Louis XV
Louis XV reigned for fifty-nine years, was called the Beloved in the middle of it, and was jeered at his own funeral. He was five when he succeeded his great-grandfather in 1715, and almost every other heir had died of measles and smallpox in a single terrible run of years. His minority under the regent Orléans included the collapse of John Law's paper-money scheme, which ruined thousands and left France distrusting banks for a century. He took the government himself in 1743 and was not equipped for it: intelligent, well informed, thoroughly bored, and unable to keep a decision made in the morning against pressure in the afternoon. He also ran his own private diplomacy, the King's Secret, whose agents pursued a policy in eastern Europe that contradicted the one his foreign ministry was conducting. The reign's disasters were foreign. The War of the Austrian Succession was fought at enormous cost and ended in 1748 with nothing gained, and the Seven Years' War lost Canada, Louisiana and India and left the navy destroyed. The Diplomatic Revolution of 1756 put France in alliance with its ancient Habsburg enemy and was never popular. His mistresses, Pompadour and du Barry, were the focus of a pamphlet literature that made the monarchy contemptible. The one real reform came at the end, when Chancellor Maupeou broke the obstructive parlements in 1771 — and his grandson restored them within months of succeeding in 1774. The remark about the deluge coming after him is not documented in his mouth and is attributed to Pompadour. Whoever said it, the arithmetic behind it was real: the debt from his wars is what forced the Estates General fifteen years after his death.
- Lived: 1710 CE – 1774 CE
- Nationality: French
- Roles: king
