LOUIS XVIII. (Stanielas Xavier), Count of 1Provence, born in 1755, was also styled Monsieur' during the life of his brother Louis XVI., who, just before his death, wrote to him, appointing him regent of France. After the death of his nephew Louis XVII. in 1795, he assumed the title of King of France and of Navarre, although he was then an exile, and he was acknowledged as king by the royalist emigrants, who composed a small court around his person. He bad shown his liberal disposition in favour of rational reforms in France in the first period of the Revolution, but the violence of the Jacobins obliged him to emigrate in 1791. He lived for some time at Verona, In the Venetian territories, which he was obliged to quit when B01111, parte Invaded Italy in 1796. He resided succesavely in various parts of Germany, and at last settled at Warsaw, but in 1803 removed to Mittan in Courland, under the protection of Russia. By, the peace of Tilsit (1807) he was obliged to leave the Continent, and he repaired to England, where he fixed his residence at Hartwell in Buckinghamshire till 1814, when events in France opened the way for his return to the throne of his ancestors. He landed at Calais in April of that year, and proceeded to St. Ouen, from wheoce he issued a proclama tion acknowledging himself as a constitutional, and not au absolute king ; promising the speedy publication of a charter, a total oblivion of all the past, and guaranteeing all the possessors of what was called national property. On the 4th of Juue he laid before both the senate and legislative body a charter which he had drawn up with the assist ance of his ministers, and which was unanimously accepted, aud became the fundamental law of the kingdom.
Louis was sincere in his professions, but he was surrounded by disappointed emigrants and old royalists, whose imprudence injured him in the public opiuion; whilst on the other side he had against him the Benapartists, a formidable body, including the greater part of the army. A conspiracy was hatched against Louis, Bonaparte returned from Elba, and Louis, forsaken by all, retired to Ghent [BONAPARTE, NAPOLEON 1.] The battle of Waterloo (June 1815) opened again to Louis the way to Paris ; but this time he appeared as an insulted and betrayed monarch. Those officers who, in spite of their oaths to Louis, had barefacedly favoured Bonaparte's usurpation, were tried and found guilty of treason ; some were shot, and others exiled. The new Chamber of Deputies, which was elected under the
excitement of this second restoration, proved ultra-royalist in principle, and went further than the sovereign. They banished all those who had voted in the convention for the death of Louis XVI., as well as those who had accepted office under Napoleon after his return from Elba. Meantime sanguinary reactions took place in various parts of France, especially in the south, where the old auimosity of the Catho lics against the Protestants was revived by political feuds. At last Louis himself saw the danger to which the violence of his pretended friends exposed him, and he dissolved the Chamber, which was styled La Chambre Introuvable.' In the new elections the moderate con stitutional party regained the ascendancy, and the king in 1818 appointed a liberal ministry, at the head of which was Count Decazes. But the assassination of his nephew, the Due de Berry [BERRY, JEAN, Duo DE], by a fanatical republican, in February 1820, again alarmed the court, and restored the influence of the ultra-royalists. Decazes was dismissed, and Villele was placed at the head of the ministry. The law of election was altered, the newspapers were placed under a censorship, and other measures of a retrograde nature were adopted. No open violation of the constitution however was committed. Iu 1823 Louis, in concert with the Northern powers, sent an army into Spain under his nephew the Duc d'Angoul6me, to rescue Ferdinand from what he termed his state of thraldom. [FERD/NAND VII.] The expedition was successful ; it restored Ferdinand to the plenitude of his power, but it did not succeed in restoring to Spain order and good government. In September 1824, Louis XVIII. died, having been a long time ill aud unable to walk : he retained to the last his mental faculties and his self-possession. He left no issue, and was succeeded by his brother Charles X.
Louis had a tolerably cultivated mind, considerable abilities, and a pleasing address: his ideas were, for a Bourbon, enlightened and liberal, and in ordinary and settled times he would have proved a very respectable constitutional king; as it was, he managed to steer safely between extreme opposite parties, and in a most critical period. He published in 1823 the account of his emigration, Relation d'un Voyage de Paris h Bruxelles et Coblenz,' which is curious.