Ml 



LOUIS XV. 



LOUIS XVI. 



913 



August 1715, and died the 1st of the following September, seventy- 

 seven years of age. 



After divesting the character of Louis XIV. of the exaggerated 

 praise bestowed oil him by flattery or national vanity, after animad- 

 verting upon his numerous faults, and even crimes, it must be fairly 

 acknowledged that he was a remarkable prince, and had many valu- 

 able qualities. He was active, intelligent, and regular in business ; 

 quick in discovering the abilities of others, an able administrator 

 himself, endowed with a constant equanimity in adversity as well 

 as prosperity, and a perfect self-command ; a kiud master, he was 

 not prone to change his servants capriciously, was not harsh in 

 rebuking them, and was ever ready to encourage merit, and praise 

 and reward zeal for his service. Hence he had many faithful and 

 dcroted servants. His manner was noble, and his appearance impo- 

 sing ; he acted the king, but he acted it admirably, at least to the 

 then taste of the people ; he had a lively sense of decorum and 

 outward propriety, which never forsook him. What he knew he 

 learnt by himself : his natural gifts and the experience of his youth, 

 pawed among civil wars, made up for his want of learning and of 

 study. If he carried his notions of absolutism to an extreme, he 

 was evidently persuaded of his supposed right, and acted as much 

 from a sense of duty as from inclination. In his reign of seventy- 

 two years he reared the fabric of the absolute monarchy in France, 

 which continued for seventy-two years more after his death; and 

 when it was shaken to pieces in the storms of the Revolution, still 

 the ruling principles of his administration, uniformity and centralisa- 

 tion, survived the wreck, and France is still governed by them. 



LOUIS XV., born in February 1710, was the only surviving son of 

 the Due da Bourgo;ne, eldest son of Louis the Dauphin, son of 

 Louis XIV. The dauphin died in 1711, and his son the Due de Bour- 

 gogne died in 1712. The younger brother of the Due de Bourgogne 

 was Philip, duke of Anjou, afterwards Philip V. of Spain, who, except 

 his nephew LouU XV., was the only legitimate descendant of 

 Louis XIV. who survived that king. The mother of Louis XV. was 

 Maria Adelaide of Savoy, who died in 1712. Philippe d'Orldans, sou 

 of Philippe de France, brother of Louis XIV., and the head of 

 the actual Orleans branch of the Bourbons, was appointed regent. 

 Louis XIV. had by his will appointed a council of regency, at the 

 head of which was the Due d'Orleans, but the parliament of Paris 

 acknowledged the duke as sole regent. In gratitude the regent issued 

 on the 15th of September a declaration, in the name of the king, 

 restoring to the parliament the right of making remonstrances on the 

 royal edicts, letters patent, and declarations, before it registered 

 them. 



The Due d'Orl<5ans had acquired an unfavourable reputation as a 

 man of licentious habits, and as destitute of religious and moral 

 principles. Thia corruption was partly ascribed to the Abbe* Dubois, 

 an unprincipled man, who had been Ms preceptor, contiuued to be his 

 favourite, and was afterwards his minister. Vicious as the duke was, 

 he was accused of crimes of which he was guiltless. The sudden 

 death of the children and grandchildren of Louis XIV. at short 

 intervals from each other had giveu rise to horrible suspicions, which 

 have been since generally rejected. The 'Me'moires de St Simon,' 

 already quoted, which include the period of the regency, contain the 

 most correct sketch of the character of the Due d'Orlcans, a character 

 not rightly understood till the publicatiou of that work. 



The regent began well : he reformed several of the most outrageous 

 abuses of the late reign ; ho liberated a number of individuals who 

 had been for years immured in the Bastille ; he enforced economy, 

 reduced the army, supported the general peace of Europe, courted the 

 friendship of England, concluded the triple alliance of the Hague in 

 1717, between France, England and Holland, and gave up altogether 

 the cause of the Pretender. Unfortunately for him and for France, 

 the disorder in which he found the finances, and the fearful deficiency 

 in the revenue, made him listen to the wild schemes of Law, which 

 ended in disappointment and the ruin of thousands of families. 

 [LAW, JOHN.] 



Philip V. of Spain, or rather his minister Alberoni, had encouraged 

 a conspiracy against the Due d'Orleans, the object of which was to 

 excite a revolution against him, to deprive him of the regency by a 

 resolution of the three estates of the kingdom, and to place Philip 

 himself at the head of the regency. The plot was discovered, several 

 of the leaders, who were chiefly in Brittany, were punished by death, 

 and in 1719 the regent declared war against Spain. The war however 

 did not last long : Alberoni was dismissed and banished by his sove- 

 reign, and Philip of Spain made peace with France in 1720. [ALBE- 

 BOM.] In 1722 Dubois, who had been made a cardinal, became prime 

 minister of France. 



In February 1723, Louis XV., having completed his fourteenth year, 

 was declared of age, and the regency of the Due d'Orlcans terminated. 

 The same year Dubois died, and was followed to the grave by the Duo 

 d'Orleans a few mouths after. The Due de Bourbon, Condr, was 

 made prime minister, and governed France until 1726. It was pro- 

 posed to marry Louis XV. to Mademoiselle de Sens, the duke's sister ; 

 but she refused, and preferred a life of retirement to a throne. Louis 

 married in 1725 Maria Leczinska, daughter of Stanislaus, ex-king of 

 Poland, and in the following year the Due de Bourbon was dismissed 

 Irom the ministry, and the Abb<5 de Flcury, the king's preceptor, and 



afterwards cardinal, was substituted for him. The seventeen years of 

 Fleury's administration, which ended with his death in 1743, were the 

 best period of the reign of Louis. [FLEURY, ANDRE HHRCCLES.] 

