November 16, 1797: Death of Friedrich Wilhelm II, King of Prussia and Prince-Elector of Brandenburg

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Frederica-Louisa of Hesse-Darmstadt, French Revolution, Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II, King Friedrich II The Great of Prussia, King Friedrich Wilhelm II of Prussia, King Louis XVI or France and Navarre, Landgrave Ludwig IX of Hesse-Darmstadt, Prince August-Wilhelm of Prussia, Prince-Elector of Brandenburg, Wilhelmine Enke

Friedrich Wilhelm II (September 25, 1744 – November 16, 1797) was King of Prussia from 1786 until his death in 1797. He was in personal union the Prince-Elector of Brandenburg and (via the Orange-Nassau inheritance of his grandfather) sovereign prince of the Canton of Neuchâtel.

Friedrich Wilhelm was born in Berlin, the son of Prince August Wilhelm of Prussia (the second son of King Friedrich Wilhelm I of Prussia) and Duchess Luise of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. His maternal Aunt, Elisabeth Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, was his mother’s elder sister, and was the wife of his paternal uncle, King Friedrich II (“Frederick the Great”).

Friedrich Wilhelm became heir-presumptive to the throne of Prussia on his father’s death in 1758, since Friedrich II had no children. The boy was of an easy-going and pleasure-loving disposition, averse to sustained effort of any kind, and sensual by nature.

Friedrich Wilhelm’s accession to the throne (August 17, 1786) was, indeed, followed by a series of measures for lightening the burdens of the people, reforming the oppressive French system of tax-collecting introduced by Frederick, and encouraging trade by the diminution of customs dues and the making of roads and canals.

This gave the new king much popularity with the masses; the educated classes were pleased by Friedrich Wilhelm II’s reversal of his uncle’s preference for the French language and the promotion of the German language, with the admission of German writers to the Prussian Academy, and by the active encouragement given to schools and universities.

Friedrich Wilhelm II also terminated his predecessor’s state monopolies for coffee and tobacco and the sugar monopoly. Under his reign the codification known as Allgemeines Preußisches Landrecht, initiated by Friedrich II, continued and was completed in 1794.

On July 9, 1788 a religious edict was issued forbidding Evangelical ministers from teaching anything not contained in the letter of their official books, proclaimed the necessity of protecting the Christian religion against the “enlighteners” (Aufklärer), and placed educational establishments under the supervision of the orthodox clergy.

Friedrich Wilhelm II, King of Prussia and Prince-Elector of Brandenburg

On December 18, 1788 a new censorship law was issued to secure the orthodoxy of all published books. This forced major Berlin journals like Christoph Friedrich Nicolai’s Allgemeine Deutsche Bibliothek and Johann Erich Biester’s Berliner Monatsschrift to publish only outside the Prussian borders. Moreover, people like Immanuel Kant were forbidden to speak in public on the topic of religion.

Finally, in 1791, a Protestant commission was established at Berlin to watch over all ecclesiastical and scholastic appointments. Although Wöllner’s religious edict had many critics, it was an important measure that, in fact, proved an important stabilizing factor for the Prussian state.

Aimed at protecting the multi-confessional rights enshrined in the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, the provisions of Wöllner’s edict were intended to safeguard against religious strife by imposing a system of state sponsored limits. The edict was also a notable step forward regarding the rights of Jews, Mennonites, and Herrnhut brethren, who now received full state protection.

Given the confessional divides within Prussian society, primarily between Calvinists and Lutherans but increasingly Catholics as well, such a policy was important for maintaining a stable civil society.

The attitude of Friedrich Wilhelm II towards the army and foreign policy proved fateful for Prussia. The army was the very foundation of the Prussian state, as both Friedrich Wilhelm I and Friedrich II the Great had fully realised. The army had been their first care, and its efficiency had been maintained by their constant personal supervision.

Friedrich Wilhelm II had no taste for military matters and put his authority as “Warlord” (Kriegsherr) into commission under a supreme college of war (Oberkriegs-Collegium) under Charles Wilhelm Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick and General Wichard Joachim Heinrich von Möllendorf. It was the beginning of the process that ended in 1806 at the disastrous Battle of Jena.

Although the Prussian army reached its highest peacetime level of manpower under Friedrich Wilhelm II (189,000 infantry and 48,000 cavalry), under his reign the Prussian state treasury incurred a substantial debt, and the quality of the troops’ training deteriorated.

Under the circumstances, Friedrich Wilhelm II’s interventions in European affairs were of little benefit to Prussia. The Dutch campaign of 1787, entered into for purely family reasons, was indeed successful, but Prussia received not even the cost of her intervention.

An attempt to intervene in the war of Russia and Austria against the Ottoman Empire failed to achieve its objective; Prussia did not succeed in obtaining any concessions of territory, and the dismissal of minister Hertzberg (July 5, 1791) marked the final abandonment of the anti-Austrian tradition of Friedrich II the Great.

Meanwhile, the French Revolution alarmed the ruling monarchs of Europe, and in August 1791 Friedrich Wilhelm II, at the meeting at Pillnitz Castle, agreed with Emperor Leopold II to join in supporting the cause of King Louis XVI of France.

However the king’s character and the confusion of the Prussian finances could not sustain effective action in this regard. A formal alliance was indeed signed on February 7,1792, and Friedrich Wilhelm II took part personally in the campaigns of 1792 and 1793, but the king was hampered by want of funds, and his counsels were distracted by the affairs of a deteriorating Poland, which promised a richer booty than was likely to be gained by the anti-revolutionary crusade into France.

A subsidy treaty with the sea powers (Great Britain and the Netherlands, signed at The Hague, 19 April 1794) filled Prussia’s coffers, but at the cost of a promise to supply 64,000 land troops to the coalition. The insurrection in Poland that followed the partition of 1793, and the threat of unilateral intervention by Russia, drove Friedrich Wilhelm into the separate Treaty of Basel with the French Republic (April 5, 1795), which was regarded by the other great monarchies as a betrayal, and left Prussia morally isolated in the struggle between the monarchical principle and the new republican creed of the Revolution.

Personal life and patronage of the arts

Frederick William’s first marriage, to Elisabeth Christine of Brunswick (his first cousin) daughter of Charles I, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, contracted 14 July 1765
had ended after four years during which both spouses had been unfaithful. Their uncle, Friedrich II, granted a divorce reluctantly, as he was more fond of Elisabeth than of Friedrich Wilhelm.

Months after his first marriage Friedrich Wilhelm II then married Frederica Louisa of Hesse-Darmstadt, daughter of Ludwig IX, Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt on July 14, 1769 also in Charlottenburg. His second marriage lasted until his death.

