Through most of the seventeenth century the French court had no fixed home, following the monarch to his numerous residences. In 1682 Louis moved his court and government to the newly renovated palace at Versailles, in the countryside southwest of Paris. The palace quickly became the center of political, social, and cultural life. The king required all great nobles to spend at least part of the year in attendance on him there. Since he controlled the distribution of state power and wealth, nobles had no choice but to obey and compete with each other for his favor at Versailles.

Elaborate formal gardens were a crucial component of the palace. The themes of the sculptures in the Versailles gardens hailed Louis’s power, with images of Apollo, the Roman sun god, and Neptune, the sea god, making frequent appearances. The rational orderliness and symmetry of the gardens showed that Louis’s force extended even to nature, while its terraces and waterworks served as showcases for the latest techniques in military and civil engineering. Exotic plants and elaborate designs testified to the sovereign’s global trading networks and cultivated taste.

Louis further revolutionized court life by establishing an elaborate set of etiquette rituals to mark every moment of his day, from waking up and dressing in the morning to removing his clothing and retiring at night. These rituals may seem absurd, but they were far from meaningless or trivial. The king controlled immense resources and privileges; access to him meant favored treatment for government offices, military and religious posts, state pensions, honorary titles, and a host of other benefits.

Courtiers sought these rewards for themselves and their family members and followers. A system of patronage — in which a higher-ranked individual protected a lower-ranked one in return for loyalty and services — flowed from the court to the provinces. Through this mechanism Louis gained cooperation from powerful nobles. Although they were denied public offices and posts, women played a central role in the patronage system. At court the king’s wife, mistresses, and other female relatives recommended individuals for honors, advocated policy decisions, and brokered alliances between noble factions.

With Versailles as the center of European politics, French culture grew in international prestige. French became the language of polite society and international diplomacy, gradually replacing Latin as the language of scholarship and learning. The royal courts of Sweden, Russia, Poland, and Germany all spoke French. France inspired a cosmopolitan European culture in the late seventeenth century that looked to Versailles as its center.

Louis’s rival European monarchs soon followed his example, and palace building became a Europe-wide phenomenon. In 1693 Charles XI of Sweden, having reduced the power of the aristocracy, ordered the construction of his Royal Palace, which dominates the center of Stockholm to this day. Another such palace was Schönbrunn, an enormous Viennese Versailles begun in 1695 by Emperor Leopold to celebrate Austrian military victories and Habsburg might. As Frederick the Great of Prussia noted, every descendant of a princely family “imagines himself to be something like Louis XIV. He builds his Versailles, has his mistresses, and maintains his army.”6