LOUIS XVI (FRANCE) (1754–1793; ruled 1774–1792)

LOUIS XVI (FRANCE) (1754–1793; ruled 1774–1792), king of France. Louis-Auguste, duc de Berry was the second surviving son of the heir to the throne (dauphin) Louis-Ferdinand and his second wife, Marie-Thérèse-Antoinette-Raphaëlle, daughter of Augustus III, elector of Saxony and king of Poland. Louis's elder brother, the duc de Bourgogne, died in 1761, so when their father died in 1765, he became eldest male heir to his grandfather, Louis XV. Once thought a dull child, recent research has shown that he was a well-taught, reflective, and intelligent student, particularly interested in the sciences (mathematics, physics, geography) and history. He was raised and remained a convinced, but intellectually curious, Catholic; he had a taste for empirical facts, and brevity in expressing them, which, together with natural taciturnity and the secretiveness he inherited from his grandfather, often made him frustrating to work with. His political principles, which became settled in his adolescence, combined the moral politics of François de Salignac de La Mothe Fénelon with a firm belief in his traditional rights as an absolute king. In 1770, he married Marie-Antoinette, youngest daughter of Maria Theresa, the ruler of Austria, but it was not until 1776 that the marriage was consummated; Derek Beales has conclusively demonstrated that the delay was caused not by a physical impediment but rather by sexual ignorance, finally rectified by advice from the queen's brother, Emperor Joseph II, who subsequently received heartfelt written thanks from the royal pair.

Louis's marriage had been designed to cement the alliance with Austria that had been concluded in 1756 and was supported by the dominant party at Louis XV's court, led by the duke of Choiseul and Madame de Pompadour. The young dauphin approved Louis XV's decision to drop Choiseul, as well as his reassertion of royal authority against the parlements in 1771, so when the old king died in 1774, it was thought that the new ruler would continue on this course. But, worried by his own youth and inexperience, he chose as close advisor and informal prime minister Jean Frédéric Phélypeaux, count of Maurepas, a veteran minister who had been disgraced in 1749 but was close to the royal family. Maurepas wanted to rebuild confidence in the monarchy, whose image had suffered from the coup of 1770–1771. He persuaded Louis to recall the old parlements, impose restrictions on their rights of judicial review of legislation through remonstrance, and choose a ministry that included the fashionable liberals Chrétien de Malesherbes and Anne Robert Jacques Turgot. The new ministry proved politically inept (for example, in their insistence on bringing back free trade in foodstuffs during the crisis year 1774–1775). Maurepas and Louis replaced them with a team that included, by late 1776, the Genevan banker and reputed financial wizard Jacques Necker as financial counsellor and the veteran diplomat Charles Gravier, the count of Vergennes, as foreign secretary.

Louis XVI, along with a large body of public opinion, enthusiastically supported France's alliance with the rebellious American colonists against Britain; he and Vergennes managed to keep the other European powers out of the conflict and avoid engagement on Austria's side in Joseph II's various adventures. The outcome in 1783 was diplomatic and military success: freedom of the seas and the restoration of France's position in Europe, although trade with the new republic did not develop as quickly as expected. Necker had hoped to finance the war on life-annuity loans serviced by economies and recovered revenue as earlier state loans were amortised, but the war went on too long, taxes had to be increased, and the usual flood of postwar claims on the government created a potential crisis. In the meantime, the political scene had changed. During the reign, two principal factions fought for control within the ministry—the remains of Choiseul's friends, grouped around Queen Marie-Antoinette and the Austrian alliance, and the socalled "king's party," which hankered after the methods of 1770–1774 and distrusted Austria. Maurepas successfully played them off against each other, but he died in 1781. Necker himself resigned that year.

Henceforward, Louis was more directly involved in politics, generally coming down on the side of the "king's party," represented in the ministry by Vergennes and Charles Alexandre de Calonne. Louis agreed with these two on the need for root-and-branch reform of the tax system to eliminate privilege and establish fiscal uniformity; with them he arranged to call an Assembly of Notables in 1787, to create a tide of public opinion to force these and other reforms through the Parlement of Paris. But Vergennes died just before the Notables met, leaving Louis and Calonne alone. They did not manage the assembly well, and Calonne, whose reforms threatened them and their like through the country, got caught in a stockmarket scandal, and had to be dismissed; he was replaced by Étienne Charles Loménie de Brienne, a partisan of Necker. John Hardman has argued that this constituted a turning point in Louis's life, leading to prolonged bouts of depression, cynicism, and dependency that dogged his behavior thereafter. Brienne attempted to ram reforms somewhat similar to Calonne's through the notables and, when that failed, through the Parlement of Paris; finally he tried to rule without them. But Louis was forced by a credit crisis to drop Brienne and bring back Necker in 1788, and, in 1789, to call the Estates-General.

Though willing to admit constitutional reform, Louis and Necker proved indecisive over the method of representation in the Estates, thus setting the stage for the successful refusal by the deputies of the Third Estate, when they met in Versailles in May 1789, to meet except as a National Assembly with one vote for each deputy. Louis's instincts told him to go along with the Third Estate in the ensuing crisis, but, pressured by his advisors, he tried to slow or reverse the process of change. He put his wide-ranging reform plans, too late, to the Séance Royale (Royal Session) on 23 June as if nothing had happened. He consented to bring up troops to maintain order in Paris, but dismissed Necker, thus provoking the Parisian revolt in which the Bastille was stormed on 14 July; and he refused to withdraw from Versailles before the Parisian women and the national guard captured the royal family and forced them to return to Paris. Confined to the Tuileries, the king became in effect a prisoner and politically little more than a figurehead; he now secretly sent a message to his cousin Charles IV of Spain, disavowing any future actions he might take as being under duress. When matters settled down, however, he appears to have been willing to make an accommodation with the Revolution as long as the monarchy could play an active role in initiating legislation; Louis rightly refused to be a martyr to the diehard policies of the reactionary nobility, Marie-Antoinette, and his émigré brothers, the counts of Provençe and Artois. That was the nub of his program in the Royal Session, and also of the manifesto he left behind when he fled eastward and was captured at Varennes with his family on 20–25 June 1791. The king seems to have viewed his flight not as a plan to invade France with the help of foreign troops, but as a demonstration of force to make the Constituent Assembly renegotiate his place in the monarchy. Forced to return, Louis made a deal with the assembly, who were frightened to dismiss him, fearing to open the way to a democratic republic. Basically, Louis intended to bide his time until the contradictions inherent in the new regime brought about its downfall, a policy of passive resistance well-suited to his character. He sanctioned the declaration of war against Austria and Prussia in April 1792, the better to demonstrate these contradictions. This strategy was clever—there was much royalist support in the country and even in Paris—but he never thought through how to translate it into constitutional change. In the meantime, popular militants in Paris and radical volunteers from the provincial National Guards stormed the Tuileries palace in a coup d'état on 10 August 1792, driving the royal family to take refuge in the Legislative Assembly. As in the crises of 1789, Louis once again drew back from using his troops in a way that would cause major bloodshed. The rump of the assembly, from which the moderate deputies had fled, convoked a new Constitutional Convention; the Convention proclaimed a democratic Republic on 22 September, put the king on trial, and found him guilty of "conspiracy against public freedom and attacks on general state security." Louis died bravely on 21 January 1793.

LOUIS XVI (FRANCE) (1754–1793; ruled 1774–1792)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Sources

Secondary Sources