The Final Days of Louis XIV

0:02 The King opens his eyes and the world rushes to serve.

0:06 Dozens of hands move in perfect rhythm, layering him like a cake.

0:10 Scented cloths are rubbed, gold-laced silk wrapped and lace cuffs fastened.

0:16 Then velvet drops and curls are locked onto the towering wig.

0:20 Finally, the red-heeled shoes are slid

0:23 on as the sweet and heavy perfume settles.

0:26 The bedroom fills with hundreds more people,

0:29 all eyes drawn to his burning presence:

0:32 Louis XIV, the Sun King, the OG of absolute rulers.

0:38 His existence is scripted without intermission.

0:40 A calendar and a watch are all it

0:43 takes to know his every move throughout the day.

0:46 Louis XIV wields power over millions.

0:49 But he is trapped by his own supremacy.

0:52 A force that will tear his body apart and torture him with unimaginable pain.

1:01 The Theater of Absolute Power It’s 1682 and the king

1:07 has finally moved into Versailles, his permanent home.

1:10 More than twenty years in the making,

1:12 this extension was among Louis’ first royal projects.

1:15 It’s still unfinished but it already

1:18 outshines every royal estate, past and future.

1:20 Its grounds could fit more than 40,000 tennis courts.

1:24 And it isn’t just a palace but a trap wrapped in gold.

1:29 Beyond the royal family and servants,

1:31 some 5,000 nobles from every corner of France live here.

1:35 Far from home, they have no power and that only makes Louis stronger.

1:40 In return, he gives them glittering titles,

1:42 tax breaks and the illusion that they matter.

1:45 Nearly one-fifth of the nation’s government spendings flows into Versailles

1:49 to keep the king’s friends close and enemies closer.

1:54 He starts the day with a breakfast and a bowel movement.

1:58 Doctors inspect the royal poop while he heads to mass.

2:03 Drums and fifes mark his entrance as the choir starts to sing.

2:07 The music changes daily, a personal playlist composed just for him.

2:12 God may reside in heaven, but here, Louis is His lieutenant.

2:18 And duty calls.

2:20 By eleven, he is back in his quarters,

2:22 buried in letters, finance and strategy with his ministers.

2:26 The kingdom flows through his hands.

2:28 The Sun King knows the status of every fortress

2:31 and troop- and not just because he has to.

2:34 He loves war, it’s his favorite kind of glory.

2:37 The goal is unapologetic:

2:39 French territory everywhere with his colonies stretching across the globe.

2:44 Just like Kangxi, the Quing emperor, Louis is obsessed with grandeur.

2:50 Yesterday, a ship of Chinese porcelain arrived, so he sends back a cannon.

2:55 The afternoon continues with more diplomacy.

2:57 Siamese envoys who've travelled for two years, finally show up.

3:02 Their jaws drop as the king greets them

3:05 draped in a coat completely encrusted in diamonds.

3:09 He showers them with gifts worth around 2 million dollars today,

3:13 a small price for the publicity this spectacle will bring.

3:16 All that work has Louis starving.

3:19 His orchestra performs as hundreds of eyes track each bite of his royal mukbang.

3:24 He couldn’t care less about cutlery

3:26 and loves devouring food with his bare hands.

3:29 And his appetite is perfectly matched by tonight’s obscene menu.

3:34 Soups and pigeons in gold-crusted pies.

3:38 Towers of chicken fricassées, partridges, tarts drenched in syrup.

3:42 The smell of perfume, candle wax, butter and wine give the palace a heady aroma.

3:49 But the real intoxication is not food.

3:52 It's extravaganza.

3:54 Tonight, 24,000 candles set the gardens ablaze.

3:58 Rockets trace the king’s initials in fire across the sky.

4:02 Courtiers brag about partying through the night

4:04 and sleeping through the day for weeks,

4:06 lost in powdered wigs and champagne laughter.

4:10 Louis’ ego thrives on this indulgent chaos.

4:14 But outside all the glitter and glam, the world looks quite different.

4:20 Beyond the Golden Walls Beyond Versailles,

4:24 Europe is a giant strategy game of paranoid kings.

