Luigi Cherubini (8 or 14 September 1760 – 15 March 1842) was an Italian-born composer who spent most of his working life in France. His most significant compositions are operas and sacred music. Beethoven regarded Cherubini as the greatest of his contemporaries.
Cherubini died in Paris at age 81 and is buried at Père Lachaise Cemetery, just four metres from his friend Chopin. His tomb was designed by the architect Achille Leclère and includes a figure representing "Music" crowning a bust of the composer with a wreath by sculptor Augustin Dumont.
Category:1760 births Category:1842 deaths Category:Opera composers Category:People from Florence Category:Classical era composers Category:Italian composers Category:Burials at Père Lachaise Cemetery Category:Academics of the Conservatoire de Paris
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| Name | Louis XVI |
|---|---|
| Imgw | 200 |
| Caption | Louis XVI by Antoine-François Callet |
| Succession | King of France and Navarre |
| Reign | 10 May 1774 – 1 October 1791() |
| Coronation | June 11, 1775 |
| Full name | Louis Auguste de France |
| Predecessor | Louis XV |
| Successor | Himself as King of the French |
| Succession1 | King of the French |
| Reign1 | 1 October 1791 – 21 September 1792 |
| Predecessor1 | Himself as King of France and Navarre |
| Successor1 | Monarchy abolishedNational Conventionruling legislative body of the French First RepublicLouis XVII as the de jure successor and heir. Next reigning monarch in France was Napoleon I starting 1804. |
| Spouse | Marie Antoinette |
| Issue | Marie Thérèse, Queen of France and Navarre Louis Joseph, Dauphin of FranceLouis XVII of France Princess Sophie |
| House | House of Bourbon |
| Father | Louis, Dauphin of France |
| Mother | Marie-Josèphe of Saxony |
| Religion | Roman Catholicism |
| Date of birth | August 23, 1754 |
| Place of birth | Palace of Versailles, France |
| Date of death | January 21, 1793 |
| Place of death | Paris, France |
| Place of burial | Saint Denis Basilica, France |
| Date of burial | 21 January 1815 |
| Signature | Signature of Louis XVI on 20 January 1793.jpg |
Louis XVI (23 August 1754 – 21 January 1793) ruled as King of France and Navarre from 1774 until 1791, and then as King of the French from 1791 to 1792. Suspended and arrested as part of the insurrection of the 10th of August during the French Revolution, he was tried by the National Convention, found guilty of high treason, and executed by guillotine on 21 January 1793. He is the only king of France ever to be executed.
Although Louis XVI was beloved at first, his indecisiveness and conservatism led some elements of the people of France to eventually view him as a symbol of the perceived tyranny of the Ancien Régime and gave him the nickname "Uncle Lewis". After the abolition of the monarchy in 1792, the new republican government gave him the surname Capet, a nickname in reference to Hugh Capet, the founder of the Capetian dynasty - which the revolutionaries wrongly interpreted as a family name. Louis was also informally nicknamed Louis le Dernier (Louis the Last), a derisive use of the traditional nicknaming of French kings.
Louis-Auguste had a difficult childhood because his parents neglected him in favor of his, said to be, bright and handsome older brother, Louis, duc de Bourgogne, who died at the age of nine in 1761. A strong and healthy boy, but very shy, Louis-Auguste excelled in his studies and had a strong taste for Latin, history, geography and astronomy, and became fluent in Italian and English. He enjoyed physical activities such as hunting with his grandfather, Louis XV, and rough-playing with his younger brothers, Louis-Stanislas, comte de Provence, and Charles-Philippe, comte d'Artois. From an early age, Louis-Auguste had been encouraged in another of his hobbies: locksmithing, which was seen as a 'useful' pursuit for a child.
Upon the death of his father, who died of tuberculosis on 20 December 1765, the eleven-year-old Louis-Auguste became the new Dauphin. His mother, who had never recovered from the loss of her husband, died on 13 March 1767, also from tuberculosis. The strict and conservative education he received from the Duc de La Vauguyon, "gouverneur des Enfants de France" (governor of the Children of France), from 1760 until his marriage in 1770, did not prepare him for the throne that he was to inherit in 1774 after the death of his grandfather.
This marriage was met with some hostility by the French public. France's alliance with Austria had pulled France into the disastrous Seven Years War, in which France was defeated by the British, both in Europe and in North America. By the time that Louis-Auguste and Marie-Antoinette were married, the people of France generally regarded the Austrian alliance with dislike, and Marie-Antoinette was seen as an unwelcome foreigner. For the young couple, the marriage was initially amiable but distant — Louis-Auguste's shyness meant that he failed to consummate the union, much to his wife's distress, while his fear of being manipulated by her for Imperial purposes caused him to behave coldly towards her in public. Over time, the couple became closer, and their marriage was reportedly consummated in July 1773.
Nevertheless, the royal couple failed to parent any children for several years after this, placing a strain upon their marriage, whilst the situation was worsened by the publication of obscene pamphlets (libelles) which mocked the infertility of the pair. One questioned, "Can the King do it? Can't the King do it?"
The reasons behind the couple's initial failure to have children were debated at that time, and they have continued to be so since. One suggestion is that Louis-Auguste suffered from a sexual dysfunction, perhaps phimosis, a suggestion first made in late 1772 by the royal doctors. Historians adhering to this view suggest that he was circumcised (the common cure for phimosis) to relieve the condition seven years after their marriage. Louis's doctors were not in favor of the surgery — the operation was delicate and traumatic, and capable of doing "as much harm as good" to an adult male. As late as 1777, the Prussian envoy, Baron Goltz, reported that the King of France had definitely declined the operation.
In the long run, and in spite of all their earlier difficulty, the Royal couple became the parents of four children:
He aimed to earn the love of his people by reinstating the parlements. While none doubted Louis's intellectual ability to rule France, it was quite clear that, although raised as the Dauphin since 1765, he lacked firmness and decisiveness. In spite of his indecisiveness, Louis was determined to be a good king, stating that he "must always consult public opinion; it is never wrong." Louis therefore appointed an experienced advisor, Jean-Frédéric Phélypeaux, comte de Maurepas who, until his death in 1781, would take charge of many important ministerial functions.
Radical financial reforms by Turgot and Malesherbes angered the nobles and were blocked by the parlements who insisted that the King did not have the legal right to levy new taxes. So, in 1776, Turgot was dismissed and Malesherbes resigned, to be replaced by Jacques Necker. Necker supported the American Revolution, and he carried out a policy of taking out large international loans instead of raising taxes. When this policy failed miserably, Louis dismissed him, and then replaced him in 1783 with Charles Alexandre de Calonne, who increased public spending to "buy" the country's way out of debt. Again this failed, so Louis convoked the Assembly of Notables in 1787 to discuss a revolutionary new fiscal reform proposed by Calonne. When the nobles were informed of the extent of the debt, they were shocked into rejecting the plan. This negative turn of events signaled to Louis that he had lost the ability to rule as an absolute monarch, and he fell into depression.
