| 1710 |
Louis is born, the son of the Duc de Barry. He is the great-grandson of Louis XIV who has been on the throne already for 67 years, the longest reign of any monarch of Europe. Young Louis is at least fourth in the line of succession. |
| 1711 |
The Great Dauphin, the only surviving son of Louis XIV, dies, making the Duke of Burgundy the heir apparent to the throne of France. |
| 1712 February |
The Duke and Duchess of Burgundy and their oldest son all die, wiping out another one and a half generations of the royal succession. |
| 1714 |
Louis XIV declares the illegitimate sons of Montespan to be in line for dynastic succession, but a legitimate heir is the Duc de Barry who dies this year leaving his four-year-old son as the sole legitimate heir. |
| 1715 September 1 |
Louis
XIV dies in the palace at Versailles. The throne will pass on to Louis
XV his five year old great-grandson, who has survived the rage of disease
that has killed his grandfather, father and older brother as well as other
members of the royal family.
In his will Louis XIV has severely restricted the authority of Philippe, his nephew, first prince of the blood, Duc d'Orleans and Regent. Philippe makes a deal with the Paris parliament to quash the will giving him full power of Regency. In trade he restores to them the right of making remonstrances and other reforms which had long been denied by Louis XIV. This results in a long conflict that drains the power and prestige of the monarchy. Philippe settles down to a life of debauchery in his home, the Palais Royal. Actual power falls to the hands of Philippe's long-time tutor Abbe Dubois, who uses the position to amass power. He becomes secretary of state for foreign affairs and a cardinal. |
| 1721 |
The family spat between France and Spain two years ago is patched up. A plot had been hatched to kill the Regent and perhaps the young king. French troops cross the Pyrenees and Philip V ends his scheme to take the throne from his nephew. In fact it is decided that the Spanish Infanta, now three, will be wedded to Louis XV, an aged eleven years old. |
| 1723 February |
The Regency ends when the king, who is still only twelve years old, achieves legal majority. |
| 1723 August |
The Cardinal Dubois, whose diplomacy has brought a period of tranquility to France and who has been named prime minister in the last year, dies in August. |
| 1723 December |
In December Philippe, Duc d'Orleans, is struck down by apoplexy and the post of Prime Minister passes to the Duc de Bourbon who holds the post for three years. The Spanish Infanta is rejected as a mate for the young king for France would have to wait too long for an heir and if the young king dies, Philip V would have even more reason to claim his nephew's throne. |
| 1725 |
After a long list of eligible princesses is checked the French government decides that Louis XV is to be married to Marie Leczinska the daughter of the former King Stanislas of Poland. He is fifteen years old , she is 22. Over the next twelve years she will bear him ten children and then she will be completely neglected by her husband. |
| 1726 |
The Duc de Bourbon is replaced in power by Bishop Fleury, the young king's former tutor. He had worked his way to the high council and is already 73 years old, but he will hold on to power until his death in 1743 at the age of ninety. He rises in power by flattering his young charge, but he refuses the title of prime minister, content with ministre d'etat and a position on the Conseil d'en haut There is no doubt among the rest of the government who is the real ruler for the next 17 years. After this year the govenrment leaves the period of experimentation of the Regency and returns to the system that worked under Louis XIV. |
| 1730 |
A new Controleur general, Orry, comes to power and maintains it for 15 years. He is forced by the wars of the 1740s to revive the dicieme, a direct tax not used since Louis XIV, but he succeeds in keeping expenditure slightly below revenue. |
| 1738 |
Orry institutes the corvee for the building and upkeep of roads, giving France the finest road system in Europe. |
| 1739-40 |
These years are famine years which defie the relative prosperity of the Fleury administration. |
| 1743 |
