France had not only Napoleon, but also Louis XIV.
Louis XIV was born in 1638 in the city of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, west of Paris.
Louis XIV and his brother Philippe
His father was the handsome King Louis XIII of France, as anyone who has watched "The Three Musketeers" should know, and his mother was Princess Anna of Austria.
Louis XIII
Louis XIV was born at a time of chaos and turmoil in Europe, with the Thirty Years' War in full swing and France and Spain fighting on the battlefield. In 1640, the Catalans of Spain revolted and joined France with the land. Spain immediately sent troops to suppress it, and the French intervened, capturing Roussillon in 1642. At the same time, during the war, France also occupied Artois, in the Spanish Netherlands.
In 1643, King Louis XIII of France died, and Louis XIV, who was just over four years old, succeeded to the throne and was regent by his mother, Anna. The power of the country is actually in the hands of Prime Minister Mazaran, who is also Anna's lover. Mazarin was originally a retainer of the Pope, and when he was in France, he was valued by French Prime Minister Richelieu and became a cardinal with French nationality. After Richelieu's death in 1642, Mazarin became Richelieu's successor, becoming prime minister in 1643.
In 1648, the "Thirty Years' War" in Europe finally ended, and France won its final victory. Through the Treaty of Westphalia, France legally confirmed the occupation of the three bishoprics of Verdun, Metz, and Tulle, as well as suzerainty over parts of Alsace.
However, although France won the war, its purse was empty and it faced a serious financial crisis. In 1648, the French government decided to stop paying officials' salaries, and Prime Minister Mazarin was dedicated to government and filled his own pockets, and the anger of the officials was ignited, and the "Côtes of the Supreme Court" broke out.
In 1649, Mazarin fled Paris with King Louis XIV of France and Queen Mother Anna, and organized an armed counterattack, sending the Prince of Condé to besiege Paris. Subsequently, the first Fronde movement was suppressed.
The Fronde movement
After 1648, taking advantage of the outbreak of the Fronde movement in France, Spain and the anti-Mazarin forces in France continued the war with France, retaking Artois for a time and gradually recovering parts of Catalonia, but was soon defeated by the French army.
In 1650, the Prince of Condé, who had been instrumental in the suppression, was dissatisfied with his treatment and united his brothers to prepare for the central power, but was discovered and arrested by Mazarin. In the same year, the anti-Mazaran Fronde movement was again launched throughout the country, and the nobles demanded the restoration of the rights deprived by the king, which was known as the "Noble Slings Movement".
Mazaran
In 1651, Mazarin had no choice but to release Prince Condé and take King Louis XIV and the Queen Mother on the road of escape again to Germany. In 1652, the Prince of Condé took over Paris and formed a provisional government. However, unable to change the status quo and the atrocities of the army, the provisional government soon collapsed, and Condé fled to Flanders to join the Spanish army.
In the same year, Louis XIV and Prime Minister Mazarin returned to Paris, ending the second Fronde movement. The Fronde movement cast a shadow on the young Louis XIV's psyche, so he vowed never to allow such riots to happen again, and made a bad impression on Paris.
Franco-Spanish showdown
On the battlefield of the duel between France and Spain, the French general Tyrrenne, the former leader of the Fronde, sided with the royal family and led the French army against the Prince of Condé and his Spanish army. After several rounds of battles, France finally won a decisive victory against Spain.
In 1659, through a series of military victories and diplomatic manoeuvres, France forced Spain to sign the Treaty of the Pyrenees, which forced Spain to recognize the permanent annexation of Artois and Roussillon. At this point, the southern border between France and Spain was demarcated, and the ten-year Franco-Spanish War ended, and France completely owned the area north of the Pyrenees.
Moreover, after Mazarin's ingenious arrangement, the 20-year-old Louis XIV was also engaged to the young Spanish princess Marie Therese in order to marry Qin and Jin. However, this marriage laid the groundwork for the future French struggle for Spanish inheritance.
