Louis XVIII of France

Louis XVIII of France (Palace of Versailles, November 17, 1755-Paris, September 16, 1824), also called by his supporters as "the Desired" (le Désiré ), was king of France and Navarre between 1814 and 1824, being the first monarch of the Bourbon restoration in France, with the exception of the period known as the "Hundred Days" in which Napoleon I briefly regained power.

From his youth, and until the beginning of the French Revolution, he held the title of Count of Provence. However, on September 21, 1792, the National Convention abolished the monarchy and all noble titles related to the Old Regime, so Louis XVI was deposed from the throne, and would later be tried, convicted, and executed by guillotine. When young Louis XVII, Louis XVI's son, died in prison in June 1795, Louis XVIII succeeded his nephew as "titular" king of France in exile.

Louis XVIII spent twenty-three years in exile (1791-1814). During this period he toured all of Europe, passing through Prussia, the Russian Empire, and finally settled in Great Britain, where he remained until his return to France in 1814, when—aided by the Sixth Coalition—he recovered his position as monarch, a position which both he and his supporters considered part of their divine right. However, Napoleon escaped from Elba with the intention of restoring his empire, so the Bourbon monarch was forced to flee Paris. A Seventh Coalition was formed which declared war on Bonaparte, completely defeating him at Waterloo, and definitively restoring Louis XVIII to the throne of France.

Louis XVIII ruled as king for just under a decade, and during his reign he focused on consolidating the position of the Bourbons as a monarchical government, and trying to restore the deteriorated image of his family before the French people; In turn, he had to deal with an uncontrollable lower house - and later with many factions opposed to each other -, support his political allies such as the Bourbons in Italy, and intervene militarily in favor of Ferdinand VII, whom he helped quell a revolution against him. Its form of government was a constitutional monarchy, unlike the Ancien Regime, which was an absolutist monarchy, so the royal prerogative of Louis XVIII was substantially reduced thanks to the Charter that he himself promulgated as a kind of Constitution for France.. Louis XVIII died childless in 1824, so the crown passed to his brother Charles, Count of Artois. Louis XVIII would be the last French monarch to rule until his death.

At the beginning of his reign and during most of it, he displayed an attitude of national conciliation between his monarchist supporters - and their most radical side, the "ultras" - with his republican opponents and Bonapartists, coming to respect certain aspects that emerged in the Revolution. Despite the lack of support from his brother Charles and his opponents, Louis XVIII's policy of conciliation was successful until his death.

Childhood

Luis Estanislao Javier was born on November 17, 1755 in the palace of Versailles, sixth son of Louis, Dauphin of France and Maria Josepha of Saxony, and grandson of King Louis XV. He received the title of Count of Provence, but after his brother's accession to the throne he was generally known as «Monsieur», the title normally applied to the eldest brother (the "eldest" of the "youngest"). ») of the king of France. He was baptized Louis Stanislas Xavier six months after his birth, according to Bourbon family tradition, being nameless, before his baptism. By this act, he also became a knight of the Order of the Holy Spirit. The name Louis was given because he was the typical name of a prince of France; Stanislaus was chosen in honor of his maternal great-grandfather King Stanislaus Leszczynski of Poland, and Xavier was chosen by Saint Francis Xavier, whom his mother's family had as one of their patron saints. of the.

At the time of his birth, Louis Stanislaus was fourth in line to the throne of France, behind his father and his two older brothers: Louis Xavier of France, Duke of Burgundy, and Louis Augustus, Duke of Berry. The first of the brothers died in 1761, and his father the Dauphin in 1765. The two deaths elevated Stanislaus to second place in the line of succession, while Louis Augustus acquired the title of Dauphin.

Stanislaus found solace in his governess, Madame de Marsan, who played the role of "Governess of the Royal Children", as he was considered the favorite among his brothers. Stanislaw was separated from his governess when he was seven years old. of age, fulfilling the time in which the education of children of royal blood and nobility was handed over to men for their new instruction. Antoine de Quélen de Stuer de Caussade Duke of La Vauguyon, a friend of his father, was appointed his instructor.

Luis Estanislao as a young man proved to be an intelligent boy, excelling in classical subjects. His education was of the same quality and consistency as that of his older brother, Luis Augusto, despite this being the heir. Stanislaus's education was quite religious in nature; many of his teachers were ecclesiastics. Vauguyon instilled in the young man and his brothers the way in which princes should act, they must "know how to retire by themselves, and like to work" and "know how to reason correctly."

In April 1771, Stanislaus's education formally concluded, he later established his own household, which astonished his contemporaries with its extravagance. In 1773, he had 390 domestic servants. In the same month as established his home, he was granted several titles by his grandfather, Louis XV which were: Duke of Anjou, Count of Maine, Count of Perche, and Count of Senoches, although he was mainly known as the Count of Provence.

On December 17, 1773, Luis Estanislao was appointed grand master of the Order of Saint Lazarus of Jerusalem.

