Legendary French King Louis XIV The phrase is attributed: “The state is me!” Regardless of whether the monarch pronounced it or not, it reflects the essence of his reign, which lasted for 72 years.

Under the Sun King, absolute monarchy in France reached its peak. But after blossoming, decline inevitably follows. And the successor of a great monarch most often falls to the fate of being a pale shadow of his predecessor.

His great-grandson became the “shadow” of Louis XIV Louis XV.

The last years of the Sun King's reign were extremely dramatic. The position of the ruling dynasty, which until recently seemed unshakable, has been shaken due to a series of deaths of the heirs to the throne.

In 1711, the only legitimate son of Louis XIV died. In 1712 on royal family measles struck. From February 12 to March 8, the father, mother and elder brother of the future Louis XV died from this disease.

The two-year-old great-grandson of Louis XIV remained his only direct heir and the only barrier to the impending dynastic crisis.

The baby’s life hung in the balance, and the teacher snatched him from the clutches of death, Duchess de Vantadour.

The heir to the throne was protected like the apple of his eye. He was not left alone for a minute; doctors constantly monitored his health. Excessive care in childhood greatly influenced the character of Louis XV in later years.

Marriage in the interests of the state

On September 1, 1715, the five-year-old heir to the throne ascended to the French throne after the death of his great-grandfather.

Of course, in the first years of the reign, public administration was concentrated in the hands of the regent, who became the nephew of Louis XIV Philip d'Orléans. This period was marked by the struggle of various court factions, an economic crisis and chaos in foreign affairs.

The young king was not privy to what was happening. Louis studied under the guidance Bishop Fleury, who taught him piety and piety, and free time spent with Marshal Villeroy, who was ready to fulfill any whim of the monarch.

What united the warring factions at the French court was the fear of the sudden death of Louis, who, due to his young age there were no heirs.

Therefore, as soon as the king turned 15 years old, he was married to his 22-year-old daughter retired King of Poland Stanislaw Leszczynski Maria.

This marriage indeed turned out to be prolific - the couple had 10 children, seven of whom lived to adulthood.

Maria Leshchinskaya and the Dauphin Louis. Photo: Public Domain

For the cardinal - power, for the king - entertainment

In 1726, 16-year-old Louis XV announced that he was taking the reins of power into his own hands, but in reality power actually passed into the hands of his tutor Fleury, who became a cardinal.

Louis XV had little interest in state affairs, which was greatly facilitated by the cardinal, who concentrated great power in his hands.

Cardinal Fleury avoided reforms and drastic political steps in general, but his cautious policy allowed for some improvement economic situation countries.

Louis himself spent his time in entertainment and was engaged in philanthropy, supporting sculptors, painters and architects, encouraging natural Sciences and medicine.

From 1722 to 1774, more than 800 paintings, more than a thousand elegant pieces of furniture, and much more were purchased for the castles of Louis XV.

But women were a much greater passion for the king than art. Louis XV had countless favorites. Their number especially increased after the wife Maria Leshchinskaya(after the birth of her tenth child in 1737) she refused intimacy with her husband.

Main favorite

After the death of Cardinal Fleury in 1743, Louis XV finally became the sovereign ruler of France. In 1745 banker Joseph Paris, hoping to get closer to the king, introduced him to the 23-year-old Jeanne Antoinette d'Etiol, a Parisian beauty who, according to the financier, might appeal to Louis XV.

The banker was not mistaken - Jeanne Antoinette became the king's mistress. But this turned out to be no passing hobby. The energetic lady managed to become a close friend for the king, a confidant in all matters, and then, in fact, an adviser in matters of public administration.

This is how Jeanne Antoinette d'Etiolle became an influential Marquise de Pompadour, the official favorite of the king, who overthrew and appointed ministers and determined the direction of the country's domestic and foreign policy.

Subsequently, the French themselves were inclined to blame Madame de Pompadour for all the failures of France during the reign of Louis XV. However, in reality, the blame lies with the king himself, who was never able to overcome the aversion to state affairs that had been ingrained in him since childhood.

By the end of the 1750s, the country's economic situation began to deteriorate sharply. In 1756, Louis XV, not without the influence of his favorite and her nominees, was drawn into the Seven Years' War, taking the side of Austria, traditionally a rival of France. This conflict not only devastated the treasury, but also led the country to the loss of colonies and a decrease in France's political influence in the world as a whole.

"Deer Park"

The king, who was the favorite of France in childhood and received the nickname Beloved, was rapidly losing popularity. He preferred to spend time in the company of his favorites, whom he presented with expensive gifts and in whose honor he threw luxurious feasts that shook out the last pennies from the treasury.

The king’s favorite leisure spot was the “Deer Park,” a mansion in the vicinity of Versailles, specially built for meetings between Louis XV and his favorites. The initiator of its construction was the Marquise de Pompadour. The far-sighted woman, who did not want to lose her place as the official favorite, decided to take into her own hands the matter of raising the girls, who would later go to bed with the king.

The older Louis XV became, the younger his mistresses were. However, the accusations of pedophilia against the king are somewhat exaggerated. The inhabitants of the “Deer Park” were mainly girls 15-17 years old, who, by the standards of that time, were no longer considered children.

After the next young mistress ceased to attract the king, she was given in marriage, giving a worthy dowry for this.

Two-faced marquise

The easiest way would be to call the power-hungry marquise “the keeper of the royal brothel.” But Madame de Pompadour was at the same time the patroness of scientists, painters and other creative people. Thanks to her, old palaces were rebuilt and new ones were built, and street ensembles were created, which are the pride of France to this day. The name of the Marquise de Pompadour is inextricably linked with the concept of “Gallant Age”. The great man admired the intelligence and energy of this woman. Voltaire.

In 1764, the all-powerful favorite passed away at the age of 42. Louis XV suffered this loss rather indifferently - as a consolation he was left with the Deer Park, where fresh beauties were always at his service.

The death of Madame de Pompadour opened the final period of the reign of Louis XV. Having never felt a craving for state affairs, he now almost completely withdrew from them, engaging in them only for one purpose - to obtain funds for entertainment and gifts for his mistresses.

"Flood" as a legacy to a grandson

The Parisian parliament, which resisted the king's introduction of new taxes, was forced by Louis to obey by force. In 1771, he completely dispersed the parliamentarians with the help of soldiers. Such measures contributed to the growth of discontent not only in the ranks of the aristocracy, but also among the lower strata of society.

IN last years In his life, Louis XV, who spent more and more time hunting and in the “Deer Park,” invariably responded to the words of the courtiers about the unrest among the people and the catastrophic financial situation of the country with a phrase once said by Madame de Pompadour, who was reproached for wastefulness: “After us, even a flood! »

Louis XV himself was not destined to see the “flood”. In 1774, another young mistress infected the king with smallpox. On May 10, 1774, he died in Versailles.

Louis XV's grandson, Louis XVI, ascended the throne. The young king, who did not share his grandfather’s hobbies and was disgusted by the “Deer Park,” soon became a victim of that very “flood”, the onset of which Louis XV and the Marquise de Pompadour predicted after themselves. But the guillotine does not understand royal necks...

Louis XV of France. Man, personality, character

“I want to follow in everything the example of the deceased king, my great-grandfather,” declared 16-year-old Louis XV after the fall of prime minister the Duke de Bourbon in 1726. Was this possible?

Under his great-grandfather Louis XIV (1643 - 1715), the system of “absolutist” monarchy in France and Europe reached its highest development. The “Sun King”, like no one else, knew how to personify the sovereignty of the “absolute” monarch and central government kingdom in reality and personally fill this central position. The difficult role of the “omnipresent” king was only possible for a person with the qualities of Louis XIV. But with this, the “sun king” turned the kingdom into a burden that exceeded human strength.

Human weaknesses prevented Louis XV, despite everything positive traits, follow the example of his predecessor and concentrate the state in his person, as the “omnipresent” king did. He has not grown up to the inhuman tasks of an “absolute” monarchy. So he became a misunderstood, lonely and tragic figure.

For a long time, Louis XV was portrayed as a lazy and weak king with a large number of favorites and mistresses, and only new biographers, most notably Michel Antoine, rightly evaluate him as a person with inherent merits.

