Louis XVI

Louis XVI (Louis-Auguste; French: [lwi sɛːz]; 23 August 1754 – 21 January 1793) was the last king of France before the fall of the monarchy during the French Revolution. The son of Louis, Dauphin of France (son and heir apparent of King Louis XV), and Maria Josepha of Saxony, Louis became the new Dauphin when his father died in 1765. In 1770, he married Marie Antoinette. He became King of France and Navarre on his paternal grandfather's death on 10 May 1774, and reigned until the abolition of the monarchy on 21 September 1792. From 1791 onwards, he used the style of king of the French.

The first part of Louis XVI's reign was marked by attempts to reform the French government in accordance with Enlightenment ideas. These included efforts to increase tolerance toward non-Catholics as well as abolishing 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 Treaty of Paris (1783). 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 France's middle and lower classes intensified opposition to the French aristocracy and the absolute monarchy led by Louis XVI and his wife, Marie Antoinette. Tensions progressively rose, punctuated by violent riots such as the storming of the Bastille, which forced Louis to recognize the legislative authority of the National Assembly.

Louis's indecisiveness and conservatism toward the demands of the Estates led many to despise him as the embodiment of ancien régime tyranny, and his popularity deteriorated progressively. His unsuccessful flight to Varennes in June 1791 seemed to confirm suspicions that the king hoped for foreign intervention to restore his power, deeply undermining his legitimacy. Four months later, the constitutional monarchy was declared, and the replacement of the monarchy with 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.

With the outbreak of civil and international war, Louis XVI was arrested during the Insurrection of 10 August 1792. One month later, the monarchy was abolished and the French First Republic was proclaimed on 21 September 1792. The former king became a desacralized French citizen, addressed as Citoyen (Citizen) Louis Capet in reference to his ancestor Hugh Capet. Louis was tried by the National Convention (self-instituted as a tribunal for the occasion), found guilty of high treason, and executed by guillotine on 21 January 1793. Louis XVI's 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 released to her Austrian relatives in exchange for French prisoners of war, eventually dying childless in 1851.