Louis XV

• 1. Introduction

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  On the 1st of September 1715, Louis XV, a boy of five, trembled and cried as he inherited the throne of France. Almost nobody had expected this. His reign would last almost 59 years, the second longest in French history. He became known as Louis the Beloved. Why was a child so far from the crown the one left standing? How did a king with that nickname end up judged harshly by most historians? And why do a minority of scholars insist that he was popular in his own lifetime, and that revolutionary propaganda later blackened his name?

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• 2. A Line Cut by Disease

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  Louis was born at the Palace of Versailles on the 15th of February 1710 and was styled the Duke of Anjou. The throne looked remote. His grandfather, the Grand Dauphin, was expected to succeed Louis XIV. After him in line came Louis's father, known as the Petit Dauphin, and then Louis's elder brother, a child also named Louis, the Duke of Brittany.

  Disease then rearranged the line. The Grand Dauphin died of smallpox on the 14th of April 1711. On the 12th of February 1712, Louis's mother, Marie Adélaïde, died of measles. Six days later her husband followed her, having refused to leave her side during the illness.

  With both dauphins dead, the elder brother became Dauphin. On the 7th of March, doctors found that both boys had caught measles as well. They applied the traditional treatment of bloodletting. On the night of the 8th and the 9th of March, the five-year-old Dauphin died from the combined effect of the disease and the cure.

  The boys' governess, Madame de Ventadour, would not let it happen twice. She forbade the doctors to bleed the two-year-old Duke of Anjou. Instead she hid him in a palace closet and nursed him alone. He was gravely ill, but he lived.

  The old king still reigned, and his will, written in August 1714, already contained arrangements for the boy. A portion of that will would soon be challenged.

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• 3. Regency and Schoolroom

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  A royal ordinance issued by Charles V in 1374 required France to be governed by a regent until its king turned 13. Custom gave the role to a young king's mother or an uncle. Louis's mother was dead, and his only uncle had already been enthroned as King of Spain. The task fell to his great-uncle Philippe II, Duke of Orléans.

  Louis XIV had distrusted this choice. He saw Philippe, a renowned soldier, as an atheist and libertine, and privately called him a Fanfaron des crimes, a "braggart of crimes". Part of the dead king's will stood in Philippe's way, and he saw the trap.

  Only the Parlement of Paris, an assembly of nobles among whom Philippe had many friends, could annul that part of the will. Immediately after the king's death, he asked it to do so. His price was the droit de remontrance, the right of remonstrance, which let the Parlement challenge a king's decisions. Louis XIV had taken that right away. Restoring it would impair the monarchy's functioning and began a conflict between crown and Parlement that contributed to the French Revolution in 1789.

  On the 9th of September 1715, the Regent moved the boy from Versailles to Paris, to his own residence at the Palais Royal. Three days later Louis opened the first lit de justice of his reign there. He lived at the Château de Vincennes until January 1716, then moved to the Tuileries Palace.

  In February 1717, at the age of seven, Louis was taken away in tears from his beloved governess. His new governor was François de Villeroy, a 73-year-old Duke and Maréchal de France, whom Louis XIV's will had named. Villeroy taught the boy court etiquette, how to review a regiment, and how to receive royal visitors.

  One visitor in 1717 was Tsar Peter the Great. The Tsar stood two meters tall and ignored the usual protocol between great rulers, lifting Louis by the arms and kissing him. The boy won him over by naming the major rivers, cities and geographic features of Russia.

  That knowledge came from his tutor, the Abbé André-Hercule de Fleury, bishop of Fréjus. Fleury saw to lessons in Latin, Italian, history and geography, astronomy, mathematics, drawing and cartography. The interest lasted. Louis later created departments of physics in 1769 and mechanics in 1773 at the Collège de France. He also sponsored the Cartes de Cassini, the first complete and accurate map of France. Riding and hunting became his great passions.

  Villeroy followed Louis XIV's example in one other respect. He had the boy dance in public, at the Tuileries Palace on the 24th of February 1720 and in the Ballet des Elements on the 31st of December 1721. The shy king was terrified and never danced in another ballet.

  A financial storm broke over the Regency in between. In May 1716, the Scottish banker John Law, named controller-general of finances, opened the Banque Générale Privée, soon renamed the Banque Royal. It was mostly funded by the government and was one of the earliest banks to issue paper money, which Law promised could be exchanged for gold. He also persuaded wealthy Parisians to invest in the Mississippi Company, a scheme to colonize French Louisiana. The stock soared and then collapsed in 1720, taking the bank with it. Law fled France, and Parisians trusted nothing but gold afterward.

