Louis XVI of France

Louis XVI of France (French: Louis XVI; Versailles, August 23, 1754 – Paris, January 21, 1793) was King of France and Navarre between 1774 and 1789, co-prince of Andorra between 1774 and 1793, and King of the French between 1789 and 1792. He was the last monarch before the fall of the monarchy by the French Revolution, as well as the last to exercise his absolute monarch powers. He was known as a Capetian Citizen (French: citoyen Capet) during the four months preceding his execution by guillotine. Louis XVI became Dauphin of France upon the death of his father and heir presumptive, Louis of France. Upon the death of his grandfather, King Louis XV, on May 10, 1774, he inherited the office of King of France and Navarre which he would hold until 1789, when he assumed the title of King of the French under a monarchy. constitutional. On September 21, 1792, all his titles were stripped of him when the monarchy was abolished.

The first years of his reign were marked by attempts to reform the French administration in accordance with the ideas of the Enlightenment. Some of these measures included efforts to abolish serfdom, the removal of the taille (tax on estates) and the corvée (obligation to work without pay for the feudal lord). as well as increasing tolerance towards non-Catholics and abolishing the death penalty for deserters. However, the French nobility reacted to the proposed reforms with hostility and successfully opposed their implementation. This added to his lack of character and his court intrigues meant that most of the Enlightenment reforms never saw the light of day. Luis implemented the deregulation of the grain market, defended by his economy minister, the liberal Turgot, but this ended in an increase in bread prices. In periods of bad harvests, which led to food shortages that, during a particularly bad harvest in 1775, led the masses to revolt. Since 1776, Louis XVI actively supported the North American colonists, who were seeking their independence from Great Britain, which materialized in the Treaty of Paris of 1783. To avoid the bankruptcy of the country caused mainly by bad harvests and food shortages, his Turgot, Necker and Calonne ministers tried six times (1774-1776, 1781 and four in 1787) to carry out deep structural and fiscal reforms. The toga nobility of the Parliament of Paris and the court of Versailles refused such reforms, making the king have to present his proposals to an Assembly of Notables and later to the Estates General for approval. In the Estates General of 1789, the Third Estate, which was not granted the per-person vote it requested, proclaimed itself a National Assembly, swearing not to dissolve until it gave France a Constitution. Discontent among members of France's lower and middle classes resulted in strong opposition to the French aristocracy and the absolute monarchy, of which Louis and his wife, Queen Marie Antoinette, were seen as representatives. The increase in tensions and violence were marked by events such as the storming of the Bastille, during which riots in Paris forced Louis to definitively recognize the legislative authority of the National Assembly.

Louis's indecisiveness and conservatism led some elements of the people of France to view him as a symbol of the perceived tyranny of the Old Regime, and his popularity progressively deteriorated. His failed flight to Varennes in June 1791, four months before the constitutional monarchy was declared, seemed to justify rumors that the king linked his hopes of political salvation to the prospects of foreign intervention. The king's credibility was deeply undermined, and the abolition of the monarchy and the establishment of a republic became an increasing possibility. The growth of anti-clericalism among the revolutionaries resulted in the abolition of the dîme (religious land tax) and various government policies aimed at the de-Christianization of France. In an atmosphere of national chaos caused by the civil and international war, after the escape of Varennes, Louis was taken back to Paris and suspended from his duties. Despite the fact that there was a republican movement that demanded that the king be punished, the monarch signed the Constitution of 1791 and was reinstated in his functions. In an assault on the Tuileries, on the day of August 10, 1792, he was arrested (arrest motivated by his refusal to send soldiers to fight against Austria and Prussia), placed at the disposal of the new National Convention (replacing the Assembly National Legislative) and prosecuted. He was convicted of high treason and sentenced to death. He was guillotined on January 21, 1793, as a deconsecrated French citizen under the name citoyan Capet in reference to Hugh Capet, founder of the Bourbon dynasty. Louis XVI was the only king of France to be executed, and his death ended more than a thousand years of continuous French monarchy. His two sons died in infancy, before the Bourbon Restoration; his only daughter to reach adulthood, Maria Theresa, was given to the Austrians in exchange for French prisoners of war, and she eventually died without issue in 1851.

Biography

Childhood and youth

Born Louis Auguste of France (Louis Auguste de France), Duke of Berry, he was the fourth son of the dauphin Louis Ferdinand and Maria Josefa of Saxony. The Dauphin's second wife was the daughter of Frederick Augustus III, King of Poland. At the time of his birth, his father and his brother Luis José Javier (born 1751 and died 1761) preceded him in the line of succession, so it was never believed that he would come to the throne. His other siblings were María Teresa (1746-1748), daughter of his father's first marriage to María Teresa of Spain and who died at the age of two; María Ceferina (1750-1755), who died at the age of five; Javier María (1753-1754), deceased at the age of one year; Luis Estanislao (1755-1824), known as Count of Provence (during the Revolution he went into exile and after the fall of Napoleon he ascended the throne as Louis XVIII, thus initiating the Restoration); Carlos Felipe (1757-1836), known as Count of Artois (he ascended the throne as Carlos X, succeeding his brother Luis XVIII); Clotilde (1759-1802), queen consort of Sardinia; and Isabel (1764-1794), known as Madame Isabel.

Louis was entrusted to Marie Louise, Countess of Marsan and Princess of Rohan, who removed him from court and brought him to Bellevue Palace, showering him with care and probably saving his life. At the age of six he must have being separated from his nurse and brought together with the men, which caused him great sadness that they tried to alleviate with toys and other distractions, such as fireworks, to no avail. His father personally chose the men in charge of educating him: the Duc de La Vauguyon was chosen as governor; Jean-Gilles du Coëtlosquet, Bishop of Limoges as preceptor; the Marquis de Sinety as lieutenant governor and the abbot of Radonvillers to carry out the essential tasks of the vice-preceptor. His father rejected the majority educational method at the time, which reduced instruction to entertainment and fun, and advocated work and effort, which did not combat his predisposition to extreme shyness and a reserved character, which became a defect..

Luis (on the right) and his brother, the count of Provence (on the left) in his childhood, painted by François Hubert Drouais.

