André-Hercule de Fleury (22 June or 26 June 165329 January 1743) was a
French Catholic prelate who served as
Bishop of Fréjus and as the chief minister of
Louis XV
Louis XV (15 February 1710 – 10 May 1774), known as Louis the Beloved (), was King of France from 1 September 1715 until his death in 1774. He succeeded his great-grandfather Louis XIV at the age of five. Until he reached maturity (then defi ...
. He was created a
cardinal
Cardinal or The Cardinal most commonly refers to
* Cardinalidae, a family of North and South American birds
**''Cardinalis'', genus of three species in the family Cardinalidae
***Northern cardinal, ''Cardinalis cardinalis'', the common cardinal of ...
in 1726 by
Pope Benedict XIII
Pope Benedict XIII (; ; 2 February 1649 – 21 February 1730), born Pietro Francesco (or Pierfrancesco) Orsini and later called Vincenzo Maria Orsini, was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 29 May 1724 to his death in ...
.
Life and government
He was born in
Lodève,
Hérault
Hérault (; , ) is a departments of France, department of the Regions of France, region of Occitania (administrative region), Occitania, Southern France. Named after the Hérault (river), Hérault River, its Prefectures in France, prefecture is M ...
, the son of a
tax farmer of a noble family.
He was sent to Paris as a child to be educated by the
Jesuits
The Society of Jesus (; abbreviation: S.J. or SJ), also known as the Jesuit Order or the Jesuits ( ; ), is a religious order (Catholic), religious order of clerics regular of pontifical right for men in the Catholic Church headquartered in Rom ...
in philosophy and the Classics as much as in theology. He entered the priesthood nevertheless and through the influence of
Cardinal Bonzi became
almoner
An almoner () is a chaplain or church officer who originally was in charge of distributing money to the deserving poor. The title ''almoner'' has to some extent fallen out of use in English, but its equivalents in other languages are often used f ...
to
Maria Theresa
Maria Theresa (Maria Theresia Walburga Amalia Christina; 13 May 1717 – 29 November 1780) was the ruler of the Habsburg monarchy from 1740 until her death in 1780, and the only woman to hold the position suo jure, in her own right. She was the ...
, queen of
Louis XIV
LouisXIV (Louis-Dieudonné; 5 September 16381 September 1715), also known as Louis the Great () or the Sun King (), was King of France from 1643 until his death in 1715. His verified reign of 72 years and 110 days is the List of longest-reign ...
, and, after her death, to the king himself. In 1698 he was appointed
bishop of Fréjus, but seventeen years in a provincial
see eventually determined him to seek a position at court.
In May 1715, a few months before the Sun-King's death, Fleury became tutor to Louis' great-grandson and heir, and in spite of a seeming lack of ambition, he acquired an influence over the child that was never broken, fostered by Louis' love and confidence. On the death of the regent
Philippe d'Orléans in 1723, Louis XV came of age. Fleury, although already seventy years of age, deferred his own supremacy by suggesting the appointment of
Louis Henri, duke of Bourbon, as first minister. Fleury was present at all interviews between Louis XV and his titular first minister, and on Bourbon's attempt to break through this rule Fleury retired from court. Louis made Bourbon recall the tutor, who on 11 June 1726 took affairs into his own hands and secured the exile from court of Bourbon and of his mistress
Madame de Prie. He continued to refuse the formal title of first minister, but his elevation to cardinal, in 1726, confirmed his precedence over any others.
Under the Régence, the Scottish economist
John Law had introduced financial measures that were modern for the time: a national bank, easy credit to encourage investors, and paper money exchangeable for gold bullion. Investor overconfidence in the ability to exchange paper money for gold led to wild speculation after 1720, and when the bubble burst, Law and his policies were thoroughly discredited, and French finances were in as dire straits as they had been when Louis XIV died. Fleury was imperturbable in his demeanor, frugal and prudent, and he carried these qualities into the administration. In 1726 he fixed the standard of the currency and secured French credit by initiating regular payment of interest on the national debt, with the result that in 1738/39 there was a surplus of 15,000,000 ''livres'' instead of the usual deficit. Fleury's stringencies were enforced through the ''contrôleur général des finances''
Philibert Orry (who remained in office until 1745). By exacting forced labor from the peasants (see
corvée
Corvée () is a form of unpaid forced labour that is intermittent in nature, lasting for limited periods of time, typically only a certain number of days' work each year. Statute labour is a corvée imposed by a state (polity), state for the ...
) he improved France's roads, though at the cost of rousing angry discontent, which later found expression in the French Revolution. During the seventeen years of his orderly government, the country found time to recuperate its forces after the exhaustion caused by the ambitions of Louis XIV and extravagances of the regent, and national prosperity increased. Social peace was seriously disturbed by the severities which Fleury exercised against the
Jansenists.
He was one of the minority of French bishops who published
Clement XI's bull ''
Unigenitus
''Unigenitus'' (named for its Latin opening words ''Unigenitus Dei Filius'', or "Only-begotten Son of God") is an apostolic constitution in the form of a papal bull promulgated by Pope Clement XI in 1713. It opened the final phase of the Janse ...
'' and imprisoned priests who refused to accept it, and he met the Jansenist opposition of the
Parlement of Paris
The ''Parlement'' of Paris () was the oldest ''parlement'' in the Kingdom of France, formed in the 14th century. Parlements were judicial, rather than legislative, bodies and were composed of magistrates. Though not representative bodies in the p ...
by exiling forty of its members to a "gilded cage" not far from Paris.
