Régence

• 9 January: Declaration of War with Spain;
• 15 April: Death of
  Madame de Maintenon at Saint-Cyr-l'École
  ;
• May: Foundation of the French East India Company by John Law;
• 21 July: Death of Marie Louise Élisabeth d'Orléans; daughter of the Regent who participated in the hectic nightlife of his court, even during several pregnancies with different men. (Jules Michelet, "Histoire de France, vol.XV, La Régence", Equateurs, 2008).

1720

• 5 January: John Law made Controller-General of Finances;
• 11 February: Marriage of Charlotte Aglaé d'Orléans to the Hereditary Prince of Modena at the Tuileries Palace;
• March: Great Plague of Marseille;
• 21 March: Death of Marie Anne de Bourbon, wife of the Duke of Bourbon;
• 26 March: Execution of the leaders of the
  Pontcallec Conspiracy
  against the Regency.

1721

• Publication of the Persian Letters by Montesquieu; negotiations between the Regent and Peter I of Russia begin regarding the proposed marriage of the Regent's only legitimate son to a daughter of the Emperor, namely either the Grand Duchess Anna Petrovna or the future Elizabeth of Russia; plans fail and Louis d'Orléans marries in 1724;
• 6 January: Arrest of Louis Dominique Bourguignon;
• 27 March: Alliance of Spain and France;
• May : Visit of Mehmet Effendi, Turkish ambassador;
• 18 July: Death of Antoine Watteau;
• 17 September: Death of the Grand Duchess of Tuscany; cousin of the Regent;
• 29 December : Birth of the future Madame de Pompadour;
• Marie Anne de Bourbon is put in charge of the Infanta's education in France;

1722

• Jules Hardouin Mansart
  ;
• 20 January: Marriage of Louise Élisabeth d'Orléans to the future Louis I of Spain;
• 10 March: Arrival of Infanta
  Elisabeth of Parma
  ;
• 15 June: Louis XV and the court return to Versailles; the Regent takes the old apartments of his dead cousin, the late
  Louis, Dauphin of France
  (1661–1711);
• 22 August: Guillaume Dubois made the Prime Minister of the Regent;
• 25 October: Coronation of Louis XV at the
  Cathedral of Notre-Dame, Reims
  ;
• 8 December: Death of
  Elizabeth Charlotte of the Palatinate
  (Madame), mother of the Regent;

1723

• Louis XV orders plans for the future Salon d'Hercule to begin;
• 2 February: Secret marriage of the
  Count of Toulouse and Marie Victoire de Noailles
  (already widowed daughter in law of Mme de Montespan) in Paris; their marriage was only announced after the death of the Regent;
• 16 February: Louis XV attains his majority upon turning 13 years old
• 23 February: Death of Anne Henriette of Bavaria, Dowager Princess of Condé;
• 10 August: Death of Dubois; role later took on by Louis Henri, Duke of Bourbon;
• 2 December: Death of the Regent at the Palace of Versailles;

The Polysynody

There were seven parts of the Polysynody all of which had their own ministers for the Regency:

1. Council of Conscience (Conseil de Conscience)
   Members included
   Cardinal de Noailles, Armand Bazin de Bezons (Archbishop of Bordeaux), Henri François d'Aguesseau, René Pucelle, Cardinal Fleury
   .
2. Council of Foreign Affairs (Conseil des Affaires étrangères, headed by Nicolas Chalon du Blé)
3. Council of War (Conseil de la Guerre)
   Members included:
   Duke of Gramont, Claude le Blanc
   .
4. Count of Toulouse
   )
5. Council of Finances (Conseil des Finances, headed by the
   Duke of Noailles
   )
6. Council of the Affairs the Kingdom (Conseil des Affaires du Dedans du Royaume, headed by the Duke of Antin – half brother of the Duke of Maine and Count of Toulouse)
   Members included: marquis de Harlay, de Goissard, Marquis of Argenson,
7. Council of Commerce (Conseil du Commerce)

General

People

The Men

• Madame de Montespan
  . He died at Versailles in the arms of his mistress;
• Louise-Françoise de Bourbon
  , he was thus the nephew of Philippe d'Orléans and was the Prime Minister of France 1723–26; he was a great rival of the Regent and the House of Orléans in general;
• Madame de Maintenon
  , he was despised by the Princes of the Blood due to his constant honours and great wealth he accumulated from his father. He died at Sceaux aged 66;
• Mississippi Bubble and a chaotic economic collapse in France; he died in Venice
  .

Louis XV of France in 1723; Rigaud

Louis Henri de Bourbon

John Law

who reformed French Finances

The Women

• Brazilian Imperial Family
  descends from Philippe d'Orléans, Louis XV as well as Mariana Victoria;
• Madame de Montespan. She married Philippe d'Orléans and was mother of 8 of his children including the next Duke of Orléans; she died at the Château de Saint-Cloud
  aged 71;
• Cellamare Conspiracy
  was found out; she died in Paris having outlived most of her generation;

Anne Louise Bénédicte de Bourbon

, duchesse du Maine

Places

• Palace of Versailles : Birthplace of Louis XV and the home of the French court before and after the Regency; it was at Versailles that the Duke of Orléans died in 1723;
• Palais-Royal : Paris home of the House of Orléans; it was from there that the Regent handled state affairs; his last daughter, Louise Diane, was also born at the palace;
• Palais des Tuileries : the childhood home of Louis XV during the Regency; Louis XV was installed in the Grand Appartements of Louis XIV located on the second floor.

Politics

The Régence marks the temporary eclipse of

Palais Royal in Paris. It marks the rise of Parisian salons as cultural centres, as literary meeting places and nuclei of discreet liberal resistance to some official policies. In the Paris salons aristocrats mingled more easily with the higher Bourgeoisie

in a new atmosphere of relaxed decorum, comfort and intimacy.

Art history

In the arts, the style of the Régence is marked by early Rococo, characterised by the paintings of Antoine Watteau (1684–1721).

Rococo developed first in the decorative arts and interior design. Louis XIV's succession brought a change in the court artists and general artistic fashion. By the end of the old king's reign, rich Baroque designs were giving way to lighter elements with more curves and natural patterns. These elements are obvious in the architectural designs of Nicolas Pineau. During the Régence, court life moved away from Versailles and this artistic change became well established, first in the royal palace and then throughout French high society. The delicacy and playfulness of Rococo designs is often seen as perfectly in tune with the excesses of Louis XV's regime.

The 1730s represented the height of Rococo development in France. The style had spread beyond architecture and furniture to painting and sculpture, exemplified by the works of Antoine Watteau and François Boucher. Rococo still maintained the Baroque taste for complex forms and intricate patterns, but by this point, it had begun to integrate a variety of diverse characteristics, including a taste for Oriental designs and asymmetric compositions.

Colonialism

The Régence is also the customary French word for the pre-independence regimes in the western North African countries, the so-called Barbary Coast. It was applied to:

• First the Barbary Coast (Maghrebinian countries in North Africa) was de facto independent (dominated by military governors, soon de facto princes, styled
  corsairs), but nominally an Ottoman
  province.

French colonial expansion was not limited to the

Karikal (1739) (see French India). Colonies were also founded in the Indian Ocean, on the Île de Bourbon (Réunion, 1664), Isle de France (now Mauritius, 1718), and the Seychelles

(1756).

See also

• Liège–Aachen Baroque furniture [de]

References

• WorldStatesmen- see every present country; here Algeria

1. JSTOR 41827152
   .