As power drifted from him, there were increasingly loud calls for him to convoke the Estates-General, which had not met since 1614, at the beginning of the reign of Louis XIII. As a last-ditch attempt to get new monetary reforms approved, Louis XVI convoked the Estates-General on 8 August 1788, setting the date of their opening at 1 May 1789. With the convocation of the Estates-General, as in many other instances during his reign, Louis placed his reputation and public image in the hands of those who were perhaps not as sensitive to the desires of the French public as he was. Because it had been so long since the Estates-General had been convened, there was some debate as to which procedures should be followed. Ultimately, the parlement de Paris agreed that "all traditional observances should be carefully maintained to avoid the impression that the Estates-General could make things up as it went along." Under this decision, the King agreed to retain many of the divisionary customs which had been the norm in 1614, but which were intolerable to a Third Estate buoyed by the recent proclamations of equality. For example, the First and Second Estates proceeded into the assembly wearing their finest garments, while the Third Estate was required to wear plain, oppressively somber black, an act of alienation that Louis would likely have not condoned. He seemed to regard the deputies of the Estates-General with at least respect: in a wave of self-important patriotism, members of the Estates refused to remove their hats in the King's presence, so Louis removed his to them.
This convocation was one of the events that transformed the general economic and political malaise of the country into the French Revolution, which began in June 1789, when the Third Estate unilaterally declared itself the National Assembly. Louis's attempts to control it resulted in the Tennis Court Oath (serment du jeu de paume), on 20 June, and the declaration of the National Constituent Assembly on 9 July. Within three short months, the majority of the king's executive authority had been transferred to the elected representatives of the people's nation. The storming of the Bastille on 14 July served to reinforce and emphasize this radical change in the mind of the masses.
French involvement in the Seven Years War had left Louis XVI a disastrous inheritance. Britain's victories had seen them capture most of France's colonial territories. While some were returned to France at the 1763 Treaty of Paris a vast swathe of North America was ceded to the British.
This had led to a strategy amongst the French leadership of seeking to rebuild the French military in order to fight a war of revenge against Britain, in which it was hoped the lost colonies could be recovered. France still maintained a strong influence in the West Indies, and in India maintained five trading posts, leaving opportunities for disputes and power-play with Great Britain.
The Americans gained their independence, and the war ministry rebuilt the French Army. However, the British defeated the main French fleet in 1782 and successfully defended the island of Jamaica. France gained little from the Treaty of Paris (of 1783) that ended the war, except the colonies of Tobago and Senegal. The war cost 1,066 million livres, financed by new loans at high interest (with no new taxes). Necker concealed the crisis from the public by explaining only that ordinary revenues exceeded ordinary expenses, and not mentioning the loans. After he was forced from office in 1781, new taxes were levied.
Initially, after the removal of the royal family to Paris, Louis maintained a certain level of popularity by acquiescing to many of the social, political, and economic reforms of the revolutionaries. Unbeknownst to the public, however, recent scholarship has concluded that Louis began to suffer at the time from severe bouts of clinical depression, which left him prone to paralyzing indecisiveness. During these indecisive moments, his wife, the unpopular queen, was essentially forced into assuming the role of decision-maker for the Crown.
The revolution's principles of popular sovereignty, though central to democratic principles of later eras, marked a decisive break from the absolute monarchical principle that was at the heart of traditional French government. As a result, the revolution was opposed by many of the rural people of France and by practically all the governments of France's neighbors. As the revolution became more radical and the masses became more uncontrollable, several leading figures in the initial formation of the revolution began to doubt its benefits. Some like Honoré Mirabeau secretly plotted with the Crown to restore its power in a new constitutional form.
Beginning in 1791, Montmorin, Minister of Foreign Affairs, started to organize covert resistance to the Revolutionary forces. Thus, the funds of the Civil List (la Liste civile), voted annually by the National Assembly were partially assigned to secret expenses in order to preserve the monarchy. Arnault Laporte was in charge of the Civil List and he collaborated with both Montmorin and Mirabeau. After the sudden death of Mirabeau, Maximilien Radix de Sainte-Foix, a noted financier, took his place. In effect, he headed a secret council of advisers to the King that tried to preserve the Monarchy; these schemes proved unsuccessful, and were exposed later as the armoire de fer scandal.
Mirabeau's death, and Louis's indecision, fatally weakened negotiations between the Crown and moderate politicians. On one hand, Louis was nowhere near as reactionary as his brothers, the comte de Provence and the comte d'Artois, and he repeatedly sent messages to them requesting a halt to their attempts to launch counter-coups. This was often done through his secretly nominated regent, the Cardinal Loménie de Brienne. On the other hand, Louis was alienated from the new democratic government both by its negative reaction to the traditional role of the monarch and in its treatment of him and his family. He was particularly irked by being kept essentially as a prisoner in the Tuileries, where his wife was being humiliatingly forced to have revolutionary soldiers in her private bedroom watching her as she slept, and by the refusal of the new regime to allow him to have confessors and priests of his choice rather than 'constitutional priests' pledged to the state and not the Roman Catholic Church.
On 21 June 1791, Louis attempted to secretly flee with his family from Paris to the royalist fortress town of Montmédy on the northeastern border of France. While the National Assembly worked painstakingly towards a constitution, Louis and Marie-Antoinette were involved in plans of their own. Louis had appointed the baron de Breteuil to act as plenipotentiary, dealing with other foreign heads of state in an attempt to bring about a counter-revolution. As tensions in Paris rose and Louis was pressured to accept measures from the Assembly against his will, the King and Queen plotted to secretly escape from France. Beyond escape, they hoped to raise an "armed congress" with the help of the émigrés who had fled, as well as assistance from other nations, with which they could return and, in essence, recapture France. This degree of planning reveals Louis’ determination to do what he thought was right for his country beneath his superficial appearance of apathy, although unfortunately it was for this determined plot that he was eventually convicted of high treason. However, flaws in its plan and lack of rapidity were responsible for the failure of the escape. The royal family was arrested at Varennes-en-Argonne shortly after Jean-Baptiste Drouet, postmaster of the town of Sainte-Menehould, had recognised the king from his profile on a golden écu, and had given the alert. Louis XVI and his family were brought back to Paris where they arrived on 25 June. Viewed suspiciously as traitors, they were placed under tight house arrest upon their return to the Tuileries.
The other monarchies of Europe looked with concern upon the developments in France, and considered whether they should intervene, either in support of Louis or to take advantage of the chaos in France. The key figure was Marie Antoinette's brother, the Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II. Initially, he had looked on the revolution with equanimity. However, he became more and more disturbed as it became more and more radical. Despite this, he still hoped to avoid war.
