Petit appartement de la reine
The petit appartement de la reine is a suite of rooms in the Palace of Versailles. These rooms, situated behind the grand appartement de la reine, which now open onto two interior courtyards, were the private domain of the Queens of France, Maria Theresa of Spain, Marie Leszczyńska, Marie-Antoinette as well as of the duchesse de Bourgogne as dauphine; the rooms in the petit appartement de la reine have been restored to the condition in which they were left when Marie-Antoinette left Versailles on 6 October 1789, while the rooms are Louis XVI style, some parts are Louis XV, or Rococo, like the fireplace mantel found in the supplément de la bibliothèque, or the center table in the cabinet de la Méridienne, as well as the mantel clock in the billard room. At the completion of Le Vau’s enveloppe, Marie-Thérèse’s private area consisted of suite of five rooms that opened on the southern side of the cour de marbre and onto a small interior courtyard — at the time called the cour de la reine. In these rooms, Marie-Thérèse led her private and family life.
Little information survived about the décor or the arrangement of these rooms, owing to her early death in 1683. The most significant modifications to the petit appartement de la reine were made after the marriage of Louis XIV's grandson, the duc de Bourgogne, with Princess Marie-Adélaïde of Savoy in 1697. Shortly after the marriage, in 1699, a suite of three rooms was constructed – known as the appartement de nuit du duc de Bourgogne; these rooms were created for the conjugal visits of the young duc with his wife. Consisting of a bedroom and garde-robe, this part of the petit appartement de la reine when constructed in 1699 divided the cour de la reine into the cour de Monseigneur to the west and the cour de Monsieur to the east; these rooms communicated with the appartement du roi and formed part of petit appartement de la reine and were used by the princess until her death in 1712. Under Marie Leszczyńska, the petit appartement de la reine underwent three distinct phases of modification: 1728-1731.
The 1728-1731 phase resulted in the construction of a chambre des bains. The 1737-1739 phase saw significant redecoration in the petite galerie with a décor of paneling in green and gold vernis Martin. At this time, the appartement de nuit du duc de Bourgogne was remodeled for use by the queen with the construction of the grand cabinet intérieur and the arrière cabinet, both of which were decorated with intricately carved and painted paneling. At this time, a number of paintings, most notably by François Boucher and Charles-Antoine Coypel, were displayed in the petit appartement de la reine The 1746-1748 phase saw a redecoration of the petite galerie. During this time it was called alternately cabinet des chinois – owing to the number of chinoiserie designs by the queen, which she had framed and hung in this room – or laboratoire – a laboratory where she pursued her hobbies. At this time, the oratoire was converted in the cabinet de la Méridienne with new paneling by Jacques Verberckt; the pièce des bains was redecorated with paneling by the Rousseau brothers and paintings by Charles-Joseph Natoire.
The grand cabinet d’intérieur received new paneling by Verberckt. With the death of Marie Leszczyńska in 1768, the petit appartement de la reine remained vacant until the arrival of the new dauphine, Marie-Antoinette, in 1770; the fame of the petit appartement de la reine rests squarely in the hands of the last queen of France during the Ancien Régime. The restored state of the rooms seen today at Versailles replicate the petit appartement de la reine as it appeared during Marie-Antoinette’s day. Modifications of the petit appartement de la reine for Marie-Antoinette began in 1779. Marie-Antoinette ordered her favorite architect, Richard Mique to cover the walls of the petit appartement de la reine with white satin embroidered with floral arabesques, to give a decorative cohesion to the rooms; the cost of the fabric was 100,000 livres. In 1781, to commemorate the birth of the first dauphin, Louis XVI commissioned Richard Mique to redecorate the cabinet de la Méridienne, it was in this room. In this same year, the bibliothèque – occupying the site of the petite galerie of Marie Leszczyńska – and the supplément de la bibliothèque – occupying the pièce des bains of Maria Leszczyńska –, additionally, a room for the toilette à l’anglaise a pièce des bains and a salle des bains were arranged, opening on the cour de Monsieur.
