The Project Gutenberg EBook of Louis XIV., Makers of History Series, by
John S. C. Abbott

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Title: Louis XIV., Makers of History Series

Author: John S. C. Abbott

Release Date: October 26, 2008 [EBook #27056]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Makers of History

Louis XIV.

BY JOHN S. C. ABBOTT

WITH ENGRAVINGS

NEW YORK AND LONDON
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
1904

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870, by

HARPER & BROTHERS,

in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington

Copyright, 1898, by LAURA A. BUCK.

[Illustration: LOUIS XIV.]

PREFACE

We all live a double life: the external life which the world sees, and
the internal life of hopes and fears, joys and griefs, temptations and
sins, which the world sees not, and of which it knows but little. None
lead this double life more emphatically than those who are seated upon
thrones.

Though this historic sketch contains allusions to all the most
important events in the reign of Louis XIV., it has been the main
object of the writer to develop the inner life of the palace; to lead
the reader into the interior of the Louvre, the Tuileries, Versailles,
and Marly, and to exhibit the monarch as a man, in the details of
domestic privacy.

This can more easily be done in reference to Louis XIV. than any other
king. Very many of the prominent members of his household left their
autobiographies, filled with the minutest incidents of every-day life.

It is impossible to give any correct idea of the life of this proud
monarch without allusion to the corruption in the midst of which he
spent his days. Still, the writer, while faithful to fact, has
endeavored so to describe these scenes that any father can safely read
the narrative aloud to his family.

There are few chapters in history more replete with horrors than that
which records the "Revocation of the Edict of Nantes.