Louis XV

Louis XV came to the throne at age 5 in 1715 as the sole surviving male heir after the deaths of his father the Dauphin Louis (1711), his grandfather the Duke of Burgundy (1712), and his great-grandfather Louis XIV — his survival from smallpox as an infant making him King against all dynastic expectation. His early reign earned him the sobriquet 'le Bien-Aimé' and genuine popularity, but he gradually withdrew from active government after the 1740s, leaving policy direction to a succession of ministers and favourites while the state's fiscal crisis — rooted in Louis XIV's war debts and a tax-exempt nobility — deepened irreversibly. Despite recognised personal intelligence and genuine engagement in foreign policy (conducting a secret parallel diplomacy known as the Secret du Roi), he consistently failed to sustain reforming ministers against noble and parlementaire resistance, dismissing Machault d'Arnouville (1757) and Choiseul (1770) at pivotal moments of potential reform. His alleged remark 'Après moi, le déluge' encapsulates the cynical resignation of a monarch who understood the structural crisis of the Ancien Régime but lacked either the will or the political courage to resolve it.

• Lived: 1710 CE – 1774 CE
• Nationality: french
• Roles: king

Related

• The Seven Years' War
• Death of Louis XIV
• War of the Austrian Succession
• The Diplomatic Revolution
• Death of Louis XV