Detesting false compliments, he did not reciprocate those who gave them to him, and they isolated him, which caused him a strong insecurity in himself and an exaggerated modesty, to the point that, on one occasion, when complimenting him a harangue of the provinces for his precocious qualities, he replied: "You are mistaken, sir, I am not the one who possesses [the] spirit, it is my brother [the count] of Provence".

His aunt and godmother, Princess Mary Adelaide, developed a great affection for him, and was fond of taking him home, where more than once she told him: "Come on, my poor [Duke of] Berry, stay home." your taste, you have free elbows: speak, shout, make noise, I give you carte blanche».

The dauphin (after the death of his father in 1765) received an exquisite teaching, by the Jesuit Berthier and, of course, the Duke of La Vauguyon, which gave splendid results: the dauphin Luis Augusto knew Latin, Italian was as familiar to him as his mother tongue, he spoke German passably and was fluent in English, translating from the latter L'histoire de Charles Ier (The Story of Charles I), by David Hume; Doutes historiques sur les crimes imputés à Richard III (Historical doubts about the crimes imputed to Richard III), by Horace Walpole and the first five volumes of Décadence de l'Empire romain (Decline of the Roman Empire), by Gibbon, which were printed and published. #34;wounds" of France with speed and precision", not only educating him with elementary knowledge, but "teaching him to know men".

He received an education befitting a "prince of the Enlightenment", and was considered "an enlightened monarch". He practiced logic, grammar, rhetoric, geometry and astronomy. He had a knowledge of history and geography. incontestable (he himself designed an atlas of rigorous precision) and economic competences. He was greatly influenced by Montesquieu, who inspired him a modern conception of the monarchy, free of divine right.

Marriage

Louis XVI as a dolphin of France.

The Duke of Choiseul decides to ally with Austria in order to put an end to the prosperity of Great Britain and Russia, for which he asks for the hand of Marie Antoinette of Austria, Archduchess of Austria and daughter of Francis of Lorraine and the Empress María Teresa, to marry her to the dolphin.

For the crossing of the border by Marie Antoinette, two pavilions were built, symbolizing the two allied powers. In the French pavilion were the Countess of Noialles, lady-in-waiting; the Duchesse de Cossé, costume lady; four palace ladies; the Count of Saulx-Tavannes, knight of honor; the Count of Tessé, first squire, and the Bishop of Chartres, first chaplain. In the other pavilion were the Austrian ladies who had accompanied the archduchess and dressed her in French garments sent from Paris.

Marie Antoinette as a definate of France, portrayed by Joseph Ducreux (1769).

Marie Antoinette entered Strasbourg and made a stop in Compiègne, where she arrived on May 15, 1770. There she met the king, her future husband, and the Mesdames de France (the daughters of Louis XV). The entourage then proceeded to Saint-Denis, where the Carmelite nun Louise of France (daughter of Louis XV) met the future dauphine. In Saint-Denis, the archduchess and her entourage stayed in the Palais de la Muette and the king and the dauphin returned to Versailles. The next morning (May 16), the dauphine arrived at Versailles and the young bride and groom were led to the palace chapel, where the grand chaplain, Cardinal de la Roche, gave them the nuptial blessing.

The court celebrations were brilliant, but those in Paris surpassed them, and both in the capital and in Versailles there was a large influx of public. However, these celebrations would lead to a catastrophe: in one of the celebrations in Paris In the Place de Louis XV, in which a great mass of public was found, fireworks were launched, which caused great fear in the crowd, which fled in the direction of another street. The imperfections in the terrain caused some people to fall, which led to many more falling, being crushed by passing carriages and even falling into the Seine riverbed.

The marriage was not consummated until seven years after the wedding, by which time the couple had already ascended the throne. This is attributed to Louis XVI's phimosis, which prevented him from having sexual relations, but also because the young man, due to his shyness, initially avoided his wife. Once these obstacles were finally overcome and he was more confident, they began a conjugal relationship from which four children were born:

• Maria Teresa, Madame Royale (19 December 1778-19 October 1851), duchess of Anguloma with Luis Antonio de France, and for the monarchists Queen Consort of France and Navarra (1830) for his marriage to himself.
• Luis José (22 October 1781-4 June 1789), dolphin of France and Duke of Brittany. Dead in childhood.
• Luis Carlos (27 March 1785-8 June 1795), Duke of Normandy. Considered king by the enemies of the republican regime and by several European States after the death of their father, although he never actually managed to govern.
• Sofia (9 July 1786-19 June 1787), killed at the age of eleven months.

In 1778 Louis XVI had an illegitimate daughter who was later also adopted by Queen Marie Antoinette named Ernestine Lambriquet who was the daughter of a Versailles maid named Marie-Philippine Noiret.

Accession to the throne and reign

Louis XVI at 20, by Duplessis.

After falling ill with black smallpox and suffering a slow agony, Louis XV died on May 10, 1774. Upon learning of the king's death, a large crowd flocked to the chambers of the until then dauphins of France and, entering they themselves addressed the couple as Your Majesties. Both Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were shocked and, kneeling down, exclaimed: “Oh, my God! We will reign too young. My God, guide us and protect us from our inexperience!"

The first measure that the young Louis XVI took as king was to dismiss the ministers most hated by public opinion; the duc d'Aiguillon and the abbot of Terray were discarded. However, the sovereign realized that he needed to have someone by his side to guide him in his difficult task. After ruling out the Duc de Choiseul and Machault, the king opted for Maurepas.

One of the most important decisions that the monarch had to make was whether or not to restore the Parliament of Paris, abolished by his grandfather's minister, Maupeou, who replaced it with the six Superior Courts of Arras, Blois, Clermont- Ferrand, Lyon, Paris and Poitiers. Finally, Louis XVI made the decision to restore them, allowing the return of the exiled members of Parliament, who were able to recover their posts.

The Count of Vergennes was in charge of Foreign Affairs, the Count of Muy of those of War, Antoine de Sartine of those of the Navy, Jacques Turgot was appointed Comptroller General of Finance (equivalent to Minister of Economy), Malesherbes he was posted to the Paris department and Armand Thomas Hue de Miromesnil was appointed keeper of the seal of France (the equivalent of a Minister of Justice).

