It is true that Louis XIV, like most men who grew
up in between 1640 and 16660, was incapable of rising beyond the
limits of his education, let alone of taking in, at one glance, the
whole of the planet on which he lived, to say nothing of infinite
space. A king to the depths of his being, and a dedicated king, he had
a concept of greatness which was that of his generation: military
greatness, dynastic greatness, territorial greatness and political
greatness which expressed itself in unity of faith, the illusion of
obedience and magnificent surroundings. He left behind him an image of
the monarchy, admirable in its way, but already cracking if not
outworn at the time of his death. Like most men, and many kings, he
had grown stiff and sclerotic with old age. [Pierre Goubert, Louis
XIV and Twenty Million Frenchmen (1966)
