The Regency: Liberation and Disorder

The Regency of Philippe d'Orléans (1715-1723) for the five-year-old Louis XV began with a deliberate repudiation of Louis XIV's system. The Regent, a cultivated libertine who embodied aristocratic opposition to the late king's austere final years, moved the court back to Paris and inaugurated a period of political experimentation and social relaxation. This transition, initially welcomed after decades of war and religious persecution, ultimately demonstrated the difficulty of controlled reform within absolutist structures.

The Polysynodie, the Regent's experiment in conciliar government, replaced ministerial despotism with councils of high nobles advising on different governmental departments. This system, inspired by aristocratic critiques of Louis XIV's exclusion of great nobles from real power, aimed to broaden the monarchy's base while maintaining royal supremacy. However, the councils proved inefficient, torn by personal rivalries and lacking clear authority. Their abolition in 1718 marked the failure of attempts to create aristocratic participation in absolutist government.

The parlements' recovery of their right of remonstrance—the ability to protest royal edicts before registering them—proved more consequential. The Regent's concession, intended to secure the Parlement of Paris's support for overturning Louis XIV's will, inadvertently created an institutional opposition that would plague the monarchy until its fall. The parlements, dominated by wealthy judicial nobles who had purchased their offices, used remonstrance rights to position themselves as defenders of fundamental laws and public interest against royal despotism.

Social relaxation accompanied political experimentation. The Regent's own scandalous behavior—his openly conducted affairs, rumored incest with his daughter, and notorious "suppers" featuring every form of debauchery—set a tone of moral license that filtered through society. The court abandoned Versailles's stiff etiquette for Parisian pleasures. Religious persecution ceased, with Jansenists and even Protestants enjoying unofficial toleration. This liberation, while welcome after Louis XIV's oppressive final years, also weakened royal authority's moral foundations.