Marriage

On May 14, 1771, Luis Estanislao married Princess María Joséfina of Savoy (1753-1810), daughter of Victor Amadeo, Duke of Savoy, —future king of Sardinia—, and his wife María Antonia de Borbón. His brother Carlos married Princess María Teresa, sister of María Josefina, so both marriages were strongly related.

The wedding took place with quite a bit of luxury on May 20, 1771. However, Stanislaus found his wife disgusting, whom he considered ugly, tedious and ignorant of the customs of the court of Versailles. The marriage remained unconsummated for years. Biographers of Louis XVIII do not agree on the reason. According to biographer Antonia Fraser , the Count of Provence suffered from supposed impotence, or also that his unwillingness to sleep with his wife was due to her lack of personal hygiene. Josefina never brushed her teeth, groomed her eyebrows, or even used any perfume. At the time of her marriage, Estanislao was already obese, wobbling instead of walking. He never exercised to remedy it and continued to eat enormous amounts of food.

Although Stanislaus was not in love with his wife, he boasted that he and his wife enjoyed vigorous marital relations, although these statements were little believed by the courtiers of Versailles. He also subsequently proclaimed that his wife was pregnant, something he said simply to annoy his older brother and his wife Marie Antoinette, who had not yet consummated their marriage. The Dauphin and Stanislaus did not enjoy a harmonious relationship and argued often, as did his wives. In 1774 Stanislaus finally managed to get his wife pregnant, after having overcome his differences with her. However, the pregnancy ended in a miscarriage. A second pregnancy in 1781 also had a miscarriage and the marriage never produced children.

At his brother's court

On April 27, 1774, Louis policy. He tried to be admitted to the king's council in 1777, but failed, leaving him in a political limbo, which he called "a gap of 12 years in my political life." Louis XVI granted his brother income with the duchy of Alençon in December 1774. The dukedom was given to him to improve his personal assets, however it only earned income of 300,000 livres a year, which was much less than what the duchy had given during its heyday in the century XIV.

Louis Stanislas traveled more throughout France than other members of the royal family, who rarely left the capital. In 1774, he accompanied her sister Clotilde to Chambéry on the journey to meet her husband Charles Emmanuel, Prince of Piedmont, heir to the throne of Sardinia. In 1775, he visited Lyon and also his aunts Mary Adelaide of France and Victoria of France when they were taking the waters in Vichy. The four provincial tours that Stanislas took before 1791 took a total time of three months.

On May 5, 1778, Dr. Lassonne, Marie Antoinette's private physician, confirmed her pregnancy. On December 19, 1778, the Queen gave birth to a daughter, whom she named Maria Theresa Charlotte of France and received the honorary title "Madame Royale." The birth of a daughter came as a relief to the Count of Provence., who maintained his position as heir to Louis XVI, since the Salic law excluded women from accessing the throne of France. However, Stanislaus did not remain heir to the throne much longer. On October 22, 1781, Marie Antoinette gave birth to the dauphin Louis Joseph. The Count of Provence and his brother, the Count of Artois, served as godparents alongside Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor, the queen's brother. Marie Antoinette gave birth to her second son, Louis Charles, who was born in March 1785, leaving Stanislaus one place lower in the line of succession.

In 1780, Anne Nompar de Caumont, Countess of Balbi, entered the service of Marie Josephine. Luis Estanislao soon fell in love with his wife's new lady-in-waiting and made her his mistress, resulting in a further cooling of their relationship as a couple. Estanislao commissioned a pavilion for his lover on a plot of land that became known like the Parc Balbi in Versailles.

The Count of Provence maintained a quiet and sedentary lifestyle, not having much to do due to his self-proclaimed political exclusion in 1774. He kept busy with his extensive library of over 11,000 books in the Balbi pavilion, dedicating himself reading for several hours each morning. In the early 1780s, he also incurred enormous debts totaling 10 million livres, which were paid by his brother Louis XVI.

An Assembly of notables, whose members consisted of magistrates, mayors, nobles and clergy, was held in February 1787 to ratify the financial reforms requested by the Comptroller General of Finances Charles Alexandre de Calonne. This provided the Count of Provence, who hated the radical reforms proposed by Calonne, the opportunity he had always been waiting for to establish himself in politics. The reforms proposed the implementation of a new property tax, and new provincial assemblies. elected officials who would have to declare in relation to local taxes. Calonne's reforms were flatly rejected by notables, and as a result, Louis XVI dismissed him. The archbishop of Toulouse, Étienne Charles de Loménie de Brienne, took Calonne's place. Brienne attempted to save Calonne's reforms, but ultimately failed to convince the notables to approve them. A frustrated Louis XVI dissolved the assembly.