Louis was born in Versailles on February 15, 1710. He was the son of the Duke of Burgundy, the eldest son of the Dauphin (Crown Prince) Louis and Maria Anna of Bavaria. Thus, he was the son of the eldest grandson of Louis XIV and Marie Adelaide of Savoy. Nothing seemed to foretell little Louis that he would someday ascend to the throne of the “Sun King.” But then a huge misfortune broke out over the Bourbon dynasty: within one year, from April 14, 1711 to March 8, 1712, death claimed the Dauphin in turn (died on April 14, 1711 from smallpox), followed by the Dauphin, Duke of Burgundy (died on February 18, 1711). .1712 from measles), his wife Maria Adelaide (died 12.2.1712) and his elder brother, who became the Dauphin (died 8.3.1712).

Since the firstborn died in childhood, only two-year-old Louis remained, the Dauphin, the hope of the dynasty when the reigning king and great-grandfather Louis XIV was already 73 and a half years old. The little crown prince is a charming child, lively, precociously developed, timid, very gentle, sensitive, weak and spoiled, being a complete orphan, he grew up without a family, 6 siblings, very isolated and withdrawn, although surrounded by many people. Therefore, he became very attached to the governess, whom he called “Mama Ventadur,” and to his great-grandfather, whom he called “Papa the King.”

The latter ordered that his former comrade-in-arms in the games, the 73-year-old Duke of Vieuroy, become a tutor, the 63-year-old Bishop Fleury - a teacher, and the Duke of Meigne, a legitimate son, - a guardian, so that the Duke of Orleans, regent and great-uncle of the baby, would not influence him too much. great influence.

When Louis XIV died on September 1, 1715, Louis XV became king of France at the age of five and a half. Of course, at this age he could not yet rule; this was done by the regent and the regency council on his behalf. But nevertheless, a serious life began for the little shy boy, because he was more and more involved in performing representative tasks. Already on September 2, 1715, he was supposed to preside as king at the reading of the will of Louis XIV. He opened the meeting with a few memorized words and then conveyed everything to the Chancellor. He also had to accept expressions of condolences in the presence of the regent in connection with the death of Louis XIV, then regularly receive the diplomatic corps, be present at the taking of the oath and perform religious duties as the most Christian king, and much more. Vijeroy is primarily to blame for the fact that little boy in the seventh year of life, they were overloaded with these protocol duties, and the naturally timid child developed a fear of crowds that never left him. strangers. Behind his ease and excellent manners, an innate timidity was hidden in the soul and character of the monarch. At a time when other children could play with their peers, he carried out with amazing seriousness the duties entrusted to him, which greatly burdened him and early developed a tendency towards melancholy. Soon a relationship of trust united him with his tutor and home teacher, Bishop Andre Hercule de Fleury, who ruled the small bishopric of Freju from 1699 to 1715, a modest, wise and pious man who eschewed court intrigues.

Fleury gave to the young king pronounced religious education.

Already at the age of 10, along with his previous representative duties, Louis XV began to be involved in other royal affairs. From February 18, 1720, he regularly (as a listener) participated in meetings of the State Council. In addition, he began to study in depth all branches of knowledge important to the king.

As in other monarchies, the king's marriage was considered an important political event; the wishes or sympathies of the participants did not play a role here. But the marriage policy of the regent and his prime minister, Cardinal Dubois, who, in order to consolidate friendly relations with Spain, united the 11-year-old Louis XV with the 3-year-old Spanish infanta Maria Anna Victoria, was especially egregious. The marriage contract was signed on November 25, 1721, and the little Spanish princess was brought to Paris to raise her there and wait until a church wedding became possible.

The 11-year-old king was naturally left indifferent by his bride, but upon her arrival he gave her a doll. So Louis XV grew up alone at the head of state, without family or close friend. His only confidants were the elderly “Maman Ventadour” and the relatively old Fleury.

On October 25, 1722, with great pomp, according to old tradition, Louis was anointed to rule and crowned at Reims Cathedral. When the king turned 13 on February 15, 1723, he became an adult and the regency ended.

Soon the Prime Minister, the Duke de Bourbon, considered it extremely necessary to marry the often ill king, on whom the dynasty's hopes were pinned. The 6-year-old “infanta queen” was sent back to Madrid in 1725, to the great indignation of the Spaniards. Bourbon chose as his new bride the Polish princess Maria Leszczynska, the daughter of the dethroned King Stanislav, who was 7 years older than Louis. The wedding took place on September 5, 1725 in Fontainebleau with great pomp and in the presence of a huge number of princes and nobles from all over Europe.

What kind of person was Louis XV, who grew up without parents and family and always felt lonely? What was his character like?

Contemporaries, as well as surviving portraits, indicate that Louis XV was a handsome, well-built, strong man. His representative appearance and harmonious facial features made him very attractive. He was said to be "the handsomest man in his kingdom." He especially enjoyed horseback riding and hunting and enjoyed good health. However, he had a tendency to inflammation of the nasal mucosa and laryngitis, which made his voice hoarse. In general, his voice did not match his impressive appearance. This prevented him from speaking, gaining recognition with his speeches, representing, leading the Council, pacifying obstinate parliamentary councils and ruling his court. Therefore, ministers often had to read his statements instead.

The most important distinctive feature The king was his high intelligence. He, along with Henry IV, was the most intelligent of the Bourbons (Antoine), quickly grasped the essence and was insightful, as many of his employees emphasize, such as d'Agreson, d'Averdi, Croy and others. The French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Marquis d'Agreson wrote: "The king thinks fast." And he emphasized: “His train of thought is faster than lightning... with quick and sharp judgments.”

Louis was, as the Austrian envoy Kaunitz reported to Vienna with surprise, one of the most well-informed and highly educated rulers of his time. The monarch always sought to expand and enrich his knowledge and for this purpose he collected a magnificent personal library, constantly replenished with new books. Along with history, law and theology, he was interested in natural sciences and public health issues. He personally contributed to the founding of the Academy of Surgery and naturally encouraged scientific projects, such as Count Le Garey, who in 1745 published his Hydraulic Chemistry. As Croy, a contemporary, emphasized, “the king was particularly well versed in astronomy, physics and botany.”

Louis XV, a highly intelligent and educated man, had an “extremely complex and mysterious character” (Antoine). Agreson and the Duke of Luyny described him as impenetrable and inaccessible. He had weak nerves, was timid in front of people, and often fell into melancholy and depression. Luyny writes about this: “Attacks of melancholy sometimes appeared spontaneously, sometimes they were determined by circumstances.”

While the “Sun King,” whom everyone - at least outwardly - respected and revered, controlled the court and courtiers at Versailles, the shy, fearful Louis XV was greatly on the nerves of constant court intrigues and disputes over rank , malicious chatter and slander, undisguised envy and pride. Accustomed to secrecy since childhood, the monarch saw only one opportunity to isolate himself from all this: to show a restrained, mysterious, silent attitude, always mysterious and inaccessible to external influences. Like many shy people, he did not show his feelings and became a master of pretense and secrecy. Very remarkable in this regard is the advice that he gave to his grandson Ferdinand in 1771: “First of all, calm down and do not let your feelings be seen.”

Louis XV hid what he was planning, what he was doing and what he was working on. Because of this, the public had the false impression that he was not interested in the affairs of the state and was lazy; because no one knew his true thoughts, intentions, hard work, and foresight.

Unlike Louis XIV, whose life from morning to evening took place in public, surrounded by many ceremonies, including the presence of especially privileged people during the toilet, Louis XV was horrified by all this, tried to avoid court life, tried to fence off free space for himself. He built himself small apartments in Versailles, where he slept and worked, and where not everyone had access, as in the “large apartments.” In addition, as soon as the opportunity presented itself, he fled from Versailles to small hunting castles in Rambouillet, La Mouette, Choisy, Saint-Hubert, etc. It has been established that in some years he spent less than 100 nights at Versailles.

The royal ceremony was for Louis XV only a harsh duty and a heavy burden, a façade behind which he hid his true way of life.

Louis, despite his timidity in front of people and fear of crowds and strangers, did not try to avoid performing representative duties. But he did not like theatrical appearances. When going into the active army, he, unlike his predecessors, avoided big ceremonies and simply left. From time to time he missed his great-grandfather's daily public rising or going to bed with all the court ceremonies in the large royal apartments.