  In 1720 the Regent also decreed an official silence on religious conflicts. In those same years Montesquieu and Voltaire published their first works, and the Age of Enlightenment in France quietly began.

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• 4. Queen and Mistresses

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  A Franco-Spanish treaty signed on the 27th of March 1721, ending a war that France had fought against Spain alongside Britain and the Dutch Republic, proposed uniting the two royal families. Louis was to marry Mariana Victoria of Spain, the three-year-old daughter of Philip V. The contract was signed on the 25th of November 1721, and the little princess took up residence in the Louvre. After the Regent's death, the new prime minister judged her too young to bear children soon enough, and she was sent back to Spain.

  That prime minister was Louis Henri, Duke of Bourbon, and finding a bride became his priority. He wanted an heir to secure the monarchy and keep the rival Orléans branch off the throne. His staff drew up a list of 99 princesses. Mariana Victoria later married the Crown Prince of Portugal and became the mother of Maria I. Charlotte Amalie of Denmark never married. The choice fell on Marie Leszczyńska, daughter of Stanislaus I, the deposed king of Poland.

  The wedding was celebrated in September 1725, when Louis was 15. Between 1727 and 1737 Marie gave him ten children, eight girls and two boys. Only the elder boy, the Dauphin Louis, born in 1729, survived childhood, and his birth was welcomed across French society. The second son, the Duke of Anjou, was born in 1730 and died in 1733. Only the two eldest daughters, fraternal twins, were raised at Versailles. The rest went to the Abbey of Fontevrault.

  The Dauphin married Maria Josepha of Saxony in 1747. Their sons would become Louis XVI, Louis XVIII and Charles X. The Dauphin himself died in 1765 and never reigned.

  Marie was a pious and timid queen who spent most of her time secluded with her own courtiers. She was a musician, read widely, and played social games with her ladies. Louis had been deeply in love with her, but as the family grew and she was constantly pregnant or exhausted, he began to look elsewhere.

  His first mistress was Louise Julie de Mailly, a lady of the Queen's court, the same age as the king and from an ancient noble family. He raised her to Duchess without courtship or ceremony. The Duke of Luynes observed: "The King loves women, and yet there is absolutely no gallantry in his spirit."

  In 1738 the Queen lost an unborn child, and her doctors forbade relations with the king for a time. He took offense at her refusal and never shared her bed again. Aware that he was committing adultery, he refused to confess or take the sacrament, whatever Fleury urged.

  That same year Louis turned to Louise Julie's sister, Pauline Félicité de Mailly. She became pregnant in 1740, allegedly by the king, and died in childbirth. The child was called "Demi-Louis" for his resemblance to his father, who paid for his upkeep but gave him little attention. Louis went into mourning and for a time turned to religion.

  When he recovered, Louise Julie introduced him to her youngest sister, Marie Anne de Mailly. Marie Anne demanded that her older sister be expelled from court first. The king agreed. On the 4th of October 1742 Marie Anne became a Lady of the Queen's court, and he made her Duchess of Châteauroux. A popular comic poem mocked the arrangement: "Choosing an entire family: is that being unfaithful, or constant?"

  In June 1744, Louis left Versailles to command his armies in person, a popular move spoiled by his decision to bring Marie Anne. In August, at Metz, the king fell gravely ill, and death seemed near. His chaplain, François de Fitz-James, refused him absolution unless he renounced his mistress, and he did. Marie Anne left court. When Louis recovered, he made a triumphal entry into Paris, and a public relieved by his survival gave him the epithet "well-beloved".

  The Metz affair still damaged him. His confession of adultery circulated publicly, embarrassing him and tarnishing the monarchy's prestige. Marie Anne was recalled to Versailles but soon fell sick with convulsive pains and died on the 8th of December 1744.

  Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, better known as Madame de Pompadour, was the most famous and influential of his mistresses. She was the illegitimate daughter of a Paris fermier-general and was married to a banker, Charles Guillaume Lenormant d'Étoiles. The king noticed her after one of his hunts and formally met her at a carnival costume ball in 1745. By July she was his mistress and the Marquise de Pompadour.