Frederica Louisa of Hesse-Darmstadt

Although he had seven children by his second wife, he had an ongoing relationship with his mistress, Wilhelmine Enke (created Countess Wilhelmine von Lichtenau in 1796), a woman of strong intellect and much ambition, and had five children by her—the first when she was still in her teens.

In 1794–1797 he had a castle built for her on the Pfaueninsel. Moreover, he was involved in two more (bigamist) morganatic marriages: with Elisabeth Amalie, Gräfin von Voß, Gräfin von Ingenheim in 1787 and (after her death in 1789) with Sophie Juliane Gräfin von Dönhoff.

He had another seven children with those two women, which explains why his people also called him der Vielgeliebte (“the much loved”) and der dicke Lüderjahn (“the fat scallywag”).

His favourite son—with Wilhelmine Enke—was Graf Alexander von der Mark. His daughter from Sophie Juliane, Countess Julie of Brandenburg (1793 –1848) married to Friedrich Ferdinand, Duke of Anhalt-Köthen.

On November 16, 1797, Friedrich Wilhelm II died in Potsdam. He was succeeded by his son, Friedrich Wilhelm III, who had resented his father’s lifestyle and acted swiftly to deal with what he considered the immoral state of the court.

October 17, 1779: Birth of Prince Louis Charles of Orléans, Count of Beaujolais

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Count of Beaujolais, Duke of Orleans, French Revolution, House of Bourbon, House of Orléans, King Louis Philippe of the French, Louis Charles of Orléans, Philippe Égalité, prince du sang (Prince of the Blood)

Louis Charles of Orléans, Count of Beaujolais (October 17, 1779 – May 30, 1808) Louis Charles was born at the Palais-Royal in Paris. He was the third and youngest son of Louis Philippe II of Orléans, Duke of Chartres, later Duke of Orléans as Philippe Égalité, and of his wife, Louise Marie Adélaïde de Bourbon.

Louise Marie Adélaïde de Bourbon was the daughter of Louis Jean de Bourbon, Duke of Penthièvre and Princess Maria Teresa d’Este. At the death of her brother, Louis Alexandre, Prince of Lamballe, Louise Marie Adélaïde became the wealthiest heiress in France prior to the French Revolution.

Louis Jean de Bourbon (1725 – 1793) was the son of Louis Alexandre de Bourbon and his wife Marie Victoire de Noailles. Louis Jean de Bourbon was therefore a grandson of Louis XIV of France and his mistress, Madame de Montespan. From birth he was known as the Duke of Penthièvre.

As a member of the reigning House of Bourbon, Louis Charles of Orléans, Count of Beaujolais was a prince du sang (Prince of the Blood). Louis Charles of Orléans, Count of Beaujolais was also the younger brother of King Louis Philippe I of the French.

In 1781 the Countess of Genlis was appointed to be the governess to Louis Charles and to his two older brothers Louis Philippe and Antoine. Two years later the abbé Mariottini, nephew of the apostolic nuncio to France was made his tutor, but he resigned in 1786 after a conflict with Madame de Genlis. Louis Charles was then tutored by the first chamberlain Barrois, before being assigned to the under-governor Lebrun in 1789.

In April 1793 Louis Charles was arrested with his father and imprisoned at Fort-Saint-Jean in Marseille. During his imprisonment he contracted tuberculosis, a condition which eventually caused his death. His father was executed in November 1793 but Louis Charles remained imprisoned until August 1796 when the Directory decided to exile him and his brother Antoine to Philadelphia. The French chargé d’affaires in Philadelphia settled upon Louis-Charles an annual pension of 15,000 francs.

In February 1797 Louis Charles and Antoine were joined in Philadelphia by their older brother Louis Philippe. Together they travelled to New York City and Boston, and as far north as Maine and as far south as Nashville.

In September 1797 Louis Charles and his brothers learnt that their mother had gone into exile in Spain, and so they decided to return to Europe. They went to New Orleans, planning to sail to Cuba and from there to Spain. The ship they took from New Orleans, however, was captured by a British warship in the Gulf of Mexico.

The British seized the three brothers, but took them to Havana anyway. Unable to find passage to Europe, the three brothers spent a year in Cuba, until they were unexpectedly expelled by the Spanish authorities. They sailed via the Bahamas to Nova Scotia. Eventually, the brothers sailed back to New York, and in January 1800, they arrived in England, where they settled at Twickenham outside London.

In September 1804 Louis Charles entered the Royal Navy, but his health did not allow him to continue a military career. In October he and his brothers went on a brief expedition to the French coast. They were fired upon by the French batteries at Boulogne but escaped without harm.

In 1808, in an attempt to improve Louis Charles’ health, his older brother Louis Philippe accompanied him on a voyage to Gibraltar, Sicily and Malta. The brothers were received at Casa Miari, a palace in the Maltese capital city Valletta.

Louis Charles, however, continued to deteriorate; he died of tuberculosis a fortnight after his arrival on the island. His funeral took place on June 3. Ten years later his body was buried on April 10, 1818 in St. John’s Co-Cathedral in Valletta. James Pradier designed and sculpted his tomb, a replica of which is at Dreux.

Louis Charles’ portrait was painted posthumously in 1818 by Albert Gregorius (now in the Palais Royal) and by Charles-Francois Phelippes (now in the Palais-Royal). Another portrait was painted in 1835 by Amédée Fauré (now at the Château d’Eu). There are copies of all three portraits in the Palace of Versailles.

September 16, 1824: Death of Louis XVIII, King of France and Navarre

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Emperor of the French, French Revolution, House of Bourbon, King Felipe V of Spain, King Louis XVIII of France and Navarre, Napoleon Bonaparte, Princess Marie Joséphine of Savoy, Queen of France and Navarre, The One Hundred Days

Louis XVIII (November 17, 1755 – September 16, 1824) was King of France and Navarre from 1814 to 1824, except for a brief interruption during the Hundred Days in 1815. He spent twenty-three years in exile: during the French Revolution and the First French Empire (1804–1814), and during the Hundred Days.

Youth

Prince Louis Stanislas Xavier de Bourbon of France, styled Count of Provence from birth, was born on November 17, 1755 in the Palace of Versailles, a younger son of Louis, Dauphin of France, and his wife Maria Josepha of Saxony, daughter of Augustus III, Prince-Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, and Archduchess Maria Josepha of Austria (daughter of Holy Roman Emperor Joseph I and Wilhelmine Amalie of Brunswick-Lüneburg).

Louis, Count of Provence was the grandson of the reigning King Louis XV. As a son of the Dauphin, he was a Fils de France. He was christened Louis Stanislas Xavier six months after his birth, in accordance with Bourbon family tradition, being nameless before his baptism.

