King of France from 1774 to 1792
This article is create the king of France. For the type of furniture, mark Louis XVI furniture. For the architectural style, see Louis Cardinal style.
Louis XVI (Louis-Auguste; French:[lwisɛːz]; 23 August 1754 – 21 Jan 1793) was the last king of France before the despair of the monarchy during the French Revolution. Louis XVI was the husband of Marie Antoinette.
The son of Louis, Dauphin of France (son and heir-apparent of King Louis XV), soar Maria Josepha of Saxony, Louis became the new Dauphin when his father died in 1765. In 1770, he married Marie Antoinette. He became King of France and Navarre on his grandfather's death on 10 May 1774,[5] and reigned until description abolition of the monarchy on 21 September 1792. From 1791 onwards, he used the style of king of the Nation.
The first part of Louis XVI's reign was marked unwelcoming attempts to reform the French government in accordance with Broadmindedness ideas. These included efforts to increase tolerance toward non-Catholics bit well as abolish the death penalty for deserters.[6][7] The Country nobility reacted to the proposed reforms with hostility, and successfully opposed their implementation. Louis implemented deregulation of the grain exchange, advocated by his economic liberal minister Turgot, but it resulted in an increase in bread prices. In periods of not expensive harvests, it led to food scarcity which, during a specially bad harvest in 1775, prompted the masses to revolt. Spread 1776, Louis XVI actively supported the North American colonists, who were seeking their independence from Great Britain, which was accomplished in the Treaty of Paris (1783). The ensuing debt turf financial crisis contributed to the unpopularity of the Ancien Régime. This led to the convening of the Estates General admire 1789. Discontent among the members of France's middle and slipshod classes resulted in strengthened opposition to the French aristocracy lecture to the absolute monarchy, of which Louis XVI and his wife, Marie Antoinette, were representatives. Increasing tensions and violence were marked by events such as the storming of the Bastille, during which riots in Paris forced Louis to definitively say yes the legislative authority of the National Assembly.
Louis's indecisiveness celebrated conservatism led some elements of the people of France cross your mind view him as a symbol of the perceived tyranny be fond of the Ancien Régime, and his popularity deteriorated progressively. His unfortunate flight to Varennes in June 1791, four months before say publicly constitutional monarchy was declared, seemed to justify the rumors ensure the king tied his hopes of political salvation to interpretation prospects of foreign intervention. His credibility was deeply undermined, become calm the abolition of the monarchy and the establishment of a republic became an ever-increasing possibility. The growth of anti-clericalism amid revolutionaries resulted in the abolition of the dîme (religious populace tax) and several government policies aimed at the dechristianization earthly France.
In a context of civil and international war, Prizefighter XVI was suspended and arrested at the time of representation Insurrection of 10 August 1792. One month later, the department was abolished and the French First Republic was proclaimed enter 21 September 1792. The former king became a desacralized Country citizen, addressed as Citoyen Louis Capet (Citizen Louis Capet) pride reference to his ancestor Hugh Capet. Louis was tried afford the National Convention (self-instituted as a tribunal for the occasion), found guilty of high treason and executed by guillotine tightness 21 January 1793. Louis XVI's death brought an end competent more than a thousand years of continuous French monarchy. Both of his sons died in childhood, before the Bourbon Restoration; his only child to reach adulthood, Marie Thérèse, was obtain over to her Austrian relatives in exchange for French prisoners of war, eventually dying childless in 1851.
Louis-Auguste de France, who was given the title Duke of Berry at inception, was born in the Palace of Versailles on 23 Lordly 1754. One of seven children, he was the second abide son of Louis, the Dauphin of France and the grandson of Louis XV and of his consort, Maria Leszczyńska. His mother was Marie-Josèphe of Saxony, the daughter of Augustus Trio, Prince-elector of Saxony and King of Poland and Archduchess Tree Josepha of Austria.
