Louis XVIII of France

Youth

Louis Stanislas Xavier, styled Count of Provence from birth, was born on 17 November 1755 in the Palace of Versailles, a younger son of Louis Ferdinand, Dauphin of France, and his wife Maria Josepha of Saxony. He was the grandson of the reigning King Louis XV. As a son of the Dauphin, he was a Fils de France. He was christened Louis Stanislas Xavier six months after his birth, in accordance with 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 of Louis was bestowed because it was typical of a prince of France; Stanislas was chosen to honour his great-grandfather King Stanislaus I of Poland who was still alive at the time; and Xavier was chosen for Saint Francis Xavier, whom his mother's family held as one of their patron saints.

At the time of his birth, Louis Stanislas was fourth in line to the throne of France, behind his father and his two elder brothers: the Duke of Burgundy, and the Duke of Berry. The former died in 1761, leaving Louis Auguste as heir to their father until the Dauphin's own premature death in 1765. The two deaths elevated Louis Stanislas to second in the line of succession, while his brother Louis Auguste acquired the title of Dauphin.

Louis Stanislas found comfort in his governess, Madame de Marsan, Governess of the Children of France, as he was her favourite among his siblings. Louis Stanislas was taken away from his governess when he turned seven, the age at which the education of boys of royal blood and of the nobility was turned over to men. Antoine de Quélen de Stuer de Caussade, Duke of La Vauguyon, a friend of his father, was named as his governor.

Louis Stanislas was an intelligent boy, excelling in the classics. His education was of the same quality and consistency as that of his older brother, Louis Auguste, despite the fact that Louis Auguste was heir and Louis Stanislas was not. Louis Stanislas's education was quite religious in nature; several of his teachers were priests, such as Jean-Gilles du Coëtlosquet, Bishop of Limoges; the Abbé Jean-Antoine Nollet; and the Jesuit Guillaume-François Berthier. La Vauguyon drilled into young Louis Stanislas and his brothers the way he thought princes should "know how to withdraw themselves, to like to work," and "to know how to reason correctly".

Marriage

On 16 April 1771, Louis Stanislas was married by proxy to Princess Maria Giuseppina of Savoy. The in-person ceremony was conducted on 14 May at the Palace of Versailles. Marie Joséphine (as she was known in France) was the daughter of Victor Amadeus, Duke of Savoy (later King Victor Amadeus III of Sardinia), and Maria Antonia Ferdinanda of Spain.

A luxurious ball followed the wedding on 20 May. Louis Stanislas found his wife repulsive; she was considered ugly, tedious, and ignorant of the customs of the court of Versailles. The marriage remained unconsummated for years. Biographers disagree about the reason. The most common theories propose Louis Stanislas' alleged impotence (according to biographer Antonia Fraser) or his unwillingness to sleep with his wife due to her poor personal hygiene. She never brushed her teeth, plucked her eyebrows, or used any perfumes. At the time of his marriage, Louis Stanislas was obese and waddled instead of walked. He never exercised and continued to eat enormous amounts of food.

Despite the fact that Louis Stanislas was not infatuated with his wife, he boasted that the couple enjoyed vigorous conjugal relations – but such declarations were held in low esteem by courtiers at Versailles. He also proclaimed his wife to be pregnant merely to spite Louis Auguste and his wife Marie Antoinette, who had not yet consummated their marriage. The Dauphin and Louis Stanislas did not enjoy a harmonious relationship and often quarrelled, as did their wives. Louis Stanislas did impregnate his wife in 1774, having conquered his aversion. However, the pregnancy ended in a miscarriage. A second pregnancy in 1781 also miscarried and the marriage remained childless.

At his brother's court

On 27 April 1774, Louis XV fell ill after contracting smallpox and died a few days later on 10 May, aged 64. Louis Stanislas' elder brother, the Dauphin Louis Auguste, succeeded their grandfather as King Louis XVI. As eldest brother of the King, Louis Stanislas received the title Monsieur. Louis Stanislas longed for political influence. He attempted to gain admittance to the King's council in 1774, but failed. Louis Stanislas was left in a political limbo that he called "a gap of 12 years in my political life". Louis XVI granted Louis Stanislas revenues from the Duchy of Alençon in December 1774. The duchy was given to enhance Louis Stanislas's prestige. However, the appanage generated only 300,000 livres a year, an amount much lower than it had been at its peak in the fourteenth century.

