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Tag Archives: King Louis XV of France and Navarre

January 5, 1757: Attempted Assassination of King Louis XV of France and Navarre

05 Thursday Jan 2023

Posted by liamfoley63 in Bishop of Rome and the Catholic Church, Featured Monarch, Kingdom of Europe, This Day in Royal History

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Assassination Attempt, Drawn añd Quartered, Empress Maria Theresa, French Parlement, Grand Trianon, King George II of Great Britain, King Louis XV of France and Navarre, Pope Benedict XIV, Robért-François Damiens, Versailles

On January 5, 1757, as King Louis XV of France and Navarre was getting into his carriage in the courtyard of the Grand Trianon Versailles, a demented man, Robért-François Damiens rushed past the King’s bodyguards and stabbed him with a penknife, inflicting only a slight wound. He made no attempt to escape and was apprehended at once.

Damiens was arrested on the spot and taken away to be tortured to force him to divulge the identity of any accomplices or those who had sent him. This effort was unsuccessful.

King Louis XV of France and Navarre

The King’s guards seized Damien, and the King ordered them to hold him but not harm him. The King walked up the steps to his rooms at the Trianon, where he found he was bleeding profusely. He summoned his doctor and then fainted. Louis was saved from greater harm by the thickness of the winter clothing he was wearing.

Before King Louis XV passed out he also called for a confessor to be brought to him, as he feared he might die. When the Queen ran to Louis’s side, he asked forgiveness for his numerous affairs.

When the news reached Paris, anxious crowds gathered in the streets. Pope Benedict XIV, the Holy Roman Empress Maria Theresa, and King George II of Great Britain, with whom France was at war, sent messages hoping for his swift recovery.

Damien was tried before the Parlement of Paris, which had been the most vocal critic of the King. The Parlement demonstrated its loyalty to the King by sentencing Damiens to the most severe possible penalty.

Grand Trianon at the Palace of Versailles

Damiens’s motivation has always been debated, with some historians considering him to have been mentally unstable. From his answers under interrogation, Damiens seems to have been put into a state of agitation by the uproar that followed the refusal of the French Catholic clergy to grant the holy sacraments to members of the Jansenist sect. He appears to have laid the ultimate blame for this on the King, and so formed a plan to punish him.

Fetched from his prison cell on the morning of March 28, 1757, Damiens allegedly said “La journée sera rude” (“The day will be hard”). He was first subjected to a torture in which his legs were painfully compressed by devices called “boots”.

He was then tortured with red-hot pincers; the hand with which he had held the knife during the attempted assassination was burned using sulphur; molten wax, molten lead, and boiling oil were poured into his wounds.

He was then remanded to the royal executioner Charles Henri Sanson who, after emasculating Damiens, harnessed horses to his arms and legs to be dismembered. But Damiens’s limbs did not separate easily: the officiants ordered Sanson to cut Damiens’s tendons, and once that was done the horses were able to perform the dismemberment.

Once Damiens was dismembered, to the applause of the crowd, his reportedly still-living torso was burnt at the stake. (Some accounts say he died when his last remaining arm was removed.)

Execution of Damiens

Damiens’s final words are uncertain. Some sources attribute to him “O death, why art thou so long in coming?”; others claim Damiens’ last words consisted mainly of various effusions for mercy from God.

Aftermath

After his death, the remains of Damiens’s corpse were reduced to ashes and scattered in the wind. His house was razed, his brothers and sisters were forced to change their names, and his father, wife, and daughter were banished from France.

The King recovered physically very quickly, but the attack had a depressive effect on his spirits. One of his chief courtiers, Duford de Cheverny, wrote afterwards: “it was easy to see that when members of the court congratulated him on his recovery, he replied, ‘yes, the body is going well’, but touched his head and said, ‘but this goes badly, and this is impossible to heal.’

After the assassination attempt, the King invited his heir, the Dauphin, to attend all of the Royal Council meetings, and quietly closed down the chateau at Versailles where he had met with his short-term mistresses.”

