Louis XVI and the French Revolution, 1789–1792

This book revisits and analyses the early French Revolution's epic struggle against the Bourbon monarchy and its symbolic culture.

Ambrogio A. Caiani (Author)

9781107631014, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 2 February 2017

270 pages, 10 b/w illus. 5 tables
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.4 cm, 0.37 kg

'This well researched and meticulous book investigates the fate of royal court ceremonial after 1789 in unprecedented detail. Demonstrating how Louis XVI's retention of Old Regime ritual confirmed suspicions he could not be trusted, it is important for explaining why the king and the French Revolutionaries proved unable to reach a political compromise.' Thomas E. Kaiser, University of Arkansas, Little Rock

The experience, and failure, of Louis XVI's short-lived constitutional monarchy of 1789–92 deeply influenced the politics and course of the French Revolution. The dramatic breakdown of the political settlement of 1789 steered the French state into the decidedly stormy waters of political terror and warfare on an almost global scale. This book explores how the symbolic and political practices which underpinned traditional Bourbon kingship ultimately succumbed to the radical challenge posed by the Revolution's new 'proto-republican' culture. While most previous studies have focused on Louis XVI's real and imagined foreign counterrevolutionary plots, Ambrogio A. Caiani examines the king's hitherto neglected domestic activities in Paris. Drawing on previously unexplored archival source material, Caiani provides an alternative reading of Louis XVI in this period, arguing that the monarch's symbolic behaviour and the organisation of his daily activities and personal household were essential factors in the people's increasing alienation from the newly established constitutional monarchy.

Introduction: Louis XVI, a constitutional monarch?
Part I. Inventing a Constitutional Monarchy: 1. The Maison du Roi at the twilight of the Ancien Régime
2. The Liste Civile, the new monarchy, Sieyès and the constitution
3. The court of the Tuileries 1789–92
Part II. Reform and Survival of the Ancien Régime: 4. The royal guard during the French Revolution
5. Court presentations and the French Revolution
6. The age of chivalry is gone?
7. Louis XVI's chapel during the French Revolution
Conclusion
Bibliography.

Subject Areas: History of ideas [JFCX], European history [HBJD], History [HB]