France's last monarch to die on the throne spent 23 years in exile first
Louis XVIII fled revolutionary France in 1791, claimed its crown from abroad in 1795, and finally returned when Napoleon fell in 1814, only to run again during the Hundred Days. He ruled as a constitutional king for under a decade, yet no French king or emperor after him managed to die still reigning.
Born at Versailles on 17 November 1755, Louis Stanislas Xavier was a grandson of Louis XV and started life fourth in line to the throne. Each of his three names carried a message: Louis for a French prince, Stanislas for a Polish king who was his great-grandfather, and Xavier for a saint his mother's family revered. Clever and strong in the classics, he received the same schooling as his elder brother, the future Louis XVI. At 15 he got his own household, which by 1773 employed 390 servants.
His 1771 marriage to Marie Joséphine of Savoy was unhappy and childless. Biographers still argue whether it went unconsummated for years because of impotence or because he found her repellent; two later pregnancies ended in miscarriage. Meanwhile he quarrelled with his brother, boasted of his wife's supposed pregnancy to needle Marie Antoinette, took the Countess of Balbi as a mistress, and piled up 10 million livres of debt that Louis XVI covered. He described being shut out of the king's council from 1774 as a twelve-year gap in his political life.
Revolution transformed his prospects. The monarchy was abolished in September 1792 and Louis XVI was executed, and when the boy Louis XVII died in prison in June 1795, the exiled Count of Provence declared himself Louis XVIII. He drifted between Prussia, Britain and Russia until the Sixth Coalition defeated Napoleon in 1814. Napoleon's escape from Elba forced him out again, and the Seventh Coalition restored him a second time.
His Bourbon Restoration was no return to absolutism. The Charter of 1814 cut back royal power, making him a constitutional monarch. His second return brought a wave of reprisals by the Ultra-royalists known as the White Terror, and in 1816 he dissolved an unpopular chamber, which helped the liberal Doctrinaires rise. He died on 16 September 1824 and was followed by his brother Charles X, who later abdicated; the rulers after him were deposed.
Source: Louis XVIII
