Louis XIV ( ruled as King of France and of Navarre from May 14, 1643 until his death just prior to his seventy-seventh birthday. He acceded to the throne a few months before his fifth birthday, but did not assume actual personal control of the government until the death of his First Minister , Jules Cardinal Mazarin, in 1661. The reign of Louis XIV, known as The Sun King or as Louis the Great (in French Louis le Grand, or simply Le Grand Monarque, "the Great Monarch") spanned seventy-two years, the longest reign of any major European monarch. Louis XIV increased the power and influence of France in Europe, fighting three major wars, the Franco-Dutch War, the War of the League of Augsburg , and the War of the Spanish Succession, and two minor conflicts, the War of Devolution , and the War of the Reunions.