Louis XIV at the wedding
In 1660, Louis XIV married Princess Marie Therese of Spain, who became queen. In 1661, Prime Minister Mazarin died, and Louis XIV became in power. The prime minister worked hard to lay the groundwork for Louis XIV's hegemony. But before his death, Mazarin taught Louis XIV the teachings of Richelieu: the king should rule over everything. Therefore, Louis XIV heeded Mazarin's teachings and abolished the prime minister, and in his 54 years in power, he never appointed a prime minister, and left all affairs to his own discretion. Louis XIV's most famous words of statecraft are "I am the state".
After Louis XIV came to power, he vigorously strengthened the absolute monarchy, squeezing out the royal family and the great nobles, and replacing them with the "robed aristocracy" who rose from the plebeians. In order to be promoted, the nobles and ministers had to do whatever it took to curry favor with the king and serve the reign of Louis XIV. In 1661, Louis XIV played the role of the sun god "Apollo" in the ballet, so Louis XIV was later revered as the "Sun King".
With Le Telier as Minister of Defense, Rio as Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Colbert as Minister of Finance and Navy, Louis XIV formed a "three-man team" to assist the king, and vigorously carried out political, military, and economic reforms.
Kolbel
Among them, Colbert is the most famous, under his planning, France's desire to dominate the sea has been revived, and France's domestic commodity manufacturing, shipbuilding and colonial construction are all carried out in an orderly manner, and the goal of becoming a maritime power is getting closer and closer. Unfortunately, France was thinking about eastward expansion, and after Courbert's death in 1683, Louis XIV abolished all his policies.
After the Thirty Years' War and the Franco-Spanish Ten-Year War, the Habsburgs were unable to dominate Europe. At the same time, the Netherlands and Great Britain flourished as maritime powers, becoming serious competitors to France. The young French king Louis XIV was not to be left alone, and he was eager to make France the new hegemon of Europe.
At the time of Marie Therese's marriage to Louis XIV, Spain promised to pay France a dowry of 500,000 ecís on the condition that Marie renounce her right to the Spanish throne. However, the 500,000 dowry was never fulfilled in Spain, which gave Louis XIV an excuse in the future.
Louis XIV pro-conquest
In 1665, Louis XIV's father-in-law, King Fili IV of Spain, died, and Louis XIV immediately claimed the inheritance of the Flanders region of the Spanish Netherlands in the name of Queen Marie, the daughter of Fili IV. In 1667, Louis XIV personally invaded the region with his own army, fighting the Spanish and Dutch forces, and the "War of the Flemish Heritage" began. Tillenne fought valiantly with the Prince of Condé, who had returned in 1659, leading his army to capture Lille and other places, and then turned southeast, capturing the Spanish possession of Franche-Conté within half a month.
Faced with French aggressiveness, the Netherlands sought the help of Britain and Sweden to form a Triple Alliance to put pressure on France. In 1668, France was forced to sign the Treaty of Aachen, which returned Franche-Comté to Spain, but retained some lowland cities such as Lille and Douai. In 1669, France also annexed the Duchy of Haute-Lorraine.
However, Louis XIV was not satisfied with this, and began to expand his armaments and intervened in the struggle between England and the Netherlands. By 1672, the number of French troops had increased several times to 450,000.
In order to win over England as a helper, Louis XIV bribed his cousin, King Charles II, for £400,000. Britain had already fought two wars with the Netherlands and was planning to seek revenge on the Netherlands, so Charles II privately agreed without the approval of Parliament.
In 1672, France declared war on the Netherlands and sent troops to invade the Netherlands. Britain immediately announced its withdrawal from the Triple Alliance with the Netherlands and Sweden, and attacked the Dutch caravan without declaring war. Thus, the Franco-Dutch War and the Third Anglo-Dutch War broke out.