Louis XV spent the night in his small apartments, got up early and managed to work for several hours at his desk before heading to the larger apartments.

In the same way, Louis retired in the evening after hunting to his small chambers to work, have dinner with several trusted people, and only then went to the state room to publicly demonstrate going to bed. But as soon as the curtains of the bed were drawn and the courtiers left, he went to sleep in his room. According to contemporaries, in his personal life he was a “modest and kind-hearted person.”

However, such a double life led to the fact that the king could not use the court, court life and ceremony as a tool for ruling and “taming” the court nobility. In addition, by constantly avoiding publicity, he gave rise to mistrust, idle gossip, fantastic rumors, false judgments about his activities, and all this in the face of a very critical public, which, under the influence of the thoughts of enlighteners, as well as the scandalous press, was only looking for sacrifice. Louis XV became her favorite target, which gradually led to the weakening of the monarchical idea.

There was also something else that prevented him from completely taking the position of an “absolute” monarch like his great-grandfather: his naturally very strong shyness, which increased during his childhood and youth, fear of people and fear of public speaking. On them, “the king was always paralyzed” and could not, as Beri’s contemporary emphasizes, because of his timidity “read more than four sentences.” Thus, he could rarely overcome himself and publicly make a speech, address an envoy at a reception, exchange a few phrases with one of the courtiers, or express his praise or dissatisfaction to a minister or official. The king, who seemed constrained, cold and stiff in public, as Croy reports, in a narrow circle could be “cheerful, relaxed” and “no longer shy at all, but completely natural.”

The lack of ability in an official setting to address those who were waiting for his words constrained his actions. As Antoine rightly notes, for an absolute monarch it was primarily speech, that is, the ability to “speak to order and decide, to judge, to prohibit or allow, to congratulate, to encourage, to praise or scold, to punish or forgive.” Shyness made it difficult for him to communicate with his ministers and senior officials, especially with new faces, which is why he did not like change. They generally did not know what to expect from the monarch, who zealously guarded his powers of power, since they had never heard either praise or disapproval. All the more unexpected for them, in the appropriate circumstances, was Louis’s decision to resign or his written orders on punishments. Either truly significant politicians could not appear in such an atmosphere, or they simply did not exist. In any case, during the time of Louis XV after Fleury there were few significant political personalities, although there were well-managed officials. Despite this, Louis XV carried out his duties as the supreme representative of the kingdom, as the embodiment of the highest legislative, executive and judicial powers. He had a clear concept of his integral sovereign authority, a religious position of the “most Christian king”; he showed himself not as a despot or even as an authoritarian monarch.

He was a bureaucrat who wrote a lot, which suited his introverted nature. Unlike Louis XIV, who willingly and competently used the spoken word in his rule and wrote little, his great-grandson led the same institutions passed down from his predecessors in writing. Although he often had to preside over meetings of the State Council and regularly confer with ministers in a narrow circle, he still preferred correspondence. Since he was good with the pen, he felt much more confident in the written field. He wrote everything himself and did not have a personal secretary. The Marquis d'Argeson notes on this matter: “The king writes a lot in his own hand, letters, memos, many excerpts from what he reads...” Thus, the monarch tried to control writing as much as possible, demanded this or that, did notes in the documents of his ministers and officials, criticized or approved, gave instructions, etc.

Thus, he was able to fully carry out his management duties and keep everything under control, although he was often absent from Versailles and moved from one hunting castle to another. He had a folding desk with a lockable drawer filled with letters and files that was always with him, and important ministers sometimes had to travel to talk with their king.

Despite this style of government, which could be quite effective, historians mainly talk about his low ability to solve domestic and foreign political and financial difficulties due to exaggerated modesty and strong self-doubt. This intelligent, insightful monarch constantly doubted himself. His lack of confidence hampered his valuable qualities. He very quickly grasped what was essential and necessary, as well as the meaning and consequences of events. But if his entourage or ministers expressed a different opinion, he became confused, became indecisive and spent a lot of time making a decision. Contemporary Duke Croy, who knew the king well, remarks on this matter: “...modesty was a quality that turned into a flaw in him. Although he understood matters much better than others, he always believed himself to be in the wrong.”

Non-musical, but sensitive to art, deeply religious, a devout man and a faithful son of the church and the pope, he did not allow many nobles to distract him from his faith, although they diligently tried to do so.

After he was no longer intimate with the queen from 1737 at the latest, he lived for long periods with official mistresses, to whom were sometimes added fleeting favorites of lower birth. Although keeping mistresses was then common for almost all monarchs, these constant violations of church morality caused remorse and depression in the French king. He was aware of his sinful state, but did not want to change it or did not have enough willpower to do so. He hoped, being always surrounded by priests, to solve the problem by repentance before death, as Croy notes.

Cardinal Burney emphasized: “His love for women conquered his love for religion, but it could never... harm his respect for her” and “The King has a religion... he would rather abstain from the sacrament of the sacrament than profane it.” . During the 38 years of his reign, Louis did not take the sacrament, although he otherwise fulfilled his religious duties responsibly and, like his predecessor, participated in Mass every day with great reverence and always kneeling, fasted on prescribed days and participated in processions. It was customary for the king, as God's anointed, to lay hands on his subjects who were sick with scrofula on major holidays in order to heal them. But for this it was necessary to first confess and receive communion. From 1722 to 1738, Louis XV always faithfully carried out the laying on of hands on scrofulous people. But from 1739 this stopped because he no longer received communion. This caused a big scandal. Although, thanks to the Enlightenment, the nobility had long questioned the sacredness of royal power, Louis XV, by ceasing to perform the old royal ritual of laying hands on the scrofulous, contributed to the desacralization of his authority and its weakening.

Louis XV caused great damage to his reputation by having too many mistresses. He was considered a "lustful sinner." This “most Christian king” was not forgiven, although most of the courtiers lived not with their wives, but with their mistresses, and things were no better for the upper bourgeoisie. A special reason for the scandal was the king’s connection with the notorious Pompadour, which went down in history as a symbol of the royal mistress.

The young king was at first a loving, good and faithful husband. In the first 12 years, his wife gave birth to ten children. The first daughter was born when he was seventeen and a half years old, and the last when he was twenty-seven and Mary thirty-four. In addition to two boys, the couple had 8 girls who bore the title “Madame of France”; they were numbered by age (“Madame First”, “Madame Second”, etc.). Of the girls, “Madame the Third” died at four and a half years old, and of the boys, the youngest, born in 1730. The only son left was the Dauphin Louis, born on September 4, 1729, an organist and singer who did not like either hunting or sports, very pious and homely, who, after the death of his beloved first wife, led a happy life with his second wife, Maria Josepha of Saxony family life, more reminiscent of the bourgeois. From them descended the subsequent kings Louis XVI, Louis XVIII and Charles X. Louis XV's relationship with his son was very tense, but he was very attached to his daughters, whom, when they grew up, he willingly visited and talked with them. I listened to their music and made them coffee with my own hands. Only the eldest, Elizabeth of France, married Don Philip of Spain, the future Duke of Parma. The youngest, Louise, became a nun of the Carmelite Order.

Although Louis was a loving father, difficulties soon arose in his marriage to Maria Leszczynska. His wife, seven years older, very pious, but unattractive, boring, apathetic and sad, had completely different interests than the king, rarely accompanied him due to her frequent pregnancies, and was unable to create the environment that Louis was striving for. There was no truly close, trusting relationship between them, and the king “found the queen’s darkest corner at court.” When the queen once, on the advice of doctors, denied intimacy to her husband, but did not dare explain the reason, he, offended, finally turned away from her. Not accustomed to abstinence and, obviously, incapable of it, from 1738/39 the king began to spend time in the company of the metresses. Croy spoke about this as follows: “Along with exaggerated modesty, he had the most important and only drawback - a passion for women.” The first official mistresses were the four daughters of the Marquis de Nestlé. He enjoyed the fact that he could relax with them and “live like an ordinary person.”