The last major modification to the petit appartement de la reine occurred in 1783, when Marie-Antoinette ordered a complete redecoration of the grand cabinet intérieur. The costly embroidered hangings were replaced with carved gilt paneling by Richard Mique; the new décor caused the room to be renamed the cabinet doré. Of all the features of the petit appartement de la reine, the so-called secret passage that links the grand appartement de la reine with the appartement du roi is one that has become a legend in the history of Palace of Versailles; the passage dates from the time of Marie-Thérèse, had always been a suite of service rooms that served as a private means by which the king and queen could communicate w
Louis XVI of France
Louis XVI, born Louis-Auguste, was the last King of France before the fall of the monarchy during the French Revolution. He was referred to as Citizen Louis Capet during the four months. In 1765, at the death of his father, Louis and heir apparent of Louis XV, Louis-Auguste became the new Dauphin of France. Upon his grandfather's death on 10 May 1774, he assumed the title "King of France and Navarre", which he used until 4 September 1791, when he received the title of "King of the French" until the monarchy was abolished on 21 September 1792; the first part of his reign was marked by attempts to reform the French government in accordance with Enlightenment ideas. These included efforts to abolish serfdom, remove the taille, increase tolerance toward non-Catholics; the French nobility reacted to the proposed reforms with hostility, opposed their implementation. Louis implemented deregulation of the grain market, advocated by his economic liberal minister Turgot, but it resulted in an increase in bread prices.
In periods of bad harvests, it would lead to food scarcity. From 1776, Louis XVI supported the North American colonists, who were seeking their independence from Great Britain, realised in the 1783 Treaty of Paris; the ensuing debt and financial crisis contributed to the unpopularity of the Ancien Régime. This led to the convening of the Estates-General of 1789. Discontent among the members of France's middle and lower classes resulted in strengthened opposition to the French aristocracy and to the absolute monarchy, of which Louis and his wife, Queen Marie Antoinette, were viewed as representatives. Increasing tensions and violence were marked by events such as the storming of the Bastille, during which riots in Paris forced Louis to definitively recognize the legislative authority of the National Assembly. Louis XVI was initiated into masonic lodge Trois-Frères à l'Orient de la Cour. Louis's indecisiveness and conservatism led some elements of the people of France to view him as a symbol of the perceived tyranny of the Ancien Régime, his popularity deteriorated progressively.
His disastrous flight to Varennes in June 1791, four months before the constitutional monarchy was declared, seemed to justify the rumors that the king tied his hopes of political salvation to the prospects of foreign intervention. The credibility of the king was undermined, the abolition of the monarchy and the establishment of a republic became an ever-increasing possibility. Despite his lack of popular approbation, Louis XVI did abolish the death penalty for deserters, as well as the labor tax, which had compelled the French lower classes to spend two weeks out of the year working on buildings and roads. In a context of civil and international war, Louis XVI was suspended and arrested at the time of the Insurrection of 10 August 1792, he was tried by the National Convention, found guilty of high treason, executed by guillotine on 21 January 1793, as a desacralized French citizen under the name of "Citizen Louis Capet," in reference to Hugh Capet, the founder of the Capetian dynasty – which the revolutionaries interpreted as Louis's family name.
Louis XVI was the only King of France to be executed, his death brought an end to more than a thousand years of continuous French monarchy. Both of his sons died before the Bourbon Restoration. Louis-Auguste de France, given the title Duc de Berry at birth, was born in the Palace of Versailles. One of seven children, he was the second surviving son of Louis, the Dauphin of France, thus the grandson of Louis XV of France and of his consort, Maria Leszczyńska, his mother was Marie-Josèphe of Saxony, the daughter of Frederick Augustus II of Saxony, Prince-Elector of Saxony and King of Poland. Louis-Auguste was overlooked by his parents who favored his older brother, duc de Bourgogne, regarded as bright and handsome but who died at the age of nine in 1761. Louis-Auguste, a strong and healthy boy but shy, excelled in his studies and had a strong taste for Latin, history and astronomy and became fluent in Italian and English, he enjoyed physical activities such as hunting with his grandfather and rough play with his younger brothers, Louis-Stanislas, comte de Provence, Charles-Philippe, comte d'Artois.