  For the next twenty years she was his confidante and advisor, helping him choose or demote ministers. Her opinions brought down capable men, including Machault d'Arnouville and the Marquis d'Argenson, and promoted weak military commanders. Her best choice was the Duke de Choiseul, who became one of the king's most effective ministers. She ceased sexual intimacy with him by 1750 but remained his closest advisor. She was made Duchess in 1752, and she patronized music, the arts and religious establishments.

  She died on the 15th of April 1764, and Louis was devastated. Court protocol kept him from her funeral, since she ranked far below him, yet he carried on court business while mourning. Some at court immediately began maneuvering to replace her, and the Duchess of Gramont, sister of Choiseul, was a leading candidate. The king showed no interest. In February 1765 he closed down the Parc-aux-Cerfs, where he had met his petites maîtresses.

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• 5. Fleury's Peace

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  In 1726, the young king insisted that his old tutor attend every meeting between himself and the Duke of Bourbon. The Duke, rigid and cold, did not appeal to Louis and began undermining Fleury at court. When the king learned of the intrigue, he abruptly dismissed the Duke and put Fleury in his place.

  From 1726 until his death in 1743, Fleury effectively ruled with the king's assent. He encouraged Louis's indecision, flattered his pride, and forbade him to discuss politics with the Queen. On the surface this was the most peaceful and prosperous stretch of the reign. Beneath it, opposition was growing among the noble members of the Parlements, who saw their privileges shrinking.

  The government was unusually stable. Fleury had just thirteen ministers in nineteen years, while the king employed forty-three in his last thirty-one. Philibert Orry served as controller of the currency for twelve years. He cut the debt left by the War of the Spanish Succession and simplified the tax system, though the unpopular dixième, a tax of a tenth of every citizen's revenue, remained. In the last two years of Fleury's government, Orry balanced the royal budget, an achievement never repeated in the reign. His predecessor Le Peletier des Forts had steadied the currency but was expelled in 1730 for enriching himself.

  Commerce flourished. The Saint-Quentin canal, linking the Oise and Somme rivers, was finished in 1738, and the government systematically built a national road network. By the middle of the 18th century France had the most modern and extensive road network in the world. French foreign maritime trade rose from 80 to 308 million livres between 1716 and 1748. Fleury did, however, downplay the French Navy, a decision that would prove a fatal mistake.

  Religion brought a harsher side. Louis XIV had requested the papal bull Unigenitus from Pope Clement XI, and it was granted on the 8th of September 1713. It condemned Jansenism, a Catholic doctrine drawn largely from Saint Augustine, which counted Blaise Pascal, the poet Racine, Madame de Sévigné and Madame de Lafayette among its followers. On the 24th of March 1730, Fleury persuaded the king to make Unigenitus the law of France.

  The repression followed. On the 27th of April 1732, the Archbishop of Paris threatened to excommunicate anyone who read the Jansenist journal Nouvelles Ecclésiastiques. Priests who refused Unigenitus could not give last rites. A new tax, the cinquantième, hit clergy who had previously been exempt. After 139 members of provincial parlements were dismissed for opposing the bull, the Parlement of Paris had to register it and could no longer hear religious cases. Religious dissent lingered for the whole reign.

  The king's father-in-law drew France into war in 1733. Augustus II of Poland died on the 1st of February, and Stanislaus I Leszczyński, the Queen's father, was the favored candidate to succeed him. Russia, Prussia and Austria had agreed in secret to exclude him and back Augustus III. Stanislaus was elected and crowned in Warsaw on the 12th of September, but Empress Anna's regiments marched in, and he fled to the port of Danzig. Augustus III was crowned on the 5th of October.

  Fleury answered with careful diplomacy. He secured promises from Britain and Holland to stay out, and lined up Spain and Charles Emmanuel III of Sardinia. On the 10th of October 1733, Louis declared war on Austria. French armies occupied Lorraine, and another captured Milan on the 3rd of November, handing it to the King of Sardinia. For Stanislaus himself, Fleury did far less. Rather than send the main fleet, he dispatched a small squadron carrying two thousand soldiers, which Russian forces sank. On the 3rd of July Stanislaus fled again, in disguise, to Prussia.

  Peace came through an ingenious swap. Francis III, Duke of Lorraine, went to Vienna and married Maria Theresa in 1736, and Stanislaus took the vacant duchy of Lorraine in exchange for abandoning Poland. Francis received Tuscany, and Sardinia got territory in Lombardy. When Stanislaus died in 1766, Lorraine and neighboring Bar passed to France.