By this act, he also became a Knight of the Order of the Holy Spirit. The name of Louis was bestowed because it was typical of a Prince of France; Stanislas was chosen to honour his great-grandfather King Stanislaus I of Poland who was still alive at the time; and Xavier was chosen for Saint Francis Xavier, whom his mother’s family held as one of their patron saints.

King Louis XVIII of France and Navarre

At the time of his birth, Louis Stanislas was fourth in line to the throne of France, behind his father and his two elder brothers: Louis Joseph, Duke of Burgundy, and Louis Augusté, Duke of Berry. The former died in 1761, leaving Louis Augusté as heir to their father until the Dauphin’s own premature death in 1765.

The two deaths elevated Louis Stanislas to second in the line of succession, while his brother Louis Augusté acquired the title of Dauphin.

On April 16, 1771, Louis Stanislas was married by proxy to Princess Maria Giuseppina of Savoy. The in-person ceremony was conducted on May 14 at the Palace of Versailles. Marie Joséphine (as she was known in France) was a daughter of Victor Amadeus, Duke of Savoy (later King Victor Amadeus III of Sardinia), and his wife Infanta Maria Antonia Ferdinanda of Spain who was the youngest daughter of Felipe V of Spain and of his second wife Elisabeth Farnese.

A luxurious ball followed the wedding on May 20. Louis Stanislas found his wife repulsive; she was considered ugly, tedious, and ignorant of the customs of the court of Versailles. The marriage remained unconsummated for years. Biographers disagree about the reason.

The most common theories propose Louis Stanislas’ alleged impotence (according to biographer Antonia Fraser) or his unwillingness to sleep with his wife due to her poor personal hygiene. She never brushed her teeth, plucked her eyebrows, or used any perfumes. At the time of his marriage, Louis Stanislas was obese and waddled instead of walked. He never exercised and continued to eat enormous amounts of food.

Despite the fact that Louis Stanislas was not infatuated with his wife, he boasted that the two enjoyed vigorous conjugal relations – but such declarations were held in low esteem by courtiers at Versailles.

He also proclaimed his wife to be pregnant merely to spite Louis Augusté and his wife Marie Antoinette, who had not yet consummated their marriage. The Dauphin and Louis Stanislas did not enjoy a harmonious relationship and often quarrelled, as did their wives.

Louis Stanislas did impregnate his wife in 1774, having conquered his aversion. However, the pregnancy ended in a miscarriage. A second pregnancy in 1781 also miscarried, and the marriage remained childless.

On September 21, 1792, the National Convention abolished the monarchy and deposed Louis XVI, who was later executed by guillotine. When his young nephew, nominally Louis XVII died in prison in June 1795, the Count of Provence proclaimed himself (titular) king under the name Louis XVIII.

Following the French Revolution and during the Napoleonic era, Louis XVIII lived in exile in Prussia, England, and Russia. When the Sixth Coalition finally defeated Napoleon in 1814, Louis XVIII was placed in what he, and the French royalists, considered his rightful position.

However, Napoleon escaped from his exile in Elba and restored his French Empire. Louis XVIII fled, and a Seventh Coalition declared war on the French Empire, defeated Napoleon again, and again restored Louis XVIII to the French throne.

Princess Marie Joséphine of Savoy, Queen of France and Navarre

Louis XVIII ruled as king for slightly less than a decade. The government of the Bourbon Restoration was a constitutional monarchy, unlike the Ancien Régime, which was absolutist. As a constitutional monarch, Louis XVIII’s royal prerogative was reduced substantially by the Charter of 1814, France’s new constitution.

His return in 1815 led to a second wave of White Terror headed by the Ultra-royalist faction. The following year, Louis dissolved the unpopular parliament, referred to as the Chambre introuvable, giving rise to the liberal Doctrinaires. His reign was further marked by the formation of the Quintuple Alliance and a military intervention in Spain.

Death

Louis XVIII’s health began to fail in the spring of 1824. He was experiencing obesity, gout and gangrene, both dry and wet, in his legs and spine. Louis died on 16 September 16 1824 surrounded by the extended royal family and some government officials. Since didn’t have a son or heir hewas succeeded by his youngest brother, Prince Charles Philippe, the Count of Artois, as King Charles X of France and Navarre.

Louis XVIII had no children and was the last French monarch to die while still reigning, as Charles X (1824–1830) abdicated and both Louis Philippe I (1830–1848) and Napoleon III (1852–1870) were deposed.

French Pretenders Part I: 2022

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Duke of Anjou, French pretenders, French Revolution, House of Bourbon, House of Bourbon -Orléans, Jean d'Orléans, Legitimists, Louis Alphonse de Bourbon, Louis XIV of France and Navarre, Philip V of Spain, Treaty of Utrecht, War of the Spanish Succession

From the Emperor’s Desk: When I began this blog back in 2012 I initially wrote a series of articles on the various pretenders to vacant thrones of Europe. Many of these articles need an update so today I start with the pretenders to the vacant throne of France.

One of the most interesting battles for the claims to a vacant or non existent throne is that of France. The argument on who is the rightful heir to the French throne rests on the legality of the renunciation of rights to the French throne by King Felipe V of Spain (1700-1746) and his descendents at the end of the War of the Spanish Succession in 1714.

Felipe V of Spain (Philippe Duc d’Anjou) was born a French Prince of the Blood (Prince Du Sang) the second son of Louis the Grand Dauphin and a grandson of King Louis XIV of France and Navarre (1643-1715). Felipe V of Spain was also a maternal great-grandson of King Felipe III of Spain and Portugal (1598-1621) from whose descent he was appointed successor to the childless King Carlos II of Spain (1665-1700).

King Felipe V of Spain

King Louis XIV and his son and heir, The Grand Dauphin, had the strongest genealogical claim to the Spanish throne held by his maternal uncle, King Carlos II. The great European powers would never accept a united France and Spain under the leadership of King Louis XIV of France.

However, since neither the Grand Dauphin nor his eldest son, Louis, Duke of Burgundy, could be displaced from the succession to the French throne, King Carlos II of Spain named Prince Philippe de Bourbon, the Duke of Anjou as his heir-presumptive in his will. He ascended the Spanish throne in 1700 upon the death of Carlos II as King Felipe V of Spain.

What followed was the the 13-year War of the Spanish Succession, which continued until the Treaty of Utrecht forbade any future possibility of unifying the French and Spanish crowns while confirming the Duke of Anjou’s accession to the throne of Spain.

