Louis XV

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A stub for the Well-Beloved of despots —

Louis XV of France

Louis XV in 1748:
a pastel portrait by Maurice Quentin de La Tour
(Louvre Museum) Louis XV (February 16, 1710 – May 10, 1774), called the Well-Beloved (French: le Bien-Aimé), was King of France from 1715 to 1774. Miraculously surviving the death of his entire family, he was loved by the French at the beginning of his reign. However, in time, his inability to reform the French monarchy and his policy of appeasement on the European stage lost him the support of his people, and he died as one of the most unpopular kings of France.

Louis XV is the king with the most ambivalent personality in the history of France. Though he has been much maligned by historians, modern research shows that he was in fact very intelligent and dedicated to the task of ruling the largest kingdom of Europe. However, his indecisiveness, fueled by his awareness of the complexity of problems ahead, as well as his profound timidity, hidden behind the mask of an imperious king, account for the poor results achieved during his reign. In many ways, Louis XV prefigures the bourgeois rulers of the romantic 19th century: although dutifully playing the role of the imperial king carved out by his great-grandfather Louis XIV, Louis XV in fact cherished nothing more than his private life far away from pomp and ceremony. Having lost his mother while still an infant, he always longed for a motherly and reassuring presence, which he tried to find in the intimate company of women, for which he was much slandered both during and after his life. ...