Despite his rakish youth, Louis XIV proved a hardworking king. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday he presided at a council meeting in which he and a select group of ministers formulated policies that affected the lives of his 20 million subjects. Louis developed two effective new instruments of power: a corps of professional diplomats and a standing, uniformed army. After 1682 the king spent most of his time at Versailles, near Paris, where he had built a magnificent palace that became the showplace of Europe. In foreign affairs, Louis's consistent aim was to glorify France, to gird its defenses on the northern and eastern frontiers, and to prevent any resurgence of the power of the Habsburg dynasty, which had formerly threatened France on two sides by its control over Spain and Germany. In four wars he displayed before all of Europe his prowess as a military leader. In 1667, claiming his wife's right of inheritance (jus devolutionis), Louis invaded the Spanish Netherlands. His quick victories prompted England, Holland, and Sweden to check France and force the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle (1668). Louis gained 12 fortresses in Flanders and soon isolated the Dutch by buying English and Swedish neutrality. In 1672 he hurled an army against Holland. For six years the Dutch, aided by Spain and Austria, staved off French attacks. The treaties signed at Nijmegen (1678) did not dismantle Holland but gave Louis the Franche-Comté region and more forts in Flanders.

While his armies were battling Dutch Protestants, Louis had been denying religious liberty to the Protestants (Huguenots) of France and tightening control over his Roman Catholic clergy. In 1685, determined to force conversion of the Huguenots, he revoked their charter of liberties, the Edict of Nantes, forcing more than 200,000 into exile and igniting the Camisards' revolt. Although applauded by his Roman Catholic subjects, the revocation stiffened resistance to Louis in Protestant Europe. Overconfident and ill-advised, he sent an army into the Rhineland in 1688 to claim the Palatinate for his sister-in-law Elizabeth Charlotte of Bavaria. This War of the League of Augsburg (1688-97) revealed serious deficiencies in Louis's army. Despite the devastation of the Rhineland, the Peace of Ryswick (1697) did not improve French defenses or add to the glory of the monarchy.

Louis's last military venture, the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-13), stemmed from his acceptance of the Spanish throne on behalf of his grandson, Philip. Louis's armies, opposed by an alliance of the European powers, lost most of the major battles, but won control of Spain. The Treaty of Utrecht (1713), which awarded several French territories in North America to the British, also recognized Philip as king of Spain. Louis ruled a war-weary France until his health broke in 1715. Suffering from fever and gangrene, he mustered enough strength to say, "I depart, France remains," before dying on September 1, 1715, at Versailles.