The treaty required King Felipe V of Spain to renounce his claim to the French throne, both for himself and his descendants, with reciprocal renunciations by French Bourbon Prince and Princesses to the Spanish throne, including Louis XIV’s nephew Philippe, Duke of Orléans. These renunciations became increasingly important after a series of deaths between 1712 and 1714 that left the five year old, Prince Louis, Duke of Anjou, (the future King Louis XV ) as his great-grandfather’s heir.

Although the House of Bourbon still reigns in Spain, the French monarchy was abolished in 1848 with the abdication of Louis Philippe I, King of the French of the House of Bourbon-Orléans.

Louis Alphonse de Bourbon (King Louis XX of France)

After the death of Henri, Comte de Chambord in 1884, who died without an heir, the claim to the vacant throne of France has been contested between the descendants of the Spanish branch of the House of Bourbon and the descendants of Louis Philippe I, King of the French of the House of Bourbon-Orléans.

As previously mentioned, the arguments of which of these pretenders is the rightful heir to the French throne rests on the legality of the renunciations to the French and Spanish thrones by Spanish and French members of the House of Bourbon as outlined in the Treaty of Utrecht.

Today there are two claimants from the different lines of the House of Bourbon. The first is Prince Louis Alphonse of Bourbon, Duke of Anjou who is the senior male heir of Hugh Capét, King of the Franks (987-996). Louis Alphonse is also the senior descendant of King Louis XIV of France through the aforementioned King Felipe V of Spain.

Those that support the Spanish branch of the House of Bourbon to the French throne are called Legitimist. According to the Legitimists, Louis Alphonse of Bourbon, Duke of Anjou is recognized as the rightful claimant to the French throne and is considered King Louis XX of France by his supporters.

Prince Jean of Orléans, Comte de Paris (King Jean IV of France)

The other claimant to the French throne is Prince Jean of Orléans, Comte de Paris and Duc de France. Prince Jean is a descendant of King Louis Philippe I (1830-1848), the last King of the French. Known as King Jean IV of France by his supporters and he is the current head of the Orléans line of the Bourbon dynasty.

August 26, 1850: Death of Louis Philippe I, King of the French

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Charles X of France, Comte de Neuilly, Duke of Orleans, French Revolution, General Assembly, Henri de Chambord, House of Bourbon, House of Bourbon -Orléans, July Monarchy, Louis Philippe I of the French, Maria Amalia of Naples and Sicily, Regent, Revolution of 1848

Louis Philippe I (October 6, 1773 – August 26, 1850) was King of the French from 1830 to 1848, and the penultimate monarch of France.

Early life

Louis Philippe was born in the Palais Royal, the residence of the Orléans family in Paris, to Louis Philippe II, Duke of Orléans and Louise Marie Adélaïde de Bourbon, who was the daughter of Louis Jean Marie de Bourbon, Duke of Penthièvre and Princess Maria Teresa d’Este of Modena.

At the death of her brother, Louis Alexandre, Prince of Lamballe, Louise Marie Adélaïde de Bourbon became the wealthiest heiress in France prior to the French Revolution. She was descended from Louis XIV of France through a legitimized line.

Louis Philippe I, King of the French

As a member of the reigning House of Bourbon, Louis Philippe was a Prince of the Blood (Prince du sang), which entitled him the use of the style “Serene Highness“.

Louis Philippe was the eldest of three sons and a daughter, a family that was to have erratic fortunes from the beginning of the French Revolution to the Bourbon Restoration.

The elder branch of the House of Bourbon, to which the Kings of France belonged, deeply distrusted the intentions of the cadet Orléans branch, which would succeed to the throne of France should the senior branch die out. Louis Philippe’s father was exiled from the royal court, and the Orléans confined themselves to studies of the literature and sciences emerging from the Enlightenment.

As Louis Philippe III, Duke of Orléans, he distinguished himself commanding troops during the Revolutionary Wars, but broke with the Republic over its decision to execute King Louis XVI. He fled to Switzerland in 1793 after being connected with a plot to restore France’s monarchy. His father Louis Philippe II, Duke of Orléans (Philippe Égalité) fell under suspicion and was executed, and Louis Philippe remained in exile for 21 years until the Bourbon Restoration.

In 1808, Louis Philippe proposed to Princess Elizabeth, daughter of King George III of the United Kingdom. His Catholicism and the opposition of her mother Queen Charlotte (born a Princess of Mecklenburg-Strelitz) meant the Princess reluctantly declined the offer.

HRH The Princess Elizabeth of the United Kingdom and Hanover

In 1809, Louis Philippe married Princess Maria Amalia of Naples and Sicily, daughter of King Ferdinand IV-III of Naples and Sicily and Archduchess Maria Carolina of Austria, the thirteenth child of Empress Maria Theresa of Austria and Holy Roman Emperor Franz I

The ceremony was celebrated in Palermo November 25, 1809. The marriage was controversial because Princess Maria Amalia of Naples and Sicily’s mother, Archduchess Maria Carolina of Austria, was a younger sister to Queen Marie Antoinette, the wife of King Louis XVI.

HRH Princess Maria Amalia of Naples and Sicily, Queen of the French

Louis Philippe’s father was considered to have a role in Marie Antoinette’s execution. Maria Carolina as the Queen of Naples was opposed to the match for this reason. She had been very close to her sister and devastated by her execution, but she had given her consent after Louis Philippe had convinced her that he was determined to compensate for the mistakes of his father, and after having agreed to answer all her questions regarding his father.

Bourbon Restoration (1815–1830)

After the abdication of Napoleon, Louis Philippe III, Duke of Orléans, returned to France during the reign of his fifth cousin Louis XVIII, at the time of the Bourbon Restoration. Louis Philippe had reconciled the Orléans family with Louis XVIII in exile, and was once more to be found in the elaborate royal court.

However, his resentment at the treatment of the Orléans family, the cadet branch of the House of Bourbon under the Ancien Régime, caused friction between him and Louis XVIII, and he openly sided with the liberal opposition.

Louis Philippe was on far friendlier terms with Louis XVIII’s brother and successor, Charles X, who acceded to the throne in 1824, and with whom he socialized. However, his opposition to the policies of Villèle and later of Jules de Polignac caused him to be viewed as a constant threat to the stability of Charles X’s government. This soon proved to be to his advantage.

King of the French (1830–1848)

1830, the July Revolution overthrew Charles X, who abdicated in favour of his son Louis Antoine, Duke of Angoulême, who shortly abdicated in favour of his 10-year-old nephew, Henri, Duke of Bordeaux.

King Louis Philippe I of the French

Charles X named Louis Philippe Lieutenant général du royaume, and charged him to announce his desire to have his grandson succeed him to the popularly elected Chamber of Deputies. Louis Philippe did not do this, in order to increase his own chances of succession.