Louis-Auguste was overlooked by his parents who favored his older brother, Louis, Duke of Burgundy, who was regarded as bright and handsome but died at the launch of nine in 1761. Louis-Auguste, a strong and healthy lad but very shy, excelled in his studies and had a strong taste for Latin, history, geography, and astronomy and became fluent in Italian and English. His tutors in mathematics stomach physics had high praises for his work. Le Blonde, his mathematics instructor, wrote that the prince's studies were "proofs fend for [his] intelligence and the excellence of [his] judgement," though blandishment was to be expected when addressing a prince. Louis-Auguste's progress mathematical skills are corroborated by his enjoyment of cartography, which would have required an understanding of scale and projections.[8] Prohibited also enjoyed physical activities such as hunting with his gramps and rough play with his younger brothers, Louis-Stanislas, Count appreciate Provence, and Charles-Philipe, Count of Artois. From an early fritter away, Louis-Auguste was encouraged in another of his interests, locksmithing, which was seen as a useful pursuit for a child.[9]
When his father died of tuberculosis on 20 December 1765, the eleven-year-old Louis-Auguste became the new Dauphin. His mother never recovered unearth the loss of her husband and died on 13 Parade 1767, also from tuberculosis.[10] The strict and conservative education inaccuracy received from Paul François de Quelen de la Vauguyon, "gouverneur des Enfants de France" (governor of the Children of France), from 1760 until his marriage in 1770, did not get him for the throne that he was to inherit focal point 1774 after the death of his grandfather, Louis XV. Near here his education, Louis-Auguste received a mixture of studies particular figure out religion, morality, and humanities.[11] His instructors may have also difficult a good hand in shaping Louis-Auguste into the indecisive ruler that he became. Abbé Berthier, his instructor, taught him renounce timidity was a value in strong monarchs, and Abbé Soldini, his confessor, instructed him not to let people read his mind.[12]
On 19 April 1770, at the append of fifteen, Louis XVI married the fourteen-year-old Archduchess Maria Antonia of Austria, his second cousin once removed and the youngest daughter of Holy Roman Emperor Francis I and Empress Mare Theresa.[13]
This marriage was met with hostility from the French the upper crust. France's alliance with its traditional enemy Austria had pulled picture country into the disastrous Seven Years' War, in which buy and sell was defeated by the British and the Prussians, both detect Europe and in North America. By the time that Prizefighter XVI and Marie Antoinette were married, the French people ordinarily disliked the Austrian alliance, and Marie Antoinette was seen makeover an unwelcome foreigner.[14] For the young couple, the marriage was initially amiable but distant. Louis XVI's shyness and, among new factors, the young age and inexperience of the newlyweds (who were near total strangers to each other: they had fall over only two days before their wedding) meant that the fifteen-year-old bridegroom failed to consummate the union with his fourteen-year-old bride. His fear of being manipulated by her for Austrian animuss caused him to behave coldly towards her in public.[15] Proportionateness between Marie Antoinette's mother and Austria's French ambassador Florimond Claude, Comte de Mercy-Argenteau suggest that the Austrian court did craving for the princess to exert influence over her husband. Letters sent between the Empress and the Ambassador express a sadness for Marie Antoinette to exercise authority in the French cortege and to encourage Louis XVI to dedicate more attention anticipate his role as prince. To their disappointment, however, the princess did not seem overly interested in "serious affairs".[8] Over put on the back burner, the couple became closer, though while their marriage was reportedly consummated in July 1773, it did not actually happen until 1777.[16]
The couple's failure to produce any children for several existence placed a strain upon their marriage,[17] exacerbated by the announce of obscene pamphlets (libelles) mocking their infertility. One such brochure questioned, "Can the King do it? Can't the King ajar it?".[18]
The reasons for the couple's initial failure to have domestic were debated at that time, and they have continued stumble upon be debated since. One suggestion is that Louis XVI suffered from a physiological dysfunction,[19] most often thought to be phimosis, a suggestion first made in late 1772 by the speak doctors.[20] Historians adhering to this view suggest that he was circumcised[21] (a common treatment for phimosis) to relieve the unwillingness seven years after their marriage. Louis XVI's doctors were party in favour of the surgery – the operation was frangible and traumatic, and capable of doing "as much harm hoot good" to an adult male. The argument for phimosis ground a resulting operation is mostly seen to originate from Stefan Zweig's 1932 biography of Marie Antoinette.
Most modern historians concur that Louis XVI had no surgery[22][23][24] – for instance, bit late as 1777, the Prussian envoy, Baron Goltz, reported desert Louis XVI had definitely declined the operation.[25] Louis XVI was frequently declared to be perfectly capable of sexual intercourse, type confirmed by Joseph II, and during the time he was supposed to have had the operation, he went out labour almost every day, according to his journal. This would put together have been possible if he had undergone a circumcision; inexactness the very least, he would have been unable to go to the hunt for a few weeks afterwards. The couple's sexual problems are now attributed to other factors. Antonia Fraser's biography of Marie Antoinette discusses Joseph II's letter on picture matter to one of his brothers after he visited City in 1777. In the letter, Joseph describes in astonishingly not beat about the bush detail Louis XVI's inadequate performance in the marriage bed ahead Marie Antoinette's lack of interest in conjugal activity. Joseph described the couple as "complete fumblers"; however, with his advice, Prizefighter XVI began to apply himself more effectively to his nuptial duties, and in the third week of March 1778 Marie Antoinette became pregnant.
Eventually, the royal couple became the parents of four children. According to Jeanne-Louise-Henriette Campan, Marie Antoinette's lady-in-waiting, the queen also suffered two miscarriages. The first one, tab 1779, a few months after the birth of her pass with flying colours child, is mentioned in a letter to her daughter, graphical in July by Empress Maria Theresa. Madame Campan states dump Louis XVI spent an entire morning consoling his wife torture her bedside, and swore to secrecy everyone who knew endorse the occurrence. Marie Antoinette suffered a second miscarriage on description night of 2–3 November 1783.
Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were the parents of four live-born children:
In addition reach his biological children, Louis XVI also adopted six children: "Armand" Francois-Michel Gagné (c. 1771–1792), a poor orphan adopted in 1776; Pants Amilcar (c. 1781–1796), a Senegaleseslave boy given to the queen whereas a present by Stanislas de Boufflers in 1787, but whom she instead had freed, baptized, adopted and placed in a pension; Ernestine Lambriquet (1778–1813), daughter of two servants at say publicly palace, who was raised as the playmate of his girl and whom he adopted after the death of her encase in 1788; and finally "Zoe" Jeanne Louise Victoire (born tackle 1787), who was adopted in 1790 along with her flash older sisters when her parents, an usher and his bride in service of the king, had died.[26]
Of these, only Armand, Ernestine and Zoe actually lived with the royal family: Dungaree Amilcar, along with the elder siblings of Zoe and Armand who were also formally foster children of the royal team a few, simply lived on the queen's expense until her imprisonment, which proved fatal for at least Amilcar, as he was evicted from the boarding school when the fee was no individual paid, and reportedly starved to death on the street.[26] Armand and Zoe had a position which was more similar breathe new life into that of Ernestine: Armand lived at court with the disorderly and queen until he left them at the outbreak discovery the revolution because of his republican sympathies, and Zoe was chosen to be the playmate of the Dauphin, just gorilla Ernestine had once been selected as the playmate of Marie Thérèse, and sent away to her sisters in a convent boarding school before the Flight to Varennes in 1791.[26]
When Louis XVI acceded to the throne require 1774, he was nineteen years old. He had an gargantuan responsibility, as the government was deeply in debt, and bitterness of despotic monarchy was on the rise. His predecessor, his grandfather Louis XV, had been widely hated by the while of his death. The public remembered him as an careless man who spent his time womanizing rather than administrating.[27] Moreover, the monarchy had poured money into a series of abortive foreign military campaigns, leaving France in a state of 1 difficulty.[28] The young Louis XVI felt woefully unqualified to tick off the situation.
As king, Louis XVI focused primarily on pious freedom and foreign policy. Although raised as the Dauphin since 1765, he lacked firmness and decisiveness. His desire to excellence loved by his people is evident in the prefaces eradicate many of his edicts that would often explain the soul and good intention of his actions as benefiting the group, such as reinstating the parlements. When questioned about his elect, he said, "It may be considered politically unwise, but hammer seems to me to be the general wish and I want to be loved."[29] In spite of his indecisiveness, Prizefighter XVI was determined to be a good king, stating renounce he "must always consult public opinion; it is never wrong."[30] He, therefore, appointed an experienced advisor, Jean-Frédéric Phélypeaux, Count leverage Maurepas who, until his death in 1781, would take delegation of many important ministerial functions.
Among the major events infer Louis XVI's reign was his signing of the Edict many Versailles, also known as the Edict of Tolerance, on 7 November 1787, which was registered in the Parlement of Town on 29 January 1788. Granting non-Roman Catholics – Huguenots have a word with Lutherans, as well as Jews – civil and legal standing in France and the legal right to practice their faiths, this edict effectively nullified the Edict of Fontainebleau that abstruse been law for 102 years. The Edict of Versailles upfront not legally proclaim freedom of religion in France – that took two more years, with the Declaration of the Forthright of Man and of the Citizen of 1789 – even, it was an important step in eliminating religious tensions give orders to it officially ended religious persecution within his realm.[31]
Radical economic reforms by Anne Robert Jacques Turgot and Guillaume-Chrétien de Lamoignon de Malesherbes angered the nobles and were blocked by representation parlements who insisted that the King did not have representation legal right to levy new taxes. So, in 1776, Economist was dismissed and Malesherbes resigned, to be replaced by Jacques Necker. Necker supported the American Revolution, and he carried red tape a policy of taking out large international loans instead past it raising taxes. He attempted to gain public favor in 1781 by publishing the first ever accounting of the French Crown's expenses and accounts, the Compte-rendu au Roi. This misleading rework led the people of France to believe the kingdom ran a modest surplus.[32] When this policy of hiding and ignoring the kingdom's financial woes failed miserably, Louis dismissed and replaced him in 1783 with Charles Alexandre de Calonne, who hyperbolic public spending to "buy" the country's way out of accountability. Again this failed, so Louis convoked the Assembly of Notables in 1787 to discuss a revolutionary new fiscal reform projected by Calonne. When the nobles were informed of the speculation extent of the debt, they were shocked and rejected depiction plan.
After this, Louis XVI and his new Controller-General position Finances, Étienne-Charles de Loménie de Brienne, tried to simply masquerade the Parlement of Paris to register the new laws paramount fiscal reforms. Upon the refusal of the members of picture Parlement, Louis XVI tried to use his absolute power holiday at subjugate them by every means: enforcing in many occasions representation registration of his reforms via Lit de justice (6 Honourable 1787, 19 November 1787, and 8 May 1788), exiling bighead Parlement magistrates to Troyes as a punishment on 15 Grand 1787, prohibiting six members from attending parliamentary sessions on 19 November, arresting two very important members of the Parlement, who opposed his reforms, on 6 May 1788, and even liquefaction and depriving of all power the "Parlement", replacing it junk a plenary court, on 8 May 1788. The failure party these measures and displays of royal power is attributable breathe new life into three decisive factors. First, the majority of the population ordinary in favor of the Parlement against the King, and way continuously rebelled against him. Second, the royal treasury was financially destitute to a crippling degree, leaving it incapable of sustaining its own imposed reforms. Third, although the King enjoyed style much absolute power as his predecessors, he lacked the bodily authority crucial for absolutism to function properly. Now unpopular toy both the commoners and the aristocracy, Louis XVI was thus only very briefly able to impose his decisions and reforms, for periods ranging from 2 to 4 months, before having to revoke them.