In the spring of 1745, a new lady rose to the position of “chief maîtresse”: Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, the illegitimate daughter of a financier, who grew up in a respectable bourgeois family and at the age of 20, in 1742, was married to the financier Charles Guillaume Le Normand d’Etoile. A seductive, exceptionally beautiful, ambitious and educated young woman met Louis XV during his hunting expeditions and decided to become his mistress, which she achieved in March 1745. She separated from her husband, received a noble estate from Louis and as Marquise de Pompadour was admitted to the court, although the nobles despised this upstart. Her art and talent lay primarily in the fact that she knew how to entertain the king and dispel his melancholy. The new mistress, unyielding in her ambition and desire for power, played a very important role from 1745 until her death in 1764. The public found it particularly scandalous that this woman was able to maintain her position for so many years. She perfectly knew how to recapture the king from her rivals and maintain his favor. Although their relationship lasted only until 1750, she remained an even more influential friend, created a private atmosphere for him and supplied the king with or tolerated around him little favorites from the common classes who were not dangerous to her. It was these little mistresses who lived in the same house that gave rise to fantastic rumors, stories and suspicions. They talked about mass orgies, seduction of minors, etc. In reality, young women of marriageable age made their way on their own, often pushed by their ambitious parents. Although Louis XV knew what a blow Pompadour dealt to his prestige, yet in 1768, at the age of 58, he made another bourgeoisie, 25-year-old Jeanne Vaubenier, who was married to the Comte de Barry, the main mistress. The new mistress, Countess de Barry, a cheerful, crafty, good-natured young woman, now surrounded by courtiers, artists and philosophers, did not play such a political role as the Marquise de Pompadour, but with her extravagance she also contributed to the decline of the monarch’s authority. The number of Louis's illegitimate children is estimated differently. Antoine emphasizes that there were only eight of them, i.e. less than the legal ones. It was mainly about girls who were married off well; both sons became clergymen.

Louis XV was born on February 15, 1710 in the city of Versailles, France. The boy ascended the throne at the age of five, Prince Philippe of Orleans became his regent, and after his death, the Duke of Bourbon. At the age of sixteen, the king became the husband of the Polish princess Maria Leszczynska. But the young monarch did not want to engage in state affairs.

From 1726 to 1743, France was ruled by the elderly Cardinal de Fleury, who was an experienced politician and managed to strengthen the country's financial position by promoting the development of industry and trade. After Fleury's death in 1743, Louis himself began to rule the state, and difficult days came for the country.

Louis XV turned out to be incapable of governing the country, showed indifference to affairs, devoting most of his time to feasts, hunting and love affairs. His favorites had a great influence on state affairs. Among them, the most influential was the Marquise of Pompadour. The king generously rewarded his lovers at the expense of the country's budget, taxes grew.

Wars of the Polish and Austrian Succession, Seven Years' War depleted the treasury. The British defeated French troops in North America and India. The French were effectively driven out of India and lost Canada.

By the beginning of the 1750s, the king was greatly degraded both morally and physically. From a handsome young man he turned into an unattractive, flabby, fat man who suffered from shortness of breath. Gluttony and debauchery destroyed him. The future of the country did not worry the monarch. Some of the rise of France is associated with the activities of the Duke of Choiseul, who received great power in 1758 under the patronage of the Marquise of Pompadour.

During the years of his reign, Choiseul managed to expel the Jesuits from the country, carry out reforms in the army, and improve the economic situation of the country. He also managed to annex Corsica to France and achieve peace. But he could not raise the king’s authority. The parliaments of France, which had been submissive under Louis XIV, began to oppose the king's policies.

Under Louis XV, the role of royal court. In the previous reign, the court played a large role in cultural life countries. In the age of Louis XV, the enlightened French viewed court life ironically. For readers of Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, Helvetius and others, the court increasingly seemed an anachronism. The eve of the French Revolution was approaching.

Louis XV died on May 10, 1774 in Versailles, having contracted smallpox from another young concubine. On this day in Paris no one grieved, but on the contrary: they rejoiced.

Awards of Louis XV

Order of the Holy Spirit
Order of Saint Michael (France)
Order of Saint Louis
Order of the Golden Fleece
Order of St. Andrew the First-Called Apostle

Louis XV (French Louis XV), official nickname Beloved (French Le Bien Aimé; February 15, 1710, Versailles - May 10, 1774, Versailles) - king of France since September 1, 1715 from the Bourbon dynasty.

The great-grandson, the future king (who bore the title Duke of Anjou from birth) was at first only fourth in line to the throne. However, in 1711, the boy’s grandfather, the only legitimate son of Louis XIV, the Grand Dauphin, died.

At the beginning of 1712, Louis's parents, the Duchess (February 12) and the Duke (February 18) of Burgundy, died of measles one after another, and then (March 8) his older 4-year-old brother, the Duke of Breton. Two-year-old Louis himself survived only thanks to the persistence of his teacher, Duchess de Vantadour, who did not allow the doctors to use severe bloodletting on him, which killed his older brother. The death of his father and brother made the two-year-old Duke of Anjou the immediate heir of his great-grandfather, he received the title of Dauphin of Vienne.

In 1714, Louis's uncle, the Duke of Berry, died without leaving any heirs. It was expected that he would act as regent for his nephew, since his other uncle, Philip V of Spain, renounced his rights to the French throne in 1713 at the Treaty of Utrecht. The fate of the dynasty, which only a few years ago was numerous, depended on the survival of a single child. The little orphan was constantly watched and was not left alone for a minute. The concern and sympathy that he aroused played a certain role in his popularity in the first years of his reign.

After the death of his great-grandfather, Louis XIV, on September 1, 1715, Louis ascended the throne at the age of 5, under the tutelage of the regent Philippe d'Orléans, the late king's nephew. Foreign policy The latter was a reaction against the direction and policy of Louis XIV: an alliance was concluded with England, and a war with Spain began.

Internal management was marked by financial troubles and the introduction of the John Law system, which entailed a severe economic crisis. Meanwhile, the young king was brought up under the guidance of Bishop Fleury, who cared only about his piety, and Marshal Villeroy, who tried to bind the student to himself, indulging all his whims and lulling his mind and will. On October 1, 1723, Louis was declared of age, but power continued to remain in the hands of Philippe d'Orléans, and upon the latter's death it passed to the Duke of Bourbon. In view of Louis' poor health and the fear that in the event of his childless death, his uncle, the Spanish King Philip V, would not lay claim to the French throne, the Duke of Bourbon hastened to marry the king to Maria Leszczynska, the daughter of the ex-King of Poland Stanislaus.

In 1726, the king announced that he was taking the reins of government into his own hands, but in reality power passed to Cardinal Fleury, who led the country until his death in 1743, trying to drown out any desire in Louis to engage in politics.

The reign of Fleury, who served as an instrument in the hands of the clergy, can be characterized as follows: within the country - the absence of any innovations and reforms, the exemption of the clergy from paying duties and taxes, the persecution of Jansenists and Protestants, attempts to streamline finances and make greater savings in expenses and the impossibility of achieving this due to the minister’s complete ignorance of economic and financial matters; outside the country - the careful elimination of everything that could lead to bloody clashes, and, despite this, the waging of two ruinous wars, for the Polish inheritance and for the Austrian.

The first, at least, annexed Lorraine to the possessions of France, to the throne of which the king's father-in-law, Stanislav Leszczynski, was elevated. The second, which began in 1741 under favorable conditions, was carried out with varying success until 1748 and ended with the Peace of Aachen, according to which France was forced to cede to the enemy all its conquests in the Netherlands in exchange for the concession of Parma and Piacenza to Philip of Spain. Louis personally participated in the War of the Austrian Succession for a time, but in Metz he became dangerously ill. France, greatly alarmed by his illness, joyfully welcomed his recovery and nicknamed him Beloved.

Cardinal Fleury died at the beginning of the war, and the king, reiterating his intention to govern the state independently, did not appoint anyone as first minister. Due to Louis’s inability to deal with affairs, this had extremely unfavorable consequences for the work of the state: each of the ministers managed his ministry independently of his comrades and inspired the sovereign with the most contradictory decisions. The king himself led the life of an Asian despot, at first submitting to one or the other of his mistresses, and from 1745 he fell entirely under the influence of a woman who skillfully pandered to the base instincts of the king and ruined the country with her extravagance. The Parisian population became more hostile towards the king.

