LUIGI XVI, King of FRANCE. — Born at Versailles on 23 Aug. 1754 to Luigi, Dauphin of France (son of Luigi XV) and Maria Giuseppina of Saxony; died in Paris on 21 Jan. 1793. He married in 1770 Maria Antonietta, Archduchess of Austria; ascended the throne on 10 May 1774. His simple and honest life, his gentle character, and his reduction of personal expenses—almost as an example to his people of what was needed to restore order in France—won him widespread popular sympathy and led many to believe that the era of royal mistresses, court extravagance, and financial disorder had ended. Yet Luigi’s irresolute and vacillating character, torn between tradition and reform, between a desire for innovation and fear of offending the privileged classes, worked against him. More consistent and steadfast was his foreign policy, in which he firmly supported Minister Vergennes, who had restored France from the depression and humiliation of the Treaty of Paris, resisting both his opponents and the Queen’s repeated attempts at interference. It was also at Luigi XVI’s wish that France aided the rebels in the British American colonies, an action that not only served the cause of liberty but also secured favorable commercial agreements with the new nation.
Yet as public funds continued to be squandered—with the Queen, the court, and the princes having free rein—storm clouds gathered, and in desperation the only apparent remedy seemed to be the summoning of the Estates-General. This decision restored confidence in the King and optimism in the nation. When the Estates-General convened at Versailles on 5 May 1789, Luigi XVI was indeed surrounded by popular goodwill, and nearly all public opinion favored a constitutional monarchy on the English model, one that would give greater scope to democratic interests.
Luigi XVI’s decision to side with the nobility and clergy against the bourgeoisie provoked deep resentment in the Third Estate. In 1789, through a *lit de justice*, he attempted to impose order-based voting upon the deputies, who had declared themselves the National Assembly, but when they resisted, he dared not dissolve the Assembly. Repenting his concession, he sought revenge, yet when the revolutionary reaction erupted after the fall of the Bastille, he humiliated the monarchy further by granting the mayoralty and the National Guard. Thus the belief gained ground that the nation’s woes stemmed from the fact that Luigi XVI, singularly good and mindful of France’s fate, had been kept in ignorance by self-interested parties. From this conviction arose the Assembly’s measures for a bodyguard to follow the King everywhere, attempts to free him from intrigues, declarations of devotion to the “best of fathers and greatest of monarchs” (a speech by President Beaumetz), and the invitation for the King to set his own civil list at his discretion. The Festival of the Federation on 14 July 1790 was a national and Parisian day, no less monarchical than civic.
Nevertheless, the King was planning to flee. He intended to go to Saint-Cloud for Easter, where he would be served by a refractory priest, but on 18 April 1791 he was prevented by the tumultuous crowd and the National Guard; he returned on 11 June. Then, on 20 June, while en route to Montmédy, he was arrested at Varennes, not far from the frontier, and brought back to Paris. Declared suspended until he swore the Constitution, he took the oath on 13 September 1791 and seemed willing to apply it loyally. Yet his veto of strict laws against émigrés and refractory priests provided the long-awaited pretext for tens of thousands—among them many workers from the popular Faubourg Saint-Antoine, stirred by the fiery words of Robespierre, Pétion, and other Jacobins—to storm the Tuileries on 20 June 1792.
The last-ditch effort by La Fayette to save the monarchy by marching against the Jacobins was thwarted by the court; even the proposal that the King take refuge at Compiègne, nearer the frontier and safer, was rejected by the Queen, who awaited the arrival of the Duke of Brunswick at the head of victorious German troops to free them. It then became clear that the allied army was acting in Luigi XVI’s interest. The French people felt betrayed: 47 of Paris’s 48 sections voted for the monarchy’s abolition. A battalion of 516 Marseillais, having crossed France, entered Paris on 30 July with the intention of freeing France from the tyrant. The clash between the Marseillais and National Guards against the King’s grenadiers, which left dead and wounded, marked the beginning of civil war. The court believed this would hasten the Duke of Brunswick’s arrival, but after the insurrection of 10 August 1792—victorious for the Paris Commune, which had installed itself at the Hôtel de Ville under the energetic and eloquent leadership of Danton—and the storming and sacking of the Tuileries, Luigi XVI saw his doom sealed. First confined with his family at the Luxembourg Palace, then transferred to the Temple fortress under close guard, he could no longer communicate with the outside world. Suspended a second time after Valmy (10 August), he was declared deposed by the Convention on 21 September. The next day, 22 September, the Republic was proclaimed.
From documents seized on 10 August from the iron cabinet at the Tuileries, the Convention became convinced (20 November) that the Queen, as early as 16 August 1790, had written—even on the King’s behalf—that both of them relied solely on foreign forces and had negotiated with Prussia and Austria for their armies to link up with those of the King, and that Luigi XVI had pledged to reimburse the allies for their war expenses. On 10 December 1792, at Robespierre’s proposal, the Convention summoned the King to answer the charges, granting him a defense counsel. Luigi XVI denied some facts, attributed others to his ministers, invoked the Constitution of 1791 for still others, and regarding the iron cabinet documents—whose contents he may not have fully known—he offered a mendacious, inept, and futile account. Nothing availed against the intransigence of the Constituent Assembly, which many saw as composed of accusers rather than judges. The motion for “unconditional death” (16 January 1793) carried by 387 votes to 334 for imprisonment or conditional death. On the evening of 20 January, Luigi XVI saw his family for the last time; the next morning, at ten past ten, fortified by the sacraments, after hearing Mass kneeling on the ground and attended by a priest until his final moments, he laid down his head on the scaffold, saying: “I die innocent: may my blood not fall upon France.” Even in his will (25 December 1792) he forgave his enemies and enjoined his children to forget all resentment, as he had done. The only thing he reproached himself for was signing the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. — See pl. CXV.