Download French Legends: The Life and Legacy of King Louis XIV AudioBook Free
"Every time I create an appointment, I create a hundred malcontents and one ingrate." (Louis XIV) A whole lot of printer ink has been spilled covering the lives of history's most important characters, but how much of the forest is lost for the trees and shrubs? In Charles River Editors' French Legends series, listeners can get swept up to accelerate on the lives of France's most important women and men in enough time it takes to finish a commute, while learning interesting facts long overlooked or never known. France's most well-known king, and Europe's longest portion, Louis XIV (1638-1715) is often seen today as a symbol of royal extravagance and splendor. Reigning for over 72 years, the legacy of the "Direct sun light King" is kept in mind for the spectacular Palace of Versailles, the patronizing of arts and theater, and the apocryphal quote "l'Etat c'est moi" (I am the State). Although it is more than reasonable to associate sunlight King with vanity and unfathomable shelling out for luxury, the laser-sharp give attention to the superficial aspects of the person and his reign have come to overshadow just how effective he was as a ruler. Becoming king as a kid and assuming genuine power in his early 20s, Louis put in nearly 55 years centralizing and consolidating power in his monarchy by providing the aristocracy to heel and keeping religious divisions from devolving into violence, thereby passing off to his successor a complete monarchy with an extremely solid foundation. At the same time, his foreign plans, though often criticized as quests for glory, helped build France as the dominating power on the Western continent and firmly in control of an international colonial empire that stretched both east and western.
