HistoryCourt People

Louis XIV chose the sun for his emblem. The sun was Apollo, god of Peace and the Arts; it was also the heavenly body giving life to all things, the embodiment of regularity, which rises and sets each day. Like the Sun God, Louis XIV, the warrior hero, brought peace to his people; he protected the arts and dispensed all the graces. Through the regularity of his work, his public levers and couchers (morning rising and evening retiring ceremonies), he insisted on the resemblance, carved in stone: the decor of Versailles was filled with the depictions and attributes of the god (laurels, lyre, tripod) on all the royal portraits and emblems.

The absolutist regime
The monarch resided in the central part of the Château, on the first floor where three vast apartments were reserved to him. He impose his Etiquette on the Court, the rules of precedence to which the nobility had to submit. From Versailles, Louis XIV ruled a centralised and absolutist State which was built around his person. With Colbert, he directed the administrative and financial reorganisation of the kingdom, as well as the development of trade and industry. With Louvois, he reformed the army and accumulated military successes. Monarch by divine right, the king was the representative of God on earth. During his coronation, he committed himself to defending the Catholic faith. To fulfil his vow and preserve the kingdom’s religious unity, he led the struggle against the Jansenists of Port-Royal and the persecutions against the Protestants. The forced conversions and the emigration of two hundred thousand Protestants led him to cancel the edict of tolerance: this was the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1785.

Weakened by 72 years of rule, Louis XIV died on 1 September 1715. He was buried in the Basilica of Saint-Denis and bequeathed the throne to his great-grandson Louis XV, then aged 5 years old. He remains the man of the “Grand Century”, symbol of the pomp and ceremony of Versailles and the influence of France.