This book presents a new interpretation of the development of the French army during the "personal rule" of Louis XIV. Based on massive archival research, it examines the army not only as a military institution but also as a political, social and economic organism. Guy Rowlands asserts that the key to the development of Louis XIV's armed forces was the king's determination to acknowledge and satisfy the military, political, social and cultural aspirations of his officers, and maintain the solid standing of the Bourbon dynasty.

This book presents a new interpretation of the development of the French army during the "personal rule" of Louis XIV. Based on massive archival research, it examines the army not only as a military institution but also as a political, social and economic organism. Guy Rowlands asserts that the key to the development of Louis XIV's armed forces was the king's determination to acknowledge and satisfy the military, political, social and cultural aspirations of his officers, and maintain the solid standing of the Bourbon dynasty.

At the start of the eighteenth century Louis XIV needed to remit huge sums of money abroad to support his armies during the War of the Spanish Succession. For this essential task the French government turned to the services of a number of leading international bankers, men who could provide foreign exchange on a vast scale through a multitude of European financial centres. However, the demand for foreign exchange was unprecedented and the remittance system was utterly opaque, with government ministers ignorant of its workings and almost impotent before its power. As a consequence, the...

The personal rule of Louis XIV, following on from a long period of royal minority and apprenticeship, lasted 54 years from 1661 to 1715. But the second half of this personal rule has, until recently, received significantly less scholarly attention than the 1660s and 1670s. This has obscured some of the very real changes and developments that occurred between the early 1680s and the mid-1690s, by which time a new generation of younger royals had come to prominence, France was engulfed in international war on a greater scale than ever before, and the king was visibly no longer as vigorous or...