On 27 August, Leopold and King Frederick William II of Prussia, in consultation with émigrés French nobles, issued the Declaration of Pillnitz, which declared the interest of the monarchs of Europe in the well-being of Louis and his family, and threatened vague but severe consequences if anything should befall them. Although Leopold saw the Pillnitz Declaration as an easy way to appear concerned about the developments in France without committing any soldiers or finances to change them, the revolutionary leaders in Paris viewed it fearfully as a dangerous foreign attempt to undermine France's sovereignty.
In addition to the ideological differences between France and the monarchical powers of Europe, there were continuing disputes over the status of Austrian estates in Alsace, and the concern of members of the National Constituent Assembly about the agitation of émigrés nobles abroad, especially in the Austrian Netherlands and the minor states of Germany.
In the end, the Legislative Assembly, supported by Louis, declared war on the Holy Roman Empire first, voting for war on 20 April 1792, after a long list of grievances was presented to it by the foreign minister, Charles François Dumouriez. Dumouriez prepared an immediate invasion of the Austrian Netherlands, where he expected the local population to rise against Austrian rule. However, the revolution had thoroughly disorganised the army, and the forces raised were insufficient for the invasion. The soldiers fled at the first sign of battle, deserting en masse and, in one case, murdering their general.
.]] While the revolutionary government frantically raised fresh troops and reorganised its armies, a mostly Prussian allied army under Charles William Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick assembled at Coblenz on the Rhine. In July, the invasion commenced, with Brunswick's army easily taking the fortresses of Longwy and Verdun. The duke then issued on 25 July a proclamation called the Brunswick Manifesto, written by Louis's émigré cousin, the Prince de Condé, declaring the intent of the Austrians and Prussians to restore the king to his full powers and to treat any person or town who opposed them as rebels to be condemned to death by martial law.
Contrary to its intended purpose of strengthening the position of the King against the revolutionaries, the Brunswick Manifesto had the opposite effect of greatly undermining Louis's already highly tenuous position in Paris. It was taken by many to be the final proof of a collusion between Louis and foreign powers in a conspiracy against his own country. The anger of the populace boiled over on 10 August when a group of Parisians — with the backing of a new municipal government of Paris that came to be known as the "insurrectionary" Paris Commune — besieged the Tuileries Palace. The king and the royal family took shelter with the Legislative Assembly.
The Girondins were partial to keeping the deposed king under arrest, both as a hostage and a guarantee for the future. The more radical members – mainly the Commune and the Parisian deputies who would soon be known as the Mountain – argued for Louis's immediate execution. The legal background of many of the deputies made it difficult for a great number of them to accept an execution without the due process of law of some sort, and it was voted that the deposed monarch be tried before the National Convention, the organ that housed the representatives of the sovereign people.
In November 1792, the Armoire de fer (French: 'iron chest') incident took place at the Tuileries Palace. This was believed to have been a hiding place at the Royal apartments, where some secret documents were kept. The existence of this iron cabinet was publicly revealed to Jean-Marie Roland, Girondinist Minister of the Interior. The resulting scandal served to discredit the King.
On 11 December, among crowded and silent streets, the deposed King was brought from the Temple to stand before the Convention and hear his indictment, an accusation of high treason and crimes against the State. On 26 December, his counsel, Raymond de Sèze, delivered Louis's response to the charges, with the assistance of François Tronchet and Malesherbes. , . The empty pedestal in front of him had supported a statue of his grandfather, Louis XV, now torn down during one of the many revolutionary riots.]] On 15 January 1793, the Convention, composed of 721 deputies, voted on the verdict. Given overwhelming evidence of Louis's collusion with the invaders, the verdict was a foregone conclusion — with 693 deputies voting guilty, none for acquittal, with 23 abstaining. The next day, a roll-call vote was carried out to decide upon the fate of the King, and the result was uncomfortably close for such a dramatic decision. 288 of the Deputies voted against death and for some other alternative, mainly some means of imprisonment or exile. 72 of the Deputies voted for the death penalty, but subject to a number of delaying conditions and reservations. 361 of the Deputies voted for Louis's immediate death.
The next day, a motion to grant Louis XVI reprieve from the death sentence was voted down: 310 of the Deputies requested mercy, but 380 of the Deputies voted for the immediate execution of the death penalty. This decision would be final. On Monday, 21 January 1793, stripped of all titles and honorifics by the Republican Government, Citoyen Louis Capet was beheaded by guillotine on the Place de la Révolution. The executioner, Charles Henri Sanson, testified that the former King had bravely met his fate.
As Louis mounted the scaffold he appeared dignified and resigned. He delivered a short speech in which he reasserted his innocence and he pardoned those responsible for his death. He declared himself willing to die and prayed that the people of France would be spared a similar fate. He seemed about to say more when Antoine-Joseph Santerre, a general in the National Guard, cut Louis off by ordering a drum roll. The former King was then quickly beheaded.
Some accounts of Louis's beheading indicate that the blade did not sever his neck entirely the first time. There are also accounts of a blood-curdling scream issuing from Louis after the blade fell but this is unlikely, since the blade severed Louis's spine. It is agreed that while Louis's blood dripped to the ground many members of the crowd ran forward to dip their handkerchiefs in it.
The regicide has loomed as a shadow over French history. The 19th-century historian, Jules Michelet, attributed the restoration of the French monarchy to the sympathy that had been engendered by the execution. Michelet's Histoire de la Révolution Française and Alphonse de Lamartine's Histoire des Girondins, in particular, showed the marks of the feelings aroused by the revolution's regicide. The two writers did not share the same sociopolitical vision, but they agreed that, even though the monarchy was rightly ended in 1792, the lives of the royal family should have been spared. Lack of compassion at that moment contributed to a radicalization of revolutionary violence and to greater divisiveness among Frenchmen. Because Louis XVI was a merciful man, the revolutionaries' passions needed to be balanced by compassion and by less fanatical sentiments. For the 20th century novelist Albert Camus the execution signaled the end of the role of God in history, for which he mourned. For the 20th century philosopher Jean-François Lyotard the regicide was the starting point of all French thought, the memory of which acts as a reminder that French modernity began under the sign of a crime.
His daughter, Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte, the future Duchess of Angoulême, survived the French Revolution, and she lobbied in Rome energetically for the canonization of her father as a saint of the Catholic Church. Despite his signing of the "Civil Constitution of the Clergy", Louis had been described as a martyr by Pope Pius VI in 1793. In 1820, however, a memorandum of the Congregation of Rites in Rome, declaring the impossibility of proving that Louis had been executed for religious rather than political reasons, put an end to hopes of canonization.
In the two-part film La Révolution française, Jean-François Balmer gave a critically-acclaimed performance as Louis XVI, whom he portrayed as an insecure, shy, yet decent and intelligent man. In Ridicule, the king was played by Urbain Cancelier. In Jefferson in Paris, Louis XVI was played by Michael Lonsdale who, at 64 years old, greatly exceeded the King's actual age. In Marie Antoinette (2006), he was played by Jason Schwartzman, in a movie which is considered historically inaccurate but not intended to be a detailed portrayal of his life.