Brienne's reforms were then submitted to the Parliament of Paris in the hope that they would be approved. This parliament was responsible for ratifying the king's edicts, and although each province had its own parliament, that of Paris was considered the most important of all. The Parliament of Paris refused to accept Brienne's proposals and clarified that any new imposition would have to be approved by the States General, which served as a nominal parliament of France. Louis XVI and Brienne took a hostile stance against this rejection, and Louis XVI had to implement a lit de justice, which automatically registered an edict in the Parliament of Paris, to ratify the desired reforms. On May 8, two of the leading members of the Paris parliament were arrested. There were riots in Brittany, Provence, Burgundy and Béarn in reaction to the arrests. This discontent was engineered by the local magistrates and nobles, who attracted the people to rebel against the justice system established by the king, which was quite unfavorable to the nobles and magistrates. The clergy also joined the provincial cause, and condemned the fiscal reforms of Brienne, who conceded defeat in July and agreed to call the States General to meet in 1789. He resigned his office in August and was replaced by the Swiss magnate Jacques Necker.

In November 1788 a second Assembly of Notables, called by Necker, was called to consider the composition of the next Estate General. The Parliament of Paris recommended that the Estates should be the same as those at the last assembly, held in 1614, this meant that the clergy and nobility would have more representation than the Third Estate. The notables rejected the proposal of "double representation". On the other hand, Louis Stanislaus was the only notable who voted in favor of increasing the third estate. Necker disagreed with the notables' criticism and convinced Louis XVI to grant additional representation. Luis duly obliged to do so on December 27.

Outbreak of the Revolution

The States General were convened in May 1789 to ratify the financial reforms. The Count of Provence favored an unconditional position against the Third Estate and its demands for tax reform. On June 17, the Third Estate declared a National Assembly, an Assembly not of the States, but of the people.

The Count of Provence urged the king to act harshly against the declaration, while the king's popular minister Jacques Necker urged him to commit to the new assembly. Louis XVI was characteristically indecisive. On July 9, the assembly declared itself a "National Constituent Assembly" which sought to give France a new constitution. On July 11, Louis XVI dismissed Necker, an act that led to widespread riots throughout Paris. On July 12, a cavalry regiment of Prince Charles Eugene of Lorraine of Lambesc charged a crowd gathered in the Tuileries gardens, leading to the storming of the Bastille two days later.

On July 16, the Count of Artois left France with his wife and children, along with many other courtiers. Charles settled with his family in Turin, the capital of his father-in-law of the Kingdom of Sardinia, with the family of the princes of the count.

The Count of Provence decided to stay in Versailles. The royal family had planned to escape from Versailles to Metz, but Stanislaus advised the king not to leave the palace, a suggestion that the king accepted.

The royal family was forced to leave the palace of Versailles one day after the women's march to Versailles, on October 5, 1789. They were relocated to Paris. There, the Count of Provence and his wife stayed at the Luxembourg Palace, while the rest of the royal family stayed at the Tuileries Palace. In March 1791, the National Assembly created a law designating the regency of Luis Carlos in case his father died, the dauphin being still too young to reign. This law granted the regency of Louis Charles to his closest male relative in France, at that time being the Count of Provence, followed by the Duke of Orleans and bypassing the Count of Artois for having fled France. If the Duke of Orleans were not available, the regency would be put up for election.

The Count of Provence and his wife fled to the Austrian Netherlands at the same time as the royal family's failed escape from Varennes in June 1791.

Exile

The early years

When the Count of Provence arrived in the Netherlands—then known as Holland—he proclaimed himself de facto regent of France. He exposed a document that he and Louis XVI had written before the latter's failed escape to Varennes.The document granted him the regency in the event of the death or inability of his brother to carry out his role as king. He joined the other princes in exile at Koblenz shortly after the escape. It was there that he, the Count of Artois, and the Prince of Condé proclaimed their goal of invading France. Meanwhile in Paris, Louis XVI was greatly upset by the behavior of his brothers. Provence sent emissaries to various European courts asking for financial aid, soldiers, and ammunition. Artois secured a castle for the court in exile in the electorate of Trier, where his maternal uncle, Clement Wenceslas of Saxony, was the archbishop-elector. The émigrés' activities bore fruit when the rulers of Prussia and the Holy Roman Empire met in Dresden. They launched the Pillnitz Declaration in August 1791, which urged Europe to intervene in France if Louis XVI or his family were threatened. Provence's support for the declaration was not well received in France, neither by ordinary citizens nor by Louis XVI himself.

In January 1792, the assembly declared that all emigrants were "traitors" to France, so their properties and titles were confiscated. The French monarchy was abolished by the National Convention on September 21, 1792, establishing itself in its place, the First French Republic.

Louis XVI was executed by guillotine in January 1793. This left his young son, Louis Charles, as "titular king." The princes in exile proclaimed him King Louis XVII of France. The Count of Provence declared himself regent for his nephew, since he was too young to be head of the House of Bourbon.

