Louis XVI Indicted for Treason - Dec. 11, 1792

Louis XVI was indicted for treason on this day in 1792. There's more detail in the November 19, 2008 episode of Stuff You Missed in History Class.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to This Day in History Class from how Stuff
Works dot Com and from the desk of Stuff You
Missed in History Class. It's the show where we explore
the past one day at a time with a quick
look at what happened today in history. Hello, and welcome
to the podcast. I'm Christopher Haciotas, sitting in this week
for your regular host Tracy V. Wilson. It's December eleven,

(00:25):
and in one of the most pivotal moments of the
French Revolution, King Louis the sixteenth was indicted for high
treason and crimes on this day in seventeen. The man
who had become France's final king before the French Revolution
was born August seventeen fifty four as Louis August. He
was his parents seventh pregnancy, but the first child to
survive to adulthood. Louis August was born during the reign

(00:48):
of his grandfather Louis, who was also known as Louis
the Beloved and ruled France for nearly six decades. Now
Louis the Fifteenth, Louis the sixteenth predecessor died of smallpox
in May of seventeen seventy four. Normally Louis August's father
would have assumed the throne, but he had died of
tuberculosis nine years earlier, So in seventeen seventy four, Louis
August became Louis the sixteenth, King of France. I know

(01:11):
it's a lot of Louis Louise, but we can keep
track now. Louis the sixteenth was nineteen years old at
the time, and he was already married to Murrie Antoinette
of Austria. They'd been married for about four years at
that point. Louis the sixteenth we'll just call him Louis
from now on. Louis started his reign with an eye
towards values that came out of the era of Enlightenment.
Greater freedom of the press, religious tolerance, and scientific inquiry,

(01:32):
among other endeavors. Eliminating certain land taxes, increasing acceptance of
non Catholic Christians, abolishing serfdom, supporting the American Revolution, and
even deregulating grain markets. These were all undertaken by Louis.
Some were resisted and shot down by nobility, while other
reforms were successful. It says last two though, that would
prove to be pivotal. Deregulation of grain markets in France

(01:55):
led to wild fluctuations in price. The common people struggled
to afford bread or even the grain to make their own,
and a number of riots broke out in seventeen seventy five.
That was a series of events often called the Bread
War in supporting the American Revolution. The following year put
France into serious debt, and the ensuing financial crisis was
compounded by a byzantine system of taxation. The next decades

(02:17):
saw an erosion of the monarchy's credibility, and people came
to view Louis and his wife Marie Antoinette as figures
of not just an outdated system of governance, but one
ignorant to the plight of the common people. Violence, civil unrest,
and political turmoil became more prevalent, and Louis became increasingly
irrelevant when it came to actual governance, and gained a
reputation for being indecisive, unskilled, a political maneuvering, and just

(02:39):
generally being out of touch with the realities of the
day and the need for policy compromise. So in July fourteenth,
seventeen eighty nine, a group of revolutionaries stormed the Bastile,
which was a political prison in Paris, though it only
held seven prisoners. At the time, the Bastill was viewed
as symbolic of the monarchy's rule. Now here's a side note.
You may hear that louis journal for that day, July fourteenth,

(03:01):
seventeen eighty nine, held only a single word nothing, which
a lot of people say signifies how out of touch
he was. That journal was actually just a hunting journal
or a hunting log, so it's not really indicative of
where Louis head was at. And anyway, at the time,
Louis was at the Palace of Versailles, outside of Paris,
and he only learned of the storming of the Bastil
the following morning. So following these events, Louis was forced

(03:22):
to accept the dissolution of the monarchy as it existed,
and a constitutional monarchy was established. But after a failed
assassination attempt on Marie Antoinette, Louis and his family relocated
from Versailles outside of the city to the Tuilerie Palace,
which is right in the heart of the city, and
the intent there was to be closer to the people.
Now in seventee, Louis tried to secretly flee the city

(03:45):
in response to what he considered indignities and restraints placed
upon him and his family by the constitutional government. He
was being treated he felt away a monarch should never
be treated. On his way out of town, though, Louis
left behind a political manifesto which outlined his detatae faction
with the constitutional system, he considered it illegitimate. This manifesto
was published in newspapers, though, making his true feelings public,

(04:07):
and just four days after leaving Paris, Louis and his
family were identified. He was recognized because his face was
on the national currency, and he was arrested and returned
to Paris. At this point, Louis lost all credibility even
with those who had stood by him, and he was
viewed as more loyal to foreign governments rather than to
his own people. Later that summer, on August tenth, of

(04:28):
the people of Paris had had enough. A group marched
on the Tuileries Palace, and the royal family again fled,
taking shelter with the Legislative Assembly. Louis the sixteenth was
found and arrested a few days later, and eventually taken
to the Parisian prison known as the Temple. While he
was in prison. There, the government officially abolished the constitutional monarchy,

(04:49):
declared a republic, and stripped Louis of all his titles
and honors. So for the last few months of his life,
Louis the sixteenth was known as Citizen Louis Cape. That's
the name that would have been his ancestral surname. Citizen
Louis Cape's trial before the National Convention began on December three,
more than a week after the trial started, bringing us

(05:11):
to today, December eleven, Louis was brought out of the
temple and before the Assembly formally indicted. Now there were
thirty three charges in total. These ranged from ordering the
army to march on the citizens of Paris, to attempting
to flee the city, and from ignoring counter revolutions to
defanging the navy and ignoring foreign threats, particularly from Austria,
where Marie Antoinette was from the final of these thirty

(05:34):
three charges, you caused the blood of frenchmen to flow. Louis,
through his defense team, responded to his individual charges on
December generally demanding proof, claiming he wasn't involved in certain decisions,
saying he knew nothing of the claims or to borrow
more contemporary political phrase, passing the buck to his ministers
and their decisions. Louise lawyer Raimonda Says, argued the former

(05:56):
king's case for three hours straight that day, and it
wasn't until three weeks later that Louis the sixteenth was
convicted overwhelmingly of colluding with foreign powers. Now seven hundred
and twenty one voters were tasked with choosing his punishment.
There were four options, including life, imprisonment, or banishment from France,
but on January three hundred and sixty one of the

(06:19):
voters exactly fifty plus one vote sentenced Louis to death,
and on the very next day, citizen Louis Cape was
executed by guillotine. The beheading took place in the Place
de la revolution, an open square where the revolutionary government
conducted the majority of its public executions. It's the same
spot where Robespierre, Olympe de Gouge, and Marie Antoinette, who

(06:40):
followed her husband to the guillotine eight months later, were executed.
The plaza went through a series of name changes and
took the names of both Louis the fifteenth and Louis
the sixteenth but in eighteen thirty returned to its original
name of Place de la Concorde. Today, located along the
banks of the Sin, you'll find the Place de la
Concorde full of obelisks and fountains. To learn more about this,

(07:01):
listen to the November nineteenth, two thousand to eight episode
of Stuffy Misston History Class called How the French Revolution Worked,
or scroll back on your podcast and find the November
second episode of this very podcast, which is the day
Marie Antoinette was born. Thanks to Casey Pegrum and Chandler
May's for their audio work on this show, you can
subscribe to This Day in History Class on Apple Podcasts,
the I Heart Radio app, or wherever else you like

(07:22):
to find your podcasts, and uh stick around because tomorrow
we're going to learn about a disastrous explosion.