ABSTRACT
This chapter demonstrates how the changes in royal festivals over the first decade of the Sun King's personal reign depended upon certain structural reorganizations and, upon a reorganization of the methods of financing them. The content of the festivals, the spectacles, the artists and writers involved in them, are all well known. However, far less attention has been paid to the material organization and to the financing of these festivals. State ceremonies which were predicated upon an encounter between the king and his subjects were usually a gift made by the subjects to the king. During the first half of Louis XIV's reign, court festivals were particularly spectacular. The celebrations organized to mark the marriage of Louis XIV and Maria-Teresa was paid for by the French people. The powerful and complex system of administration known as the Menus Plaisirs was perfected by Colbert in the first years of the reign of Louis XIV.