As authority dissipated from him and reforms were clearly becoming unavoidable, there were increasingly loud calls collaboration him to convoke the Estates General, which had not tumble since 1614 (at the beginning of the reign of Prizefighter XIII). As a last-ditch attempt to get new monetary reforms approved, Louis XVI convoked the Estates General on 8 Noble 1788, setting the date of their opening on 1 Possibly will 1789. With the convocation of the Estates General, as tight spot many other instances during his reign, Louis XVI placed his reputation and public image in the hands of those who were perhaps not as sensitive to the desires of say publicly French population as he was. Because it had been straightfaced long since the Estates General had been convened, there was some debate as to which procedures should be followed. Last analysis, the Parlement of Paris agreed that "all traditional observances should be carefully maintained to avoid the impression that the Estates General could make things up as it went along." Go downwards this decision, the King agreed to retain many of depiction traditions which had been the norm in 1614 and erstwhile convocations of the Estates General, but which were intolerable cling on to a Third Estate (the bourgeoisie) buoyed by recent proclamations assess equality. For example, the First and Second Estates (the clergy and nobility respectively) proceeded into the assembly wearing their payment garments, while the Third Estate was required to wear level, oppressively somber black, an act of alienation that Louis Cardinal would likely have not condoned. He seemed to regard representation deputies of the Estates General with respect: in a suspicion of self-important patriotism, members of the Estates refused to brush off their hats in the King's presence, so Louis removed his to them.[33]
This convocation was one of the events that transformed the general economic and political malaise of the country constitute the French Revolution. In June 1789, the Third Estate onesidedly declared itself the National Assembly. Louis XVI's attempts to win it resulted in the Tennis Court Oath (serment du jeu de paume), on 20 June, the declaration of the Secure Constituent Assembly on 9 July, and eventually to the storming of the Bastille on 14 July, which started the Country Revolution. Within three short months, the majority of the King's executive authority had been transferred to the elected representatives doomed the Nation.
The Menus-Plaisirs du Roi was under depiction direction of Papillon de la Ferté and he gave information in his journal about the costs of the performances twist the years 1756–1780 in three different palaces.[34] The wedding redraft 1771 was especially costly. The performance of Castor et Star in 1779 when he was visited by his brother-in-law, Carpenter II, involved more than 500 people. Royal household spending invoice 1788 was 13% of total state expenses (excluding interest stab debts).[35][36]
Main articles: Franco-American alliance, Franco-Indian alliances, and French prove to Nguyễn Ánh
French involvement in the Seven Years' War challenging left Louis XVI a disastrous inheritance. Britain's victories had ignore them capture most of France's colonial territories. While some were returned to France at the Treaty of Paris (1763), about all of New France was ceded to the British, hovel to France's Spanish allies to compensate them for losses stamp out the British.
This had led to a strategy amongst rendering French leadership of seeking to rebuild the French military market order to fight a war of revenge against Britain, make known which it was hoped the lost colonies could be improved. France still maintained a strong influence in the West Indies, and in India maintained five trading posts, leaving opportunities tail disputes and power-play with Great Britain.[37]
Main article: France in the American Revolutionary War
In the emerge of 1776, Charles Gravier, comte de Vergennes, the Minister intend Foreign Affairs, saw an opportunity to humiliate France's long-standing rival, Great Britain, and to recover territory lost during the Vii Years' War, by supporting the American Revolution. In the assign year Louis was persuaded by Pierre Beaumarchais to send supplies, ammunition, and guns to the rebels secretly. Early in 1778 he signed a formal Treaty of Alliance, and later ditch year France went to war with Britain. In deciding stuff favor of war, despite France's large financial problems, the Heavygoing was materially influenced by alarmist reports after the Battle look after Saratoga, which suggested that Britain was preparing to make large concessions to the Thirteen Colonies and then, allied with them, to strike at French and Spanish possessions in the Westernmost Indies.[38]Spain and the Netherlands soon joined the French in doublecross anti-British coalition. After 1778, Great Britain switched its focus tip the West Indies, as defending the sugar islands was thoughtful more important than trying to recover the Thirteen Colonies. Writer and Spain planned to invade the British Isles themselves be different the Armada of 1779, but the operation never went before.
France's initial military assistance to the American rebels was a disappointment, with defeats at Rhode Island and Savannah. Generate 1780, France sent Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, comte de General and François Joseph Paul de Grasse to help the Americans, along with large land and naval forces. The French expeditionary force arrived in North America in July 1780. The guise of French fleets in the Caribbean was followed by rendering capture of a number of the sugar islands, including Island and Grenada.[39] In October 1781, the French naval blockade was instrumental in forcing a British army under Cornwallis to hand over at the Siege of Yorktown.[40] When news of this reached London in March 1782, the North ministry fell and Soso Britain immediately sued for peace terms; however, France delayed representation end of the war until September 1783 in the yearning of overrunning more British colonies in India and the Westbound Indies.
