Royal procession passing the Pont-
Neuf under Louis XIV
Alternatively, Louis's critics attribute the social upheaval culminating in the French Revolution to his failure to reform French
institutions while the monarchy was still secure. Other scholars counter that there was little reason to reform institutions that
largely worked well under Louis. They also maintain that events occurring almost 80 years after his death were not reasonably
foreseeable to Louis and that in any case, his successors had sufficient time to initiate reforms of their own.[135]
Louis has often been criticised for his vanity. The memoirist Saint-Simon, who claimed
that Louis slighted him, criticised him thus:
There was nothing he liked so much as flattery, or, to put it more plainly,
adulation; the coarser and clumsier it was, the more he relished it.
For his part, Voltaire saw Louis's vanity as the cause for his bellicosity:
It is certain that he passionately wanted glory, rather than the conquests
themselves. In the acquisition of Alsace and half of Flanders, and of all of
Franche-Comté, what he really liked was the name he made for himself.[136]
Nonetheless, Louis has also received praise. The anti-Bourbon Napoleon described him not only as "a great king", but also as "the
only King of France worthy of the name".[137] Leibniz, the German Protestant philosopher, commended him as "one of the
greatest kings that ever was".[138] And Lord Acton admired him as "by far the ablest man who was born in modern times on the
steps of a throne".[139] The historian and philosopher Voltaire wrote: "His name can never be pronounced without respect and
without summoning the image of an eternally memorable age".[140] Voltaire's history, The Age of Louis XIV, named Louis's reign
as not only one of the four great ages in which reason and culture flourished, but the greatest ever.[141][142]
Numerous quotes have been attributed to Louis XIV by legend.
The well-known "I am the state" ("L'État, c'est moi.") was reported from at least the late 18th century.[143] It was widely repeated
but also denounced as apocryphal by the early 19th century.[144][b][145]
Quotes