Louis XV
Legacy and historical judgements

E. H. Gombrich writes, "Louis XV and Louis XVI, the Sun King 's successors, were incompetent, and content merely to imitate their great predecessor's outward show of power. The pomp and magnificence remained.... Finance ministers soon became expert swindlers, cheating and extorting on a grand scale. The peasants worked till they dropped and citizens were forced to pay huge taxes." Louis was blamed for significant diplomatic, military and economic reverses. His reign was marked by ministerial instability, while his "prestige was ruined by military failure and colonial losses". Despite Louis' failings in administration and war, many historians agree that France reached a high point of culture and art under his reign.

Louis inherited a French monarchy at the zenith of its cultural influence and political power, a position it kept during the first half of the eighteenth century. However most scholars agree that Louis XV's decisions weakened France, depleted the treasury, discredited the absolute monarchy, and unsettled the trust and respect of the French and foreigners alike. Scholars point to the French Revolution, which broke out 15 years after his death. Norman Davies characterizes Louis XV's reign as "one of debilitating stagnation", characterized by a costly defeat in the Seven Years' War, endless clashes between the Court and the Parlements, and religious feuds. Jerome Blum described the king as "a perpetual adolescent called to do a man's job."

The view of many historians is that Louis was unequal to the high expectations of his subjects. Robert Harris writes that, "Historians have depicted this ruler as one of the weakest of the Bourbons, a do-nothing king who left affairs of state to ministers while indulging in his hobbies of hunting and womanizing." Ministers rose and fell according to his mistresses' opinions, seriously undermining the confidence in the monarchy.

For much of his lifetime Louis XV was celebrated as a national hero. Edmé Bouchardon 's equestrian statue of Louis was originally conceived to commemorate the monarch's victorious role in the War of the Austrian Succession, portrayed the king as peacemaker. Fifteen years later in 1763, following France's defeat in the Seven Years' War, it was unveiled in a patriotic spectacle staged to restore public confidence in a monarchy in decline. Located on the Place Louis XV, the statue was torn down during the Revolution.

Some scholars have turned away from the king's own actions to his image in the mind of the public. Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, the leader of the Annales School, noted that the king was handsome, athletic, intelligent and an excellent hunter, but that he disappointed the people. However, he did not keep up the practice of attending Mass, and the people felt he had shirked his religious obligations and diminished the sacred nature of the monarchy.

According to Kenneth N. Jassie and Jeffrey Merrick, contemporary songs, poems, and public declarations typically portrayed a king as a "master", an unblemished "Christian", and a benevolent provider ("baker"). Young Louis' failings were attributed to inexperience and manipulation by his advisors. Jassie and Merrick argue that the king's troubles mounted steadily, and the people blamed and ridiculed his debauchery. The king was a notorious womaniser; the monarch's virility was supposed to reflect his power. Nevertheless, popular faith in the monarchy was shaken by the scandals of Louis' private life and by the end of his life he had become despised. The king ignored the famines and crises of the nation, until the people reviled him in protest, and finally celebrated his death. The monarchy survived—for a while—but Louis XV left his successor with a smoldering legacy of popular resentment.

Some sermons on his death in 1774 praised the monarch and went out of their way to excuse his faults. Jeffrey Merrick writes: "But those ecclesiastics who not only raised their eyebrows over the sins of the Beloved but also expressed doubts about his policies reflected the corporate attitude of the First Estate more accurately." They prayed the new king would restore morality at court and better serve the will of God.

The financial strain imposed by the wars and excesses of the royal court, and the consequent dissatisfaction with the monarchy, contributed to the national unrest that culminated in the French Revolution of 1789. The historian Colin Jones argues that Louis XV left France with serious financial difficulties: "The military disasters of the Seven Years' War led to acute state financial crisis.". Ultimately, Louis XV failed to overcome these fiscal problems, mainly because he was incapable of resolving conflicts among the parties and interests in his entourage. Although aware of the forces of anti-monarchism threatening his family's rule, he did not act effectively to stop them.

Trends in 20th-century French historiography, especially the Annales School, have deprecated biography and minimized the role of the King. English historian William Doyle wrote:

The political story....of the reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI, by contrast, had too often been scorned, and therefore neglected, as a meaningless succession of petty intrigues in boudoirs and bedrooms, unworthy of serious attention when there were economic cycles, demographic fluctuations, rising and falling classes, and deep-seated shifts in cultural values to analyse.

A few scholars have defended Louis, arguing that his highly negative reputation was based on propaganda meant to justify the French Revolution. Olivier Bernier argued that Louis le Bien-aimé (the well-beloved) was a popular leader who reformed France. During his 59-year reign, France was never threatened by foreign conquest, though some of its overseas colonies were lost. Many of his subjects prayed for his recovery during his serious illness in Metz in 1744. His dismissal of the Parlement of Paris and his chief minister, Choiseul, in 1771, were attempts to wrest control of government from those Louis considered corrupt. He changed the tax code to try to balance the national budget. Bernier argued that these acts would have avoided the French Revolution if his successor Louis XVI had not reversed them. Guy Chaussinand-Nogaret claims that Louis XV's tarnished reputation was created fifteen years after his death, to justify the Revolution, and that the nobility during his reign were competent.
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