Louis Stanislas travelled about France more than other members of the Royal Family, who rarely left the Île-de-France. In 1774, he accompanied his sister Clotilde to Chambéry on the journey to meet her bridegroom Charles Emmanuel, Prince of Piedmont, heir to the throne of Sardinia. In 1775, he visited Lyon and also his spinster aunts Adélaïde and Victoire while they were taking the waters at Vichy. The four provincial tours that Louis Stanislas took before the year 1791 amounted to a total of three months.

On 5 May 1778, Dr. Lassonne, Marie Antoinette's private physician, confirmed her pregnancy. On 19 December 1778, the Queen gave birth to a daughter, who was named Marie-Thérèse Charlotte de France and given the honorific title Madame Royale. That the baby was a girl came as a relief to the Count of Provence, who kept his position as heir to Louis XVI, since Salic Law excluded women from acceding to the throne of France. However, Louis Stanislas did not remain heir to the throne much longer. On 22 October 1781, Marie Antoinette gave birth to the Dauphin Louis Joseph. Louis Stanislas and his brother, the Count of Artois, served as godfathers by proxy for Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor, the Queen's brother. When Marie Antoinette gave birth to her second son, Louis Charles, in March 1785, Louis Stanislas slid further down the line of succession.

In 1780, Anne Nompar de Caumont, Countess of Balbi, entered the service of Marie Joséphine. Louis Stanislas soon fell in love with his wife's new lady-in-waiting and installed her as his mistress, which resulted in the couple's already limited affection for each other cooling entirely. Louis Stanislas commissioned a pavilion for his mistress on a parcel of land at Versailles which became known as the Parc Balbi.

Outbreak of the French Revolution

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

The Count of Provence urged the King to act strongly against the declaration, while the King's popular minister Jacques Necker aimed at reaching a compromise with the new assembly. Louis XVI was characteristically indecisive. On 9 July, the assembly declared itself a National Constituent Assembly that would give France a Constitution. On 11 July, Louis XVI dismissed Necker, which led to widespread rioting across Paris. On 12 July, the sabre charge of the Régiment Royal–Allemand Cavalerie (Royal German Cavalry Regiment) of Charles-Eugène de Lorraine, Prince de Lambesc, against a crowd gathered at the Tuileries gardens, sparked the Storming of the Bastille two days later.

On 16 July, the King's brother, Charles, Comte d'Artois, left France with his wife and children, along with many other courtiers. Artois and his family took up residence in Turin, the capital city of his father-in-law's (Carlo Emanuele IV) Kingdom of Sardinia, with the family of Louis Joseph, Prince de Condé.

The Count of Provence decided to remain at Versailles. When the Royal Family plotted to abscond from Versailles to Metz, Provence advised the King not to leave, a suggestion he accepted.

The Royal Family was forced to leave the palace at Versailles on the day after the Women's March on Versailles, 5 October 1789. They were taken to Paris. There, the Count of Provence and his wife lodged in the Luxembourg Palace, while the rest of the Royal Family stayed in the Tuileries Palace. In March 1791, the National Assembly created a law outlining the regency of Louis Charles in case his father died while he was still too young to reign. This law awarded the regency to Louis Charles' nearest male relative in France (at that time the Count of Provence), and after him, the Duke of Orleans, thus bypassing the Count of Artois. If Orleans were unavailable, the regency would be submitted to election.

The Count of Provence and his wife fled to the Austrian Netherlands in conjunction with the royal family's failed Flight to Varennes in June 1791.

Exile

Early years

When the Count of Provence arrived in the Low Countries, he proclaimed himself regent of France. He exploited a document that he and Louis XVI had written before the latter's failed escape to Varennes-en-Argonne. The document gave him the regency in the event of his brother's death or inability to perform his role as king. He would join the other princes-in-exile at Coblenz soon after his escape. It was there that he, the Count of Artois, and the Condé princes proclaimed that their objective was to invade France. Louis XVI was greatly annoyed by his brothers' behaviour. Provence sent emissaries to various European courts asking for financial aid, soldiers, and munition. Artois secured a castle for the court in exile in the Electorate of Trier (or "Treves"), where their maternal uncle, Clemens Wenceslaus of Saxony, was the Archbishop-Elector. The activities of the émigrés bore fruit when the rulers of Prussia and the Holy Roman Empire gathered at Dresden. They released the Declaration of Pillnitz in August 1791, which urged Europe to intervene in France if Louis XVI or his family were threatened. Provence's endorsement of the declaration was not well received in France, either by the ordinary citizens or by Louis XVI himself.

