A Great Controversy Among Historians About the Figure of Louis XIV Research Paper

A Great Controversy Among Historians About the Figure of Louis XIV - Research Paper Example Louis XIV thought that his entire life has to be the walk of a great king in a great country, the entire country being resumed in his divine-right, absolute monarch. It is possible that he never said the famous statement historians had always attributed to him, â€Å"L’à ¨tat, c’est Moi† (I am the state). But, as Jacques Bousset and Jean Domat1 were theorizing (Domat 1829), he considered himself to be God’s instrument on earth, and clearly felt that the state was his patrimony, as J. Nathan suggests (The Virginia Quarterly Review, J. Nathan). In his letters to his heirs, he explains his thought: â€Å"†¦A king works for himself when he has the state in mind, and the welfare of the one enhances the glory of the other†. Bearing this idea in mind, he devoted his life to the achievement of his glory and, therefore, of the glory of France. And he believed that war was the main mean to achieve his greatness. Through all the wars he sustained during his life, he tried to force all European nations to accept the French hegemony. He never really worked to establish a harmonic co-existence with other European nations (The Virginia Quarterly Review, J. Nathan). He did steer France through a series of wars in order to dictate Europe his idea of order: all nations united under the legitimate hegemony of France. Diplomacy was in his hands only a mean to keep enemies occupied while he prepared the army, and nobody was better than him in betraying his own words. As once he wrote to his ambassador: â€Å"†¦there are hardly any words in the world so clear..that do not have some exceptions and contrary reasons†¦Ã¢â‚¬ .