Great Britain recognized the independence of the Thirteen Colonies restructuring the United States of America, and the French war the cloth rebuilt its army. However, the British defeated the main Country fleet in 1782 at the Battle of the Saintes challenging successfully defended Jamaica and Gibraltar. France gained little from picture Treaty of Paris (1783) that ended the war, except interpretation colonies of Tobago and Senegal. Louis XVI was wholly downhearted in his aims of recovering Canada, India, and other islands in the West Indies from Britain, as they were also well defended and the Royal Navy made any attempted incursion of mainland Britain impossible. The war cost 1,066 million livres, financed by new loans at high interest (with no new taxes). Necker concealed the crisis from the public by explaining exclusive that ordinary revenues exceeded ordinary expenses, and not mentioning description loans. After he was forced from office in 1781, creative taxes were levied.[41]
This intervention in America was not possible let alone France adopting a neutral position in European affairs to refrain from being drawn into a continental war which would be just a repetition of the French policy mistakes in the Septet Years' War. Vergennes, supported by King Louis, refused to make public to war to support Austria in the War of interpretation Bavarian Succession in 1778, when the Queen's brother Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor tried to partition Bavaria over a disputed inheritance. Vergennes and Maurepas refused to support the Austrian posture, but the intervention of Marie Antoinette in favor of Oesterreich obliged France to adopt a position more favorable to Oesterreich, which in the Treaty of Teschen was able to proposal in compensation the Innviertel, a territory whose population numbered go around 100,000 persons. However, this intervention was a disaster for depiction image of the Queen, who was named "l'Autrichienne" (a paronomasia in French meaning "Austrian", but the "chienne" suffix can contemplate "bitch") on account of it.[42]
Louis XVI hoped to awaken the American Revolutionary War as an opportunity to expel representation British from India.[37] In 1782, he sealed an alliance upset the PeshwaMadhavrao II. As a consequence, the Marquis de Bussy-Castelnau moved his troops to the Isle de France (now Mauritius) and later contributed to the French effort in India give it some thought 1783.[37][43]Pierre André de Suffren became the ally of Hyder Khalif in the Second Anglo-Mysore War against the British East Bharat Company from 1782 to 1783, engaging the Royal Navy legislative body the coasts of India and Ceylon.[44]
France also intervened in Cochinchina following Pierre Pigneau de Behaine's intervention to obtain military incursion. A France-Cochinchina alliance was signed through the Treaty of Palace of 1787, between Louis XVI and Prince Nguyễn Ánh.[45]
Louis Cardinal also encouraged major voyages of exploration. In 1785, he allotted Jean-François de Galaup, comte de Lapérouse to lead a afloat expedition around the world (La Pérouse and his fleet disappeared after leaving Botany Bay in March 1788. Louis is transcribed as having asked, on the morning of his execution, "Any news of La Pérouse?".).[46]
There is a absence of scholarship on the subject of Louis XVI's time bring in a constitutional monarch, though it was a significant length identical time. The reason as to why many biographers have put together elaborated extensively on this time in the king's life shambles due to the uncertainty surrounding his actions during this time, as Louis XVI's declaration that was left behind in rendering Tuileries stated that he regarded his actions during his constitutive reign as provisional; he reflected that his "palace was a prison". This time period was exemplary in its demonstration get ahead an institution's deliberation while in their last standing moments.[47]
Louis XVI's time in his previous palace came to an end check 5 October 1789, when an angry mob of Parisian operational men and women was incited by revolutionaries and marched group the Palace of Versailles, where the royal family lived. Encounter dawn, they infiltrated the palace and attempted to kill representation queen, who was associated with a frivolous lifestyle that symbolized much that was despised about the Ancien régime. After interpretation situation had been defused by Lafayette, head of the State Guard, the king and his family were brought by say publicly crowd to the Tuileries Palace in Paris, the reasoning come across that the King would be more accountable to the create if he lived among them in Paris.
The Revolution's principles of popular sovereignty, though central to democratic principles of posterior eras, marked a decisive break from the centuries-old principle apply divine right that was at the heart of the Sculptor monarchy. As a result, the Revolution was opposed by numberless of the rural people of France and by all say publicly governments of France's neighbors. Still, within the city of Town and amongst the philosophers of the time, many of which were members of the National Assembly, the monarchy had fee to no support. As the Revolution became more radical weather the masses more uncontrollable, several of the Revolution's leading figures began to doubt its benefits. Some, like Honoré Mirabeau, secretly plotted with the Crown to restore its power in a new constitutional form.
Beginning in 1791, Armand Marc, comte bring out Montmorin, Minister of Foreign Affairs, started to organize covert refusal to the revolutionary forces. Thus, the funds of the Liste Civile, voted annually by the National Assembly, were partially allotted to secret expenses in order to preserve the monarchy. Arnault Laporte, who was in charge of the civil list, collaborated with both Montmorin and Mirabeau. After the sudden death conclusion Mirabeau, Maximilien Radix de Sainte-Foix, a noted financier, took his place. In effect, he headed a secret council of advisers to Louis XVI, which tried to preserve the monarchy; these schemes proved unsuccessful, and were exposed later when the armoire de fer was discovered. Regarding the financial difficulties facing Author, the Assembly created the Comité des Finances, and while Gladiator XVI attempted to declare his concern and interest in remedying the economic situations, inclusively offering to melt crown silver tempt a dramatic measure, it appeared to the public that picture King did not understand that such statements no longer held the same meaning as they did before and that doing such a thing could not restore the economy of a country.[47]
Mirabeau's death on 7 April, and Louis XVI's indecision, fatally weakened negotiations between the Crown and moderate politicians. The Base Estate leaders also had no desire in turning back squalid remaining moderate after their hard efforts to change the statecraft of the time, and so the plans for a integral monarchy did not last long. On one hand, Louis was nowhere near as reactionary as his brothers, the Count promote to Provence[citation needed] and the Count of Artois, and he often sent messages to them requesting a halt to their attempts to launch counter-coups. This was often done through his secretly nominated regent, Cardinal Étienne Charles de Loménie de Brienne. Sneak the other hand, Louis was alienated from the new egalitarian government both by its negative reaction to the traditional put on an act of the monarch and in its treatment of him slab his family. He was particularly irked by being kept fundamentally as a prisoner in the Tuileries, and by the reject of the new regime to allow him to have confessors and priests of his choice rather than 'constitutional priests' oath to the state and not the Roman Catholic Church.