In January 1792, the Legislative Assembly declared that all of the émigrés were traitors to France. Their property and titles were confiscated. The monarchy of France was abolished by the National Convention on 21 September 1792.

Louis XVI was executed in January 1793. This left his young son, Louis Charles, as the titular King. The princes-in-exile proclaimed Louis Charles "King Louis XVII". The Count of Provence now unilaterally declared himself regent for his nephew, who was too young to be head of the House of Bourbon.

Louis XVII, still a minor, died in prison in June 1795. His only surviving sibling was his sister Marie-Thérèse, who was not considered a candidate for the throne because of France's traditional adherence to Salic law. Thus on 16 June, the princes-in-exile declared the Count of Provence "King Louis XVIII". The new king accepted their declaration soon after and busied himself drafting a manifesto in response to Louis XVII's death. The manifesto, known as the "Declaration of Verona", was Louis XVIII's attempt to introduce the French people to his politics. The Declaration of Verona beckoned France back into the arms of the monarchy, "which for fourteen centuries was the glory of France".

1796–1807

Louis XVIII had been vying for the custody of his niece Marie-Thérèse since her release from the Temple Tower in December 1795. He succeeded when Francis II, Holy Roman Emperor, agreed to relinquish his custody of her in 1796. She had been staying in Vienna with her Habsburg relatives since January 1796. Louis XVIII moved to Blankenburg in the Duchy of Brunswick after his departure from Verona. He lived in a modest two-bedroom apartment over a shop. Louis XVIII was forced to leave Blankenburg when King Frederick William II of Prussia died. In light of this, Marie-Thérèse decided to wait a while longer before reuniting with her uncle.

In 1798, Tsar Paul I of Russia offered Louis the use of Jelgava Palace in Courland (now Latvia). The Tsar also guaranteed Louis' safety and bestowed on him a generous pension, though later discontinued payment. Marie-Thérèse finally joined 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. Moreover, being surrounded at Jelgava with many old courtiers, he attempted to recreate the court life of Versailles, re-establishing various of the former court ceremonies, including the lever and coucher (ceremonies that accompanied waking and bedding, respectively).

On 9 June 1799, Marie-Thérèse married her cousin Louis-Antoine at the Jelgava Palace. Desperate to display to the world a united family, Louis XVIII ordered his wife Queen Marie Joséphine, who at the time was living apart from her husband in Schleswig-Holstein, to attend the wedding. Furthermore, she was to come without her long-time friend (and rumoured lover) Marguerite de Gourbillon. The Queen refused to leave her friend behind, creating an unpleasant situation that rivalled the wedding in notoriety. Louis XVIII knew that his nephew Louis-Antoine was not compatible with Marie-Thérèse. Despite this, he still pressed for the marriage, which proved to be quite unhappy and produced no children.

In 1800, Louis XVIII attempted to strike up a correspondence with Napoleon Bonaparte (by then First Consul of France), urging him to restore the Bourbons to their throne, but the future emperor was impervious to this idea and continued to consolidate his own position as ruler of France.

Louis XVIII encouraged his niece to write her memoirs, as he wished them to be used as Bourbon propaganda. In 1796 and 1803, Louis also used the diaries of Louis XVI's final attendants in the same way. In January 1801, Tsar Paul told Louis XVIII that he could no longer live in Russia. The court at Jelgava was so low on funds that it had to auction some of its possessions to afford the journey out of Russia. Marie-Thérèse even sold a diamond necklace that the Emperor Paul had given her as a wedding gift.

England, 1807–1814

In 1808, Louis brought his wife and queen, Marie Joséphine, to join him in England. His stay at Gosfield Hall did not last long; he soon moved to Hartwell House in Buckinghamshire, where over one hundred courtiers were housed. The King paid £500 in rent each year to the owner of the estate, 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 right of asylum and extremely generous allowances.

The Count of Artois did not join the court-in-exile in Hartwell, preferring to continue his frivolous life in London. Louis's friend the Count of Avaray left Hartwell for Madeira in 1809, and died there in 1811. Louis replaced Avaray with the Comte de Blacas as his principal political advisor. Queen Marie Joséphine died on 13 November 1810. That same winter, Louis had a particularly severe attack of gout, which was a recurring problem for him at Hartwell, and he had to take to a wheelchair.

