From Louis XIV to Napoleon

Much of the period 1661-1815 appeared to be the age of France. France was the greatest power in Western Europe in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and Louis XIV and Napoleon seemed to dominate their periods.yet when Louis XIV died in 1715, and again after Napoleon's attempt to resume power was defeated at Waterloo a century later, France appeared as a waning power. This failure in Europe was matched on the world scale. France was overtaken by Britain in the struggle for maritime pre