In the American supernatural television drama Moonlight, Louis XVI is mentioned as the progenitor of a vampiric bloodline who discovers a temporary cure for vampirism.
He was also depicted in Titanic as being the owner of the fictional diamond Heart of the Ocean.
Category:1754 births Category:1793 deaths Category:1793 crimes Category:Kings of France Category:Dauphins of France Category:Dukes of Berry Category:People executed by guillotine during the French Revolution Category:Executed royalty Category:Executed French people Category:Executed reigning monarchs Category:Roman Catholic monarchs Category:Knights of the Golden Fleece Category:Princes of Andorra Category:People executed for treason against France Category:Leaders ousted by a coup Category:Princes of France (Bourbon) Category:Murdered monarchs Category:Recipients of the Order of the Holy Spirit Category:Burials at the Basilica of St Denis
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
Since 1971, he has been a frequent conductor of operas and concerts at the Salzburg Festival, where he is particularly known for his Mozart opera performances. From 1972, Muti regularly conducted the Philharmonia Orchestra in London. In 1974, he was appointed the orchestra's principal conductor to succeed Otto Klemperer.
In 1987, Muti was appointed principal conductor of the Scala Philharmonic Orchestra, with which in 1988 he received the Viotti d'Oro and with which he went on tour in Italy and in Europe. In 1991, after twelve years as Music Director, he announced his resignation from the Philadelphia Orchestra at the end of the 1991-1992 season.
Muti has been a regular guest of the Berlin Philharmonic and the Vienna Philharmonic. In 1996, Muti conducted the latter at the closing of the Viennese Festival Week in a tour of the Far East to Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Germany, and the Vienna New Year's Concert in 1993, 1997, 2000 and 2004.
Apart from La Scala, Muti has conducted operatic performances with the Philadelphia Orchestra, as well as productions in Munich, at the Vienna State Opera (starting with Aida in 1973, followed by La forza del destino in 1974, Rigoletto in 1983, Così fan tutte in 1994, Don Giovanni in 1999, Le nozze di Figaro in 2001), in London, and at the Ravenna Festival.
Muti is a regular guest conductor at the Vienna Staatsoper where he continues to conduct Mozart operas such as Le nozze di Figaro and Così fan tutte.
A special relationship connects Muti with the Salzburg Festival, where the conductor debuted in 1971 with Donizetti's Don Pasquale (staged by Ladislav Stros). In the following years Muti has been constantly present at the festival, conducting both numerous concerts with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and opera productions, such as Così fan tutte (staged by Michael Hampe) from 1982 to 1985 and from 1990 to 1991, La clemenza di Tito (staged by Peter Brenner) in 1988 and 1989, Don Giovanni (staged by Michael Hampe) in 1990 and 1991, La traviata (staged by Lluis Pasqual, and designed by Luciano Damiani) in 1995, Die Zauberflöte in 2005 (staged by Graham Vick) and 2006 (staged by Pierre Audi, stage designed by Karel Appel), Otello (staged by Stephen Langridge) in 2008, Moise et Pharaon (staged by Jürgen Flimm) in 2009, and Orfeo ed Euridice (staged by Dieter Dorn) in 2010. In 2011, Muti will conduct a new production of Verdi's Macbeth, that will be directed by Peter Stein. Muti also owns a residence close to Salzburg.
From 2007 to 2011, Muti is the principal conductor at Salzburg's Pentecost Festival. He conducts productions of rare Italian operas from the 18th century, and concerts with his Luigi Cherubini Youth Orchestra. after a performance in Moscow, 1 June 2000.]] In the USA, from 1980 to 1992, Muti was music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra, which he led on numerous international tours. In 1979, he was appointed its music director and, in 1992, conductor laureate. Muti stated that his approach was to remain faithful to the intent of the composer. This meant a change from applying the lush "Philadelphia Sound," created by his predecessors Eugene Ormandy and Leopold Stokowski, to all repertoire; however, many of his recordings with that orchestra largely seem to do away with its hallmark sound, even in the works of such composers as Tchaikovsky, Brahms, and other high romantics. His sonic changes to the orchestra remain controversial. Some felt he turned it into a generic-sounding institution with a lean sound much favored by modern recording engineers. Others believe Muti uncovered the true intention of the works, which had been covered in a silky sheen by Muti's predecessor. Since his departure from Philadelphia, he has made very few guest conducting appearances with the Philadelphia Orchestra, most recently in 2005.
Muti has been a regular and popular guest conductor with the New York Philharmonic. The orchestra's musicians have been reported as being interested in Muti as their next music director, both towards the end of the tenures of Kurt Masur and Lorin Maazel, but Muti had stated that he had no wish to take on the position with the orchestra. On May 5, 2008, Muti was named the next music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO), effective with the 2010-2011 season, with an initial contract of 5 years. Muti is scheduled to conduct a minimum of 10 weeks of CSO subscription concerts each season, in addition to domestic and international tours. He made his CSO debut at the Ravinia Festival in 1973. In August 2009, Muti was named the next music director of the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma, effective December 2010. On 21 June 2010, Ljubljana will celebrate Carlos Kleiber's 80th Birthday with VPO and Muti.
Riccardo Muti is married to Cristina Mazzavillani, who is the founder and director of the Ravenna Festival. They have three children, two sons and a daughter.
On 24 February 2005, the La Scala governors dismissed Fontana as general manager and named Meli as his successor. The musicians sided with Fontana against Muti at this point in the dispute, and on 13 March, Muti stated that he would refuse to conduct the La Scala orchestra from that point on. On March 16, 2005, the orchestra and staff of La Scala voted overwhelmingly against Muti in a motion of no-confidence. Muti was forced to cancel a concert prior to the vote, and some other productions were disrupted at the theater because of continuing rifts with Fontana's supporters. On April 2, he resigned from La Scala, citing "hostility" from staff members.
Muti is considered one of the world's greatest conductors of the operas of Giuseppe Verdi. He also led a series of annual performances of opera in concerts including the works of Verdi, Puccini, Mozart, and Wagner. In 1992, Muti conducted performances of Ruggero Leoncavallo's Pagliacci with Luciano Pavarotti. A recording was also made of these performances.
At La Scala, Muti was noted for exploring lesser-known works of the Classical- and early Romantic-era repertory such as Lodoiska by Luigi Cherubini and La Vestale by Gaspare Spontini.
