Louis XVIII of France
Louis XVIII was restored to the French throne after twenty-three years in exile and reigned for a decade under a written charter. Born at Versailles in 1755, he was a grandson of Louis XV and a younger brother of Louis XVI, and was created Count of Provence. He was well read, intelligent, physically enormous and severely gouty. He fled France in June 1791, the same night as the royal family's failed escape to Varennes, and unlike them got away. He spent the emigration in the Low Countries, Prussia, Russia, Poland and finally England, styling himself regent after his brother's execution and king after the death of the imprisoned Louis XVII in 1795. He was restored in 1814 after Napoleon's abdication, in the baggage of the allied armies. When Napoleon returned in March 1815 he fled to Ghent for the Hundred Days and came back after Waterloo. He understood that the revolution could not simply be undone. He granted the Charter of 1814, which retained the Napoleonic legal codes, the sale of confiscated church and noble lands, and equality before the law, while establishing a chamber of deputies elected on a very narrow property franchise. It was a grant from the crown rather than a contract with the nation, which mattered to him. His difficulty was the ultra-royalists, led by his brother the future Charles X, who wanted revenge and a full restoration. The White Terror of 1815 and the reactionary chamber of that year forced him to dissolve it. The assassination of his nephew in 1820 pushed policy rightward for the remainder. He died in 1824, the last French king to die on the throne.
- Lived: 1755 CE – 1824 CE
- Nationality: French
- Roles: king, head_of_state
