Louis XVI, King of France

LUIGI XVI, king of FRANCIA. — Born at Versailles on 23 August 1754 to Luigi, dauphin of France (son of Luigi XV), and Maria Giuseppa di Sassonia; died in Paris on 21 January 1793. In 1770 he married Maria Antonietta, archduchess of Austria; he ascended the throne on 10 May 1774. His simple and honest life, his mild character, and the fact that he had reduced his personal expenses, almost as if to set an example to his people of what needed to be done to reorganize France, won him broad popular sympathy and led people to believe that the era of favorites, court extravagance, and financial disorder had ended. L. was harmed by his irresolute character, oscillating between tradition and reform, between the desire for innovation and the fear of offending the privileged classes. His foreign policy was more straightforward and consistent: he tenaciously supported Minister Vergennes, who had raised France from the depression and disgrace of the Treaty of Paris, resisting his opponents and the Queen’s repeated attempts at interference. It was also at the behest of L. XVI that France aided the rebels in the British colonies in America; this benefited not only the cause of liberty but also the securing of favorable commercial agreements with that country.

But as the squandering of the public treasury continued, with the Queen, the court, and the princes having free rein, it raised clouds foretelling a storm; and, despairing of other remedies, the convocation of the Estates-General appeared as the sole means of salvation, a decision that restored confidence in the King and optimism in the nation. When the Estates-General met at Versailles on 5 May 1789, L. XVI was indeed surrounded by popular sympathy, while nearly the whole of public opinion favored a constitutional monarchy of the English type, which would give greater scope to democratic interests.

L. XVI’s decision to support the nobility and clergy against the bourgeoisie produced fierce irritation in the Third Estate: in 1789, by a lit de justice, he sought to impose upon it, after it had proclaimed itself the National Assembly, voting by orders; but when the deputies rebelled, he did not dare dissolve the Assembly. Repenting that he had yielded, he wanted to take his revenge; but in the face of the sudden revolutionary reaction after the capture of the Bastille, he further humiliated the monarchy by granting the mairie and the National Guard. Thus the opinion gained credence that the State’s ills arose from the fact that L. XVI, exceptionally good and concerned for France’s destiny, was being kept completely in the dark by interested parties. From this conviction came the Assembly’s measures for a bodyguard that would accompany the King everywhere; the attempts to “free the King” from intrigues; the declaration of devotion to “the best of fathers and the greatest of monarchs” (the speech of President Beaumetz); and the invitation to the King to determine the civil list himself, at his own discretion. The Federation Festival of 14 July 1790 was a national and Parisian day no less than it was a monarchist one. Nevertheless, the King was thinking of flight. He planned to go to St-Cloud for Easter, where a nonjuring priest would officiate, but had to abandon the plan (18 April 1791), prevented by the tumultuous crowd and the National Guard; he tried again on 11 June, and then on 20 June, when, on the road to Montmédy, he was arrested at Varennes, not far from the frontier, and brought back to Paris. Declared suspended until he swore to the Constitution, he swore to it on 13 September 1791, and seemed willing to apply it loyally. But the veto imposed on the stringent laws concerning émigrés and nonjuring priests provided the long-awaited pretext for several tens of thousands of people, including very many workers from the popular district of S. Antonio, who, incited by the fiery words of Robespierre, Petion, and other Jacobins, invaded the Tuileries (20 June 1792).

La Fayette’s supreme attempt to save the monarchy by marching against the Jacobins was thwarted by the court; the proposal that the King take refuge in Compiègne, which was safer and closer to the frontier, was likewise allowed to fall through by the Queen, who was waiting for the duke of Brunswick, at the head of the victorious German troops, to enter Paris and liberate them. It then seemed clear that the allied army was acting in the interests of L. XVI; the French people felt betrayed: 47 of Paris’s 48 sections favored the abolition of the monarchy; 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 the National Guards and the King’s grenadiers, in which there were dead and wounded, marked the beginning of the civil war. The court believed that this would facilitate the arrival of the duke of Brunswick; but after the insurrection of 10 August 1792, victorious for the Paris Commune, which had installed itself at the Hôtel de Ville under the impetus of the energetic and eloquent Danton, and after the occupation and sack of the Tuileries, L. XVI saw himself lost. Confined with his family, first in the Luxembourg, then in the Temple fortress under close surveillance, he could no longer communicate with the outside world. Suspended for the second time after Valmy (10 August), he was declared deposed by the Convention on 21 September. The following day, 22 September, the Republic was proclaimed.

From the documents taken on 10 August from the iron cabinet of the Tuileries, the Convention was able to convince itself (20 November) that, as early as 16 August 1790, the Queen had written, also in the King’s name, that they both relied solely on foreign forces; negotiations had been conducted with Prussia and Austria so that their troops would join those of the King; and he had undertaken to reimburse the allies for the expenses of the war. The Convention, on Robespierre’s proposal, summoned the King on 10 December 1792 to answer the accusations, granting him a defense counsel. L. XVI replied by denying some facts, attributing others to the ministers, and invoking the Constitution of 1791 for still others; as for the documents from the iron cabinet, whose contents he perhaps did not know precisely, he gave a mendacious, futile, and clumsy account. Nothing availed against the intransigence of the Constituent Assembly, which seemed to many to be composed of accusers rather than judges. The question of “unconditional condemnation to death” (16 January 1793) obtained 387 votes, against 334 for detention or conditional death. On the evening of 20 January, L. XVI saw his family for the last time; the following morning, at 10:22, provided with religious consolation, after hearing s. Mass kneeling on the ground and assisted by a priest until his final moments, he laid his head upon the scaffold, saying: “I die innocent: may my blood not fall back upon France.” In his testament as well (25 December 1792), he forgave his enemies and instructed his children to forget, as he did, every resentment. There was only one thing for which he reproached himself: having signed the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. — Vedi tav. CXV.

riau, Louis XVI et la Révolution, ivi 1893; P. de Vainière, La mort du Roi, ivi 1910; H. Fleischmann, Louis XVI franc-maçon, in Revue des curiosités révolutionnaires, 1 (1910-11), pp. 335-43, 368-74; H. Labroue, Le procès de Louis XVI. Documents inédits, in La Revue et revue des revues, 93 (1911), pp. 82-90; G. Giardini, I processi di L. XVI e di Maria Antonietta (1793), Milano 1932; id., Varennes. La fuga di L. XVI (1791), ivi 1932; L. Madelin, Le crépuscule de la monarchie, Louis XVI et Marie Antoinette, Parigi 1936; Louis

XVI. Extraits des mémoires du temps, raccolti da J