80 Fun Facts About Louis XIV

By what nickname is Louis XIV best known?

The Sun King. He took the sun as his emblem and, at 14, danced the part of the sun god Apollo in a court ballet, casting himself as the star his whole kingdom revolved around.

Which British monarch's 70-year reign is second only to Louis XIV's 72 among sovereign monarchs?

Elizabeth II. Her 70 years and 214 days fell short of Louis XIV's 72 years and 110, a total he could reach only because he inherited the throne as a small child.

In which royal château west of Paris was Louis XIV born?

Saint-Germain-en-Laye. He held court at the château for years before settling at Versailles, then lent it to England's deposed king, whose exiled court stayed on for decades.

Which real-life musketeer, later immortalised by Alexandre Dumas, arrested Louis XIV's disgraced finance minister in 1661?

D'Artagnan. The real Charles de Batz de Castelmore, an officer of the king's musketeers, made the arrest on Louis's orders and then spent years as his prisoner's jailer.

Who was Louis XIV's mother, who ruled France as sole regent during his minority?

Anne of Austria. Despite the name she was a Spanish princess, born in Valladolid to King Philip III; 'Austria' was the name of her Habsburg dynasty, not her homeland.

How old was Louis XIV when he became King of France?

Four. His dying father, distrusting the queen, tried to tie her to a regency council, but within days she had the will overturned and governed alone in her son's name.

Which cardinal, Richelieu's successor, governed France as chief minister throughout Louis XIV's youth?

Mazarin. Born Giulio Mazzarino in Italy, he was also the boy king's godfather and personally schooled him in diplomacy and statecraft until his own death in 1661.

The 1648 Peace of Westphalia, negotiated during Louis XIV's minority, ended which war?

The Thirty Years' War. France, though Catholic, had joined it against the Catholic Habsburgs, and the peace rewarded the boy king's government with lands in Alsace.

Which 1648–53 civil wars forced the young Louis XIV and his court to flee Paris?

The Fronde. Named after the slings of a Paris street game played in defiance of the authorities, the revolts failed, and their collapse cleared the way for Louis's absolute rule.

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

Pretended to be asleep. The crowd gazed at the boy, was satisfied and left quietly, but Louis never forgot the humiliation and held it against Paris for the rest of his life.

Which famous blue gem in the Smithsonian is thought to have been recut from a diamond Louis XIV bought in 1668?

The Hope Diamond. Louis's stone, known as the French Blue, vanished when thieves looted the crown jewels in 1792, and the smaller gem that later surfaced in London is believed to be what was left of it.

Whom did Louis XIV marry in 1660 to seal France's peace with a long-standing enemy?

Maria Theresa of Spain. His cousin on both sides, she bore his affairs in silence, and when she died in 1683 he is reported to have said it was the only trouble she had ever caused him.

At Versailles, courtiers competed for the honour of watching Louis XIV do what each morning?

Get out of bed. At the ceremony called the lever he was woken at 8.30, then washed, shaved and dressed before onlookers admitted in order of rank, so a place in the room showed how high a courtier stood.

On taking personal power in 1661, Louis XIV astonished his court by announcing he would do what?

Rule without a chief minister. It broke with tradition, since French kings had long left daily government to a favourite, but Louis chaired his own councils for the next 54 years.

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

Nicolas Fouquet. His judges voted only to banish him, but Louis overruled them and 'commuted' the sentence upward, to life in the Alpine fortress of Pignerol, where he died in 1680.

At which château did Louis XIV's finance minister throw the king a lavish fête weeks before his arrest?

Vaux-le-Vicomte. Louis went on to hire the very team that had created it, its architect, its painter and its garden designer, to build his own far larger palace at Versailles.

Which finance minister of Louis XIV, a champion of French industry, sharply cut the royal deficit in the 1660s?

Jean-Baptiste Colbert. Convinced that France grew rich by selling more than it bought, he lured skilled foreign craftsmen such as Venetian glassmakers to the kingdom and taxed imports heavily.

What was the gabelle, one of the main taxes of Louis XIV's France?

A salt tax. Across much of France everyone over the age of eight had to buy a set amount of salt at the crown's price, and because that price varied hugely between provinces, salt smuggling became a thriving trade.

Louis XIV's ministers Michel le Tellier and his son, the Marquis de Louvois, reorganised which institution?

The army. Their inspector of infantry, Jean Martinet, drilled the regiments so relentlessly that his surname passed into English as the word for a rigid disciplinarian.

