13.  War of the Austrian Succession.—­Thus France plunged into new wars.  Louis XV. married the daughter of Stanislas Lecksinsky, a Polish noble, who, after being raised to the throne, was expelled by Austrian intrigues and violence.  Louis was obliged to take up arms on behalf of his father-in-law, but was bought off by a gift from the Emperor Charles VI. of the duchy of Lorraine to Stanislas, to revert to his daughter after his death and thus become united to France.  Lorraine belonged to Duke Francis, the husband of Maria Theresa, eldest daughter to the Emperor, and Francis received instead the duchy of Tuscany; while all the chief Powers in Europe agreed to the so-called Pragmatic Sanction, by which Charles decreed that Maria Theresa should inherit Austria and Hungary and the other hereditary states on her father’s death, to the exclusion of the daughters of his elder brother, Joseph.  When Charles VI. died, however, in 1740, a great European war began on this matter.  Frederick II. of Prussia would neither allow Maria Theresa’s claim to the hereditary states, nor join in electing her husband to the Empire; and France took part against her, sending Marshal Belleisle to support the Elector of Bavaria, who had been chosen Emperor.  George II. of England held with Maria Theresa, and gained a victory over the French at Dettingen, in 1744.  Louis XV. then joined his army, and the battle of Fontenoy, in 1745, was one of the rare victories of France over England.  Another victory followed at Laufeldt, but elsewhere France had had heavy losses, and in 1748, after the death of Charles VII., peace was made at Aix-la-Chapelle.

14.  The Seven Years’ War.—­Louis, dull and selfish by nature, had been absolutely led into vice by his courtiers, especially the Duke of Bourbon, who feared his becoming active in public affairs.  He had no sense of duty to his people; and whereas his great-grandfather had sought display and so-called glory, he cared solely for pleasure, and that of the grossest and most sensual order, so that his court was a hotbed of shameless vice.  All that could be wrung from the impoverished country was lavished on the overgrown establishments of every member of the royal family, in pensions to nobles, and in shameful amusements of the king.  In 1756 another war broke out, in consequence of the hatreds left between Prussia and Austria by the former struggle.  Maria Theresa had, by flatteries she ought to have disdained, gained over France to take part with her, and England was allied with Frederick II.  In this war France and England chiefly fought in their distant possessions, where the English were uniformly successful; and after seven years another peace followed, leaving the boundaries of the German states just where they were before, after a frightful amount of bloodshed.  But France had had terrible losses.  She was driven from India, and lost all her settlements in America and Canada.