Louis XV in coronation costume, by Louis-Michel van Loo. 1762. Palace of Versailles • WIKIMEDIACOMMONS To dive into the reign of Louis XV is to dive into a vanished world. We have no idea of winter sledding on the Grand Canal at Versailles, rabbit hunting in the meadows of Issy-les-Moulineaux, holidays in the fall for the grape harvest, timpanists, Scottish guards, feudal tributes, wine fountains, the Royal Post Office whose riders galloped tirelessly on the sandy track along the main road, the gates of fortified towns closed at nightfall... Remains what we think we know , and which must be forgotten when one evokes this unknown sovereign that was Louis XV. Building on the legacy Successor, at the age of 5, of his great-grandfather Louis XIV who died in 1715, Louis XV clearly appears as the "after king", at best a successor. That's right, and that's how he thought of himself. Louis XV did not have the pride to upset his heritage. His mission was to protect and transmit, which he did his best. Heir to Louis XIV, he therefore received and kept the largest kingdom in the West, the most populous and the most prosperous. His political work could be compared to putting a legacy in order, to cleaning up institutions. After the great financial and economic upheaval of the Regency – Louis XV was a child, so he had nothing to do with it – the stabilization of the currency in 1726 announced an era of prosperity, certainly favored by the economic situation and a policy favorable to trade. and to industry. The Colbertian factories, in bad shape in 1715, were revived; an enormous work of construction of roads and bridges occupies all the reign, of which our administration of the Bridges and Chaussées is the direct heiress; the channel network is developed; coal mining begins; scientific progress has industrial applications; the ups and downs in the wheat trade, unpredictable since they were due to the climate, were cushioned by the construction of public granaries, of which Lille and Lyon have two monumental examples; famine disappears; the cities develop and renew themselves to the point that almost nothing remains of their medieval face:Bordeaux and Nantes are “Louis XV” cities. A kingdom weakened militarily The same is true of laws. Until 1770 – almost all of his reign – Louis XV behaved with great caution, avoiding abusing his authority, even if it meant enduring a numerically small but fairly noisy opposition, that of the magistrates of the parliaments. Yet this opposition relates only to taxes and certain attributes of the King's Council. Because the other reforms, such as the legislative clarification led by Chancellor d'Aguesseau or the modernization of the constabulary (ancestor of our gendarmerie) and the urban police, are well received. But in 1770, Louis XV made an act of authority by abolishing the parliaments, replaced by superior courts similar to our courts of appeal. Rational, modern measure, which public opinion received calmly, but which is nonetheless a constitutional change, which is why Louis XV only adopted it after hesitating. The same again with the military thing. Until the end of the reign, France was considered practically invincible. The War of the Austrian Succession (1740-1748) was a series of successes all the more dazzling as Louis XV fought personally. The Seven Years' War (1756-1763) was less fortunate, but it must be remembered that the enemy never penetrated the territory of the kingdom, apart from a few islands:won or lost, the battles were fought outside France. . At most, we saw Hungarian horsemen one summer in northern Alsace... For its adversaries, France was therefore an impenetrable bloc, defended by its fortresses, its solid and disciplined regiments, its rapid communications, its experienced command. Rococo is not his style Finally, taste, that of the rococo with which the name of Louis XV is associated. But this loaded and somewhat frivolous style is by no means that of the sovereign, and it is absent from royal castles. Not only did Louis XV keep the Versailles of his predecessor and waited a long time before undertaking the renovation of the building on the city side, but he favored artists of classical temperament, nourished by the tradition of the King's buildings, more learned and refined than demonstrative. The taste of Louis XV is the Military School and the vanished castles of Choisy-le-Roi, Saint-Hubert, Bellevue. It is the Petit Trianon, which is entirely his own, inside and out:balance of proportions, finesse of the decor, sobriety of the volumes. Linden green, pale pink, pearl grey. To receive, to maintain, to refine:it is a work of perfection. There is in Louis XV, a great worker - every day, all his life -, all the more attentive to the precision and efficiency of his pen that he expresses himself little and without pleasure, a desire for perfection. . To make the kingdom, through its institutions, its public facilities, its diplomacy, its armies, a flexible and healthy organ, a perfect organ:such was, despite inevitable setbacks, the objective of Louis XV. Rehabilitate the man What setbacks? Let's first get rid of the false weaknesses, those that come up in any conversation. Louis XV is not dissipated, he is hardworking. He is not superficial, he is a perfectionist and very serious in temperament since his early childhood. He is not capricious, he is thoughtful until he delays making a decision. Mistresses played no role in politics. Not even Madame de Pompadour. Those who see in it a gray — pink eminence? — would do well to read his correspondence… The mistresses played no part in the opinion. Nor in the feeling of the people with regard to the king. We didn't like them, we didn't hate them either. We would have liked, because the moralization of mores experienced, from the 1720s, a significant progress, that the king had no mistresses. But Louis XV would also have wanted it, and he suffered from this gap between his Christian faith, which was strong, and his affective intimacy. Louis XV held the helm until the end. He didn't shrug when North America was lost. It was inevitable, once the French fleet had been dispersed in the Cardinals disaster of 1759, that Quebec and Montreal, besieged by a vastly superior enemy, would fall. But as soon as peace was signed and the islands of the Antilles safeguarded, Louis XV undertook a rearmament of which the triumph