André-Hercule de Fleury, Bishop of Fréjus (22 June or 26 June 1653–29 January 1743) was a French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 cardinal

Cardinal (Catholicism)

A cardinal is a senior ecclesiastical official, usually an ordained bishop, and ecclesiastical prince of the Catholic Church. They are collectively known as the College of Cardinals, which as a body elects a new pope. The duties of the cardinals include attending the meetings of the College and...

 who served as the chief minister of Louis XV

Louis XV of France

Louis XV was a Bourbon monarch who ruled as King of France and of Navarre from 1 September 1715 until his death. He succeeded his great-grandfather at the age of five, his first cousin Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, served as Regent of the kingdom until Louis's majority in 1723...

.

Biography

He was born in Lodève

Lodève

Lodève is a commune in the Hérault département in Languedoc-Roussillon in southern France. It is a sub-prefecture of the department.-Geography:...

, Hérault

Hérault

Hérault is a department in the south of France named after the Hérault river.-History:Hérault is one of the original 83 departments created during the French Revolution on 4 March 1790...

, the son of a tax farmer of a noble family. He was sent to Paris as a child to be educated by the Jesuits in philosophy and the Classics as much as in theology. He entered the priesthood nevertheless and through the influence of Cardinal Bonzi became almoner

Almoner

An almoner is a chaplain or church officer who originally was in charge of distributing cash to the deserving poor.Historically, almoners were Christian religious functionaries whose duty was to distribute alms to the poor. Monasteries were required to spend one tenth of their income in charity to...

 to Maria Theresa

Maria Theresa of Spain

Maria Theresa of Austria was the daughter of Philip IV, King of Spain and Elizabeth of France. Maria Theresa was Queen of France as wife of King Louis XIV and mother of the Grand Dauphin, an ancestor of the last four Bourbon kings of France.-Early life:Born as Infanta María Teresa of Spain at the...

, queen of Louis XIV

Louis XIV of France

Louis XIV , known as Louis the Great or the Sun King , was a Bourbon monarch who ruled as King of France and Navarre. His reign, from 1643 to his death in 1715, began at the age of four and lasted seventy-two years, three months, and eighteen days...

, and, after her death, to the king himself. In 1698 he was appointed bishop of Fréjus, but seventeen years in a provincial see

Holy See

The Holy See is the episcopal jurisdiction of the Catholic Church in Rome, in which its Bishop is commonly known as the Pope. It is the preeminent episcopal see of the Catholic Church, forming the central government of the Church. As such, diplomatically, and in other spheres the Holy See acts and...

 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 July 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

John Law (economist)

John Law was a Scottish economist who believed that money was only a means of exchange that did not constitute wealth in itself and that national wealth depended on trade...

 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 the right man for the moment; naturally cool and impeturbable in his demeanor, frugal and prudent, 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

Philibert Orry

Philibert Orry, count of Vignory and lord of La Chapelle-Godefroy, was a French statesman born in Troyes on the 22 January 1689 and who died at La Chapelle-Godefroy on 9 November 1747.-Life:...

 (who remained in office until 1745). By exacting forced labor from the peasants (see corvée

Corvée

Corvée is unfree labour, often unpaid, that is required of people of lower social standing and imposed on them by the state or a superior . The corvée was the earliest and most widespread form of taxation, which can be traced back to the beginning of civilization...

) he improved France's roads, though at the cost of rousing angry discontent. 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

Pope Clement XI

Pope Clement XI , born Giovanni Francesco Albani, was Pope from 1700 until his death in 1721.-Early life:...

 bull Unigenitus

Unigenitus

Unigenitus , an apostolic constitution in the form of a papal bull promulgated by Pope Clement XI in 1713, opened the final phase of the Jansenist controversy in France...

and imprisoned priests who refused to accept it, and he met the Jansenist opposition of the Parlement of Paris 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

Robert Walpole

Robert Walpole, 1st Earl of Orford, KG, KB, PC , known before 1742 as Sir Robert Walpole, was a British statesman who is generally regarded as having been the first Prime Minister of Great Britain....

