October 16, 1793: Execution of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France and Navarre

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Affair of the Diamond Necklace, Empress Maria Theresa, Guillotine, Louis XVI of France and Navarre, Marie Antoinette of France, Place de la Révolution, Revolutionary Tribunal, Tuileries Palace, War of the First Coalition

Marie Antoinette (November 2, 1755 – October 16, 1793) was the last Queen of France before the French Revolution. She was born an Archduchess of Austria, of the House of Habsburg and was the penultimate child and youngest daughter of Empress Maria Theresa, Queen of Hungary, Bohemia, Croatia and Archduchess of Austria and Emperor Franz I.

She became dauphine of France in May 1770 at age 14 upon her marriage to Louis-Auguste, heir apparent to the French throne. On May 1774, her husband ascended the throne as Louis XVI and she became Queen.

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, allegedly having illegitimate children, and harboring sympathies for France’s perceived enemies—particularly her native Austria.

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 Palace 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.

The Life of Marie-Thérèse de Bourbon, Duchess of Angoulême. Part II.

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Duchess of Angoulême, French Revolution, Louis Charles, Louis XVI, Louis XVII, Madame Royale, Marie Antoinette, Marie-Thérèse de Bourbon, Princess Élisabeth de Bourbon, Robespierre, Tuileries Palace

Move to the Tuileries

When the Bastille was stormed by an armed mob on 14 July 1789, the situation reached a climax. The life of the 10-year-old Madame Royale began to be affected as several members of the royal household were sent abroad for their own safety. The comte d’Artois, her uncle, and the duchesse de Polignac, governess to the royal children, emigrated on the orders of Louis XVI.

The Duchesse de Polignac was replaced by Princess Louise-Elisabeth de Croÿ, Marquise de Tourzel, whose daughter Pauline became a lifelong friend of Marie-Thérèse.

On 5 October, a mixed cortège of mainly working women from Paris marched to Versailles, intent on acquiring food believed to be stored there, and to advance political demands. After the invasion of the palace in the early hours of 6 October had forced the family to take refuge in the king’s apartment, the crowd demanded and obtained the move of the king and his family to the Tuileries Palace in Paris.

As the political situation deteriorated, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette realized that their lives were in danger, and went along with the plan of escape organised with the help of Count Axel von Fersen. The plan was for the royal family to flee to the northeastern fortress of Montmédy, a royalist stronghold, but the attempted flight was intercepted in Varennes, and the family escorted back to Paris.

On August 10, 1792, after the royal family had taken refuge in the Legislative Assembly, Louis XVI was deposed, although the monarchy was not abolished until September 21. On August 13, the entire family was imprisoned in the Temple Tower, remains of a former medieval fortress. On January 21, 1793, Louis XVI was executed on the guillotine, at which time Marie-Thérèse’s young brother Louis Charles was recognized as King Louis XVII of France by the royalists.

Almost six months later, in the evening of July 3, 1793, guards entered the royal family’s apartment, forcibly took away the eight-year-old Louis Charles, and entrusted him to the care of Antoine Simon, a cobbler and Temple commissioner.

Remaining in their apartment in the Tower were Marie Antoinette, Marie-Thérèse and Madame Élisabeth, Louis XVI’s youngest sister. When Marie Antoinette was taken to the Conciergerie one month later, in the night of August 2, Marie-Thérèse was left in the care of her aunt Élisabeth who, in turn, was taken away on May 9, 1794 and executed the following day. Of the royal prisoners in the Temple, Marie-Thérèse Charlotte was the only one to survive the Reign of Terror.

Her stay in the Temple Tower was one of solitude and often great boredom. The two books she had, the famous prayer book by the name of The Imitation of Christ and Voyages by La Harpe, were read over and over, so much so that she grew tired of them. But her appeal for more books was denied by government officials, and many other requests were frequently refused, while she often had to endure listening to her brother’s cries and screams whenever he was beaten.

