Francois Michel Letellier Louvois, marquis de, a French statesman, born in Paris, Jan. 18, 1641, died there, July 16, 1691. He was the son of Michel Letellier, chancellor of France under Louis XIV., by whose influence he was appointed a secretary to the ministry of war. At the age of 21 he married Anne de Souvre, marchioness de Courtanvaux, one of the richest heiresses in France, and soon after renounced the dissipations and pleasures of the court, to which he had been greatly addicted, and, as a preparation for his future functions, examined into the condition of the army, visited the different fortified places in the kingdom, and in various ways endeavored to impress the king favorably by his industry and capacity for business. At the same time he flattered him with the idea that the most successful measures were the result of the royal suggestions, until Louis gradually began to consider the young minister as in some sort his own pupil in the art of statesmanship. By careful management Louvois was thus enabled, in spite of his haughty and overbearing disposition, which made him unpopular with both courtiers and people, to assume and retain for more than a quarter of a century so great an ascendancy in the royal councils that Mme. de Sevigne, writing about him in 1676, said, " He possesses absolute power, and armies advance or retreat at his pleasure." From 1666, about which time he assumed the sole direction of the war department, until the peace of Nime-guen in 1678, he was incessantly employed in planning and conducting campaigns.

The cruel devastation of the Palatinate during this war is generally supposed to have been instigated by Louvois. On the other hand, he conceived the plan of the Hotel des Invalides in Paris, established hospitals and asylums in various parts of the country, and made great ameliorations and improvements in the army. In times of peace his plans for the aggrandizement of the kingdom were scarcely less magnificent than his achievements in war. He projected the palace of Versailles, the Place Vendome in Paris, and the great aqueducts of Maintenon. After the death of Colbert in 1683 Louvois exercised almost absolute power. He was a bitter enemy of the Huguenots, against whom he eventually directed the dragonnades, and in October, 1685, induced the king to revoke the edict of Nantes, thereby expelling from France more than half a million of its most useful inhabitants. In 1688 war broke out between France and the league of continental powers headed by the prince of Orange, and the energy, capacity, and unscrupulousness of Louvois became more conspicuous than ever.

His dictatorial manner and affectation of supreme control, however, were beginning to incense the king; and after the siege and capture of Mons in 1691, during which he had provoked Louis by interfering with operations which he desired to carry out himself, the king reproached him with the numerous cruelties perpetrated under the royal name. Louvois declined rapidly in health, and died suddenly after a stormy interview with his master, not without suspicion of poison.