The regency and reign of Louis XV was marred by two great wars in which France was defeated at sea. The first of these was the War of the Austrian Succession. Its main theaters of military operations were Central Europe, the Austrian Netherlands, and Northern Italy. At the same time, between England, on the one hand, and France and Spain, on the other, there was a war at sea. A new book by historians S. Makhov and E. Sozaev details the state of the French fleet in the first half of the 18th century, as well as the outstanding French admirals and the most famous naval operations and battles of the War of the Austrian Succession.