Louis XVIII of France

Count of Provence, King of France from 1814 to 1824

Louis Stanislas Xavier was born in Versailles on November 17, 1755, the fourth son of Dauphin Louis-Ferdinand (son of Louis XV) and Marie-Josèphe de Saxe. He was the younger brother of Louis Auguste (future Louis XVI) and the elder one of Charles-Philippe, comte d'Artois (future Charles X).

On May 14, 1771, he married Marie-Joséphine de Savoie, daughter of King Victor-Amédée III of Sardinia and Marie-Antoinette Ferdinande, Infanta of Spain.

He resigned to emigrate on June 20, 1791, the day his elder brother Louis XVI fled. He stayed successively in Brussels, Koblenz, Hamm in Westphalia, Riga, Mittau in Courland, Gothenburg in Sweden, and finally in Essex, England.

Following Napoleon I's first abdication, and by decision of the Congress of Vienna, he reigned from April 6, 1814 to March 20, 1815, granting the French a Constitutional Charter. This ensured freedom of the press, freedom of religion (although Catholicism remained the state religion) and independence of the judiciary, and created two chambers: one of peers appointed by the King, and the other of deputies elected on the basis of censal suffrage.

The Hundred Days forced him into exile once again, to Ghent in the Netherlands.

The defeat at Waterloo and the definitive abdication of the Emperor reinstalled him on the French throne on July 8, 1815.

He devoted his reign to attempting to reconcile, with skill, intelligence and some success, the legacies of the Revolution and Empire with those of the Ancien Régime. In concert with governments that always came from the parliamentary majority, he also endeavored to restore prosperity to a country that had been bled dry by the Napoleonic wars.

He died on September 16, 1824 in Paris, and was buried in the Basilica of Saint-Denis . With no descendants, he was succeeded on the French throne by his brother Charles-Philippe, under the name of Charles X.