Category:1941 births Category:Italian conductors (music) Category:Music directors (opera) Category:Living people Category:People from Naples Category:United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Goodwill Ambassadors Category:Milan Conservatory alumni Category:Honorary Knights Commander of the Order of the British Empire Category:Honorary Members of the Royal Academy of Music
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| Name | Louis XVIII |
|---|---|
| Succession | King of France and of Navarre |
| Caption | Louis XVIII, in his coronation robes, by Antoine Jean Gros |
| Reign | De jure 8 June 1795 – 16 September 1824 De facto 11 April 1814 – 20 March 1815; then8 July 1815 – 16 September 1824 |
| Full name | Louis Stanislas Xavier de France |
| Predecessor | Napoleon I De facto and by law predecessor as Emperor of the French. Legitimate predecessor was Louis XVII |
| Successor | Charles X |
| Spouse | Marie Joséphine of Savoy |
| Royal house | House of Bourbon |
| Father | Louis, Dauphin of France |
| Mother | Maria Josepha of Saxony |
| Date of birth | November 17, 1755 |
| Place of birth | Palace of Versailles, France |
| Date of death | September 16, 1824 |
| Place of death | Paris, France |
| Place of burial | Basilica of St Denis, France |
Louis XVIII (Louis Stanislas Xavier; 17 November 1755 – 16 September 1824) was King of France and of Navarre from 1814 to 1824, omitting the Hundred Days in 1815. Louis XVIII spent twenty-three years in exile, from 1791 to 1814, during the French Revolution and the First French Empire, and again in 1815, for 100 days, upon the return of Napoleon from Elba. While in exile, he lived in Prussia, the United Kingdom and Russia.
The French Republic abolished the monarchy and deposed King Louis XVI on 21 September 1792. Although the monarchy had been disestablished, Louis XVIII succeeded his nephew, Louis XVII, as titular king, when the latter died in prison in June 1795.
When the coalition armies captured Paris from Napoleon Bonaparte in 1814, Louis XVIII was restored to what he, and Royalists, considered his rightful place. Louis XVIII ruled as king for slightly less than a decade, during the Bourbon Restoration period. The Bourbon Restoration was a constitutional monarchy (unlike the Ancien Régime, which was absolute). As a constitutional monarch, Louis XVIII's royal prerogative was reduced substantially by the Charter of 1814, France's new constitution.
Louis had no children; therefore, upon his death, the crown passed to his younger brother, Charles, comte d’Artois. Louis XVIII was the last French monarch to die while reigning.
Louis Stanislas found comfort in his governess, Madame de Marsan, Governess of the Children of France, (Gouvernante des Enfants de France), as he was her favourite among his siblings. Louis Stanislas was taken away from his governess when he turned seven, 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, duc de La Vauguyon, a friend of his father, was named his governor. Louis Stanislas was an intelligent boy, excelling in 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. which astounded contemporaries with its extravagance: in 1773, the number of servants reached 390. In the same month his household was founded, Louis was granted several titles by his grandfather, Louis XV: duc d'Anjou, comte du Maine, comte de Perche and comte de Senoches.
A luxurious ball followed the wedding on 20 May. Louis Stanislas was repulsed by his wife, the new comtesse de Provence, who was considered to be ugly, tedious and ignorant of the court at Versailles. The marriage remained unconsummated; biographers disagree about the reason, maintaining that it was due to 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 two enjoyed vigorous conjugal relations — 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, Archduchess of Austria, 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 impregnated his wife in 1774, having conquered his aversion to Marie Joséphine. However, the pregnancy ended in a miscarriage.
On 27 April 1774, Louis XV fell ill after having contracted smallpox, and died the following 4 May. The Dauphin, Louis Auguste, succeeded his grandfather as King Louis XVI. Louis Stanislas longed for political influence. He attempted to gain admittance to the King’s council in 1774, ultimately failing. 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' prestige; however, his appanage turned over only 300,000 livres per annum, an amount much lower than it had been at its peak in the fourteenth century.
Louis Stanislas travelled more through France than other members of the royal family, who rarely left the Île-de-France. In 1774, he accompanied his sister Madame 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, Madame Adélaïde and Madame Victoire, while they were taking the waters at Vichy.
On 5 May 1778, Dr. Lassonne, Marie Antoinette's private physician, confirmed her pregnancy. On 19 December 1778, the Queen gave birth to a daughter, who was named Marie-Thérèse Charlotte de France, and given the honorific title Madame Royale. The birth of a girl came as a relief to the comte de Provence, who kept his position as heir to Louis XVI, since Salic Law excluded women from acceding to the throne of France. However, Louis Stanislas did not remain heir to the throne much longer, as, on 22 October 1781, Marie Antoinette gave birth to the Dauphin, Louis Joseph. Louis Stanislas and the comte d’Artois served as godfathers by proxy for the Holy Roman Emperor, the Queen’s brother. When Marie Antoinette gave birth to her second son, Louis Charles, in March 1785, Louis Stanislas slid further down the line of succession.
In 1780, Anne Nompar de Caumont de La Force, comtesse de Balbi entered the service of Marie Joséphine. Louis Stanislas soon fell in love with his wife's new lady-in-waiting, and installed her as his mistress, which resulted in the couple's already small affection for each other to cool entirely. Louis Stanislas commissioned a pavilion for his mistress on a parcel that became known as the Parc Balbi, near the Pièce d’eau des Suisses and the Potager du Roi at Versailles.
Louis Stanislas lived a quiet and sedentary lifestyle at this point, not having a great deal to do since his self-proclaimed political exclusion in 1774. He kept himself occupied with his vast library of over 11,000 books at Balbi's pavilion, reading for several hours each morning. In the early 1780, he also incurred huge debts totaling 10 million livres, which his brother Louis XVI paid for him.
An Assembly of Notables (the members consisted of magistrates, mayors, nobles and clergy) was convened in February 1787 to ratify the financial reforms sought by the Controller-General of Finance Charles Alexandre de Calonne. This provided Louis Stanislas, who abhorred the radical reforms proposed by Calonne, the opportunity he had long been waiting for to establish himself in politics. The reforms proposed a new property tax, and new elected provincial assemblies that would have a say in local taxation. Calonne's proposition was rejected outright by the notables, and, as a result, Louis XVI dismissed him. The Archbishop of Toulouse, Étienne Charles de Loménie de Brienne, acquired Calonne's ministry. Brienne attempted to salvage Calonne's reforms, but ultimately failed to convince the notables to approve them. A frustrated Louis XVI dissolved the assembly.
, which was called "Porcelaine de Monsieur", 1780.]] Brienne's reforms were then submitted to the Parlement de Paris in the hopes that they would be approved. (A parlement was responsible for ratifying the King’s edicts. Each province had its own parlement, but the parlement de Paris was the most significant of all.) The Parlement de Paris refused to accept Brienne’s proposals, and pronounced that any new taxation would have to be approved by an Estates-General (the nominal parliament of France). Louis XVI and Brienne took a hostile stance against the parlement's rejection, and Louis XVI had to implement a Lit de justice (which automatically registered an edict in the Parlement de Paris) to ratify the desired reforms. On 8 May, Jean-Jacques Duval d'Eprémesnil and Goislard de Montsabert, two of the leading members of the Parlement de Paris were arrested. There was rioting in Brittany, Provence, Burgundy and Béarn in reaction to their arrest. This unrest was engineered by local magistrates and nobles, who enticed the people to revolt against the Lit de Justice, which was quite unfavourable to the nobles and magistrates. The clergy also joined the provincial cause, and condemned Brienne's tax reforms. Brienne conceded defeat in July and agreed to calling the Estates-General to meet in 1789. He resigned from his post in August and was replaced by the Swiss magnate Jacques Necker.
