Louis, dauphin de France (1729-1765), born in Versailles, was the eldest and only surviving son of King Louis XV of France and Queen Marie Leszczyńska, and thus heir (dauphin) to the throne of France.
The birth of an heir to the throne had long been awaited since the tragic decimation of the French royal family in the early 1710s (see Louis XV). When the third pregnancy of Marie Leszczyńska gave birth to a son in 1729, there was great rejoicing and celebrations complete with fireworks (memorialized in engravings) in all the major cities of France, and indeed in most European courts. For the first time in 15 years, the future of the dynasty seemed assured.
In 1745, the 16-year-old dauphin Louis was married to the first cousin of his father, the 19-year-old infanta Maria-Teresa of Spain, daughter of King Philip V of Spain. This marriage followed a tradition of alliances with Catholic powers and wars against Protestant countries going back to Louis XIV, as well as an alliance of the two Bourbon dynasties against the Habsburg Austrian Empire, the hereditary enemy of the House of Bourbon. However, the frail and delicate Maria Teresa died while giving birth to her first child in 1746.
18-year-old Louis was re-married in 1747 to 16-year-old Marie-Josèphe of Saxony, daughter of
Frederick Augustus II of Saxony, Prince-Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, who gave birth to three kings of France.
The dauphin Louis was rather plump, but well educated and not dim-witted in the least. A man of study, cultivated and lover of music, he preferred the pleasures of conversation to those of hunting, balls, or spectacles. With a keen sense of morality, very much committed to his wife Marie-Josèphe of Saxony, he was a fervent supporter of the Jesuits, like his very Catholic mother and sisters, and was led by them to worship the Sacred Heart. He appeared in the eyes of his sisters as the ideal of the Christian prince, in sharp contrast with their father Louis XV whose morality was most compromised after 1740.
Kept away from government affairs by his father, the dauphin Louis was at the center of the devout party (see dévots), which hoped to gain power with his accession to the throne.
The dauphin Louis died of tuberculosis at Fontainebleau in 1765 at the age of 36, while his father was still alive, thus never becoming king of France. His eldest surviving son Louis, duke of Berry, became the new dauphin, and later ascended the throne as Louis XVI at the death of Louis XV.
Children
(the first one by Maria Teresa of Spain, all the other ones by Marie-Josèphe of Saxony)
- Marie-Thérèse (1746-1748)
- Marie-Zéphyrine (1750-1755)
- Louis, duke of Burgundy (1751-1761)
- Xavier, duke of Aquitaine (1753-1754)
- King Louis XVI (1754-1793) (guillotined)
- King Louis XVIII (1755-1824)
- King Charles X (1757-1836)
- Marie-Clotilde (1759-1802), married King Charles Emmanuel IV of Sardinia, prince of Piedmont.
- Élisabeth (1764-1794), known as Madame Élisabeth, never married, cared for her brother Louis XVI and his children during the French Revolution, following them to their jail of her own will, instead of emigrating like her other brothers. She was guillotined at the very end of the Terror in June 1794. The devout and innocent Madame Élisabeth, whose courage and fidelity led her to the guillotine, is a famous example of the excesses of the Terror.
External link
- De la Tour's pastels at the Musée l'Écuyer, Saint-Quentin, (in French) the pastel illustrated above described as a study for one of four portraits De la Tour made of the Dauphin (according to a letter of the Marquis de Marigny ), of which the only known survivor, at the Louvre is dated 1748. The curators at the Musée l'Écuyer consider the study above to have served perhaps for the first of these portraits, that of 1745.
