''L'État, c'est moi'' (, ) is an apocryphal saying attributed to

King King is a royal title given to a male monarch. A king is an Absolute monarchy, absolute monarch if he holds unrestricted Government, governmental power or exercises full sovereignty over a nation. Conversely, he is a Constitutional monarchy, ...

Louis XIV LouisXIV (Louis-Dieudonné; 5 September 16381 September 1715), also known as Louis the Great () or the Sun King (), was King of France from 1643 until his death in 1715. His verified reign of 72 years and 110 days is the List of longest-reign ...

. It was allegedly said on before the

Parlement of Paris The ''Parlement'' of Paris () was the oldest ''parlement'' in the Kingdom of France, formed in the 14th century. Parlements were judicial, rather than legislative, bodies and were composed of magistrates. Though not representative bodies in the p ...

. It is supposed to assert the primacy of the royal authority in a context of defiance with the Parliament, which contests royal edicts taken in ''

lit de justice In France under the Ancien Régime, the ''lit de justice'' (, "bed of justice") was a particular formal session of the Parlement of Paris, under the presidency of the King of France, for the compulsory registration of the royal edicts and to im ...

'' on 20 March 1655. The phrase symbolizes absolute monarchy and absolutism.

Historicity

Nevertheless, historians contest that this sentence, which does not appear in the registers of the parliament, was really said by Louis XIV, especially since on his deathbed, Louis XIV pronounced a sentence, attested, seemingly contradictory: "I die, but the state will always remain." The origin of the phrase is attributed to

Pierre-Édouard Lémontey Pierre-Édouard Lémontey (14 January 1762, Lyon – 26 June 1826, Paris) was a French lawyer, politician, scholar, and historian. Life Lémontey was born in Lyon and became a barrister. On the convocation of the États généraux, he was not ...

in his ("Essay on the Monarchical Establishment of Louis XIV and on the Alterations He Experienced During the Life of that Prince") (1818), who writes: "The

Koran The Quran, also Romanization, romanized Qur'an or Koran, is the central religious text of Islam, believed by Muslims to be a Waḥy, revelation directly from God in Islam, God (''Allah, Allāh''). It is organized in 114 chapters (, ) which ...

of France was contained in four syllables and Louis XIV pronounced them one day: "L'État, c'est moi!". As Olivier Chaline and Edmond Dziembowski point out, "if the forger is well forgotten today, his invention has not finished being used...".''in'' Michel Figeac (dir), ''État, pouvoirs et contestations dans les monarchies française et britannique et dans leurs colonies américaines (vers 1640-vers 1780)'',

Armand Colin Armand Colin is a French publishing house founded in 1870 by Auguste Armand Colin. It specializes in publishing works concerning human sciences, economics and education. Among its best-known publications are the "U" collection begun in 1968, and ...

, 2018, p. 8

References

Bibliography

* 1655 in France French political catchphrases Louis XIV Political quotes Misquotations 17th-century neologisms 17th-century quotations {{italics title