  In September 1739, Fleury's mediation between the Holy Roman Empire and the Ottoman Empire produced the Treaty of Belgrade, which favored the Ottomans. In 1740 they renewed the French capitulations, marking the supremacy of French trade in the Middle East. Louis's prestige peaked, and Frederick William I of Prussia declared: "Since the Treaty of Vienna France is the arbiter of Europe." Within months, a courier would interrupt a royal hunt.

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• 6. Hands in Pockets

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  On the 29th of October 1740, a courier found Louis hunting at Fontainebleau with news that Emperor Charles VI was dead and his daughter Maria Theresa was to succeed him. After two days of reflection, the king declared: "In these circumstances, I don't want to get involved at all. I will remain with my hands in my pockets, unless of course they want to elect a Protestant emperor." His allies, who saw a chance to carve up Habsburg lands, were displeased, and so were generals who had spent a century winning glory against Austria.

  Frederick the Great had succeeded to the Prussian throne on the 31st of May, and on the 17th of December 1740 he invaded the Austrian province of Silesia. The elderly Fleury lacked the energy to resist the war. He sent the Maréchal de Belle-Isle to the Diet of Frankfurt with instructions to avoid war by backing the Elector of Bavaria. Belle-Isle detested the Austrians and instead agreed to join the Prussians. French and Bavarian armies captured Linz and besieged Prague.

  In 1742 the balance turned. George II, the German-born British king and Elector of Hanover, joined Austria and took personal command of his soldiers in Germany. Maria Theresa's Hungarian army retook Linz. In June, Frederick withdrew from the French alliance after winning Silesia. The French had to abandon Prague at a cost of eight thousand men. Orry was forced to bring back the hated dixième to pay for the war.

  Fleury died on the 29th of January 1743, and Louis ruled alone. The Duke of Noailles then showed him a letter from Louis XIV to Philip V of Spain, which advised: "Don't allow yourself to be governed; be the master. Never have a favorite or a prime minister. Listen, consult your Council, but decide yourself." Louis took the advice and governed without a prime minister.

  The war was going badly in Germany. At the Battle of Dettingen, George II's British, Hessian and Hanoverian force defeated the Duke of Noailles's army, and by September the French had to leave Germany. In 1744 the Austrian Netherlands became the main battlefield, and French fortunes improved. Louis left Versailles to lead his armies there, with the German-born Maréchal Maurice de Saxe in field command.

  At the Battle of Fontenoy on the 11th of May 1745, Louis came under fire for the first time, with his young son the Dauphin beside him, and saw a French victory over British, Dutch and Austrian forces. The Dauphin grew excited at the sight of so many enemy dead. The king told him: "You see what a victory costs. The blood of our enemies is still the blood of men. The true glory is to spare it."

  Saxe won again at Rocoux in 1746 and Lauffeld in 1747. In 1746 French forces took Brussels, which Louis entered in triumph, and he rewarded Saxe with the Château de Chambord in the Loire Valley. By the summer of 1747 France held the entire Austrian Netherlands, modern Belgium.

  In March 1748, Louis proposed a conference at Aix-la-Chapelle. Saxe's capture of Maastricht on the 10th of April helped the process, and Britain, worried by the threat to the rest of the Netherlands, pressed for a quick settlement. The treaty was signed that September and October. Naval war with Britain had been costly to French trade, which made Louis eager as well.

  His terms were surprisingly generous. He gave all his Netherlands conquests back to the Austrians, Maastricht to the Dutch, Nice and Savoy to the Sardinians, and Madras in India to the English. In return France got back Louisbourg and Cape Breton Island. France also agreed to expel Charles Edward Stuart, the Stuart pretender. Parisians acclaimed Charles Edward and he refused to go, so he was arrested on the 10th of December 1748 and carried by force to Switzerland.

  Celebrations at the war's end turned to anger when the terms were published on the 14th of January 1749. Saxe and the other commanders were furious about surrendering the Netherlands. Louis had practical reasons. He did not want those lands to be a permanent source of quarrels, and he felt France had reached its proper borders and should cultivate prosperity instead. Fleury had also taught him that the Seventh Commandment forbade taking others' property by fraud or violence. He liked to cite a Latin maxim that the best way to defend a kingdom is never to wish to enlarge it.

