Grand Dauphin Louis Of FRANCE

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Louis of France (1 November 1661 - 14 April 1711) was the eldest son and heir of Louis XIV, King of France, and his spouse, Maria Theresa of Spain. As the heir apparent to the French throne, he was styled Dauphin. He became known as Le Grand Dauphin after the birth of his own son, Le Petit Dauphin. As he died before his father, he never became king. His grandson became Louis XV of France.

Biography
Louis was born on 1 November 1661 at the Château de Fontainebleau, the eldest son of Louis XIV of France and Maria Theresa of Spain (who were double first-cousins to each other). As a Fils de France ("Son of France") he was entitled to the style of Royal Highness. He was baptised on 24 March 1662 at the chapel of the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye and given his father's name of Louis. At the ceremony, the Cardinal de Vendôme and the Princess of Conti acted as proxies for the godparents, Pope Clement IX and Queen Henrietta Maria of England. The latter was Louis's great-aunt. It was for this occasion that Jean-Baptiste Lully composed the motet Plaude Laetare Gallia.

He was initially under the care of royal governesses, among them being Julie d'Angennes and Louise de Prie de La Mothe-Houdancourt. When Louis reached the age of seven, he was removed from the care of women and placed in the society of men. He received Charles de Sainte-Maure, duc de Montausier, as his governor and was tutored by Jacques Bénigne Bossuet, Bishop of Meaux, the great French preacher and orator, without positive result:

Louis XIV secretly nursed the same suspicious jealousy of the Grand Dauphin that Louis XIII had once shown to himself. No prince could have been less deserving of such feelings. Monseigneur, as the heir to the throne was now known, had inherited his mother's docility and low intelligence. All his life he remained petrified with admiration of his formidable father and stood in fear of him even while lavish proofs of 'affection' were showered upon him. The best way for Monseigneur to do someone an injury was to commend him to the royal favour. He knew it, and did not conceal it from his rare petitioners.
Louis XIV saw to it that his son's upbringing was quite the opposite of his own. Instead of a devoted mother and an affectionate and likeable tutor, the Dauphin had the repellent and misanthropic Duc de Montausier, who ruthlessly applied the same methods that had so disturbed Louis XIII. They annihilated his grandson.
[...] Bossuet overwhelmed his backward pupil with such splendid lessons that the Dauphin developed a lasting horror of books, learning and history. By the age of eighteen, Monseigneur had assimilated almost none of the knowledge amassed to so little purpose, and the apathy of his mind was second only to that of his senses.[2]

It was said that when Louis was an adult, he could pass a whole day simply tapping his cane against his foot in an armchair. Nonetheless, his generosity, affability, and liberality gave him great popularity in Paris and with the French people in general. Louis was one of six legitimate children of his parents. The others all died in early childhood; the second longest-lived, Marie Thérèse of France, died at the age of five when Louis was 11.

Louis XIV, too, had a low opinion of his son:

indolent, fatuous, and dull, only the saving grace of his bourgeois morals kept him from outraging the pious people about him. Like his father he enjoyed the hunt, but that was about the only way in which this disappointing son resembled his father. [3]
Alive especially to political considerations, the King considered various European royal daughters as possible wives for his heir, such as Anna Maria Luisa de' Medici, Louis' own cousin Marie Louise d'Orléans, daughter of Philippe, Duke of Orléans, and Princess Henrietta of England. According to various reports, Marie Louise and Louis were in love, having grown up with each other. However, Louis XIV decided to use Marie Louise to forge a link with Spain and forced her to marry the invalid Charles II of Spain, the Dauphin's own half-uncle.

Louis was engaged to his second cousin, Maria Anna Victoria of Bavaria, when he was seven. She was a year older than Louis and, upon arriving at the French court, was described as being very unattractive. Nonetheless, she was a very cultured princess, and made initially a good impression upon her arrival as she was able to speak French fluently.

They were married by proxy in Munich on 28 January 1680; the couple met for the first time on 7 March 1680 in Châlons-sur-Marne.

