Historians generally criticise his reign, citing how reports of his corruption embarrassed the monarchy, while his wars drained the treasury while producing little gain. He commissioned François Boucher to paint pastoral scenes for his apartments in Versailles, and gave him the title of First Painter of the King in 1765. By 1774, revenues had been increased by 60 million livres and the debt reduced to 20 million livres. Thereafter, Britain and Prussia held the upper hand, tying down the French army in the German states along the Rhine. The birth of the king's male heir in 1729 dispelled the risks of a succession crisis in France. Between April and September 1762, the Parlements of Rennes, Bordeaux, Paris and Metz joined in the condemnation, followed in 1763 by Aix, Toulouse, Pau, Dijon and Grenoble. He forbade the king to discuss politics with the Queen. Soon he expanded the network of agents, intending to form an anti-Austrian alliance with Sweden, Prussia, Turkey, and Poland. [2] In 1748, Louis returned the Austrian Netherlands, won at the Battle of Fontenoy of 1745. The King referred privately to Philippe as a Fanfaron des crimes ("braggart of crimes"). Spain was defeated on both land and sea, and quickly sought peace. The King was attended by six physicians, six surgeons, each of whom took his pulse and gave his diagnosis. The stock of the company first soared and then collapsed in 1720, taking the bank with it. Historiography suggest the following as possible issue of the King: Note: Both children are officially recognized by their mother's husband, although it is alleged that the King himself was the real father. First, his mother caught the measles. Registered as a daughter of. The remark is usually taken out of its original context. [78] The King announced that he was giving his silver service to the mint, to be melted down and made into money. Madame Pompadour herself accepted it as a preferable alternative to a rival at court, as she stated: "It is his heart I want! Justus, Kevin Lane. As a son of the king, Louis was a fils de France.As heir apparent, he became Dauphin of France.However, he died before ascending the throne. Both the child and mother died in childbirth. [14] Besides his academic studies, He received a practical education in government. [116], The King, the Queen and her daughters were major patrons of music. I would not be so calm if I saw some pretty woman of the court or the capital trying to conquer it. [46] Resistance to the new measures grew with the church and in the provinces, which had their own parlements. The civil justice system came to a halt. As the third son of the dauphin of France (heir apparent to the throne), there were two people in line before him for the throne after his grandfather Louis XV—his older brother and his father. In 1755, the British seized 300 French merchant ships. On 25 October, Louis was crowned King at the Cathedral of Reims. The King remained conscious and cheerful. She described the Comtesse as "The most stupid and impertinent creature imaginable". With these successes, Louis XV's prestige reached its highest point. The possibility of his becoming King seemed very remote; the King's oldest son and heir, Louis Le Grand Dauphin, Louis's father and his elder surviving brother were ahead of him in the succession. Following the advice of his preceptor Fleury, Louis XV appointed his cousin Louis Henri, Duke of Bourbon, to replace the late Duke of Orléans as prime minister. They prayed the new king would restore morality at court and better serve the will of God. [90], The King soon installed her in the Palace of Versailles, and in 1771 gave her the new Pavillon de Louveciennes. In his later life the King retained his passion for science and geography; he created departments in physics (1769) and mechanics (1773) at the Collège de France.,[13] and he sponsored the first complete and accurate map of France, the Cartes de Cassini. "[110], Another characteristic remarked by contemporaries was his penchant for secrecy. The king died in 1774, hated as much as Louis XIV had been. A reader asked about Louis XIV’s father: Has anyone given serious consideration to the possibility that Henri d’Effiat, Marquis de Cinq-Mars, was the biological father of Louis XIV? A few months later, he also became the Minister of the Navy, and became the most influential and powerful member of the government. [58], In the New World, conflict had already begun between Britain and France. Using the Prussian army as a model, he reformed French military doctrine, making the state and not the officers responsible for training and equipping soldiers. Richelieu went to his close friend D’Effiat specifically to bring his handsome 18-year-old son into the court. On 3 July Stanislaus was forced to flee again, in disguise, to Prussia, where he became the guest of King Frederick William I of Prussia in the castle of Koenigsburg. The coevals attribute the paternity of both children to Louis XV for, according to documents from the Military Archive, Françoise de Châlus' husband had been wounded in the War of the Austrian Succession (1747) becoming from that moment unable to have any offspring. The monarchy survived—for a while—but Louis XV left his successor with a damaging legacy of popular discontent. In 1746, the French occupied Brussels. Once again the Parliaments rebelled. It was the first overt disobedience of the legislature against the King, and one of the first signs that the Parlement believed it, not the King, was the legitimate source of laws in the nation. The French army greatly outnumbered the British and Prussians on the continent. Louis had been very much in love with the Queen, and they were inseparable in the early years of his reign, but as his family grew and the Queen was constantly pregnant or exhausted by her maternities, he began to look elsewhere. The presence of du Barry at the court scandalized the high members of the Aristocracy. The military forces of Frederick the Great in Prussia had been nearly exhausted in the long war against the combined forces of Austria and Russia; but Frederick was saved by the sudden death of the Tsarina Elizabeth in 1762, and her replacement by Peter III of Russia, a fervent admirer of the Prussian King. She was the target of dozens of scandalous pamphlets accusing her of every possible immoral act. Louis XV was the great-grandson of Louis XIV and the third son of the Duke of Burgundy (1682–1712), and his wife Marie Adélaïde of Savoy, the eldest daughter of Victor Amadeus II, Duke of Savoy. 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