Louis XVI (23 August 1754-21 January 1793) was the King of France from 1774 to 1792, succeeding Louis XV of France and preceding the uncrowned Louis XVII of France. He was overthrown during the French Revolution in 1789 and guillotined in 1793 after attempting to flee the country to avoid being killed.
Biography[]
Louis Auguste de Bourbon was the third son of the Dauphin Louis and his wife Maria Josepha of Saxony, and was known to be a very shy child. He loved history, geography, astronomy, and also learned to speak Latin, Italian, and English in addition to French. As a young man he also learned locksmithing.
With the death of his father in 1765 he became the heir apparent to France's throne, and in 1770 he married his fourteen-year-old cousin Maria Antonia of Austria to form a marriage alliance between the two most powerful families in Europe: the Bourbons and the Habsburgs. Their marriage was not consummated for another seven years, as Louis's shyness caused him to behave coldly to "Marie Antoinette" in public and have a lack of lust for her. He suffered from phimosis, hurting when he became aroused; this condition contributed to Louis XVI's failure to produce a male heir until 1781: the future Louis XVII of France.
In 1774, the 19-year-old Louis XVI became the King of France after his father's death. He felt that he was not yet ready to become the monarch that would rule over France, and early in his reign he made very poor decisions. In 1778, he declared war on Great Britain and sent millions of francs and 10,000 troops to help the United States in the American Revolutionary War. He was able to gain revenge against the British, but he was unaware of the after-effects. Louis's spending had plunged France into a national debt crisis, and one that they could not afford; the people of France were already starving, and their population was growing. In 1789, he called the Estates-General for the first time in 175 years, an organization which represented the classes: the clergy of the First Estate, the nobles of the Second Estate, and workers and bourgeoisie of the Third Estate. In June 1789 the French peasants, mad at the failure of Jacques Necker's public reforms, formed the National Assembly and when King Louis tried to control them, they signed the Tennis Court Oath and swore to defend the people's rights. On July 14 the people of Paris stole muskets from the armory and assaulted the Bastille prison in search of gunpowder. The Storming of the Bastille led to the equipment of 3,000 woman rebels, who marched on Versailles with cannon, pikes, muskets, and spears. They stormed the Versailles Palace and impaled the heads of the guards on stakes, and Louis was captured. He was forced to share power with the people, and he and Marie Antoinette were held as virtual prisoners in the Tuileries Palace in Paris.
As a prisoner, Louis was confined to Tuileries Palace. He was forced to sign a document similar to the Magna Carta that forced him to establish a constitutional monarchy, although France was in effect ruled by the National Assembly and Maximilien de Robespierre. In 1792 Louis tried to flee to the Austrian Netherlands with his wife and son while pretending to be servants, and they made it as far as Varennes, where they were captured. The people of France felt that their king had betrayed them by trying to abandon them, and on 10 August 1792 the people stormed Tuileries Palace and killed all the guards. Louis and Marie were held as prisoners, and confined to a cell. He was held as a prisoner for months until Robespierre decided that as long as the King lived, France would not be fully independent. Louis was put on trial and the one-sided case resulted in an epoch-making moment.
Death[]
Louis XVI is guillotined
Louis XVI was sentenced to death, despite opposition to the verdict by the Girondist party, who represented the people of the French countryside. By the time of his execution, France had entered war with Austria, Prussia, Great Britain, Spain, the United Provinces, Sardinia, Naples, Sicily, and Hanover that they were clearly losing. Louis had his hair cut before he was strapped to a board and slid under the national razor, the guillotine. He tried to speak, but the shouts of the crowd drowned out his pleas. King Louis was beheaded by the French revolutionary guards amidst shouts of the crowds surrounding the platform, and his death was greeted with enthusiasm from the revolutionaries and anger from the countryside peasants as well as from the Austrians, British, and other European kingdoms. His last words were saying how he wished that his death would help the people of France.
Gallery[]
