Lack of compassion at that moment contributed to a radicalization of revolutionary violence and to greater divisiveness among Frenchmen. Nine months later his wife met the same fate. Malesherbes wanted to break the news to Louis and bitterly lamented the verdict, but Louis told him he would see him again in a happier life and he would regret leaving a friend like Malesherbes behind. Louis XVI, The Silent King. Louis attempted to work within the framework of his limited powers after the women’s march but won little support, and he and the royal family remained virtual prisoners in the Tuileries. By signing up for this email, you are agreeing to news, offers, and information from Encyclopaedia Britannica. Louis's doctors were not in favour of the surgery – the operation was delicate and traumatic, and capable of doing "as much harm as good" to an adult male. His sister Elizabeth would follow him to the guillotine. The growth of anti-clericalism among revolutionaries resulted in the abolition of the dîme (religious land tax) and several government policies aimed at the dechristianization of France. symbol for royal absolutism. In Marie Antoinette (1938), he was played by Robert Morley. Although Louis was his father’s third son, he was the eldest male child to survive to adulthood. Following these two events the Girondins could no longer keep the king from trial. While the revolutionary government frantically raised fresh troops and reorganised its armies, a Prussian-Austrian army under Charles William Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick assembled at Coblenz on the Rhine. As Louis XVI mounted the scaffold, he appeared dignified and resigned. In many ways, the former king's trial represented the trial of the monarchy by the revolution. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. rebellion spreads to countryside → peasants are destroying. His mother was Marie-Josèphe of Saxony, the daughter of Frederick Augustus II of Saxony, Prince-Elector of Saxony and King of Poland. Second, the royal treasury was financially destitute to a crippling degree, leaving it incapable of sustaining its own imposed reforms. The other monarchies of Europe looked with concern upon the developments in France, and considered whether they should intervene, either in support of Louis or to take advantage of the chaos in France. Author: Barry Jones. After he was forced from office in 1781, new taxes were levied. Increasing 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. He followed the policy of severe control and punishment. After 1789 Louis XVI’s incapacity to rule, his irresolution, and his surrender to reactionary influences at court were partially responsible for the failure to establish in France the forms of a limited constitutional monarchy. [20] Louis was frequently declared to be perfectly capable of sexual intercourse, as confirmed by Joseph II, and during the time he was supposed to have had the operation, he went out hunting almost every day, according to his journal. Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. (La Pérouse and his fleet disappeared after leaving Botany Bay in March 1788. Patrick Henry delivering his famous speech on the Rights of the Colonies, before the Virginia Assembly, convened at Richmond, March 23, 1775. In Start the Revolution Without Me, Louis XVI is portrayed by Hugh Griffith as a laughable cuckold. However, the British defeated the main French fleet in 1782 and successfully defended Jamaica and Gibraltar. His approval of French military and financial support for the American colonists led to a foreign policy success, but the borrowing required to pay for the war drove the government to the brink of bankruptcy and led the king to support the radical fiscal, economic, and administrative reforms proposed by Charles-Alexandre de Calonne, the controller-general of finance, in 1787. mob storms and takes Bastille . In the spring of 1776, Vergennes, the Foreign Secretary, saw an opportunity to humiliate France's long-standing enemy, Great Britain, and to recover territory lost during the Seven Years' War, by supporting the American Revolution. •Factions had developed and threatened to destroy the new government. This time period was exemplary in its demonstration of an institution's deliberation while in their last standing moments.[38]. [63], The 19th-century historian Jules Michelet attributed the restoration of the French monarchy to the sympathy that had been engendered by the execution of Louis XVI. On October 5, 1778, the women infiltrated the palace at dawn and made an attempt on Marie Antoinette’s life. "[50], Two events led up to the trial for Louis XVI. Born on September 5, 1638, to King Louis XIII of France (1601-1643) and his Habsburg queen, Anne of Austria (1601-1666), the future Louis XIV was his parents’ first child after 23 years of marriage; in recognition of this apparent miracle, he was christened Louis-Dieudonné, meaning “gift of God.” A younger brother, Philippe (1640-1701), followed two years later. [65] In 1820, however, a memorandum of the Congregation of Rites in Rome, declaring the impossibility of proving that Louis had been executed for religious rather than political reasons, put an end to hopes of canonization. [39][40], While the National Assembly worked painstakingly towards a constitution, Louis and Marie-Antoinette were involved in plans of their own. [53], The convention would be