Damiens was the last person to be executed in France by dismemberment, the traditional form of death penalty reserved for regicides.

Pretenders to the French Throne. Part II: The End of a Dynasty

30 Tuesday Aug 2022

Posted by liamfoley63 in Abdication, Featured Monarch, Kingdom of Europe, Regent, Royal Genealogy, Royal House, Royal Succession

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French pretenders, House of Bourbon, July Revolution, King Charles X of France and Navarre, King Louis Philippe I of the French, King Louis XV of France and Navarre, Lieutenant général du royaume, Regent, Usurper

King Louis XV had ten legitimate children, but there were only two sons, only one of whom survived to adulthood, Louis, Dauphin of France. This did not help dispel the concerns about the future of the dynasty; should his male line fail, the succession would be disputed by a possible war of succession between the descendants of Felipe V of Spain and the House of Orléans descended from Philippe I, Duke of Orléans, the younger brother of King Louis XIV.

The Dauphin Louis predeceased his father but left behind three sons, Louis Augusté, Duke of Berry, Louis Stanislas, Count of Provence and Charles Philippe, Count of Artois. The Duke of Berry succeeded his grandfather as King Louis XVI.

King Charles X of France and Navarre

Louis XVI would be the only French king to be executed, during the French Revolution. For the first time, the Capetian monarchy had been overthrown. The monarchy would be restored under his younger brother, Louis Stanislaus, Count of Provence, who took the name Louis XVIII in consideration of the dynastic seniority of his nephew, Louis, from 1793 to 1795 (the child never actually reigned but is counted as King Louis XVII).

Louis XVIII died childless and was succeeded by his younger brother, Charles Philippe, Count of Artois, as King Charles X. Louis XVIII is the last King of France to die while still being King.

Compelled by what he felt to be a growing, manipulative radicalism in the elected government, Charles felt that his primary duty was the guarantee of order and happiness in France and its people; not in political bipartisanship and the self-interpreted rights of implacable political enemies. He issued the Four Ordinances of Saint-Cloud, which were intended to quell the people of France.

However, the ordinances had the opposite effect of angering the French citizens. In Paris, a committee of the liberal opposition had drawn up and signed a petition in which, they asked for the ordonnances to be withdrawn; more surprising was their criticism “not of the King, but his ministers” – thereby disproving Charles X’s conviction that his liberal opponents were enemies of his dynasty.

Charles X considered the ordonnances vital to the safety and dignity of the French throne. Thus, he did not withdraw the ordonnances. This precipitated the July Revolution.

Louis Philippe I, King of the French

The July Revolution resulted in King Charles X of France and Navarre (1824-1830) being deposed. He unsuccessfully tried to abdicate the throne in favor of his eldest son, Louis Antoine, Duke of Angoulême whom the Legitimist faction call King Louis XIX of France and Navarre. His tenure on the French throne was brief and never officially recognized. 30 minutes later Louis XIX abdicated his claim to the throne to his nephew Henri of Artois, Comte de Chambord.

The Comte de Chambord claimed the throne of France as Henri V until the Chamber of Deputies proclaimed his distant cousin, Louis Philippe, Duke of Orléans as King of the French on August 9, 1830. The Legitimist faction view Louis Philippe as a usurper to the French throne and rightly so.

The National Assembly had at first named Louis Philippe, Lieutenant général du royaume, and he was to act as regent for the young King Henri V in the same role as his ancestor, Philippe II, Duke of Orléans played as regent to the young King Louis XV.

The National Assembly also gave him the responsibility to proclaim to the Chamber of Deputies his desire to have his cousin, Henri V, Count of Chambord, mount the French throne.

Louis Philippe failed to do this in an attempt to seize the throne for himself. This hesitation gave the Chamber of Deputies time to consider Louis Philippe in the role of king due to his liberal policies and his popularity with the general public.

Despite Louis Philippe being regent for the young Henri V, the Chamber of Deputies proclaimed Louis Philippe as the new French king, displacing the senior branch of the House of Bourbon. This coup which displaced the senior Bourbons was in direct violation of the Fundamental Laws of Succession to the French Crown.

