Louis XVIII, REV

Really, what a life! He was a grandson of Louis XV. His elder brother Louis XVI died on the guillotine; his younger brother Charles X died in exile. Yet he died "in bed", having lived through the Revolution and other vicissitudes, still King of France. Not the most glamourous of French kings, but arguably one of the most memorable. Fascinating. Buy it.

The brilliance of Philip Mansel shines in Louis XVIII. For some reason history regards his reign as just a footnote, in reality Louis XVIII shines as a much more intelligent and reasonable monarch for his time. I deliberately took my time reading this book, I wanted to savor all the information Mr. Mansel presented so well! A fabulous look into France after the tumult of the revolution and Bonaparte!

Mansel's biography does an excellent job filling in some blanks in French History; the times from Louis XIV through Napoleon I are very well documented, but so little has been written about the restoration monarchs. This biography is thoughtful and detailed, chronicling a prince who spent the better part of his life waiting in the wings to attain his throne. Mansel does a superb job working with Louis' known words (spoken and written) to reveal the character behind this somewhat elusive figure. A major find!My only complaint against the book (which brought it from 5 stars to 4) is the author's very annoying insistence on quoting innumerable sources in French and then translating them in full into English. For those who read French, the English translation slows reading (one can't help but compare one's own translation to that of the author); for those that don't, the French is superfluous. This bilingual quotation method is occasionally useful when a critical shade of meaning must be brought across; to do it on virtually every page is just a nuisance.

If the French Revolution is a gulf yawning between the Ancien Regime and the truly modern world, then few kings could have embodied that disjunction better than Louis XVIII. Born in 1755, he lived to see his brother and sister-in-law, Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, guillotined by extreme revolutionaries; the Corsican general Napoleon Bonaparte seize the throne and declare himself emperor; and his country welcome him back after Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo. Bitter memories of his brother's ignominious death encouraged him to steer a course between reactionaries and revolutionaries. Although Louis has often been dismissed as a non-entity, Mansel's eminently readable biography presents a more balanced portrait of this enigmatic survivor.