Chief minister of France


The chief minister of France or, closer to the French term, chief minister of state or prime minister of France were and are informal titles given to various personages who received various degrees of power to rule the Kingdom of France on behalf of the monarch during the Ancien Régime. The titles were however informal and used more as job descriptions.

History

As the titles were unofficial, the monarch maintained all his powers, giving to the chief minister the task of carrying out his orders. However, during the times when the king was absent from the country, very sick, unwilling or unfit to govern, the chief minister had a powerful role, becoming the real mind behind the administration of the country.
Usually, the chief ministers were members of the King's Council or high members of the French nobility or the Catholic clergy.
With the eruption of the French Revolution in 1789, the chief minister progressively lost importance and influence in national politics. Finally, with the arrival of the constitutional monarchy in 1791, the role of chief minister ceased to exist.
In fact, according to the Encyclopédie Larousse, after 1661, Louis XIV and his descendants refused to allow one of their ministers to be more important than the others, so the terms were not in use.

List

After the 10 August 1792, Louis XVI and his family were imprisoned. However, after the fall of the First Empire in 1814, "Chief Ministers" appeared to represent the monarchy until its full Restoration. The position definitively ending only with the creation of the office of "President of the Council of Ministers" in 1815.