Louis XVII died in June 1795. His only living relative was his sister Maria Theresa, who was not considered for the throne due to France's traditional adherence to the Salic Law. Thus on June 16, the princes in exile declared the Count of Provence as "King Louis XVIII", and he accepted their declaration shortly after. Louis XVIII took up the drafting of a manifesto in response to the death of the nephew of the. The manifesto, known as "The Verona Declaration", was Louis XVIII's attempt to introduce the French people to his politics. With this declaration, the Bourbon monarch urged France to return again to the arms of the absolutist monarchy, "which for fourteen centuries had been the glory of France."

Louis XVIII negotiated the release of Maria Theresa from her Paris prison in 1795. He desperately sought her to marry his first cousin, Louis Antony, Duke of Angoulême, son of the Count of Artois. Louis XVIII deceived her niece by telling her that her parents' dying wish was for her to marry Louis Anthony, and she duly acceded to her uncle's wishes.

Louis XVIII was forced to abandon Verona when Napoleon Bonaparte invaded the Republic of Venice in 1796.

1796-1807

Louis XVIII had been vying for custody of his niece Maria Theresa since her release from the Temple tower in December 1795. Which he achieved when Francis II, Holy Roman Emperor, agreed to renounce her custody in 1796. She had been living in Vienna with her Habsburg relatives since January 1796. Louis XVIII moved to Blankenburg in the Duchy of Brunswick after his departure from Verona. She lived in a modest two-bedroom apartment in a workshop. Louis XVIII was forced to leave Blankenburg when King Frederick William II of Prussia died. In light of this, María Teresa decided to wait a little longer before meeting her uncle.

In 1798, Tsar Paul I of Russia offered Louis the use of Jelgava Palace in Courland (present-day Latvia). Paul also guaranteed Louis' safety and granted him a generous pension. However, the Tsar later neglected this benefit. Maria Theresa finally met Louis XVIII at Jelgava in 1799. In the winter of 1798-1799, Louis XVIII wrote a biography of Marie Antoinette, titled Réflexions Historiques sur Marie Antoinette (in Spanish "Historical reflections on Marie Antoinette"). He tried to recreate the life of the court of Versailles in Jelgava, where many old courtiers experienced the reestablishment of all court ceremonies, from Le lever du Roi to Le coucher du Roy (ceremonies that accompanied the vigil and the bedding, respectively).

María Teresa married her cousin Luis Antonio on June 9, 1799, in the Jelgava Palace. Louis XVIII ordered his wife to attend the marriage ceremony in Courland without his long-time friend—and alleged lover—Marguerite de Gourbillon. Queen Maria Josephine lived separately from her husband in Schleswig-Holstein. Louis XVIII desperately tried to show the world that they were a united family. The queen refused to abandon her friend, with unpleasant consequences that rivaled her high-profile weddings. Louis XVIII knew that her nephew Louis Anthony was not compatible with Maria Theresa. Despite this, he continued to press for the marriage, which turned out to be very unhappy and they had no children.

Louis XVIII attempted to enter into correspondence with Napoleon Bonaparte (now first consul of France) in 1800. He urged Bonaparte to restore the Bourbon monarchy, but the future emperor proved immune to Louis's requests and continued to consolidate his position as ruler of France. He also encouraged his niece to write her memoirs, hoping to use them as Bourbon propaganda. In 1796 and 1803, Louis also used the diaries of Louis XVI's last assistants in the same way. In January 1801, Tsar Paul I told Louis XVIII that he could no longer live in Russia. The court in Jelgava had become so low on funds that they had to auction off some of their possessions to pay for the trip out of Russia. Maria Theresa even sold a diamond necklace that Paul I had given her as a wedding gift.

María Theresa persuaded Queen Louise of Prussia to give her family refuge in Prussian territory. Luis accepted, but the Bourbons were forced to assume pseudonyms. Louis XVIII used the titles of Comte d'Isle - the name of his estate in Languedoc -, and that of Comte de Lille. He and his family established their residence in Warsaw, then part of the province of South Prussia, at the Łazienki Palace, from 1801 to 1804, after an arduous journey from Jelgava. According to the memoirs of Wirydianna Fiszerowa, a contemporary noblewoman residing at the time, the local authorities of Prussia, who wanted to honor them upon their arrival, did so through music, and with the desire to give it a national and patriotic character, they chose The Marseillaise, the anthem of the First French Republic, with very unfavorable allusions to the Bourbons. Later, they apologized for his mistake.

Very shortly after their arrival, they learned of the death of Paul I. Louis hoped that Paul's successor, Alexander I, would repudiate his father's banishment to the Bourbons, which later occurred. Louis XVIII tried to leave for the Kingdom of Naples. The Count of Artois asked Louis to send his son Louis Anthony and his daughter-in-law Maria Theresa with him to Edinburgh, but they did not do so at that time. The Count of Artois had been admitted by King George III, and he sent some money to Louis XVIII, whose court in exile was being spied on by the French police. Financed mainly by the interest owed by Francis II on the objects of value of his aunt, Marie Antoinette, who were removed from France, Louis XVIII had to cut his expenses significantly.

