Ludvík XVIII.

Ludvík XVIII



- King, reigned from 1814 to 1824



He was born on 17 November 1755, the brother of King Louis XVI and Count of Provence. During the French Revolution in 1791, he fled to Koblenz, Germany, from where he organized a counter-revolution. After the death of the minor Louis XVII, of whom he was regent, the royalists declared him his successor as Louis XVIII. After the defeat of Prussia by Napoleon in 1809, he moved to England, from where, with the help of Foreign Minister Talleyrand, he returned to France in April 1814 to restore the monarchy.


On his accession to the throne on 4 June 1814, Louis XVIII rejected the constitution prepared by Talleyrand and proclaimed a constitutional monarchy on the British model. In the constitutional charter of 26 June, he then established a bicameral parliament, with the upper house of peers being hereditarily appointed by the king, while the members of the lower house were elected by electoral censure. He vested legislative power in a government directly responsible to the king. Napoleon's Code Civil, guaranteeing civil rights and secularizing the church, remained in force. Nevertheless, through a system of an appointed upper chamber and ministers, he succeeded in promoting to the head of state conservative representatives of the nobility and high clergy, overthrown during the Revolution. This sparked an anti-royalist movement and led to the assassination of a reactionary leader - the king's nephew, the Duc de Berry. The king then placed an ultramonarchist - the father of the assassinated duke, his brother, the Comte d'Artois - at the head of the government in 1820. He subsequently restricted civil liberties and began to persecute the opposition.


In foreign policy, Louis XVIII was firmly attached to the so-called Holy Alliance, formed at the Congress of Vienna, and took part in the military intervention against the revolution in Spain in 1823. After the death of Louis XVIII on 16 September 1824, his brother, Count d'Artois, as Charles X, ascended the throne.
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