, and the two old enemies refrained from war during Fleury's ministry. Jacobite sympathizers in France had formed a most un-Masonic secret lodge of Freemasons; 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

Pope Clement XII , born Lorenzo Corsini, was Pope from 12 July 1730 to 6 February 1740.Born in Florence, the son of Bartolomeo Corsini, Marquis of Casigliano and his wife Isabella Strozzi, sister of the Duke of Bagnuolo, Corsini had been an aristocratic lawyer and financial manager under preceding...

 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

Elisabeth of Parma

Elisabeth Farnese , the daughter of Odoardo Farnese and Dorothea Sophie of Neuburg, was Queen consort of Spain who exerted great influence over Spain's foreign policy.-Parma:Elisabeth was born at the Palazzo della Pilotta in Parma, the capital of a duchy which had been ruled by...

, 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

Corsica is an island in the Mediterranean Sea. It is located west of Italy, southeast of the French mainland, and north of the island of Sardinia....

n revolutionaries under the elder Paoli

Paoli

Paoli may refer to:People:*Amalia Paoli , Puerto Rican soprano, sister of the better known Antonio Paoli*Ambrose De Paoli , Roman Catholic cleric and Papal Nuncio*Angelo Paoli , Italian Carmelite...

, 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 war 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

Germain Louis Chauvelin

Germain Louis Chauvelin , marquis de Grosbois, was a French politician, serving as garde des sceaux and Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs under Louis XV.-Life:...

 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 of Austria

Maria Theresa Walburga Amalia Christina was the only female ruler of the Habsburg dominions and the last of the House of Habsburg. She was the sovereign of Austria, Hungary, Croatia, Bohemia, Mantua, Milan, Lodomeria and Galicia, the Austrian Netherlands and Parma...

 under the Pragmatic sanction

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....

. 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 Austrian Succession he wrote in confidence a humble letter to the Habsburg general, Königsegg

Dominik von Königsegg-Rothenfels

Lothar Joseph Dominik Graf von Königsegg-Rothenfels was an imperial Fieldmarshal.Lothar was the youngest son of Count Leopold Wilhelm von Königsegg-Rothenfels and Maria Polyxena, Countess Scherffenberg. His parents sent him to the Jesuit school in Besançon, to become a priest. At the age of 16...

, who immediately published it. Fleury disavowed his own letter, and died in Issy-les-Moulineaux

Issy-les-Moulineaux

Issy-les-Moulineaux is a commune in the southwestern suburban area of Paris, France. It is located from the centre of Paris. On 1 January 2003, Issy-les-Moulineaux became part of the Communauté d'agglomération Arc de Seine along with the other communes of Chaville, Meudon, Vanves and Ville-d'Avray...

, 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 French Academy from 1717, of the Academy of Science, and the Academy of Inscriptions

Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres

The Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres is a French learned society devoted to the humanities, founded in February 1663 as one of the five academies of the Institut de France.-History:...

.

In the years following Fleury's death, escalating Franco-British skirmishes at sea, culminated in a declaration of war with England 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.

Quotes

• "Richelieu bled
  Bleeding
  Bleeding, technically known as hemorrhaging or haemorrhaging is the loss of blood or blood escape from the circulatory system...
  
   France, Mazarin purged it, and Fleury put it on a diet
  Dieting
  Dieting is the practice of eating food in a regulated fashion to achieve or maintain a controlled weight. In most cases dieting is used in combination with physical exercise to lose weight in those who are overweight or obese. Some athletes, however, follow a diet to gain weight...
  
  ". (d'Argenson)

External links

• Catholic Encyclopedia entry
• Biographical dictionary of Roman Catholic cardinals
• Fleury's covert Corsican policy in a letter from the foreign minister, Chauvelin, to the French envoy at Genoa, January 30, 1735 (French)
• Drummond and other Scots Jacobites misread Fleury's politeness for support, and over-represent his vague promises in Scotland, 1742

----