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BSL - Louis XIV 1713
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1713 - LOUIS XIV - THE SUN KING - SIGNED DOCUMENT |
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 Louis XIV |
Louis XIV - The Sun King of France |
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 Jean Francois Colbert Signed "By the King" - as PM |
 Louis XIV autograph signed at Paris 25 March 1713 |
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Historical Note
Louis XIV - The Sun King of France (1638 - 1715) Louis XIV (Louis-Dieudonné) reigned as King of France and of Navarre from May 14, 1643 until his death at the age of 77. He succeeded to the throne a few months before his fifth birthday, but did not assume actual personal control of the government until the death of his First Minister ("Premier Ministre"), Jules Cardinal Mazarin, in 1661. Louis XIV, known as The Sun King (in French Le Roi Soleil) or as Louis the Great (in French Louis le Grand, or simply Le Grand Monarque 'the Great Monarch'), ruled France for seventy-two years—the longest reign of any French or other major European monarch. Louis XIV increased the power and influence of France in Europe, fighting three major wars—the Franco-Dutch War, the War of the League of Augsburg, and the War of the Spanish Succession—and two minor ones—the War of Devolution, and the War of the Reunions. One of France's greatest kings, Louis XIV worked successfully to create an absolutist and centralized state. Louis XIV became the archetype of an absolute monarch. The phrase "L'État, c'est moi" ("I am the state") is frequently attributed to him, though this is considered by historians to be a historical inaccuracy and is more likely to have been conceived by political opponents as a way of confirming the stereotypical view of the absolutism he represented. Quite contrary to that apocryphal quote, Louis XIV is actually reported to have said on his death bed: "Je m'en vais, mais l'État demeurera toujours." ("I am going, but the State shall always remain") Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Marquis de Torcy (1665-1746)
Jean-Baptiste Colbert,
Marquis de Torcy, generally called Colbert de Torcy, was the namesake of
his uncle, Jean Baptiste Colbert, Le Grand Colbert, Louis' Chief Advisor
and Minister of Finance and the Father of Mercantilism - for whom the
title of Torcy was created. He was also the son of Charles
Colbert, Louis' Minister of Foreign Affairs; the young Marquis de Torcy
had a heady pedigree. Colbert de Torcy was a brilliant and precocious
legal student. Following the death of his father and uncle Torcy proved
himself so able that in 1689 Louis XIV granted him the right to succeed
to his father's position as Minister of Foreign Affairs, a position he
held until Louis' death. He negotiated some of the most important
treaties towards the end of Louis XIV's reign, notably the treaty (1700)
that occasioned the Spanish Succession (1701-1714), in which the dying
Charles II of Spain named Louis XIV's grandson, Philippe, duc d'Anjou,
heir to the Spanish throne, eventually founding the line of Spanish
Bourbons. Torcy was the guiding spirit of French diplomacy at the series
of international conferences that resulted in the Treaty of Utrecht
(1713) and the Treaty of Rastatt (1714). Colbert de Torcy was concerned
with professionalizing the conduct of diplomacy. He instituted an
Académie Politique to train young professionals in the equivalent of a
foreign service bureaucracy: it did not survive his retirement, but his
establishment at Versailles of a centralized diplomatic archive (1710)
has been a service to historians. The aged king, recognizing that Torcy
had been a de facto Secretary of State, named him such in his will. But
when Louis died in 1715, his will was broken by the Regent, Philippe duc
d'Orléans, who deprived Torcy of any political power and he settled into
a long but vociferous retirement.
Offered
by Berryhill & Sturgeon, Ltd. |
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