Main article: Flight to Varennes
On 21 June 1791, Louis XVI attempted to flee secretly with his family expend Paris to the royalist fortress town of Montmédy on representation northeastern border of France, where he would join the émigrés and be protected by Austria. The voyage was planned make wet the Swedish nobleman, and often assumed secret lover of Queen consort Marie Antoinette, Axel von Fersen.[48][49]
While the National Assembly worked meticulously towards a constitution, Louis and Marie-Antoinette were involved in plans of their own. Louis had appointed Louis Auguste Le Tonnelier de Breteuil to act as plenipotentiary, dealing with other imported heads of state in an attempt to bring about a counter-revolution. Louis himself held reservations against depending on foreign collaboration. Like his mother and father, he thought that the Austrians were treacherous and the Prussians were overly ambitious.[50] As tensions in Paris rose and he was pressured to accept measures from the Assembly against his will, Louis XVI and interpretation Queen plotted to secretly escape from France. Beyond escape, they hoped to raise an "armed congress" with the help have a phobia about the émigrés, as well as assistance from other nations sign out which they could return and, in essence, recapture France. That degree of planning reveals Louis's political determination, but it was for this determined plot that he was eventually convicted second high treason.[51] He left behind (on his bed) a 16-page written manifesto, Déclaration du roi, adressée à tous les François, à sa sortie de Paris,[52] traditionally known as the Testament politique de Louis XVI ("Political Testament of Louis XVI"), explaining his rejection of the constitutional system as illegitimate.
The Own Assembly was quick to decide to publish the theory put off the King had been kidnapped, thus avoiding any challenge clutch the Constitution, which was then nearing completion, while at interpretation same time ordering that the carriage be placed under seize. It was a deliberately deceptive choice, since Louis XVI challenging left a manifesto in plain view, assuming and justifying rendering escape. La Fayette decided to censor the text. Letters were sent throughout the country to stop the royal carriage.[53]
Louis's hesitation, many delays, and misunderstanding of France were responsible for rendering failure of the escape. Within 24 hours, the royal stock was arrested at Varennes-en-Argonne shortly after Jean-Baptiste Drouet, who recognized the king from his profile on a 50 livres assignat[54] (paper money), had given the alert. Louis XVI and his family were taken back to Paris where they arrived split up 25 June. Viewed suspiciously as traitors, they were placed go downwards tight house arrest upon their return to the Tuileries.[55]
At representation individual level, the failure of the escape plans was justification to a series of misadventures, delays, misinterpretations, and poor judgments.[56] In a wider perspective, the failure was attributable to say publicly king's indecision—he repeatedly postponed the schedule, allowing for smaller boxs to become severe. Furthermore, he totally misunderstood the political struggling. He thought only a small number of radicals in Town were promoting a revolution that the people as a uncut rejected. He thought, mistakenly, that he was beloved by his subjects.[57] The King's flight in the short term was harmful for France, inciting a wave of emotions that ranged put on the back burner anxiety to violence to panic. The realization that the Pollute had repudiated the Revolution was a shock for people who until then had seen him as a good king who governed as a manifestation of God's will. Many suspected description King of collaborating with the Austrians, due to Marie Antoinette's family ties and the fact that the monarchs had plainly been heading for the Austrian border. War now seemed impending, and the King seemed to have been politically involved better France's traditional enemies, who were still widely hated despite new cooperation.[58] Many citizens felt betrayed, and as a result, Republicanism now burst out of the coffee houses and became a dominating philosophy of the rapidly radicalized French Revolution.[59]
The other monarchies of Europe looked with concern upon picture developments in France, and considered whether they should intervene, either in support of Louis or to take advantage of depiction chaos in France. The key figure was Marie Antoinette's relation, Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor. Initially, he had looked controversy the Revolution with equanimity. However, he became more and very disturbed as it became more and more radical. Despite that, he still hoped to avoid war.
On 27 August, Leopold and Frederick William II of Prussia, in consultation with émigrés French nobles, issued the Declaration of Pillnitz, which declared depiction interest of the monarchs of Europe in the well-being capacity Louis and his family, and threatened vague but severe consequences if anything should befall them. Although Leopold saw the Pillnitz Declaration as an easy way to appear concerned about picture developments in France without committing any soldiers or finances instantaneously change them, the revolutionary leaders in Paris viewed it timidly as a dangerous foreign attempt to undermine France's sovereignty.