Which military engineer ringed Louis XIV's France with fortresses and directed many of the king's sieges?

Vauban. Late in life the great fortress builder turned reformer, proposing that most taxes give way to a flat tenth paid by every class, nobles included, and the government suppressed his book.

Louis XIV's Code Noir of 1685 regulated what in the French colonies?

Slavery. As much about religion as labour, the code ordered every enslaved person to be baptised a Catholic and expelled all Jews from France's colonies.

The 1667 War of Devolution was Louis XIV's attempt to seize territory in which region?

The Spanish Netherlands. Louis invoked a local custom there that let a daughter of a first marriage inherit ahead of sons of a second, and claimed the lands had 'devolved' to his wife.

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

Charles II. In return for French money that freed him from Parliament, he secretly promised to declare himself a Catholic one day, a clause known to only two of his own councillors.

How did the Dutch stop Louis XIV's invading troops from reaching Amsterdam in 1672?

Flooding their own land. They opened the dikes to drown a belt of countryside, the Water Line, kept too deep to march through and too shallow for boats, and the French advance stopped dead.

Which landscape gardener designed the gardens of Versailles for Louis XIV?

André Le Nôtre. Born into a family of royal gardeners, he studied perspective and optics in a painter's studio and used them to lay out vistas that seem to run on as far as the eye can see.

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

Strasbourg. Louis simply seized the largely Protestant city in peacetime, with no war declared, and the rest of Europe accepted it as French only in the peace treaty of 1697.

Which French explorer claimed the whole Mississippi basin in 1682 and named it Louisiana after Louis XIV?

La Salle. Two years later he sailed back to plant a colony at the river's mouth, missed it, landed in what is now Texas and was murdered there by his own men in 1687.

Embassies from which Asian kingdom did Louis XIV receive at Versailles in 1684 and 1686?

Siam. King Narai wanted a French alliance to offset Dutch power, and Louis received his envoys in state, but it all ended in 1688, when Narai fell ill and a court faction overthrew and executed his Greek favourite, Constantine Phaulkon.

Which Catholic order supplied the 'mathematicians' Louis XIV sent to the Chinese emperor's court in 1685?

The Jesuits. The five priests reached Beijing in 1688, and two of them stayed at court for years teaching the Kangxi Emperor mathematics and astronomy.

Which kingdom's ruler sent Louis XIV an elephant from the Congo for his menagerie at Versailles?

Portugal. The elephant lived in the menagerie for thirteen years, and when it died in 1681 its dissection revealed that the animal long taken for a male was in fact a female.

Which Molière comedy about a religious hypocrite, first staged for Louis XIV in 1664, was then suppressed for five years?

Tartuffe. The court's own record says the king found the play extremely diverting, yet, apparently swayed by the archbishop of Paris, he kept it from the public until a revised version was allowed in 1669.

By what name is Louis XIV's 1685 act revoking the Edict of Nantes formally known?

The Edict of Fontainebleau. Issued from the palace of that name, it ordered France's remaining Protestant churches pulled down and outlawed their worship, ending 87 years of legal toleration.

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

Henry IV. Brought up a strict Protestant, he had turned Catholic to win Paris and his crown, then used the edict to protect the faith he had left behind.

What were the dragonnades that Louis XIV used against French Protestants from 1681?

Billeting soldiers in their homes. The dragoons had tacit leave to bully their hosts and wreck or steal their goods, pressure meant to drive whole families into the Catholic Church.

Huguenot refugees from Louis XIV's France helped build the wine industry of which present-day country?

South Africa. Huguenots who reached the Dutch colony at the Cape from 1688 were granted farms in a valley still called Franschhoek, 'French Corner', in today's Cape Winelands.

The 1686 league formed against Louis XIV took its name from which German city?

Augsburg. The league itself proved toothless, but three years later William of Orange, by then King of England, drew its members into the Grand Alliance that fought Louis until 1697.

Louis XIV's scorched-earth campaign of 1688–89 in south-west Germany is known as the devastation of what?

The Palatinate. Louis and his war minister had towns, villages and crops along the Rhine destroyed on purpose, so that no enemy force could feed itself there on the road to France.

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

James II. Deposed in 1688, he fled to France, where Louis handed him a château near Paris; after his defeat in Ireland he lived on there as the French king's guest until his death in 1701.

Which city did Louis XIV have bombarded in 1695 in a failed attempt to lift the siege of Namur?

Brussels. Three days of shelling and fire destroyed about a third of the city, including the Grand-Place, which is why the famous guildhalls around that square all date from the rebuilding.

