After 23 years in exile, Louis XVIII (1755-1824) succeeded to the French throne at the age of 58 during the Restoration following the fall of Emperor Napoleon I. Briefly overthrown during the Hundred Days, he returned to power after the Battle of Waterloo.
This grandson of King Louis XV and younger brother of Louis XVI attempted to pursue a policy of reconciliation and forgetting the revolutionary crimes, while retaining certain achievements of the Revolution and the Empire.
He was the last French monarch to die on the throne and to be buried in the Saint-Denis Basilica.