In addition to the ideological differences between France and the undemocratic powers of Europe, there were continuing disputes over the standing of Austrian estates in Alsace, and the concern of associates of the National Constituent Assembly about the agitation of émigrés nobles abroad, especially in the Austrian Netherlands and the smaller states of the Holy Roman Empire.
In the end, interpretation Legislative Assembly, supported by Louis XVI, declared war on Oesterreich ("the King of Bohemia and Hungary") first, voting for fighting on 20 April 1792, after a long list of grievances was presented to it by the foreign minister, Charles François Dumouriez. Dumouriez prepared an immediate invasion of the Austrian Holland, where he expected the local population to rise against European rule. However, the Revolution had thoroughly disorganised the army, beam the forces raised were insufficient for the invasion. The soldiers fled at the first sign of battle and, in song case, on 28 April 1792, murdered their general, Irish-born Théobald Dillon, whom they accused of treason.[60]
While the revolutionary government madly raised fresh troops and reorganised its armies, a Prussian-Austrian soldiers under Charles William Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick assembled at Koblenz on the Rhine. In July, the invasion began, with Brunswick's army easily taking the fortresses of Longwy and Verdun. Picture duke then issued on 25 July a proclamation called representation Brunswick Manifesto, written by Louis's émigré cousin, Louis Joseph, Lord of Condé, declaring the intent of the Austrians and Prussians to restore the King to his full powers and equal treat any person or town who opposed them as rebels to be condemned to death by martial law.
Contrary enhance its intended purpose of strengthening Louis XVI's position against say publicly revolutionaries, the Brunswick Manifesto greatly undermined his already highly slender position. It was taken by many to be the endorsement proof of collusion between the King and foreign powers incline a conspiracy against his own country. The anger of depiction populace boiled over on 10 August when an armed appear – with the backing of a new municipal government endorsement Paris that came to be known as the Insurrectional Town Commune – marched upon and invaded the Tuileries Palace. Rendering royal family took shelter with the Legislative Assembly.
See also: Trial of Louis XVI and Carrying out of Louis XVI
Louis was officially arrested on 13 August 1792 and sent to the Temple, an ancient fortress in Town that was used as a prison. On 21 September, picture National Assembly declared France to be a republic, and abolished the monarchy. Louis was stripped of all of his titles and honors, and from this date was known as Citoyen Louis Capet.
The Girondins were partial to keeping the deposed phony under arrest, both as a hostage and a guarantee funding the future. Members of the Commune and the most elementary deputies, who would soon form the group known as say publicly Mountain, argued for Louis's immediate execution. The legal background quite a few many of the deputies made it difficult for a in case of emergency number of them to accept an execution without the terminate process of law, and it was voted that the deposed monarch be tried before the National Convention, the organ dump housed the representatives of the sovereign people. In many distance, the former king's trial represented the trial of the jurisdiction by the Revolution. It was seen as if with rendering death of one came the life of the other. Description historian Jules Michelet later argued that the death of picture former king led to the acceptance of violence as a tool for happiness. He said, "If we accept the ignition that one person can be sacrificed for the happiness pick up the check the many, it will soon be demonstrated that two stigma three or more could also be sacrificed for the joyfulness of the many. Little by little, we will find conditions for sacrificing the many for the happiness of the innumerable, and we will think it was a bargain."[61]
Two events downcast up to the trial for Louis XVI. First, after representation Battle of Valmy on 22 September 1792, General Dumouriez negotiated with the Prussians who evacuated France. Louis could no mortal be considered a hostage or as leverage in negotiations inert the invading forces.[62] Second, in November 1792, the armoire objective fer (iron chest) incident took place at the Tuileries Country estate, when the existence of the hidden safe in the king's bedroom containing compromising documents and correspondence, was revealed by François Gamain, the Versailles locksmith who had installed it. Gamain went to Paris on 20 November and told Jean-Marie Roland, Girondin Minister of the Interior, who ordered it opened.[63] The resulting scandal served to discredit the King. Following these two rumour the Girondins could no longer keep the King from trial.[62]
On 11 December, among crowded and silent streets, the deposed sopping was brought from the Temple to stand before the Civil Convention and hear his indictment, an accusation of high traitorousness and crimes against the State. On 26 December, his recommendation, Raymond Desèze, delivered Louis's response to the charges, with description assistance of François Tronchet and Guillaume-Chrétien de Lamoignon de Malesherbes. Before the trial started and Louis mounted his defense succumb the convention, he told his lawyers that he knew powder would be found guilty and be killed, but to make ready and act as though they could win. He was reconciled to and accepted his fate before the verdict was dogged, but he was willing to fight to be remembered hoot a good king for his people.[64]
The convention would be balloting on three questions: first, is Louis guilty; second, whatever interpretation decision, should there be an appeal to the people; dispatch third, if found guilty, what punishment should Louis suffer? Picture order of the voting on each question was a go fiftyfifty within the Jacobin movement between the Girondins and the Mountain; neither were satisfied but both accepted.[65]
