Louis XIV (1643-1715) at the end of his long reign perceived the danger. As the aged monarch lay on his deathbed, flushed with fever, he called his five-year-old great-grandson and heir, the future Louis XV, to the bedside and said: "My child, you will soon be sovereign of a great kingdom. Do not forget your obligations to God; remember that it is to Him that you owe all that you are. Endeavor to live at peace with your neighbors; do not imitate me in my fondness for war, nor in the exorbitant expenditure which I have incurred. Take counsel in all your actions. Endeavor to relieve the people at the earliest possible moment, and thus to accomplish what, unfortunately, I am unable to do myself."
[Sidenote: Louis XV, 1715-1774]
It was good advice. But Louis XV was only a boy, a plaything in the hands of his ministers. In an earlier chapter [Footnote: See above, pp. 255 f.] we have seen how under the duke of Orleans, who was prince regent from 1715 to 1723, France entered into war with Spain, and how finance was upset by speculation; and how under Cardinal Fleury, who was minister from 1726 to 1743, the War of the Polish Election (1733- 1738) was fought and the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-1748) begun.
When in 1743 the ninety-year-old Cardinal Fleury died, Louis XV announced that he would be his own minister. But he was not a Frederick the Great. At the council table poor Louis "opened his mouth, said little, and thought not at all." State business seemed terribly dull, and the king left most of it to others.
But of one thing, Louis XV could not have enough—and that was pleasure. He much preferred pretty girls to pompous ministers of state, and spent most of his time with the ladies and the rest of the time either hunting or gambling. In spite of the fact that he was married, Louis very easily fell in love with a charming face; at one time he was infatuated by the duchess of Châteauroux, then by Madame de Pompadour, and later by Madame du Barry. Upon his mistresses he was willing to lavish princely presents,—he gave them estates and titles, had them live at Versailles, and criminally allowed them to interfere in politics; for their sake he was willing to let his country go to ruin.
The character of the king was reflected in his court. It became fashionable to neglect one's wife, to gamble all night, to laugh at virtue, to be wasteful and extravagant. Versailles was gay; the ladies painted their cheeks more brightly than ever, and the lords spent their fortunes more recklessly.
But Versailles was not France. France was ruined with wars and taxes. Louis XIV had said, "Live at peace with your neighbors"; but since his death four wars had been waged, culminating in the disastrous Seven Years' War (1756-1763), by which French commerce had been destroyed and the French colonies had been lost. [Footnote: The formal annexation of Lorraine in 1766 and of Corsica in 1768 afforded some crumbs of comfort for Louis XV.] Debts were multiplied and taxes increased. What with war, extravagance, and poor management, Louis XV left France a bankrupt state.
[Sidenote: Growing complaints against the French Monarchy under Louis
XV]
Complaints were loud and remonstrances bitter, and Louis XV could not silence them, try as he might. Authors who criticized the government were thrown into prison: radical writings were confiscated or burned; but criticism persisted. Enemies of the government were imprisoned without trial in the Bastille by lettres de cachet, which were orders for arrest signed in blank by the king, who sometimes gave or sold them to his favorites, so that they, too, might have their enemies jailed. Yet the opposition to the court ever increased. Resistance to taxation centered in the Parlement of Paris. It refused to register the king's decrees, and remained defiant even after Louis XV had angrily announced that he would not tolerate interference with his prerogatives. The quarrel grew so bitter that all the thirteen Parlements of France were suppressed (1771), and in their stead new royal courts were established.
Opposition was only temporarily crushed; and Louis XV knew that graver trouble was brewing. He grew afraid to ride openly among the discontented crowds of Paris; the peasants saluted him sullenly; the treasury was empty; the monarchy was tottering. Yet Louis XV felt neither responsibility nor care. "It will surely last as long as I," he cynically affirmed; "my successor may take care of himself."