General Notes

Louis XV (1710-74), king of France (1715-74), whose failure to provide strong
leadership and badly needed reforms contributed to the crisis that brought on
the French Revolution.
Louis was born at Versailles on February 15, 1710, the great-grandson of Louis
XIV, whom he succeeded at the age of five. Philippe II, duc d'Orléans,
governed as regent until Louis reached his legal majority in 1723. In 1725 the
king married Maria Leszczynska, daughter of Stanislas I of Poland. The
following year he appointed his former tutor, André Hercule de Fleury, as
prime minister. Fleury gave France a stable administration until his death 17
years later. Thereafter Louis himself was in nominal control, but he took only
a sporadic interest in government and never followed any consistent policy at
home or abroad. He was frequently influenced by his mistresses, the most
powerful of whom was the marquise de Pompadour.
France was involved in three wars during Louis's reign. As a result of the
first, the War of the Polish Succession (1733-35), France gained the province
of Lorraine. The second, the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-48), which
marked the beginning of a colonial struggle with Great Britain, was
indecisive. In the last, the Seven Years' War (1756-63), France, crippled by
corruption and mismanagement, lost most of its overseas possessions to the
British. French foreign policy in this period was made chaotic by Louis's
"secret diplomacy," as his agents in other countries sometimes pursued aims
that were in conflict with those of his own ministers. The situation improved
somewhat in the 1760s, when a new minister, the duc de Choiseul, restored some
order to the government and tried to repair the damage done by the Seven
Years' War. In the last years of his reign, Louis cooperated with his
chancellor, René de Maupeou, in an effort to reform the country's inequitable
and inefficient system of taxation. In 1771 the parlements, or sovereign
courts, which had opposed reform, were reorganized and stripped of their power
to obstruct royal decrees. Measures were then implemented to tax the
previously exempt nobility and clergy, but these were reversed after the
king's death at Versailles on May 10, 1774. Louis XV's reported prophecy,
"After me, the deluge," was fulfilled in the overthrow of the French monarchy
less than two decades later.