Louis XIV

An intimately detailed portrait of France's most powerful and flamboyant ruler.

For more than half a century the solitary figure of Louis XIV dominated Europe: the young man imbued with a fierce passion for life and love, the haughty autocrat who identified himself with the State, the creator of a spectacular style of leadership that became a tradition, the aged sovereign confronting death in the same inflexible manner as that in which he had confronted life.

Erlanger's account, extensively quoting Louis' own words and eyewitness accounts of contemporaries, catches all the magnificence and the harshness of the greatest era of French history.

A galaxy of fascinating figures surrounds the King, advising, flattering, deceiving, plotting, quarrelling, weeping: his wise and heroic mother, the Regent Anne of Austria; 'Monsieur', his pitiful playboy brother; the subtle Mazarin; the stern Colbert; the furiously jealous marshals Conde and Turenne; the royal mistresses Mme de Montespan, Mlle de la Valliere and Mme de Maintenon; Moliere and Fenelon; Philip V of Spain, Queen Anne and Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough.