All language subtitles for BBC.Versailles.1of3.The.Dream.of.a.King.HDTV.x264.AC3.MVGroup.Forum-eng

Louis XIV - so powerful, he took
his name from the sun itself.

So dominant, he made the haughtiest
aristocrats bend to his will.

So insatiable, that no one mistress
could satisfy him for long.

Throughout a long and turbulent
life, Louis sought magnificence
in all things.

He strived for it in love...

in battle...and in art.

But above all, he wanted
magnificence at Versailles

by creating a building
so spectacular,

it would outshine any
palace on Earth.

Taken from intimate memoirs
and official records,

this is the story
of how a king's obsession

created one of the
wonders of the world.

It started in a swamp.

It was here, in a stretch of
mosquito-infested marshland,

that Louis, the 27-year-old
King of France,

decided to construct his new palace,

near a small and unremarkable
country town called Versailles.

His courtiers
were far from impressed.

It was almost as though
Louis had deliberately picked
the worst possible

site for his magnificent palace

in order to prove to the world that
his will was greater than nature.

Louis had a sentimental reason
for choosing Versailles.

It was the site of his father's
old hunting lodge,

and as a boy,
he'd played and hunted here.

The original chateau of Louis'
father was on top of a hill.

The problem, if you wanted to turn
it into a whacking great palace,

was that you weren't going
to be building on flat land.

Louis was told, this is not a
great place for a big expansion

of your father's chateau.

As a monarch with absolute power,

Louis wasn't used
to being told what to do.

And he didn't much like it.

TRANSLATION:

From the outset,
Louis was thinking big.

He started by hiring the
greatest architect of the age,

Louis Le Vau,
to transform the hunting lodge
into the palace of his dreams.

Louis was to devote much of
his energy to his new project

but he was always sure to make
time for his other great passion.

Although married
to Queen Marie-Therese,

he had numerous affairs.

His current mistress
was a young aristocratic beauty

called Louise De La Valliere.

TRANSLATION:

Louis' attitude towards women
was one of tremendous enthusiasm!

He really loved women.
He didn't just love them for sex,

he loved their company,
he loved their conversation,

he loved their elegance, he loved
women who were witty and refined.

Most of all I think he loved
women because they teased him,

they made him laugh.

TRANSLATION:

He had a tremendous sexual appetite.

He would quite often, if his mistress
was too slow in taking her dress off,

have a turn with her lady's maid
while he was waiting,

or a passing servant in
the corridor at Versailles.

He made love the way he did
everything else, with enormous gusto.

A French king was expected
to have a mistress.

It sort of symbolised
the virility of the nation.

And, you know, a hundred years
later, poor Louis XVI -

the French were furious with him
because he DIDN'T have a mistress!

Louise De La Valliere was Louis
XIV's first official mistress.

She was a lady-in-waiting
at the court.

She was guileless, charming,
daughter of a good family,

and she adored the King, and
it was irresistible because she

convinced him, quite genuinely,
that she loved him for himself.

And I think this is what
the young King wanted to hear.

I think he had a very good time.

Louise was very important to him,
he did love her.

They had two children together,
he made her a duchess.

But it was a young man's crush,
rather than a profound passion.

PANTING AND MOANING

Whatever his feelings for Louise,

Louis was always careful to fulfil
all of his obligations to his wife.

His marriage to Queen
Marie-Therese was politically vital.

It had ensured peace between
France and Spain for many years.

And he needed to father
children with her

to ensure that his dynasty lived on.

Louis did a feel a
duty towards the Queen.

He made love to her frequently,

and she would always have a special
mass said the day afterwards.

Everybody would nudge each other
at court because she'd look very
pleased as she came into the chapel.

He was attentive to her,
polite to her.

They had children together, but she
simply didn't have the looks or the

education or the spirit or the charm
to captivate a man like that.

She accepted his infidelity, as did

most royal and aristocratic women of
the time, as being part of marriage.

Louis' mosquito-bitten
courtiers also had to accept
their King for what he was.

Like all 17th century monarchs,

Louis believed himself
appointed directly by God.

TRANSLATION:

Nobody could tell him what
to do, he was quite simply

the only power in the realm.

And having had this consciousness
since he was a very, very small

child, I think it meant that he was,
without any arrogance or hubris,

of the opinion that he was
pretty much a god himself.

As a kind of living god,
Louis liked nothing more

than being the centre
of everyone else's attention.

Louis was brought up in
a theatre-mad age.

As a young man, he
took dancing lessons,

which seem to have completely
transformed his self confidence.

He was actually a very
accomplished dancer,

and he clearly enjoyed
greatly taking part in these

performances, which were mainly
in front of a court audience.

TRANSLATION:

I think all his contemporaries
were extremely impressed by him.

He was astonishingly handsome

with his long golden hair and
his almost cherubic face.

He was indeed "God given", as his
mother, Anne of Austria, called him.

Louis liked dressing up,
and not just for fun.

It was part of his public image.

He chose as his role model
the Greek god Apollo,

represented in
classical imagery as the sun.

TRANSLATION:

Louis was very interested
in the sun as a symbol.

It's a very powerful symbol because
it sheds its light everywhere.

It's obviously very beneficial.

But it's also a symbol
of domination,

because all the other elements
are subordinate to the sun.

He's in a sense, above everything.

The Sun King seems to
be an appropriate title.

It was one that was a piece
of propaganda when he was young.

But like many bits of propaganda,
I think it became fact.

Le Vau's plans for the remodelling
of Versailles were complete

and ready to present
to his demanding boss.

Louis certainly knew that
what he wanted

was a building which had
that shock and awe effect.

There's absolutely no doubt
that he wanted a building

that would be sensational.

Le Vau's model was impressive,
but had a major flaw.

He planned to destroy
the old hunting lodge.

TRANSLATION:

The idea of Louis XIV was to

keep always the little
chateau of his father.

So that was a problem for an
architect because architects

prefer to destroy everything
and to build a new building.

So Louis sent the architect
away and told him,

"I want this little chateau
preserved."

TRANSLATION:

With Le Vau sent back to
the drawing board,

Louis turned his
attention to the landscape.

He wanted to expand
the existing garden,

adding ornamental lakes and groves
lined with dazzling fountains.

But he'd picked an awful site.

There were no views - it's hemmed
in by the sides of a valley.

And also Versailles wasn't endowed,

the region, with the sort of trees
which Louis wanted for his garden.

Louis's chief gardener
was the century's most celebrated
landscape designer,

Andre Le Notre.
Versailles would be the greatest
challenge of his career.

TRANSLATION:

But the Sun King did not want to
wait for his earthly paradise,

or for his trees
to grow from saplings.

Louis XIV wanted results
and he wanted them fast.

This was really a theme of the
whole sort of Project Versailles.

And the solution was to
uproot mature trees

from other parts
of France and bring them in.

And a special contraption
was invented,

a horse-drawn contraption,
which would allow these

mature trees to be transported on,
as you can imagine, these terribly

bad roads from other provinces.

With major new building
work on hold,

Louis instructed Le Vau to upgrade
the interior of Versailles.

On his inspection tours,
Louis was accompanied by his

entourage, including mistress
Louise De La Valliere.

But Louise now had a rival.

TRANSLATION:

After a while he became bored
with Louise, and she hung around

at court desperate to get his
attention back. She never really did.

So I think she probably
suffered quite a lot.

I think the King
could pick and choose.

Power's a great aphrodisiac,
and a crown even more so.

So naturally I think he
picked very beautiful women.

Louis liked to display his power.

After winning a war against Spain,

he celebrated with a huge party
in the gardens of Versailles.

It was also a chance
for the King to show off

the woman who had now replaced
Louise as his favourite mistress.

Her name was Madame De Montespan,

and she was one of the most
beautiful women in France.

TRANSLATION:

Montespan is such an
attractive figure, I think.

She was a tremendous goer. She loved
everything to do with pleasure.

She loved jewels,
she liked marvellous clothes,

she liked food, flowers, gardening.

And above all she liked sex,
you see, and he did too,

so he found the absolutely the
right maitresse-en-titre for him.

And she knew about
having wonderful feasts

and about having entertainments.

So she was exactly the kind
of person Louis envisaged
as being suitable. At the

same time she was so beautiful that
ambassadors thought she contributed

to the legend of the Sun King.

The Sun King's festivities
were about more than pleasure.

They had real
political significance.

Louis was slowly turning his new
palace into the most important

and the most fashionable
seat of power in Europe.

The parties at Versailles,

they've been described
as Pagan masses.

Fireworks, rides along
the canal in gondolas,

balls for 3,000 people
under the stars.

Plays, ballets with
a hundred dancers by Lully.

Everything you could possibly
imagine all at once

in this tremendous circus
of celebration for the King.

The great parties were intended
to show the nobility and the rest

of Europe how powerful the King of
France was, what wonderful artists

he had, what wonderful musicians.

How superior his court
and his culture were

to every other court
and culture in Europe.

The King's former mistress Louise

eventually gave up
trying to win him back.

After years of neglect, she decided

to enter a convent, leaving behind
the children she'd had with Louis.

I don't think she felt guilt
about leaving them

behind because she knew that they
were going to be very well treated.

So I don't think she felt that
kind of guilt, because I think

her big guilt she wanted to
expunge with penance and fasting
and all that in the convent.

And when she finally got away
I think she was much happier.

And she became a very hard-line nun,
you know, hair cut, hair-shirt,

praying and repentance, and
generally ended her life more or
less in the odour of sanctity.

Because Louis was spending more and
more time at Versailles, he decided

to move his entire government there.

To accommodate the new officials,
Le Vau suggested a brand new idea -

keeping the old hunting lodge

but enclosing it with massive
new buildings on three sides.

The design was known
as the "envelope".

The chateau was preserved, but
it was enveloped in this new

building in a completely different
style, which looked like a palace.

What he also did with Le Vau was to
build pavilions for his ministers.

This was very important. What this
meant was that for the first time,

Versailles could function
as a seat of monarchy,

a place from which
the King could govern.

Building the "envelope"
was a massive task,

requiring thousands of workers.

The largest number of workers were
40,000 people at the same time.

It was a very dangerous place

also because the work to be done was
not done in a secure way of course,

it was with accidents
and people dying.

Louis was impatient to
get the job done quickly.

Work went on day and night.

There was no health and
safety regime.

And the workers
who were most at risk

were the ones who
were working high up.

So, for instance, the roofers,
the carpenters.

We do know that there were a
lot of accidents on site.

WOMAN CRIES OUT

TRANSLATION:

There were times when the
death rate, the mortality rate,

was high, and in order not
to demoralise the workforce,

the corpses would be
removed at night.

Louis' mistress Madame De Montespan
was already married,

but that didn't stop her spending
most of her time with the King.

And he made sure
she got the VIP treatment.

She had a suite of 20 rooms whereas
the Queen had to make do with 11.

They were gorgeously appointed,
and he spent a lot of time in them.

They included a bathroom -
most unusual for the time,

in which apparently he and Madame
De Montespan spent many happy hours.

Despite her elevated status,

Montespan found it hard to share
Louis, even with his own wife.

TRANSLATION:

I don't think she was
really jealous of the Queen
because after all she had

everything of Louis'
real love, and she knew it.

But I think she made scenes
about the other mistresses,

when they came along
as the years passed.

And I think there are some men -
possibly Louis among them - who

rather like it if a woman is
jealous and shows signs of caring.

You know, she certainly
complained like mad if she felt

he was straying from what was in
fact an illegitimate relationship.

Louis kept a close eye
on the building works.

But one inspection visit
brought a nasty surprise.

A mother angry at the death
of her son, killed on site,

was waiting for him.

TRANSLATION:

We're told that she just let fly
at Louis XIV.

I mean, he was very surprised.
He said, "Is that me?"

This was a courageous thing for
this mother to have done, because

there were guards everywhere,

and of course as soon as she had
said this she was very quickly

hustled away for her punishment.

SHE CRIES OUT

TRANSLATION:

Le Notre's ambitious plans were
finally taking shape.

And Louis' dream of creating the
most spectacular palace in Europe

was slowly becoming a reality.

Louis' great gardener, his real gift

was for rearranging the landscape
basically and dividing it up on a

grid, and then you treat the units
within the grid essentially
as outdoor rooms.

And then you would bring in
all sorts of other people -

water engineers, sculptors,

architects, essentially
to furnish these rooms.

TRANSLATION:

The "envelope" around the old
hunting lodge was complete.

Louis' ministers were installed in
their new apartments, and the King

began governing from Versailles.

Now, Louis decided he would make
the palace his permanent home,

and insisted that leading French
nobles come and live there too.

TRANSLATION:

There's no question that
for Louis, the nobility,

particularly the court nobility, were
an essential aspect of his kingship.

They surrounded him
with glory and status.

This is a state
where the ultimate decider

on granting favour or refusing
favour is in the hands of the king.

If you were looking for
a military command, if you

were looking for favours for many of
your clients, supporters and family,

then the way to achieve this
was by getting access to Louis

and to a lesser extent by gaining
access to the ministers around Louis.

But housing all the nobles
would mean yet more building work.

Louis' finance minister
Jean-Baptiste Colbert

worried about the cost.

TRANSLATION:

Louis wanted the nobility at
Versailles in order that

he could keep an eye on them.

The message he wanted to give
to his nobles was this -

"You don't need
to rebel to get what you want.

"What you have to do is come
and pay your court to me."

TRANSLATION:

Original architect Louis Le Vau died
before his project was complete.

His replacement, Jules Mansart,
had ideas of his own.

Mansart had the great idea
to have big wings

each side of the "envelope",
to make some accommodation for

the princes and the court,
so it was a huge design,

and I think he had a greater idea

of what would be a
great palace for a great king.

TRANSLATION:

Mansart's most ambitious proposal

was to build a fabulous
gallery lined with mirrors.

However magnificent the plans,

Louis' experience with his
builders was a familiar one.

Everything took much longer and
cost far more than the estimates.

And they made a terrible mess.

Nothing is more false than these
gracious pictures of Versailles,

which shows this stately
place with everything perfect,
everybody gliding about.

Actually,
it was a huge building site.

All the court ladies
complained about it.

The workmen starting at 6am,
my dear, the dust

and the smell of wet plaster
which got into their hair.

It's exactly like today - exactly
like what we feel on a tiny scale

when our neighbours go building.

TRANSLATION:

Must have been an amazing sight.

I mean, the first day in
at Versailles.

Everybody starts jostling, jostling,
jostling for bigger rooms and

better rooms and a better position.

In meantime, the lesser folk, they
were trying to get down from the

attics, get better rooms, always to
get as near as possible to the King.

TRANSLATION:

At night, there was this
sort of great unrolling of

mattresses all over the palace,
as servants and soldiers, guards,

they'd go to sleep on the floor.

The lavatory arrangements were
pretty kind of basic.

Servants would think nothing
of relieving themselves

in the corridors of Versailles.

So you have this extraordinary
attention on outward appearances

and magnificent clothes, but
alongside you have all these smells.

I mean, you could have
been in a farmyard.

TRANSLATION:

I think many of the nobility
would have resented the chaos

and lack of order, and doubtless
complained about this at length.

But I think one shouldn't
underestimate the compulsive desire

of most of the great nobility
to attend at court

to be around the King.

Louis' desire for magnificence

extended to every aspect of his
life - especially his wardrobe.

He dressed in the finest cloth

and expected his courtiers
to do likewise.

And when his hair began to recede,

he adopted the fashion
for elaborate wigs.

A half inch of lace on a cuff,
a gold or a silver button,

whether your pearl was here
on your collar or here.

These could mean life and
death to the courtiers.

Fashion was hugely important and
it was a very important way for

the aristocracy to distinguish
themselves from the ordinary people.

Louis influenced
fashion to some extent.

When he was a young man he
dressed quite flamboyantly -

lots of cavalier
silks and laces and ribbons.

He was a bit on the short side,
so he introduced a fashion

for high-heeled shoes.
His mistresses perhaps

were more influential on fashion.

Madame De Montespan invented
various outfits including one,

the glorious deshabille, which was a
sort of a tunic worn over trousers,

and she invented this because
it was very easy to take off.

Normally a lady's dress required
two women to stand behind her to

undo all the strings, and of
course Louis was an impatient man,
he couldn't be bothered waiting.

So she invented this so that he
could undress her easily in private.

With so many courtiers now craving
his attention, Louis kept them busy

by turning his daily activities
into public rituals.

When he gets up in the morning,
that's the royal lever, with a

great queue of great nobles who hand
him different articles of clothing.

At night it's all reversed,
it's the royal coucher

and he takes things off
and gives them to nobles.

Great nobles would quarrel with one
another as to which of them had the

right to hand him his shirt,

because it had to be the person
of highest rank in the room.

They couldn't go off to
the country on their estates and

start raising armies, meddling. It
meant that they had to stay there,

quarrelling about whose turn it
was to give the King his napkin.

Even the King's mealtimes turned
into a performance, where the nobles

stood and watched the King eat,
waiting for him to speak to them.

One of the phenomena of Versailles
was the sight of leading nobles

adopting these
very deferential poses.

This was actually a very
powerful signal that the
monarchy was back in charge.

For the courtiers,
flattery became a way of life.

For instance, one courtier,
a great nobleman in his province,

Louis says to him,
"When is your wife's baby due?"

And this nobleman says,
"When your majesty wishes it."

LAUGHTER

As well as accommodating thousands
of courtiers and officials,

Versailles was also used by
the King to promote France itself.

There was a deliberate
intention to create a showcase

for French manufacturers
and to rival or outdo

Italy above all, which was the great
source of taste in the 17th century.

The magnificence of the interior -
of course, it was all about the

splendour of the monarchy and
the splendour of Louis XIV.

Louis personally loved rich
materials and fine craftsmanship.

But it was also a careful
orchestration of Louis XIV's -

France's - claim to lead Europe
in terms of taste and the arts.

As building progressed, Louis
commissioned hundreds of paintings,

sculptures and other decorations,
many containing images of himself

as the embodiment of French glory.

This was no accident.

If you compare Louis with
rulers before, it is remarkable
how he had professional advice.

So, he's not presenting
his image by himself.

There was a whole back-up team
of intellectuals, writers.

This is a real innovation, that
there should be a small committee

of people who are simply working
on how to present the king's image

in the most grand manner possible.

The great French painter Charles
Le Brun was recruited to the cause.

TRANSLATION:

Louis' image-makers liked art that
presented him as a conquering

hero - drawing on figures from
ancient mythology like Jupiter

and his favourite, Apollo.

The association with the image of
very powerful men of the past

were part of the strategy of being

the best king and the most powerful
and most important king of the time.

Louis' public image
may have included a fair amount
of 17th century hype.

But he was certainly
a remarkable man.

He goes hunting three times a day,
goes to council meetings

three times a day,
he's a very hard worker,

he makes love three times a day -

we must conclude the man
had amazing energies.

Louis' restless pursuit of
glory and magnificence

found expression
in the gardens of Versailles.

But even the King could not change
the geography of a region that was

critically short of running water to
power the hundreds of new fountains

that Le Notre had installed.

And so, when the King took a stroll,

his gardeners had to turn
the fountains on as he approached.

And then off again
once he had walked past.

TRANSLATION:

The problem of getting supplies of
fast running, high-pressure water

were never adequately solved.

Various attempts were made to
find alternative sources from

quite far away from Versailles.

The celebrated Machine of Marly was
a series of vast water wheels which

were intended to bring water up
from the Seine

and deliver it
to the Palace of Versailles.

This provided water
but not enough...

The great and
final scheme involved building a
full scale Roman-style aqueduct.

This was abandoned as being too
expensive and the result,

of course, was that the great
gardens of Versailles never

had enough water to drive all
the fountains simultaneously.

Fortunately, there was enough
glass to furnish the Palace's
most ambitious development,

the result of six
years' intense work.

This was Mansart and Le Brun's
most stunning achievement,

Versailles' Hall of Mirrors.

TRANSLATION:

I think the effect of
the gallery is more a dream.

A wonderful light
given by the mirrors.

And it's... I think it's very
impressive. And astonishing.

Versailles is undoubtedly
one of the great palaces.

Louis would have wanted us
to think of the chateau as

an integrated whole.

Not to focus on specific items,

whether the Hall of Mirrors
or the Great Canal.

And as an integrated unit it
completely outshines, I think,

almost every other palace ever
conceived or built.

TRANSLATION:

Louis said of his house,
"Versailles, c'est moi."

Louis was Versailles,
he was his house.

If we understand one,
we understand the other.

The King wishes to assert his
authority and maintain his position.

He has to do it through display.

Versailles is an ideal theatre
set on which he can act out

what he regards as his royal duties.

Versailles from this view point
fulfils those requirements

better than almost any other
building that could be imagined.

Louis' love affair with his palace

lasted longer than any
of his human relationships.

After 14 years, nine pregnancies
and seven children,

Montespan was beginning to lose her
looks and her hold on the king.

Madame de Montespan began
to fall out of favour because,

inevitably, after nine pregnancies,
her figure wasn't quite what it was.

She became rather blousy,
she drank too much,

she gambled too much,
she made a nuisance of herself with

her tantrums, and I think, as happens
to a lot of women, the more she felt

her man slipping away from her,

the more needy and clingy she became,

and the more needy and clingy she
became, the more she drove him away.

TRANSLATION:

But I think Louis was also
undergoing quite a significant
personal transformation.

He was becoming much more religious.

Madame de Montespan was
a married woman.

Committing adultery with an
unmarried woman was one thing,

but double adultery was sacrilege.

It was a tremendous scandal,

and he was becoming conscious of
the fact that his way of life was

really compromising the state
and compromising his kingship.

Louis turned to a
very different woman.

Madame de Maintenon - governess
to his illegitimate children.

Maintenon was pious,
quiet and intelligent.

Qualities that a middle-aged
Louis had come to admire.

Poor Madame de Maintenon
had to do everything.

She had to act as a cook,
plumber, gardener, as well as
a teacher and nursemaid.

It was exhausting,
and she did this so well that Louis
began to pay attention to her.

He noticed this, this intelligent
woman, this calm presence.

Slowly, slowly Madame de
Maintenon began to seduce the King.

Rejected mistress Montespan
was distraught.

TRANSLATION:

I think it was the rise of
Maintenon in the first place

which really riled her because
she found she'd made a mistake -

she'd underestimated another woman.

Maintenon was poor, and a widow

and innocuous and very
pleasant and intelligent.

And she didn't spot that Louis might
actually fall in love with a woman

like that, you know, and it might
be a very seductive thing to him,

in quite a different way
from her own seductive past.

And I think, for a couple of years
at least, she was extremely angry.

When Louis' long-suffering queen,
Marie Therese, died,

he was free to marry again.

And he turned to
the quiet governess.

She'd not only won his heart,

she'd convinced him she
could help save his soul.

17th century mentality -
it was very different.

The attention paid to salvation,
dying in a state of grace so you

didn't go to hell was enormous,
and Louis, who in some ways was

quite simple took this very, very,
seriously and I think Maintenon

persuaded him that she could
help him towards his salvation.

As Maintenon was a commoner,

the King could only marry her
behind closed doors.

He did need a secret church wedding,
a morganatic wedding,

as they're called, in the
presence of clergy and witnesses.

After that, he's all right with
God and the church - he can go to

communion, it's all perfectly OK.

And it's interesting that Louis
never declared the marriage

because she wasn't a princess.

He had his own values, that is,
he would have his private life,

but in public, he was solitary.

In public, Louis concentrated
on running his palace.

And his court life at Versailles
became ever more formalised.

I think the establishment of the full
court at Versailles really turned it

into the great social political
power broking centre of France.

Versailles was exciting, if you
thought like a French nobleman.

Because Louis XIV was your host.

You would spend the evening
in the physical presence of
the King of France.

You would be admitted to his
gaming table.

You would be invited to dance in
front of the King. Now, for nobles,

this was an enormously prestigious,
an enormously flattering thing.

The court of Versailles could be
seen as a cross, perhaps, between

Royal Ascot and the dealing floor
of a futures exchange.

A combination of a very

socially elite group who already know
each other and can interact with each

other and at the same time a group of
hardened professionals who have their

own language and their own codes.

Who know how to strike deals, and to
extract the best possible advantages

from a particular situation.

Versailles was the
original hotbed of scandal.

The phrase with which everyone began
their conversation was, "On dit" -

"it's being said." They're
saying this, they're saying that.

All day, these whispers of rumour
would travel about the palace

and people would send each other
little bulletins by sedan chair,

to report on what was going on in
the different rooms and that of

course made it a tremendously
claustrophobic place to live.

You couldn't do anything
without everybody knowing about it.

It was this extraordinary
networking centre.

Everyone who was anyone
in France, was now at Versailles,

so to be excluded was
disastrous for a French nobleman.

The worst thing that a courtier
could hear from the King

was, "He's a man I never see."

People would spend literally years

trying to hear one word or
have a gesture from the King.

With the nobility
now so dependent on him,

Louis could fully immerse himself
in the role he was born to play.

He emerges as this absolutely
consummate performer.

The whole regime at Versailles
hinged on your having this

extraordinarily charismatic figure
who could perform in all the right

ways for this enormous audience
which he had assembled around him.

GROANING

But Louis was only human.
And after years of good health,

he began to suffer from a serious
medical problem, an anal fistula.

TRANSLATION:

This was an extremely
serious condition in the context
of the 17th century.

The risk of it becoming gangrenous -
that the pus would seep into the rest

of the body and infect -
was very great indeed.

Untreated, it would almost
certainly have killed the King.

The only way that it was likely to be
cured was through invasive surgery.

Such surgery had had
a very poor success rate.

But Louis instructed his
doctors to go ahead.

His senior physician
devised a new instrument

especially for the operation.

The doctors involved in the operation

practised on a number of others
who had anal fistulas before hand.

But it was nonetheless
still a very risky operation.

In the 17th century,
the doctors were much more likely
to kill you than cure you.

Huge effort was made at Versailles
to keep the details of this secret

because it was felt so likely
that the King wouldn't survive,

that the diplomatic repercussions of
this would sweep through Europe.

TRANSLATION:

HE GASPS AND MURMURS

He was so stalwart during the
operation, he never spoke at all.

Imagine the pain, no anaesthetic.

This extraordinary
self control he had,

he just gritted his teeth
and conducted himself
with great dignity.

And that night,
he took a counsel meeting.

Extraordinary, very pale with a sort
of sheen of sweat, but he made it.

Louis recovered his health,
but other troubles were looming.

His fame and success had
earned him many enemies.

Two years after his operation,

France began a costly war against
Spain, England and Sweden.

As the fighting dragged on,
some of Versailles' silver was

quietly removed and melted down
to pay the King's soldiers.

Unable to win the war, Louis signed
an unfavourable peace treaty,

conceding territory to his enemies.

The Sun King was finally in decline
and, although he continued to make

small improvements to
his great palace,

he lost much of his enthusiasm.

TRANSLATION:

After just four years of peace,
a new crisis threatened.

The Spanish king died, leaving
his empire to Louis' grandson.

If Louis accepted on the boy's
behalf, he knew the other European
powers would try to stop him.

But if he refused,
the territories would go to
France's rivals in Austria.

He was in an impossible situation.

Louis was damned if he did,
damned if he didn't.

Faced with an issue which concerns
the honour of his dynasty,

it's perhaps not surprising
that he opts for the acceptance
of the Spanish offer.

But inevitably, therefore,
provokes war with the other
major European powers.

This, the most gruelling
war of Louis' reign,

lasted for 12 years and brought
France to the brink of ruin.

As Louis grew old and frail, he fell
ever more under the influence of his

devout wife, and now shunned
the lavish amusements

that had once filled
his beloved palace.

I think Versailles became a chilly,
tedious place in many respects once

de Maintenon got Louis into her grip.

It became this sort of
rather dreary world

where whatever the King of France
was doing, you could set your

watch by - you could look at a
clock at any hour of the day and

know exactly where Louis was, and his
whole life became this, this endless

choreography of etiquette and ritual,
with Madame de Maintenon sitting

there in the corner like some sort
of holy spider watching it all.

TRANSLATION:

Maintenon was a comfort to
Louis when he needed it the most.

Illness took the life of many
members of his family, including

a son and grandson, and he was
haunted by the legacy of his wars.

I think Louis was a tragic figure
in his final days.

I think the tragedy began
with the sudden deaths of so many
of his nearest and dearest.

Louis had Maintenon by his side, but
she said about him that sometimes he

would be alone with her,
he'd shut the doors

and then he would just weep
about the way things had gone.

I think it was a
very sad old age, you know,

outliving his descendents, and
having led France into these wars,

which seemed wonderful when
he was winning them and became
ghastly when he wasn't.

Aged 76, and after 72 years
on the throne,

Louis was once
again taken seriously ill.

TRANSLATION:

No-one expected Louis XIV to
live as long as he did.

When Louis finally weakens in
the last year of his life,

it's the result of a gangrenous
infection which gradually spreads

from his leg to the rest
of the left side of his body.

Even Louis' own death
became a public performance.

TRANSLATION:

In spite of their long intimacy,

Maintenon wasn't actually at
the King's side when he died.

That was not the practice.

By her own wish she went off to a

convent to be among ladies who would
sucker her and sympathise with her,

leaving him to priest
and, ultimately, to God.

He died rather slowly, and so
she came back once I think, twice,

to be with him again.

But ultimately,
it was time for her to go.

The heir to the throne
was a really tiny child,

a little five-year-old boy,
and he's brought in to see his

grandfather,
and his grandfather sort of

tells him to be a good king but
says, "I have loved war too much."

Very sad dying words from Louis XIV,
certainly true.

TRANSLATION:

Throughout his long reign,

Louis sought to bring glory
to himself and his country.

That lifelong devotion,
expressed in the extraordinary

palace he built at Versailles,

is the reason he's become part
of the very essence of France.

He didn't just leave
glorious monuments, beautiful

buildings, fabulous paintings,

he left a sense of identity
which has endured until today.

Louis certainly embodies, I think,
the idea of the greatness of France.

He was the king
and you were the subject,

and there was never
any doubt about that.

He imposed his will on the world
so splendidly in every respect.

He wanted to impress everybody,
and I think he succeeded.

The scale of the vision
is breathtaking.

No-one did it like Louis.

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