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The task of assigning varying causal weights to certain connected groups of facts which preceded the French Revolution is both challenging and difficult. Common sense tells us that any such body of data can be evaluated in three ways - either it accelerated, or it postponed, or it had no effect on the coming of the Revolution. I shall not be concerned with the vast problem of Louis XV's actual reign, which contains many still unresolved controversies.1 In the first part of my paper I shall limit myself to an evaluation of Louis XV as an individual, an attempt to determine whether his particular set of qualities made a positive or a negative or no contribution at all towards 1789. I shall conclude with some observations on the nature of monarchy and revolution based upon the specific case of Louis XV.
A careful, objective statement of what can be established with relative certainty about Louis XV's character should surely be a prerequisite to any evaluation of his historical influence. However, most writers, especially those with democratic predispositions, have dismissed Louis XV as a weak man and a bad king, basing their judgments on such external facts as the increase in Louis XV's unpopularity towards the end of his long reign. Thus Kingsley Martin, whose assertion that Louis XV was a direct cause of the Revolution is most vehement and unqualified, can write that a knowledge of Louis XV, “… inevitably led to contempt.”2 We shall see that this is the absolute reverse of the truth. The mémoires