France sent troops from land, and Britain sent troops from the sea to flank the Netherlands on both sides. The situation in the Netherlands was precarious, 60% of the country was occupied by the French, and the Dutch ruling Prince of Orange had to blow up the dikes to stop the French army. But the Franco-Dutch invasion greatly stimulated the patriotic fervor of the Dutch, who held back the armies of both countries and appealed to the European countries for help.
Spain, Austria, Denmark, and the German states came to the aid of the Netherlands against France, making it difficult for the French army in the Netherlands. The Netherlands then lobbied the British Parliament to make the deal between Louis XIV and Charles II public, and to shake out Charles II's promise to return England to Catholicism. At this time, the British people quit, anti-French sentiment was high, and Parliament refused to allocate funds to Charles II. King Charles II of England had no choice but to withdraw from the war in 1674.
In 1674, with the exception of Bavaria, Württemberg, and Hanover, almost all European countries sided with the Netherlands against France. The war lasted for seven years, and after exhausting its manpower and material resources, France finally won a difficult victory, inflicting heavy losses on the Netherlands.
In 1678, the Treaty of Nijmegen was signed, under which France seized Franche-Comté and parts of the Spanish Netherlands, but returned the Dutch lands. This treaty marked the culmination of French hegemony in Europe, and Louis XIV became a veritable "Sun King", revered as "Louis the Great" by the Paris City Hall. In the years that followed, the French Army and Navy were the best in Europe.
Louis XIV
However, Louis XIV's desire for expansion was limitless, as there were many wealthy cities from northeastern France to the Netherlands. In the years that followed, Louis XIV occupied a number of cities under various pretexts.
In 1681, France suddenly sent troops to occupy Strasbourg, which belonged to the Holy Roman Empire, and the Germans were powerless to admit the established facts. At this point, France completed the annexation of the entire Alsace region under Louis XIV. In 1682, Louis XIV moved into the Palace of Versailles, a symbol of centralized power.
Versailles
Louis XIV believed that in order for France to achieve national unity, it was necessary to unify religion. As a result, Louis XIV actively pursued the policy of "one country, one religion" and restarted the persecution of Protestants. In 1685, Louis XIV issued the Edict of Fontainebleau, which abolished the Edict of Nantes, and many Protestants either converted to Catholicism or went into exile. According to statistics, more than 200,000 Protestants, most of whom were businessmen, went into exile abroad, which was a major blow to the French economy. Louis XIV needed a lot of money to fight, and it was clear that it would not be worth the cost to do so.
Edict of Fontainebleau
Louis XIV's recklessness provoked strong discontent among the countries of Europe, who reunited and formed an alliance against France. In 1686, Austria, Spain, the Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, Italy, Savoy and other countries formed the League of Augsburg, and after the "Glorious Revolution" in England in 1688, the Dutch ruling Orange ascended the English throne, King James II fled to France, and England also joined the League of Augsburg.
In 1688, the War of the League of Augsburg, also known as the War of the Grand League, broke out. France faced almost all the countries of Europe alone, and the situation of the war was increasingly unfavorable for France. Although the French army was the most powerful army in Europe at that time, and the battle was also very brave, but France's finances were very tight, and in 1693 alone, it consumed 110 million livres of military spending, plus the great cold disaster in 1694, French agriculture was greatly hit, millions of people died of cold and starvation, and France finally could not hold on.
In 1696, France negotiated a marriage with Savoy. In 1697, France was forced to sign the Treaty of Rieswick in the Netherlands, returning the annexed Duchy of Upper Lorraine and recognizing William of Orange as King of England. However, France retained its occupation of the Strasbourg region.
The conquest of Iberia had always been a dream for France, which had been waiting for an opportunity to acquire the Spanish legacy and thus unify southwestern Europe.
Soon, the opportunity came.