On 11 May 1794, Robespierre visited Marie-Thérèse, but there is no record of the conversation. During her imprisonment, Marie-Thérèse was never told what had happened to her family. All she knew was that her father was dead. The following words were scratched on the wall of her room in the tower:

“Marie-Thérèse Charlotte is the most unhappy person in the world. She can obtain no news of her mother; nor be reunited to her, though she has asked it a thousand times. Live, my good mother! whom I love well, but of whom I can hear no tidings. O my father! watch over me from Heaven above. O my God! forgive those who have made my parents suffer.”

In late August 1795, Marie-Thérèse was finally told what had happened to her family, by Madame Renée de Chanterenne, her female companion. When she had been informed of each of their fates, the distraught Marie-Thérèse began to cry, letting out loud sobs of anguish and grief.

It was only once the Terror was over that Marie-Thérèse was allowed to leave France. She was liberated on December 18, 1795, on the eve of her seventeenth birthday, exchanged for prominent French prisoners (Pierre Riel de Beurnonville, Jean-Baptiste Drouet, Hugues-Bernard Maret, Armand-Gaston Camus, Nicolas Marie Quinette and Charles-Louis Huguet de Sémonville) and taken to Vienna, the capital city of her cousin, the Holy Roman Emperor Franz II, and also her mother’s birthplace.

August 13, 1792: King Louis XVI of France and Navarre is arrested.

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Archduchess Marie Antoinette of Austria, French Revolution, Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II, Ki`g Frederick William II of Prussia, Legislative Assembly, Louis XVI of France and Navarre, Tuileries Palace

The monarchies of Europe looked with concern upon the developments in France as the Revolution became severe and widespread in France, and considered whether they should intervene, either in support of Louis or to take advantage of the chaos in France. The key figure was Marie-Antoinette’s brother, the Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II. Initially, he had looked on the Revolution with equanimity. However, he became more and more disturbed as it became more and more radical. Despite this, he still hoped to avoid war.

On August 27, 1791 Emperor Leopold II and King Friedrich Wilhelm II of Prussia, in consultation with émigrés French nobles, issued the Declaration of Pillnitz, which declared the interest of the monarchs of Europe in the well-being of Louis and his family, and threatened vague but severe consequences if anything should befall them.

In the end, the Legislative Assembly, supported by Louis XVI, declared war on Austria (“the King of Bohemia and Hungary”) first, voting for war on April 20, 1792, after a long list of grievances was presented to it by the foreign minister, Charles François Dumouriez. Dumouriez prepared an immediate invasion of the Austrian Netherlands, where he expected the local population to rise against Austrian rule. However, the Revolution had thoroughly disorganised the army, and the forces raised were insufficient for the invasion. The soldiers fled at the first sign of battle and, in one case, on April 28, 1792, murdered their general, Irish-born comte Théobald de Dillon, whom they accused of treason.

While the revolutionary government frantically raised fresh troops and reorganised its armies, a Prussian-Austrian army under Carl Wilhelm Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick assembled at Coblenz on the Rhine. In July, the invasion began, with Brunswick’s army easily taking the fortresses of Longwy and Verdun. The duke then issued on July 25 a proclamation called the Brunswick Manifesto, written by Louis’s émigré cousin, Louis Joseph, Prince de Condé, declaring the intent of the Austrians and Prussians to restore the king to his full powers and to treat any person or town who opposed them as rebels to be condemned to death by martial law.

Contrary to its intended purpose of strengthening Louis XVI’s position against the revolutionaries, the Brunswick Manifesto had the opposite effect of greatly undermining his already highly tenuous position. It was taken by many to be the final proof of collusion between the king and foreign powers in a conspiracy against his own country. The anger of the populace boiled over on August 10, 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. The royal family took shelter with the Legislative Assembly.

Louis was officially arrested on August 13, 1792 and sent to the Temple, an ancient fortress in Paris that was used as a prison. On September 21, the National Assembly declared France to be a republic, and abolished the monarchy. Louis was stripped of all of his titles and honors, and from this date was known as Citizen Louis Capet.

The Girondins were partial to keeping the deposed king under arrest, both as a hostage and a guarantee for the future. Members of the Commune and the most radical deputies, who would soon form the group known as the Mountain, argued for Louis’s immediate execution.

