Maybe we he prepares a future Henri IV to close this august series?
Once again we are surprised to read this enormous amount of work as easily; this is the key to a great historian to know that transmit the layman or amateur, without his knowledge walnut under scholarship or bored.
In line with recent work published on that which has been dubbed the "black sun" of Versailles, JCPetitfils makes the party rediscover a monarch which we finally know little secret and he was so shy.
Or rather to debunk a detestable reputation as textbooks for two centuries have passed from generation to generation of schoolchildren.
Without trying to excuse all of the reign failures (especially the inability to reform the social body of the kingdom), JCP also shows us a brave man to the war (his courage led to the French fury at the Battle of Fontenoy will be most great victory in decades on English), an endearing man, cultivated, anxious to save the blood of its soldiers and relieve the miseries of the realm.
It dispels some fantasies around the debauchery of the king who finally had fewer mistresses and bastards Henry IV or Louis XIV.
It demonstrates the king's efforts to seek unsuccessfully however soothe the quarrels with parliaments and clergy to officiate the great politico-religious conflicts in the age of the Jansenism goshawks.
It also explains the difficulty of the little Louis XV, sole survivor of a terrifying massacre of royal princes in the last years of the reign of Louis XIV, to find its place in the absence of love of a mother or father , to break away from the authoritarian regent Philippe d'Orléans or the benevolent but stifling tutelage of Cardinal Fleury.
This reign of 59 years finally in JCPetitfils optics had his greatness beyond the tough prejudices that have doomed Louis XV to public obloquy.
A beautiful book which has been struggling to get out. Deeply the handheld version.