September 1, 1715: Death of Louis XIV, King of France and Navarre.

02 Thursday Sep 2021

Posted by liamfoley63 in Featured Monarch, Kingdom of Europe, Royal Death, Royal Succession, This Day in Royal History

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Absolute Monarchy, Death, Gangrene, King Louis XV of France and Navarre, Longest reign, Louis XIII, Louis XV, Maria Theresa of Spain

Louis XIV (Louis Dieudonné; September 5, 1638 – September 1, 1715), also known as Louis the Great (Louis le Grand) or the Sun King (le Roi Soleil), was King of France from May 14, 1643 until his death in 1715. His reign of 72 years and 110 days is the longest recorded of any monarch of a sovereign country in history. Louis XIV’s France was emblematic of the age of absolutism in Europe. The King surrounded himself with a variety of significant political, military, and cultural figures.

Louis XIV was born in the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, to Louis XIII and Anne of Austria, the eldest daughter of King Felipe III of Spain and his wife Archduchess Margaret of Austria. Anne held the titles of Infanta of Spain and of Portugal (since her father was King of Portugal as well as Spain) and Archduchess of Austria. Despite her Spanish birth, she was referred to as Anne of Austria because the rulers of Spain belonged to the senior branch of the House of Austria, known later as the House of Habsburg, a designation relatively uncommon before the 19th century.

He was named Louis Dieudonné (Louis the God-given) and bore the traditional title of French heirs apparent: Dauphin. At the time of his birth, his parents had been married for 23 years. His mother had experienced four stillbirths between 1619 and 1631. Leading contemporaries thus regarded him as a divine gift and his birth a miracle of God.
Sensing imminent death, Louis XIII decided to put his affairs in order in the spring of 1643, when Louis XIV was four years old. In defiance of custom, which would have made Queen Anne the sole Regent of France, the king decreed that a regency council would rule on his son’s behalf. His lack of faith in Queen Anne’s political abilities was his primary rationale. He did, however, make the concession of appointing her head of the council.

Louis’ relationship with his mother was uncommonly affectionate for the time. Contemporaries and eyewitnesses claimed that the Queen would spend all her time with Louis. Both were greatly interested in food and theatre, and it is highly likely that Louis developed these interests through his close relationship with his mother. This long-lasting and loving relationship can be evidenced by excerpts in Louis’ journal entries, such as:

“Nature was responsible for the first knots which tied me to my mother. But attachments formed later by shared qualities of the spirit are far more difficult to break than those formed merely by blood.”

It was his mother who gave Louis his belief in the absolute and divine power of his monarchical rule.

Louis began his personal rule of France in 1661, after the death of his chief minister, the Cardinal Mazarin. An adherent of the concept of the divine right of kings, Louis continued his predecessors’ work of creating a centralised state governed from the capital. He sought to eliminate the remnants of feudalism persisting in parts of France and, by compelling many members of the nobility to inhabit his lavish Palace of Versailles, succeeded in pacifying the aristocracy, many members of which had participated in the Fronde rebellion during his minority.

By these means he became one of the most powerful French monarchs and consolidated a system of absolute monarchy in France that endured until the French Revolution. He also enforced uniformity of religion under the Gallican Catholic Church. His revocation of the Edict of Nantes abolished the rights of the Huguenot Protestant minority and subjected them to a wave of dragonnades, effectively forcing Huguenots to emigrate or convert, and virtually destroying the French Protestant community.

During Louis’ long reign, France emerged as the leading European power and regularly asserted its military strength. A conflict with Spain marked his entire childhood, while during his reign, the kingdom took part in three major continental conflicts, each against powerful foreign alliances: the Franco-Dutch War, the War of the League of Augsburg, and the War of the Spanish Succession. In addition, France also contested shorter wars, such as the War of Devolution and the War of the Reunions.

Warfare defined Louis’s foreign policy and his personality shaped his approach. Impelled by “a mix of commerce, revenge, and pique”, he sensed that war was the ideal way to enhance his glory. In peacetime he concentrated on preparing for the next war. He taught his diplomats that their job was to create tactical and strategic advantages for the French military.

