[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":27},["ShallowReactive",2],{"hreflang:/en/zoom/p8ch2z11-the-education-and-military-training-of-louis-xiv-1638-1661":3,"zoom:p8ch2z11:en":7},{"fr":4,"en":5,"es":6},"/zoom/p8ch2z11-education-et-formation-militaire-de-louis-xiv-1638-1661","/en/zoom/p8ch2z11-the-education-and-military-training-of-louis-xiv-1638-1661","/es/zoom/p8ch2z11-educacion-y-formacion-militar-de-luis-xiv-1638-1661",{"period":8,"chapter":17,"zoom":20},{"id":9,"title":10,"titleEn":10,"titleEs":11,"range":12,"rangeEn":12,"rangeEs":12,"covers":13},"p8","Ancien Regime","Antiguo Régimen","1610 → 1789",[14],{"filename":15,"url":16},"A Stag Hunt at Versailles","https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a5/Martin%2C_Jean-Baptiste_%E2%80%94_A_Stag_Hunt_at_Versailles_%E2%80%94_c._1700.jpg",{"id":18,"title":19},"p8ch2","Louis XIV and the Height of Absolutism (1643-1715)",{"id":21,"title":22,"chapterId":18,"html":23,"hasEn":24,"isFallback":25,"seoDescription":26},"p8ch2z11","The Education and Military Training of Louis XIV (1638-1661)","\u003Cp>Born on 5 September 1638 after twenty-three years of a childless marriage between Louis XIII and Anne of Austria, Louis-Dieudonné was from the outset perceived as a miracle child. His education, long considered neglected in early childhood, was progressively structured after his father’s death in 1643, combining learned tutors, exceptional artistic training and, above all, the direct apprenticeship, on the political and military ground itself, of a power he was to wield alone for more than half a century.\u003C/p>\n\u003Chr>\n\u003Ch2>👶 An Education First Neglected, Then Structured\u003C/h2>\n\u003Cp>Having become king at the age of four and a half, the young Louis XIV was first entrusted to governesses whom Saint-Simon, in his \u003Cem>Mémoires\u003C/em>, accused of having “left [the child] to women and valets who granted him everything” — a harsh judgment that Louis XIV himself seems to have confirmed when he later spoke of “a fairly general ignorance” of the affairs of his kingdom. From 1644, this education was structured under the direction of \u003Cstrong>Hardouin de Péréfixe\u003C/strong>, future Archbishop of Paris, who taught him history and letters while explicitly shaping him in the image of his grandfather Henri IV, whose biography he himself wrote. The philosopher \u003Cstrong>François de La Mothe Le Vayer\u003C/strong>, an erudite libertine of sceptical bent, completed this training in moral philosophy from 1649. The curriculum, conventional for a prince of his rank, mixed Latin, history, geography and physical exercises — horsemanship, fencing, hunting — in which the young king excelled, though his knowledge of the exact sciences or of foreign languages other than French remained, throughout his life, fairly limited.\u003C/p>\n\u003Chr>\n\u003Ch2>💃 The “Dancing King”: Exceptional Artistic Training\u003C/h2>\n\u003Cp>It was paradoxically in dance, an essential art of court life, that Louis XIV received the most thorough training, under the direction of \u003Cstrong>Pierre Beauchamp\u003C/strong>, the future codifier of the five fundamental positions. The young king danced his first ballet role as early as the age of seven, in 1645, and continued performing regularly in public until around 1670: it was in the role of Apollo, god of the sun, that he appeared on 23 February 1653 in the \u003Cem>Ballet de la Nuit\u003C/em> — an appearance directly at the origin of the nickname “Sun King” that was to remain attached to him for posterity. This skill, recognised by his contemporaries as exceptional, was not merely a matter of entertainment: it expressed, in the codified language of the court, the mastery of body and grace that royal power intended to claim even in the physical register, before age and the dignity of his office led the king to abandon this public practice around the turn of the 1670s.\u003C/p>\n\u003Chr>\n\u003Ch2>⚔️ Military Training under Turenne\u003C/h2>\n\u003Cp>The most formative experience of Louis XIV’s youth remained, however, the Fronde, lived between the ages of five and fifteen through flights from Paris, the humiliation of a court held in check by its own subjects, and the direct spectacle of civil war — a trauma from which he was to draw the conviction that a divided power was a weak power. On the strictly military plane, his training took place mainly under Viscount \u003Cstrong>Turenne\u003C/strong>, who had remained loyal to the crown during the Fronde and became, in the following years, the young king’s principal mentor in strategy, tactics and logistics; Voltaire was to sum up this apprenticeship in a striking formula: “Louis XIV learned the art of war from the greatest captain of his century.” This training found practical application as early as the War of Devolution (1667-1668), when the king personally commanded in the field, while \u003Cstrong>Vauban\u003C/strong>, whose collaboration with the king deepened from the 1660s, taught him for his part the scientific principles of siegecraft and fortification that were to durably mark the conduct of the reign’s wars.\u003C/p>\n\u003Chr>\n\u003Ch2>🏛️ Mazarin’s Political Lessons\u003C/h2>\n\u003Cp>On the plane of government itself, it was Cardinal \u003Cstrong>Mazarin\u003C/strong> who most directly shaped the young king, admitting him from adolescence to the sessions of the Council in order to teach him, through direct observation, the diplomacy, administration and finances of the kingdom. This training reached its culmination in the last counsel the dying cardinal gave his pupil in March 1661: to govern alone, without a chief minister; to be wary of ministers, even the most faithful; to keep personal control over finances, the source of all real power; to maintain by every means the religious unity of the kingdom and the submission of the nobility. Louis XIV was to apply these principles with remarkable fidelity from the very day after Mazarin’s death, making of this political education, completed in the urgency of a final interview, the direct matrix of the personal government he was to exercise for the following fifty-four years.\u003C/p>\n\u003Chr>\n\u003Ch2>🧠 Key Takeaways\u003C/h2>\n\u003Cul>\n\u003Cli>Louis XIV’s initial education, often judged neglected by his contemporaries including Saint-Simon, was structured from 1644 under the direction of the tutor Hardouin de Péréfixe, modelled on Henri IV.\u003C/li>\n\u003Cli>The young king received exceptional artistic training in dance, performing in public until around 1670; his role as Apollo in the 1653 Ballet de la Nuit is the direct origin of the nickname “Sun King.”\u003C/li>\n\u003Cli>The Fronde, lived between the ages of five and fifteen, durably shaped his conception of power by convincing him that a divided kingdom was a weak kingdom.\u003C/li>\n\u003Cli>His military training took place mainly under Turenne, described by Voltaire as “the greatest captain of his century,” complemented by the principles of fortification taught by Vauban.\u003C/li>\n\u003Cli>Mazarin completed this education with a political testament delivered shortly before his death in 1661: govern alone, distrust ministers, control the finances — principles Louis XIV applied from the very next day with remarkable fidelity.\u003C/li>\n\u003C/ul>\n",true,false,"Born on 5 September 1638 after twenty-three years of a childless marriage between Louis XIII and Anne of Austria, Louis-Dieudonné was from the outset perceived",1786625744605]