March 23, 1732: Birth of Marie Adélaïde de Bourbon of France. Part II.

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French Revolution, King Louis XVI of France, Madame Victoire, Marie Adélaïde de Bourbon of France, Marie Antoinette, Monarchy, Palace of Versailles, Pope Pius VI, Tuileries Palace

Part II.

As mentioned in Part I, at the beginning of his reign, Louis XVI had such immense confidence in his aunt, Madame Adélaïde that he allowed her to take an active role in state affairs. Louis XVI thought she was intelligent enough to make her his political adviser and allowed her to make appointments to the Treasury and to draw on its funds. She was supported by her followers, the duke of Orléans, the duke de Richelieu, the duke d Aigmllon, the Duchess de Noailles and Madame de Marsan; however, her political activity was opposed to such a degree within the court that the king soon saw himself obliged to exclude her from state affairs.

Madame Adélaïde and her sisters did not get along well with Queen Marie-Antoinette. When Marie-Antoinette introduced the new custom of informal evening family suppers, as well as other habits which undermined the formal court etiquette, it resulted in an exodus of the old court nobility in opposition to the queen’s reforms, which gathered in the salon of Madame Adélaïde and her sisters.

They entertained extensively at Bellevue as well as Versailles; their salon was reportedly regularly frequented by minister Maurepas, whom Madame Adélaïde had elevated to power, by Louis Joseph, Prince of Condé and Louis François II, Prince of Conti, both members of the Anti-Austrian party against Queen Marie Antoinette. The Austrian Ambassador Mercy reported that their salon was a center of intrigues against Marie Antoinette, where the Mesdames tolerated poems satirizing the queen. When Marie Antoinette, referring to the rising opposition of the monarchy, remarked to Adelaide of the behavior of the “shocking French people”, Adelaide replied “I think you mean shocked”, insinuating that Marie Antoinette’s behavior was shocking.

Revolution and later life

Madame Adélaïde and her sister, Madame Victoire, were present at Versailles during the Parisian women’s march to Versailles on October 6, 1789, during the early days of the French Revolution. Madame Adélaïde and her sister were also when those gathered in the king’s apartment the night on the attack on Marie Antoinette’s bedroom. They participated in the wagon train leaving the Palace of Versailles for Paris; however, their carriage separated from the rest of the procession on the way before they reached Paris, and they never took up residence at the Tuileries with the rest of the royal family, but preferred to retire to the Château de Bellevue

Madame Adélaïde and Madame Victoire remained in France until February 1791 when Revolutionary laws against the Catholic Church caused them to apply for passports from their nephew the king to travel on pilgrimage to the Basilica of Saint Peter in Rome, and Louis XVI signed their passports and notified the Cardinal de Bernis, the French Ambassador to Rome, of their arrival.

They arrived in Rome on April 16, 1791, where Pope Pius VI (1775 – 1799) gave them an official welcome with ringing of bells, and where they stayed for about five years. In Rome, the sisters were given the protection of the Pope and housed in the palace of Cardinal de Bernis. In the Friday receptions of Cardinal de Bernis, Cornelia Knight described them: “Madame Adélaïde still retained traces of that beauty which had distinguished her in her youth, and there was great vivacity in her manner, and in the expression of her countenance. Madame Victoire had also an agreeable face, much good sense, and great sweetness of temper.

Upon the invasion of Italy by Revolutionary France in 1796, Adélaïde and Victoire left Rome for Naples, where Marie Antoinette’s sister, Maria Carolina, was queen, wife of Ferdinand IV-III of the Kingdom of Naples and Sicily (later King of the Two-Sicilies). The sisters settled at the Neapolitan royal court in the Palace of Caserta. Queen Maria Carolina found their presence in Naples difficult: “I have the awful torment of harboring the two old Princesses of France with eighty persons in their retinue and every conceivable impertinence… The same ceremonies are observed in the interior of their apartments here as were formerly at Versailles.”