As a consequence, because the chamber was aware of Louis Philippe’s liberal policies and of his popularity with the masses, they proclaimed Louis Philippe as the new French king, displacing the senior branch of the House of Bourbon. For the prior eleven days Louis Philippe had been acting as the regent for the young King Henri V his fifth cousin twice removed.

Maria Amalia, then Duchess of Orléans, with her son Ferdinand Philippe

Charles X and his family, including his grandson, went into exile in Britain. The young ex-king, the Duke of Bordeaux, who, in exile, took the title of Comte de Chambord, later became the pretender to the throne of France and was supported by the Legitimists.

Louis-Philippe was sworn in as King Louis Philippe I on August 9, 1830. Upon his accession to the throne, Louis Philippe assumed the title of King of the French – a title already adopted by Louis XVI in the short-lived Constitution of 1791. Linking the monarchy to a people instead of a territory (as the previous designation King of France and of Navarre) was aimed at undercutting the legitimist claims of Charles X and his family.

By an ordinance he signed on August 13, 1830, the new king defined the manner in which his children, as well as his “beloved” sister, would continue to bear the territorial designation of “Orléans” and the arms of Orléans, declared that his eldest son, as Prince Royal (not Dauphin), would bear the title Duke of Orléans, that the younger sons would continue to have their previous titles, and that his sister and daughters would only be styled Princesses of Orléans, not of France.

His ascent to the title of King of the French was seen as a betrayal by Emperor Nicholas I of Russia, and it ended their friendship.

In 1832, his daughter, Princess Louise-Marie, married the first ruler of Belgium, Leopold I, King of the Belgians. Their descendants include all subsequent Kings of the Belgians, as well as Empress Carlota of Mexico.

King Louis Philippe I of the French. The only French monarch to be photographed

On February 24, 1848, during the February 1848 Revolution, King Louis Philippe abdicated in favour of his nine-year-old grandson, Philippe, comte de Paris. If he had reigned he would have been King Philippe VII of France, although some sources list him as King Louis Philippe II of France.

Fearful of what had happened to the deposed Louis XVI, Louis Philippe quickly left Paris under disguise. Unlike Louis XVI, who attempted to escape France in extravagant transportation, he instead rode in an ordinary cab under the name of “Mr. Smith.” He fled to England and spent his final years incognito as the ‘Comte de Neuilly’.

The National Assembly of France initially planned to accept young Philippe as king, but the strong current of public opinion rejected that. On February 26 the Second Republic was proclaimed. Louis Napoléon Bonaparte was elected president on December 10, 1848; on December 2, 1851, he declared himself president for life and then Emperor Napoleon III in 1852.

Louis Philippe and his family remained in exile in Great Britain in Claremont, Surrey, though a plaque on Angel Hill, Bury St Edmunds, claims that he spent some time there, possibly due to a friendship with the Marquess of Bristol, who lived nearby at Ickworth House.

The royal couple spent some time by the sea at St. Leonards and later at the Marquess’s home in Brighton. Louis Philippe died at Claremont on August 26, 1850. He was first buried at St. Charles Borromeo Chapel in Weybridge, Surrey. In 1876, his remains and those of his wife were taken to France and buried at the Chapelle royale de Dreux, the Orléans family necropolis his mother had built in 1816, and which he had enlarged and embellished after her death.

August 23, 1754: Birth of Louis XVI, King of France and Navarre

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Abolition of the Monarchy, Archduchess Marie Antoinette of Austria, Duke of Berry, French Revolution, Guillotine, King of the French, Louis XV of France and Navarre, Louis XVI of France and Navarre, Louis-Auguste de Bourbon, National Assembly

Louis-Augusté de Bourbon of France, (August 23, 1754 – January 21, 1793) who was given the title Duc de Berry at birth, was born in the Palace of Versailles. One of seven children, he was the second surviving son of Louis, the Dauphin of France, and the grandson of King Louis XV of France and Navarre and of his consort, Maria Leszczyńska.

His mother was Marie-Josèphe of Saxony, the daughter of August III, Prince-Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, and Archduchess Maria Josepha of Austria the eldest child of Joseph I, Holy Roman Emperor and Princess Wilhelmina Amalia of Brunswick-Lüneburg.

Louis-Augusté was overlooked by his parents who favored his older brother, Louis-Joseph, duc de Bourgogne, who was regarded as bright and handsome but who died at the age of nine in 1761.

Louis-Augusté, a strong and healthy boy 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. He enjoyed physical activities such as hunting with his grandfather and rough play with his younger brothers, Louis-Stanislas, comte de Provence, and Charles-Philippe, comte d’Artois. From an early age, Louis-Augusté was encouraged in another of his interests, locksmithing, which was seen as a useful pursuit for a child.

Louis XVI, King of France and Navarre

When his father died of tuberculosis on December 20, 1765, the eleven-year-old Louis-Augusté became the new Dauphin.

On May 16, 1770, at the age of fifteen, Louis-Augusté 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 Franz I and his wife, the Archduchess Maria Theresa, Queen of Hungary, Bohemia and Croatia.

This marriage was met with hostility from the French public. France’s alliance with Austria had pulled the country into the disastrous Seven Years’ War, in which it was defeated by the British and the Prussians, both in Europe and in North America.

By the time that Louis-Augusté and Marie-Antoinette were married, the French people generally disliked the Austrian alliance, and Marie-Antoinette was seen as an unwelcome foreigner. For the young couple, the marriage was initially amiable but distant.

Louis-Augusté’s shyness and, among other factors, the young age and inexperience of the newlyweds (who were near total strangers to each other: they had met only two days before their wedding) meant that the 15-year-old bridegroom failed to consummate the union with his 14-year-old bride.

His fear of being manipulated by her for imperial purposes caused him to behave coldly towards her in public. Over time, the couple became closer, though while their marriage was reportedly consummated in July 1773, it did not actually happen until 1777.

Upon his grandfather’s death on May 10, 1774, Louis-Augusté became King Louis XVI of France and Navarre, he was nineteen years old. He had an enormous responsibility, as the government was deeply in debt, and resentment of despotic monarchy was on the rise. He himself felt woefully unqualified to resolve the situation.

The first part of his reign was marked by attempts to reform the French government in accordance with Enlightenment ideas. These included efforts to abolish serfdom, remove the taille (land tax) and the corvée (labour tax), and increase tolerance toward non-Catholics as well as abolish the death penalty for deserters.

The French nobility reacted to the proposed reforms with hostility, and successfully opposed their implementation. Louis implemented deregulation of the grain market, advocated by his economic liberal minister Turgot, but it resulted in an increase in bread prices.