In 1757, Damien made an attempt on Louis' life. The disastrous state of the country prompted the Comptroller General Machaut to think about reform in the financial system: he proposed introducing an income tax (vingtième) on all classes of the state, including the clergy, and restricting the right of the clergy to buy real estate due to the fact that church property was exempt from payment of all kinds of duties. The clergy rose unanimously in defense of their ancestral rights and tried to create sabotage - to arouse the fanaticism of the population by persecuting Jansenists and Protestants. Eventually Machaut fell; his project remained unfulfilled.

In 1756, the Seven Years' War broke out, in which Louis took the side of Austria, the traditional enemy of France, and (despite the local victories of Marshal Richelieu) after a series of defeats, he was forced to conclude the Peace of Paris in 1763, which deprived France of many of its colonies (by the way - India, Canada) in favor of England, which managed to take advantage of the failures of its rival to destroy its maritime significance and destroy its fleet. France has sunk to the level of a third-rate power.

Pompadour, who replaced commanders and ministers at her discretion, placed the Duke of Choiseul, who knew how to please her, at the head of the administration. He arranged a family treaty between all the sovereigns of the House of Bourbon and persuaded the king to issue a decree expelling the Jesuits. The country's financial situation was terrible, the deficit was huge. New taxes were required to cover it, but the Parisian parliament in 1763 refused to register them. The king forced him to do this through lit de justice (the supremacy of the royal court over any other - the principle according to which, since parliament makes decisions in the name of the king, then in the presence of the king himself, parliament has no right to do anything. According to the saying: “When the king comes , the judges fall silent"). The provincial parliaments followed the example of the Parisian one: Louis organized the second lit de justice (1766) and declared the parliaments to be simple judicial institutions that should consider it an honor to obey the king. Parliaments, however, continued to resist.

The king's new mistress, who took over the place of Pompadour after the latter's death in 1764, brought Choiseul, the defender of the parliaments, d'Aiguillon, their ardent opponent, into place.

On the night of January 19-20, 1771, soldiers were sent to all members of parliament demanding an immediate answer (yes or no) to the question: whether they wish to obey the orders of the king. The majority answered in the negative; the next day it was announced to them that the king was depriving them of their positions and expelling them, despite the fact that their positions had been purchased by them, and they themselves were considered irremovable. Instead of parliaments, new judicial institutions were established (see Mopa), but lawyers refused to defend cases before them, and the people reacted with deep indignation to the violent actions of the government.

Louis did not pay attention to popular discontent: locked in his parc aux cerfs (Deer Park), he was engaged exclusively in his mistresses and hunting, and when they pointed out to him the danger that threatened the throne and the misfortunes of the people, he replied: “The monarchy will last longer, while we are alive” (“even a flood after us”, “après nous le déluge”). The king died of smallpox, having contracted it from a young girl sent to him by DuBarry.

Family and children of Louis XV:

On September 4, 1725, 15-year-old Louis married 22-year-old Maria Leszczynska (1703-1768), daughter of the former King of Poland Stanislaus. They had 10 children, of whom 1 son and 6 daughters lived to adulthood. Only one, the eldest, of the daughters got married. The king's younger unmarried daughters took care of their orphaned nephews, the children of the Dauphin, and after the accession of the eldest of them, Louis XVI, to the throne, they were known as “Lady Aunts” (French: Mesdames les Tantes). Children:

1. Louise Elisabeth (14 August 1727 – 6 December 1759), wife of Philip, Duke of Parma
2. Henrietta Anna (August 14, 1727 - February 10, 1752), to whom the Regent's grandson Louis-Philippe d'Orléans (1725-1785) unsuccessfully wooed
3. Marie Louise (July 28, 1728 – February 19, 1733)
4. Louis Ferdinand, Dauphin of France (4 September 1729 – 20 December 1765), father of Louis XVI, Louis XVIII and Charles X
5. Philip (30 August 1730 – 7 April 1733), Duke of Anjou
6. Adelaide (23 March 1732 - 27 February 1800)
7. Victoria (11 May 1733 – 7 June 1799)
8. Sofia (July 27, 1734 - March 3, 1782)
9. Therese Felicite (16 May 1736 - 28 September 1744)
10. Marie Louise (July 15, 1737 – December 23, 1787).

Madame de Pompadour had a daughter, Alexandrina-Jeanne d'Etiol (1744-1754), who died in childhood, who may have been the king's illegitimate daughter. According to some versions, the girl was poisoned by court haters of Madame de Pompadour.

In addition to his wife and favorite, Louis had a whole “harem” of mistresses, who were kept in the Deer Park estate and other places. At the same time, many favorites were prepared for this from adolescence, since the king preferred “uncorrupted” girls and was also afraid of venereal diseases. Later they were married off with a dowry.

On September 13, 2005, the opening of a recreated monument to the founder of the city took place in Peterhof in the Lower Park. The author is sculptor N. Karlykhanov. The opening of the monument was timed to coincide with the 300th anniversary of Peterhof. The current monument is a copy of the monument lost after the war "Peter I with the young Louis XV in his arms" works by R. L. Bernshtam. The sculpture illustrates the visit of the Russian Tsar to France in 1717, when Peter raised the young French king in his arms and said: “All of France is in my hands.”

Louis XV of France. Internal development. Domestic policy

If we take a closer look at the 59 years of the reign of Louis XV, they look - with all the weaknesses and shortcomings - as a brilliant era for France in a variety of fields, especially in the arts, science, literature and spiritual life, as well as in the field of economics. The fact that during these long years France was largely free from external invasions and did not experience the devastating consequences of war played a major role. Contemporaries Abbé de Vere and Duke de Croy assessed the long period of her reign as a happy era due to her internal peace and her economic and intellectual strength.

Since Louis XV was not very musical, he did not really encourage music, although composers such as François Couperin (1668-1733) and Jean Philippe Rameau (1683-1764) worked in France. He liked sculpture and painting, but he devoted himself with real passion to architecture and personally encouraged a wide variety of projects. He knew this subject so well that the architects could not mislead him in anything, he intervened as a specialist and in all large projects delved into all the details. His reign was a time of great growth in art and architecture. It is no coincidence that the characteristic style of Louis XV, which dominated then, especially in interior decoration, with its refined ornaments and imaginative decorations in the Rococo style, was named after the king. The most outstanding buildings should be called the Neptune Pool and the opera house built by Gabriel in 1770 at the Palace of Versailles, one of the most beautiful opera buildings in the world, then the “small apartments”, which were created from 1735 to 1738. The largest completed project was restored from 1751 to 1755, Robert de Cotte castle in Komien. At the same time, other, smaller castles arose: Petit Trianon (Gabriel), San-Hubert, Bellevue, etc. Under the auspices of Louis XV, “Place Louis XV” (now Place de la Concorde), one of the largest and most beautiful squares, was also built Europe, public buildings of military and surgical schools, the Church of St. Genevieve (now the Pantheon), begun in 1764 and the Church of St. Louis (now the Cathedral), begun in 1745 in Versailles, ministerial buildings, etc.

The art of interior decoration reached a special flourishing thanks to such masters as Germain Boffant and J.A. Rousseau. At the same time, elegant, magnificent examples of furniture appeared, as well as masterfully painted, delicate and exquisite paintings in the Rococo style by Antoine Watteau, Francois Boucher and Jean-Marc Nattier.

Louis XV was, as Antoine and Maoc and Michel Bernay emphasize, through his vigorous building activity, his desire to renovate and perfect interior decoration, and his search for refined comfort, the main driver in the heyday of French architecture and the “Golden Age” applied arts. At the same time, the courtyard and the city of Versailles formed a symbiosis. The king set the tone, and he was followed by the court nobility, who had palaces in this huge world city, in which artists, craftsmen and dealers in works of applied art lived and worked. These artists and craftsmen found rich buyers and patrons here. For the castles of Louis, for example, from 1722 to 1774, no less than 850 paintings were purchased or orders were placed for them, more than a thousand elegant pieces of furniture, which guaranteed the livelihood of a large number of famous cabinetmakers. Since French style and taste were a model for Europe, craftsmen from Paris and Lyon (silk) supplied their products to almost all the courts of Europe right up to Russian St. Petersburg.

The era of Louis XV was a golden age for science, literature and spiritual life. Since Louis XV especially encouraged the natural sciences and medicine, it seems that he was much less of a patron of literature and philosophy than Louis XIV. And yet Voltaire was a court writer for many years. Louis did not patronize writers and poets as much as his great-grandfather, so that they would exalt him and the royal power, but with his relatively liberal rule - despite outdated censorship restrictions and even persecution - he provided them with a wide field of activity. Thus, his reign became the golden age of the French Enlightenment. Soon all of Europe looked to France as the center of spiritual life.