  Voltaire backed him, writing: "It seems better, and even more useful for the court of France to think about the happiness of its allies, rather than to be given two or three Flemish towns which would have been the eternal object of jealousy." But Louis lacked the skill to explain himself to the public and saw no need to. The French coined two bitter sayings: Bête comme la paix, "Stupid as the peace", and Travailler pour le roi de Prusse, "To work for the king of Prussia", meaning to work for nothing. After 1748, pamphlets attacking the king's mistresses were widely distributed and read.

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• 7. Taxes and Parlements

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  In May 1749, two decrees from the finance minister Jean Baptiste de Machault d'Arnouville aimed to reduce the war debt and modernize taxation. The first issued bonds paying five percent interest to clear 36 million livres of war debt, and it was an immediate success. The second abolished the dixième, a ten percent tax created for the war, and replaced it with the vingtième, five percent of net revenue. For the first time it reached the income from clergy and noble property, along with everyone else's.

  Voltaire supported the new tax, but the nobility and church resisted fiercely. On the 5th of May 1749, the Parlement of Paris rejected it by a vote of 106 to 49 and asked for more time. The king demanded immediate registration, and the Parlement reluctantly gave it on the 19th of May. The provinces proved harder. Burgundy, Provence and Artois gave way, but Brittany and Languedoc refused. The government closed the Parlement of Brittany, sent the members of Languedoc back to their estates, and took direct control of Provence.

  The church escaped. The clergy were ordered to declare their revenues by the 17th of February 1751, and the day passed with no declarations. Quietly, the king had issued a new decree in December 1750 cancelling the tax. The church would instead give the government its voluntary don gratuit, a gift of 1,500,000 livres. Louis's tolerance owed something to his gratitude to Archbishop de Beaumont, who defended him against Jansenist attacks and tolerated his mistresses.

  An argument over the Hôpital Général showed the king and Parlement in open conflict. This semi-religious institution ran six hospitals and shelters in Paris with some five thousand staff. Many officials were Jansenists, and prominent Parlement members sat on its board. In 1749, Louis moved to purge it of Jansenists and corruption and appointed a new Supérieure. When the First President of the Parlement, René Nicolas Charles Augustin de Maupeou, would not carry out the decree, the Parlement went on vacation. On the 28th of January 1752, the king told the Grand Council to reorganize the hospital without the Parlement's approval. Voltaire wrote: "Never before has such a small affair caused such a great emotion of the spirit." It was the first overt disobedience of the legislature, and a sign that the Parlement thought it, not the king, was the true source of law.

  The Parlements were assemblies of hereditary nobles and wealthy citizens who had bought their seats. As Louis appointed intendants of his own across the provinces, the Parlements lost prestige and the price of seats fell. When intendants tried to collect taxes from all classes, the Parlements went on strike, and civil justice stopped. In 1761 the Parlement of Normandy in Rouen wrote that the king alone could tax, but the Parlement alone could collect the money. Louis overruled it and banished some of its boldest members.

  A remonstrance from the same Parlement on the 5th of July 1760 had gone further: "One King, one law, one Parlement." It described the law as a contract that destines the king to reign and the people to obey. On the 31st of January 1761, Louis sent the letter back, calling its principles false and contrary to his authority. The Parlement of Bordeaux told him: "Sire, your Parlement cannot recognize any intermediate power between it and your person." For the rest of the reign, the Parlements swore loyalty to the king while resisting his taxes at every chance.

  Finance ministers kept falling. Étienne de Silhouette taxed horses, carriages, silk, paintings, coffee, furs and other luxuries, which enraged the wealthy. He lasted eight months, and his name came to mean a paper cutout of a shadow, a thing that lasts a moment. The king offered his silver service to be melted down for coin. Henri Bertin, named controller of finances on the 23rd of November 1759, tried broadening the tax base instead. Again the Parlements refused, the decrees were withdrawn, and the debt remained.

  The Parlements also drove the suppression of the Jesuits. There were 3,500 Jesuits in France, running 150 establishments including 85 colleges, whose graduates included Voltaire and Diderot. By tradition dating from Henry IV, the king's confessor was a Jesuit. The campaign began in the provincial Parlements in 1760, where Gallicans, who wanted a distinctively French Catholicism, were strong. The complaint was that the Jesuits answered to no authority in France. On the 12th of February 1762, the Parlement of Rouen declared them outside the law, and others followed through 1763.