In November 1788, a second Assembly of Notables was convened by Jacques Necker, to consider the makeup of the next Estates-General. The Parlement de Paris recommended that the Estates should be the same as they were at the last assembly, in 1614 (this would mean that the clergy and nobility would have more representation than the Third Estate). The notables rejected the "dual representation" proposal. Louis Stanislas was the only notable to vote to increase the size of the Third Estate. Necker disregarded the notables' judgment, and convinced Louis XVI to grant the extra representation — Louis duly obliged on 27 December.
The Estates-General were convened in May 1789 to ratify financial reforms. Louis Stanislas favoured a stalwart position against the Third Estate and its demands for tax reform. On 17 June, the Third Estate declared itself a National Assembly, an Assembly not of the Estates, but of the People.
Louis Stanislas urged the King to act strongly against the declaration, while the King's popular minister, Jacques Necker, intended to compromise with the new assembly. Louis XVI was characteristically indecisive. On 9 July, the assembly declared itself a National Constituent Assembly, that would give France a Constitution. On 11 July, Louis XVI dismissed Jacques Necker, which led to widespread rioting across Paris. On 12 July, the sabre charge of Charles-Eugène de Lorraine, prince de Lambesc's cavalry regiment, the Royal-Allemand, on a crowd gathered at the Tuileries gardens, sparked the Storming of the Bastille two days later.
On 16 July, the comte d’Artois left France with his wife and children, along with many other courtiers. Artois and his family took up residence in Turin, the capital city of his father-in-law’s Kingdom of Sardinia, with the Condé family.
Louis Stanislas decided to remain at Versailles. When the royal family plotted to abscond from Versailles to Metz, Louis Stanislas advised the King not to leave, to which the latter duly agreed.
The royal family was ripped away from their Palace at Versailles, the day after the 5 October 1789 women's march on Versailles. In Paris, the Comte and his wife lodged in the Luxembourg Palace, while the rest of the royal family stayed in the Tuileries Palace. In March 1791, the National Assembly created a law outlining the regency of Louis Charles in case his father died while he was still too young to reign. The law created the potential regency as follows: Louis Charles' nearest male relative in France (presently the comte de Provence Louis Stanislas), and after him, the regency would be given to the duc d’Orléans, and if he were unavailable, the regency would go to election.
The comte de Provence and his wife fled to the Austrian Netherlands in conjunction with the royal family’s failed Flight to Varennes in June 1791.
In January 1792, the Legislative Assembly declared that all the émigrés were traitors to France. Their property and titles were confiscated. The monarchy of France was abolished by the National Convention on 21 September 1792.
Louis XVI was executed in January 1793. This left his young son, Louis Charles, as titular King Louis XVII of France. The princes-in-exile proclaimed Louis Charles "King Louis XVII". Louis Stanislas now unilaterally declared himself regent for his nephew, who was too young to be head of the House of Bourbon (since the French monarchy had been abolished for several months, Louis XVII never actually ruled, and any claim to regency would have been in name only.)
Young Louis XVII's reign did not last long as he died in June 1795, survived by his sister Marie-Thérèse Charlotte de France, Madame Royale. On 16 June, the princes-in-exile declared the comte de Provence "King Louis XVIII". The new King accepted their declaration soon after. Louis XVIII busied himself drafting a manifesto in response to Louis XVII's death. The manifesto, known as "The Declaration of Verona" was Louis XVIII's attempt to introduce the French people to his politics (after all, he had just been declared King by the exiles). The Declaration of Verona beckoned France back into the arms of the monarchy, "which for fourteen centuries was the glory of France".
Louis XVIII was forced to abandon Verona when Napoleon Bonaparte invaded the Republic of Venice.
Louis XVIII had been vying for the custody of his niece Marie-Thérèse since her release from the Temple Tower in December 1795. Louis succeeded when Francis II, Holy Roman Emperor agreed to relinquish custody of Marie-Thérèse in 1796. She had been staying in Vienna with her Habsburg relatives since January 1796. Louis XVIII was forced to leave Blankenberg when King Frederick William II of Prussia died. In light of this, Marie-Thérèse decided to wait a while longer before reuniting with her uncle.
In 1798, Emperor Paul I of Russia offered Louis the use of Jelgava Palace in Courland (now Latvia). Paul I also guaranteed Louis's safety and bestowed upon him a generous pension, Marie-Thérèse finally joined Louis XVIII at Jelgava in 1799. In the winter of 1798–1799, Louis XVIII wrote a biography on Marie Antoinette, titled Réflexions Historiques sur Marie Antoinette. King Louis attempted to recreate the court life of Versailles at Jelgava, where many old courtiers lived, reestablishing all the court ceremonies, including the lever and coucher (these ceremonies were for waking and bedding respectively).
Marie-Thérèse married her cousin Louis Antoine on 9 June 1799, at Jelgava Palace. Louis XVIII ordered his wife to attend the marriage proceedings in Courland without her long-time friend (and rumoured lover) Madame de Gourbillon. Queen Marie Joséphine lived apart from her husband in Schleswig Holstein. Louis XVIII was trying desperately to display to the world a united family front. The Queen refused to leave her friend behind and drama ensued, rivalling the wedding in notoriety. Louis XVIII knew that his nephew Louis Antoine was not compatible with Marie-Thérèse. Despite this, he still rallied for their marriage, which proved to be quite unhappy and produced no children.
Louis XVIII attempted to strike up a correspondence with Napoleon Bonaparte (First Consul of France) in 1800. Louis XVIII besought Bonaparte to restore the Bourbons to their throne, but the future emperor was immune to Louis's requests and continued to consolidate his position as ruler of France.
Louis XVIII encouraged his niece to write her memoirs, as he wished them to be used as Bourbon propaganda. Louis also used the diaries of Louis XVI' final attendants in the same way, in 1796 and in 1803. It was very soon after their arrival that they learned of the death of Paul I. Louis hoped that Paul's successor, Alexander I of Russia, would repudiate his father's banishment of the Bourbons. Louis XVIII then intended to set off to the Neapolitan court. The comte d’Artois asked Louis to send his son, Louis Antoine, and daughter-in-law, Marie-Thérèse, to him in Edinburgh. Louis was distressed by Artois' request, as Louis Antoine and his wife were all that he had, while Charles had an allowance from King George III of Great Britain. Louis XVIII's court in exile was being spied on by French police. Louis greatly valued his niece's advice. The court-in-exile was being financed by interest owed from Francis II on valuables his aunt, Marie Antoinette, had removed from France. The comte d'Artois in England also sent money. They had to cut their expenses significantly.
