Death of Louis XV
Louis XV died of smallpox at Versailles on 10 May 1774, aged 64, after a reign of 59 years during which the Ancien Régime's structural contradictions deepened to the point of irreversibility. He bequeathed to his 19-year-old grandson Louis XVI a state whose debt, swollen by the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–1748), the Seven Years' War (1756–1763), and the subsequent reconstruction of the navy, had outpaced its revenue-raising capacity by any conventional means. Every minister who had attempted systemic fiscal reform — Machault d'Arnouville's vingtième in 1749, which would have taxed the privileged orders, and Turgot's later programme (just barely anticipated in Louis XV's final years) — had been blocked by a combination of Parlement resistance and noble pressure on the king. The tragedy of Louis XV's reign was that he was sufficiently clear-eyed to understand the system's fragility — he is said to have remarked 'Après moi, le déluge' — without possessing either the political will or the institutional leverage to prevent it.
- Year: 1774 CE
- Category: Political