  The royal household split. The Dauphin, the king's daughters and the Queen defended the Jesuits, while Madame de Pompadour, whom they had criticized, wanted them gone. In 1764 the indecisive king ordered the suppression, saying he acted against his own feelings. The Jesuits left for Prussia and Russia. France's church was weakened, and so was the king, who had acted like a constitutional monarch on behalf of the Parlements.

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• 8. War, Loss and Legacy

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  At the end of August 1755, the Empress of Austria sent a discreet letter to Louis through her ambassador in Paris and Madame de Pompadour. It proposed a secret alliance against the growing power of Prussia, still formally a French ally. In North America the fighting had already started. About 70,000 French colonists were spread from the St. Lawrence River to Louisiana, against roughly one million settlers in the British 13 Colonies.

  France had built Fort Duquesne to defend its frontier, and Britain had sent the young George Washington to build nearby Fort Necessity. In 1754 the French envoy Joseph Coulon de Jumonville was killed, and French reinforcements forced Washington's men to withdraw. An undeclared French and Indian War followed. By the end of 1755, British ships had seized over 300 French merchant vessels.

  On the 16th of January 1756, Frederick the Great signed the Treaty of Westminster with Britain. On the 1st of May Louis answered with a defensive treaty with Austria, the first Treaty of Versailles, reversing France's long hostility to the Habsburgs. He declared war on Britain on the 9th of June 1756, confident of success. The navy took Minorca, and French troops occupied parts of Hanover.

  Then the war soured. Maurice de Saxe had died two years after the previous war, and his successors, the Prince de Soubise, the Duke d'Estrées and the Duke de Broglie, loathed each other and rarely cooperated. On the 5th of November 1757, Frederick was outnumbered nearly two to one yet crushed Soubise's army at Rossbach. William Pitt, now British Prime Minister, named Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel to command, and French armies were pushed back to the Rhine.

  British naval supremacy cut France off from its colonies. In 1759 the British attacked Martinique and Guadeloupe and captured Quebec. Pondicherry in India, besieged by the British, surrendered the following year. Montreal surrendered on the 8th of September 1760, ending French rule in Canada, and Martinique fell in 1762.

  A shock had come at home on the 5th of January 1757. As the king climbed into his carriage at the Grand Trianon, Robert-François Damiens pushed through the guards and stabbed him in the side with a small knife. Louis ordered the man held but not harmed, walked upstairs bleeding, called for a doctor and a priest, and fainted. His thick winter clothing had saved him from worse.

  Damiens was tried before the Parlement of Paris, the king's loudest critic, which proved its loyalty with the harshest sentence. On the 28th and the 29th of March he was executed on the Place de Grève by dismemberment, and his body was burned. His birthplace was burned down, and his father, wife and daughter were banished. His siblings had to change their name.

  Louis healed quickly in body but not in spirit. A courtier, Duford de Cheverny, recorded him saying, as he touched his head: "yes, the body is going well, but this goes badly, and this is impossible to heal." The king invited the Dauphin to every Royal Council meeting. On the 1st of February 1757 he dismissed and exiled d'Arnouville and d'Argenson, blaming them for failing to prevent the attack.

  The Duke de Choiseul became foreign minister on the 3rd of December 1758 and, by 1763, had taken charge of both army and navy. The Treaty of Paris, signed on the 10th of February 1763, ended the war with Britain and Spain. France gave up its Canadian territories except the islands of Saint Pierre and Miquelon, but regained Guadeloupe, Martinique and Santa Lucia, whose sugar plantations were thought more valuable. Louis ratified it on the 23rd of February, the day his statue was unveiled on the Place Louis XV, today the Place de la Concorde.

  Choiseul then rebuilt the military. The government, not the officers, took charge of training and uniforms, the artillery was standardized, and Prussian-style tactics were taught. The navy in 1763 had only 47 vessels and twenty frigates, three times smaller than Britain's. He launched a program for eighty ships and forty-five frigates. He also completed the absorption of Lorraine in 1766, brought Corsica into France in 1768, and arranged the 1770 marriage of the king's grandson to Marie Antoinette.

  Historians generally criticize the reign, arguing that Louis's incompetence and extravagance weakened France, drained the treasury, discredited absolute monarchy and damaged the country's standing abroad. A minority counter that he was popular in his lifetime, and that revolutionary propaganda blackened his name later. Louis died on the 10th of May 1774. His grandson Louis XVI inherited a kingdom on the brink of financial disaster and in need of political reform, which laid the groundwork for the Revolution of 1789.

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