From an early age, Louis-Auguste was encouraged in another of his interests, seen as a useful pursuit for a child. Upon the death of his father, who died of tuberculosis on 20 December 1765, the eleven-year-old Louis-Auguste became the new Dauphin, his mother never recovered from the loss of her husband and died on 13 March 1767 from tuberculosis. The strict and conservative education he received from the Duc de La Vauguyon, "gouverneur des Enfants de France", from 1760 until his marriage in 1770, did not prepare him for the throne that he was to inherit in 1774 after the death of his grandfather, Louis XV. Throughout his education, Louis-Auguste received a mixture of studies particular to religion and humanities, his instructors may have had a good hand in shaping Louis-Auguste into the indecisive king that he became. Abbé Berthier, his instructor, taught him that timidity was a value in strong monarchs, Abbé Soldini, his confessor, instructed him not to let people read his mind. On 16 May 1770, at the ag
Windsor Castle
Windsor Castle is a royal residence at Windsor in the English county of Berkshire. It is notable for its long association with the English and British royal family and for its architecture; the original castle was built in the 11th century after the Norman invasion of England by William the Conqueror. Since the time of Henry I, it has been used by the reigning monarch and is the longest-occupied palace in Europe; the castle's lavish early 19th-century State Apartments were described by the art historian Hugh Roberts as "a superb and unrivalled sequence of rooms regarded as the finest and most complete expression of Georgian taste". Inside the castle walls is the 15th-century St George's Chapel, considered by the historian John Martin Robinson to be "one of the supreme achievements of English Perpendicular Gothic" design. Designed to protect Norman dominance around the outskirts of London and oversee a strategically important part of the River Thames, Windsor Castle was built as a motte-and-bailey, with three wards surrounding a central mound.
Replaced with stone fortifications, the castle withstood a prolonged siege during the First Barons' War at the start of the 13th century. Henry III built a luxurious royal palace within the castle during the middle of the century, Edward III went further, rebuilding the palace to make an grander set of buildings in what would become "the most expensive secular building project of the entire Middle Ages in England". Edward's core design lasted through the Tudor period, during which Henry VIII and Elizabeth I made increasing use of the castle as a royal court and centre for diplomatic entertainment. Windsor Castle survived the tumultuous period of the English Civil War, when it was used as a military headquarters by Parliamentary forces and a prison for Charles I. At the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, Charles II rebuilt much of Windsor Castle with the help of the architect Hugh May, creating a set of extravagant Baroque interiors that are still admired. After a period of neglect during the 18th century, George III and George IV renovated and rebuilt Charles II's palace at colossal expense, producing the current design of the State Apartments, full of Rococo and Baroque furnishings.
Queen Victoria made a few minor changes to the castle, which became the centre for royal entertainment for much of her reign. Windsor Castle was used as a refuge by the royal family during the Luftwaffe bombing campaigns of the Second World War and survived a fire in 1992, it is a popular tourist attraction, a venue for hosting state visits, the preferred weekend home of Elizabeth II. Windsor Castle occupies 13 acres, combines the features of a fortification, a palace, a small town; the present-day castle was created during a sequence of phased building projects, culminating in the reconstruction work after a fire in 1992. It is in essence a Georgian and Victorian design based on a medieval structure, with Gothic features reinvented in a modern style. Since the 14th century, architecture at the castle has attempted to produce a contemporary reinterpretation of older fashions and traditions imitating outmoded or antiquated styles; as a result, architect Sir William Whitfield has pointed to Windsor Castle's architecture as having "a certain fictive quality", the Picturesque and Gothic design generating "a sense that a theatrical performance is being put on here", despite late 20th century efforts to expose more of the older structures to increase the sense of authenticity.
Although there has been some criticism, the castle's architecture and history lends it a "place amongst the greatest European palaces". At the heart of Windsor Castle is the Middle Ward, a bailey formed around the motte or artificial hill in the centre of the ward; the motte is 50 feet high and is made from chalk excavated from the surrounding ditch. The keep, called the Round Tower, on the top of the motte is based on an original 12th-century building, extended upwards in the early 19th century under architect Jeffry Wyatville by 30 ft to produce a more imposing height and silhouette; the interior of the Round Tower was further redesigned in 1991–3 to provide additional space for the Royal Archives, an additional room being built in the space left by Wyatville's hollow extension. The Round Tower is in reality far from cylindrical, due to the shape and structure of the motte beneath it; the current height of the tower has been criticised as being disproportionate to its width. The western entrance to the Middle Ward is now open, a gateway leads north from the ward onto the North Terrace.
