LOUIS XVIII OF BOURBON, King of France. - B. at Versailles on 17 Nov. 1755, d. at Paris on 16 Sept. 1824. Louis Stanislas Xavier, Count of Provence, son of the dauphin Louis (son of Louis XV) and of Maria Josepha of Saxony, and therefore younger brother of Louis XVI, in his youth devoted himself to literary studies, while nonetheless taking part in political life as an opponent of his sister-in-law Marie Antoinette.
When the Revolution broke out, he fled to Koblenz and there - as later at Verona, at Mittau and in England - was the recognized head of the royalist emigration. Having proclaimed himself regent upon the death of the King his brother and then sovereign in 1795, as soon as he received news of the death of his nephew Louis XVII in the prison of the Temple, he negotiated in vain with Napoleon so that the latter might restore the monarchy: the assassination of the Duke of Enghien was the first consul's bloody answer. After the Emperor was defeated at Leipzig and forced to abdicate, L. returned to Paris in May 1814 and promulgated a constitutional charter, at the same time personally directing Talleyrand's political action at the Congress of Vienna so that France might be restored to the frontiers of 1789, with, in addition, despite the protests and the efforts of Card. Consalvi, the former pontifical territories of Avignon and the Comtat Venaissin.
The "Hundred Days" forced him once again into exile, from which he returned after Waterloo, but this time the restoration appeared to be imposed by the coalition armies, whereas the previous year he had been received in Paris with sincere enthusiasm. Nevertheless, L. did not abrogate the Constitution of '14, sought to moderate the excesses of the "White Terror," and dissolved, because it was too reactionary, the Chamber that emerged from the elections of 1815, the so-called "Unobtainable Chamber." Excellently assisted by the Duke of Richelieu and by Décazes, he governed with moderation, deaf to the counsels of his brother the Count of Artois, head of the "ultras"; but after the assassination of the presumptive heir, the Duke of Berry (1820), he had to call Villèle to the government, with an authoritarian program. In 1822 he authorized his nephew the Duke of Angoulême to lead the French expedition beyond the Pyrenees, against the Spanish liberals, decided upon by the Holy Alliance at the Congress of Verona. Good-naturedly skeptical by nature and tinged with Voltairianism, his ecclesiastical policy was not exempt from Gallican tendencies, albeit moderate, tendencies whose prevalence also in the Chamber caused the failure of the concordatory negotiations of 1816 and '17, with a pure and simple return not to the Concordat of 1516, as L. wished, but to the Napoleonic one, as Pius VII wished.
He was succeeded - the last of the direct Bourbon line - by his brother Charles X, since he had had no male offspring by Maria Luisa of Savoy, whom he married in 1771. - See pl. CXV.
Bibliography5 works
Renzo U. Montini