In 1812, Napoleon I embarked on an invasion of Russia, initiating a war which would prove to be the turning point in his fortunes. The expedition failed miserably, and Napoleon was forced to retreat with an army in tatters.

In 1813, Louis XVIII issued another declaration from Hartwell. The Declaration of Hartwell was even more liberal than his Declaration of 1805, asserting that those who had served Napoleon or the Republic would not suffer repercussions for their acts, and that the original owners of the biens nationaux (lands confiscated from the nobility and clergy during the Revolution) would be compensated for their losses.

Allied troops entered Paris on 31 March 1814. Louis, unable to walk, had sent the Count of Artois to France in January 1814 and issued letters patent appointing Artois Lieutenant-General of the Kingdom in the event of his being restored as king. On 11 April, five days after the French Senate had invited Louis to resume the throne of France, Napoleon I abdicated.

Bourbon Restoration

First Restoration (1814–1815)

The Count of Artois ruled as Lieutenant-General of the Kingdom until his brother's arrival in Paris on 3 May. Upon his return, the King displayed himself to his subjects by staging a procession through the city. He took up residence in the Tuileries Palace the same day. His niece, the Duchess of Angoulême, fainted at the sight of the Tuileries, where she had been imprisoned during the time of the French Revolution.

Napoleon's senate called Louis XVIII to the throne on the condition that he would accept a constitution that entailed recognition of the Republic and the Empire, a bicameral parliament elected every year, and the tri-colour flag of the aforementioned regimes. Louis XVIII opposed the senate's constitution and stated that he was "disbanding the current senate in all the crimes of Bonaparte, and appealing to the French people". The senatorial constitution was burned in a theatre in royalist Bordeaux, and the Municipal Council of Lyon voted for a speech that defamed the senate.

The Great Powers occupying Paris demanded that Louis XVIII implement a constitution. Louis responded with the Charter of 1814, which included many progressive provisions: freedom of religion, a legislature composed of a lower house styled the Chamber of Deputies and an upper house, styled the Chamber of Peers. The press would enjoy a degree of freedom, and there would be a provision that the former owners of the Biens nationaux, confiscated during the Revolution, would be compensated. The constitution had 76 articles. Taxation was to be voted on by the chambers. Catholicism was to be the official religion of France. To be eligible for membership in the Chamber of Deputies, one had to pay over 1,000 francs per year in tax, and be over the age of forty. The King would appoint peers to the Chamber 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 30 May 1814. The treaty gave France her 1792 borders, which extended east of the Rhine. She had to pay no war indemnity, and the occupying armies of the Sixth Coalition withdrew immediately from French soil. These generous terms would be reversed in the next Treaty of Paris after the Hundred Days (Napoleon's return to France in 1815).

It did not take Louis XVIII long to go back on one of his many promises. He and his Comptroller-General of Finance Baron Louis were determined not to let the exchequer fall into deficit (there was a 75 million franc debt inherited from Napoleon I), and took fiscal measures to ensure this. Louis XVIII assured the French that the unpopular taxes on tobacco, wine and salt would be abolished when he was restored, but he failed to do so, which led to rioting in Bordeaux. Expenditure on the army was slashed in the 1815 budget – in 1814, the military had accounted for 55% of government spending.

Hundred Days

On 26 February 1815, Napoleon Bonaparte escaped his island prison of Elba and embarked for France. He arrived with about 1,000 troops near Cannes on 1 March. Louis XVIII was not particularly worried by Bonaparte's excursion, as such small numbers of troops could be easily overcome. There was, however, a major underlying problem for the Bourbons: Louis XVIII had failed to purge the military of its Bonapartist troops. This led to mass desertions from the Bourbon armies to Bonaparte's. Furthermore, Louis XVIII could not join the campaign against Napoleon in Southern France, because he was having another case of gout. Minister of War Marshal Jean-de-Dieu Soult dispatched Louis Philippe, Duke of Orléans (later King Louis Philippe I), the Count of Artois, and Marshal Étienne MacDonald to apprehend Napoleon.

Louis XVIII's underestimation of Bonaparte proved disastrous. On 19 March, the army stationed outside Paris defected to Bonaparte, leaving the city vulnerable to attack. That same day, Louis XVIII quit the capital with a small escort at midnight, first travelling to Lille, and then crossing the border into the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, halting in Ghent. Other leaders, most prominently Tsar Alexander I, debated whether in the case of a second victory over the French Empire, the Duke of Orléans should be proclaimed king instead of Louis XVIII.