When Naples was invaded by France in 1799, they left in a Russian frigate for Corfu, and finally settled in Trieste, where Victoire died of breast cancer. Adélaïde died one year later. Their bodies were returned to France by Louis XVIII at the time of the Bourbon Restoration in 1815 and buried at the Basilica of Saint-Denis.

This date in History. September 21, 1792: France Abolishes the Monarchy.

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Absolute Monarchy, French Revolution, King Louis XVI of France, Kingdom of France, Legislative Assembly, Louis XVI, Monarchy Abolished, National Constituent Assembly, National Convention, Tuileries Palace

One of the main source of conflict between the Crown and the Revolutionaries was the Revolution’s principles of popular sovereignty, though central to democratic principles of later eras, it marked a decisive break from the centuries-old principle of divine right that was at the heart of the French monarchy. As a result, the Revolution was opposed by many of the rural people of France and by all the governments of France’s neighbors.

Still, within the city of Paris and amongst the philosophers of the time, many of which were members of the National Assembly, the monarchy had next to no support. As the Revolution became more radical and the masses more uncontrollable, several of the Revolution’s leading figures began to doubt its benefits. Some, like Honoré Mirabeau, secretly plotted with the Crown to restore its power in a new constitutional form.

On June 20, 1789, the members of the French Third Estatetook the Tennis Court Oath, vowing “not to separate, and to reassemble wherever circumstances require, until the constitution of the kingdom is established”. It was a pivotal event in the French Revolution. The Oath signified for the first time that French citizens formally stood in opposition to Louis XVI and the National Assembly’s refusal to back down forced the king to make concessions.

Drawing by Jacques-Louis David of the Tennis Court Oath. David later became a deputy in the National Convention in 1793.

As most of the Assembly still favoured a constitutional monarchy rather than a republic, the various groups reached a compromise in designing a written Constitution which left Louis XVI as little more than a figurehead: he was forced to swear an oath to the constitution, and a decree declared that retracting the oath, heading an army for the purpose of making war upon the nation, or permitting anyone to do so in his name would amount to abdication.

Louis XVI was alienated from the new democratic government both by its negative reaction to the traditional role of the monarch and in its treatment of him and his family. He was particularly irked by being kept essentially as a prisoner in the Tuileries, and by the refusal of the new regime to allow him to have confessors and priests of his choice rather than ‘constitutional priests’ pledged to the state and not the Roman Catholic Church.

On June 21, 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. The voyage was planned by the Swedish nobleman, and often assumed secret lover of Queen Marie-Antoinette, Axel von Fersen. The King and Queen were recognized at Varennes and returned to Paris.

The Assembly provisionally suspended the King. He and Queen Marie Antoinette remained held under guard. The King’s flight had a profound impact on public opinion, turning popular sentiment further against the clergy and nobility, and built momentum for the institution of a constitutional monarchy.

In the summer of 1791, the National Constituent Assembly decided that the king needed to be restored to the throne if he accepted the constitution. The decision was made after the king’s flight to Varennes.

That decision enraged many Parisians into protesting, and one major protest devolved into the Champ de Mars Massacre, with 12 to 50 people killed by the National Guard.

After surviving the vicissitudes of a revolution for two years, the National Constituent Assembly dissolved itself on September 30, 1791. The following day, the Constitution went into effect, which granted power to the Legislative Assembly.

The Legislative Assembly was the legislature of France from October 1, 1791 to September 20, 1792 during the years of the French Revolution. It provided the focus of political debate and revolutionary law-making between the periods of the National Constituent Assembly and of the National Convention.

Louis XVI formed a series of cabinets, veering at times as far-left as the Girondins. However, by the summer of 1792, amid war and insurrection, it had become clear that the monarchy and the now-dominant Jacobins could not reach any accommodation.

What happened next was a crucial moment in the downfall of the monarchy. On April 20, 1792, the Legislative Assembly, supported by Louis XVI, declared war on Austria (“the King of Bohemia and Hungary”) first, voting for war after a long list of grievances was presented to it by the foreign minister, Charles François Dumouriez. Dumouriez prepared an immediate invasion of the Austria.