After a period of debate about the celebration of the ceremony of consecration of the sovereign, considered an act of feudal servitude by various sectors (the minister Turgot himself was of this opinion), on June 11, 1775 he took held in the cathedral of Reims. The coronation was carried out using the procedure used since the consecration of Pepin the Short. The king was anointed by the Archbishop of Reims and received from him the royal attributes: the royal ring, the scepter, the Hand of Justice and the crown. A large number of patients (mainly scrofulous) came from all over France to be the newly anointed monarch laid his hands on them and prayed to God for his healing. The expense of the ceremony did not exceed the sum of 180,000 francs.

The famous Hôtel-Dieu in Paris, founded in the year 661 and dedicated for more than a millennium to charity and the care of the sick, was in a deplorable situation, having suffered a fire in 1772. Although the construction of four hospitals in the capital was planned to replace the old Hôtel-Dieu, the deficit of the coffers did not allow it; the different buildings that made up the thousand-year-old institution were considerably reformed and expanded. On December 14, 1774, the first stone of the new building of the Paris School of Medicine was laid on the banks of the Seine River. Later he dedicated himself to improving Justice. He freed a large number of men imprisoned for reasons of State, had the Code revised to eliminate the most severe sections, in 1780 abolished the question préparatoire (action of torture) and regulated the mitigation of the sentence by desertion.

The reign of Louis XVI is marked by numerous attempts at economic and institutional reforms along the lines of the reform initiated by René Nicolás Carlos Agustín de Maupeou (1771) under the reign of Louis XV. Louis XVI restores the Parliaments. On at least four occasions (Turgot, Necker, Calonne, Brienne and again Necker) he tries to carry out more or less profound reforms of the kingdom, and more specifically, the establishment of an egalitarian tax. On each occasion he runs into the opposition of the privileged (most of the nobility and a part of the clergy) and his closest circles (the court, the queen...). The Parliaments, formed by the toga nobility, clinging to the maintenance of privileges, are also opposed, and Luis does not think of exceeding the powers that the fundamental laws of the kingdom give him, so he has to endorse his reforms. He hopes to be able to establish his reforms in the States General, which are summoned in 1789.

If the stalling of his reforms by the nobility and high clergy is his biggest political hurdle, his biggest economic problem is the growing deficit. Then he thinks that the only way to end him is to take measures that compromise the privileges of the upper classes. The Estates General, summoned by their prime minister to try to carry them out as smoothly as possible, quickly escaped his control.

Ministry of Turgot

Luis XVI

Jacques Turgot.

Jacques Turgot is named controller general of finances by Louis XVI.

Turgot then launched into a "revolutionary" of creating a system of assemblies with a pyramidal structure, elected by the people: municipalities in the municipalities, districts in the provinces and finally a kingdom municipality. As the historian Victor Duruy explained in 1854: «There were very big news; Turgot planned other more fearsome ones: elimination of the burdens that suffocated the poor, establishment on the nobles and the clergy of a land tax; but improvement of the situation of the priests and vicars, who possessed the smallest portion of the income of the Church and suppression of the vast majority of the monasteries, equal participation in the tax through the creation of a cadastre, freedom of thought for Protestants, redemption of feudal rents, the same system of weights and measures for the whole kingdom, freedom of thought also for industry and commerce, and finally, as Turgot was concerned with moral and material needs, a vast plan of instruction. public to spread the Enlightenment (the principles of Enlightenment)".

A great coalition of individuals, whose interests were harmed by the reforms, was formed against Turgot: holders of the grain monopoly, parliamentarians belonging to the toga nobility, privileged..., etc. This coalition was joined by those close to the king (Minister Maurepas and Queen Marie Antoinette). The king tried to resist the privileged, his minister and the queen, in order to keep Turgot's plans. In March 1776 he declared: "I see that only Turgot and I love the people." There were serious disturbances: in almost all of France, popular revolts broke out over the price of flour (called the flour war), probably organized by some prince of the blood, who together with the rich bourgeoisie were harmed by the economic reforms, which spurred the already annoying hungry people.

After two years of resistance, Louis XVI and his reformist ministers gave in to pressure. Malesherbes resigned and the sovereign was forced to dismiss Turgot on May 12, 1776 and thwart his reforms.

Necker Ministry

Jacques Necker.

Turgot's replacement died several months after cessation. In October 1776, Louis XVI appointed Jacques Necker director of finances (the equivalent of controller general of finances). It was a triply avant-garde choice: Necker was a commoner, a foreigner (Geneva), and a Protestant.

Louis XVI and Necker returned to the essential reforms, Necker's ministry is thus characterized by the liberation of the last serfs of the kingdom, by an ordinance of August 8, 1779. This ordinance was favored by Voltaire, who in 1778 supported the cause of the serfs of Mont-Jura and the abbey of Saint-Claude. However, the ordinance was barely applied and serfdom persisted locally until the Revolution, when it would be eliminated with the abolition of privileges on the night of the 4th. August 1789.

It also abolished the prior question (applied to those sentenced to death). He also projected an organization of provincial assemblies, but with a purely financial purpose.

After Necker's publication of the rendition of the state of finances in 1781, the "war" that succeeded so well with Turgot began with his successor. Parliament rejected the edict that restored the provincial assemblies, and the courtiers, seeing their budgets reduced, used slander to undermine the authority of the king and his ministers. The monarch and Necker could not remain too long enduring the opposition of the privileged, so Necker submitted his resignation, which was accepted on May 21, 1781.

An edict of August 8, 1779 authorized married women, miners, and monks to spend their pension without requiring authorization (from the husband in the case of a married woman).

Calonne Ministry

Louis XVI appointed Charles Alexandre de Calonne, reputedly a good financial technician, as general inspector of finances (November 1783) and then Minister of State to replace Necker. Calonne carried out for three years a policy of expenses and loans, of "reactivation" according to some (large jobs in transport, industry, the trade agreement with England in 1786) intended to recover the credit of the State.

But it was false, Calonne had to return to the same reform plan as his predecessors: liberalize internal trade by eliminating internal customs, suppress treaties, reduce size, replace royal corveas (free jobs for commoners for the Crown, by nature, medieval) by a metal tax, transform the Discount Fund into a state bank and above all “submit the privileged to a tax and territorial subsidy; to establish the "elected" provincial assemblies, which would distribute this tax. Like Turgot, Calonne intended to create a pyramid of local assemblies (parish assemblies, municipal assemblies, and district assemblies) elected by the taxpayers.

