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Louis
XVI (23 August 1754 – 21 January 1793) ruled
as King of France
and Navarre
from 1774 until 1791, and then as King of the French
from 1791 to 1792. Suspended and arrested as part of
the insurrection of the 10th of August during the French
Revolution, he was tried by the
National
Convention, found guilty of
high treason, and executed by guillotine on
21 January 1793. He is the only king of France ever to be
executed.
Although
Louis XVI was beloved at first, his indecisiveness and conservatism
led some elements of the people of France to eventually view him as
a symbol of the perceived tyranny of the Ancien Régime and gave him the nickname Oncle Louis ("Uncle Louis").
After the abolition of the monarchy in 1792,
the new republican government gave him the surname Capet, a
nickname in reference to Hugh Capet,
the founder of the Capetian dynasty
- which the revolutionaries wrongly interpreted as a
family name. Louis was also informally nicknamed Louis le
Dernier (Louis the Last), a derisive use of the traditional
nicknaming of French
kings.
Marie
Antoinette (2 November 1755 – 16
October 1793) was an Archduchess of Austria and
the Queen of France
and of
Navarre. She was the fifteenth and
penultimate child of Empress Maria Theresa
of Austria and Emperor Francis
I.
At the age of
fourteen, on the day of her marriage to Louis-Auguste, Dauphin of
France, she became Dauphine de
France. At the death of King Louis XV, in May 1774, her husband ascended the throne of France as
King Louis XVI, and Marie Antoinette assumed the title of Queen of
France and of Navarre. After seven years of marriage she gave birth
to a daughter, Marie-Thérèse
Charlotte, the first of their four
children.
Initially charmed
by her personality and beauty, the French people generally came to
dislike her, accusing "the Austrian" of being profligate and
promiscuous, and of harboring sympathies for France's
enemies.
At the height of
the French
Revolution, Louis XVI was deposed and the
royal family was imprisoned. Nine months after her husband's
execution, she was tried, convicted of treason, and executed by
guillotine on
16 October
1793.
- 1789-1989 BICENTENARY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION,LOUIS XVI - MARIE
ANTOINETTE
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