Louis XVIII (Louis Stanislas Xavier; 17 November 1755 – 16 September 1824), known as the Desired (French: le Désiré), was King of France from 1814 to 1824, except for a brief interruption during the Hundred Days in 1815. Before his reign, he spent 23 years in exile from France beginning in 1791, during the French Revolution and the First French Empire.
Until his accession to the throne of France, he held the title of Count of Provence as brother of King Louis XVI, the last king of the Ancien Régime. On 21 September 1792, the National Convention abolished the monarchy and deposed Louis XVI, who was later executed by guillotine. When his young nephew Louis XVII died in prison in June 1795, the Count of Provence claimed the throne as Louis XVIII.
Following the French Revolution and during the Napoleonic era, Louis XVIII lived in exile in Prussia, Great Britain, and Russia. When the Sixth Coalition first defeated Napoleon in 1814, Louis XVIII was placed in what he, and the French royalists, considered his rightful position. However, Napoleon escaped from his exile in Elba and restored the Napoleonic Empire. Louis XVIII fled, and a Seventh Coalition declared war on the French Empire, defeated Napoleon again, and again restored Louis XVIII to the French throne.
Louis XVIII ruled as king for slightly more than a decade with his combined reigns. His Bourbon Restoration government was a constitutional monarchy, unlike the absolutist Ancien Régime in France before the Revolution. As a constitutional monarch, Louis XVIII's royal prerogative was reduced substantially by the Charter of 1814, France's new constitution. His return in 1815 led to a second wave of White Terror headed by the Ultra-royalist faction. The following year, Louis dissolved the unpopular parliament (the Chambre introuvable), giving rise to the liberal Doctrinaires. His reign was further marked by the formation of the Quintuple Alliance and a military intervention in Spain. Louis had no children, and upon his death the crown passed to his brother, Charles X. Louis XVIII was the last king or emperor of France to die a reigning monarch: his successor, Charles X (r. 1824–1830), abdicated; and both Louis Philippe I (r. 1830–1848) and Napoleon III (r. 1852–1870) were deposed.
Louis Stanislas Xavier, styled Count of Provence from birth, was born on 17 November 1755 in the Palace of Versailles, a younger son of Louis Ferdinand, Dauphin of France, and his wife Maria Josepha of Saxony. He was the grandson of the reigning King Louis XV. As a son of the Dauphin, he was a Fils de France. He was christened Louis Stanislas Xavier six months after his birth, in accordance with Bourbon family tradition, being nameless before his baptism. By this act, he also became a Knight of the Order of the Holy Spirit.
The name of Louis was bestowed because it was typical of a prince of France; Stanislas was chosen to honour his great-grandfather King Stanislaus I of Poland who was still alive at the time; and Xavier was chosen for Saint Francis Xavier, whom his mother's family held as one of their patron saints.
At the time of his birth, Louis Stanislas was fourth in line to the throne of France, behind his father and his two elder brothers: the Duke of Burgundy, and the Duke of Berry. The former died in 1761, leaving Louis Auguste as heir to their father until the Dauphin's own premature death in 1765. The two deaths elevated Louis Stanislas to second in the line of succession, while his brother Louis Auguste acquired the title of Dauphin.
Louis Stanislas found comfort in his governess, Madame de Marsan, Governess of the Children of France, as he was her favourite among his siblings. Louis Stanislas was taken away from his governess when he turned seven, the age at which the education of boys of royal blood and of the nobility was turned over to men. Antoine de Quélen de Stuer de Caussade, Duke of La Vauguyon, a friend of his father, was named as his governor.
Louis Stanislas was an intelligent boy, excelling in the classics. His education was of the same quality and consistency as that of his older brother, Louis Auguste, despite the fact that Louis Auguste was heir and Louis Stanislas was not. Louis Stanislas's education was quite religious in nature; several of his teachers were priests, such as Jean-Gilles du Coëtlosquet, Bishop of Limoges; the Abbé Jean-Antoine Nollet; and the Jesuit Guillaume-François Berthier. La Vauguyon drilled into young Louis Stanislas and his brothers the way he thought princes should "know how to withdraw themselves, to like to work," and "to know how to reason correctly".
In April 1771, when he was 15, Louis Stanislas's education was formally concluded, and his own independent household was established, which astounded contemporaries with its extravagance: in 1773, the number of his servants reached 390 In the same month his household was founded, Louis was granted several titles by his grandfather, Louis XV: Duke of Anjou, Count of Maine, Count of Perche, and Count of Senoches. During this period of his life he was often known by the title Count of Provence.
On 17 December 1773, he was inaugurated as a Grand Master of the Order of St. Lazarus.
On 16 April 1771, Louis Stanislas was married by proxy to Princess Maria Giuseppina of Savoy. The in-person ceremony was conducted on 14 May at the Palace of Versailles. Marie Joséphine (as she was known in France) was the daughter of Victor Amadeus, Duke of Savoy (later King Victor Amadeus III of Sardinia), and Maria Antonia Ferdinanda of Spain.
A luxurious ball followed the wedding on 20 May. Louis Stanislas found his wife repulsive; she was considered ugly, tedious, and ignorant of the customs of the court of Versailles. The marriage remained unconsummated for years. Biographers disagree about the reason. The most common theories propose Louis Stanislas' alleged impotence (according to biographer Antonia Fraser) or his unwillingness to sleep with his wife due to her poor personal hygiene. She never brushed her teeth, plucked her eyebrows, or used any perfumes. At the time of his marriage, Louis Stanislas was obese and waddled instead of walked. He never exercised and continued to eat enormous amounts of food.
Despite the fact that Louis Stanislas was not infatuated with his wife, he boasted that the couple enjoyed vigorous conjugal relations – but such declarations were held in low esteem by courtiers at Versailles. He also proclaimed his wife to be pregnant merely to spite Louis Auguste and his wife Marie Antoinette, who had not yet consummated their marriage. The Dauphin and Louis Stanislas did not enjoy a harmonious relationship and often quarrelled, as did their wives. Louis Stanislas did impregnate his wife in 1774, having conquered his aversion. However, the pregnancy ended in a miscarriage. A second pregnancy in 1781 also miscarried and the marriage remained childless.
On 27 April 1774, Louis XV fell ill after contracting smallpox and died a few days later on 10 May, aged 64. Louis Stanislas' elder brother, the Dauphin Louis Auguste, succeeded their grandfather as King Louis XVI. As eldest brother of the King, Louis Stanislas received the title Monsieur. Louis Stanislas longed for political influence. He attempted to gain admittance to the King's council in 1774, but failed. Louis Stanislas was left in a political limbo that he called "a gap of 12 years in my political life". Louis XVI granted Louis Stanislas revenues from the Duchy of Alençon in December 1774. The duchy was given to enhance Louis Stanislas's prestige. However, the appanage generated only 300,000 livres a year, an amount much lower than it had been at its peak in the fourteenth century.
Louis Stanislas travelled about France more than other members of the Royal Family, who rarely left the Île-de-France. In 1774, he accompanied his sister Clotilde to Chambéry on the journey to meet her bridegroom Charles Emmanuel, Prince of Piedmont, heir to the throne of Sardinia. In 1775, he visited Lyon and also his spinster aunts Adélaïde and Victoire while they were taking the waters at Vichy. The four provincial tours that Louis Stanislas took before the year 1791 amounted to a total of three months.