In 1700, King Charles II of Spain died of illness, and the Habsburg dynasty became extinct in Spain. Charles II left a will in which his nephew, Philip, Duke of Anjou, grandson of King Louis XIV of France, succeeded to the Spanish throne. Spain also had many overseas colonies, which allowed France to annex the vast Spanish Empire without a single soldier.
However, the Habsburg family in Austria did not do anything. They believed that the throne of Spain should have been inherited by Archduke Charles of Austria, and that France must not be allowed to take such a big bargain for nothing. As a result, Austria began to form an alliance with England, the Netherlands, Portugal, Savoy, Naples, and the German states, declared war on France, and decided to regain the Spanish throne.
Not to be outdone, King Louis XIV of France formed alliances with Spain and several German states, such as Bavaria. In 1702, Austria declared war on France on behalf of the anti-French alliance, and the War of the Spanish Succession broke out.
At first, the situation was unfavorable for France, the Anglo-Dutch fleet defeated the Spanish fleet, and the British also occupied Gibraltar. In 1704, Prince Eugen of Savoy and John Churchill of England (the ancestor of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in World War II) broke the myth of the invincibility of the French army by defeating the combined forces of France and Bavaria. Over the next two years, the French army suffered another series of defeats on the battlefield. Louis XIV's grandson Philip was forced to flee Madrid, and Archduke Charles of Austria ascended to the Spanish throne.
But Austria did not rejoice for long, and just when it thought that the situation was decided, the French army began to launch a counteroffensive. In 1707, the French occupied most of Spain, and Philip returned to Spain. However, in 1708, Prince Eugen and John Churchill led their armies to defeat the French. In 1709, the two sides fought a decisive battle in the Netherlands, and the French army was again defeated, but the anti-French alliance did not achieve further results, and the two sides entered a stalemate.
At this time, Britain decided to negotiate peace with France in order to fight war with Russia for Northern Europe, and made every effort to deal with Russia. As a result, the other allied countries also negotiated peace with France. Archduke Charles of Austria had become Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, and the Spanish throne was no longer uncommon. Moreover, a Habsburg Empire straddling Spain and Germany was not what European countries wanted. France has a poor harvest at home, is facing a serious economic crisis, and does not want to fight.
Peace of Utrecht
In 1713, France signed the Treaty of Utrecht with the countries of the anti-French alliance, and Louis XIV's grandson Philip V, Philip V, could become the king of Spain, but France and Spain could never be united; Britain got the Spanish islands of Gibraltar and Mecano and some North American colonies obtained from France; and the Spanish territories of the Netherlands, Milan, Sardinia, and Naples were inherited by Austria.
The War of the Spanish Succession caused France heavy losses, and Louis XIV did not realize his attempt to dominate Europe again, but he eased relations with Spain. There is no doubt that the greatest beneficiary of this war was Britain, who took away the French colonies and began to move towards maritime supremacy, and France and Britain once again formed a great feud.
In 1715, Louis XIV died at the age of 77 at the Palace of Versailles. Louis XIV reigned for 72 years, 54 years, and 31 years at war with European countries, making him the most warlike king in French history.
During his reign, he greatly expanded the territory of France, taking Artois, Alsace, Franche-Comté and Roussillon, laying the foundation of today's French territory, basically demarcating the borders with neighboring countries, and greatly improving France's position in Europe. However, Louis XIV's territorial expansion was largely achieved before the 80s of the 17th century, and the later reckless militarism not only had little effect, but also brought deep disaster to the French people, with a declining population and a near-collapse of the economy. Louis XIV was also aware of this on his deathbed, and his last words to his heir were: "Do not imitate me, be a peace-loving monarch, and may the whole of your energy be devoted to lightening the burdens of the people." "But in any case, Louis XIV is one of the most important figures in French history and can be ranked in the top five in France. If there is one word to describe Louis XIV's deeds, it can only be said that "sin is in the present generation, and merit is in the future".
Bibliography: A Brief History of the World on a Map, History of France, World Geography and Hegemony, The Rise of Great Powers, etc.
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