Jean-Frédéric Phélypeaux, comte de Maurepas

From an early age the Comte de Maurepas was groomed for the position of a minister.  Indeed his father purchased him the role of Secretary of State to France.  In 1718 he became Minister of the Royal Household.  He would occupy many different positions in the ministries of Louis XV.  Eventually he would be removed from power in 1749 in a political coup.  When Louis XVI ascended to the throne he appointed Maurepas as Minister of State and Chief Minister.  He was key to Louis’ decision to provide French aid to the American Colonies in their War of Independence.  He found it difficult to work with Turgot (whom he conspired against) and Necker.  He would die in 1781.

The Marquis de Bouille on Louis XVI’s principal minister Maurepas.  Taken from Memoirs Relating to the French Revolution by the Marquis de Bouille, Cadell and Davies (1797) p45

M. de Maurepas, principal minister, had governed the kingdom during the former part of the reign of Louis the Sixteenth, but instead of remedying the disorders of the state, he rather augmented them. I have already described the levity and negligence of his character; he was more attentive to the little intrigues of a court, than to the great concerns of a nation more studious of his own ease and enjoyments than of the safety of the state. It is easy to conceive what must be the lamentable effects of such a character upon the administration of a great kingdom, and even upon the habits and decisions of a young prince, whose good sense and purity of heart would have secured the happiness of his people, had the earlier part of his reign been under the guidance of a man of more virtue and capacity than this minister.