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. In July, the invasion began, with Brunswick’s army easily taking the fortresses of Longwy and Verdun. The duke then issued on July 25 a proclamation called the Brunswick Manifesto, written by Louis’s émigré cousin, the Prince de Condé, declaring the intent of the Austrians and Prussians to restore the king to his full powers and to treat any person or town who opposed them as rebels to be condemned to death by martial law.

Contrary to its intended purpose of strengthening Louis XVI’s position against the revolutionaries, the Brunswick Manifesto had the opposite effect of greatly undermining his already highly tenuous position. It was taken by many to be the final proof of collusion between the king and foreign powers in a conspiracy against his own country. On July 11, 1792, the Assembly formally declared the nation in danger because of the dire military situation.

The anger of the populace boiled over on August 10 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. The royal family took shelter with the Legislative Assembly.

Louis XVI was officially arrested on August 13, 1792 and sent to the Temple, an ancient fortress in Paris that was used as a prison.

From 1789 until August 10, 1792 during the French Revolution, France was first controlled by the two-year National Constituent Assembly and then by the one-year Legislative Assembly. After the great insurrection of August 10, 1792, The National Convention was created.

The Convention’s députés were instructed to put an end to the crisis that had broken out after the bloody capture of the Tuileries (August 10, 1792). The middle-class origin and political activity meant that most members of the Convention bore no sympathy for the monarchy, and the victory at the battle of Valmy on 20 September (the revolution’s first military success) occurred on the same day as their meeting, thus confirming their convictions.

Proposition for abolition

When the député for Paris, Jean-Marie Collot d’Herbois, proposed abolition he met with little resistance; at most, Claude Basire, friend of Georges Jacques Danton, tried to temper the enthusiasm, recommending a discussion before any decision. However, abbé Henri Grégoire, constitutional bishop of Blois, replied strongly to any suggestion of discussion.

What need do we have of discussion when everyone is in agreement? Kings are as much monsters in the moral order as in the physical order. The Courts are a workshop for crime, the foyer for corruption and the den of tyrants. The history of kings is the martyrology of nations!

Jean-François Ducos supported him in affirming that any discussion would be useless “after the lights spread by 10 August.”

The summary argument served as a debate and the decision taken was unanimous: On September 21, 1792 the National Assembly declared abolished the monarchy abolished and France as a Republic. Louis XVI was stripped of all of his titles and honours, and from this date was known as Citizen Louis Capet.

End of an era

In the wake of the proclamation, efforts grew to eliminate the vestiges of the ancien regime.

As the date of the Republic’s first anniversary approached, the Convention passed a set of laws replacing many familiar ancien systems of order and measurement, including the old Christian calendar. This dramatic change was powerful encouragement to the growing wave of anticlericalism which sought a dechristianisation of France.

The new French Republican Calendar discarded all Christian reference points and calculated time from the Republic’s first full day after the monarchy, September 22, 1792, the first day of Year One.

The Fall of Louis XVI of France and Navarre: Part V

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Austria, Emperor Leopold II, Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia, Holy Roman Empire, Leopold II, Louis XIV of France, Louis XVI of France, Marie Antoinette, Tuileries Palace

Part V

Despite the Kings flight from the Palace the Legislative Assembly still favored a constitutional monarchy. After a new Constitution was written and Louis agreed to swear an oath to uphold it, there was still a chance the monarchy could survive. What most people often think is that that the Enlightenment ideals were against a monarchy because the French Revolution came so quickly on the heels of the American Revolution where the former British Colonies said “No” to being ruled by a king. That is not the case. The Enlightenment ideals supported many types of government as long as it was the will of the people and that they had a say in the process of government. While an absolute monarchy, which was the type Louis XVI inherited, was not congenial to Enlightenment principles but a constitutional or limited monarchy was favorable because it limited the powers of the monarch and allowed for elected officials that represented the populace.

