Louis XV's deathbed apology

On 7 May 1774, three days before Louis XV's death, the archbishop of Reims made a public apology in the incapacitated king's name. Contemporaries agreed about that much but disagreed about the content and meaning of the apology. They recorded many different versions in letters, journals, memoirs, collections of news and gossip, and polemics. Against the background of Chancellor Maupeou's invocations of divine right and suppression of the parlements, it mattered whether Louis XV's apology included his subjects as well as his Maker and his alleged political offences as well as his notorious sexual misconduct. Supporters and opponents of Maupeou and his style of absolutism used different versions against each other. The appropriation and manipulation of the apology illustrates the development and operations of political culture and public opinion in the decades preceding the French Revolution.