FLEURY', ANDRE HERCULE DE, CARDINAL, was born in 1653 at Lodeve in Languedoc, studied at Paris in the college of the Jesuits, was afterwards made almoner to the queen-consort of Louis XIV., and in 1699 bishop of Fr6jue, which see he resigned in 1715, on account of ill-health. Louis XIV. appointed him also pre ceptor to his grandson, afterwards Louis XV., who became greatly attached to him. After the death of the regent in 1723, Fleury was made a member of the Council of State, and subsequently prime minister, in which office he continued for seventeen years, till the time of his death. The period of hie administration was tho happiest part of the reign of Louis XV. Fleury was honest, economical, dis interested, a friend to peace, and a patron of learning. He was obliged, against his inclinations, by the court party and Marshal Villars, to take a part in the war of the Polish succession in 1733, iu which France engaged chiefly in order to support Stanlslaue Leczinsky, father-in-law of Louis XV. Although that object was frustrated by
the united forces of Austria and Russia, yet the war terminated in 1736 in a manner advantageous to France, which gained by it the important accession of Lorraine.
In 1741 Cardival Fleury found himself driveu by court influence into another war, that of the Austrian succession, of which he did net live to see the end. He died in 1743, at eightynine years of age ; and from that time tho government of Louis XV. felt deeper and deeper into corruption and decay. Fleury amassed no fortune, but he left the reputation of a wise, benevolent, and faithful minister of state. Ile completed the building for the royal (now imperial) library, which ho enriched with a number of valuable manuscripts, especially in the oriental languages.