Background
The reign of Louis XIV left the French state financially troubled but politically triumphant. Louis's political and military victories as well as numerous cultural achievements helped raise France to a preeminent position in Europe. Europe came to admire France for its military and cultural successes, power, and sophistication. Europeans generally began to emulate French manners, values, and goods and French became the universal language of the European elite. Louis XIV's successor and great-grandson, Louis XV, thus inherited a country with a reputation of a military, political, colonial, and cultural power. By the end of his reign, however, the international opinion of France changed dramatically, largely because of Louis's controversial foreign policy.
The War of the Austrian Succession
In 1740, the death of Emperor Charles VI and his succession by his daughter Maria Theresa started the War of the Austrian Succession. Sensing the vulnerability of Maria Theresa's position, King Frederick the Great of Prussia invaded the Austrian province of Silesia in hopes of annexing it permanently. The elderly Cardinal Fleury had too little energy left to oppose the war, which was strongly supported by the anti-Austrian party at court. Renewing the cycle of conflicts typical of Louis XIV's reign, the king entered the war in 1741 on the side of Prussia in hopes of pursuing its own anti-Austrian foreign policy goals. The war would last seven years and Fleury did not live to see its end. After Fleury's death in 1743, the king followed his predecessor's example of ruling from then on without a first minister. In Germany, the French were forced back to the Rhine and their Bavarian allies were decisively defeated. At one point Austria even considered launching an offensive against Alsace, before being compelled to retreat due to a Prussian offensive. In north Italy, the war stalled and did not produce significant results.
These fronts were of lesser importance than the front in the Netherlands. Here, France experienced much military success despite the king's loss of his trusted advisor. Against an army composed of British, Dutch, and Austrian forces the French were able to savor a series of major victories at the Battles of Fontenoy (1745), Rocoux (1746), and Lauffeld (1747). In 1746, French forces besieged and occupied Brussels, which Louis entered in triumph. By 1748, France occupied the entire Austrian Netherlands (modern-day Belgium) as well as some parts of the northern Netherlands, then the wealthiest area of Europe.
Despite his victory, Louis XV, who wanted to appear as an arbiter and not as a conqueror, agreed to restore all his conquests back to the defeated enemies with chivalry at the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748, arguing that he was "king of France, not a shopkeeper." He thought it better to cultivate the existing borders of France rather than trying to expand them. The attitude was internationally hailed and he became known as the "arbiter of Europe." At home, however, this decision, largely misunderstood by his generals and by the French people, made the king unpopular. The news that the king had restored the Southern Netherlands to Austria was met with disbelief and bitterness. Louis's popularity was also threatened by public exposure of his marital infidelities, which likely could have been kept concealed had France not entered the War of the Austrian Succession (when taking personal command of his armies, the king brought along one of his mistresses). The military successes of the War of the Austrian Succession inclined the French public to overlook Louis's adulteries, but after 1748, in the wake of the anger over the terms of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, pamphlets against the king's mistresses became increasingly widely published and read.
Europe in the years after the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748, source: Wikipedia.
In the aftermath of the War of Austrian Succession in France, there was a general resentment at what was seen as a foolish throwing away of advantages (particularly in the Austrian Netherlands, which had largely been conquered by the brilliant strategy of Marshal Saxe), and it came to be popular in Paris to use the phrases Bête comme la paix ("Stupid as the peace") and La guerre pour le roi de Prusse ("The war for the king of Prussia").
Seven Years' War
By 1755, a new European conflict was brewing. The Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle turned out to be only a short-lived truce in the conflict between Austria and Prussia over the province of Silesia while France and Britain were in conflict over colonial possessions. Indeed, the French and British were fighting without a declaration of war in the French and Indian War of 1754-1763. In 1755, the British seized 300 French merchant ships in violation of international law. A few months later, Great Britain and Prussia, enemies in the War of the Austrian Succession, signed a 1756 treaty of "neutrality."
Frederick the Great had abandoned his French ally during the War of Austrian Succession by signing a separate peace treaty with Austria in 1745. At the same time, French officials realized that the Habsburg Empire of Maria Theresa of Austria was no longer the danger it had been when they controlled Spain and much of the rest of Europe and presented a formidable challenge to France. The new dangerous power looming on the horizon was Prussia. In what is known as diplomatic revolution, the king overruled his ministers and signed the Treaty of Versailles with Austria in 1756, putting an end to more than 200 years of conflict with the Habsburgs. The new Franco-Austrian alliance would last intermittently for the next thirty-five years. In 1756, Frederick the Great invaded Saxony without a declaration of war, initiating the Seven Years' War, and Britain declared war on France.
The French military successes of the War of the Austrian Succession were not repeated in the Seven Years' War, except for a few temporary victories. A French invasion of Hanover in 1757 resulted in a counter-attack that saw them driven out of the electorate. Plans for an invasion of Britain in 1759 were never carried out due to catastrophic naval defeats. French forces suffered disaster after disaster against the British in North America, the Caribbean, India, and Africa.
Map showing the 1750 possessions of Britain (pink), France (blue), and Spain (green) in North America and the Caribbean, source: Wikipedia.
In the aftermath of the lost Seven Years' War, France lost most of its colonial holdings in North America and some, although not all, of its colonies in the Caribbean.
Treaty of Paris
During the war, Great Britain had conquered the French colonies of Canada, Guadeloupe, Saint Lucia, Dominica, Grenada, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Tobago, the French trading posts in India, the slave-trading station at Gorée, the Sénégal River and its settlements, and the Spanish colonies of Manila in the Philippines and Havana in Cuba. France had captured Minorca and British trading posts in Sumatra, while Spain had captured the border fortress of Almeida in Portugal and Colonia del Sacramento in South America.
In the Treaty of Paris of 1763, which ended the Seven Years' War, most of these territories were restored to their original owners although Britain made considerable gains. France and Spain restored all their conquests to Britain and Portugal. Britain restored Manila and Havana to Spain, and Guadeloupe, Martinique, Saint Lucia, Gorée, and the Indian trading posts to France. In return, France ceded Canada, Dominica, Grenada, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Tobago to Britain. France also ceded the eastern half of French Louisiana to Britain. In addition, while France regained its trading posts in India, it recognized British clients as the rulers of key Indian native states, and pledged not to send troops to Bengal. The Treaty is also sometimes noted as the point at which France gave Louisiana to Spain. The transfer, however, occurred with the Treaty of Fontainebleau (1762) but was not publicly announced until 1764. The Treaty of Paris was to give Britain the east side of the Mississippi. New Orleans on the east side remained in French hands (albeit temporarily). The Mississippi River corridor in what is modern day Louisiana was to be reunited following the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 and the Adams–Onís Treaty in 1819.
Territorial Gains
Although Louis XV failed to expand the French frontier, the large acquisition of Lorraine through diplomacy in 1766 contributed to his legacy. Furthermore, after a short period of Corsican sovereignty, France conquered the island but it was not incorporated into the French state until 1789.