However, it seems with what transpired next, it wasn’t so much that a constitutional monarchy was against the Enlightenment or the Revolution, it seems that those in the French government grew tired of Louis. One of the events that lead to the toppling of Louis and his crown was the war between France and the Holy Roman Empire in April of 1792. At this time Marie-Antoinette’s brother, was Leopold II, the Holy Roman Emperor. Leopold, along with King Friedrich-Wilhelm III of Prussia and French Émigrés issued the Declaration of Pillnitz, which declared that in the interest of the all European monarchs of Europe that the well-being of Louis and his family was essential, and threatened vague but severe consequences if anything should befall them. Shortly after this deceleration the Legislative Assembly, with the support of Louis, ironically, declared war on the Holy Roman Empire.

This war solidified many factions within the Revolution. To these revolutionaries this war was not about the protection of the Royal Family but against French sovereignty itself. When the leader of the Prussian-Austrian army Prince Carl-Wilhelm-Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick issued a proclamation called the Brunswick Manifesto on July 25, 1792, written by Louis’s émigré cousin, Louis Joseph de Bourbon the Prince de Condé, declaring the intent of the Austrians and Prussians to restore the king to his full powers and to treat any person or town who opposed them as rebels to be condemned to death by martial law, this was the final blow for Louis.

Paris mobs had reached their boiling point. With foreign powers threatening to give Louis his full absolute powers and threatening French sovereignty, Paris mobs marched on the Tuileries Palace where both the Royal Family and the monarchist members of the Legislative Assembly had taken refuge. On August 13, 1792 Louis XVI and his family were formally arrested. The Legislative Assembly was replaced by a National Assembly which formally abolished the Monarchy on September 21, 1792.

It is difficult to evaluate Louis’ actions and figure where did he go wrong? One of Louis’ problems was that he was a kind man yet indecisive. If he had been a powerful presence would the outcome have been the same? I really don’t know. It seems even with a powerful ruler the Revolution was larger than one man. In the light of the revolution many of Louis’ actions are understandable.

As a prisoner in the Tuileries Palace he had but little choice but to go along with the revolutionary government. I don’t think all of his actions with the government were insincere. While he was an absolute monarch at heart he did show some level of willingness to work with the government. I do not really think Louis would have objected to a role as a Constitutional monarch. I do see the radical nature of the Revolutionary assemblies as having much to do with Louis’ downfall. It was not all of his fault.

He did, however, play a role. The two largest issues seem to be his flight from the Tuileries Palace and his plotting with foreign powers to end the revolution and to be restored to his full powers. I do think those were the two major points that brought Louis down. However, I can have empathy for him. I do not blame him for trying to regain power. Who wouldn’t have under those circumstances? Plus after a couple of years being a prisoner in his own palace, I can’t blame him for trying to flee that condition.

For myself, I think the larger problem was the absolute monarchy itself. The seeds were sown and the threads for its downfall were laid in the times of Louis XIV. His hunger for power, territory and war was something his successor Louis XV strived for. In some lesser extent so did Louis XVI. Another key ingredient was by placing the court at Versailles and isolating the King from his people, the monarchy lost touch with the common man and his sufferings. That was the true issue that brought down the monarchy.

The Fall of Louis XVI of France and Navarre: Part IV

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Austria, Constitutional Monarchy, French Émigrés, French Revolution, Legislative Assembly, Louis XVI of France, Marie Antoinette, Tuileries Palace, Varennes

Part IV

Things took a turn for the worse for Louis XVI and family in 1791 when the Constituent Assembly was replaced with the Legislative Assembly. This assembly consisted of two factions. One group, known as the Freuillants were wealthy middle class men that supported a Constitutional Monarchy and felt the revolution had runs its course. The second group, the Democratic faction did not trust the king and felt the revolutionary principles had to continue to reform society and the government.

The reason the Democratic faction did not trust the king? That came on 1791. Louis was very discontent being a prisoner of the revolution. He had been conspiring behind closed doors with diplomats favorable to the king. Louis envisioned a congress consisting of French Émigrés that would, along with foreign troops, restore the king to his full powers and end the revolution.