In 1803, Napoleon tried to force Louis XVIII to renounce his right to the throne of France, but Louis refused. In May 1804, Napoleon Bonaparte declared himself Emperor of the French. Louis XVIII and his nephew left for Sweden in July for a Bourbon family conference where Louis XVIII, the Count of Artois and the Duke of Angoulême issued a statement condemning Napoleon's decision to proclaim himself emperor. The king of Prussia issued a proclamation saying that Louis XVIII would have to leave Prussian territory, which meant leaving Warsaw. Alexander I of Russia invited him to resettle again at his residence at Jelgava, where Louis XVIII had to live in conditions much less advantageous than those he enjoyed under Paul I, and he intended to embark for England as soon as possible. possible.

As time passed, Louis XVIII realized that France would never accept an attempt to return to the ancien regime. Accordingly, he created another policy in 1805, with a view to regaining the throne from him: a declaration that was much more liberal than his earlier writings. Rejecting his Verona declaration, he promised to abolish conscription, retain the administrative and judicial system of Napoleon I, reduce taxes, eliminate political prisons, and guarantee amnesty to all who did not oppose a Bourbon Restoration. The views expressed in the declaration were largely those of Antoine Louis François de Bésiade, Count of Avaray, a close associate of Louis in exile.

Louis XVIII was once again forced to abandon Jelgava when Alexander I of Russia informed him that his safety was not guaranteed in continental Europe. In July 1807, he boarded a Swedish frigate as far as Stockholm, taking with him only the Duke of Angoulême. Luis did not stay in Sweden for long; he arrived at Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, England, in November 1807, and took up his residence at Gosfield Hall, leased to him by Richard Temple-Nugent-Grenville, Marquis of Buckingham.

England

Louis brought his wife and queen, Mary Josephine from the European continent in 1808. Louis' stay at Gosfield Hall did not last long; He soon moved to Hartwell House in Buckinghamshire, where over a hundred courtiers were housed. The king paid £500 in rent each year to the landlord, Sir George Lee. The Prince of Wales—the future George IV—was very charitable to the exiled Bourbons. As Prince Regent, he granted them permanent rights of asylum and very generous benefits.

The Earl of Artois did not join the court in exile at Hartwell, preferring to continue his frivolous life in London. Louis's friend the Earl of Avaray left Hartwell for Madeira in 1809, and died there in 1811. Louis replaced Avaray with Pierre Louis Jean Casimir de Blacas as his main political advisor. Queen Mary Josephine died on 13 November 1810. That same winter, Louis suffered a particularly severe case of gout, which was a recurring problem for him at Hartwell, and had to be placed in a wheelchair.

During this time, Napoleon I embarked on the invasion of Russia in 1812. This war became a turning point in his fortunes, the expedition failed miserably and Napoleon was forced to retreat with his army in rags.

While at Hartwell, Louis XVIII issued another declaration in 1813. The "Hartwell Declaration" was even more liberal than his "declaration of 1805", stating that all who served Napoleon or the Republic would suffer no consequences for their acts, and that the original owners of the Biens nationaux—the lands confiscated from the nobility and clergy during the Revolution—were to be compensated for their losses.

The Allied troops entered Paris on March 31, 1814. Louis, however, could not walk, and so sent his brother to France in January 1814. Louis XVIII issued patents naming the Count of Artois "Lieutenant General of the Kingdom" at the event in which the Bourbon monarchy was restored. Napoleon abdicated on April 11. Five days later, the French Senate invited the Bourbons to resume their place on the throne of France.

Bourbon Restoration

First reign

The Count of Artois ruled as lieutenant until his brother's arrival in Paris on May 3. Upon his return, the king shows himself to his subjects through a procession through the city. He took up residence in the Tuileries Palace on the same day. His niece, the Duchess of Angoulême, fainted at the sight of the Tuileries, where she had lived during the time of the French Revolution. The viability of the Restoration was in doubt, but the appeal of peace to a war-weary French public and demonstrations of support for the Bourbons in Paris, Bordeaux, Marseille and Lyon helped to reassure the powers.

Napoleon's Senate called Louis XVIII to the throne on the condition that he accept a constitution that implied the recognition of the Republic and the Empire, a bicameral parliament elected every year, and the tricolor flag of the aforementioned regimes. Louis XVIII showed his opposition to the constitution of the Senate and began what for him was "the dissolution of the present Senate in all the crimes of Bonaparte, and appealing to the French people." The senatorial constitution was burned in a royalist theater in Bordeaux, and the Municipal Council of Lyon voted in favor of a speech in which he defamed the Senate.

