[Sidenote: Last Years of the Grand Monarch]
While France was shorn of none of her European conquests, nevertheless the War of the Spanish Succession was exceedingly disastrous for that country. In its wake came famine and pestilence, excessive imposts and taxes, official debasement of the currency, and bankruptcy—a long line of social and economic disorders. Louis XIV survived the treaty of Utrecht but two years, and to such depths had his prestige and glory fallen among his own people, that his corpse, as it passed along the royal road to the stately tombs of the French kings at St. Denis, "was saluted by the curses of a noisy crowd sitting in the wine-rooms, celebrating his death by drinking more than their fill as a compensation for having suffered too much from hunger during his lifetime. Such was the coarse but true epitaph which popular opinion accorded to the Grand Monarch."
[Sidenote: Misgovernment of France during Minority of Louis XV]
Nor had the immediate future much better things in store for exhausted France. The successor upon the absolutist throne was Louis XV, great- grandson of Louis XIV and a boy of five years of age, who did not undertake to exercise personal power until near the middle of the eighteenth century. In the meantime the country was governed for about eight years by the king's uncle, the duke of Orleans, and then for twenty years by Cardinal Fleury.
[Sidenote: John Law]
Orleans loved pleasure and gave himself to a life of debauchery; he cared little for the boy-king, whose education and training he grievously neglected. His foreign policy was weak and vacillating, and his several efforts to reform abuses in the political and economic institutions of Louis XIV invariably ended in failure. It was while experimenting with the disorganized finances that he was duped by a Scotch adventurer and promoter, a certain John Law (1671-1729). Law had an idea that a gigantic corporation might be formed for French colonial trade, [Footnote: Law's corporation was actually important in the development of Louisiana.] shares might be widely sold throughout the country, and the proceeds therefrom utilized to wipe out the public debt. Orleans accepted the scheme and for a while the country went mad with the fever of speculation. In due time, however, the stock was discovered to be worthless, the bubble burst, and a terrible panic ensued. The net result was increased misery for the nation.
[Sidenote: Fleury and the War of the Polish Election]
The little sense which Orleans possessed was sufficient to keep him out of foreign war [Footnote: France was at peace throughout his regency, except for a brief time (1719-1720) when Orleans joined the British government in preventing his Spanish cousin, Philip V, from upsetting the treaty of Utrecht.] but even that was lacking to his successor, Cardinal Fleury. Fleury was dragged into a war (1733-1738) with Austria and Russia over the election of a Polish king. The allies supported the elector of Saxony; France supported a Pole, the father-in-law of Louis XV, Stanislaus Leszczinski. France was defeated and Louis XV had to content himself with securing the duchy of Lorraine for his father-in- law. Thus, family ambition merely added to the economic distress of the French people.
It was during the War of the Polish Election, however, that the Bourbon king of Spain, perceiving his rivals engaged elsewhere, seized the kingdom of the Two Sicilies from Austria and put a member of his own family on its throne. Thus, in the eighteenth century, the Bourbons dominated France, Spain, and southern Italy.
[Illustration: THE SPANISH SUCCESSION]