In periods of bad harvests, it led to food scarcity which, during a particularly bad harvest in 1775, prompted the masses to revolt. 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. The ensuing debt and financial crisis contributed to the unpopularity of the Ancien Régime.

Queen Marie Antoinette of France and Navarre

This led to the convening of the Estates-General of 1789. Discontent among the members of France’s middle and lower classes resulted in strengthened opposition to the French aristocracy and to the absolute monarchy, of which Louis XVI and his wife Queen Marie Antoinette were viewed as 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 recognize the legislative authority of the National Assembly.

Louis’s indecisiveness and conservatism led some elements of the people of France to view him as a symbol of the perceived tyranny of the Ancien Régime, and his popularity deteriorated progressively. On September 4, 1791, Louis XVI received the title of King of the French.

His unsuccessful flight to Varennes in June 1791, four months before the constitutional monarchy was declared, seemed to justify the rumors that the king tied his hopes of political salvation to the prospects of foreign intervention.

The credibility of the king was deeply undermined, and the abolition of the monarchy and the establishment of a republic became an ever-increasing possibility. 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.

In a context of civil and international war, Louis XVI was suspended and arrested at the time of the Insurrection of August 10, 1792. One month later, the monarchy was abolished and the First French Republic was proclaimed on September 21, 1792.

Louis was then tried by the National Convention (self-instituted as a tribunal for the occasion), found guilty of high treason and executed by guillotine on January 21, 1793, as a desacralized French citizen under the name of Citizen Louis Capét, in reference to Hugh Capét, the founder of the Capetian dynasty – which the revolutionaries interpreted as Louis’s surname.

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. Both of his sons died in childhood, before the Bourbon Restoration; his only child to reach adulthood, Marie Thérèse, was given over to the Austrians in exchange for French prisoners of war. In 1799 she married her cousin Louis Antoine, Duke of Angoulême, the eldest son of Charles, Comte d’Artois, future King Charles X of France and Navarre. She eventually died childless in 1851.

Dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire. Part VI: War With France

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Austrian Netherlands, Duke Charles Wilhelm Ferdinand of Brunswick, French Revolution, Holy Roman Emperor Franz II, Holy Roman Empire, Louis XVI of France and Navarre, Protestant Electors, Reichsdeputationshauptschluss, War of the First Coalition

The War of the First Coalition was a set of wars that several European powers fought between 1792 and 1797 initially against the constitutional Kingdom of France and then the French Republic that succeeded it. They were only loosely allied and fought without much apparent coordination or agreement; each power had its eye on a different part of France it wanted to appropriate after a French defeat, which never occurred.

As part of the War of the First Coalition the forces of the French First Republic overran and occupied the Austrian Netherlands in 1792.

Foreign minister Charles François Dumouriez, who sought a war which might restore some popularity and authority to the King. Dumouriez prepared the invasion of the Austrian Netherlands, where he expected the local population to rise against Austrian rule. However, the revolution had thoroughly disorganized the French army, which had insufficient forces for the invasion. Its soldiers fled at the first sign of battle, deserting en masse, in one case murdering General Théobald Dillon.

While the revolutionary government frantically raised fresh troops and reorganized its armies, an allied army under Charles Wilhelm Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick assembled at Koblenz on the Rhine.

The invasion commenced in July 1792. The Duke then issued a declaration on July 25, 1792, which had been written by the brothers of Louis XVI, that declared his [Brunswick’s] intent to restore the King of France to his full powers, and to treat any person or town who opposed him as rebels to be condemned to death by martial law.

This motivated the revolutionary army and government to oppose the Prussian invaders by any means necessary, and led almost immediately to the overthrow of the King by a crowd which stormed the Tuileries Palace.

The Holy Roman Empire was defending itself quite well until Prussia abandoned the war effort to focus its attention on its Polish territories (overseeing the Second and Third Partitions of Poland), taking the resources and military strength of northern Germany with it.

Charles Wilhelm Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick

Despite the empire’s mounting difficulties in the face of the wars with France, there was no large-scale popular unrest within its borders. Instead, the explanation for the end of the Holy Roman Empire lies in the realm of high politics.

The empire’s defeat in the Revolutionary Wars was the most decisive step in the gradual undermining of the empire. The conflict between France and the Holy Roman Empire had begun with the French declaring war on the newly crowned Emperor Franz II of the Habsburg dynasty only in his capacity as the
e King of Hungary.

The fact that much of the wider empire (including influential figures such as the King of Prussia and the Archbishop-Elector of Mainz), however unwilling, joined the conflict on the side of the Habsburgs proves that imperial ideals were still alive by the late 18th century.

The key point in which fortunes shifted was Prussia’s abandonment of the war effort. Prussia had been the only true counterweight to Austria’s influence in the institutions of the empire. Though the western parts of Prussia, such as Brandenburg, remained formal parts of the Holy Roman Empire and the Prussians continued to be represented in the Reichstag, Prussia ceased to compete for influence in imperial affairs.

Austria stood alone as the protector of the states in southern Germany, many of which began considering making their own separate peaces with France. When the Austrians learnt that Württemberg and Baden had opened formal negotiations with France, the armies sent by these two states were disbanded and disarmed in 1796, causing resentment against the emperor and, combined with losses to France, suggesting that the Habsburg emperor was no longer capable of protecting his traditional vassals in Germany.

Franz II, Holy Roman Emperor

In the wake of the wars with France, there was a substantial reorganization of Imperial territory (the so-called Reichsdeputationshauptschluss, supported by Prussia), with the Habsburg monarchy meaning to compensate those princes who had lost territory in the French wars and effectivize the empire’s current semi-feudal structure.

Although there were huge territorial changes, notably the almost complete abolition of any church territory and significant territorial gains for Bavaria, Baden, Württemberg, Hesse-Darmstadt and Nassau, the most important changes were in the empire’s electoral college.

Salzburg was added as a fourth Catholic elector, while Württemberg, Baden and Hesse-Cassel became the fourth, fifth and sixth Protestant electors, giving the Protestants a majority for the first time in history and raising doubts whether Emperor Franz II would be able to work together with his Reichstag.

Although the Austrian regime spent much time and resources attempting to make the new arrangement work, the general verdict at the time was that the reorganization had essentially killed the empire.

The dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire. Part I.

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Austria, Brandenburg-Prussia, French Revolution, Holy Roman Emperor Franz II, House of Habsburg-Lorraine, Hungary and Croatia, King of Bohemia, Napoleonic Wars, Peace of Westphalia, Prussia

The dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire occurred de facto on August 6, 1806, when the last Holy Roman Emperor, Franz II of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine, abdicated his title and released all imperial states and officials from their oaths and obligations to the empire.