Significant achievements during his reign which would go on to have a wide influence on the Early Modern Era well into the Industrial Revolution and up to today, include the construction of the canal du midi, the creation of the Palace and Gardens of Versailles, the sponsorship and patronage of such artists and composers as Jean-Baptiste de Lully, Molière, and Hyacinthe Rigaud, as well as the founding of the French Academy of Sciences, among others.

In 1660 marriage to King Louis XIV, and his double first cousin, Maria Theresa of Spain was made with the purpose of ending the lengthy war between France and Spain. Famed for her virtue and piety, she saw five of her six children die in early childhood, and is frequently viewed as an object of pity in historical accounts of her husband’s reign, since she was often neglected by the court.

Maria Theresa of Spain (September 10, 1638 – July 30, 1683), was by birth an Infanta of Spain and Portugal (until 1640) and Archduchess of Austria as member of the Spanish branch of the House of Habsburg and by marriage Queen of France and Navarre.

Maria Theresa was the daughter of Felipe IV and his wife Elisabeth of France, who died when Maria Theresa was six years old. Elisabeth of France was the eldest daughter of King Henri IV of France and his second spouse Marie de’ Medici (grandparents of King Louis XIV).

Louis XIV and his wife Maria Theresa of Spain had six children from their marriage. However, only one child, the eldest, survived to adulthood: Louis, le Grand Dauphin, known as Monseigneur. Maria Theresa died in 1683, whereupon Louis remarked that she had never caused him unease on any other occasion.

Despite evidence of affection early on in their marriage, Louis was never faithful to Maria Theresa. He took a series of mistresses, both official and unofficial. Among the better documented are Louise de La Vallière (with whom he had five children; 1661–67), Bonne de Pons d’Heudicourt (1665), Catherine Charlotte de Gramont (1665), Françoise-Athénaïs, Marquise de Montespan (with whom he had seven children; 1667–80), Anne de Rohan-Chabot (1669–75), Claude de Vin des Œillets (one child born in 1676), Isabelle de Ludres (1675–78), and Marie Angélique de Scorailles (1679–81), who died at age 19 in childbirth.

Through these liaisons, he produced numerous illegitimate children, most of whom he married to members of cadet branches of the royal family.

Louis proved relatively more faithful to his second wife, Françoise d’Aubigné, Marquise de Maintenon. He first met her through her work caring for his children by Madame de Montespan, noting the care she gave to his favorite, Louis Auguste, Duke of Maine. The king was, at first, put off by her strict religious practice, but he warmed to her through her care for his children.

When he legitimized his children by Madame de Montespan on December 20, 1673, Françoise d’Aubigné became the royal governess at Saint-Germain. As governess, she was one of very few people permitted to speak to him as an equal, without limits. It is believed that they were married secretly at Versailles on or around 10 October 1683 or January 1684. This marriage, though never announced or publicly discussed, was an open secret and lasted until his death.

Death of King Louis XIV

Louis XIV’s health started to decline on August 10, 1715 after his return from a hunting trip in Marly, when he felt sharp pains in his leg. He wa diagnosed sciatica by his physician, Fagon. Shortly afterwards with no relief from the pain black marks appeared, indicating his legs had developed gangrene. Although Louis was in certain excruciating pain, he continued with his daily routine without complaining and fully intending to do his duties.

On August 25, the Feast Day of Saint Louis IX, the King was compelled to remain in bed, due to his worsening symptoms. As the gangrene continued to worsen it was discovered on the next day that it had spread to his bones. The doctors were powerless and could do nothing to help him. That same day the king received his five-year-old great-grandson, the future Louis XV, to give him advice. He told his heir to lighten the burden on the people and avoid going to war and to remain “a peaceful prince.”

After a week of excruciating pain, Louis XIV died in Versailles just after 8.15 am on September 1st. Louis died just four days shy of his 77th birthday. He had been king for 72 years, which was the longest reign in the history of France and Europe.

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