Louis XVI

About King Louis XVI

King Louis XVI was beloved by the French people at first. However, his indecisiveness and conservatism led the people to reject him and hate in him the perceived tyranny of the former kings of France.

During the French Revolution, King Louis XVI was given the family name Capet (a faulty reference to Hugh Capet, the founder of the dynasty), and was called Louis Capet in an attempt to discredit his status as king.

King Louis XVI was also informally nicknamed Louis le Dernier ("Louis the Last"), a derisive use of the traditional nicknaming of French kings. Today, historians and Frenchmen in general have a more nuanced view of Louis XVI, who is seen as an honest man with good intentions but who was probably unfit for a king, and who was used as a scapegoat by the Revolutionaries.

King Louis XVI