The Regicide of Louis XVI (original) (raw)
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Hardman details the history of Louis' successive governments. This book is, nevertheless, an important piece of political history that brings to light sources often undervalued by historians-such as the Mémoires of the Comte d'Angiviller-and poses some important questions. Hardman also presents a good analysis of the policies developed by Louis' ministers, and pays close attention to their relationships with other members of government. His emphatic rejection of "the conventional stereotype of the stupid, lazy and impassive king" (442) is curious, as few scholars continue to espouse this opinion.
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According to pope Benedict XIV there was no greater proof for the existence of providence than to see France prosper under the rule of Louis XV. Few were as gentle or ironic as the pontiff in their assessment of the lung. For the duke de Choiseul, who was the linchpin of his government for more than a decade (1758-70), Louis XV was 'soulless' with the mind of a 'spiteful child'. Worse still 'he would, like Nero, have been enchanted to watch Paris burn. .. but lacked the ' J. P. Guicciadini and P. Bonnet (eds.) Mimoires du Duc de Choiseul (Paris, 1983), 192.
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Louis the duc de Bourgogne (1686 – 1712), grandson of Louis XIV, was briefly Dauphin of France before his premature death from measles. Advised by a group of noted former tutors and members of the court, Bourgogne’s Circle devised a range of plans to reform the French state under his future rule. Opposing the centralising model of sovereignty pursued by Louis XIV, the Circle intended to expand government, decentralise power into the provinces, reform an ailing economy, and resurrect the fortunes of a high-aristocracy believed to have been excluded from meaningful government. The Circle’s conviction that Louis XIV had circumvented the ancient nobility by tyrannical (‘absolutist’) means challenges revisionist interpretations of absolutism in ancien régime France. This article will therefore test revisionist claims that ‘absolutism’ did not exist in France, by assessing the contemporary opinion of the Circle’s key members. In so doing, it will reveal the divergent reform agendas of its members and contest previous historiographical notions that depict the group as possessing a cohesive ideology.
While historians have considered the pamphlets attacking the sacrality of the monarchy to be a major cause of the French Revolution, they have largely overlooked the fact that such criticisms went back much further. Additionally, studies of Louis XIV have primarily explored the fabrication of the king's image, but largely neglected the discourse produced by his critics, because they have mistakenly attributed the underground literature to Huguenots in exile. By analysing four libelles in particular, this article demonstrates that there was a desacralization campaign around 1690 and asks why. It proposes three reasons for these attacks on religious legitimacy. First, the king himself violated in several ways norms upon which the sacral monarchy had been built in the first half of the seventeenth century. Secondly, moral rigorism was rising after 1650. Thirdly, a new court faction emerged around Louis XIV's son, Louis de France, better known as Monseigneur le Dauphin (1661-1711). This faction, whose role has been greatly neglected in recent historiography, brought together several groups critical of the king and used the monarchy's break with established religious norms to develop their political arguments. 1 P. Burke, The Fabrication of Louis XIV (New Haven, 1992); G. Sabatier, Versailles ou la figure du roi (Paris, 1999). 2 There are numerous studies deconstructing the myth of absolutism, including R. Mettam,
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The Historical Journal, 1999
This article re-examines a crucial aspect of French history between 1789 and 1793, and one which remains controversial : the attitude of Louis XVI towards the Revolution. It does this by exploiting an important and unpublished source, the letters of the king's secret plenipotentiary to the European powers, the baron de Breteuil, to the foreign monarch most trusted by the French royal family, Gustavus III of Sweden. Since Louis XVI's precarious position in Paris from the October Days until his death prevented him from expressing his true feelings except very rarely, historians since have found it difficult to reach firm conclusions on his political views and motivation during the Revolution, and the result has often been partisan judgements from left and right. The issue has been further clouded by persistent claims for over a century that several of Louis's most important letters of this period are forgeries. While they do not resolve all these problems, the letters of B...
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This article examines The Political and Confidential Correspondence of Lewis the Sixteenth (1803), by Helen Maria Williams, in which she translates the letters by Louis XVI while she adds her own political commentaries. This translation received negative reviews and one of its harshest critics was royalist emigré Bertrand de Moleville. The first part of this article explores the controversy that surrounded Correspondence and reveals that the letters were forged. The following part analyzes Williams’s political arguments that legitimize the deposition of Louis XVI as the king of France. The last part explores Bertrand’s Refutation, published in 1804. The article concludes that, regardless of the authenticity of the letters, Correspondence is a work that deserves reconsideration as it sheds light into Williams’s participation in the political debates of her time. Besides, the article shows that the misogynistic arguments employed by Bertrand contributed to the invisibilization of Will...