What does Veeky Forums think about the Sun King

It was tied together for a long time by Louis XIV's personal mastery of politics, but later on things started to fall apart in France, and by the time of the Revolution and Napoleon, most of Europe's monarchies were desperate to crush the revolution, and especially the British and Austrians wanted desperately to stop French hegemony over all of the continent, at which they were eventually successful, after Napoleon swatting the Austrians around for about a decade and embarrassing pretty much everybody else at least twice in the process.

The French did pretty well, all told. The only major European war they lost humiliating badly was WW2, and that's really more a credit to the Germans than anything else. Not that they didn't fuck up a lot, but as Rudyard Kipling said about the French, "Their business is war, and they do their business."

>Louis XIV's personal mastery of politics

Bitch please, if someone should be credited for France's hegemonic status it's Richelieu. The Thirty Years War was to France what WW2 was to America.

Even WW2 was a political and strategic fuckup (actually a perfect storm of many different fuckups), not related to cowardice.

>War of Austrian Succession
>Louis "High Water Mark for France" Bourbon XIV
Austrian Succession wasn't until later, when Louis XV was ruining France.

All I mean is that Louis had a personal mastery of internal politics, and had the good sense to have excellent foreign ministers. I'm not saying that everything that Mazarin and Richelieu did should be credited to Louis, but look, it was his administration, at some point we just have to associate notable heads of state at least somewhat with their administrations.

The point is that France was undeniably ascendant during his reign, however much it was somewhat the work of other men. Just like it's not all Louis XVI's fault that his state failed.

Richelieu and Mazarin both came before Louis XIV's reign (Richelieu before Louis was even born, Mazarin when he was still underage and not ruling).

Louis XIV's legacy is a lot more mixed, since while he did put the dominant position France had taken to profit, he's also responsible for enormous spending and debt.

More like "France was an anschlussing machine"

The debt would have been controllable if his grandson had not conceded so much and basically be a pushover with his son being such a Good Guy Greg that he cucked his nation

Whoops, my mistake. I think I'm thinking too Three Musketeers about this.

Louis's still a good king, though, even if he did inadvertently basically cause, uh, WWI?

You can place the blame of WW1 on anyone really.

>Louis XIV
>not the mildly successful "Internet tough guy" of its time
This the most valuable king france has had

Forgot picture

t.Inbred Austrian

Louis " I'm a dancer so what bitch"
Louis " I have made the greatest palace in the world swb"
Louis " I fucked 18 known mistresses swb"
Louis " I had 6 kids and 17 bastards swb "

Louis " I am the creator of arrogance in France SO WHAT BITCH"

France was like Russia, only not on Europe's doorstep.
They had massive population and a pretty centralized state.

...

>papist heretic
Trash

t. Swede living off French donations

Go get hit by a truck, Jacque

t. Another Inbred Austrian

Get out of my kingdom, pagans and habsburgers

France seems like the only one that can win a 2 front war