The great powers occupying Paris demanded that Louis XVIII implement a constitution. The monarch responded with the Charter of 1814, which included many progressive provisions: freedom of religion, a legislature composed of a "Chamber of Deputies" and of a "House of Peers", a press that could enjoy a certain degree of freedom, and a provision that the Biens nationaux would remain in the hands of their current owners. The Constitution had 76 articles. Taxation was going to be voted on by the chambers. Catholicism once again became the official religion of France. To be eligible as a member of the Chamber of Deputies, one had to pay more than 1,000 francs per year in taxes, and be over forty. The king would appoint his peers to the House of Peers on a hereditary basis, or for life at his discretion. Deputies would be elected every five years, with one-fifth of them up for election each year. There were 90,000 citizens eligible to vote.

Louis XVIII signed the Treaty of Paris on May 30, 1814. The treaty allowed France to maintain the borders gained in 1792, which extended east of the Rhine. It did not have to pay any war indemnities, and the armies occupation forces of the Sixth Coalition instantly withdrew from French soil. These generous terms would be reversed in the next treaty that the monarch would be forced to sign after the Hundred Days campaign.

It didn't take long for Louis XVIII to begin to go back on his many promises. He and his Comptroller General of Finance, Baron Louis, were determined not to let the public treasury fall into deficit – there was a debt of 75 million francs inherited from Napoleon I – and he took fiscal measures to ensure this. Louis XVIII had promised the French that unpopular taxes on tobacco, wine and salt would be abolished when he returned to the throne, but he failed to do so, resulting in riots in Bordeaux. Expenditures on the army were reduced in the 1815 budget, the military had accounted for 55% of government expenditures. On the other hand, a strong rejection of Louis XVIII was created among some Frenchmen, including the army, non-Catholics and workers affected by a post-war decline and British imports.

Louis XVIII admitted the Count of Artois and his nephews, the Dukes of Angoulême and Berry, to the King's Council in May 1814, since its creation. The council was informally headed by Charles Maurice de Talleyrand. Louis XVIII took a great interest in the comings and goings of the Congress of Vienna (created to redraw the map of Europe after Napoleon's abdication). Talleyrand represented France in the proceedings. Louis was horrified by Prussia's intention to annex the Kingdom of Saxony, which he rejected since his mother had been born a Saxon princess and he was also concerned about Prussia's pretensions to dominate Germany. He also desired the restoration of the Duchy of Parma in favor of the Bourbon Parmesans, and not to the Empress Marie Louise of France, as the allies suggested.

Louis also protested the inaction of the Allies in Naples, where he wanted to eliminate the Napoleonic usurper Joachim Murat in favor of the Neapolitan Bourbons. On behalf of the Allies, Austria agreed to send a force to the Kingdom of Naples to depose Murat in February 1815, when Murat was suspected of corresponding with Napoleon, which was explicitly prohibited by a recent treaty. Murat never actually wrote to Napoleon, but Louis, intent on restoring the Neapolitan Bourbons at any cost, forged the correspondence, and subsidized the Austrian expedition with 25 million francs.

Louis XVIII achieved the restoration of the Neapolitan Bourbons in the kingdom of Naples. But the Duchy of Parma was granted to the former Empress Maria Luisa for life, and the Bourbon Parmesans were given the Duchy of Lucca until Maria Luisa's death.

One Hundred Days

On February 26, 1815, Napoleon Bonaparte escaped from his prison on the island of Elba and embarked for France. He arrived with a force of 1000 soldiers near Cannes on March 1. Louis XVIII was not particularly concerned about Bonaparte's excursion as such, because he believed that a small number of troops could easily overcome him. However, there was a major problem for the Bourbons. Louis XVIII had not purged the army of Bonapartist troops, so there were many desertions in the army from the Bourbons to Bonaparte. Furthermore, Louis XVIII could not join the campaign against Napoleon in southern France, as he was suffering from yet another case of gout. The Minister of War, Marshal Soult, sent the Duke of Orleans, the Count of Artois, and Marshal MacDonald to stop Napoleon.

The king's underestimation of Bonaparte proved disastrous. On March 19, the army stationed outside Paris deserted in favor of Bonaparte, leaving the city vulnerable to attack. That same day, Louis XVIII left the capital with a small escort at midnight. The monarch decided to go first to Lille, and then crossed the border into Holland, staying in Ghent. The other leaders, among the most prominent Alexander I of Russia, debated whether in the event of a second victory over Bonaparte, they should proclaim Louis Philippe king. Orléans instead of Louis XVIII. Part of the people and some French politicians shared the same thought.

However, Napoleon did not rule France for long, as he suffered a decisive defeat at the hands of the armies of the Duke of Wellington and Field Marshal Blücher at the Battle of Waterloo on June 18. A tired and weak Napoleon decided to abdicate again in favor of his son Napoleon II. However, the coalition powers reached a consensus that Louis XVIII should return to the throne of France.

