King Louis XVI – Ingliando

On this day, less than three months after the Storming of the Bastille, in the marketplaces of Paris where food shortages and the price of bread had become intolerable, the women of the French capital rose up in a massive rebellion. Instantly encouraged by revolutionary agitators seeking liberal political reforms and a constitutional monarchy for France, the swelling crowd, set out on a six-hour march to Versailles where they besieged the Palace and pressed their demands on King Louis XVI. Forced to return to Paris with his family, the king’s independence was effectively brought to an end. The event heralded a new balance of power that would ultimately displace the established, privileged orders of the French nobility in favour of the common people, collectively known as the Third Estate. By bringing together people representing the sources of the Revolution in such large numbers, the march on Versailles proved to be a defining moment of the French Revolution.

Puoi trovare altre brevi notizie storiche QUI

Your comments are always very welcome.

On this day in the Place de la Révolution (today’s Place de la Concorde), King Louis XVI of France, was beheaded by the guillotine having been found guilty of conspiracy and attacks upon public safety. The French Revolution, which had started in 1789 with the Estates General and the storming of the Bastille, had led to the abolition of the monarchy and the birth of the French Republic. The new French government was undecided regarding the fate of Louis, but in the end it was the more radical Robespierre who swung the vote in favour of the death penalty with his lapidary words, “Louis must die so that the nation may live.”

Read Bob Lynn’s short story “The Last Supper of Reason”
about the French Revolution HERE

Puoi trovare altre brevi notizie storiche QUI