Since the Middle Ages, the Holy Roman Empire had been recognized by Western Europeans as the legitimate continuation of the ancient Roman Empire due to its emperors having been proclaimed as Roman emperors by the papacy. Through this Roman legacy, the Holy Roman Emperors claimed to be universal monarchs whose jurisdiction extended beyond their empire’s formal borders to all of Christian Europe and beyond.

The decline of the Holy Roman Empire was a long and drawn-out process lasting centuries. The formation of the first modern sovereign territorial states in the 16th and 17th centuries, which brought with it the idea that jurisdiction corresponded to actual territory governed, threatened the universal nature of the Holy Roman Empire.

The Holy Roman Empire by the time of the 18th century was widely regarded by contemporaries, both inside and outside the empire, as a highly “irregular” monarchy and “sick”, having an “unusual” form of government. The empire lacked both a central standing army and a central treasury and its monarchs, formally elective rather than hereditary, could not exercise effective central control.

Franz II, Holy Roman Emperor, King of Bohemia, Hungary and Croatia

Even then, most contemporaries believed that the empire could be revived and modernized. The Holy Roman Empire finally began its true terminal decline after the Peace of Westphalia and the rise of Brandenburg-Prussia which saw a rivalry between Austria and Prussia that lasted more than a century.

What is interesting to note is that begining with the rivalry between Austria and Prussia one doesn’t read much in the history books about the Holy Roman Empire itself and the focus is on Austria and Prussia as individual states.

The Empire’s decline was sped up during and after its involvement in the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars. Again one is more likely to read about Austria’s involvement in the French Revolution and the subsequent Napoleonic Wars further demonstrating how fragmented the Empire was at this time.

Although the empire defended itself quite well initially, war with France and Napoleon proved catastrophic. In 1804, Napoleon proclaimed himself as the Emperor of the French, which Franz II responded to by proclaiming himself the Emperor of Austria, in addition to already being the Holy Roman Emperor, an attempt at maintaining parity between France and Austria while also illustrating that the Holy Roman title outranked them both.

Austria’s defeat at the Battle of Austerlitz in December 1805 and the secession of a large number of Franz II’s German vassals in July 1806 to form the Confederation of the Rhine, a French satellite state, effectively meant the end of the Holy Roman Empire.

The abdication in August 1806, combined with a dissolution of the entire imperial hierarchy and its institutions, was seen as necessary to prevent the possibility of Napoleon proclaiming himself as Holy Roman Emperor, something which would have reduced Franz II to being Napoleon’s vassal.

The Holy Roman Empire

Reactions to the empire’s dissolution ranged from indifference to despair. The populace of Vienna, capital of the Habsburg monarchy, were horrified at the loss of the empire. Many of Franz II’s former subjects questioned the legality of his actions; though his abdication was agreed to be perfectly legal, the dissolution of the empire and the release of all its vassals were seen as beyond the emperor’s authority.

As such, many of the empire’s princes and subjects refused to accept that the empire was gone, with some commoners going so far as to believe that news of its dissolution was a plot by their local authorities. In Germany, the dissolution was widely compared to the ancient and semi-legendary Fall of Troy and some associated the end of what they perceived to be the Roman Empire with the end times and the apocalypse.

Queen Marie Antoinette of France & the French Revolution

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Affair of the Diamond Necklace, Archduchess Marie Antoinette of Austria, Empress Maria Theresa, French Revolution, King Louis XVI of France and Navarre, The Bastille

Marie Antoinette Josèphe Jeanne of Austria (née Maria Antonia Josepha Johanna; November 2, 1755 – October 16, 1793) was the last Queen of France and Navarre before the French Revolution.

Archduchess Maria Antonia of Austria was a member of the House of Habsburg and the youngest daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor Franz I and his wife, the Empress Maria Theresa, Archduchess of Austria, Queen of Bohemia, Hungary and Croatia.

Maria Antonia spent her formative years between the Hofburg Palace and Schönbrunn, the imperial summer residence in Vienna, where on October 13, 1762, when she was seven, she met Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, two months her junior and a child prodigy.

Despite the private tutoring she received, the results of her schooling were less than satisfactory. At the age of 10 she could not write correctly in German or in any language commonly used at court, such as French or Italian, and conversations with her were stilted.

Maria Antonia was raised together with her sister, Archduchess Maria Carolina, who was three years older, and with whom she had a lifelong close relationship. Maria Carolina of Austria (1752 – 1814) was Queen of Naples and Sicily as the wife of King Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies.

Maria Carolina of Austria, sister of Marie Antoinette

Maria Antonia had a difficult but ultimately loving relationship with her mother, who referred to her as “the little Madame Antoine”.

Maria Antonia formally renounced her rights to Habsburg domains, and on April 19 she was married by proxy to the Dauphin of France, Louis Augusté at the Augustinian Church in Vienna, with her brother Archduke Ferdinand standing in for the Dauphin.

On May 14, she met her husband at the edge of the forest of Compiègne. Upon her arrival in France, she adopted the French version of her name: Marie Antoinette. A further ceremonial wedding took place on May 16, 1770 in the Palace of Versailles and, after the festivities, the day ended with the ritual bedding. The couple’s longtime failure to consummate the marriage plagued the reputations of both Louis-Augusté and Marie Antoinette for the next seven years.

The marriage was met with hostility from the French public. France’s alliance with Austria had pulled the country into the disastrous Seven Years’ War, in which it was defeated by the British and the Prussians, both in Europe and in North America. By the time that Louis-Augusté and Marie-Antoinette were married, the French people generally disliked the Austrian alliance, and Marie-Antoinette was seen as an unwelcome foreigner.

When Louis Augusté’s father died in 1765, he became the new Dauphin. Upon his grandfather’s death on May 10, 1774, he assumed the title King of France and Navarre and she became Queen Consort of France and Navarre.

Marie Antoinette’s position at court improved when, after eight years of marriage, she started having children. She became increasingly unpopular among the people, however, with the French libelles accusing her of being profligate, promiscuous, harboring sympathies for France’s perceived enemies—particularly her native Austria—and her children of being illegitimate.

The false accusations of the Affair of the Diamond Necklace damaged her reputation further. During the Revolution, she became known as Madame Déficit because the country’s financial crisis was blamed on her lavish spending and her opposition to the social and financial reforms of Turgot and Necker.

Several events were linked to Marie Antoinette during the Revolution after the government had placed the royal family under house arrest in the Tuileries Palace in October 1789.

