How far was the French monarchy responsible for their own downfall in 1793? Explain your answer.

As a rather indecisive person, Louis was guaranteed to make some poor decisions during his reign.  Many of these related to foreign policy and money-as there was no central bank or financial administration there was no control on what the country’s money was spent on.  Louis was still making up for the vast amounts of money his father and grandfather had poured into wars against Austria, Great Britain and Prussia which had been a great drain on the French economy throughout the eighteenth century.  As well as this during his own reign Louis ran France into debt in sending his troops to fight against Great Britain in the American War of Independence, which lasted for 8 years from 1775 to 1783.  France was not the international power it wanted to be and the economy was not strong enough to supply troops with supplies as well as make sure that the country itself was financially stable.  Louis made a further mistake when in 1792 he declared war on Austria with the hope of distracting the people from revolution.  He lost the country yet more money and made himself more unpopular with the people.  As a result war expenditure was a key factor in the financial crisis, which could have been avoided if Louis had managed his finances more efficiently.

Since there was no central bank system to put constraints on the amount of money spent on various areas, including the army and royal expenditure, and from which the king could borrow money, he was forced to borrow money from his subjects which was unlikely to be paid back due to the phenomenal national debt.  This meant that as well as dragging the country further into debt the king was also making the poor of France even poorer.  Although the starving peasants in rural France may have blamed the monarchy for their lack of food and squalid living conditions, the bad harvests were not his fault nor was there anything he could do to rectify the situation.  However, as starvation drove millions to rioting in the streets the king did nothing to relieve the problems.  He refused to lift the strict controls on transporting grain across the country with the result that nobody could make any bread because they could not afford to transport the grain.  In trying to combat the debt problem the government even raised the prices on necessities such as bread in the hope of gaining money, but as the poor could not afford the bread the debt problem did not improve and the public became resentful at the way the government clearly did not understand their plight.

Louis’s lack of understanding of the way French politics worked meant that he made some grave errors when it came to governing the country in the run-up to revolution.  After having absolutism and the divine right to rule drilled into his head from such a young age, the king was unable to accept the concept that perhaps he could not rule effectively on his own.  When the Paris Parlement refused to register the reforms of Brienne in 1787, rather than attempting to compromise and listen to their reasons for not passing the reforms Louis exiled the parlement and denied them of their right to register decrees.  This showed the whole of France that Louis was uncompromising and unwilling to listen to the views of his people.  This idea was reinforced when the king called the Estates General in 1789 to discuss the need for extended taxation.  

The Estates General had not been summoned since 1614 and consequently nobody really knew how to go about organising the meeting.  The third estate were pleased because they thought the king was finally listening to them and intending to do something about the unfair taxation system, but the king not only refused to consider Necker’s idea of increasing the number of Third Estate representatives in proportion the distribution of the French population, but also refused to let the three estates meet as one, so the first and second estates still had the power to overrule the third estate.  When the Third Estate arrived at the meeting they found they had been locked out of the room and were driven onto the tennis courts.  Here the new National Assembly was formed without consulting the king, as the Third Estate felt he was unwilling to take their views and number into account.  They decided to form a National Assembly in order to draw up a constitution by which France could be governed, detailing the expected rights and freedoms of the French citizens; this signalled the end of absolutism in France, since the constitution no longer allowed the king total power over the way the country was run.  These poor decisions meant that Louis was seen as a dictator unwilling to attempt to understand his subjects.  If Louis had considered adjusting the numbers in the Estates General and showed more interest in the Third Estate he would not have been resented to such an extent.

One factor which the monarchy had no control over was the spread of the ideas of the Enlightenment, many of which undermined the way the country had always been run and the Catholic principles on which many of the fundamental ideals of France as a country were based.  ‘Philosophes’ like Voltaire professed the theory of deism.  These radical ideas attacked the power and the function of the Catholic church which was such an influential factor in the lives of the French people and also questioned the king’s divine right to rule. Other philosophes put forward extreme ideas about the separation of powers, democracy and free trade.  Louis felt threatened by these ideas as they questioned the established order of the country and the way in which he governed it.  Scholars such as Montesquieu particularly alarmed him by suggesting that a republic was the best form of government, although he did later concede that it would be unsuitable for a large state like France. The king could do nothing to suppress the ideas of the movement, although he could perhaps have been more accepting of them so that the French people did not see that he felt threatened by them.  

From the time when he came to the throne Louis was unpopular but he could certainly have done more to build support among his subjects.  On several occasions when he could have appeased his people by compromising with their demands, for example, accepting the Civil Constitution of the Clergy straight away would have made him more popular because the public would see him as being willing to listen to them.  However, Louis postponed a decision for as long as possible, eventually reluctantly agreeing to the Constitution five months after it was put forward.  The king could also have gained support by working closely with the moderate Feuillants to build a monarchy party which could have worked to reinforce the king’s position.  Instead he chose to ignore the support from royalists and therefore lost any followers he might have had.  Again Louis undermined his own role as king during the war against Austria in 1792 by refusing to work closely with General Lafayette and instead relying on the promise of help from Prussia.  This showed that the king no longer had any faith in his own subjects and was entirely dependant on outside help.  If he had used the support he already had to gain more support from the French people, Louis would have been better able to cope with the revolution and would perhaps have been able to reinstate himself, at least to some degree.

It could be said that the French monarchy was destined to come to an end in the eighteenth century anyway.  It was an outdated system of government with its principles deep rooted in the increasingly redundant feudal system and no matter what the king and queen had done, the formation of a republic could not have been prevented.  However, it is possible that if they had made more of an effort to meet a compromise with the revolutionaries, Louis and Marie Antoinette could have escaped, if not with their titles at least without being executed.  When the constitution declaring that Louis XVI was no longer an absolute monarch was passed on 14 September 1792, the king and queen could definitely have been more accepting of it, showing that they were willing to embrace change and make the new system of government work.  As it was they refused to accept the constitution and it seemed to the French people that they wanted no part in the future of France.

In conclusion, although certain aspects of the collapse of the monarchical system in France were beyond the control of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, such as the poor harvests and the outdated seigneurial system which had been in place long before Louis came to the throne, the king and queen should have tried harder to listen to the ideas of their subjects, especially the third estate, in order to gain support and improve the way the country was run.