Louis XVI told Calonne: "It is purely Necker what you propose to me!", but the plan was more like Turgot's. One of the main drafters of the project was the physiocrat Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours, a former collaborator of Turgot.

In order not to face the noble minority in Parliament, who always rejected the reforms, the government had to convene an assembly of 144 notables (also privileged) to carry out their project. But meeting in February-March 1787, it denies the egalitarian land tax. The monarch, who had maintained his support for Calonne for several months, abruptly withdrew it in April of that same year, possibly under the influence of the court, the queen or public opinion.

In January 1787, Louis XVI abolished the personal toll that Jews in Alsace had to pay.

Foreign Policy

The American War of Independence

Carlos III from Spain.

In the summer of 1776, news reached France of the proclamation of independence of the American colonies from England. Already in the previous year negotiations had taken place between the colonies and France. Finally, Vergennes convinced Louis XVI to enter the war for the freedom of the colonies, to the detriment of the hostile English. The goal of France was to recover the colonies lost in the Seven Years' War.

Benjamin Franklin.

On February 8, 1778, the Franco-American alliance was made public. That same year, Louis XVI welcomed Benjamin Franklin to France and convinced Carlos III of Spain to ally himself with the colonies. Another important piece of news was that Marie Antoinette became pregnant in the spring of 1778. She would give birth on December 19 of the same year, with great disappointment for those present: a girl, named María Teresa. Meanwhile, France had reaped numerous victories, including the decisive battle off Ouessant Island on July 27, 1778. Louis XVI himself, with the help of Sartine, Minister of the Navy, planned attacks in the English Channel. In 1779, the French managed to recapture Senegal, but suffered several naval defeats; In addition, his fleet and the Spanish fleet were decimated by diseases such as dysentery.

Portrait of John Adams, by Gilbert Stuart (1755-1828).

The king decided to garrison America by sending large troops, made up in part of noble courtiers, to the aid of General Washington. 1781 was an eventful year: in America there were numerous victories during the siege of Yorktown, and in France, on October 22, Marie Antoinette gave birth to the much-desired dauphin, Louis Joseph. Another important fact was the death of Maurepas on November 21. The courtiers then wondered who would be the successor, but the sovereign clarified everything by saying the following words: "J'entends régner" (I plan to reign).

On February 2, the Franco-Spanish fleet reconquered Menorca by defeating the English fleet. On the night of April 8-9, Louis XVI undertook to calm down a bourgeois uprising in Geneva, leaving behind the principles of absolutism, forgetting that he was fighting in America for liberty and equality. . As a consequence of this event, the delegates of the American Congress, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and John Jay, rejected the agreements with France and signed a separate peace with England, which angered the French king, who ordered Vergennes to reprimand Franklin.

Finally, on January 20, 1783, an agreement was reached when French, Spanish, American, and English delegates met in the Council Room of the Palace of Versailles. The signing of the agreement brought with it the obtaining by France of Senegal, some Caribbean islands and commercial stopovers in India and Dunkirk, but the French lost six million pounds initially agreed with the Americans, which worsened the financial crisis of the State. The deficit reached 80 million pounds.

Relations with Austria

Joseph II of Habsburg.

In the first months of 1778, the War of the Bavarian Succession broke out over the alleged rights to the Lower-Bavarian throne of Emperor Joseph II, brother of Marie Antoinette. The queen, suffering constant psychological blackmail from her mother, and skilfully manipulated by Ambassador Mercy, spoke to her husband and his ministers about the Austrian cause, but they and the king opposed it, the outbursts of the queen being worthless. queen, and her pregnancy in the spring did not change the situation either. Louis XVI decided to mediate between the two parties, asking Joseph II to renounce his rights to the throne of Lower Bavaria. Peace was signed at Teschen on May 13, 1779.

Catherine II of Russia, the Great.

In 1782, Joseph II expressly asked his sister to ask the king to intervene in support of Austria and Russia in an operation advantageous to all three nations. Together with Tsarina Catherine II, Joseph II intended to carve up the Ottoman Empire, and Egypt was offered to Louis XVI in exchange for France's neutrality. The sovereign was able to accept this offer, but he wrote a letter to his brother-in-law in which he denounced the "monstrous compensation system" that caused perennial conflicts in the old continent. José, resentful and angry and convinced that France had long been the protector of the Ottoman Empire and would have defended it, was forced to renounce his plans. Marie Antoinette had a rapprochement with Luis, becoming pregnant again and having a miscarriage on November 1, 1783.

In 1784, Joseph II, giving up the Balkans, focused on the Netherlands. He wanted the Dutch to reopen the mouth of the Scheldt River to allow the full expansion of the port of Antwerp in the Austrian Netherlands. That was a violation of the Peace of Westphalia that France took notice of. The emperor's plans, in addition to violating Dutch business interests, upset the French. Exasperated by his brother-in-law, who did not stop endangering peace in Europe, Luis had no intention of supporting him; furthermore, Gallic public opinion aligned with the Netherlands, even having a fit of rage against the emperor.

The emperor put new pressure on Marie Antoinette, but the sovereign's requests were useless, even though she became pregnant for the fourth time. She had no choice but to confess her defeat to her brother. Although she sensed that the king did not support, Joseph II reaffirmed himself by force and sent an Austrian ship down the Scheldt. After several warnings, the Dutch fired on the ship. The emperor threatened to declare war. When hostilities reached the point where peace could be destroyed in Europe, Louis XVI appeared as a peacemaker. José asked for 10 million guilders to renounce his conquests, reduced to eight by the Dutch. Louis XVI offered to pay the remaining two million out of love for peace, as he said. This futile reconciliation maneuver was attributed to the influence of the queen, who, on March 27, 1785, gave birth to another male: Luis Carlos. A year later she would have María Sofía Elena Beatriz, who would die of tuberculosis after almost a year of life.

