have no first minister; thus began his fifty-four-year personal reign.
When Louis XIV took sole control of power in France in 1660, the long
war between France and Spain (1643-1659) had just ended with the Peace of
He pursued a policy of aggression, using his military power to occupy and
annex territories for which France had no legitimate claim.
â–¡ 1667-1668 War with Spain - The War of Devolution
â–¡ 1672-1678 The Franco - Dutch war
â–¡ 1689-1697 War of the League of Augsburg. (The Nine Years War)
â–¡ 1702-1713 War of the Spanish Succession.
In 1667-1668 French armies occupied the Spanish Netherlands and the
France Comte in the War of Devolution. In 1672, in alliance with Britain,
Sweden, the bishops of Cologne and Muenster, the French army attacked the
Dutch Republic, which stood alone. [Author not known 1 2000]
Louis strove vigorously for supremacy in foreign affairs. His marriage
(1660) to the Spanish princess Marie Thérese served as a pretext for the
War of Devolution (1667-68). Although the Dutch had by then moved against
him with the Triple Alliance of 1668 the marriage netted him part of
Flanders. Relations with the Dutch were exacerbated by commercial rivalry
and in 1672 Louis, determined to crush Holland, began the third of the
Dutch Wars, which depleted his treasury.
For the next ten years the king limited his policies to diplomacy. He set
up "chambers of reunion" to unearth legal grounds for claims on a number of
cities, which Louis promptly annexed. Fear of Louis's rapacity resulted in
a European coalition as in the Grand Alliance of the League of Augsburg,
which confronted him when he attacked the Holy Roman Empire in 1688. This
war ended with the Treaty of Ryswick (1697), through which Louis lost minor
territories. Louis's last war, the War of the Spanish Success
...