It was then that such French mathematicians and natural scientists as d’Alembert, Condorcet, Laplace, Monge, Lavoisier, Buffon, Montgolfier and many others became leaders in their disciplines. French historians, linguists and art historians who studied foreign overseas cultures achieved great success. The physiocrats published their economic theories and founded the first national economic school, which preached rationalism, individualism and natural law.

Diderot and d'Alembert in 1751 - 1780. A 35-volume Encyclopedia was published. It published “Information on modern knowledge.” Thanks to its anticlerical and anti-absolutist orientation, the Encyclopedia became “the main work of the French Enlightenment,” a journalistic weapon of philosophers. It was these philosophers and thinkers of the era who published seminal works and proposed ideas that became historical and, among other things, prepared the revolution.

The most outstanding mind among philosophers was Voltaire (1694-1778). From 1726 to 1729 he lived in England and was therefore strongly influenced by English thinkers. He was a writer, playwright, poet, historian, philosopher and popularizer of the ideas of the Enlightenment. Montesquieu had a great influence on the development of society with his “Spirit of Laws,” which demanded the independence of the judiciary and a certain separation of powers; Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712 - 1778) gained great respect as a critic of civilization, writer and teacher. His Social Contract, published in 1762, later greatly influenced revolutionaries, especially the Jacobins. It was Rousseau who spoke about the need to transfer state power into the hands of the people, i.e. citizens. The enlightenment philosophers mentioned as an example also played a significant role in the literature of that time, when traditional authorities were no longer taken into account and reason was declared the universal judge of all things. The comedy was updated by Pierre Carlet de Chambelin de Marivaux (1688-1763), the drama by Michel-Jean Sedin (1719-1797), the realistic novel by Alain-René Lesage (1668 - 1747), the philosophical novel by Montesquieu, Voltaire, Diderot and Tasso and psychological - Marivaux and Abbé Prévost (1697-1763).

Louis's reign was a favorable time not only for the flowering of Enlightenment philosophy, but to some extent also for internal development and the economy, although there were plenty of difficult situations and conflicts for which the regent laid many foundations.

During the regency of the Duke of Orleans, when the young King Louis XV already had to perform numerous representative duties as the sovereign of the kingdom, many decisive milestones were outlined that negatively affected further development monarchy and having severe consequences. Responsible for this was primarily the regent, described in an ancient study as a "cynical hedonist". In newer works, along with very free morals, his intelligence and political abilities are also noted.

The reign of the “Sun King” Louis XIV (1643 - 1715) became the pinnacle of the “absolute” power of the monarchy in France, but during the War of the Spanish Succession (1701 - 1714) the image of the monarchy within the kingdom was shaken, the leading position of France in Europe was replaced by the balance of the great powers, and the finances of the Bourbon kingdom were exhausted. In fact, the French state became insolvent in 1715. Thus, the regent inherited a burden of difficult political problems. He had to find a solution to them.

In his 1714 will, Louis XIV appointed a regency for his then four-year-old heir to the throne and great-grandson Louis XV. The “Sun King” in it decreed that his only nephew, Philip, Duke of Orleans (in the event of the death of Louis XV, he was also his heir), should not receive a full regency and too much influence over the child king. However, when the “Sun King” died, the ambitious Duke of Orleans wanted an unlimited and complete regency. In order to receive it without conflicts, the Duke considered it necessary to meet the Parisian Parliament halfway as the custodian of the will. He recognized the Parisian Parliament political role, lost half a century ago. This was to play a negative role in the next 74 years, since the Parisian Parliament and the provincial parliaments, that is, the highest courts of the kingdom with their judges from the serving nobility, who received their positions by inheritance or bought them, invariably opposed the reforms and almost constantly blocked them as representatives of the interests of the privileged.

Another long-term goal of the regent was in the religious field, was associated with the strengthened positions of parliaments and created problems for Louis XV throughout his reign: the rise of the Jansenist, Rigorist and Gallican movements. Jansenism, originally a religious and moral reform movement of the 17th century. inside catholic church with strict, ascetic moral foundations, was persecuted by Louis XIV, because over time it developed from a purely religious into a large-scale political movement with a religious basis. It acquired special significance and penetrating power, as it united with rigorism and gallicanism. Rigorism is a church movement that emerged in 1611, based on the theses of the Sorbonne theologian Edmond Richet, which were adopted by the Jansenists. Richet emphasized the largely equal role of all priests as judges in matters of faith and advisers in matters of church discipline and, in accordance with this, the advantage of representative meetings of the clergy (synods, church councils) as opposed to bishops and the pope. These ideas found more adherents among chaplains and priests, the more the episcopate appointed by the French king represented a virtual monopoly of the nobles. Rigorism united with Gallicanism with the goal of creating a national church that was not dependent on the pope. Since Gallicanism had a legal weapon - the ability to appeal against abuses, these appeals against the church authorities (up to the pope and church courts) were now submitted to the highest secular courts, parliaments.

Parliaments thus considered not only the appeals of priests who had been condemned or persecuted by their bishops, but also questions of faith - complaints against bulls, prayer books and instructions of the papacy. Parliamentary councils, mostly close to Jansenism, used their rights to weaken the authority of the noble bishops appointed by the king in favor of the lower clergy. This led to discord and unrest in the dioceses.

Louis XIV, as the French king, certainly did not have a negative attitude towards Gallicanism and even sometimes tried to use it in the harshest form against the pope, but he saw the Jansenists behaving in a Gallican manner as a danger to royal authority. He believed, not without reason, that the Jansenists, who fought with such passion against dogmatic decisions and the infallibility of the pope, would also attack the authority of the king. At his request, Pope Clement XI once again condemned in 1713 in the bull Unigenitus Dei 101 provisions from the work of the French Jansenist Quesnel. The bull again aroused minds. But Louis XIV, with the authority of his power, ensured that the Paris Parliament on February 15, 1714 registered the papal charter, which thus became a kind of basic law (constitution) of the monarchy.

After a purely external pacification, passions flared up again after the death of the “Sun King” in September 1715. It came to clashes between the Jansenist-rigorist opponents of the bull and its defenders, primarily the Jesuits.

When the Parliament of Paris declared the "Constitution Unigenitus" unacceptable and condemned it as directed against the liberties of the Gallican Church, the Regent allowed this to happen, apparently awaiting the favor of the parliaments in the matter of the will. Interested in questions of faith from a young age, he went to meet the opponents of the bull. This led to a small theological war, fueled by pamphlets, and a serious conflict with the pope. The pope approved only those bishops appointed by the regent who recognized the bull, while the Duke of Orleans rejected such a papal position as an unacceptable interference in his rights.

While parliaments constantly interfered in matters of theology and church discipline, passions on both sides flared up more and more, so that the regent felt the need to restore calm. In 1720, he ordered that the bull be taken into account and this issue not be discussed further. However, this order was not very successful, and the split into the parties of Jansenists, Rigorists and Gallicans, encouraged by the regent, which had a strong influence on both the highest legal circles and the clergy and population of Paris, played an important role in the weakening of the monarchy in the following decades until the revolution. .

Under the regent, the authority of the monarchy also began to decline due to constant destructive criticism and systematic exaggeration of the mistakes and weaknesses of the monarch and his entourage, directed primarily by the Jansenist party. If Louis XIV evoked a certain respect, then after his death, under the regent, criticism took on a sharper and at the same time more incorrect and destructive form. Finally, in the field of financial policy, the regent took a step that had dire consequences. He decided on an experiment by Edinburgh financier John Lowe. John Law created a new type of bank in 1716 to account for bills, deposits and issue banknotes; in 1717 he founded the Compagnie d’Occident for the French North America and issued shares against it. In 1718 Oma was transformed into a royal bank that issued banknotes. In the spring of 1720, he declared banknotes the only legal means of payment for payments over 100 livres. However, since the cover was not provided and Lowe succumbed to the temptation to use the printing press more and more, printing 1.5 billion worth of banknotes in two months, he caused an inflation that he could no longer curb with deflationary measures. So, on December 26, 1720, the bankrupt royal bank was closed and Lowe fled. Because of the experiment, hundreds of thousands of people lost their fortunes, but due to inflation, public debts were significantly reduced and the state gained room for maneuver. Some sectors of the economy even experienced a boom.