The Estates General

On May 5, 1789, the Estates General met in Versailles. The Third Estate quickly entered into opposition with the other two. What was happening those days did not implicate the sovereigns, who were watching the already dying dauphin. Luis José died on June 4, 1789, and Louis XVI decided to suspend the meetings of the States General for two months, as a sign of mourning. The Third Estate, which had proclaimed itself a National Assembly, rejected the king's decision and, meeting on June 20 in the Ball Room, swore not to dissolve until France had a constitution.

On July 9, the National Assembly became the National Constituent Assembly. On the same day, most of the clergy and fifty nobles joined the newborn Assembly. To control it, the king had the regiments of Marshal de Broglie brought from Alsace to take Versailles and Paris, but the presence of soldiers led to the discovery of the monarchical plot. Popular fury increased on July 13, and the monarch accepted Necker's resignation. On July 14, the Parisian people and a good number of deserters took the Bastille fortress, for them a symbol of royal despotism: The Revolution had begun.

The Revolution

Bastille takepainted in 1789 by Jean-Pierre-Louis-Laurent Houel.

In the weeks that followed, the more conservative families, such as the Artois or the Polignacs, fled the country for fear of being killed. On July 17, Louis XVI left for Paris, although the queen tried in every way to make him give up: she considered it a humiliating and dangerous action, having no hope of seeing him alive again. The king returned to Versailles. He had supported the revolution in Paris and wore the tricolor cockade, a symbol of the union of the monarchy and the nation, on his hat. On July 29, at the request of the people, Necker returned and was appointed Prime Minister of Finance.

Meanwhile, fear of a military reaction by émigré nobles, famine, and bewilderment at events in Paris sparked throughout France a series of peasant revolts known as the Great Fear, directed almost exclusively to the detriment of the nobility. To remedy this, on August 4, the Assembly voted the abolition of feudal rights and the equality of all citizens before the law, putting an end to feudalism. The king was furious, since his person was at the top of the same class society that the revolutionaries wanted to subvert with their demands for equality. On October 1, a dinner was given at the Palace of Versailles in honor of the Flanders regiments, but news leaked out in Paris that it was in fact an anti-revolutionary meeting. On October 5, an armed mob made up of its Most of the women marched on Versailles to ask the king for bread and petition him in the hope that the situation would be resolved. On the morning of October 6, the royal rooms were invaded and there were deaths among the guards and civilians. The family was then forced to move to Paris, to the Tuileries Palace, under the surveillance of the National Guard.

Marie Antoinette portrayed by Kucharsky shortly before the escape to Varennes. On the lower left side you can see the bayonet blow that a revolutionary killed the painting.

On October 10, 1789, the General Assembly approved Louis's new title: Louis, par la grâce de Dieu et la loi de l'État constitutionnelle, Roi des Français (« Louis, by the grace of God and the law of the constitutional state, King of the French"). From this moment he obtained the title of King of the French, which not only differed grammatically from that of King of France, but also symbolized the change in the State, and the change in conception of the monarch, who now "belonged to the French and owed allegiance to them."

No longer able to go hunting and not even leave the Tuileries, the king fell into a profound apathy. The agitation began to grow in the royal family and talk began of plans to escape from Paris, to seek political and military support in the European courts. The undertaking was very risky and complicated. Thus, the kings had to make pacts with the most moderate sector of the Assembly. A secret correspondence began between the royal family and the Marquis Honoré Mirabeau. The sovereigns studied Mirabeau's reports in detail; but they had more confidence in Count Fersen and in Breteuil: the latter, emigrated to Switzerland, was appointed by the monarch as his only representative in the European courts.

Meanwhile, the presence of the National Guard reminded the kings that they were political prisoners and also called them to a state of submission. They feared the Constitution with whose preamble they did not agree, but also the warnings from the exiled nobles, who claimed to want to set off a genuine counterrevolution. But these nobles showed nothing but contempt for Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, who, terrified by their claims, had sent emissaries urging them to calm down. Meanwhile, popular anger against the kings was unleashed in Paris because Marat accused Louis XVI of being the leader of a counterrevolution and incited the people to exterminate the royal family. This is how the Parisians got used to seeing Louis XVI as a traitor to the nation who deserved death.

Because of this, the queen, encouraged by Count Fersen, began to urge her husband to decide to flee Paris. Mirabeau also advised the family to flee: he proposed organizing an army made up of loyal troops (according to him, receiving help from foreign troops would have been an irreparable mistake) to dissolve the Assembly and elect a new one to revise the Constitution in favor of the monarch. At first, Louis XVI did not agree, but he consented after being forced to sign the Civil Constitution of the Clergy: "Under such conditions, I would rather be King of Metz than remain King of France" he seems to have said immediately after ratifying the decree.

French currency of 1791. On the opposite appears the king's bust with the inscription: «Louis XVI. Roi des Français». On the reverse appear fascio and the frigid cap, both symbols of the National Constituent Assembly that would come to be fully associated with the French Republic.

Problems multiplied after Mirabeau's death on April 2, 1791. The king, although he did not trust him very much, considered him the only man capable of speaking out the monarchical cause in the National Assembly. On April 18, Easter Day, the family was detained by the mob and was not allowed to celebrate mass in Saint-Cloud. In anger, Louis XVI exclaimed: "It is astonishing that, after giving freedom to the nation, I myself should be deprived of it." The queen and the two children got out of the carriage and headed for the Tuileries to the boos and laughter of the mob. "The king has reached the lowest step of vileness" wrote Madame Roland, the wife of a Girondin, who opened a salon in Paris. «He has been exposed by those around him; he inspires nothing but contempt... People call him Luis the Liar or the fat pig. It is impossible to imagine such an abominable being on the throne." L'Ami du peuple described Louis Capet as a hypocritical, physically vulgar being, who "consoled himself with a bottle".

Return from the royal family to Paris after his capture in Varennes.

On June 21, 1791, the royal family fled to the Austrian Netherlands, but a few kilometers from the border, near the town of Varennes-en-Argonne, they were recognized, arrested, and sent to Paris. The return trip was a real nightmare: in Épernay a man spat in front of the king and others tried to kill him. The escape attempt completely demolished the already very dented idea of the sacredness of the king's person. It began to be thought that a king, who had betrayed his own country by trying to escape, was no longer necessary to the State; but the monarch left a claim explaining the reasons for his flight: in that long act of accusation, he accused the Revolution from the beginning, emphasizing that he was coerced into carrying out the acts that the Assembly wanted.