Bishop Fleury dies and the personal reign of Louis XV, now 33, begins. The next three decades of his reign are prosperous at home and disastrous abroad. He is often bored and unwilling to govern. France is run by independent-minded ministers who gain and maintain their positions by court intrique. The king keeps himself amused by running his own secret service to keep him informed of foreign affairs and to carry out his own policies. |
| 1744 |
France again declares war on England which aligns it against the Dutch and Austrians. |
| 1745 |
Another amusement for the king is Jeanne Poisson, Marquise de Pompadour who is installed in court this year. Madame Pompadour has real political power which will be blamed by the general public for the excesses of the court and the disaster of the Seven Years War. Mauchault replaces Orry as Controleur general and will attempt important reforms in the taxation system, aiming to make the pays d'etat (provinces with estates) and the privileged orders pay a larger share of the burden. Stiff opposition is encountered from all quarters: the Pays d'etat, the Parlement and the clergy. |
| 1745 |
The war against Anglo-Dutch-Austrian forces starts badly, but a hero appears. The General Maurice de Saxe claims a victory at Fontenoy, celebrated in poetry by Voltaire, captures several towns in the Austrian Netherlands including Brussels, and penetrates Holland. |
| 1746 |
The French navy is less successful. In North America the port of Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island is seized by New England colonists supported by the English fleet. The French are more successful in India with victories at Madras and Pondicherry |
| 1748 |
The Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle brings this latest war to a close, but is very unpopular in France. The French regain Cape Breton Island but lose Madras and the territory occupied by Maurice de Saxe. An uneasy peace follows before the Seven Years War. The state finances are in a critical state. |
| 1749 |
Two government edicts appear, one to raise a loan to cover the war debt and the other to establish a new tax, the vingtieme, which is a permanent tax used to repay the national debt. |
| 1754 |
Machault leaves the post of Controleur general, the vingtieme, not being entirely successful as a tax reform. The clergy and the pays d'etat allowed to pay a lump sum much lower than their share of the vingtieme. |
| 1756 |
The Seven Years War breaks out, but hostilities exist previously including a famous reversal of alliances. England allies itself with Fredrick the Great by the Treaty of Westminster in January. Negotiations are completed between traditional enemies France and Austria at Versailles. Frederick opens the war by invading Saxony. France agrees not to make peace until Frederick cedes Silesia and will, in exchange, gain several towns in the Austrian Netherlands (Belgium). This focus on the home front draws French military attention away from her colonial possessions. |
| 1757 |
An attempt is made to assassinate Louis XV. The man, named Damiens, necessitates a criminal trial creating a diversion for the judges of the Paris Parlement who had not resigned over the latest religious spat with the King. The last few months of 1756 and the beginning of 1757 is a period of near anarchy in France. |
| 1757 |
Frederick the Great defeats the French army at Rossbach, a village in Thruingia, despite backing by Austrian and Russian armies. |
| 1757-1759 |
The French navy is respectable at the beginning of the war, but it will be out-numbered and out-maneuvered by the British fleet. After a plan to invade England collapses in 1759 the French navy's value is negligible and her colonies defenseless. |
| 1758-61 |
French armies suffer more humiliating defeats in Western Germany. |
| 1758-61 |
Consequenses for French possessions in North America, the West Indies and India are calamitous. After taking Cape Breton Island in 1758 the British cut off French access to Louisiana through Canada. |
| 1758-1770 |
The Duc de Choiseul is appointed the secretary of state for foreign affairs and will remain in office until 1770. He will not become prime minister but will also hold the postitons of secretary of state for war and for navy, giving him considerable power during this period.