4:28 France, the most populous kingdom, is leveling up fast.

4:32 This is freaking out Spain, the Holy Roman Empire, England, and the Dutch,

4:36 who all team up to stop Louis XIV from eating the map.

4:40 His ambition is to expand his realm to the natural borders of France:

4:44 the Rhine, the Alps, the Pyrenees.

4:47 He commissions over a hundred star-shaped

4:49 fortresses and strengthens the old ones,

4:52 wrapping France in defenses with 400,000

4:55 soldiers and 13,000 cannons standing ready.

4:58 Louis delights in joining his army on the battlefield:

5:01 during his 72-year reign he will engage in five major wars,

5:05 both on land and at sea.

5:08 Genoa, one of the wealthiest ports in Italy,

5:10 becomes the first European city to face

5:13 the terror of his bomb ketches’ explosive shells.

5:16 A ten day bombardment destroys half of the city.

5:20 The message is clear: resist French annexation and fire will rain from the sky.

5:26 Each conflict reshapes the map of Europe absorbing Belgium,

5:30 Lorraine, Alsace, Strasbourg into France.

5:33 The price of glory is brutal.

5:35 Even when the cannons fall silent,

5:37 the army eats more than half the kingdom’s money.

5:40 In wartime, the treasury bleeds dry and peasants

5:43 are squeezed with taxes until their pockets are empty.

5:46 The people grow angry,

5:48 riots erupt and the King answers with military crackdowns.

5:52 To bolster his image,

5:54 he funds newspapers that inflate his victories and downplay domestic problems.

5:59 He orders the construction of hospitals in Paris to care

6:02 for wounded soldiers and the poor who crowd the streets.

6:06 But the hospitals are filthy, designed less to heal than to confine.

6:10 Instead of curing, 17th century medicine is mostly just lessons in bearing pain.

6:15 And the Sun King will face that himself.

6:18 His glory doesn’t just demand tribute from his people.

6:21 It’s about to turn on him as well.

6:26 The Body Becomes a Battleground Before we close in on the Sunking,

6:31 let’s zoom out for a moment.

6:33 Absolute rulers know that knowledge is power,

6:35 and then just like now, this includes getting the full picture.

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7:29 And now back to the Sun King!

7:32 On the outside, he looks unstoppable, fighting, hunting, dancing, every day.

7:37 It's glamorous and absolutely exhausting.

7:41 But he knows that weakness is dangerous and the court can never see him crack.

7:46 So he hides sleepless nights and smiles through fevers and joint pains.

7:51 As he nears fifty, his body slows and stiffens.

7:55 Decades of gluttony and extravagance begin to take their toll:

7:59 his frame grows rounder and he’s increasingly suffering from toothaches.

8:04 With no anesthesia and only the dentist holding his head still,

8:08 the teeth are wrenched and pulled.

8:10 One of the roots snaps and Louis can hear

8:13 the bone crack as his mouth fills with blood.

8:16 At night he tries to dull the pain with wine but as he chugs,

8:20 it shoots up through his nostrils.

8:22 The dental work has opened a tunnel from the King’s upper jaw to his nose.

8:27 In a few days his mouth starts tasting of rot,

8:30 his breath reeks and people flinch when he speaks.

8:34 The doctors try to burn this hole shut, leaving Louis unable to eat for days.

8:39 And this nightmare was just a dress

8:42 rehearsal for the century’s most infamous surgery.

8:46 Months later, he develops a truly royal agony: a swollen lump near his anus.

8:52 The doctors try piercing it, burning it, injecting mysterious potions.

8:56 Nothing works and soon an open sore develops.

9:01 The last option is surgery.

9:03 The problem is that his chief surgeon

9:05 has never performed anything like this before.

9:08 Surgery, at this time, is just glorified butchery,

9:12 amputations and haircuts both done by barbers.

9:15 So the surgeon needs guinea pigs.

9:18 He practices on condemned prisoners, perfecting both his courage and his cuts.

9:24 Finally, it's the Sun King’s turn: As the blade slices into the infected flesh,

9:30 the King clasps the hand of his war minister and whispers “Mon Dieu” only twice.