Political and military role
Although he was permitted at first to attend and later to participate in the Conseil d'en haut, Louis did not play an important part in French politics. Nonetheless, as the heir to the throne, he was constantly surrounded by cabals battling for future prominence. Apart from the minor political role he played during his father's reign, Louis engaged in more leisurely pursuits and was esteemed for his magnificent collection of art at Versailles and Meudon. Louis XIV purchased Meudon for him from the widow of Louvois. The Dauphin employed Jules Hardouin Mansart and the office of the Bâtiments du Roi, but most particularly his long-term "house designer" Jean Bérain, head of the Menus Plaisirs, to provide new decors. He lived quietly at Meudon for the remainder of his life surrounded by his two half-sisters Marie Anne de Bourbon and the Princess of Condé, both of whom he loved dearly. These three made up the main part of the Cabal de Meudon which opposed the Dauphin's son Louis and his Savoyard wife, the Duchess of Burgundy.

Louis is said to have hunted wolves to extinction in the Île-de-France.[citation needed]

During the War of the Grand Alliance, he was sent in 1688 to the Rhineland front. Before leaving the court, Louis was thus instructed by his father:

In sending you to command my army, I am giving you an opportunity to make known your merit; go and show it to all Europe, so that when I come to die it will not be noticed that the King is dead.

There Louis succeeded, under the tutelage of Marshal de Duras and Vauban, in taking one of the bridgeheads across the Rhine, Philippsburg, which was surrounded by marshes. Louis' courage was shown when he visited the soldiers in the inundated trenches under heavy fire to observe the progress of the siege.[4] Montausier, his former governor, wrote to him thus:

I shall not compliment you on the taking of Philippsburg; you had a good army, bombs, cannons and Vauban. I shall not compliment you because you are brave. That virtue is hereditary. But I rejoice with you that you have been liberal, generous, humane, and have recognised the services of those who did well.[5]


The Grand Dauphin
Louis' capture of Philippsburg prevented the large gathering Imperial army from crossing the Rhine and invading Alsace.

Louis's position in the Conseil d'en haut gave him an opportunity to have his voice heard in the years and crises leading up to the War of the Spanish Succession. From his mother, Louis had rights and claims to the Spanish throne. His uncle Charles II of Spain had produced no descendants and, as he lay dying, had no heir to whom he could pass the throne. The choice of a successor was essentially split between the French and Austrian claimants. In order to improve the chances of a Bourbon succession, Louis gave up his (and his eldest son's) rights in favour of his second son, Philip, Duke of Anjou (later Philip V of Spain), who, as second son, was not expected to succeed to the French throne, thus keeping France and Spain separate. Moreover, in the discussions in the Conseil d'en haut regarding the French response to Charles II's last will and testament, which did indeed leave all Spanish possessions to Anjou, Louis persuasively argued for acceptance. He opposed those who advocated a rejection of the will and the adherence to the Partition Treaty signed with William III of England, even though that Treaty had awarded Naples, Sicily and Tuscany to him.

Louis died of smallpox on 11 April 1711, at the age of 49, predeceasing his father.

Literary tribute
The Delphin Classics was a large edition of the Latin classics, edited in the 1670s for Louis (Delphin is the adjective derived from dauphin) Thirty-eight scholars contributed to the series, which was edited by Pierre Huet, with assistance from several co-editors including Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet and Anne Dacier.
Marriages
Louis married Duchess Maria Anna of Bavaria on 7 March 1680. She was known in France as Dauphine Marie Anne Victoire. Although the marriage was not a close one, the couple had three sons. The Dauphine died in 1690 and in 1695 Louis secretly married his lover Marie Émilie de Joly de Choin. His new wife did not acquire the status of Dauphine of France, and the marriage remained without surviving issue. Pregnant at the time of her marriage, Mlle de Choin gave birth to a son, who was secretly sent to the countryside; the child died aged two, in 1697, without having been publicly named.[6]

Issue
Louis (16 August 1682 ? 18 February 1712), Duke of Burgundy and later Dauphin of France; married Princess Maria Adelaide of Savoy and had the future Louis XV of France;
Philip (19 December 1683 ? 9 July 1746), Duke of Anjou and later King of Spain; married Princess Maria Luisa of Savoy and had issue; married again Elisabeth Farnese and had issue such as the future Dauphine of France, Infanta Maria Teresa Rafaela of Spain;
Charles (31 July 1686 ? 5 May 1714), Duke of Berry, Alençon and of Angoulême Count of Ponthieu; married Marie Louise Élisabeth d'Orléans and had issue but none survived over a year;
Thus, through Burgundy and Anjou, Louis ensured the continuation of the senior Bourbon line on the throne of France and the establishment of the Spanish Bourbon dynasty.