Second reign

Louis XVIII returned to France promptly after Napoleon's defeat to ensure his second restoration in "the enemy's baggage train", that is, with Wellington's troops. The Duke of Wellington used the person of the king Louis to fight his way to Paris, as some fortresses refused to surrender to the allies, but agreed to do so for their king. Louis XVIII arrived at Cambrai on June 26, where a proclamation was issued declaring that all who served the emperor in the Hundred Days would not be persecuted, with the exception of "instigators." It was also recognized that Louis XVIII's government may "have made mistakes during the First Restoration." On 29 June, a delegation of five from the Chamber of Deputies and the House of Peers approached the Duke of Wellington suggesting he put a foreign prince on the throne of France. Wellington rejected his requests outright, declaring that "Louis XVIII is the best way to preserve the integrity of France." Wellington ordered the deputies to support the king's cause. Louis XVIII entered Paris on 8 July greeted by a boisterous reception.: The gardens of the Tuileries Palace were crowded with passers-by, and, according to the Duke of Wellington, the acclaim of the crowd was so loud that it was impossible to converse with the king that night.

After the Hundred Days, Louis XVIII's role in politics was voluntarily reduced; He renounced most of his duties to his council. He and his ministry embarked on a series of reforms during the summer of 1815. The king's council, an informal group of ministers who advised Louis XVIII, was dissolved and replaced by a small privy council, the so-calledMinistère de Roi. The dukes of Artois, Berry and Angoulême were discarded from the new Ministère and Talleyrand was appointed as the first Président du Conseil, that is, prime minister of France. On the 14th In July, the ministry disbanded army units considered "rebellious." The hereditary nobility was reestablished at the request of Louis by the minister.

In August, the elections for the Chamber of Deputies ended up giving unfavorable results to Talleyrand. The minister wanted moderate deputies, but the electorate voted almost exclusively for the ultra-royalists, giving rise to the so-called Chambre introuvable. The Duchess of Angoulême and the Count of Artois pressured King Louis to fire his minister. Talleyrand submitted his resignation on September 20. Louis XVIII chose the Duke of Richelieu as his new Prime Minister. Richelieu was chosen because he was accepted by Luis's family and the reactionary Chamber of Deputies.

Anti-Napoleonic sentiment was high in southern France, and this gave it a prominent place in the White Terror, which saw the purge of all important officials in the Napoleonic government and the execution of others. The French committed barbaric acts against some of these officials. Guillaume Marie Anne Brune (a Napoleonic marshal) was savagely murdered, and his remains thrown into the Rhône River. Louis XVIII deplored these illegal acts, but vehemently showed his support for the persecution of those marshals who helped Napoleon in the Hundred Days. The government of Louis XVIII executed Napoleon's most important marshal, Marshal Ney, in December 1815 for treason. His confidants Charles François, Marquis de Bonnay, and the Duke of La Chatre advised him to inflict firm punishments on the "traitors." After a period in which local authorities were unable to stop the violence, the king and his ministers sent their own officials to restore order.

The king was reluctant to shed blood, and this strongly irritated the ultra-monarchist faction in the chamber of deputies, who felt that Louis XVIII was not acting sufficiently. The government issued an amnesty proclamation to the " traitors" in January 1816, but the trials that had already begun were completed in due course. That same declaration also prohibited any member of the House of Bonaparte from owning property, or entering France. It is estimated that between 50,000-80,000 officials were purged from the government during what is known as the Second White Terror.

In November 1815, Louis XVIII's government had to sign another treaty of Paris that formally ended Napoleon's Hundred Days. The previous treaty had been quite favorable to France, but this one took a harder line. France's borders were reduced until they were extended in 1790. France had to pay for an army to occupy it for at least five years, at a cost of 150 million francs per year. France also had to pay a war compensation of 700 million francs to the allies.

In 1818, the Houses passed a military law that increased the size of the army by more than 100,000 men. In October of the same year, the prime minister, the Duke of Richelieu, managed to convince the powers to withdraw their armies promptly in exchange for a sum of more than 200 million francs.

Louis XVIII chose many centrist cabinets, because he wanted to appease the population to the chagrin of his brother, the ultra-royalist Count of Artois. Louis always showed fear that after his death, his brother and heir would abandon the centrist government by an ultra-realist autocracy, which would not bring favorable results to the Bourbons, which actually happened.

The king did not like the prince of the blood, Louis Philippe of Orleans, and took advantage of every opportunity to snub him, such as denying him the title of Royal Highness, in part because of the role that the father of the duke in the French Revolution by voting in favor of the execution of Louis XVI, which caused personal resentment in Louis XVIII. The Duke of Berry, nephew of Louis XVIII, was murdered at the Paris Opera on February 14, 1820. The royal family was greatly affected by the tragedy and Louis XVIII broke an old tradition by attending his nephew's funeral, due because the kings of France could not have any form of association with death. The death of the Duke of Berry meant that the House of Orleans would have a better chance of accessing the throne.

Berry was the only member of the family who managed to father children. His wife gave birth to a posthumous son in September, Henry, Duke of Bordeaux, nicknamed Dieudonné (God-given) by the Bourbons because they believed that with him they had secured the future of the dynasty. However, the Bourbon succession was still in doubt. The Chamber of Deputies proposed to modify the Salic law to allow the Duchess of Angoulême to access the throne. On June 12, 1820, the Chambers ratified a law that increased the number of deputies from 258 to 430. The additional deputies were to be chosen by the richest quarter of the population in each department. These individuals now effectively had two votes.

