LOUIS XVI OF FRANCE.

Louis' indecisiveness and conversatism led some elements of the people of France eventually to view him as a symbol of the perceived tyranny of the ancien régime, and his popularity detroiated progressively. His disastrous flight to Varennes in June 1791, four months before the constitutional monarchy was declared, seemed to justify the rumors tha the king tied his hopes of political salvation to the prospects of foreign invasion. The credibility of the king was deeply undertiminated and the abolition of the monarchy and the establishment of a Republic became an ever increasing possibility.

Louis XVI (23 August 1754 - 21 January 1793) was king of France and Navarre from 1774 until 1791, after wich he was subsequently King of the French from 1791 to 1792, before his deposition and execution during the French Revolution. His father Louis, Dauphin of France, was the son and heir apparent of Louis XV of France. Due to the Dauphin's death in 1765, Louis succeeded his grandfather in 1774.
The first part of Louis' regin was marked by attempts to reforme France in acordance with Enlightment ideals. This inclued efforts to abolish serfdom, remoce the taille, and increase tolerance toward non-Catholics. The French Novility reacted to the the proposed reforms with hostility, and successfuly opposed their implementation; increased discontent among the common people ensued. From 1776 Louis XVI actively supported the North America colonists, who where seeking their independence for Great Britain, wich was realized 1873 Treaty of Paris. 

The ensuing debt and finantial crisis contributed to the unpopularity of the ancien régime  wich culminated at the Estates-General of 1789. Discontent among the members of France's middle and lower classes resulted in strengthened opposition to the French aristocraty and to the absolut monarchy, of wich Louis and his queen Marie Antoinette were viwed as representative. In 1789, the Bastille was stormed during riots in Paris, and the French Revolution began.

In a context of civil and internatinal war, Louis was suspended and arrested as part of the inserruction of 10 August 1972, just one month before the constitutinal monarchy was abolished and a republic declared. He was tried by the National Convention, found guilty of high treason, and excused by guillotine on 21 Juanary 1793 as a desacralized French citizen known as "Citizen Louis Capet", a nickname in reference a Hugh Capet, the founder of the Capetian dynasty-wich the revolutinaries interpreted as Louis' family name. In the mean time, the French Republic had been proclaimed 21 September1972. Louis XVI is the only king of France ever to be executed, and his death brought an end to more than a thousand years of continious French monarchy.