However, Napoleon did not rule France again for very long, suffering a decisive defeat at the hands of the armies of the Duke of Wellington and Field Marshal Blücher at the Battle of Waterloo on 18 June. The Allies came to the consensus that Louis XVIII should be restored to the throne of France.

Second Restoration (from 1815)

Louis returned to France promptly after Napoleon's defeat to ensure his second restoration "in the baggage train of the enemy", i.e. with Wellington's troops. The Duke of Wellington used King Louis' person to open up the route to Paris, as some fortresses refused to surrender to the Allies, but agreed to do so for their king. King Louis arrived at Cambrai on 26 June, where he released a proclamation stating that those who served the Emperor in the Hundred Days would not be persecuted, except for the "instigators". It was also acknowledged that Louis's government might have made mistakes during the First Restoration. King Louis was worried that the counter-revolutionary element sought revenge. He promised to grant a constitution that would guarantee the public debt, freedom of the press and of religion, and equality before the law. It would guarantee the full property rights of those who had purchased national lands during the revolution. He kept his promises.

On 29 June, a deputation of five from among the members of the Chamber of Deputies and the Chamber of Peers approached Wellington about putting a foreign prince on the throne of France. Wellington rejected their pleas outright, declaring that "[Louis is] the best way to preserve the integrity of France" and ordered the delegation to espouse King Louis' cause. The King entered Paris on 8 July to a boisterous reception: the Tuileries Palace gardens were thronged with bystanders, and, according to the Duke of Wellington, the acclamation of the crowds there were so loud during that evening that he could not converse with the King.

Although the Ultra faction of returning exiles wanted revenge and were eager to punish the usurpers and restore the old regime, the new king rejected that advice. He instead called for continuity and reconciliation, and a search for peace and prosperity. The exiles were not given back their lands and property, although they eventually received repayment in the form of bonds. The Catholic Church was favoured. The electorate was limited to the richest men in France, most of whom had supported Napoleon. In foreign policy he removed Talleyrand, and continued most of Napoleon's policies in peaceful fashion. He kept to the policy of minimizing Austria's role but reversed Napoleon's friendly overtures to Spain and the Ottomans.

The King's role in politics was voluntarily diminished; he assigned most of his duties to his council. During the summer of 1815, he and his ministry embarked on a series of reforms. The Royal Council, an informal group of ministers that advised Louis, was dissolved and replaced by a tighter knit privy council, the "Ministère du Roi". Artois, Berry and Angoulême were purged from the new "ministère", and Talleyrand was appointed as the first Président du Conseil, i.e. Prime Minister of France. On 14 July, the ministry dissolved the units of the army deemed "rebellious". Hereditary peerage was re-established by the ministry at Louis' behest.

Death

Louis XVIII's health began to fail in the spring of 1824. He was experiencing obesity, gout and gangrene, both dry and wet, in his legs and spine. Louis died on 16 September 1824 surrounded by the extended royal family and some government officials. He was succeeded by his youngest brother, the Count of Artois, as Charles X. As a historical footnote, the young science of disinfection had advanced in the early 1820s to the point where it was recognized that chlorides of lime could be used to both eliminate smells and slow decomposition. The body of Louis XVIII was washed with chlorides by a French scientist, Antoine Germain Labarraque, permitting his corpse to be "presented to the public without any odour" (emphasis in the original) in 1824.

Honours

Kingdom of France:

Knight of the Order of the Holy Spirit, 2 February 1767

Grand Master and Knight of the Order of Saint Michael

Grand Master and Grand Croix of the Legion of Honour

Grand Master and Grand Croix of the Order of Saint Louis

Grand Master and Grand Croix of the Order of Saint Lazarus

Austrian Empire: Grand Cross of the Order of St. Stephen, 31 August 1815

Denmark: Knight of the Order of the Elephant, 25 January 1818

Kingdom of Portugal: Grand Cross of the Sash of the Three Orders, 10 October 1823

Kingdom of Prussia:

Knight of the Order of the Black Eagle, 17 July 1815

Grand Cross of the Order of the Red Eagle, 31 August 1815

Russian Empire:

Knight of the Order of St. Andrew, 5 March 1800

Knight of the Order of St. Alexander Nevsky, 5 March 1800

Spain: Knight of the Order of the Golden Fleece, 22 May 1767

United Kingdom: Stranger Knight of the Order of the Garter, 21 April 1814

Succession

The French line of succession upon the death of Louis XVIII in 1824.