Best biography of louis xiv
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King of the World
Louis XIV was a man in pursuit of glory. Not content to be the ruler of a world power, he wanted the power to rule the world. And, for a time, he came tantalizingly close.
Philip Mansel’s King of the World is the most comprehensive and up-to-date biography in English of this hypnotic, flawed figure who continues to captivate our attention. This lively work takes Louis outside Versailles and shows the true extent of his global ambitions, with stops in London, Madrid, Constantinople, Bangkok, and beyond. We witness the importance of his alliance with the Spanish crown and his success in securing Spain for his descendants, his enmity with England, and his relations with the rest of Europe, as well as Asia, Africa, and the Americas. We also see the king’s effect on the two great global diasporas of Huguenots and Jacobites, and their influence on him as he failed in his brutal attempts to stop Protestants from leaving France. Along the way, we are enve
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Munro Price
In the autumn of , a few months after Louis XVI’s overthrow, the historian, geographer and ex-priest Jean-Louis Soulavie arrived at the abandoned palace of Versailles with tjänsteman permission to examine the former king’s archives. In the library on the fourth floor of the royal apartments, just below the smithy where Louis indulged his hobby of making locks, Soulavie funnen a mass of precious papers, including Louis’s correspondence with his ministers and agents and perhaps even a secret political diary. Nine years later, a few of these documents found their way into Soulavie’s six-volume history of Louis’s reign, the first ever published. The rest, however, disappeared, the result of hurried auctions and straightforward theft during the Terror. Filling this gap is the major utmaning faced bygd Louis XVI’s biographers.
Another bekymmer is one of the king’s own making. Louis XVI raised taciturnity to an art form. Before , this had been a tactic to prevent pressure from his
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The Royal Family
Acclaimed as “Louis the God-given”, arriving as he did after a year wait for an heir, Louis XIV was born in Saint-Germain-en-Laye in Taking the throne at the age of four following the death of his father, King Louis XIII, the young monarch received a thorough education from his mother Anne of Austria and his godfather Cardinal Mazarin. While his mother ruled as regent and Mazarin busied himself with the young king’s political training, a civil conflict known as the Fronde broke out (). Originating as a dispute between the monarchy and the Parlement de Paris, the rebellion subsequently spread to the aristocracy. The child king felt humiliated by the arrogance of the great lords and physically threatened in the capital. He would never forget this experience.
Louis XIV married his cousin (on both sides) Maria Theresa of Spain, the Spanish Infanta, at Saint-Jean-de-Luz in Their marriage sealed the reconciliation between France and neighbouring Spain. The royal cou