voting on three questions: first, Is Louis guilty; second, whatever the decision, should there be an appeal to the people; and third, if found guilty, what punishment should Louis suffer? Louis XVI was wholly disappointed in his aims of recovering Canada, India, and other islands in the West Indies from Britain, as they were too well defended and the Royal Navy made any attempted invasion of mainland Britain impossible. How did Louis XVI’s weak leadership contribute to the growing crisis in France? Viewed suspiciously as traitors, they were placed under tight house arrest upon their return to the Tuileries. The war cost 1,066 million livres, financed by new loans at high interest (with no new taxes). Louis XIV King of France and Navarre In Power May 14, 1643 – Sept. 1, 1715 Born Sept. 5, 1638 Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France Died Sept. 1, 1715 (at age 76) Palace of Versailles, Versailles, France Nationality French Religion Catholicism Louis XIV rose to power when he was only five years old. [54], On 15 January 1793, the convention, composed of 721 deputies, voted on the verdict. Vergennes and Maurepas refused to support the Austrian position, but the intervention of Marie Antoinette in favor of Austria obliged France to adopt a position more favorable to Austria, which in the treaty of Teschen was able to get in compensation a territory whose population numbered around 100,000 persons. He was pressured by Jansenist Parliament to expel Jews, from France, which he ultimately did. Larmuseau et al. When did Louis XVI call an assembly of Estates General to pass proposals for new taxes? Significant civil and political events by year, Concerning the American Revolution and Europe, Revolutionary constitutional reign, 1789–1792, Imprisonment, execution and burial, 1792–1793. On December 3 it was decided that Louis, who together with his family had been imprisoned since August, should be brought to trial for treason. His desire to be loved by his people is evident in the prefaces of many of his edicts that would often explain the nature and good intention of his actions as benefiting the people, such as reinstating the parlements. On 26 December, his counsel, Raymond Desèze, delivered Louis's response to the charges, with the assistance of François Tronchet and Malesherbes. In 1770 he married the Austrian archduchess Marie-Antoinette, daughter of Maria Theresa and the Holy Roman emperor Francis I. [57], On Monday, 21 January 1793, Louis XVI, at age 38, was beheaded by guillotine on the Place de la Révolution. Louis XIV (1638 – 1715) was the longest reigning and one of the most powerful monarchs in European history. Furthermore, he totally misunderstood the political situation. The Legislative Assembly created a constitutional monarchy, stripping Louis XVI of most of his powers. Louis was the fourth son of the dauphin Louis, the son of Louis XV, and received the title comte de Provence; after the death of his two elder brothers and the accession of his remaining elder brother as Louis XVI in 1774, he became heir presumptive. Ultimately, the Parlement de 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." "[22] In spite of his indecisiveness, Louis XVI was determined to be a good king, stating that he "must always consult public opinion; it is never wrong. [citation needed] The Madeleine cemetery was closed in 1794. The royal family took shelter with the Legislative Assembly. [7], On 16 May 1770, at the age of fifteen, Louis-Auguste married the fourteen-year-old Habsburg Archduchess Maria Antonia (better known by the French form of her name, Marie Antoinette), his second cousin once removed and the youngest daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor Francis I and his wife, the Empress Maria Theresa. For example, the First and Second Estates proceeded into the assembly wearing their finest garments, while the Third Estate was required to wear plain, oppressively somber black, an act of alienation that Louis XVI would likely have not condoned. As king, Louis XVI focused primarily on religious freedom and foreign policy. Why was King Louis XVI tried for treason? From 1776, Louis XVI actively supported the North American colonists, who were seeking their independence from Great Britain, which was realised in the 1783 Treaty of Paris. 31 "The Revolution" or "La Paix", Mov. Worried about his family safety and dismayed by the direction the Revolution was taking, King Louis XVI decided to flee with his family from Paris to the Austrian border in June 1791. What did Louis XVI do, seeing the power of his revolting subjects? “[members of the crowd]….had seen Louis raise his hand before the ‘Altar of the Fatherland’ and swear an oath to uphold the constitution” (101). This led to the convening of the Estates-General of 1789. [27] In 1782, he sealed an alliance with the Peshwa Madhu Rao Narayan. The Constitution of 1791 limited King Louis XVI's authority by. He felt he was unqualified to be king when he started his rule and that was one of the big reasons why he felt that he needed to be loved by his people. Vergennes, supported by King Louis, refused to go to War to support Austria in the Bavarian Succession crisis in 1778, when Austrian Holy Roman Emperor Joseph tried to control parts of Bavaria. The reason as to why many biographers have not elaborated extensively on this time in the king's life is due to the uncertainty surrounding his