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On what charges did Louis XVI guillotine?

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Last updated date: 17th May 2024
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Answer
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Hint: Louis XVI (August 23, 1754 – January 21, 1793), the final King of France before the French Revolution, reigned from 1754 to 1793. During the four months leading up to his guillotine execution, he was known as Citizen Louis Capet. After his father, Louis, Dauphin of France, died in 1765, he became the new Dauphin.

Complete answer:
On January 21, 1793, Louis XVI was put to death by guillotine. He was put to death for high treason. He was accused of inciting an invasion of France by other European kingdoms, such as Austria, to put an end to the Revolution and reclaim power. Attempts to reorganize the French government in conformity with Enlightenment concepts dominated the first half of his reign.

Efforts to abolish serfdom, abolish the taille (land tax) and the corvée (labour tax), enhance tolerance toward non-Catholics, and abolish the death penalty for deserters were among them. The proposed reforms were met with hostility by the French nobles, who successfully fought their implementation. Deregulation of the grain market was enacted by Louis, as proposed by his economic liberal minister Turgot, although it resulted in a rise in bread costs. It resulted in food scarcity during bad harvests, which pushed the populace to revolt following a particularly disastrous harvest in 1775.

Louis XVI aggressively supported North American colonists seeking independence from Great Britain beginning in 1776, which was realized in the Treaty of Paris of 1783. The debt and financial crises that followed added to the Ancien Régime's unpopularity. The Estates-General was called in 1789 as a result of this. It resulted in food scarcity during bad harvests, which pushed the populace to revolt following a particularly disastrous harvest in 1775.

Note: Louis's indecisiveness and conservatism caused some French citizens to see him as a representative of the Ancien Régime's perceived tyranny, and his popularity dwindled over time. His failed departure to Varennes in June 1791, four months before the constitutional monarchy was established, seemed to validate accusations that the king linked his political salvation to the possibility of foreign intervention.