Louis XVI Biography

Louis XVI was the last king of France (1774-1992) in the line of Bourbon monarchs preceding the French
Revolution of 1789. He was excited for treason by guillotine in 1793.

Louis XVI was born on August 23, 1754, in the Palace of Versailles. Named Louis Auguste de France, he
was given the title Du de Berry signifying his junior status in the French Court. He was the third son of
Louis, grandson of Louis XV of France. His mother, Maire-Josephe of Saxony, was the daughter of
Frederick Augustus 2 of Saxony, the King of Poland.

Louis XVI grew up strong and healthy, though very shy. He was tutored by French high-class noblemen
and studied religion, morality, and humanities. With his good health, he enjoyed physical activities such
as hunting and wrestling and from an early age he enjoyed locksmithing, which became a life-long hobby.

Louis XVI parents didnt give him attention, instead focusing on his older brother, the heir apparent, Louis
dic de Bourgogne, who died at age 9 in 1761. Then, on December 20, 1765, his father died from
tuberculosis, and Louis Auguste became Dauphin at age 11. His mothers heart broke and never
recovered from the family tragedies and also succumbed to tuberculosis on March 13,1767. Louis XVI
was prepared for the throne he was soon to inherit. Causes of death of his parents, Louiss tutors
provided him with poor interpersonal skills. They team him that austerity was a sign of a strong character
in monarchs. As a result, he presented himself as being very indecisive.

As him grew at the age of 15, Louis married the 14 year-old Habsburg Archduchness Maria Antonia
(Marie Antoninette), his second cousin once removed, in an arranged marriage. She was the youngest
daughter of Holy Emperor Francis 1 and Empress Maria Teresa. The marriage was met with some
skepticism by members of the French court, as they remembered a previous alliance with the Habsburgs
pulled France into the Seven Years War. Tough initially charmed by her personality, the French people
eventually came to loathe her, accusing her of being promiscuous and sympathetic to French enemies.

The first few years of marriage for Louis and Marie were amicable but distant, His shyness kept him
distant from her in private and his fear of her manipulation made him cold to her in public. It is believed
the couple did not consummate their marriage for some time, having their first child eight years after their
wedding. Historians debate the cause, but most likely, Louis suffered from a physiological dysfunction
that took time to rectify. Eventually, the couple had four children, all of whom but one died in childhood.

On May 10, 1774, Louis Ausguste became Louis XVI, with the death of his grandfather Louis XV. In the
early years of his reign, Louis XVI focused on religious uniformity and foreign policy. By 1789, in the
month of May France face crisis, Louis XVI convened the Estates General, an advisory assembly of
different estates or socio-economic classes (the clergy, nobility, and commoners). The meeting didnt
went well. By June, the Third Estate declared itself the National Assembly and set out to develop a
constitution. He accepted bad advice from the nobilitys hard line conservatives and his wife, Marie
Antoinette. In the final two years of his reign, events moved rapidly. In the fall of 1791, Louis XVI tied his
hopes on the dubious prospect of war with Austria in hopes that a military defeat would pave the way for
a restoration of his authority. War broke out in April 1792. Louis was capture to the prison. On January
21, 1793, Louis XVI was guillotined in the Palace de la Revolution.

Marie Antoinette Biography

Marie Antoinette helped provoke the popular unrest that led to the French Revolution and to the
overthrow of the monarch in August 1792.

Marie Antoinette born on November 2, 1755, in Vienna, Austria, Marie Antoinette helped provoke the
popular unrest that led to the French Revolution and to the overthrow of the monarchy. She became a
symbol of the excesses of the monarchy and is often credited with the famous quote Let them eat cake,
although there is no evidence she actually said it. As a 20 year consort to Louis XVI, she was beheaded
nine months after he was, on October 16, 1793, by order of the Revolutionary tribunal.

Marie Antoinette, the last queen of France, was born Maria Antonia Josepha Joanna on November 2,
1755, in Vienna, Austria. She was the 15th and second to last child of Maria Theresa, empress of Austria,
and Holy Roman Emperor Francis I. Marie Antoinette lived a relatively carefree childhood. She received
an education typical of an 18th century aristocratic girl, focusing primarily on religious and moral
principles, while her brothers studied more academic subject matter. with the conclusion of the Seven
Years War in 1763, the preservation of a fragile alliance between Austria and France became a priority
for Empress Maria Theresa. In 1765, Louis, dauphin de France (also known as Louis Ferdinand), the son
of French monarch Louis XV, died. His death left the kings 11-year-old grandson, Louis- Auguste, heir to
the French throne. Within months, Marie Antoinette and Louis-Auguste were pledge to marry each other.

In 1768, Louis XV dispatched a tutor to Austria to instruct his grandsons future wife. The tutor found
Marie Antoinette more intelligent than has been generally supposed, but added that since she is rather
lazy and extremely frivolous, she is hard to teach. Marie Antoinette was a child of only 14 years,
delicately beautiful, with tray-blue eyes and ash-blonde hair. In May 1770, she set out for France to be
married, escorted by 57 carriages, 117 footmen and 376 horsemen.

Louis XV died in 1774, and Louis-Auguste succeeded him to the French throne as Louis XVI, making
Marie Antoinette, at 19 years old, queen of France. The personalities of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette
could not have been more different. During the 1780s, with the French government sliding into financial
turmoil and poor harvests driving up grain prices across the country, Marie Antoinettes fabulously
extravagant lifestyle increasingly became the subject of popular ire. However, in the summer of 1792,
with France at war with Austria and Prussia, the increasingly powerful radical Jacobin leader Maximilien
de Robespierre called for the removal of the king. In September 1792, after a month of terrible massacres
in Paris, the National Convention abolished the monarchy, declared the establishment of a French
Republic, and arrested the king and queen.

In January 1793, the radical new republic placed King Louis XVI on trial convicted him of treason and
condemned him to death. On January 21, 1793, he was dragged to the guillotine and executed. As
Thomas Jefferson once said, predicting the way Marie Antoinette would be viewed by posterity, I have
ever believed that if there had been no Queen, there would have been no revolution. Marie Antoinette is
a start of the revolution.