Really, the main cause of his fate was his blatant treason. He plotted with the Prussians and the nobility and clergy who had emigrated to reestablish himself and their privileges by war.KaosCill8r wrote:French fun fact #77: King Louis XVI got what he deserved. Living the way he did while his people lived in poverty and stench. And then having the nerve to tax the shit out of them for the privilege to live in that filth. The revolutionaries are fucking hero's in my opinion.
Louis Antoine Saint-Just was the revolutionary who was the public prosecutor during Capet's trial (notice how I use his civil name and not his monarch name). His entire argumentation his based on two key elements:
- Capet says he is the people's king, but he is a traitor and he his the reason so many died for freedom and equality
- A constitution that would be accepted by a king wouldn't be one, therefore the king shouldn't be tried as any citizen, he isn't part of a social contrat
You have to bear in mind that the Revolutionaries of 1789 were a bit more "bourgeois" than those of 1792. They were in their majority very pro a constitutional monarchy. The Republic was founded on September the 20th 1792, on the same day that the war was won in Valmy by General Kellerman. Capet was tried on November the 13th of the same year by the Convention (a.k.a the National Assembly) and beheaded on the following January 21st.
The Revolution itself isn't the result of taxes like most were, and that's probably the reason ours had a philosophical and universalist approach. It's the result of long term causes like the influence of the enlightenment and the participation of France in the American Revolution, a social crisis that was rooted in the feudal class system, a religious crises which lessened the influence of the clergy on the population who were in turn a bit more free to rebel... Also an institutional crisis, one of the most politically important event of the period was when the king decided to replace his minister of Finance who was perceived as competent by the people, and his replacement wasn't. The tiresome and costly endless wars with the English... A massive economical crisis which led to a massive famine is maybe the most prominent of all.
But yeah, The Revolutionaries are my heroes. I embrace it all, like Clemenceau said, but I have to admit I have my preferences. Saint-Just's speech I was referencing earlier is maybe one of the most important to me in history.
