France was involved in three wars during Louis's reign. As a result of the first, the War of the Polish Succession (1733-35), France gained the province of Lorraine. The second, the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-48), which marked the beginning of a colonial struggle with Britain, was indecisive. In the last, the Seven Years' War (1756-63), France, crippled by corruption and mismanagement, lost most of its overseas possessions to the British. French foreign policy in this period was made chaotic by Louis's “secret diplomacy,” as his agents in other countries sometimes pursued aims that were in conflict with those of his own ministers. The situation improved somewhat in the 1760s, when a new minister, the duc de Choiseul, restored some order to the government and tried to repair the damage done by the Seven Years' War. In the last years of his reign, Louis cooperated with his chancellor, René de Maupeou, in an effort to reform the country's inequitable and inefficient system of taxation. In 1771 the parlements, or sovereign courts, which had opposed reform, were reorganized and stripped of their power to obstruct royal decrees. Measures were then implemented to tax the previously exempt nobility and clergy, but these were reversed after the king's death at Versailles on 10 May 1774. Louis XV died of smallpox as a defeated and unpopular king. He was succeeded by his grandson, Louis XVI, who was later guillotined during the French Revolution.