Besides his unnamed child with Mme de Choin, Louis had two illegitimate daughters with Françoise Pitel:[7][8]

Anne Louise de Bonbour (1695 ? August 1716) ? wife of Anne Errard d'Avaugour;
Charlotte de Fleury (6 February 1697 ? 1750) ? wife of Gérard Michel de La Jonchère.
With another mistress, Marie Anne Caumont de La Force, he had one daughter:[8]

Louise Émilie de Vautedard (1694?1719) ? wife of Nicolas Mesnager.
Legend has it that a prophecy told at his birth[citation needed] said that Louis would be "son of a king, father of a king, but never a king". This was thought to be fulfilled as he was the son of Louis XIV of France and father of Philip V of Spain, but did not himself become king.

Ancestry
Louis's paternal grandparents were Louis XIII of France and Anne of Austria; he was descended, on his mother's side, from Philip IV of Spain and Élisabeth of France. Louis XIII and Élisabeth de Bourbon were siblings (the children of Henry IV of France and Marie de' Medici), as were Anne of Austria and Philip IV, who were the children of Philip III of Spain and Margaret of Austria. That means that he had only four great grandparents instead of the usual eight, and that his parents had the same coefficient of coancestry (1/8) as if they were half-siblings.

Louis married Maria Anna Victoria of BAVARIA in 1680. Maria (daughter of Elector of Bavaria Ferdinand Maria Of BAVARIA and Henrietta Adelaide Marie Of SAVOY) was born on 28 Nov 1660 in Munich, Bavaria; died on 20 Apr 1690 in Palace of Versailles, France. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

1. Philip V of SPAIN was born on 19 Dec 1683 in Palace of Versailles, France; died on 9 Jul 1746 in Madrid, Spain.

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Louis XIV (Louis Dieudonné; 5 September 1638 - 1 September 1715), known as Louis the Great (Louis le Grand) or the Sun King (le Roi Soleil), was King of France from 14 May 1643 until his death in 1715. His reign of 72 years and 110 days is the longest recorded of any monarch of a sovereign country in European history.[1][a] In the age of absolutism in Europe, Louis XIV's France was a leader in the growing centralisation of power.[2]

Louis began his personal rule of France in 1661, after the death of his chief minister, the Italian Cardinal Mazarin.[3] 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 also enforced uniformity of religion under the Gallican Catholic Church. His revocation the Edict of Nantes abolished the rights of the Huguenot Protestant minority and subjected them to a wave of dragonnades, effectively forcing Huguenots to emigrate or convert, and virtually destroying the French Protestant community.

The Sun King surrounded himself with a dazzling constellation of political, military, and cultural figures such as Mazarin, Colbert, Louvois, the Grand Condé, Turenne, Vauban, Boulle, Molière, Racine, Boileau, La Fontaine, Lully, Charpentier, Marais, Le Brun, Rigaud, Bossuet, Le Vau, Mansart, Charles, Claude Perrault, and Le Nôtre.

During Louis' long reign, France was the leading European power, and it fought three major wars: the Franco-Dutch War, the War of the League of Augsburg, and the War of the Spanish Succession. There were also two lesser conflicts: the War of Devolution and the War of the Reunions. Warfare defined the foreign policy of Louis XIV, and his personality shaped his approach. Impelled "by a mix of commerce, revenge, 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.[4]

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 (Louis the God-given)[5] and bore the traditional title of French heirs apparent: Dauphin.[6] 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 a divine gift and 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, however, 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 that the Queen would spend all her time with Louis. Both were greatly interested in food and theatre, and it is highly 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 later by shared qualities of the spirit are far more difficult to break than those formed merely by blood."[7]

It was his mother who gave Louis his belief in the absolute and divine power of his monarchical rule.[8]

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, particularly François de Villeroy, and divided his time between the Palais-Royal and the nearby Hotel de Villeroy.

Minority and the Fronde

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Accession
Further information: Franco-Spanish War (1635?59)

Louis XIV in 1643, prior to becoming king, by Claude Deruet
On 14 May 1643, with Louis XIII dead, Queen Anne had her husband's will annulled by the Parlement de Paris (a judicial body comprising mostly nobles and high clergymen).[9] This action abolished the regency council and made Anne sole Regent of France. Anne exiled some of her husband's ministers (Chavigny, Bouthilier), and she nominated Brienne as her minister of foreign affairs.[10] Anne also nominated Saint Vincent de Paul as her spiritual adviser, which helped her deal with religious policy and the Jansenism question.[11]