9:37 Three hours later, it's over.

9:39 And though the operation was done in secret,

9:42 a new fashion sweeps the court: Bandages wrapped around everyone’s buttocks.

9:47 Louis smiles but he knows deep down:

9:50 he survived not thanks to his doctors, but despite them.

9:57 The Age of Gory The 17th century is Europe’s medical

10:01 twilight zone and probably the worst time to get sick.

10:05 Doctors will blame everything on your blood.

10:07 So for a thousand years,

10:09 the go-to cure has been to cut a vein and let the sickness flow out.

10:13 Bleed between the eyebrows for headaches,

10:15 cut under the tongue for a sore throat and if a woman’s periods are irregular,

10:19 well, better get out the knife again.

10:22 By the mid-1600s, blood circulation is discovered and the invention

10:25 of the microscope unveils a hidden universe of microorganisms,

10:29 pulling medicine out of the dark ages.

10:32 But this progress doesn’t help sick people much.

10:35 Doctors still use ancient treatments that can kill you faster than smallpox.

10:40 Ironically, no one suffers more from outdated medicine

10:43 than the most powerful man in the kingdom.

10:45 By the turn of the century, the Sun King is in his early sixties,

10:49 a miraculous age most people never make it to.

10:52 He launches his longest and most expensive war for the Spanish throne but gout,

10:58 arthritis and rheumatism keep him off the battlefield.

11:02 Now, his main enemy is himself.

11:05 The doctors do their usual bleedings and colonic cleanses but nothing helps.

11:10 With all his teeth gone, royal feasts are just a memory.

11:14 All he wants now is to secure his dynasty

11:17 but a wave of measles tears through the royal family,

11:20 killing his son, his grandson and almost every other heir to his throne.

11:26 They all receive the same treatment of bloodletting and laxatives.

11:30 Still, death claims everyone around Louis.

11:34 He is somehow spared– but not forever.

11:41 The Final Performance It begins with a chill running through his bones

11:47 on a summer day when everyone else complains about the heat.

11:51 With a sharp pain in his left leg, a black spot begins to bloom on the skin.

11:56 It’s gangrene, his flesh starving for blood.

11:59 The rot crawls upward, his flesh consuming itself and turning black.

12:03 The sickly stench overpowers the incense in his bedroom.

12:07 The blood the doctors draw is thick and dark.

12:10 Even donkey milk, praised for its healing powers, doesn’t help.

12:14 The nights drag on and nothing quenches his terrible thirst.

12:19 He tries to keep working but ministers can see death in his eyes.

12:24 He faces it the way he faced everything else, as theater.

12:28 He summons his five-year-old great-grandson, the future Louis XV and tells him:

12:32 "Try to remain at peace with your neighbours.

12:35 I loved war too much.

12:37 Do not follow me in that." Over the next few days,

12:42 he says farewells to ministers, courtiers and princes.

12:45 “I am leaving but the State will always remain.”

12:48 he says before he goes out like a candle.

12:55 The Afterglow The last few decades of Louis

13:00 XIV life were a complete medical nightmare, but still:

13:03 for 72 years, longer than any other ruler,

13:06 he embodied the idea that one man could be the state.

13:10 But the system he built was too costly and way

13:13 too dependent on one megalomaniac trapped in a body with limits.

13:17 Once reliable like clockwork and the source of his power,

13:21 his robust physique started to fail.

13:24 While he endured the brutal medical treatments of the time,

13:27 the perfect image he demanded of himself began to fall

13:30 apart until the Sun king was only a suffering toothless man.

13:36 But the dream of Versailles refuses to end.

13:39 Frederick the Great of Prussia and Ludwig II of Bavaria went full fanboys,

13:44 building their own glittering replicas of this fantasy.

13:47 Even today, some leaders chase that same mix of ambition and ego,

13:52 surrounding themselves with gold and spectacle to prove they’re godlike.

13:57 Their palaces are the afterglow of a desire for absolute power.

14:01 But their human bodies still mark the limit of their influence.