Henry IV, king of Gascony, became king of France after the murder of the last Valois in 1589. The Bourbon rulers who followed, including Louis XIV, the Sun King, and Louis XV, presided over a period when France was the leading military power in Europe and when its arts was dominant. Louis XIV's palace of Versailles epitomised classical French culture and celebrated the power of its creator. Frances autocratic government, under which the nobility were largely exempt from taxation, led in the eighteenth century to increasingly severe political and financial strains. The French Revolution of 1789 brought about the fall of the Bourbon monarchy and to the execution of Louis XVI and his wife, Marie-Antoinette. In exile under Napoleon, the Bourbons returned to power for fifteen years after 1815, but never fully re-established their authority.
