Louis XVIII of France: Biography

Luis XVIII He was the King of France from 1814 to 1824, except for a brief period in 1815. He came to the throne when France was going through a transitional period. The country had just witnessed the beheading of King Louis XVI by the revolutionary government, and had witnessed the rapid rise and tragic fall of the empire of Napoleon I.

Tired of the war, the French wanted a stable government that allowed their voices to be heard. Even before coming to power, King Louis XVIII realized that the days of absolute monarchy had disappeared. For this reason he adopted a more liberal attitude and made efforts to accommodate each section of society in his government.

Louis XVIII of France

Consequently, he was hailed as an intelligent and liberal king by scholars. However, many more regard him as a narrow-minded, skeptical monarch whose sole objective was to cling to his throne.

Index

  • 1 Biography
  • 2 Training
  • 3 Marriage
  • 4 Resistance to Napoleon Bonaparte
    • 4.1 Appearance of the"ultras"
  • 5 Illustrated Monarch
  • 6 References

Biography

Prince Luis Estanislao Javier, Count of Provence, was born on November 17, 1755 in Versailles. He was the third son of the dolphin Luis and Maria Josefa of Saxony. He was the grandson of King Louis XV of France and King Augustus III of Poland.

Being the fourth in the line of succession, little importance was given. However, that changed quite rapidly with the death of his older brother in 1761. In 1765 his father died.

As a result of this, young Luis was only overcome by his only surviving older brother, the future King Louis XVI, to succeed his grandfather, King Louis XV.

Training

When he began his education as an inheriting prince, he was discovered to be an exceptionally bright child. Classical history and literature were his favorite subjects.

He could quote Horace by heart, he was an expert in the Bible and he was fluent in English and Italian, as well as his French mother tongue. As he grew up he developed many good qualities, but he had some shortcomings.

Although very intellectual, the Count of Provence never enjoyed exercise or physical activity. He liked to eat and soon after reaching adulthood he became increasingly obese, slow and sedentary.

Marriage

To better serve the interests of France, it was decided that he should be married to a princess of the House of Savoy. To the disappointment of both, the choice fell on Princess Maria Josefina de Saboya, daughter of King Victor Amadeo III of Piedmont.

The count considered her unattractive and sadly ignorant of the complex courtesan etiquette of Versailles. Although the two married in 1771, it took several years before the marriage was consummated.

Luis remained in Paris at the beginning of the Revolution of 1789, but fled France three years later. He spent the rest of the war actively participating from a safe distance, issuing manifestos and seeking the support of other monarchs.

His actions did little to protect the captive king and queen, who were executed in 1793. After his death, Louis declared himself regent of his nephew, the dauphin Louis XVII. He was proclaimed Louis XVIII after the death of the dolphin in 1795.

Resistance to Napoleon Bonaparte

Unable to formally claim the throne, Luis traveled throughout Europe for the next 20 years.

He met with other monarchs frequently, in an effort to maintain his legitimacy as heir to the French throne and to promote resistance to Napoleon. When Napoleon offered him a pension in exchange for his abdication, Luis refused.

After Napoleon's military defeat in 1813, Louis issued a statement promising to preserve some of the revolutionary reforms in the context of a restored Bourbon regime.

On May 3, 1814 the crowd welcomed him back to Paris. The new king moved quickly to institutionalize the constitutional monarchy he had promised. The new Constitution guaranteed a bicameral parliament, as well as religious tolerance.

The constitutional experiments were truncated by the arrival of Napoleon from exile in Elba. Louis was forced to wait a hundred days for Napoleon's return in the Belgian city of Ghent.

To reign peacefully, Louis XVIII had to balance the power of the monarchy with the demands of the post-revolutionary public.

Appearance of the"ultras"

While Luis exercised executive authority, his power was controlled by Parliament. He voted on the laws and approved the budgets. One of his greatest challenges was to maintain control of the"ultras,"a realist faction within Parliament that sought to repeal all revolutionary reforms.

The actions of the ultras led Luis to dissolve the Parliament at a given moment, instead of allowing the constitutional legitimacy of the legislature to be undermined. Luis remained on the throne until his death in Paris, on September 16, 1824.

Illustrated Monarch

Louis XVIII was an enlightened monarch, capable of maintaining control of the situation in such a heated environment as France was after Napoleon and the Revolution.

In spite of everything, its capacity to understand that, after the French Revolution, it was not possible to return to the old form of government, where absolute monarchy ruled; This would only cause more social unrest and revenge to the sovereign.

He instituted one of the first parliamentary monarchies in Europe and was one of the pioneers in creating a charter that recognized and accepted the rights of the people.

King Louis XVIII always had the right priorities and knew what was expected of him. He suffered greatly during his time in exile, but continued his duty with remarkable intelligence, skill and determination to carry the torch of traditional French monarchism in its most turbulent and dark times.

He was very cultured and intelligent, very practical and, unlike some, he had a firm understanding of what was realistic and what was not.

References

  1. Álvarez, C. (2014). King Louis XVIII and lamb chops . ABC. Retrieved from: abc.es
  2. Ander (2016). List of kings of France. Historical Criticism Recovered at: criticahistorica.com
  3. The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica (1998). Louis XVIII. Encyclopaedia Britannica. Retrieved from: britannica.com
  4. Smethurst, C. (2002). François-René de Chateaubriand, Écrits politiques (1814-1816) . Geneva, Droz"Les classiques de la pensée politique". Retrieved from: persee.fr
  5. Alicia, P. (2014). François-Memories of the reign of Louis XVIII of Chateaubriand, in the translation of Ramón López Soler (1830). Virtual Library Miguel de Cervantes. Retrieved from: cervantesvirtual.com


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