The June 1791 attempted flight to Varennes and her role in the War of the First Coalition had disastrous effects on French popular opinion. On August 10, 1792, the attack on the Tuileries forced the royal family to take refuge at the Assembly, and they were imprisoned in the Temple Prison on August 13.

On September 21, 1792, the monarchy was abolished. Louis XVI was executed by guillotine on January 21, 1793.

Marie Antoinette’s trial began on October 14, 1793; she was convicted two days later by the Revolutionary Tribunal of high treason and executed, also by guillotine, at the Place de la Révolution.

July 14, 1789: Louis XVI of France and Navarre and the Storming of the Bastille

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Bastille, Bastille Day, Citizen Louis Capet, Estates General, French Revolution, Jacques Necker, King of the French, Louis XVI of France and Navarre, Marie Antoinette of Austria, National Assembly, Storming the Bastille

Louis XVI (Louis-Augusté; August 23, 1754 – January 21, 1793) was the last King of France before the fall of the monarchy during the French Revolution. He was referred to as Citizen Louis Capét during the four months just before he was executed by guillotine.

Louis XVI was the son of Louis, Dauphin of France, son and heir-apparent of King Louis XV, and Maria Josepha of Saxony. Louis XVI’s mother was Maria Josépha of Saxony the daughter of Augustus III, Prince-Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, and Maria Josepha of Austria, an Archduchess of Austria, the eldest child of Joseph I, Holy Roman Emperor and Princess Wilhelmina Amalia of Brunswick-Lüneburg. She was named for her father.

On May 16, 1770, at the age of fifteen, Louis-Augusté married the fourteen-year-old Habsburg Archduchess Maria Antonia of Austria (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 Franz I and his wife, the Empress Maria Theresa, Archduchess of Austria, Queen of Bohemia, Hungary and Croatia.

This marriage was met with hostility from the French public. France’s alliance with Austria had pulled the country into the disastrous Seven Years’ War, in which it was defeated by the British and the Prussians, both in Europe and in North America. By the time that Louis-Augusté and Marie-Antoinette were married, the French people generally disliked the Austrian alliance, and Marie-Antoinette was seen as an unwelcome foreigner.

Archduchess Marie Antoinette of Austria

When Louis Augusté’s father died in 1765, he became the new Dauphin. Upon his grandfather’s death on May 10, 1774, he assumed the title King of France and Navarre until September 4, 1791, when he received the title of King of the French until the monarchy was abolished on September 21, 1792.

The first part of his reign was marked by attempts to reform the French government in accordance with Enlightenment ideas. These included efforts to abolish serfdom, remove the taille (land tax) and the corvée (labour tax), and increase tolerance toward non-Catholics as well as abolish the death penalty for deserters.

The French nobility reacted to the proposed reforms with hostility, and successfully opposed their implementation. Louis XVI implemented deregulation of the grain market, advocated by his economic liberal minister Turgot, but it resulted in an increase in bread prices.

In periods of bad harvests, it led to food scarcity which, during a particularly bad harvest in 1775, prompted the masses to revolt. 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. The ensuing debt and financial crisis contributed to the unpopularity of the Ancien Régime.

This led to the convening of the Estates-General of 1789. Discontent among the members of France’s middle and lower classes resulted in strengthened opposition to the French aristocracy and to the absolute monarchy, of which Louis and his wife Queen Marie Antoinette were viewed as representatives.

Tensions rose in France between reformist and conservative factions as the country struggled to resolve the economic crisis. In May, the Estates General legislative assembly was revived, but members of the Third Estate broke ranks, declaring themselves to be the National Assembly of the country, and on June 20, vowed to write a constitution for the kingdom.

On July 11, Jacques Necker, the Finance Minister of Louis XVI, who was sympathetic to the Third Estate, was dismissed by the king, provoking an angry reaction among Parisians.

Crowds formed, fearful of an attack by the royal army or by foreign regiments of mercenaries in the king’s service, and seeking to arm the general populace. Early on July 14, one crowd besieged the Hôtel des Invalides for firearms, muskets, and cannons, stored in its cellars.

That same day, another crowd stormed the Bastille, a fortress-prison in Paris that had historically held people jailed on the basis of lettres de cachet (literally “signet letters”), arbitrary royal indictments that could not be appealed and did not indicate the reason for the imprisonment, and was believed to hold a cache of ammunition and gunpowder. As it happened, at the time of the attack, the Bastille held only seven inmates, none of great political significance.

The crowd was eventually reinforced by mutinous Régiment des Gardes Françaises (“French Guards”), whose usual role was to protect public buildings. They proved a fair match for the fort’s defenders, and Governor de Launay, the commander of the Bastille, capitulated and opened the gates to avoid a mutual massacre. According to the official documents, about 200 attackers and just one defender died before the capitulation.

However, possibly because of a misunderstanding, fighting resumed. In this second round of fighting, de Launay and seven other defenders were killed, as was Jacques de Flesselles, the prévôt des marchands (“provost of the merchants”), the elected head of the city’s guilds, who under the feudal monarchy also had the competences of a present-day mayor.

Shortly after the storming of the Bastille, late in the evening of August 4, after a very stormy session of the Assemblée constituante, feudalism was abolished. On August 26, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (Déclaration des Droits de l’Homme et du Citoyen) was proclaimed.

The Increasing tensions and violence and the storming of the Bastille, and the subsequent riots in Paris forced Louis XVI to definitively recognize the legislative authority of the National Assembly.

Louis XVI’s indecisiveness and conservatism led some elements of the people of France to view him as a symbol of the perceived tyranny of the Ancien Régime, and his popularity deteriorated progressively.

His unsuccessful flight to Varennes in June 1791, four months before the constitutional monarchy was declared, seemed to justify the rumors that the king tied his hopes of political salvation to the prospects of foreign intervention.

The credibility of the king was deeply undermined, and the abolition of the monarchy and the establishment of a republic became an ever-increasing possibility. 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.

In a context of civil and international war, Louis XVI was suspended and arrested at the time of the Insurrection of August 10, 1792. One month later, the monarchy was abolished and the First French Republic was proclaimed on September 21, 1792.

Louis XVI was then tried by the National Convention (self-instituted as a tribunal for the occasion), found guilty of high treason and executed by guillotine on January 21, 1793, as a desacralized French citizen under the name of Citizen Louis Capét, in reference to Hugh Capét, the founder of the Capetian dynasty – which the revolutionaries interpreted as Louis’s surname.

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. Both of his sons died in childhood, before the Bourbon Restoration; his only child to reach adulthood, Marie Thérèse, was given over to the Austrians in exchange for French prisoners of war, eventually dying childless in 1851.