Louis XIV [Hardcover]

Ian Dunlop (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 12, 2000

Setting in motion events that would ultimately bring his nation to military and fiscal ruin-and his dynasty to a bloody end-Louis XIV also established France as the preeminent and, to this day, unchallenged seat of high culture in Europe. As a leader he simultaneously squandered a dominion's political capital and established a nation's spiritual hegemony. As a man he married brilliance and arrogance, shrewdness and excess.

Ian Dunlop explores the Sun King's many facets in this remarkable new biography. Understanding Louis in the context of his era, one of great strides for French artists, litterateurs, and architects, Dunlop presents the king as an inspirer, an enabler, and a patron of his country's best and brightest minds. But even as his armies of laborers built the magnificent palace at Versailles, Louis' warmongering brought the greatest power in Europe-his own-to repeated and humiliating defeats at the hands of more calculating foes. Ironically, Louis' mixed legacy developed a culture that would become the envy of the world.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Winner of the 1999 Enid MacLeod Award, Ian Dunlop's elegant biography of Louis XIV (1638-1715) brilliantly achieves the author's aim "to help my readers see [Louis] as his contemporaries saw him." Extensive quotes from diaries and memoirs (each assessed for their prejudices) bring to life the glittering French court in the heyday of divine-right monarchy. Handsome and athletic, autocratic but kind, devoted to his queen as well as his mistresses yet also a pious pillar of the Catholic Church, Louis seemed to his dazzled subjects to incarnate the power and glory of the French nation. He moved in a world where personal relations dominated political affairs, and royalty's private life was intensely public: "The great families of the French aristocracy were at their most natural when they were showing off," writes Dunlop, with a nice appreciation of this society's paradoxes. Louis's fondness for wars and passion for extravagant building projects like the palace of Versailles strained the French economy and sowed the seeds for the French Revolution. In his time, however, he was adored. Dunlop's engaging depiction of a generous, charismatic man makes it easy to understand why. --Wendy Smith

From Publishers Weekly

The life, times and character of the Sun King have never lacked for treatment by historians, and Dunlop, a student of architecture and biographer of Marie Antoinette, adds little new to our understanding of the notorious ruler, whom he calls "one of the most elusive" men in French history. But he skillfully deploys a wealth of sourcesAmany of them firsthand observations of the king and his courtAto bring the man and the era to life. He leads us through the Sun King's lifeAfrom his birth to his acquisition of mistresses to the battlefield; from Louis's religious dilemmas to the death of his son, the Grand Dauphin. Nor is the narrative confined to the politics of the day. Louis XIV was a major patron of the arts, and the literature, art and architecture of the period (the king's "passion for building" was "second only to his enthusiasm for warfare") are also presented in an informative and entertaining way; Dunlop is especially to be commended for a brief yet exact explanation of Jansenism. The general reader will find much of value here. The volume might seem daunting for its length and perhaps too great a wealth of detail. Still, this is an impressive addition to the literature on Louis XIV and deserves a wide readership. 12 pages of b&w illus. not seen by PW. (Aug.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 512 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press; 1st edition (August 12, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312261969
• ISBN-13: 978-0312261962
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.5 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,323,070 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars Aaarrggg December 16, 2000

By A Customer

Format:Hardcover

This book is like wading thru glue. It references people and times without explaing why people disliked/like them. It adds confusion by jumping around wihtout transition or explination, and worse, it is awash with phrases and quotations in French with no translation. If I could read French, I would not need a book in English to learn about the "Sun King."

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Louis XIV July 21, 2001

By Mauro Mioni

Format:Hardcover

The book's title appears to me to be misleading, inasmuch as rather than a chronological biography, as the title would seem to entail, it is a somewhat loose assembly of anecdotes relating to the Sun King's lifelong passion for the construction of royal palaces, interspersed with descriptions of his battles. I found that the portrait of the man, both as an individual and as a king, highlighting either his private or public life, or both, and the man's impact on history, with the whole coherently and cogently presented in a clear prose, was sorely missing. In sum, I found the book to be unfocused, uninformative, rambling and at times boring.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Well-Rounded Portrait Of The Sun King September 30, 2002

By Bruce Loveitt

Format:Hardcover

I found this to be a very well thought out, and well-written, biography. In the space of less than 500 pages we are given a very complete picture of a remarkable man, a man who came to the throne as a child and was king from 1643 until his death in 1715. The author is admirably even-handed. Louis' faults are not ignored: In his youth and up until middle-age he was an inveterate womanizer. When he was through with a mistress, she was carted off to a convent. (There was a joke making the rounds at the time that the quickest way to salvation for a woman was via the King's bed!) Louis also had an inordinate fondness for war and glory. Besides the obvious cost in lives for soldiers of all the countries involved in these conflicts, France was bankrupted. This did not stop Louis from building and renovating- Versailles; Marly; Fontainebleau, etc. One of the many strengths of this book is that Mr. Dunlop can rightfully criticize this irresponsible behavior and profligate spending; then, he can turn right around and describe the architectural splendor, the beautiful gardens and fountains, etc. For, as Montesquieu asked: "Who could have told that the King established the greatness of France by building Versailles and Marly?" Another glaring "negative" in the rule of The Sun King was his persecution of the Huguenots, via his 1685 Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. But without making excuses or trying to justify what Louis did, Mr. Dunlop puts this in perspective. To quote the author: "Tolerance enjoys a high moral status in Western civilisation today, but it exists in inverse proportion to a general decline in commitment to any creed or moral code. Total tolerance denies, in effect, the possibility of any objective truth in either religion or ethics. Intolerance, a logical outcome of total commitment or total conviction, is therefore more typical of the seventeenth century because of the often fanatical firmness with which the differing faiths were held." Likewise, regarding Louis' fondness for the ladies, the author shows us both the weakness of Louis in his giving in (often!) to temptation but also shows us the difficulties involved in resisting.... If you are brought up to believe that you are God's anointed, could you refuse the advances of beautiful, intelligent, charming women...some of whom were quite ruthless in the means they used to get a previous mistress out of the way? For bedding the King wasn't only a romantic achivement- the families of these women would "egg them on," hoping to gain political influence at court. Louis was aware that people were trying to use him, and he was always on his guard. This book is a wonderful blend of the political, the philosophical, the religious and the military aspects of Louis' reign....as well as containing much enjoyable material on the architecture and the gardens of the royal residences. The mistresses, the gossip and the hypocrisy and political infighting at court are certainly not neglected! With extensive excerpts from the diaries and letters of Louis, Saint-Simon, Vauban, Mme de Maintenon, etc., we get a beautiful balance of the personal and the public life of The Sun King. This is a very impressive book.