In 1803, Napoleon tried to force Louis XVIII to renounce his right to the throne of France, but Louis refused. In May 1804, Napoleon Bonaparte declared himself Emperor of the French. Louis XVIII and his nephew departed for Sweden in July for a Bourbon family conference, where Louis XVIII, the comte d’Artois, and the duc d'Angoulême issued a statement condemning Napoleon's decision to declare himself emperor. The King of Prussia issued a proclamation saying that Louis XVIII would have to leave Prussian territory, which meant leaving Warsaw. Alexander I of Russia invited Louis XVIII to resume residence in Jelgava. Louis XVIII had to live under less generous conditions than those enjoyed under Paul I, and he intended to embark for England as soon as possible.
Louis XVIII created another policy in 1805; a declaration that was far more liberal than his former ones. It repudiated his Declaration of Verona, promised to abolish conscription, keep Napoleon I's administrative and judicial system, reduce taxes, eliminate political prisons, and guarantee amnesty to everyone who did not oppose a Bourbon Restoration. The opinions expressed in the declaration were largely those of the comte d’Avaray (Louis's best friend in exile).
Louis XVIII was forced once again to leave Jelgava when Alexander of Russia informed him that his safety could not be guaranteed on continental Europe. In July 1807, Louis boarded a Swedish frigate to Stockholm, bringing with him only the duc d'Angoulême. Louis did not stay in Sweden for long, and arrived in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, England, in November 1807. He took up residence in Gosfield Hall, leased to him by the Marquess of Buckingham.
The comte d'Artois did not join the court-in-exile in Hartwell, continuing his frivolous life in London. Louis's friend the comte d'Avaray left Hartwell for Madeira in 1809, and died there in 1811. Louis replaced Avaray with the Comte de Blacas. Louis XVIII's wife, Queen Marie Joséphine, died on 13 November 1810. That same winter, Louis suffered a particularly severe case of gout, which was a recurring problem for him at Hartwell, and he had to be put in a wheelchair.
Napoleon I embarked on an invasion of Russia in 1812. This war would prove to be the turning point in his fortunes, as the expedition failed miserably and Napoleon was forced to retreat with an army in tatters.
In 1813, Louis XVIII issued another declaration while at Hartwell. "The Declaration of Hartwell" was more liberal than his "Declaration of 1805", asserting that all those who served Napoleon or the Republic would not have repercussions for their acts, and that the original owners of the Biens nationaux (lands confiscated from the nobles and clergy during the Revolution) were to be compensated for their losses.
Allied troops entered Paris on 31 March 1814. Louis was, however, unable to walk, and so sent the comte d'Artois to France in January 1814. Louis XVIII issued letters patent appointing Artois Lieutenant General of the Kingdom in the event of the Bourbons being restored. Napoleon I abdicated on 11 April, five days after his Senate had invited the Bourbons to re-assume the throne of France.
Napoleon's senate called Louis XVIII to the throne on the condition that he would accept the new constitution, which entailed recognition of the Republic and the Empire, a bicameral parliament elected every year, and the tri-colour flag of the aforementioned regimes. Louis XVIII opposed the senate's constitution, and stated that he was "disbanding the current senate in all the crimes of Bonaparte, and appealing to the French people". The senatorial constitution was burned in a theatre in royalist Bordeaux, and the Municipal Council of Lyon voted for a speech that defamed the senate.
The armies occupying Paris demanded that Louis XVIII implement a constitution. The Charter of 1814 that Louis created entailed all that Saint-Ouen wished for and more: Freedom of Religion, a legislature composed of the Chamber of Deputies and the Chamber of Peers, the press would enjoy a degree of freedom, the biens nationaux, would remain in the hands of their current owners. The constitution had 76 articles. Taxation was to be voted on by the chambers.
Catholicism was the official religion of France. To be eligible for election to the Chamber of Deputies, one had to pay over 1,000 francs per year in tax, and be over the age of forty. The King appointed peers to the Chamber of Peers on a hereditary basis, or for life at his discretion. Deputies were elected every five years, with one fifth of them up for election each year. There were 90,000 citizens eligible to vote.
Louis XVIII signed the Treaty of Paris on 30 May 1814. The treaty gave France her 1792 borders, which extended east of the Rhine. She had to pay no war indemnity, and the occupying armies of the Sixth Coalition withdrew instantly from French soil. These generous terms would be reversed in the next Treaty of Paris after the Hundred Days (Napoleon's return to France in 1815).
It did not take Louis XVIII long to go back on one of his many promises. He and his Controller-General of Finance Baron Louis were determined not to let the exchequer fall into deficit (there was a 75 million franc debt inherited from Napoleon I), and took fiscal measures to ensure this. Louis XVIII assured the French that the unpopular tax on tobacco, wine and salt would be abolished when he was restored, but he failed to do so, which led to rioting in Bordeaux. Expenditure on the army was slashed in the 1815 budget — in 1814, the military had accounted for 55% of government spending.
Louis XVIII admitted the comte d'Artois and his nephews, the duc d'Angoulême, and the duc de Berry into the King's council in May 1814, upon its establishment. The council was informally headed by the Prince de Talleyrand. Louis XVIII took a large interest in the goings-on of the Congress of Vienna (set up to redraw the map of Europe after Napoleon's demise). Talleyrand represented France at the proceedings. Louis was horrified by Prussia's intention to annex the Kingdom of Saxony, to which he was attached because his mother was born a Saxon princess, and he was also concerned that Prussia would dominate Germany. He also wished the Duchy of Parma to be restored to the Parmese Bourbons, and not to Empress Marie Louise of France, as was being suggested by the Allies. Louis also protested the Allies' inaction in Naples, where he wanted the Napoleonic usurper Joachim Murat removed in favour of the Neapolitan Bourbons, who had ruled for centuries.
On behalf of the Allies, Austria agreed to send a force to the Two Sicilies to depose Murat in February 1815, when it became apparent that Murat corresponded with Napoleon I, which was explicitly forbidden by a recent treaty. Murat never actually wrote to Napoleon, but Louis, intent on restoring the Neapolitan Bourbons at any cost, forged the correspondence, and subsidised the Austrian expedition with 25 million francs.
Louis XVIII succeeded in getting the Neapolitan Bourbons restored immediately. Parma was bestowed upon Empress Marie Louise for life, and the Parmese Bourbons were given the Duchy of Lucca until the death of Marie Louise.
Louis XVIII's underestimation of Bonaparte proved disastrous. On 19 March, the army stationed outside Paris defected to Bonaparte, leaving the city vulnerable to attack. That same day, Louis XVIII quit the capital with a small escort at midnight. Louis decided to go first to Lille, and then crossed the border into the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, staying in Ghent. Other leaders, most prominently Alexander I of Russia, debated that in case of a second victory over the French Empire, the First Prince of the Blood Louis Philippe d'Orléans should be proclaimed king instead of Louis XVIII.
However, Napoleon did not rule France again for very long, suffering a decisive defeat at the hands of the Duke of Wellington at the Battle of Waterloo on 15 June. Leaders came to the consensus that Louis XVIII should be restored to the throne of France.