This was not occurring swiftly enough and on the night of June 21, 1791 (223 years ago tomorrow)  Louis XVI, Marie-Antoinette their two surviving children fled from the Palace. They were soon recognized, making it as far a Varennes where they were apprehended and arrested and returned to the Palace. The Legislative Assembly stripped Louis of his remaining powers. This flight was seen as a betrayal of the revolution and it greatly shocked the French people, who, up until then, saw Louis and the Royal Family as symbols of the revolution and champions for progress and change. The flight from the Tuileries Palace changed all of that and from that moment the monarchy lost considerable support.

Was this the point of no return for Louis? Was this his fatal mistake? As we shall see in the next section this was a monumental moment in the reign of Louis XVI. With the notion of absolute monarchy and the divine right of kings gone forever in France, the notion of popular sovereignty was keeping the monarchy alive. As long as a majority of the people supported the king then the throne was stable. This betrayal greatly weakened that support.

We shall see in the next and last section that this stumble was Louis’ last mistake. For the final events that toppled the crown from his head were not of his doing.

 

The Fall of King Louis XVI of France and Navarre. Part III

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1789, Bastille, comte d'Artois, comte de Provence, French Revolution, July 14, Louis XVI of France, Marie Antoinette, Palace of Versailles, Prince Charles-Philippe, Prince Louis-Stanislas, Tuileries Palace

Part III

Now we are getting to the meat of this topic. What did Louis do wrong during the French Revolution? What was the point of no return for Louis, and could he have done something differently to save his throne?

Also, in doing my research for this topic I realized this part of the topic is very complex so I will be adding a part IV and Part V.

The French Revolution began on July 14, 1789 with the storming of the Bastille. It has been reported that Louis XVI failed to mention the raid on the Bastille in his journal that evening. I am not sure if that story is apocryphal but it does indicate how out of touch with what was going on around him.

Within a short few months of the start of the revolution the anger of the revolutionaries turned on the members of the Royal Family. On October 5th, 1789 an angry mod of Parisians lead by working women stormed the Palace of Versailles with an attempt to kill the very unpopular queen, Marie Antoinette. The mob was unsuccessful and were defused only be the intervention of General La Fayette. In the aftermath of this skirmish it was decided to move the Royal Family to the Tuileries Palace where it was thought that with the Royal Family located in Paris among the people they would be more aware of the nations problems making them more accountable.

For Louis it was a long nightmare.

One of the ideals of the Revolution was the Enlightenment belief in popular sovereignty. Popular sovereignty was the belief that individual citizens had a say in who ran the Government and who represented them. It ran counter to the divine right of Kings which said those who ruled over you were placed their divinely by God and were answerable only to God. However, as the Revolution became more radical many of those politicians that sought for reform began to question those Enlightenment ideals. One such individual was Honoré Mirabeau Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau, finance minister. A favorite of the people, and considered their spokesperson, began to side with the crown and switched to a moderate position, favoring a constitutional monarchy built on the model of Great Britain.

In 1791 another French noble, Armand Marc, comte de Montmorin, replaced the comte de Mirabeau as finance minister and secretly began to organize covert resistance to the revolutionaries by diverting money from the Civil List to cover expenses for the preservation of the monarchy. The kings own brothers, Prince Louis-Stanislas, comte de Provence, and Prince Charles-Philippe, comte d’Artois were also trying to launch counter revolutionary movements until their brother, the king, discovered their plans and demanded them to stop. Also at this time the revolutionary Government did not want to abolish the monarchy yet they did not know what role the king should play in the government. By this time the king was a virtual prisoner of the Tuileries Palace and decided he had had enough and it was time to flee.

Fleeing the Tuileries Palace will be covered in the next section.

My thoughts. Thus far from 1789 until 1791 the government and its officials were willing to work with the king. One thing I failed to mention in the body of this blog, was, at this time, because of Louis’ known support of Enlightenment ideals, the general population saw the King as a symbol of the revolution and gave great support to the monarchy. However, his treatment in the Palace was less than stellar and I think one of the contributing factors of his down fall. Louis has gone down in history as being an indecisive monarch and that will play a role in his demise. However, not supporting the counter-revolutionaries while the revolutionary government still supported him was a wise thing do.