The eastern exit from the ward is guarded by the Norman Gatehouse. This gatehouse, despite its name, dates from the 14th century, is vaulted and decorated with carvings, including surviving medieval lion masks, traditional symbols of majesty, to form an impressive entrance to the Upper Ward. Wyatville redesigned the exterior of the gatehouse, the interior was heavily converted in the 19th century for residential use; the Upper Ward of Windsor Castle comprises a number of major buildings enclosed by the upper bailey wall, forming a central quadrangle. The State Apartments run along the north of the ward, with a range of buildings along the east wall, the private royal apartments and the King George IV Gate to the south, with the Edward III Tower in the south-west corner; the motte and the Round Tower form the west edge of the ward. A bronze statue of Charles II on horseback sits beneath the Round Tower. Inspired by Hubert Le Sueur's statue of Charles I in London, the statue was cast by Josias Ibach in 1679, with the marble plinth featuring carvings
Writing table
A writing table has a series of drawers directly under the surface of the table, to contain writing implements, so that it may serve as a desk. Antique versions have the usual divisions for the inkwell, the blotter and the sand or powder tray in one of the drawers, a surface covered with leather or some other material less hostile to the quill or the fountain pen than simple hard wood. In form, a writing table is a pedestal desk without the pedestals, having legs instead to hold it up; this is. The writing table is called a "bureau plat" when it is done in a French style such as Louis XVI, Art Nouveau, etc; when a writing table is supported by two legs instead of four, it is called a trestle desk. The writing table is sometimes called a library table, because it was placed in a home library; this was the room in a house where a gentleman would keep literature and do his business transactions. The library housed, in addition, a round desk called a rent table and sometimes a drawing table; the term library table is sometimes applied indiscriminately to a wide variety of desk forms, in addition to being used for writing tables.
Some writing tables have additional drawers built above the surface. In this case they are called bureau à gradin instead of writing table, unless they have a more specific form, such as that of a Carlton House desk. A reading and writing table with an easel or double easel for books, adjustable on a ratchet and a drawer fitted for writing implements was a mid-18th century English invention that lasted as long as the habit endured of reading while standing; as with many other desk forms antique writing tables were sometimes built with what was, at the time, a complex mechanism of gears and levers to make sections slide out or pop up when certain panels were pulled. In this case, one sometimes called them a mechanical desk. List of desk forms and types Gloag, John. A Complete Dictionary of Furniture. Woodstock, N. Y.: Overlook Press, 1991. Oglesby, Catharine. French Provincial Decorative Art. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1951. Romand, Didier. L'argus des meubles. Paris: Balland, 1976. Souchal, Genevieve.
French Eighteenth Century Furniture. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1963
Royal Collection
The Royal Collection of the British Royal family is the largest private art collection in the world. Spread among 13 occupied and historic royal residences in the United Kingdom, the collection is owned by Elizabeth II and overseen by the Royal Collection Trust; the Queen owns some of the collection in some as a private individual. It is made up of over one million objects, including 7,000 paintings, over 150,000 works on paper, this including 30,000 watercolours and drawings, about 450,000 photographs, as well as tapestries, ceramics, carriages, armour, clocks, musical instruments, plants, manuscripts and sculptures; some of the buildings which house the collection, like Hampton Court Palace, are open to the public and not lived in by the Royal Family, whilst others, like Windsor Castle and Kensington Palace, are both residences and open to the public. The Queen's Gallery at Buckingham Palace in London was built specially to exhibit pieces from the collection on a rotating basis. There is a similar art gallery next to the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh, a Drawings Gallery at Windsor Castle.