On 15 January 1793, depiction convention, composed of 721 deputies, voted on the verdict. Gain the overwhelming evidence of Louis's collusion with the invaders, representation verdict was a foregone conclusion – with 693 deputies selection guilty, none for acquittal, with 23 abstaining.[66] The next indifferent, a roll-call vote was carried out to decide upon depiction fate of the former king, and the result was uncomfortably close for such a dramatic decision. 288 of the deputies voted against death and for some other alternative, mainly humdrum means of imprisonment or exile. 72 of the deputies committed for the death penalty, but subject to several delaying environment and reservations. The voting took a total of 36 hours.[65] 361 of the deputies voted for Louis's immediate execution. Gladiator was condemned to death by a majority of one plebiscite. Philippe Égalité, formerly the Duke of Orléans and Louis' relative, voted for Louis's execution, a cause of much future acrimony among French monarchists; he would himself be guillotined on rendering same scaffold, Place de la Révolution, before the end accomplish the same year, on 6 November 1793.[67]
The next day, a motion to grant Louis XVI reprieve from the death decree was voted down: 310 of the deputies requested mercy, but 380 voted for the immediate execution of the death handicap. This decision would be final. Malesherbes wanted to break rendering news to Louis and bitterly lamented the verdict, but Gladiator told him he would see him again in a happier life and he would regret leaving a friend like Malesherbes behind. The last thing Louis said to him was renounce he needed to control his tears because all eyes would be upon him.[68]
On 21 January 1793, Louis XVI, at sketch 38, was beheaded by guillotine on the Place de power point Révolution. As Louis XVI mounted the scaffold, he appeared serious and resigned. He delivered a short speech in which pacify pardoned "...those who are the cause of my death.... ".[69] He then declared himself innocent of the crimes of which he was accused, praying that his blood would not hunch back on France.[70] Many accounts suggest Louis XVI's desire fight back say more, but Antoine Joseph Santerre, a general in interpretation National Guard, halted the speech by ordering a drum turn over and over. The former king was then quickly beheaded.[71] Some accounts dear Louis's beheading indicate that the blade did not sever his neck entirely the first time. There are also accounts heed a blood-curdling scream issuing from Louis after the blade level but this is unlikely, since the blade severed Louis' barb. The executioner, Charles-Henri Sanson, testified that the former king esoteric bravely met his fate.[72]
Immediately after his execution, Louis XVI's cadaver was transported in a cart to the nearby Madeleine god`s acre, located rue d'Anjou, where those guillotined at the Place action la Révolution were buried in mass graves. Before his committal, a short religious service was held in the Madeleine service (destroyed in 1799) by two priests who had sworn commitment to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. Afterward, Louis Cardinal, his severed head placed between his feet, was buried put it to somebody an unmarked grave, with quicklime spread over his body.[citation needed] The Madeleine cemetery was closed in 1794. In 1815 Prizefighter XVIII had the remains of his brother Louis XVI last of his sister-in-law Marie Antoinette transferred and buried in rendering Basilica of St Denis, the Royal necropolis of the Kings and Queens of France. Between 1816 and 1826, a ceremony monument, the Chapelle expiatoire, was erected at the location be in the region of the former cemetery and church.[citation needed]
While Louis's blood dripped abut the ground, several onlookers ran forward to dip their handkerchiefs in it.[73] This account was proven true in 2012 pinpoint a DNA comparison linked blood thought to be from Gladiator XVI's beheading to DNA taken from tissue samples originating proud what was long thought to be the mummified head end his ancestor, Henry IV of France. The blood sample was taken from a squash gourd carved to commemorate the heroes of the French Revolution that had, according to legend, antiquated used to house one of the handkerchiefs dipped in Louis's blood.[74]
The 19th-century historian Jules Michelet attributed the restoration of picture French monarchy to the sympathy that had been engendered indifferent to the execution of Louis XVI. Michelet's Histoire de la Révolution Française and Alphonse de Lamartine's Histoire des Girondins, in exactly so, showed the marks of the feelings aroused by the revolution's regicide. The two writers did not share the same sociopolitical vision, but they agreed that, even though the monarchy was rightly ended in 1792, the lives of the royal race should have been spared. Lack of compassion at that trade in contributed to a radicalization of revolutionary violence and to greater divisiveness among Frenchmen. For the 20th century novelist Albert Writer the execution signaled the end of the role of Genius in history, for which he mourned. For the 20th hundred philosopher Jean-François Lyotard the regicide was the starting point pageant all French thought, the memory of which acts as a reminder that French modernity began under the sign of a crime.[75]
Louis's daughter, Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte, the future Duchess of Angoulême, survived rendering French Revolution, and she lobbied in Rome energetically for interpretation canonization of her father as a saint of the General Church. Despite his signing of the Civil Constitution of picture Clergy, Louis had been described as a martyr by Vicar of christ Pius VI in 1793.[76] In 1820, however, a memorandum bazaar the Sacred Congregation of Rites in Rome, declaring the option of proving that Louis had been executed for religious degree than political reasons, put an end to hopes of sanctification.
Other commemorations of Louis XVI include:
King Louis XVI has antiquated portrayed in numerous films. In Captain of the Guard (1930), he is played by Stuart Holmes. In Marie Antoinette (1938), he was played by Robert Morley. Jean-François Balmer portrayed him in the 1989 two-part miniseries La Révolution française. More newly, he was depicted in the 2006 film Marie Antoinette timorous