Louis XVIII's role in politics from the Hundred Days onward was voluntarily diminished, he resigned most of his duties to his council. He and his ministry embarked on a series of reforms through the summer of 1815. The King's council, an informal group of ministers that advised Louis XVIII, was dissolved and replaced by a tighter knit privy council, the "Ministère de Roi". Artois, Berry and Angoulême were purged from the new "ministère", and Talleyrand was appointed as the first Président du Conseil, i.e. Prime Minister of France. On 14 July, the ministry dissolved the units of the army deemed "rebellious". Hereditary peerage was re-established to Louis's behest by the ministry.
In August elections for the Chamber of Deputies returned unfavourable results for Talleyrand. The ministry wished for moderate deputies, but the electorate voted almost exclusively for ultra-royalists, resulting in the Chambre introuvable. The duchesse d'Angoulême and the comte d'Artois pressured King for the dismissal of his obsolete ministry. Talleyrand tendered his resignation on 20 September. Louis XVIII chose Armand-Emmanuel du Plessis, duc de Richelieu to be his new Prime Minister. Richelieu was chosen because he was accepted by Louis's family and the reactionary Chamber of Deputies.
Anti-Napoleonic sentiment was high in Southern France, and this was prominently displayed in the White Terror. The White Terror saw the purge of all important Napoleonic officials from government, and the execution of others. The people of France committed barbarous acts against some of these officials. Guillaume Marie Anne Brune (a Napoleonic marshal) was savagely assassinated, and his remains thrown into the Rhône River. Louis XVIII deplored such illegal acts, but vehemently supported the prosecution of those marshals that helped Napoleon I in the Hundred Days. Louis XVIII’s government executed Napoleon's Marshal Ney, Prince de la Moskowa, in December 1815 for treason. His confidants the Marquis de Bonnay and the Duc de la Chatre advised him to inflict firm punishments on the “traitors”.
The King was reluctant to shed blood, and this greatly irritated the ultra-reactionary chamber of deputies, who felt that Louis XVIII was not executing enough. The government issued a proclamation of amnesty to the “traitors” in January 1816, but the trials that had already begun were finished in due course. That same declaration also banned any member of the House of Bonaparte from owning property in, or entering, France. It is estimated that between 50,000 – 80,000 officials were purged from the government during what was known as the Second White Terror.
In November 1815, Louis XVIII’s government had to sign another Treaty of Paris, formally ending Napoleon’s hundred days. The previous treaty had been quite favourable to France, but this one took a hard-line. France’s borders were retracted to their extent at 1790. France had to pay for an army to occupy her, for at least five years, at a cost of 150 million francs per year. France also had to pay a war indemnity of 700 million francs to the allies.
In 1818, the Chambers passed a military law, which increased the size of the army by over 100,000. In October of the same year, Louis XVIII’s foreign minister, the Duc de Richelieu, succeeded in convincing the powers to withdraw their armies early, in exchange for a sum of over 200 million francs.
Louis XVIII chose many centrist cabinets, as he wanted to appease the populace. Much to the dismay of his brother, the ultra-royalist comte d’Artois, he always dreaded the day he would die, believing that his brother, and heir, Artois, would abandon the centrist government for an ultra-royalist autocracy, which would not bring favourable results.
King Louis disliked the First Prince of the Blood, Louis-Philippe d'Orléans, and took every opportunity to snub him. King Louis's nephew, the duc de Berry, was assassinated at the Paris Opera, on 14 February 1820. The royal family was grief-stricken and Louis XVIII broke an ancient tradition to attend his nephew's funeral, as previous Kings of France could not have any association with death.
Berry was the only member of the family thought to be able to beget children. His wife gave birth to a posthumous son in September Henri, duc de Bordeaux. On 12 June 1820, the Chambers ratified legislation that increased the number of deputies from 258 to 430. The extra deputies were to be elected by the wealthiest quarter of the population in each department. These individuals now effectively had two votes. Around the same time as the “law of the two votes”, Louis XVIII began to receive visits every Wednesday from a lady named Zoé Talon, comtesse du Cayla, and ordered that nobody should disturb him while he was with her. It was rumoured that he inhaled snuff from her breasts, which earned her the nickname of tabatière (snuffbox). In 1823, France embarked on a military intervention in Spain, where a revolt had occurred against the King Ferdinand VII. France succeeded in crushing the rebellion, which the duc d’Angoulême headed.
Louis XVIII's health began to fail in spring 1824. He was suffering from obesity, gout and gangrene, both dry and wet, in his legs and spine. Louis died on 16 September 1824, surrounded by the extended royal family and some government officials. He was succeeded by his youngest brother, the comte d’Artois, as Charles X.
Louis XVIII was the only French monarch of the 19th century to die while still ruling. He was interred at the Basilica of St Denis, the necropolis of French kings.
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He obtained his Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Salamanca in Spain, followed by studies at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, where he earned a Master's degree in Philosophy and licentiate in theology. Farrell also attended the Angelicum, receiving degrees in dogmatic theology (1976) and pastoral theology (1977). He holds a Master's in business and administration from the University of Notre Dame as well.
In 1984, Farrell was assigned to the United States and incardinated in the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C. He served as an associate pastor at St. Peter's Church in Olney, St. Bartholomew Church in Bethesda, and St. Thomas the Apostle Church in Washington. He succeeded Fr. Seán O'Malley, OFM Cap, as director of the Spanish Catholic Center in 1986.
Farrell became acting director of Catholic Charities in 1988, and was the Archdiocesan Secretary of Finance from 1989 to 2001. He was raised to the rank of Honorary Prelate of His Holiness in 1995. In 2001, he was named vicar general for the Archdiocese and pastor of Annunciation Church in Washington.
He was appointed by Pope Benedict XVI on 6 March 2007 to replace the retiring Bishop Charles Victor Grahmann. He was installed on 1 May 2007. The new Bishop Farrell was presented a gift by his predecessor Bishop Charles Grahmann: baseball caps representing the four Dallas-area home town sports teams.
Within the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Farrell is a consultant to the Committee on Migration, which oversees the Migration and Refugee Services department. This department serves and advocates for refugees, asylees, other forced migrants, immigrants and people on the move. Farrell is also the 2009 chair-elect of the USCCB Committee on National Collections, which supports stewardship and coordinates the collections for social justice, evangelization, education and institutional development. He will assume the chair in November 2009.
Bishop Farrell's brother, Bishop Brian Farrell, is currently the secretary of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. Kevin Farrell said of his brother, "My brother is a bishop. My older brother -- but I became a bishop before he did.... There's still some of that sibling rivalry."
Category:1947 births Category:Living people Category:People from County Dublin Category:Irish bishops Category:Irish Roman Catholic priests Category:University of Salamanca alumni Category:University of Notre Dame alumni Category:Roman Catholic Ecclesiastical Province of San Antonio Category:American Roman Catholic bishops Category:20th-century Roman Catholic bishops Category:20th-century Roman Catholics Category:21st-century Roman Catholics
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