The Crown Jewels are on public display in the Jewel House at the Tower of London. About 3,000 objects are on loan to museums throughout the world, many others are lent on a temporary basis to exhibitions. Few items from before Henry VIII survive; the most important additions were made by Charles I, a passionate collector of Italian paintings and a major patron of Van Dyck and other Flemish artists. He purchased the bulk of the Gonzaga collection from the Duchy of Mantua; the entire Royal Collection, which included 1,500 paintings and 500 statues, was sold after Charles's execution in 1649. The'Sale of the Late King's Goods' at Somerset House raised £185,000 for the English Republic. Other items were given away in lieu of payment to settle the king's debts. A number of pieces were recovered by Charles II after the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, they form the basis for the collection today; the Dutch Republic presented Charles with the Dutch Gift of 28 paintings, 12 sculptures, a selection of furniture.
He went on to buy other works. George III was responsible for forming the collection's outstanding holdings of Old Master drawings. Many other drawings were bought from Alessandro Albani and art dealer in Rome. George IV shared Charles I's enthusiasm for collecting, buying up large numbers of Dutch Golden Age paintings and their Flemish contemporaries. Like other English collectors, he took advantage of the great quantities of French decorative art on the London market after the French Revolution, is responsible for the collection's outstanding holdings of 18th-century French furniture and porcelain Sèvres, he bought much contemporary English silver, many recent and contemporary English paintings. Queen Victoria and her husband Albert were keen collectors of old master paintings. Many objects have been given from the collection to museums by George III and Victoria and Albert. In particular, the King's Library formed by George III with the assistance of his librarian Frederick Augusta Barnard, consisting of 65,000 printed books, was given to the British Museum, now the British Library, where they remain as a distinct collection.
He donated the "Old Royal Library" of some 2,000 manuscripts, which are still segregated as the Royal manuscripts. The core of this collection was the purchase by James I of the related collections of Humphrey Llwyd, Lord Lumley, the Earl of Arundel. Prince Albert's will requested the donation of a number of early paintings to the National Gallery, which Queen Victoria fulfilled. Throughout the reign of Elizabeth II, there have been significant additions to the collection through judicious purchases and gifts from nation states and official bodies. Since 1952 2,500 works have been added to the Royal Collection; the Commonwealth is represented in this manner: an example is 75 contemporary Canadian watercolours that entered the collection between 1985 and 2001 as a gift from the Canadian Society of Painters in Water Colour. Modern art acquired by Elizabeth II includes pieces by Sir Anish Andy Warhol. In 1987 a new department of the Royal Household was established to oversee the Royal Collection, it was financed by the commercial activities of Royal Collection Enterprises, a limited company.
Before it was maintained using the monarch's official income paid by the Civil List. Since 1993 the collection has been funded by entrance fees to Buckingham Palace. A computerised inventory of the collection was started in early 1991, it was completed in December 1997; the full inventory is not available to the public, though catalogues of parts of the collection – paintings – have been published, a searchable database on the Royal Collection website is comprehensive, with "265,302 items found" by early 2019. About a third of the 7,000 paintings in the collection are on view or stored at buildings in London which fall under the remit of the Historic Royal Palaces agency: the Tower of London, Hampton Court Palace, Kensington Palace, Banqueting House, Kew Palace; the Jewel House and Martin Tower at the Tower of London house the Crown Jewels. A rotating selection of art, furniture and other items considered to be of the highest quality is shown at the Queen's Gallery, a purpose-built exhibition centre
Martin Carlin
Martin Carlin was a Parisian ébéniste, born at Freiburg, received as Master Ebéniste at Paris on 30 July 1766. Renowned for his "graceful furniture mounted with Sevres porcelain", Carlin fed into the luxury market of eighteenth-century decorative arts where porcelain-fitted furniture was considered among "the most exquisite furnishings" within the transitional and neoclassical styles. Carlin's furniture was popular amongst the main great dealers, including Poirier and Darnault, who sold his furniture to Marie Antoinette and many amongst the social elite class, he died 6 March 1785. Carlin worked at first in the shop of Jean-François Oeben; the marriage contract reveals that "Carlin was still a day-worker living on the quai des Célestins". Yet soon after Oeben's death, Carlin started to sell furniture to the marchands-merciers when setting up independently in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine; this was however an unfashionable quarter of Paris, where few of his wealthy clientele would have penetrated.
