Louis XVIII
Louis XVIII (Louis Stanislas Xavier; 17 November 1755 – 16 September 1824), known as the Desired (French: le Désiré),[1][2] was King of France from 1814 to 1824, except for a brief interruption during the Hundred Days in 1815. Before his reign, he spent 23 years in exile from France beginning in 1791, during the French Revolution and the First French Empire.
Louis XVIII
3 May 1814 – 20 March 1815
8 July 1815 – 16 September 1824
- The Prince of Talleyrand
(1814) - The Duke of Blacas
(1814–1815) - The Prince of Talleyrand
(1815) - The Duke of Richelieu
(1815–1818) - Jean-Joseph Dessolles
(1818–1819) - The Duke of Decazes
(1819–1820) - The Duke of Richelieu
(1820–1821) - The Count of Villèle
(1821–1824)
8 June 1795[a] – 3 May 1814
20 March 1815 – 8 July 1815
Louis Stanislas Xavier, Count of Provence
17 November 1755
Palace of Versailles, France
16 September 1824 (aged 68)
Tuileries Palace, Paris, France
24 September 1824
Until his accession to the throne of France, he held the title of Count of Provence as brother of King Louis XVI, the last king of the Ancien Régime. On 21 September 1792, the National Convention abolished the monarchy and deposed Louis XVI, who was later executed by guillotine.[3] When his young nephew Louis XVII died in prison in June 1795, the Count of Provence claimed the throne as Louis XVIII.[4]
Following the French Revolution and during the Napoleonic era, Louis XVIII lived in exile in Prussia, Great Britain, and Russia.[5] When the Sixth Coalition first defeated Napoleon in 1814, Louis XVIII was placed in what he, and the French royalists, considered his rightful position. However, Napoleon escaped from his exile in Elba and restored his French Empire. Louis XVIII fled, and a Seventh Coalition declared war on the French Empire, defeated Napoleon again, and again restored Louis XVIII to the French throne.
Louis XVIII ruled as king for slightly less than a decade. His Bourbon Restoration government was a constitutional monarchy, unlike the absolutist Ancien Régime in France before the Revolution. As a constitutional monarch, Louis XVIII's royal prerogative was reduced substantially by the Charter of 1814, France's new constitution. His return in 1815 led to a second wave of White Terror headed by the Ultra-royalist faction. The following year, Louis dissolved the unpopular parliament (the Chambre introuvable), giving rise to the liberal Doctrinaires. His reign was further marked by the formation of the Quintuple Alliance and a military intervention in Spain. Louis had no children, and upon his death the crown passed to his brother, Charles X.[5] Louis XVIII was the last king or emperor of France to die a reigning monarch: his successor, Charles X (r. 1824–1830) abdicated; and both Louis Philippe I (r. 1830–1848) and Napoleon III (r. 1852–1870) were deposed.
Exile
Early years
When the Count of Provence arrived in the Low Countries, he proclaimed himself regent of France. He exploited a document that he and Louis XVI had written[54] before the latter's failed escape to Varennes-en-Argonne. The document gave him the regency in the event of his brother's death or inability to perform his role as king. He would join the other princes-in-exile at Coblenz soon after his escape. It was there that he, the Count of Artois, and the Condé princes proclaimed that their objective was to invade France. Louis XVI was greatly annoyed by his brothers' behaviour. Provence sent emissaries to various European courts asking for financial aid, soldiers, and munition. Artois secured a castle for the court in exile in the Electorate of Trier (or "Treves"), where their maternal uncle, Clemens Wenceslaus of Saxony, was the Archbishop-Elector. The activities of the émigrés bore fruit when the rulers of Prussia and the Holy Roman Empire gathered at Dresden. They released the Declaration of Pillnitz in August 1791, which urged Europe to intervene in France if Louis XVI or his family were threatened. Provence's endorsement of the declaration was not well received in France, either by the ordinary citizens or by Louis XVI himself.[55]
In January 1792, the Legislative Assembly declared that all of the émigrés were traitors to France. Their property and titles were confiscated.[56] The monarchy of France was abolished by the National Convention on 21 September 1792.[57]
Louis XVI was executed in January 1793. This left his young son, Louis Charles, as the titular King. The princes-in-exile proclaimed Louis Charles "Louis XVII of France". The Count of Provence now unilaterally declared himself regent for his nephew, who was too young to be head of the House of Bourbon.[58]
The young King, still a minor, died in prison in June 1795. His only surviving sibling was his sister Marie-Thérèse, who was not considered a candidate for the throne because of France's traditional adherence to Salic law. Thus on 16 June, the princes-in-exile declared the Count of Provence "King Louis XVIII". The new king accepted their declaration soon after[4] and busied himself drafting a manifesto in response to Louis XVII's death. The manifesto, known as the "Declaration of Verona", was Louis XVIII's attempt to introduce the French people to his politics. The Declaration of Verona beckoned France back into the arms of the monarchy, "which for fourteen centuries was the glory of France".[18]
Louis XVIII negotiated the release of Marie-Thérèse from her Paris prison in 1795. He desperately wanted her to marry her first cousin, Louis Antoine, Duke of Angoulême, the son of the Count of Artois. Louis XVIII deceived his niece by telling her that her parents' last wishes were for her to marry Louis-Antoine, and she duly agreed to Louis XVIII's wishes.[59]
Louis XVIII was forced to abandon Verona when Napoleon Bonaparte invaded the Republic of Venice in 1796.[60]
Film and television
Louis XVIII is portrayed by Orson Welles in the 1970 film Waterloo. British actor Sebastian Armesto played Comte Louis de Provence prior to his accession in the 2006 motion picture Marie Antoinette directed by Sofia Coppola.[139] In the 2022 TV series Marie Antoinette, created by Deborah Davis, the Count of Provence is portrayed by British-Irish actor Jack Archer.[140]