The kings lived another year in the Tuileries, feeling like prisoners. Meanwhile, on September 14, 1791, Louis accepted the French Constitution (actually he did not agree with its content; he accepted it out of fear of the Assembly). The sovereign, encouraged by part of the Assembly, declared war on Austria but in June 1792 used his veto power to prohibit the deportation of priests who had not sworn allegiance to the new Constitution and the creation of a body of provincial soldiers. to assign them outside of Paris. On June 20, 1792, the mob in arms attacked the Tuileries for the first time. Both his apologists and his detractors attribute a cold impassivity to Louis XVI on that occasion. He did not even tremble when a butcher, a certain Legendre,^{[citation needed]} railed against him saying: «Sir, you have to worry about listening, you are a rascal. He has always deceived us and will continue to do so. Our patience has run out. People are sick of his staging!" While he was affirming this, he forced the sovereign to lean out on the balcony. The sovereign impassively agreed to put on the Phrygian cap and drank wine to the health of the people. The National Assembly delegated 25 deputies who, together with the mayor of Paris, Pétion, managed to calm the crowd and convince them to disperse peacefully.

The events of June 20 anticipated what would happen on August 10, when a Hébertist-led popular insurrection overthrew the capital's municipal government to set up a rebel commune and pressure the discredited National Assembly to dethrone the King. That day the most violent assault on the building took place, which sentenced the final fall of the French monarchy. In the Tuileries, all the Swiss guards of the palace, a large number of servants and some aristocrats died while remaining to defend the royal family that was no longer in the palace. At the request of Pierre-Louis Roederer, government delegate in the Seine department, they had already sought refuge in the National Assembly where the king and the dauphin were greeted with loud applause. By two in the morning, the Assembly had become already in Convention for national security, determined to lock up the royal family. The sovereign had to assist in the creation of a provisional government made up solely of revolutionaries. On the afternoon of August 13, 1792, the King of the French was officially arrested and taken prisoner in the Temple, a tower part of a state property and that belonged to the Order of the Templars, transformed into a prison for the royal family.

[...] Between the absolute Monarchy and the National Assembly centuries passed; from the Assembly to the Constitution two years; from the Constitution to the assault of the Tuileries, a couple of months; from the assault of the Tuileries to the prison only three days. There's still a few weeks left for the cloak and then just a chin for the grave.

Stefan Zweig

Citizen Louis Capet

Seclusion in the Temple Tower

Luis in the Temple prison, oil by Jean-François Garneray (1755-1837).

In the Temple, the royal family was separated from their companions, among whom was the princess of Lamballe; the latter would die during the September massacres. Only Hanet Cléry, one of the dauphin's servants, was allowed to stay with them, even when the conditions of detention worsened. Fearing that the royal family could maintain a hidden correspondence, various measures were taken. But despite this, Cléry managed to report the news that he had heard abroad when he came to do the hair for the king or the ladies. Afterwards, each evening, the royalist faithful had a newsboy shout out the day's news just below the Temple walls.

During the period of the king's seclusion, in addition to being his son's teacher and playing with him, he dedicated his last days to reading the books that were in the tower's library: fifteen hundred volumes that made up the archive of the knights of malta He read about one book a day, frowning when he read Voltaire and Rousseau, claiming they would have been the ruin of France. Louis also had to endure various rudeness from the guards, who in addition to start by calling him Monsieur (Sir) or even Louis (Louis) instead of Majesté (Majesty), they littered the outer walls of the towers with obscene drawings or threatening graffiti. On September 21, the prisoners heard a great clamor coming from the city. From outside an imperious voice proclaimed that the monarchy had been officially abolished and the Republic had been born. The queen went to bed feeling miserable and the king did not even interrupt her reading.

Process

Meanwhile, the debate began about the fate of the sovereign. It was believed that as long as he was alive, he would provide the pretext for a counter-revolution. Thus, two commissions were created: one with the task of investigating the documents found in the Tuileries and the other with the duty of establishing whether Louis Capet, declared inviolable by the Constitution, could be prosecuted.

On November 6, the sovereign's immunity was revoked, with which the former monarch could be placed under the process of the Convention. On November 19, the iron cabinet was discovered, hiding the correspondence between Louis XVI and foreign sovereigns. After such a discovery, some deputies, such as Robespierre or Saint-Just, declared their desire to punish the citizen Louis Capet without any trial, but the majority of the Convention opted instead for a regular trial, so that France and foreign countries did not doubt the legality of the verdict.

The Convention interrogates Luis the Ultimate.

At the beginning of the process, on December 10, 1792, Luis was separated from his family. Meanwhile, the ex-monarch tried to gather the lawyers who would defend him, but very few agreed to it. In the end, the only ones willing to defend him were Malesherbes, François Denis Tronchet, a former magistrate, and the lawyer Raymond de Sèze, a Girondin feared for his great oratory and intellectual abilities. Louis Capet worked actively with his lawyers, but he knew he had little chance. to save himself: «I do not hope to convince the deputies and neither to move them. I only beg you not to resort to perorations regarding my dignity. I do not want to arouse any other interest than the one that has to arise spontaneously from the exposition of my justifications.» he told de Sèze.On December 25 he wrote his Testament, a document of great political value.

The next day, de Sèze developed his lengthy argument, but he was not convinced: he wanted to demonstrate the inviolability of the sovereign, referred to in the Constitution of 1791, and asked that he be tried as a normal citizen and not as a head of state. The deputies were divided, since the most moderate wanted to try the monarch but not execute him. The debates lasted several days but finally the death sentence was proclaimed (with 362 votes in favor, 288 against and 72 abstentions) and it was read at 2 in the morning on January 19. The execution was set at eleven in the morning in the Plaza de la Revolución (today Plaza de la Concordia) on January 21.