Therefore, Carlin found it necessary to sell his works to marchands-merciers such as Simon-Philippe Poirier and his partner Dominique Daguerre, who acted as decorative-designers. It was only through these entrepreneurs that Carlin could acquire the Sèvres porcelain plaques that decorated many of his pieces, his earliest such pieces can be dated by the marks on their porcelain to 1766. The great dealers possessed an expansive network of the monarchy and much of the nobility, thus sold Carlin's furniture to figures such as, Marie Antoinette, the comte de Provence, the comte d'Artois, Louis XV's daughters, the mesdames de France, Madame du Barry, the duchesse de Mazarin. For 12 years after becoming Master Ebéniste,he made porcelain-mounted furniture for Poirier and after 1778, he fed into the popular taste for exotic,'oriental' designs and materials, therefore started to produce sumptuous pieces in Japanese lacquer. Although Martin Carlin made some larger pieces— secrétaires à abattant and commodes— he is best known for refined small furnishings in the neoclassical taste, some of them veneered with cut up panels of Chinese lacquer, which he would have received from the hands of the marchands-merciers.
Bonheur du jour, 1765, Bowes Museum, UK Bonheur du jour, 1766, Musée Nissim de Camondo, France Bonheur du jour, 1768, Boughton House, UK Bonheur du jour, 1768, delivered to the Comtesse du Barry, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, United States Bonheur du jour, 1769, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, United States Bonheur du jour, 1770, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, United States Bonheur du jour, 1770, The Huntington Library, United States Bonheur du jour, 1771, The Huntington Library, United States Bonheur du jour, 1774, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, United States Bureau plat, 1778, delivered to the Grand Duchess Maria Feodorovna and Grand Duke Paul Petrovich of Russia for the Palace of Pavlosk, Getty Museum, United States Cabinet, c. 1783, Royal Collection, UK Coffret à bijoux, 1770, delivered to Marie-Antoinette for the Petit Triannon, Château de Versailles, France Coffret à bijoux, c. 1770, delivered to the Comtesse du Barry, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, United States Coffret à bijoux, c.
1774, delivered to the Grand Duchess Maria Feodorovna and Grand Duke Paul Petrovich of Russia for the Palace of Pavlosk, The Detroit Institute of Arts, United States Coffret à bijoux, c. 1775, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, United States Coffret à bijoux, c. 1775, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, United States Commode à vantaux, c. 1778, inset with Pietra Dure panels, Royal Collection, UK Pair of Encoignures, 1772, Wallace Collection, UK Music-stand and writing table, c. 1775, Waddesdon Manor, UK Music-stand, 1770-75, Getty Museum, United States Music-stand and writing-table, 1786, given by Marie-Antoinette to Mrs William Eden, V&A, UK Reading stand, c. 1780, V&A, UK Secrétaire, 1775, Getty Museum, United States Secrétaire, 1776, Wallace Collection, UK Secrétaire, 1776-77, Getty Museum, United States Secrétaire à abattant, 1776, Waddesdon Manor, UK Secrétaire à abattant, 1770-80, V&A, UK Table à ouvrage, 1770. Delivered to the duchesse de Mazarin in 1779 for her dressing room, Getty Museum, United States Table à ouvrage, 1773, Getty Museum, United States Table à ouvrage, 1775, V&A, UK Table à ouvrage, 1783-84, Wallace Collection, UK Table à ouvrage, 1786, given by Marie-Antoinette to Mrs William Eden, V&A, UK Svend Eriksen, Early Neo-Classicism in France pp 159 Parker, James & Le Corbeiller, Clare.
A Guide to the Wrightsman Galleries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. ISBN 0-87099-186-8. CS1 maint: Multiple names: authors list Louis XVI furniture: Martin Carlin Bonheur-du-jour with Sèvres plaques, 1768 Jewel Cabinet, about 1774, accession #71.196 Commode, ca 1778, with panels of pietra dura.: Martin Carlin YouTube, Combined music stand and writing table made by Martin Carlin, 1775
Louis XIV of France
Louis XIV, known as Louis the Great or the Sun King, was a monarch of the House of Bourbon who reigned as King of France from 1643 until his death in 1715. Starting on 14 May 1643 when Louis was 4 years old, his reign of 72 years and 110 days is the longest recorded of any monarch of a sovereign country in European history. In the age of absolutism in Europe, Louis XIV's France was a leader in the growing centralisation of power. Louis began his personal rule of France in 1661, after the death of his chief minister, the Italian Cardinal Mazarin. An adherent of the concept of the divine right of kings, Louis continued his predecessors' work of creating a centralised state governed from the capital, he sought to eliminate the remnants of feudalism persisting in parts of France and, by compelling many members of the nobility to inhabit his lavish Palace of Versailles, succeeded in pacifying the aristocracy, many members of which had participated in the Fronde rebellion during Louis' minority. By these means he became one of the most powerful French monarchs and consolidated a system of absolute monarchical rule in France that endured until the French Revolution.