Anne kept the direction of religious policy strongly in her hand until 1661; her most important political decisions were to nominate Cardinal Mazarin as her chief minister and the continuation of her late husband's and Cardinal Richelieu's policy, despite their persecution of her, for the sake of her son. Anne wanted to give her son absolute authority and a victorious kingdom. Her rationales for choosing Mazarin were mainly 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.[12] 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 person who had interrogated Anne in 1637, treating her like a "common criminal" as she described her treatment following the discovery that she was giving military secrets and information to Spain. Anne was virtually under house arrest for a number of years during her husband's rule. By keeping him in his post, Anne was giving a sign that the interests of France and her son Louis were the guiding spirit of all her political and legal actions. Though not necessarily opposed to Spain, she sought to end the war with a French victory, in order to establish a lasting peace between the Catholic nations.

The Queen also gave a partial Catholic orientation to French foreign policy. This was felt by the Netherlands, France's Protestant ally, which negotiated a separate peace with Spain in 1648.[13]

In 1648, Anne and Mazarin successfully negotiated the Peace of Westphalia, which ended the Thirty Years' War. Its terms ensured Dutch independence from Spain, awarded some autonomy to the various German princes of the Holy Roman Empire, and granted Sweden seats on the Imperial Diet and territories to control the mouths of the Oder, Elbe, and Weser rivers. France, however, profited most from the settlement. Austria, ruled by the Habsburg Emperor Ferdinand III, ceded all Habsburg lands and claims in Alsace to France and acknowledged her de facto sovereignty over the Three Bishoprics of Metz, Verdun, and Toul. Moreover, eager to emancipate themselves from Habsburg domination, petty German states sought French protection. This anticipated the formation of the 1658 League of the Rhine, leading to the further diminution of Imperial power.

Early acts
As the Thirty Years' War came to an end, a civil war known as the Fronde (after the slings used to smash windows) erupted in France. It effectively checked France's ability to exploit the Peace of Westphalia. Anne and Mazarin had largely pursued the policies of Cardinal Richelieu, augmenting the Crown's power at the expense of the nobility and the Parlements. Anne interfered much more in internal policy than foreign affairs; she was a very proud queen who insisted on the divine rights of the King of France.[citation needed]


Europe after the Peace of Westphalia in 1648
All this led her to advocate a forceful policy in all matters relating to the King's authority, in a manner that was much more radical than the one proposed by Mazarin. The Cardinal depended totally on Anne's support and had to use all his influence on the Queen to avoid nullifying, but to restrain some of her radical actions. Anne imprisoned any aristocrat or member of parliament who challenged her will; her main aim was to transfer to her son an absolute authority in the matters of finance and justice. One of the leaders of the Parlement of Paris, whom she had jailed, died in prison.[14]

The Frondeurs, political heirs of the disaffected feudal aristocracy, sought to protect their traditional feudal privileges from the increasingly centralized royal government. Furthermore, they believed their traditional influence and authority was being usurped by the recently ennobled bureaucrats (the Noblesse de Robe, or "nobility of the robe"), who administered the kingdom and on whom the monarchy increasingly began to rely. This belief intensified the nobles' resentment.[citation needed]

In 1648, Anne and Mazarin attempted to tax members of the Parlement de Paris. The members refused to comply and ordered all of the king's earlier financial edicts burned. Buoyed by the victory of Louis, duc d?Enghien (later known as le Grand Condé) at the Battle of Lens, Mazarin, on Queen Anne's insistence, arrested certain members in a show of force.[15] The most important arrest, from Anne's point of view, concerned Pierre Broussel, one of the most important leaders in the Parlement de Paris.


1655 portrait of Louis, the Victor of the Fronde, portrayed as the god Jupiter
People in France were complaining about the expansion of royal authority, the high rate of taxation, and the reduction of the authority of the Parlement de Paris and other regional representative entities. Paris erupted in rioting as a result, and Anne was forced, under intense pressure, to free Broussel. Moreover, a mob of angry Parisians broke into the royal palace and demanded to see their king. Led into the royal bedchamber, they gazed upon Louis, who was feigning sleep, were appeased, and then quietly departed. The threat to the royal family prompted Anne to flee Paris with the king and his courtiers.

Shortly thereafter, the conclusion of the Peace of Westphalia allowed Condé's army to return to aid Louis and his court. Condé's family was close to Anne at that time, and he agreed to help her attempt to restore the king's authority.[16] The queen's army, headed by Condé, attacked the rebels in Paris; the rebels were under the political control of Anne's old friend Marie de Rohan. Beaufort, who had escaped from the prison where Anne had incarcerated him five years before, was the military leader in Paris, under the nominal control of Conti. After a few battles, a political compromise was reached; the Peace of Rueil was signed, and the court returned to Paris.