The Duc de Choiseul is the power in the French government which decides that Louisiana is a liability and a drain on its fragile finances. He will be given the task of liquidating the Seven Years War, will sign the Pacte de Famillewith other Bourbon Rulers and will annex Corsica in 1768. But even his power will be unable to shore up the growing weakness of the monarchy. |
| 1759 |
In Canada British General Wolfe arrives before Quebec and forces its surrender. |
| 1760 |
Wolfe moves on to Montreal and forces its surrender, completing the fate of the colony. In the West Indies the French islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique are also captured. |
| 1761 |
The Bourbon rulers of France, Spain, Naples and Parma form an alliance, a Pacte de Famille. Spain enters the war against England in 1762 with few positive results. The alliance will work better during the American Revolution. |
| 1761 August |
The long feud between the Jansenists and the Jesuits comes to a head in 1761. The conclusion began with the unsuccessful commercial enterprises of Father La Vallette, a Jesuit missionary on the island of Martinique in the West Indies. When English warships captured French ships laden with his merchandise he is ruined and a Marseilles firm decides to sue the main Society of Jesus in France for his large debt. The Jesuits lose the case and the Society is ordered to pay the debt plus damages. Furthermore, they are forbidden to engage in future commercial ventures. The Parlement also places a restraint on all of the Society's property to secure payment and begins to examine its past history. The general public is enthusiastic about every devious intrigue dug up about this powerful icon of the French church. Its theories of regicide, the murder of Henry III, the resistance to Henry IV under the Ligue, a recent attempt to assassinate the King of Portugal and the Gunpowder Plot. |
| 1762 August |
The Parlement orders all Jesuit books condemned and burned and all students in Jesuit schools and seminaries to leave them. By the following August the Society was suppressed in France despite the efforts of the government to normalize them. Louis XV hesitated to act on the Jesuits' behalf, knowing its general unpopularity. In 1764 the Parlement ordered its members to leave France, but the King finally stepped in and, although decreeing the dissolution of the Society, allowed them to remain in France and stopped all legal proceedings against them. In Louisiana the Jesuit lands are seized and sold, including the old plantation of Bienville. |
| 1763 |
The Treaty of Paris ends the war with England and gives most of French possessions in North America to England. Louis XV sloughs Louisiana west of the Mississippi off to his Spanish cousin in Spain. All North American land east of the Mississippi River is the undisputed possession of England. |
| 1764 |
The weakness of the French government becomes more apparent in another legal contest between the local Parlement of Brittany and the central government represented by the Duc d'Aiguillon, the commandant, the Intendant of Brittany. The Parlement is called on to register a financial edict, but places additional restrictions on the administration of d'Aiguillon. The chief members of the Brittany Parlement are called to Versailles for a formal rebuke, but returns to the countryside with no remorse and lists additional remonstrances for the administration. The situation is drawn out by the indecisiveness of the Paris government and the growing restlessness of all of the provincial Parlements to bring reform to the country's finances. |
| 1768 |
France has a new Chancellor, Rene-Nicolas Maupeou, and a new mistress for the king, Madame du Barry |
| 1769 |
Abbe Terray is the new Controleur general to replace Choiseul, whose dismissal opens up an all-out attack on the Parlements. |
| 1770 |
The Dauphin who is the future Louis XVI, grandson of Louis XV is married off to the Archduchess Marie Antoinette, cementing the alliance between France and Austria. In November Maupeou sends to the Parlement for registration a royal edict forbidding the provincial and Paris Parlements to act as one body, to correspond with one another and to cease the administration of justice, under penalty of confiscation of their posts. |
| 1771 January |
After the judges of the Paris Parlement suspend the administration of justice and offer new remonstrances, Maupeou sends to each judge a lettre de cachet ordering him to resume his duties. Over a hundred refuse because they have been given a choice to either renounce all political claims or risk a showdown with the government. Each receives another letter declaring his post confiscated and exiling him to the provinces. To replace the Parlement the royal Conseil des Parties is installed in the Palais de Justice, but the avocats and procureurs refuse to recongnize the new court and justice is at a standstill. The provincial parlements now demand the Etats generaux, which has not met since 1614, as the only solution for the stalemate. The Chancellor has a plan of reform. which restricts the power of the Paris Parlement and abolishes the buying and selling of judicial posts. By April the provencial parlements received the same restrictions and changes. Again there is a call for the Etats generaux with the support of some princes of the blood and the nobility. They see Maupeous' reforms as proof of the despotism of the regime. The reforms were actually quite just, but they are to be dropped three years later after Louis XV dies. |
| 1771-1774 |
The last three years of the regime the government is run by the Triumvirat of the Chancellor, Maupeau, the Controlleur general Abbe Terray and the secretary of state for foreign affairs, the Duc d'Aiguillon |
| 1774 May |
Louis XV dies from smallpox at the age of 64. He will pass on to his successor a monarchy damaged by unsuccessful wars, long conflicts with the Parlements and the weakness and extravagance of the government. The regime had brought a long period of relative prosperity to France. |