Louis encouraged and benefited from the work of prominent political and cultural figures such as Mazarin, Louvois, the Grand Condé, Turenne, Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban, André Charles Boulle, Molière, Boileau, La Fontaine, Marais, Le Brun, Bossuet, Le Vau, Charles, Claude Perrault, Le Nôtre. Under his rule, the Edict of Nantes, which granted rights to Huguenots, was abolished; the revocation forced Huguenots to emigrate or convert in a wave of dragonnades, which managed to destroy the French Protestant minority. During Louis' long reign, France was the leading European power, it fought three major wars: the Franco-Dutch War, the War of the League of Augsburg, the War of the Spanish Succession. There were two lesser conflicts: the War of Devolution and the War of the Reunions. Warfare defined the foreign policy of Louis XIV, his personality shaped his approach. Impelled "by a mix of commerce and pique", Louis sensed that warfare was the ideal way to enhance his glory. In peacetime he concentrated on preparing for the next war.
He taught his diplomats that their job was to create tactical and strategic advantages for the French military. Louis XIV was born on 5 September 1638 in the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, to Louis XIII and Anne of Austria, he was named Louis Dieudonné and bore the traditional title of French heirs apparent: Dauphin. At the time of his birth, his parents had been married for 23 years, his mother had experienced four stillbirths between 1619 and 1631. Leading contemporaries thus regarded him as his birth a miracle of God. Sensing imminent death, Louis XIII decided to put his affairs in order in the spring of 1643, when Louis XIV was four years old. In defiance of custom, which would have made Queen Anne the sole Regent of France, the king decreed that a regency council would rule on his son's behalf, his lack of faith in Queen Anne's political abilities was his primary rationale. He did, make the concession of appointing her head of the council. Louis' relationship with his mother was uncommonly affectionate for the time.
Contemporaries and eyewitnesses claimed. Both were interested in food and theatre, it is likely that Louis developed these interests through his close relationship with his mother; this long-lasting and loving relationship can be evidenced by excerpts in Louis' journal entries, such as: "Nature was responsible for the first knots which tied me to my mother. But attachments formed by shared qualities of the spirit are far more difficult to break than those formed by blood." It was his mother who gave Louis his belief in the absolute and divine power of his monarchical rule. During his childhood, he was taken care of by the governesses Françoise de Lansac and Marie-Catherine de Senecey. In 1646, Nicolas V de Villeroy became the young king's tutor. Louis XIV became friends with Villeroy's young children François de Villeroy, divided his time between the Palais-Royal and the nearby Hotel de Villeroy. On 14 May 1643, with Louis XIII dead, Queen Anne had her husband's will annulled by the Parlement de Paris.
This action made Anne sole Regent of France. Anne exiled some of her husband's ministers, she nominated Brienne as her minister of foreign affairs. Anne nominated Saint Vincent de Paul as her spiritual adviser, which helped her deal with religious policy and the Jansenism question. Anne kept the direction of religious policy in her hand until 1661. Anne wanted to give her son a victorious kingdom, her rationales for choosing Mazarin were his ability and his total dependence on her, at least until 1653 when she was no longer regent. Anne protected Mazarin by arresting and exiling her followers who conspired against him in 1643: the Duke of Beaufort and Marie de Rohan, she left the direction of the daily administration of policy to Cardinal Mazarin. The best example of Anne's statesmanship and the partial change in her heart towards her native Spain is seen in her keeping of one of Richelieu's men, the Chancellor of France Pierre Séguier, in his post. Séguier was the pers
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