DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.70030#0179
LOUIS XVI.
The particulars of the life of this accomplished, but
unfortunate monarch, and the circumstances attending
his deplorable fate, have been already so minutely de-
tailed, as to render it less a subject of regret, that the
limits of our publication will permit us only to give a brief
and rapid sketch of the events of a reign, which gave
birth to a revolution, the most important in its conse-
quences recorded in the history of civilized nations.
Louis the sixteenth of the name, was born at Versailles,
on the 23d of August, 1754. He was the second son of
Louis, dauphin, who died in 17&5, and ascended the
throne in the year 1774, upon the death of his grand-
father, Louis XV. He had not attained the age of 21,
when he assumed the reins of government, having pre-
viously married the daughter of Marie-Therese, Marie-
Antoinette, of Austria, then the object of the idolatry of
the French.
Louis XV. left behind him ministers who were hated
and despised. He had suppressed the parliaments, and
exiled the members: the finances were in a deplorable
state, and the public discontented in the extreme : added
to which, an indifference in matters of religion had suc-
ceeded the quarrels of the Jansenists and the Molinists,
and opinions of the most dangerous tendency, on all sides,
manifested themselves. The spirit of reform and liberty,
which fermented in every head, and developed itself in
The particulars of the life of this accomplished, but
unfortunate monarch, and the circumstances attending
his deplorable fate, have been already so minutely de-
tailed, as to render it less a subject of regret, that the
limits of our publication will permit us only to give a brief
and rapid sketch of the events of a reign, which gave
birth to a revolution, the most important in its conse-
quences recorded in the history of civilized nations.
Louis the sixteenth of the name, was born at Versailles,
on the 23d of August, 1754. He was the second son of
Louis, dauphin, who died in 17&5, and ascended the
throne in the year 1774, upon the death of his grand-
father, Louis XV. He had not attained the age of 21,
when he assumed the reins of government, having pre-
viously married the daughter of Marie-Therese, Marie-
Antoinette, of Austria, then the object of the idolatry of
the French.
Louis XV. left behind him ministers who were hated
and despised. He had suppressed the parliaments, and
exiled the members: the finances were in a deplorable
state, and the public discontented in the extreme : added
to which, an indifference in matters of religion had suc-
ceeded the quarrels of the Jansenists and the Molinists,
and opinions of the most dangerous tendency, on all sides,
manifested themselves. The spirit of reform and liberty,
which fermented in every head, and developed itself in