The monarch was prepared for the verdict. He listened in silence to the sentence with stoic resignation; the only moment in which he showed surprise was when he heard that his cousin, Philippe of Orleans, then known as Philippe Égalité (Philip Equality) had voted in favor of his death. He was led by the refractory priest (that is to say, that he had not sworn to the constitution) Edgeworth de Firmont to whom he gave a signed copy of his will, as he feared that the one given to the Convention would never be made public. At eight in the evening, Luis Capeto was taken to his family. Madame Royale in her memoirs said that her father told Marie Antoinette about the process, then, taking the dauphin and sitting it on her knees, made them promise to spare her enemies. She wrote: "My father cried for us, not out of fear of death." Marie Antoinette would have wanted to spend the last night with her husband, but he refused her. Later the king told Edgeworth: “It is terrible to love so much on earth and to be loved so much in return. But now every thought and every love must go only to God."

Execution

On the morning of January 21, 1793, after receiving communion, Louis XVI, called Louis Capet by the revolutionaries and still King of France and Navarre by the monarchists, entrusted Cléry with the task of giving the last goodbye to his relatives and left the Temple in a carriage. At quarter past ten in the morning, the condemned man arrived at the place where the guillotine was installed, the then-called Plaza de la Revolución.

The execution of Luis XVI.

As he stepped out of the carriage, he took off his jacket, unbuttoned his linen shirt, and pulled the scarf from around his neck. Some guards tried to tie his hands, but Luis indignantly refused: "You will do as you are told, but you will never tie me." Edgeworth helped him up the steep steps of the scaffold and, reaching the gallows, the executioner Sanson he cut off her ponytail and finally had to agree to have her hands tied, urged on by Edgeworth, who told him that this would be his "final sacrifice". After all this, Luis de Borbón asked if the drums would roll during his performance; the former Louis XVI of France, managing to get away from the executioner, made as if to turn towards the people of France, being arrested in the attempt; he even exclaimed: «People, I die innocent of all the crimes of which I am accused! I forgive those who caused my death and I pray to God that the blood that you are going to shed never falls on France!" firmness that astonished all of us. I am convinced that he drew his strength from the principles of religion, of which no one seemed more convinced and affected than he was.” A minute or two after 10:20, he was finally guillotined.

Lithography of Louis XVII. Luis Carlos became Louis XVII for the monarchists after the death of his father.

Already decapitated, a young member of the National Guard picked up the bloody head and showed it to the people walking along the scaffold. A roar was heard proclaiming "Long live the Republic!" Most of those present began to sing "La Marseillaise", while some spectators began to dance in a circle around the scaffold. Others were busy collecting the blood that had leaked through the beams of the scaffold; some tried it. An assistant hangman auctioned off the clothes and hair of the late Louis XVI. The guards, meanwhile, placed the corpse together with the head in a wicker basket which they transferred to a cart. He later went to the Magdalena cemetery, where Louis XVI de Bourbon, the last monarch of the French Old Regime, was buried. In the Restoration (1815-1830), under the reign of his brother Louis XVIII (1815-1824), His remains were transferred along with those of Queen Marie Antoinette to the Basilica of Saint-Denis, where they were reinterred in lead coffins, in their own mausoleum worthy of a French monarch.

On his death, his eight-year-old son, Luis Carlos, automatically became King Louis XVII for royalists and European monarchs. Queen Marie Antoinette, like her husband, was sentenced to the guillotine, which she had to face on October 16, 1793, and just as Madame Isabella (the sister of Luis XVI) on May 10, 1794. The boy Louis XVII died under mysterious circumstances, perhaps from tuberculosis, on June 8, 1795. Only his sister Maria Theresa survived the Revolution, living in complete solitude for a year after the execution of his aunt Isabel; At the end of the war, she was used as a hostage and released on December 26, 1795. She went into exile in Austria, where her relatives resided, and, following the wishes of her uncles, married her cousin. She Luis Antonio, Duke of Angoulême.

Relics

The aforementioned fact that many of those present at the king's execution soaked pieces of cloth in the monarch's blood is widely known. Relatively recent are the appearances on the scene of individual relics that supposedly contain traces of the blood of Louis XVI.

The ones that are presumably known are:

• A handkerchief with blood remains of the monarch contained in a carved pumpkin. Assumed, Maximilien Bourdaloue, a citizen, wet his handkerchief in the blood of Louis XVI and later commissioned the carved pumpkin to use it as a container. The pumpkin is in possession of a family of Bologne (Italy) for more than a century. The DNA of the blood stain from the bottom of the container has been analyzed by CSIC scientists, finding that it belonged to a European individual with blue eyes, as Louis XVI had (and can be seen in the paintings of Antoine-François Callet).

• A small piece of cloth (whose dimensions are 20x16 cm) stained equally with blood, accompanied by a handwritten note on paper that reads: "The precious blood of Louis XVI, January 21, 1793. Delivered by Colonel Joubert in 1829." Both fabric and paper are, together with a small sand duffel (supposedly from the place where the sovereign was executed), contained in a small coffer of mahogany. The chest and its contents were auctioned in April 2013.

Reactions to the execution of the monarch

The death of the sovereign outraged all the European monarchies and Rome itself. Pope Pius VI, in his apology Quare Lacrymae, addressed the issue of the beatification of Louis XVI for the first time.

With the restoration of the monarchy in 1814, the self-styled "good French society" (in favor of the return of the Bourbons) began to mourn to expiate the guilt of the double regicide and idealized the life of the two monarchs. On January 18, 1815, the exhumation of the bodies of the kings began, buried in the Madeleine cemetery, with a view to a burial in the Saint-Denis basilica, appropriate for a French sovereign. The remains of Queen Marie Antoinette were removed first, followed by those of Louis XVI, all thanks to the fact that a lawyer named Pierre Louis Desclozeaux had pinpointed the exact location of the bodies by planting trees. Their eldest daughter, Princess Maria Theresa, was led to this ancient burial place by the Countess of Bearne, Madame de Tourzel, where she is said to have fallen to her knees and began to pray.

By order of Louis XVIII, two expiatory chapels were built, one in Marie Antoinette's cell in the Conciergerie and the other in the Madeleine cemetery. The latter, designed as a classical mausoleum, was located in the place where the kings were originally buried. On January 21, 1815, the remains of the sovereigns were taken in great pomp to the Saint-Denis basilica, where they were buried in lead coffins. From that moment on, poets, writers, painters and sculptors sympathetic to his ideas did nothing but exalt the virtues of the Roi Martyr.