actions during this period, as Louis XVI's declaration that was left behind in the Tuileries stated that he regarded his actions during constitutional reign provisional; he reflected that his "palace was a prison". ", Doyle, William. He brought the French monarchy to its peak of absolute power and made France the dominant power in Europe. Beyond escape, they hoped to raise an "armed congress" with the help of the émigrés, as well as assistance from other nations with which they could return and, in essence, recapture France. [29] In October 1781, the French naval blockade was instrumental in forcing a British army under Cornwallis to surrender at the Siege of Yorktown. Louis is recorded as having asked, on the morning of his execution, "Any news of La Pérouse?". On one hand, Louis was nowhere near as reactionary as his brothers, the comte de Provence[citation needed] and the comte d'Artois, and he repeatedly sent messages to them requesting a halt to their attempts to launch counter-coups. France gained little from the 1783 Treaty of Paris that ended the war, except the colonies of Tobago and Senegal. [2][3] The French nobility reacted to the proposed reforms with hostility, and successfully opposed their implementation. As a consequence, Bussy moved his troops to the Isle de France (now Mauritius) and later contributed to the French effort in India in 1783. According to Madame Campan, Marie Antoinette's lady-in-waiting, the queen also suffered two miscarriages. The anger of the populace boiled over on 10 August when an armed mob – with the backing of a new municipal government of Paris that came to be known as the Insurrectional Paris Commune – marched upon and invaded the Tuileries Palace. Fascination with constitutions and constitutional government was a creature of the Enlightenment. The first part of his reign was marked by attempts to reform the French government in accordance with Enlightenment ideas. More recently, he was depicted in the 2006 film Marie Antoinette by Jason Schwartzman. As the Revolution became more radical and the masses more uncontrollable, several of the Revolution's leading figures began to doubt its benefits. The protest was a reaction to the decadence of French monarchists while the people were starving. Beginning in 1791, Montmorin, Minister of Foreign Affairs, started to organize covert resistance to the revolutionary forces. For the next two years, the palace remained the official residence of the king. The French Revolution was a period in the history of France covering the years 1789 to 1799, in which republicans overthrew the Bourbon monarchy and the Roman Catholic Church in France perforce underwent radical restructuring. In June of 1791, Louis and his family attempted to escape France, but failed. Louis's reaction to the Revolution After 1789 Louis XVI's incapacity to rule, his irresolution, and his surrender to reactionary influences at court were partially responsible for the failure to establish in France the forms of a limited constitutional monarchy. For the 20th century novelist Albert Camus the execution signaled the end of the role of God in history, for which he mourned. All of Louis’s elder siblings died when they were children. Louis-Auguste de France, who was given the title Duc de Berry at birth, was born in the Palace of Versailles. Necker concealed the crisis from the public by explaining only that ordinary revenues exceeded ordinary expenses, and not mentioning the loans. Louis XVI was the only king of France ever to be executed, and his death brought an end to more than a thousand years of continuous French monarchy. The French expeditionary force arrived in North America in July 1780. Because it could not govern effectively after the Reign of Terror, the Directory had to rely upon _____. Because it had been so long since the Estates-General had been convened, there was some debate as to which procedures should be followed. [41] As tensions in Paris rose and he was pressured to accept measures from the Assembly against his will, Louis XVI and the queen plotted to secretly escape from France. Like his mother and father, he thought that the Austrians were treacherous and the Prussians were overly ambitious. Publicly, however, he appeared ready to accept his new role as constitutional monarch, and gestures such as his visit to Paris after the storming of the Bastille led to an upsurge in his popularity; in early August 1789 the National Assembly proclaimed him the “restorer of French liberty.”. On 21 June 1791, Louis XVI attempted to flee secretly with his family from Paris to the royalist fortress town of Montmédy on the northeastern border of France, where he would join the émigrés and be protected by Austria. In November, proof of Louis XVI’s secret dealings with Mirabeau and of his counterrevolutionary intrigues with the foreigners was found in a secret cupboard in the Tuileries. Dumouriez prepared an immediate invasion of the Austrian Netherlands, where he expected the local population to rise against Austrian rule. His overthrow and execution ended a monarchy that was over 1,000 years old, although he was not the last French king. In return, Louis XVI gave every impression that he was content to function in his new capacity, even making an impassioned speech in front of an enthusiastic, pro-revolutionary crowd on the first anniversary of Bastille Day. 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