12.1.5 to 12.1.6

Millions more were spent by Louis in building the beautiful palace at Versailles, near Paris, and in maintaining his brilliant court. There, etiquette became the "real constitution of France." It required seven persons, some of them the highest princes of the realm, to put the king's shirt on him at his getting up (levée )in the morning. A French historian says of Louis XIV: "He was a god in his temple, celebrating his own worship in the midst of his host of priests and faithful." This extravagance of the court meant a heavy burden of taxation for the common people, who were thereby reduced to a misery so great that they eventually rose up in rebellion and drove the Bourbons from the throne. Louis XIV had the distinction of ruling longer than any other European king: it was 72 years from the time when he ascended the throne, as a child of less than 5, until his death in 1715. The Grand Monarch, who had outlived both his son and his son's son, was succeeded by his 5-year-old great-grandson, Louis XV, the last son of the duke of Burgundy. (Encyclopaedia Britannica Student Article)