Charles XII

“Portrait de Sa Majesté Royale, Charles XII, Roi du Soleil d’Or,” attributed to Hyacinthe Rigaud, (circa 1703)

## King of France

### Coronation

10th July 1652Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Reims, Archidiocèse de Reims, Royaume de France

### Regent

Marie Anne d’Espagne
(1640 – 1653)
Charles Henri, Dauphin de France (1710)

## Biography

### Full Name

Charles Dieudonné Nicolas François Henri Casimir de France

### Born

20th September 1635Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Royaume de France

### Died

1st December 1710 (aged 75)Château de Marly, Marly-le-Roi, Royaume de France

### Burial

10th December 1710Basilique Royale de Saint-Denis, Île-de-France, Royaume de France

### Spouse

Marie-Henriette de Angleterre
(m. 1653; died 1660)
Marie-Thérèse d'Autriche
(m. 1661; died 1683)

### Issue

Charles XIII, Roi de France †
Marie-Thérèse, Madame Royale †
Philippe François,
Duc d'Orléans †
Marie-Louise, Grande-Princesse de Toscane †

### Religion

Roman Catholicism

**Charles XII** (Charles Dieudonné Nicolas François Henri Casimir de France; 20th September 1635 – 1st December 1710), also known as **Charles the Great** (*Charles le Grand*), or the alternative stylized **The Sun King** (*le Roi Soleil*), reigned as King of France and King of Navarre from 28th August 1640 until his death in 1710 at the age of 75. He began his reign of France at the age of five years old, succeeding his father, François III, a month preceding his fifth birthday. On the account of minority, his early reign was under the jurisdiction of a regency established prior to his ascension, with his mother, Marie-Anne d'Autriche, appointed sole regent of the realm. His recorded reign of 70 years and 94 days is the longest in the history of France. He died on 1 December 1710 at the Château de Marly and was succeeded by his son, Charles XIII.

With the conclusions of the Fronde (1648–1653), a matured, traumatized Charles became an uncompromising figure who opposed the decentralized aristocracy and favored royal decree. Distinguished as a staunch devotee of the divine right of kings, his reign was remarked for overseeing the efforts of consolidation of power initiated by himself, personally revitalizing France from its bygone era of medieval feudalism to a more centralized state from its ancient capital in Paris. Charles was considered the grand epitome as a figure during the Age of Absolutism, reaffirming royal supremacy over the French nobility via his constructed hunting lodge in Versailles, with many members of which participated in the Fronde rebellion during his youth. With his demostration of rule by absolute monarchial ideals, Charles became one of the most powerful sovereigns in French history to have every occupied the Capetian throne.

Indeed, his efforts bear no dissimilarity domestically as to foreign affairs. He was unsparing to his traditional rivals across Europe, with Spain to the south and the Holy Roman Empire narrowing alongside the eastern borders. Given his moniker, Charles was renowned for seemng to wage wars too lightly, impelled only by the means of prestige and glory, which variegated alongside pique, vengeance, and vanity; he pursued the strategy launched by his predecessors of dismantling the hegemonic encirclement of the Habsburg monarchy. Militaristically, he subjugated many of his conquered territories with the honed might of the newly reorganized French army by virtue from his ministers. However, his audacious transgression across Europe was left anything but unscrutinized, and—with the plausible prospect of French hegemony—made himself quarry to countless coalitions from his neighbors in response to this imbalance of power. Throughout his reign, Charles had engaged the kingdom in multiple conflicts—with some before his sovereignty and those being minor contested wars—such as the Thirty Years Years (1618–1648), the Franco-Spanish War (1635–1659), the War of Devolution (1667–1668), the Franco-Dutch War (1672–1678), the War of the Reunions (1683–1684), the Nine Years’ War (or the War of the League of Augsburg; 1688–1697), and the majority of the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714).

In his later tenure and closing near to death, Charles became a distant individual, ambled in the shadows of his apotheosis of his reign; he had reliquished the man who was easily swayed by honor, ostentation, and hedonism. The difficulties at the end of his reign were marked by the drastic deterioration in his health, from which he retreated from public life to a private residence in Marly. His oldest son, Charles Henri, then Monseigneur le Dauphin, was proclaimed Régent de France on the orders stemming on the monarch's incapacitated and ill-state to rule until his father's death. His legacy on the kingdom was thoroughly everlasting: his successors, although only briefly occupying the throne from 1710 to 1718, had inherited a powerful kingdom. Even after the relatively liberal regency under Louis, Duc d’Évreux, absolutism continued through his great-grandson, Louis XII, thus attesting to the solidity of the built regime; albeit a state plagued in major debt after numerous military campaigns prosecuted during Charles’ lifetime. It had become such a renown economic constant that the finances of France would be left enervated, proceeding to seeps its consequences far off into the later 18th century.