LOUIS XIV

born September 5, 1638, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Fr. died September 1, 1715, Versailles byname Louis The Great, Louis The Grand Monarch, or The Sun King, French Louis Le Grand, Louis Le Grand Monarque, or Le Roi Soleil king of France (16431715) who ruled his country, principally from his great palace at Versailles, during one of its most brilliant periods and who remains the symbol of absolute monarchy of the classical age. Internationally, in a series of wars between 1667 and 1697, he extended France's eastern borders at the expense of the Habsburgs and then, in the War of the Spanish Succession (170114), engaged a hostile European coalition in order to secure the Spanish throne for his grandson. Additional reading Louis XIV, Mmoires (Eng. trans., Memoirs of Lewis the Fourteenth, Written by Himself and Addressed to His Son, 2 vol., 1806), is very important for an understanding of the psychology of Louis XIV. There are many French editions of this work. Contemporary accounts include: the Duchess d'Orlans (Madame Palatine), Correspondance complte, 2 vol. (1857); Mmoires of the Duc de Saint-Simon; the Journal of Dangeau; and Ezechiel Spanheim, Relation de la cour de France en 1690 (1704; Account of the Court of France, 1900). Voltaire, Le Sicle de Louis XIV, 2 vol. (1751; The Age of Louis XIV), an admirably written and well-documented study, remains an important source. Jacques Roujon, Louis XIV (1943), is a very objective and complete work. Two of the best books written on this period in the past century are Philippe Erlanger, Louis XIV (1965; Eng. trans. 1970); and John B. Wolf, Louis XIV (1968). Pierre Goubert, Louis XIV and Twenty Million Frenchmen (1970), is a popularized but well-researched treatment of Le Grand Sicle.