In foreign affairs, the maintenance of peace was a preoccupation he shared with
Sir Robert Walpole, and the two old enemies refrained from war during Fleury's ministry. Some Jacobite sympathizers in France had formed lodges of
Freemasons
Freemasonry (sometimes spelled Free-Masonry) consists of fraternal groups that trace their origins to the medieval guilds of stonemasons. Freemasonry is the oldest secular fraternity in the world and among the oldest still-existing organizati ...
; their attempts to influence Fleury to support the Stuart faction led instead to raids on their premises, and Fleury urged
Pope Clement XII
Pope Clement XII (; ; 7 April 16526 February 1740), born Lorenzo Corsini, was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 12 July 1730 to his death in February 1740.
Clement presided over the growth of a surplus in the papal ...
to issue a bull in 1738 that forbade all Roman Catholics to become Freemasons under threat of excommunication. It was only with reluctance that he supported the ambitious projects of
Elizabeth Farnese, queen of Spain, in Italy by guaranteeing in 1729 the succession of Don Carlos to the duchies of Parma and Tuscany.
French diplomacy however was losing its military bite. Fleury's cagey double game with the
Corsica
Corsica ( , , ; ; ) is an island in the Mediterranean Sea and one of the Regions of France, 18 regions of France. It is the List of islands in the Mediterranean#By area, fourth-largest island in the Mediterranean and lies southeast of the Metro ...
n revolutionaries under Giacinto Paoli, smuggled arms to the island while assuring the Genoese of French support. Fleury thus began the manipulations that landed Corsica in the arms of France in 1768.
Fleury's economies in the army and navy, as elsewhere, found the nation poorly prepared when in 1733 the
War of the Polish Succession
The War of the Polish Succession (; 1733–35) was a major European conflict sparked by a civil war in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth over the succession to Augustus II the Strong, which the other European powers widened in pursuit of ...
was forced upon France. He was compelled by court opinion to support the claims of Louis XV's father-in-law
Stanislaus Leszczynski to the Polish crown on the death of
Augustus II, against the Russian and Austrian candidate; but the despatch of a French expedition to Gdańsk turned into a humiliation. Fleury was pressed by his advisor
Germain Louis Chauvelin to more energetic measures; he concluded a close alliance with the Spanish Bourbons and sent armies against the Austrians twice. Military successes on the Rhine and in Italy secured the favorable terms of the treaty of Vienna (1735–1738). France had joined with the other powers in guaranteeing the succession of
Maria Theresa
Maria Theresa (Maria Theresia Walburga Amalia Christina; 13 May 1717 – 29 November 1780) was the ruler of the Habsburg monarchy from 1740 until her death in 1780, and the only woman to hold the position suo jure, in her own right. She was the ...
under the
Pragmatic Sanction
A pragmatic sanction is a sovereign's solemn decree on a matter of primary importance and has the force of fundamental law. In the late history of the Holy Roman Empire, it referred more specifically to an edict issued by the Emperor.
When used ...
. But by a diplomatic quibble, Fleury found an excuse on the death of Charles VI in 1740 for repudiating his engagements, when he found the party of war supreme in the king's counsels. After the disasters of the Bohemian campaign at the outbreak of the
War of the Austrian Succession
The War of the Austrian Succession was a European conflict fought between 1740 and 1748, primarily in Central Europe, the Austrian Netherlands, Italian Peninsula, Italy, the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea. Related conflicts include King Ge ...
he wrote in confidence a humble letter to the Habsburg general,
Königsegg, who immediately published it. Fleury disavowed his own letter, and died in
Issy-les-Moulineaux, a few days after the French evacuation of Prague on 20 January 1743.
He had enriched the royal library by many valuable oriental manuscripts, and was a member of the
Académie Française
An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of tertiary education. The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, founded approximately 386 BC at Akademia, a sanctuary of Athena, the go ...
from 1717, of the
Academy of Sciences, and the
Academy of Inscriptions.
In the years following Fleury's death, escalating Franco-British skirmishes at sea culminated in a declaration of war with Britain in March 1744, a war he had avoided for so long, a war effectively ending the relatively peaceful period from 1713–1744, a period sometimes referred to the "Thirty Years' Peace" of which Cardinal Dubois and Philippe D'Orléans were the primary architects.
References
Further reading
*
Shennan, J. H.
Joseph Hugh Shennan (13 March 1933 – 25 May 2015) was a British historian who was Professor of European Studies (1974–98) and Deputy Vice-Chancellor (1993–98) at the University of Lancaster. One of the pioneers in European Studies, his r ...
"The political role of the parlement of Paris under Cardinal Fleury." ''English Historical Review'' (1966): 520–542.
* Wilson, Arthur McCandless. ''French Foreign Policy during the Administration of Cardinal Fleury, 1726–1743: A Study in Diplomacy and Commercial Development,'' (1936) the standard modern treatment .
External links
Catholic Encyclopedia entry(French)
*
ttp://www.electricscotland.com/history/genhist/hist59.html Drummond and other Scots Jacobites misread Fleury's politeness for support, and over-represent his vague promises in Scotland, 1742
{{DEFAULTSORT:Fleury, Andre-Hercule De
1653 births
1743 deaths
18th-century French cardinals
Bishops of Fréjus
French untitled nobility
Lycée Louis-le-Grand alumni
Members of the Académie Française
Members of the French Academy of Sciences
Members of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres
People from Lodève
People of the Regency of Philippe d'Orléans
Court of Louis XV