Question

Role of Louis 16 in French Révolution

Answer 1

The rule of Louis XVI was of extravagance. When he became the king , he found an empty treasury . Long years of war had drained the financial resources of France. Added to this was the cost of maintaining an extravagant court at the immense palace of Versailles. Under Louis XVI, France sponsored the American rebellion against their common enemy, Britain. The war added more than a billion livres to a debt that had already risen to more than 2 billion livres.The French Revolution led to the end of monarchy in France. A society based on privileges gave way to a new system of governance. The Declarations of the Rights of Man during the revolution, announced the coming of a new time. The idea that all individuals had rights and could claim equality became part of a new language of politics. These notions of equality and freedom emerged as the central ideas of a new age; but in different countries they were reinterpreted and rethought in many different ways. The anti-colonial movements in India and China, Africa and South-America, produced ideas that were innovative and original, but they spoke in a language that gained currency only from the late eighteenth century.

Answer 2

Louis XVI (French pronunciation: ​[lwi sɛːz]; 23 August 1754 – 21 January 1793), born Louis-Auguste, was the last King of France before the fall of the monarchy during the French Revolution. He was referred to as Citizen Louis Capet during the final weeks of his life. In 1765, at the death of his father, Louis, son and heir apparent of Louis XV, Louis-Auguste became the new Dauphin of France. Upon his grandfather's death on 10 May 1774, he assumed the title "King of France and Navarre", which he used until 4 September 1791, when he received the title of "King of the French" until the monarchy was abolished on 21 September 1792. Louis XVI was guillotined on 21 January 1793.