Which 1697 treaty ended the Nine Years' War between Louis XIV and the Grand Alliance?

The Peace of Ryswick. Louis handed back Lorraine and most of the lands seized since 1679 and, after nine years of war against him, accepted his old enemy William III as King of England.

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

Philip V. Much of Europe fought for over a decade to keep a French prince off that throne, yet he held on to it and founded the Spanish branch of the Bourbon dynasty.

Which 1704 victory over Louis XIV's forces gave the Duke of Marlborough's great English palace its name?

Blenheim. A grateful Crown gave Marlborough the Oxfordshire estate where the palace was built, and it was there that his descendant Winston Churchill was later born.

Which Mediterranean stronghold did Britain capture in 1704, during Louis XIV's last great war, and keep at the peace?

Gibraltar. An Anglo-Dutch fleet under Admiral Rooke seized the Rock on behalf of the Habsburg claimant to Spain's throne, but when peace came in 1713 Britain kept the fortress for itself.

Which famous Paris avenue began in 1667 as a tree-lined extension of Louis XIV's Tuileries gardens?

The Champs-Élysées. The king's chief gardener drew it as a broad promenade between double rows of elms, to carry the view from the palace gardens out across what were then open fields.

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

The Peace of Utrecht. Louis's grandson kept Spain only by renouncing any claim to the French crown, the union the war was fought to prevent, and France ceded Newfoundland and Hudson Bay to Britain.

Which scientific institution, founded under Louis XIV in 1667, gave France its own prime meridian?

The Paris Observatory. Built to chart the skies and aid navigation, it gave French maps their own zero line of longitude, and when the world chose Greenwich instead in 1884, France abstained.

Which mistress of Louis XIV, a marquise feared for her wit, bore him seven children?

Madame de Montespan. She dominated the court for over a decade, until the discreet governess she had chosen to raise her children by the king took her place in his affections.

Which pious widow, once governess to Louis XIV's illegitimate children, did the king secretly marry around 1683?

Madame de Maintenon. She is said to have been born in the prison where her father was held, and she was the penniless widow of a comic poet before she became the king's unacknowledged wife.

What had Versailles been before Louis XIV turned it into a palace?

A hunting lodge. Louis XIII built the modest brick house for his shooting trips, and rather than pull it down his son wrapped the vast new palace around it, so it still stands at the centre.

Louis XIV moved his court to Versailles in 1682 partly to keep watch on whom?

Nobles. They had started eleven civil wars in forty years, so Louis drew them to court and kept them competing for his favour through etiquette, ceremony and gambling instead of plotting on their estates.

For whom did Louis XIV build the Hôtel des Invalides in Paris?

Infirm and aged soldiers. Louis ordered it in 1670 in recognition of the men maimed in his wars, and its residents lived by a military routine that included compulsory daily worship in the soldiers' church.

Which Italian master did Louis XIV summon to Paris in 1665 to redesign the Louvre, only to reject his plans?

Bernini. Crowds lined his route and the foundations of his Louvre front were laid with full ceremony, yet nothing more was built; what survives of the visit is his marble bust of the king.

Which Italian-born composer controlled Louis XIV's court music and held a monopoly on French opera?

Jean-Baptiste Lully. His own conducting killed him: beating time with a long, heavy staff, he struck his foot, the wound became infected, and he died of it in 1687.

Who painted the celebrated 1701 state portrait of Louis XIV in his coronation robes?

Hyacinthe Rigaud. The picture was ordered as a present for the king's grandson in Spain, but Louis was so pleased with it that he kept the original at Versailles and had a copy made instead.

Which author of fairy tales such as Sleeping Beauty and Puss in Boots worked as an official of Louis XIV's royal buildings?

Charles Perrault. A lawyer by training, he spent decades in royal service and was nearly seventy when his Mother Goose tales appeared in 1697, written, it is said, to amuse his own children.

What name was given to the roughly 800 young women Louis XIV paid to send to New France as brides?

The King's Daughters. The Crown paid their passage and often a dowry to steady a colony where men far outnumbered women, and many Canadians today can trace their ancestry to them.

Louis XIV's dancing master Pierre Beauchamp is credited with defining what in classical ballet?

The five positions. Louis, an eager dancer in his youth, took lessons from Beauchamp and in 1661 founded a royal academy of dance to set standards for the art.

Which disease did Louis XIV survive at nine, only for it to kill his successor Louis XV in 1774?

Smallpox. He pulled through in 1647, but the same disease killed his only surviving legitimate son in 1711, one of the deaths that left his throne to a five-year-old.