Unfortunately for Anne, her partial victory depended on Condé, who wanted to control the queen and destroy Mazarin's influence. It was Condé's sister who pushed him to turn against the queen. After striking a deal with her old friend Marie de Rohan, who was able to impose the nomination of Charles de l'Aubespine, marquis de Châteauneuf as minister of justice, Anne arrested Condé, his brother Armand de Bourbon, Prince of Conti, and the husband of their sister Anne Genevieve de Bourbon, duchess of Longueville. This situation did not last long, and Mazarin's unpopularity led to the creation of a coalition headed mainly by Marie de Rohan and the duchess of Longueville. This aristocratic coalition was strong enough to liberate the princes, exile Mazarin, and impose a condition of virtual house arrest on Queen Anne.

All these events were witnessed by Louis and largely explained his later distrust of Paris and the higher aristocracy.[17] "In one sense, Louis' childhood came to an end with the outbreak of the Fronde. It was not only that life became insecure and unpleasant ? a fate meted out to many children in all ages ? but that Louis had to be taken into the confidence of his mother and Mazarin and political and military matters of which he could have no deep understanding".[18] "The family home became at times a near-prison when Paris had to be abandoned, not in carefree outings to other chateaux but in humiliating flights".[18] The royal family was driven out of Paris twice in this manner, and at one point Louis XIV and Anne were held under virtual arrest in the royal palace in Paris. The Fronde years planted in Louis a hatred of Paris and a consequent determination to move out of the ancient capital as soon as possible, never to return.[19]

Just as the first Fronde (the Fronde parlementaire of 1648?1649) ended, a second one (the Fronde des princes of 1650?1653) began. Unlike that which preceded it, tales of sordid intrigue and half-hearted warfare characterized this second phase of upper-class insurrection. To the aristocracy, this rebellion represented a protest against and a reversal of their political demotion from vassals to courtiers. It was headed by the highest-ranking French nobles, among them Louis' uncle Gaston, Duke of Orléans and first cousin Anne Marie Louise d'Orléans, Duchess of Montpensier, known as la Grande Mademoiselle; Princes of the Blood such as Condé, his brother Armand de Bourbon, Prince of Conti, and their sister the Duchess of Longueville; dukes of legitimised royal descent, such as Henri, Duke of Longueville, and François, Duke of Beaufort; so-called "foreign princes" such as Frédéric Maurice, Duke of Bouillon, his brother Marshal Turenne, and Marie de Rohan, Duchess of Chevreuse; and scions of France's oldest families, such as François de La Rochefoucauld.

Queen Anne played the most important role in defeating the Fronde because she wanted to transfer absolute authority to her son. In addition, most of the princes refused to deal with Mazarin, who went into exile for a number of years. The Frondeurs claimed to act on Louis' behalf, and in his real interest against his mother and Mazarin.

Queen Anne had a very close relationship with the Cardinal, and many observers believed that Mazarin became Louis XIV's stepfather by a secret marriage to Queen Anne.[20] However, Louis' coming-of-age and subsequent coronation deprived them of the Frondeurs' pretext for revolt. The Fronde thus gradually lost steam and ended in 1653, when Mazarin returned triumphantly from exile. From that time until his death, Mazarin was in charge of foreign and financial policy without the daily supervision of Anne, who was no longer regent.[21]

During this period, Louis fell in love with Mazarin's niece Marie Mancini, but Anne and Mazarin ended the king's infatuation by sending Mancini away from court to be married in Italy. While Mazarin might have been tempted for a short period of time to marry his niece to the King of France, Queen Anne was absolutely against this; she wanted to marry her son to the daughter of her brother, Philip IV of Spain, for both dynastic and political reasons. Mazarin soon supported the Queen's position because he knew that her support for his power and his foreign policy depended on making peace with Spain from a strong position and on the Spanish marriage. Additionally, Mazarin's relations with Marie Mancini were not good, and he did not trust her to support his position. All of Louis' tears and his supplications to his mother did not make her change her mind; the Spanish marriage was very important both for its role in ending the war between France and Spain, and because many of the claims and objectives of Louis' foreign policy in the next 50 years would be based on this marriage.[22]

Louis married Maria Theresa Of SPAIN in 1660. Maria was born in 1638; died in 1683. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]