The bankruptcy of the Royal Bank pushed France into a severe state crisis. Confidence in all kinds of government securities and paper money was undermined, as was faith in public credit institutions.

This continued for many years, until finally, under Napoleon I, the Bank of France was founded.

When Louis XV came of age on 23.2.1723 at the age of 13, initially next to the ambitious Cardinal Dubois, the Duke of Orleans remained the dominant figure of the kingdom. He even took over the post of prime minister after the death of the cardinal in August 1723, which was unusual for such a high-ranking member of the royal family. However, when the former regent suffered a blow on 12.2 of the same year, the position of first minister was taken over for three years by another prince of the blood, the “very crafty” 31-year-old head of the house of Condé, the Duke of Bourbon. During the time of the Duke, who profited handsomely from Lowe's experiment, the dominant figures were the financier and army supplier Paris-Duvernay and the Duke's mistress, the Marquis de Prie. However, when the prime minister, under the influence of this lady, decided to fight against Austria and Spain, he was dismissed, on the initiative of a member of the State Council, who had a very strong influence on the 16-year-old king. Fleury's main goal was to maintain peace both in France and abroad. Although the young king declared that he would rule himself, following the example of his great-grandfather Louis XIV, the leading figure in France was the 73-year-old Fleury, a "wise old man" who commanded the unlimited and always respectful confidence of the young king. Fleury was content with the title of minister of state and refused the duties of prime minister, although he performed them in practice like few others.

Fleury, born in 1653 in Loschedev (Languedoc), the son of a tax collector, was initially a priest; Despite his relatively simple bourgeois origin, in 1698 he became the bishop of the small southern French diocese of Freju, then Aumonier of the Versailles court, and in 1714 - on the recommendation of the Jesuits - tutor to Louis XV. This determined Fleury's further rise to power. Naturally kind and meek, with good manners, this man with an iron will and perseverance knew how to hide his ambition. Since he eschewed court intrigues, he for a long time had no enemies. Not a genius, but a wise, moderate, diligent and very gifted statesman with a brilliant memory, economically managed the public funds entrusted to him and worked with an extremely small staff of employees, numbering no more than 3-4 secretaries with assistants for each. And in his personal life, this clergyman was moderate and economical, avoided, as was customary then, enriching his own family and did not engage in philanthropy, like his illustrious and wealthy predecessors, Cardinals Richelieu and Mazarin. Fleury donated a significant part of his income to alms. Most of all, he rested at the Sulpician seminar in Issile-Mulino.

Louis XV on August 20, 1726 achieved the title of cardinal for his trusted statesman, as French monarchs had previously done for their ministers, for example, Richelieu and Mazarin. For Fleury, who had a humble origin, this was a great honor, since cardinals were equal in rank to princes of the blood, sometimes even crown princes. Fleury managed to provide his country with a long-term external and inner world and avoid enemy invasion into the kingdom. An era of significant economic recovery began in France. He was very successful in encouraging trade, so that during this time and in the subsequent decades of the reign of Louis XV international trade has increased greatly. An essential prerequisite for economic prosperity, along with peace and the end of major epidemics, was the stabilization of the French currency. After it was under Louis XV and the regent that government manipulation of currency was often used as a means of skimming the cream of income, on June 15, 1726 it was established once and for all that 1 louis d'or is equal to 24 livres, and 1 ecu is equal to 6 livres. Public debts decreased, and in 1738 the Comptroller General (Minister of Finance) Philibert Horry presented a balanced, deficit-free budget, the only one in the entire French 18th century.

The cardinal's influence was also pacifying in domestic religious and constitutional-legal discussions. He silenced the pathetic Jansenist agitation and curbed the “ultramontanes”, ensuring that the bull Unigenitus 24.3 was passed. 1730 became a state law, and reduced political influence parliaments.

To carry out this conciliatory but firm policy, Fleury formulated a strong government, the members of which were appointed by Louis XV at the suggestion of the cardinal. The post of chancellor was held by Henri-François d'Aguesso, a capable lawyer close to Jansenism, the foreign department was headed by Chauvelin, a persistent, brilliant former president of the Paris Parliament, the Ministry of Finance from 1726 to 1730 was headed by Le Peletier and from 1730 to 1745 by Orry, “clumsy, cruel, massive, thrifty”, Ministry of War - Le Blanc, from 1728 to 1740 - d'Angervilliers. The main members of the government came from the service, not military, nobility. In addition, the government then had very good and capable intendants in the province. Contemporary Croy assessed Fleury’s era this way: “He always ruled with great kindness, and France was never as peaceful as under him.”

Thus, the Fleury era was a “golden age” for France, when the country became rich, however, the state remained largely poor, since the rich and enriched upper strata, the privileged, but also the rising bourgeoisie, were not adequately allowed access to the means, so how Fleury did not carry out truly decisive reforms in this area and thereby did not change the structure of the regime, despite all its shortcomings. This was, as can now be judged, the weakness of this otherwise happy era.

The decades after the death of Cardinal Fleury in 1743 are rightfully considered the era of the independent rule of Louis XV. He held the threads of government in his hands and performed the duties of an "absolute" monarch like a typical bureaucrat who, being a shy, public-spirited man, ruled his kingdom from behind his desk and in writing. The significant restraint of this bureaucrat, who, with all his mobility, passion for hunting and a large number of mistresses, carried out a consistent policy of government not publicly and without using propaganda, led to the fact that in the public mind other people came to the fore, such as the mistresses, especially the marquise de Pompadour, as well as ministers like the Duke de Choiseul. His role is therefore exaggerated in older studies, although his strong influence in many areas on the timid, self-doubting monarch can well be proven.

This is especially true of Madame de Pompadour, so that in literature they even often talk about the Pompadour era or “France Pompadour”. She went down in history as the “typical personification” of the royal mistress. A very ambitious, power-hungry, beautiful, educated young woman became the Marquise de Pompadour and was officially presented to the court as a noble person. Like none of her predecessors or successors, she was “full of wild determination not to allow anyone to push her from her once conquered place.” However, she was not able to lead high politics and outline its main lines. The monarch kept this for himself. However, the royal mistress managed, albeit indirectly, through a strong influence on the personal policy of Louis XV, to play an important political role, which, however, was rarely positive and happy. The Marquise sought to appoint her favorites to important posts and to grant them honors, rewards and pensions by the monarch. Since she herself could not judge their talents, she promoted flatterers, able and incapable, without distinction, who considered her intercession the best means of gaining the favor of the monarch. Thus, in France at that time, unworthy people often received important posts, and competent and strong-willed people were fired as a result of Pompadour's intervention. Ultimately, these political actions had very negative consequences for the internal and external development of France.

It was publicly condemned that a woman from bourgeois circles had acquired such a positive influence on the king and his personnel policy. She was accused of displaying a lush and luxurious lifestyle, extravagance, and boastful patronage of the arts. Thus, it is reported that Pompadour spent about 4 million on her holidays, and 8 million livres on patronage. All this harmed the king’s reputation and gave the slanderers and wits the desired reason for attacks.

How could the fact help here that the king, as researchers show, did not pamper Pompadour too much financially and gave her only a couple of thousand livres a month, while she, the business daughter of a financier, thanks to her connections with the financial world, had significant personal income? funds and took out large loans. The extravagance and enormous expenses of Madame Pompadour were blamed on the king, and this at a time when the monarchy was experiencing great financial difficulties and there was an urgent need to raise taxes and carry out decisive financial reforms. Pompadour's influence had a negative impact on political morality, although the Marquise tried to win the favor of writers and enlightenment philosophers by encouraging them. She supported the Encyclopedia and the party of philosophers against the Jesuits, Jansenists and the Sorbonne, achieved for Voltaire the post of royal historiographer, member of the Academy and chamberlain, started various construction projects and gave large sums for them.

