied royal decrees and fled France after 1685?

That was about a quarter of France's Protestants, or 1 per cent of the whole population.

The 1686 coalition formed against him took its name from which German city?

William III's accession in England turned it into the Grand Alliance.

His pre-emptive scorched-earth campaign of 1688–89 in south-west Germany is known as the devastation of what?

It was meant to deny an invading Imperial army sustenance on France's eastern frontier.

Which exiled Catholic king did he shelter and try to restore, failing at the Boyne in 1690?

In 1697 Louis recognised William and Mary and dropped his support.

Which city did Louis XIV bombard in 1695, destroying 4,000 buildings, to try to lift the siege of Namur?

A century later the bombardment was condemned as 'as barbarous as it was useless'.

Which 1697 treaty ended the Nine Years' War and fixed the Rhine as the Franco-German border?

He returned Catalonia and most of the Reunions but kept all of Alsace.

Which grandson of his became King of Spain in 1700 under the childless Spanish king's revised will?

He was the Dauphin's second son and outside the direct French line, so no union of crowns was implied.

Which 1704 battle, won by Marlborough and Eugene of Savoy, broke the myth of French invincibility?

The Elector of Bavaria was forced to flee his lands.

In 1704 he ordered a disastrous invasion of which island to raid its harvest during a famine?

Over two million French people died in two famines between 1693 and 1710.

Which 1712 victory restored France's military pride near the end of the War of the Spanish Succession?

The Allies had earlier taken 21,000 casualties, twice the French toll, in the Pyrrhic victory at Malplaquet.

Which 1713 treaty between France, Spain, Britain and the Dutch ended the War of the Spanish Succession?

He ceded Newfoundland, Rupert's Land and Acadia, while Britain kept Gibraltar and Menorca.

How many of his six legitimate children survived to adulthood?

The survivor, the Grand Dauphin known as Monseigneur, died in 1711, four years before his father.

Which mistress bore him seven children between 1667 and 1680?

Louise de La Vallière, her predecessor, had five.

Which pious widow, once governess to his illegitimate children, did he secretly marry around 1683?

The marriage was never announced but was an open secret; under her influence he banned opera and comedy during Lent.

What had Versailles been before he turned it into a palace over four building campaigns?

It had been commissioned by his father and became the setting where the king alone commanded attention.

In which year did the royal court officially move to Versailles?

Nobles who wanted pensions and privileges had to wait constantly on the king there.

For whom did he build the Hôtel des Invalides in Paris?

It pioneered new treatments and still houses veterans today.

Which Italian master's Louvre plans were shelved in favour of the Colonnade by Le Vau, Le Brun and Perrault?

His scheme would have replaced much of the palace with an Italian summer villa; he did carve a famous bust of the king.

Which composer and dancer was his court musician, and the lens through which Le Roi Danse views the king?

Molière, Racine, Le Brun and Le Nôtre were also among the artists of the 'Grand Siècle'.

Who painted the celebrated 1701 state portrait showing the 63-year-old king on unnaturally youthful legs?

It was meant as a gift for his grandson in Spain, but he liked it so much he kept the original and sent a copy.

How many roles did he dance in the 40 major court ballets of his youth?

That approaches the career of a professional dancer.

In Molière's Les Amants magnifiques of 1670 he danced Apollo and which other god?

He had played an Egyptian in Le Mariage forcé and a Moorish gentleman in Le Sicilien.

Which dance instructor codified ballet's five positions and was told to devise a notation system?

Feuillet published the system in 1700 as Choregraphie.

Which disease did the young king contract in 1647, its effects later left out of his portraits?

He commissioned over 300 formal portraits in his lifetime.

For what condition did he undergo a painful, famous operation in November 1686?

The surgeon Félix de Tassy made a specially curved scalpel; the wound took two months to heal.

Of what did he die at Versailles on 1 September 1715?

He went 'like a candle going out' while reciting a psalm.

Where was he buried?

Revolutionaries exhumed and destroyed the royal remains there about 80 years later.

In 1848 a piece of his mummified heart was eaten by which English clergyman-geologist?

He was Dean of Westminster; the fragment had been kept in a silver locket by Lord Harcourt.

What relation was his successor, the five-year-old Louis XV, to him?

Disease had carried off his son, grandson and elder great-grandson within a year.

Which nephew of his had the royal will annulled and made himself sole regent for Louis XV?

He stripped the king's legitimised sons of the rank of Prince of the Blood.

On his deathbed he reportedly told his heir not to imitate him in what?

'Be a peaceful prince,' he is said to have added.

How is the famous line 'L'État, c'est moi' attributed to him generally regarded by historians?

His recorded deathbed words were 'I depart, but the State shall always remain'.

The military order he founded in 1693, the first French decoration open to non-nobles, was named after which king?

It shares its red ribbon with the Légion d'honneur, of which it is roughly the forerunner.

How long is the Canal du Midi, one of the great engineering works of his reign?

It links Toulouse to the Mediterranean.

Which later ruler, though anti-Bourbon, called him 'the only King of France worthy of the name'?

Leibniz called him 'one of the greatest kings that ever was'.

Which philosophe's history The Age of Louis XIV ranked his reign among the four great ages of civilisation?

He nonetheless blamed the king's vanity for his wars.

The legend of the Man in the Iron Mask, popularised by Dumas, claims the prisoner was Louis's what?

The tale ends The Vicomte de Bragelonne, Dumas's second sequel to The Three Musketeers.

Who played Louis XIV in the 1998 film The Man in the Iron Mask?

The film casts the king as a lavish villain who bankrupts his country.

Which actor played him in the Canal+ series Versailles from 2015?

Alan Rickman also played him in A Little Chaos, and Jean-Pierre Léaud in The Death of Louis XIV.

What traditional title did Louis bear as heir apparent to the French throne before 1643?

His own eldest son later carried the title for decades as le Grand Dauphin, known at court simply as Monseigneur.

What does the name Dieudonné, bestowed on the newborn king, mean?

The name reflected his parents' 23 childless years of marriage before his birth in 1638.

Along with Chandernagore, which trading post did France establish in India during his reign?

France also planted itself in the Indian Ocean at Île Bourbon, today's Réunion.

Which mistress bore Louis five children between 1661 and 1667?

She was among the best documented of a long list of royal favourites before the king settled down with Madame de Maintenon.

Which two Barbary pirate strongholds did Louis have bombarded to free Christian slaves?

Together with the punishment of Genoa, the raids earned France a reputation for brutality and arrogance across Europe.

In 1684 Louis launched a punitive mission against which Italian republic for backing Spain?

The republic submitted and its Doge travelled to Versailles to deliver an official apology.

Which 1696 agreement saw Savoy switch sides and start unravelling the League of Augsburg?

Once the Savoyards defected, the other league members rushed to the table and the Peace of Ryswick followed a year later.