Ebook: Louis XV's Navy, 1748-1762: A Study of Organization and Administration

Louis XV's Navy presents a sharply detailed picture of an institution caught between its Colbertian legacy and contemporary challenges arising from overseas development and imperial rivalry. James Pritchard analyses the changes that occurred in naval organization and administration in the years between the end of the War of Austrain Succession and the conclusion of the Seven Years War. During this time the French navy was reorganized, rebuilt, and fought a major war in which is was annihilated and its officer corps militarily humiliated. Yet this period also established the conditions that made it possible for the navy to become the major arm of French foreign policy for the only time in French history.