At first, she was closely associated with a group consisting of financiers from Paris, Tensen and Marshal Richelieu, which had a strong influence on the composition of the government. However, a general crisis of authority led to a government crisis and growing internal tensions, conflicts and restlessness. Attempts by the Minister of Finance d'Harnouville (1745-1754) to decisively reform the structures of the unsuitable and unfair tax and financial system, as well as to increase taxation of the privileged and thereby provide the monarchy with the necessary financial resources, encountered a revolt of the nobility and resistance of the clergy and collapsed as Louis XV retreated . Particularly dangerous for him was the long-term opposition, reaching the point of obstruction, by the highest courts and parliaments, a struggle that did not affect the constitutional basis of the kingdom and was a life-and-death struggle for the crown.

The councils of parliaments and other high courts formed a cohesive layer of the highest service nobility, which was related to the military nobility and belonged to the richest landowners and the most prosperous townspeople. They either bought their positions or inherited them and could hold them from the age of twenty, with minimal legal knowledge. They became "an instrument of noble and landowning reaction." Despite this, judges close to Jansenism became popular as an opposition against the “despotism” of the king and his government. Through agitation and influence on public opinion, especially in Paris, the Councils of Parliaments, dreaming of a “government of judges” in France, tried to systematically defend their positions against the government. Certain groups practiced “real ideological terrorism” against their fellow judges. Ultimately, the parliaments formed the strongest of the three opposing groups that were then waging a fierce struggle in the kingdom: the clergy - the Jesuits, the parliamentary Jansenists and the enlightenment philosophers. Obstruction of parliaments caused the greatest harm to the monarchy.

While the strife between the Jansenists and the Jesuits caused a moral crisis, and social problems As things got worse, political difficulties intensified when the Comptroller General had to introduce a new tax to save public finances. In this situation, Robert François Damien, who had long been in the service of the Jansenist-minded parliamentary councils, single-handedly made an attempt on the life of Louis XV, although only wounding him.

In response to this assassination attempt, under Pompadour's influence, the king fired both his finance minister (a sacrifice to the privileged) and the Jesuit friend Comte d'Argenson, who was firmly in charge of the Parisian police (a concession to the Jansenists). However, due to the resignation of hated but capable ministers, strong people in the government, the situation became even more difficult and unstable. The high-born, enlightened free mason Duke of Choiseul came to the fore. He was a favorite of Pompadour, an arrogant, energetic, but flighty and controversial personality, who, from 1758, held various positions in the government for 12 consecutive years. All concessions to public opinion and the opposing high courts were not justified; their resistance to all reforms of the monarchy, which was in a dire financial situation, intensified even more. Although such capable controllers general as Bertin (1759 - 1763) and L'Averdi (1763 - 1768) made great efforts, conducted surveys throughout the kingdom and through diplomats - in all largest states Europe, in order to obtain materials to justify the reform, everything went to pieces. They prepared a general cadastre for the whole of France in order to unify the tax system and received detailed information about the tax systems of various European countries in order to benefit from their experience. Parliaments and the public opinion they guided sharply opposed “ministerial despotism.” At this time, one of the most significant and rare events of the reign of Louis XV occurred: the destruction of the Jesuits. As has already been mentioned many times, the Jesuits in France were hated as the greatest opponents of the Jansenists, as “agents” of the pope and defenders of “absolute” monarchical power in Paris, both by Jansenist-minded layers, and by philosophers, and by free masons. Thus, the Jansenists constantly sought to destroy the Society of Jesus. When in 1758, after the assassination attempt on the Portuguese king, his prime minister, the free mason Pombal, laid the blame on the Jesuits, this was incredibly inflated in Paris and was accompanied by sharp reproaches and accusations of the order, which in France numbered 111 colleges, 9 novices and 21 seminaries, which used respect of Louis XV, and the “party of the pious” at court, led by the Dauphin. Choiseul, who "by destroying the Jesuits wanted to gain parliamentary support for higher taxes," proposed taking action against the Jesuits. Madame de Pompadour supported him. She could not forgive the Society of Jesus for harsh criticism of her lifestyle.

The Order itself presented this opportunity to the Paris Parliament. After he lost an important debt case, he appealed to a higher authority, that is, to the Paris Parliament, although he must have been aware of the hostile, Jansenist attitude of its judges. The Jesuits lost the case in the highest court, and Parliament, on behalf of the Parliamentary Council, began to consider the issue of the “danger” of the order. At the same time, they did not hesitate to use poorly translated and distorted quotes from the works of foreign Jesuits as evidence. Parliament accused the Jesuits of calling for the murder of the king and decided in 1761 to ban fraternities and close colleges.

While Chancellor Lamoignon, the Crown Prince and even Louis XV himself wanted to tackle the Jesuits and negotiated with the Holy See to change the rules of the order, the parliaments confronted them with a fait accompli. The Parliament of Rouen was the first to pronounce a “final verdict” on February 12, 1762; other higher courts joined it and immediately ordered the closure of the colleges. Louis XV, finding himself in a hopeless situation, retreated. Since the Jesuits had always been ardent defenders of the monarchy, the victory of their opponents was "a heavy blow to royal authority." Even the enemies of the Jesuits, the enlighteners Voltaire and d’Alembert, criticized this ban as the fruit of “fanaticism,” and Voltaire, himself a student of the Jesuits, emphasized that they never called for murder or taught “dangerous principles.”

If Choiseul and, under his influence, Louis XV believed that by sacrificing the Jesuits they would achieve parliamentary consent to increase taxes, then they were greatly mistaken. This victory made parliaments even more self-confident.

The Seven Years' War, which ended in 1763, brought the French monarchy not only the loss of numerous territories and a decline in prestige, but also devastating debts. The colossal debt after 1763 (2325.5 million livres in 1764) had catastrophic consequences for the French state treasury, which, due to the high costs of servicing the public debt, practically lost its freedom of action. The worsening financial problems turned into a protracted and severe regime crisis with immediate and long-term political and financial consequences. Ultimately, the debt fueled inflation and led to high interest rates, leading to an economic crisis.

Every attempt by the government to implement reforms was met with vetoes by the supreme courts and indignation. The kingdom became ungovernable as every measure was rejected as "oppressive" or as a "violation of fundamental laws." At the same time, the serving nobility sitting in the supreme courts worked together with the princes and the military nobility, which Choiseul had to endure.

If the king did not want to submit to the privileged and practically abdicate, but wanted to modernize his state and make it workable, he had to act. 60-year-old Louis finally summoned all his will, dismissed Choiseul and supported the reformers.

The most significant personalities of the time of reform were the Comptroller General (Minister of Finance) Abbot Terrey (1769-1774) and Chancellor Rene M.S.A. de Maupou (1770-1774). The Parliament of Brittany, having initiated proceedings against the local representative of the king, the tutor of the Duke d'Aiguillon and with its power deprived him of the peerage, opposed the king himself and his absolute monarchical power and contrasted with him the rule of parliamentary councils desired by the judges. The conflict was taken to extremes by both sides. When the king and the council of state revoked the deprivation of the peerage as against the authority of the king and withdrew the case from the parliament of Rennes, the latter continued to insist on his verdict, and was joined by other parliaments, supported by the princes of the blood. There was general outrage. After sharp disputes and numerous refusals of the parliament, and especially the Parisian one, to obey the highest royal judicial representatives, Maupou exiled 130 parliamentarians with their families to the provinces. Their positions and property were requisitioned for insubordination and refusal to work. In the provinces, 100 parliamentarians were also sent into exile. Mopu carried out a radical reform of the high courts, abolished the sale of judicial seats and introduced free access to court. New members of parliaments received allowances and became irremovable. The organization of the courts was streamlined and they began to function normally. This act of the king, considered by many as revolutionary, caused a sharp and violent reaction from a large part of society, which was influenced by parliamentarians, princes and Choiseul. It was no easier for the Minister of Finance, Abbot Terrey, a firm, energetic man who wanted to save the state. He reduced state pensions and funds provided to the crown, and sought to introduce a uniform, rationally increased land tax by creating a general cadastre. In addition, he increased the general rent.

These tough, but necessary for the survival of the state, measures of the two reformer ministers made them the target of malicious attacks and insults, in short, they were “mixed with dirt.” At the same time, they could mainly count only on the support of the king, who had lost the last vestiges of popularity, since Jansenist circles, having lost their old enemy - the Jesuits, now attacked a new enemy - the “despotism” of the government and the king. Despite this, the king declared: “I will never change my course.”