11. Peace of Utrecht.-Louis had outlived his good fortune. His great generals and statesmen had passed away. The country was exhausted, famine was preying on the wretched peasantry, supplies could not be found, and one city after another, of those Louis had seized, was retaken. New victories at Oudenarde and Malplaquet were gained over the French armies; and, though Louis was as resolute and undaunted as ever, his affairs were in a desperate state, when he was saved by a sudden change of policy on the part of Queen Anne of England, who recalled her army and left her allies to continue the contest alone. Eugene was not a match for France without Marlborough, and the Archduke Charles, having succeeded his brother the Emperor, gave up his pretensions to the crown of Spain, so that it became possible to conclude a general peace at Utrecht in 1713. By this time Louis was seventy-five years of age, and had suffered grievous family losses-first by the death of his only son, and then of his eldest grandson, a young man of much promise of excellence, who, with his wife died of malignant measles, probably from ignorant medical treatment, since their infant, whose illness was concealed by his nurses, was the only one of the family who survived. The old king, in spite of sorrow and reverse, toiled with indomitable energy to the end of his reign, the longest on record, having lasted seventy-two years, when he died in 1715. He had raised the French crown to its greatest splendour, but had sacrificed the country to himself and his false notions of greatness.
12. The Regency.-The crown now descended to Louis XV., a weakly child of four years old. His great-grandfather had tried to provide for his good by leaving the chief seat in the council of regency to his own illegitimate son, the Duke of Maine, the most honest and conscientious man then in the family, but, though clever, unwise and very unpopular. His birth caused the appointment to be viewed as an outrage by the nobility, and the king's will was set aside. The first prince of the blood royal, Philip, Duke of Orleans, the late king's nephew, became sole regent-a man of good ability, but of easy, indolent nature; and who, in the enforced idleness of his life, had become dissipated and vicious beyond all imagination or description. He was kindly and gracious, and his mother said of him that he was like the prince in a fable whom all the fairies had endowed with gifts, except one malignant sprite who had prevented any favour being of use to him. In the general exhaustion produced by the wars of Louis XIV., a Scotchman named James Law began the great system of hollow speculation which has continued ever since to tempt people to their ruin. He tried raising sums of money on national credit, and also devised a company who were to lend money to found a great settlement on the Mississippi, the returns from which were to be enormous. Every one speculated in shares, and the wildest excitement prevailed. Law's house was mobbed by people seeking interviews with him, and nobles disguised themselves in liveries to get access to him. Fortunes were made one week and lost the next, and finally the whole plan proved to have been a mere baseless scheme; ruin followed, and the misery of the country increased. The Duke of Orleans died suddenly in 1723. The king was now legally of age; but he was dull and backward, and little fitted for government, and the country was really ruled by the Duke of Bourbon, and after him by Cardinal Fleury, an aged statesman, but filled with the same schemes of ambition as Richelieu or Mazarin.
13. War of the Austrian Succession.-Thus France plunged into new wars. Louis XV. married the daughter of Stanislas Lecksinsky, a Polish noble, who, after being raised to the throne, was expelled by Austrian intrigues and violence. Louis was obliged to take up arms on behalf of his father-in-law, but was bought off by a gift from the Emperor Charles VI. of the duchy of Lorraine to Stanislas, to revert to his daughter after his death and thus become united to France. Lorraine belonged to Duke Francis, the husband of Maria Theresa, eldest daughter to the Emperor, and Francis received instead the duchy of Tuscany; while all the chief Powers in Europe agreed to the so-called Pragmatic Sanction, by which Charles decreed that Maria Theresa should inherit Austria and Hungary and the other hereditary states on her father's death, to the exclusion of the daughters of his elder brother, Joseph. When Charles VI. died, however, in 1740, a great European war began on this matter. Frederick II. of Prussia would neither allow Maria Theresa's claim to the hereditary states, nor join in electing her husband to the Empire; and France took part against her, sending Marshal Belleisle to support the Elector of Bavaria, who had been chosen Emperor. George II. of England held with Maria Theresa, and gained a victory over the French at Dettingen, in 1744. Louis XV. then joined his army, and the battle of Fontenoy, in 1745, was one of the rare victories of France over England. Another victory followed at Laufeldt, but elsewhere France had had heavy losses, and in 1748, after the death of Charles VII., peace was made at Aix-la-Chapelle.
14. The Seven Years' War.-Louis, dull and selfish by nature, had been absolutely led into vice by his courtiers, especially the Duke of Bourbon, who feared his becoming active in public affairs. He had no sense of duty to his people; and whereas his great-grandfather had sought display and so-called glory, he cared solely for pleasure, and that of the grossest and most sensual order, so that his court was a hotbed of shameless vice. All that could be wrung from the impoverished country was lavished on the overgrown establishments of every member of the royal family, in pensions to nobles, and in shameful amusements of the king. In 1756 another war broke out, in consequence of the hatreds left between Prussia and Austria by the former struggle. Maria Theresa had, by flatteries she ought to have disdained, gained over France to take part with her, and England was allied with Frederick II. In this war France and England chiefly fought in their distant possessions, where the English were uniformly successful; and after seven years another peace followed, leaving the boundaries of the German states just where they were before, after a frightful amount of bloodshed. But France had had terrible losses. She was driven from India, and lost all her settlements in America and Canada.
15. France under Louis XV.-Meantime the gross vice and licentiousness of the king was beyond description, and the nobility retained about the court by the system established by Louis XIV. were, if not his equals in crime, equally callous to the suffering caused by the reckless expensiveness of the court, the whole cost of which was defrayed by the burghers and peasants. No taxes were asked from clergy or nobles, and this latter term included all sprung of a noble line to the utmost generation. The owner of an estate had no means of benefiting his tenants, even if he wished it; for all matters, even of local government, depended on the crown. All he could do was to draw his income from them, and he was often forced, either by poverty or by his expensive life, to strain to the utmost the old feudal system. If he lived at court, his expenses were heavy, and only partly met by his pension, likewise raised from the taxes paid by the poor farmer; if he lived in the country, he was a still greater tyrant, and was called by the people a hobereau, or kite. No career was open to his younger sons, except in the court, the Church, or the army, and here they monopolized the prizes, obtaining all the richer dioceses and abbeys, and all the promotion in the army. The magistracies were almost all hereditary among lawyers, who had bought them for their families from the crown, and paid for the appointment of each son. The officials attached to each member of the royal family were almost incredible in number, and all paid by the taxes. The old gabelle, or salt-tax, had gone on ever since the English wars, and every member of a family had to pay it, not according to what they used, but what they were supposed to need. Every pig was rated at what he ought to require for salting. Every cow, sheep, or hen had a toll to pay to king, lord, bishop-sometimes also to priest and abbey. The peasant was called off from his own work to give the dues of labour to the roads or to his lord. He might not spread manure that could interfere with the game, nor drive away the partridges that ate his corn. So scanty were his crops that famines slaying thousands passed unnoticed, and even if, by any wonder, prosperity smiled on the peasant, he durst not live in any kind of comfort, lest the stewards of his lord or of Government should pounce on his wealth.