The wily Italian was gone, and Louis XIV.

settled himself upon the throne which Richelieu had rendered so exalted and immovable.
Cardinal Mazarin had said of the young Louis that "there was enough in him to make four kings, and one honest man." His greatness consisted more in amplitude than in kind.

Nature made him in prodigal mood.

He was an average man of colossal proportions.

His ability, courage, dignity, industry, greed for power and possessions, were all on a magnificent scale, and so were his vanity, his loves, his cruelties, his pleasures, his triumphs, and his disappointments.
No king more wickedly oppressed France, and none made her more glorious.