Louis XIV Dies
Impact
Peak and beginning of decline of absolutism
What happened
After a 72-year reign — the longest of any European monarch — the Sun King died. His model of absolutism (‘L'État, c'est moi’) was copied across Europe even as its philosophical foundation was already being dismantled by Enlightenment writers.
Context
Louis famously never attended a Parliament meeting and bankrupted France three times over funding his court and wars. The Revolution that beheaded his great-great-great-grandson in 1793 began, in a real sense, with the debts he left.
Era
02 · The Sovereign Crown
As the Church's political grip weakened, kings claimed the mandate directly. 'Divine right of kings' held that monarchs were accountable only to God — not to popes, and certainly not to parliaments. It worked until it didn't.
Read the full era →Other events in this era
← Earlier in era
Charles I Executed
Later in era →
The Glorious Revolution