Louis XIV died on the first of September 1715 in Versailles leaving behind a France languishing in debt and as heir his great-grandson, Louis XV, a child of five, too young to reign. On 2 September, the duc Philippe d’Orléans (1674-1723), the young King’s uncle, assumed the Regency of the kingdom. The court, the government, the nobility and the young King abandoned Versailles for Paris.

In this crucial transitional period between the death of the Great King and that of the Regent in 1723 everything seems to have changed in Paris. The Regent’s residence at the Palais-Royal now became the center of power and fashion. A flurry of monumental mansions were built by the nobility, particularly on the Left Bank opposite the Tuileries palace, leading to a revolution in interior decoration and furniture styles. Theater, luxury and generally the conspicuous consumption of all expensive pleasures overtook Paris society, newly enriched by the founding of a stock exchange, a royal bank, paper notes and a company (compagnie des Indes) to exploit the new crown colony in America – Louisiana – whose capital, New Orleans, was named after the Regent.

Our lecture will examine the politics and culture of this fast-moving era which also witnessed the emergence of some the key intellectual and cultural figures of the French Enlightenment: Voltaire, Marivaux, Montesquieu, Law, Watteau…