Louis XIV
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Louis XIV Overview
Setting in motion events that would ultimately bring his nation to military and fiscal ruin-and his dynasty to a bloody end-Louis XIV also established France as the preeminent and, to this day, unchallenged seat of high culture in Europe. As a leader he simultaneously squandered a dominion's political capital and established a nation's spiritual hegemony. As a man he married brilliance and arrogance, shrewdness and excess.
Ian Dunlop explores the Sun King's many facets in this remarkable new biography. Understanding Louis in the context of his era, one of great strides for French artists, litterateurs, and architects, Dunlop presents the king as an inspirer, an enabler, and a patron of his country's best and brightest minds. But even as his armies of laborers built the magnificent palace at Versailles, Louis' warmongering brought the greatest power in Europe-his own-to repeated and humiliating defeats at the hands of more calculating foes. Ironically, Louis' mixed legacy developed a culture that would become the envy of the world.
Ian Dunlop explores the Sun King's many facets in this remarkable new biography. Understanding Louis in the context of his era, one of great strides for French artists, litterateurs, and architects, Dunlop presents the king as an inspirer, an enabler, and a patron of his country's best and brightest minds. But even as his armies of laborers built the magnificent palace at Versailles, Louis' warmongering brought the greatest power in Europe-his own-to repeated and humiliating defeats at the hands of more calculating foes. Ironically, Louis' mixed legacy developed a culture that would become the envy of the world.
Louis XIV Specifications
Winner of the 1999 Enid MacLeod Award, Ian Dunlop's elegant biography of Louis XIV (1638-1715) brilliantly achieves the author's aim "to help my readers see [Louis] as his contemporaries saw him." Extensive quotes from diaries and memoirs (each assessed for their prejudices) bring to life the glittering French court in the heyday of divine-right monarchy. Handsome and athletic, autocratic but kind, devoted to his queen as well as his mistresses yet also a pious pillar of the Catholic Church, Louis seemed to his dazzled subjects to incarnate the power and glory of the French nation. He moved in a world where personal relations dominated political affairs, and royalty's private life was intensely public: "The great families of the French aristocracy were at their most natural when they were showing off," writes Dunlop, with a nice appreciation of this society's paradoxes. Louis's fondness for wars and passion for extravagant building projects like the palace of Versailles strained the French economy and sowed the seeds for the French Revolution. In his time, however, he was adored. Dunlop's engaging depiction of a generous, charismatic man makes it easy to understand why. --Wendy Smith
