Louis XV., king of France, the great-grandson of Louis XIV., born at Versailles, 15th February 1710, succeeded to the throne 1st September 1715. The Duke of Orleans, as first prince of the blood, was regent during the minority of the king, whose education was entrusted to Marshal Villeroi and Cardinal Fleury. The regent and the country became incomprehensibly infatuated with the financial schemes of the Scotsman Law (q.v.). All available capital was drawn away from agriculture and trade, pocketed by the financial cliques, the court, and the state, whose debt was thereby substantially reduced, and worthless paper-money issued instead. Every kind of indulgence in luxury and vice accompanied in high places this financial insanity. When Louis was fifteen years of age he married Maria Lesczynski, daughter of Stanislas, the dethroned king of Poland. At the death of the regent and of his shameless prime-minister Cardinal Dubois, Louis reigned personally, and put at the head of affairs his old, wise, and prudent teacher Cardinal Fleury, who repaired somewhat the economic disasters of his predecessors, and set his face against a warlike policy.
Louis having become involved in the war of the Polish Succession through his father-in-law, the duchy of Lorraine was without much fighting obtained for the latter, and for the French crown after him. When the war of the Austrian succession broke out (1740) Cardinal Fleury was averse to burdening the state with fresh debt and new military charges in support of the claims of the prince-elector of Bavaria to the imperial crown. Louis was then falling under the influence of a number of voluptuous and immoral noblemen, who set up a barrier between him and his wife, and delivered him into the hands of vice. Fleury lost ground; the government became a toy for ambitious courtiers and dissolute women, in the satisfaction of whose vanity war was declared against Austria. After a course of easy conquest in 1741 the French were badly beaten in 1742: regret and worry brought Fleury to the grave in the next year. But in the following years France, in alli- ance with Frederick the Great of Prussia, was repeatedly victorious on land, at Fontenoy (1745), for instance, where Louis delighted his latest mistress with the flight of English, Dutch, and Austrian troops, though on the sea the English put an end to the French navy and sea-faring trade. When peace was signed at Aix-la-Chapelle France had nothing to show save the ruinous disorganisation of her finances.
The king now sank completely under the control of Madame de Pompadour, who was both concubine and procureur, and to whom he gave notes on the treasury for enormous sums, amounting in all to hundreds of millions of livres. War broke out again with Britain concerning the boundaries of Acadia (Nova Scotia), and was for some time prosecuted with considerable vigour. In 1756 an extraordinary alliance was formed between France and Austria, contrary to the policy of ages, and chiefly through the influence of Madame de Pompadour. Directed against Prussia as a threatening Protestant power, this alliance had no other result than Frederick the Great's complete victory over the French at Rossbach. The state of the finances, the dispirited condition of the army, and the outcry of the distressed people were not sufficient to induce the king to make peace; but, governed by his mistress, he obstinately persevered in war, even after the terrible defeat of Minden in 1759; whilst the British conquered almost all the French colonies both in the East and West Indies, with Cape Breton and Canada. A peace most humiliating to France was at last concluded in 1763.
Louis, although indifferent to the ruin of his people, and to everything but his own vile pleasures, was reluctantly compelled to take part in the contest between the Paris parliament and the Jesuits (q.v.), the result of which was the suppression of the order in 1764. The parliament, emboldened by success in this contest, now attempted to limit the power of the crown by refusing to register edicts of taxation; but the king maintained his own absolute and supreme authority, thanks to the indifference with which the people and the middle class viewed the privileges of the noblesse de robe. The Duc de Choiseul was now displaced from office, a new mistress, Madame du Barry, having come into the place of Madame de Pompadour; and a ministry was formed under the Duke d'Aiguillon, every member of which was an enemy of the parliaments and abjectly immoral. The councillors of the parliament of Paris were removed from their offices, and banished with great indignity; an interim parliament was appointed (January 1771), which duly obeyed the court. The princes of the blood protested against this arbitrary act, which left them without any means of appeal against the royal will. The king, when told of the ruin of the country and the misery and discontent of the people, only remarked that the monarchy would last as long as his life, and continued his course of sensual pleasures and trifling amusements. He boasted of being the best cook in France, and was much gratified when the courtiers ate eagerly of the dishes which he had prepared. His gifts to Madame du Barry, notwithstanding the embarrassment of the finances, in five years amounted to 180 millions of livres. At last Louis, whose constitution was already shattered from the effects of a life of vice, was seized with smallpox, and on 10th May 1774 he died in abject misery, so far from being regretted that his funeral was a sort of popular festival, and was celebrated with pasquils and merry ballads. Such was the end of Louis 'le Bien-aimé.'
See Voltaire's Siècle de Louis XV. (2 vols. 1768-70), and other works by Tocqueville (2d ed. 1847), Bonhomme (1873), the Duke de Broglie (Eng. trans. 1879), Vaudal (1882), Perkins (1897), and Waddington (1897).