At the same time that the "law of two votes" was established, Louis XVIII began receiving visits every Wednesday from a lady named Zoé Talon, and ordered that no one disturb him while he was with her. It was rumored that the king inhaled tobacco from her breasts, which earned him the nickname tabatière (snuffbox).

In 1823, France embarked on a military intervention in Spain, where there had been a revolt against King Ferdinand VII. France managed to crush the rebellion, through reinforcements led by the Duke of Angoulême.

Death and succession

In his later years, Louis XVIII's problems with diabetes and gout increased to the point that it was extremely difficult for him to move, so the king had to walk with crutches, and was often transported in a wheelchair in his apartments, so he called himself the king of the armchair. Towards the end of his life, he developed generalized arteriosclerosis, gangrene increased in his body, which left him impotent and heavy with dropsy. At the end of August 1824, gangrene spread to one foot and the lower part of his spine, causing a large festering wound in his lower back that left him unrecognizable, and it is said that when his servants had to When I took off his boots, pieces of meat remained stuck to them. With great pride, he refused to lie down, repeating the words of Vespasian: "An emperor must die standing," although on September 12, his terrible suffering forced him to lie down. In his agony, he began to decompose alive and emitted such a disgusting smell that his family could not stay by his bed, he lost one of his eyes, the valet, wanting to move the body, tore off the pieces of his right foot, the One leg's bones were decayed, the other leg is just a wound, and his face turned black and yellow.

Finally he died on September 16, 1824 at four in the morning, in his room in the Tuileries palace. On the 20th of that same month, he was buried in the Basilica of Saint-Denis, but not before being embalmed by the pharmacist Antoine Germain Labarraque, who had to spray the body with a solution of chloride of lime to stop the progress of decomposition., making him the last king of France to have an autopsy and embalming performed. His brother, the Count of Artois, succeeded him as Charles X. This was the only normal succession of power in the leadership. of the state of France throughout the XIX century.

Charles X and Louis Philippe were overthrown by two revolutionary insurrections respectively. With the fall of the latter, the Second Republic was formed, which ended with a self-coup orchestrated by Napoleon III, who proclaimed himself emperor, establishing the Second French Empire. Napoleon III was defeated in the Franco-Prussian War, which led to the proclamation of the Third Republic by the assembly. No president of the Third Republic was able to complete his term until Émile Loubet was succeeded by Armand Fallières in 1906.

Louis XVIII in popular culture

Louis XVIII has some appearances in the novels. For example, the French monarch is mentioned in the works Le Bal de Sceaux and Le Lys dans la vallée, both by Honoré de Balzac; in other works, he has a certain participation in the plot, as in the novel The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas.

In his work Les Misérables, Victor Hugo describes Louis XVIII on many occasions -almost always in a negative way-, representing the monarch as someone lazy who likes to run fast in his car because He is unable to walk, or compares him to a pig, in the same way that the most virulent Bonapartists, and part of the French people, did, calling him "great pig" (Gros Cochon) or "pig XVIII" (cochon XVIII). According to the French historian Annie Duprat, "the image of the great appetite and strong corpulence of the Bourbons, beyond a simple joke, refers to all the writings and all the representations of the ogre kings, cannibals and devourers of people through taxes and war"; although he also mentions that the popular caricature images of Louis XVIII were less original and diversified than those dedicated to his brother and successor Charles X.

Film and television

Louis XVIII has been played by some actors, both on television and in film, almost always as a secondary character in films and series related to Napoleon, Marie Antoinette or the French Revolution, although Orson's interpretation stands out among them. Welles in Waterloo. He also made an appearance (always as a secondary character) in Sofia Coppola's film, Marie Antoinette which makes the historical mistake of mentioning the Duke of Angoulême as his son. of Louis XVIII when in reality he was his nephew.

Orders of chivalry

French orders

• Great Master of the Order of the Holy Spirit
• Grand Master of the Order of San Miguel
• Grand Master of the Order of San Luis
• Grand Master of the Legion of Honor
• Orders gathered from Our Lady of Mount Carmel and St. Lazarus
  • Protector (1814-1824)
  • Grand Master (1772-1814)

Foreign orders

• Knight of the Order of the Golden Toy (1767)
• Knight of the Order of the Garden
• Knight of the Order of the Black Eagle

Ancestors

Successions

Predecessor: Louis XVII	King holder of France 1795-1814	Successor: Himself (as a reigning monarch)
Predecessor: Napoleon I (French Emperor)	King of France and Navarre Copríncipe de Andorra 1814-1815	Successor: Napoleon I (French Emperor)
Predecessor: Napoleon II (French Emperor)	King of France and Navarre Copríncipe de Andorra 1815-1824	Successor: Carlos X