 Fleury restored order in the finances, and credit and commerce 

 revived. In 1733 the war of the Polish succession broke out, by the 

 death of King Augustus II., when Louis XV. took the part of his 

 father-in-law Stanislaus, the old rival of Augustus, against Austria and 

 Russia, who supported the son of Augustus. [AUGUSTUS.] 



The war was carried on between France and Austria both on the 

 Rhine and in Italy. In the latter country the French, being joined 

 by the Spaniards and the King of Sardinia, obtained great success. 

 Don Carlos, sou of Philip V., conquered the kingdom of Naples and 

 Sicily, and thus a third Bourbon dynasty was founded in Europe. 

 Peace was made in 1736, by which the duchy of Lorraine was given 

 to Stanislaus for his life, to be united after his death to the crown of 

 France. Francis, duke of Lorraine, had Tuscany in exchange. In 

 1741 the war of the Austrian succession broke out, in which France 

 took part, against the advice of Fleury, who was overruled by the king 

 and the courtiers. In 1743 Fleury died, and Louis declared that he 

 would govern by himself, and without any prime minister. The war 

 continued till 1748, when it was terminated by the treaty of Aix-la- 

 Chapelle. France derived no advantage from this murderous and 

 expensive war, and Maria Theresa remained in possession of her 

 father's dominions. Louis XV. was present at the battle of Fonteuoi, 

 in May 1745, between the English, commanded by the Duke of 

 Cumberland, and the French, commanded by Marshal de Saxe, in 

 which both armies fought with the greatest obstinacy and suffered 

 most severely ; the French however claimed the victory. 



In 1755 hostilities were begun by the English against the French 

 in America, in consequence of disputes concerning the boundary-line 

 between Canada and the English settlements. In the following year 

 war was formally declared between the two powers. This war con- 

 nected itself with the war in Europe called the Seven Years' War. 

 The English were the allies of Frederick of Prussia, whilst the French 

 joined the Empress Maria Theresa. This war proved most unfortunate 

 to France. The French were beaten at liosbach by Frederick in 1757, 

 and were again defeated at Mindeu by the Duke Ferdinand of Bruns- 

 wick, with the loss of 8000 men, cannon, baggage, military chest, &c. 

 In America they lost Canada. A project of invasion of Englaud by 

 means of 6000 flat-bottomed boats, by which landings were to be 

 effected on various points of the coast, was revealed to the English 

 ministry by an Irishman called Macallister, and was abandoned. At 

 last by the peace of Paris, February 1763, France formally ceded 

 Canada, Nova Scotia, and its other North American colonies, besides 

 Grenada, Dominica, and Tobago in the West Indies ; its navy never 

 after recovered from its losses, its finances were exhausted, and its 

 commerce destroyed. This was the last war of Louis XV., a war 

 which was undertaken rashly, and terminated in a disastrous and 

 humiliating manner. The feeling of disgrace resulting from it sunk 

 deeply into the heart of a people so vain and sensitive as the French, 

 and it completely did away with the former popularity of Louis, which 

 had once obtained him the title of ' BienaiineV or Beloved. The king 

 had now abandoned himself to gross licentiousness, and had become 

 careless of state affairs. The mad attempt of Damiens made him still 

 more alienated from his people. [D AMIENS, R. F.J After the death 

 of his mistress, the Marchioness of Pompadour, an ambitious intriguing 

 woman, but who had still some elevation of mind, he became attached 

 to more vulgar women [BARRT, MARIE JEANNE], and at last formed a 

 regular harem after the fashion of the eastern sultans, but more odious 

 from its contrast with European manners, which was called the Pare 

 aux Cerfs, and upon which vast sums were squandered. The minister 

 of foreign affairs, Choiseul, who had remonstrated with the king upon 

 his degradation, was dismissed in 1770. He was the last man of some 

 merit who served Louis XV. [CHOISEUL, ETIENNE FRANC.OIS, Duo DE.] 

 The state of the nuances was the most obvious difficulty of ministers, 

 to whose remonstrances, urged sometimes in a tone of appalling and 

 ominous seriousness, Louis used to answer, " Try to make things go 

 on as long as I am to live ; after my death it will be as it may." 



Louis died at Versailles, on the 10th of May 1774, sixty four years 

 of age. Two sons whom he had had by his wife were both dead : the 

 eldest, the dauphin, died in 1765, and left by his wife, a Saxon princess, 

 three sons, who have been in succession kings of France, namely, 

 Louis XVI., Louis XVIII., and Charles X. Louis XV. had also by his 

 wife several daughters, besides illegitimate children. 



It was under Louis XV. that the corruption of morals and principles 

 spread iu France to an alarming extent among all classes, being 

 encouraged by the materialism and sensual philosophy which were 

 taught by several men of letters. Both these causes, added to the 

 general poverty, national humiliation, and ruined finances, prepared 

 the way for the explosion which took place under his unfortunate 

 successor. 



(Uicretelle ; Fantin des Odoards ; Voltaire, Vie Privee de Louis XV.) 



LUUIS XVI., grandson of Louis XV., succeeded him in 1774, being 

 then twenty years of age. He had married iu 1770 Marie Antoinette, 

 archduchess of Austria, sister of Joseph II. He chose for his minister 

 of finance Turgot, an honest and enlightened man, who, iu concert 

 with hu colleague Malesherbes, perceiving the temper of the times, 

 wished the king to take the reform into bis own hand*, by abolishing 