of Yorktown in 1781 would be the result, and the return of Louisiana and Mississippi to France the goal achieved. He did not shrug his shoulders when parliamentarians, posing as fathers of the country, wanted to block the legislative system. The “coup de majesté” dates from 1770 and, until his death four years later, Louis XV held the reins. One of his ministers, the Marquis d'Argenson, considered him, in his silent way of deciding and acting, even firmer than Louis XIV. He was not unpopular. He was adored in his youth – the nickname “Louis le Bien-Aimé” dates from 1744 – and in his maturity retained the affection of his subjects. The monuments dedicated to him are innumerable. Only Paris cooled down in the last years, and even Louis XV was acclaimed in 1770, when he came to accomplish one of the harshest acts of his reign:to subdue the Parliament. The setbacks of the reign But the reign has had real setbacks, or shadows. First, the popular king of the "gentle life" is not the person of Louis XV, but a fictional king, a construction of the popular imagination. The real Louis XV is poorly known. Affectionate, shy, good father, sincere believer, lover of science, great hunter, faithful friend, sometimes melancholic, always secretive, never familiar... This Louis XV preferred a suede jacket to a silk coat, ignored the wig because he has kept his hair, which is brown, wears glasses when he works and likes to be alone or in the open air on his horse. This misunderstanding between what it is and what we believe it to be, Louis XV himself maintained it without wanting to, by defending his privacy and his political action. Then, if his strictly political record is to his advantage – the regime is more solid, more modern in 1774 than in 1715 – Louis XV did not manage to resolve a problem which constantly hampered his action in the second half of the reign, that of the State debt. Louis XIV had already experienced this problem, but the manipulations of the Regency, then a policy of economy aided by a lasting peace had solved it. From the 1750s, the debt created by the wars constituted an even more formidable threat – an unexpected side effect of a good financial policy! – that it limits the political initiative of the sovereign. Face-to-face with Europe Finally, the diplomacy of Louis XV is both to his credit and disappointing. It is due to him personally, because he acted alone, sometimes without his ministers. The project was simple:to eliminate any structural risk of European war by the alliance of the two main continental powers, France and Austria, at the expense of the smallest marginal states, but without wanting new enlargements of France beyond the peaceful and final annexation of Lorraine in 1766 and Corsica in 1768. Vision of reason and balance. But Louis XV seems not to have understood how unreasonable some countries could be. Frederick II and the Pitt brothers were ready to ruin Prussia and England to prolong the fight, resume the adventure, snatch a victory. They did it. And perhaps the French themselves would have liked a little less reason. The peace of 1748, ending the War of the Austrian Succession, was considered far too moderate by public opinion. We do not fight for eight years to return to equilibrium. We fight to win. This portrait has little to do with that of our school textbooks. So much the better. We only cracked open the door of this 18 th century so rich, so different from the idea we have of it, to sketch these six long decades of reign. We have not mentioned the audiences of the ministers, the stud farms in the morning mist, the ponds of Satory, the celestial globes of Abbé Nollet, the dogs Diane and Bonne, the visits to the Carmel, the coffee pot in the doorway from a window, the day when the king drew the ears of young Bontemps in the Cabinet de la Pendule, his silences, his birth, his parents, his sons, his death. There is still so much to discover. Find out more Louis XV, the beloved stranger, Y. Combeau, Belin, 2012.Louis XV, J.-C. Petitfils, Perrin, 2014. Timeline 1710 Birth of the Duke of Anjou at Versailles. In 1711-1712, sudden death of all his family. He is the sole survivor and heir.1715 Louis XV becomes king at the age of 5. He received a careful education under the Regency of the Duke of Orléans and showed good abilities.1743 After the ministry of Cardinal de Fleury, Louis XV governed alone. The War of the Austrian Succession lasted for three years.1745 Victory of Fontenoy. The popularity of Louis XV, who commanded in combat, is at its peak. France wins the war in 1748.1763 Treaty of Paris. Period of setbacks:loss of Canada, political difficulties, economic crisis. Death of the Dauphin in 1766.1770 Louis XV modifies the (unwritten) Constitution of the kingdom to increase his initiative. He died in 1774. Good father, bad husband Louis XV was faithful for quite a long time to Marie Leszczynska, his wife. He had two sons and eight daughters by her, whom he loved very much, modifying the court ceremonial to favor a more intimate family life. Educated, affectionate, the "Family" is also very pious. Madame Louise will even enter the Carmel. But, from the Marquise de Mailly to the Comtesse du Barry via Madame de Pompadour, Louis XV also had several favourites. The case of Madame de Pompadour is special, more friend than mistress for nearly twenty years. A period during which several “little mistresses” follow one another. The king wished to remain discreet, out of decency, but this discretion rather aroused curiosity. A sincere Christian, Louis XV wanted to give up mistresses. Not without difficulty. The king's other intimacy While many women surround Louis XV, he is actually more comfortable among men. Three male circles rub shoulders with him on a daily basis. That of rulers, a dozen often brilliant characters:Fleury, Orry, Argenson, Machault, Belle-Isle, Choiseul, Bertin, Maupeou, Terray... That of close friends inherited from childhood, solid men, of good character, often hunters , to whom the king demanded discretion. Finally, the circle of scientists. Louis XV loves and practices geography, physics, anatomy, geometry, astronomy. He was surrounded by a host of scholars and personally encouraged the progress of science. We owe him the creation of the Ponts et Chaussées (1747), the Maritime Engineering (1741), the Military Engineering (1748), the Veterinary School (1764)...