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

An anal fistula. His surgeon first practised on dozens of poor patients and devised a special curved scalpel; the operation, done without anaesthetic, worked, and the king's cure was celebrated across France.

Of what did Louis XIV die at Versailles on 1 September 1715?

Gangrene. It began as a pain in the leg that his doctor took for sciatica; black patches soon showed the truth, and for two weeks the king kept to his routine while it spread.

Where was Louis XIV buried?

The Basilica of Saint-Denis. Almost every French king lay there until 1793, when the revolutionary government ordered the royal tombs broken open and the remains, Louis's among them, were thrown into mass graves.

According to a much-repeated story, the Victorian geologist William Buckland ate part of which preserved organ of Louis XIV?

His heart. The relic, taken from the royal tomb and kept in a silver locket, was shown to Buckland at a dinner in 1848, and he is said to have popped it into his mouth and swallowed it.

What relation was Louis XIV's successor, the five-year-old Louis XV, to him?

Great-grandson. In under a year, in 1711–12, illness carried off Louis's son, his grandson and the elder of his great-grandsons, leaving a two-year-old as heir to France.

Which nephew of Louis XIV had the king's will annulled and made himself sole regent for Louis XV?

Philippe II, Duke of Orléans. The will had left real power with the old king's legitimised sons, so within days of the king's death Orléans had the Paris Parlement set it aside and took the regency whole.

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

Undertaking war too lightly. Accounts of his exact words differ, but in each the dying warrior king told the five-year-old to live at peace with his neighbours and to lighten his people's burdens.

Historians doubt Louis XIV ever said which famous line long attributed to him?

"I am the state" appears in no record of the 1655 parlement session where he supposedly said it. Eyewitnesses instead recorded his dying words: "I depart, but the State shall always remain."

Louis XIV named his 1693 order for officers after which crusading king of France, later made a saint?

Louis IX, known as Saint Louis, gave his name to an order that rewarded officers for merit, not noble birth. The Legion of Honour wears the same red ribbon today.

Which canal, opened under Louis XIV in 1681, links Toulouse to the Mediterranean?

Canal du Midi: the financier Pierre-Paul Riquet drained his own fortune on the 240 km waterway and died eight months before it opened.

Which later French leader judged Louis XIV the only king of France worthy of the name?

Napoleon said so in exile on St Helena, then qualified the praise as only a general would: a great king, but not a great soldier.

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

Voltaire, twice jailed in the Bastille under the king's successors, still ranked this century above the ages of Pericles, Augustus and the Renaissance.

In Dumas's version of the Man in the Iron Mask legend, the prisoner is Louis XIV's what?

Twin brother: Dumas built the last of his Musketeers novels around the hidden twin. The real prisoner's mask was reportedly black velvet, not iron.

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

Leonardo DiCaprio's only box-office rival that weekend was himself: the film opened at No. 2, about $300,000 behind his own Titanic.

Which actor directed himself as Louis XIV in the 2014 film A Little Chaos?

Alan Rickman cast Kate Winslet as a gardener at work on the king's new palace grounds, reuniting the pair almost two decades after Sense and Sensibility. It was the last film he directed.

What traditional title did the future Louis XIV hold as heir to the French throne?

Dauphin: the title came with the Dauphiné, a region the crown bought in 1349, whose lords had long used the name.

Which Channel port did Louis XIV buy from the English crown in 1662?

Dunkirk had been English only since 1658, when Cromwell's soldiers helped the French take it from Spain. Louis fortified it as a base for his corsairs.

Along with Chandernagore, which trading post did France found in India during Louis XIV's reign?

Pondicherry, settled by the French in 1674, outlasted the monarchy and the Raj alike: it stayed French until 1954, seven years after India's independence.

Which French musical institution began in 1669 under a licence from Louis XIV?

The Paris Opera staged its first opera, Pomone, in 1671, but the poet who held the king's licence was cheated by his business partners and landed in a debtors' prison.

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

Algiers and Tripoli were both shelled by his fleet. In 1683 Algiers answered by tying the French consul to the mouth of a cannon and firing it.

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

Genoa was shelled for days in May 1684. A year later its Doge, barred by law from leaving the city, had to travel to Versailles and apologise to the king in person.

Which 1696 agreement saw Savoy switch sides and begin unravelling the coalition against Louis XIV?

Treaty of Turin: Louis bought Savoy's exit by handing back Pinerolo and betrothing his grandson to the duke's young daughter.