Personality

Louis XVI did not work methodically every day, but rather allowed himself numerous breaks, during which he read travel tales, consulted geographical maps, devoted himself to studies of topography, physics or chemistry. Likewise, he entertained himself by planning the daily route of the hunting hunts, one of his great passions. The king's other great passion was assembling and fixing locks and forging keys and padlocks together with Gamain, the royal blacksmith, and Poux-Landry, an expert in mechanics. All work with locks and keys was done in a forge set up inside his personal library. The courtiers, beginning with Queen Marie Antoinette herself, were surprised to see him engaged in such "low" tasks. Two hypotheses have been developed to explain this, a priori, so strange behaviour:

• One of them defends that it could be obsessive neurosis; after all, Luis XVI showed other «rarezas»: he pointed out everything by insignificant that was, like the nights past outside the palace, the walks, the horseback riding, the downhill dams, the animals (dogs, swallows,...) mistakenly debated during the hunting smoothies, etc.
• On the other hand, according to the psychoanalysts Nicolás Abraham and María Torok, Luis XVI would have been subjected to a cryptophoria, term used to describe a disorder in which the affected individual loses his own identity and personality to replace them with the imitation of those of a deceased relative, usually a brother or a sister. If the conjecture is true, most likely the “ghost” of the sovereign would be his eldest brother, the Duke of Burgundy, Luis de France, a healthy and intelligent child to whom it happened as the delphin future of France and whose death at the age of ten affected him deeply.

Ancestors

Legacy

Cenotafio de Luis XVI y María Antonieta en Saint-Denis.

19th century historian Jules Michelet attributed the restoration of the French monarchy to the commotion caused by the execution of Louis XVI. Michelet's Histoire de la Révolution Française and Alphonse de Lamartine's Histoire des Girondins, in particular, showed the traces of sentiments aroused by the regicide of the revolution. The two writers did not share the same sociopolitical views, but agreed that although the monarchy ended properly in 1792, the lives of the royal family should have been spared. The lack of compassion at the time contributed to the radicalization of revolutionary violence and further division among the French. For the XX century novelist Albert Camus the execution marked the end of God's role in history, for which he regretted. For the philosopher of the XX century Jean-François Lyotard, the regicide was the starting point of all French thought, the memory of which it serves as a reminder that French modernity began under the sign of a crime.

Louis's daughter, Maria Theresa of France, the future Duchess of Angoulême, survived the French Revolution and lobbied vigorously in Rome for her father's canonization as a saint of the Catholic Church. Despite having signed the "Civil Constitution of the Clergy," Louis had been described as a martyr by Pope Pius VI in 1793. In 1820, however, a memorandum from the Congregation of Rites in Rome, declaring the The impossibility of proving that Luis had been executed for religious rather than political reasons put an end to hopes of canonization.

Some of the commemorations to Louis XVI include:

• The Réquiem en Do menor for the mixed choir of Luigi Cherubini was written in 1816, in memory of Luis XVI.
• Symphony of Paul Wranitzky, op. 31, which has as its theme the events of the French Revolution, includes a section entitled "The funeral march for the death of King Louis XVI".
• The city of Louisville, in the state of Kentucky, bears the name of Louis XVI. In 1780, the General Assembly of Virginia granted this name in honor of the French king, whose soldiers were helping the American side in the War of Independence. The Virginia General Assembly saw the King as a noble man, but many other continental delegates disagreed. (At that time, Kentucky was part of the Commonwealth of Virginia Kentucky became the fifteenth state of the United States in 1792.)

In cinema and literature

King Louis XVI has been portrayed in numerous films. In Captain of the Watch (1930), he is played by Stuart Holmes. In Marie Antoinette (1938), he was played by actor Robert Morley. Jean-François Balmer played him in the 1989 two-part miniseries History of a Revolution. Most recently, he was portrayed in the 2006 film Marie Antoinette by actor Jason Schwartzman. In Si Versailles m'était conté, Louis was played by one of the film's producers, Gilbert Bokanowski, using the alias Gilbert Boka. Various portrayals have maintained the image of a clumsy, almost foolish king, such as Jacques Morel's in the 1956 French film Marie-Antoinette reine de France and Terence Budd's in the live-action film Lady Oscar. In Start the Revolution Without Me, Louis XVI is portrayed by Hugh Griffith as a ridiculous cuckold. Mel Brooks played a comic version of Louis XVI in The History of the World Part 1, portraying him as a rake who has such a distaste for the peasantry that he uses them as targets in skeet shooting. In the 1996 film Ridicule de ; Urbain Cancelier plays Louis.

Louis XVI has also been the subject of novels, including two of the alternate histories anthologized in If It Had Been Otherwise (1931): "If Drouet's Cart Had Got Stuck" by Hilaire Belloc and "If Louis XVI had had an atom of firmness". by André Maurois that tell very different stories but imagine Louis surviving and still reigning in the early 19th century. Louis appears in Robert Lawson's children's book Ben and Me, but does not appear in the 1953 animated short film based on the same book.

Robert Morley as Louis XVI in the film Marie Antoinette 1938.

Titles

Predecessor: Louis XV	King of France and Navarre Copríncipe de Andorra 1774-1789	Successor: Abolition of title (he himself as king of the French)
Predecessor: New title (he himself as king of France and Navarre)	King of the French 1789-1792	Successor: Abolition of title (First French Republic)
Predecessor: Abolition of the Monarchy (he himself as king of the French)	King holder of France and Navarre Copríncipe de Andorra 1792-1793	Successor: Louis XVII (Rey holder of France and Navarre) Napoleon Bonaparte (copríncipe de Andorra)
Predecessor: Luis Fernando de Francia	Dolphin of France 1765-1774	Successor: Luis José de France
Predecessor: Carlos de Borbón y Baviera	Duke of Berry 1754-1765	Successor: Carlos Felipe de Borbón y Saxony

Awards

French Orders

• Great Master of the Order of the Holy Spirit
• Grand Master of the Order of San Miguel
• Grand Master of the Order of San Luis

Foreign Orders

• Knight of the Order of the Golden Toy (Reino de España)

Ancestors

References and notes