KING Louis XIV
Louis XIV reigned for seventy-three years and ruled for fifty-five years. By 1715 the French monarchy was approaching the end of it'slong history, but in 1661, when the young king swiftly and ruthlessly hurled Fouquet, all-powerful super-intendent of finances and heir-expectant to Richelieu and Mazarin, from the pride of place and the magnificence of Vaux-le-Vicomte, newest and loveliest of châteaux, to perpetual prison, it seemed only a beginning. France had been a millennium in the making, now at last she was made. The great nobles ,whose ambitions and rivalries had so often ravaged the country and let in the invader, had sunk from the mighty struggles of Burgundian and Armagnac, of bourbon, guise, and montmorency, to the salon politics and mob violence of Fronde, and from that to the role of mere appurtenances of marjest. After the death of Mazarin
Louis XIV reigned for seventy-three years and ruled for fifty-five years. By 1715 the French monarchy was approaching the end of it'slong history, but in 1661, when the young king swiftly and ruthlessly hurled Fouquet, all-powerful super-intendent of finances and heir-expectant to Richelieu and Mazarin, from the pride of place and the magnificence of Vaux-le-Vicomte, newest and loveliest of châteaux, to perpetual prison, it seemed only a beginning. France had been a millennium in the making, now at last she was made. The great nobles ,whose ambitions and rivalries had so often ravaged the country and let in the invader, had sunk from the mighty struggles of Burgundian and Armagnac, of bourbon, guise, and montmorency, to the salon politics and mob violence of Fronde, and from that to the role of mere appurtenances of marjest. After the death of Mazarin
