Louis XVI

Louis XVI was the last king of France before the monarchy's abolition during the French Revolution, reigning from 1774 until his deposition in 1792. His reign was marked by mounting financial crisis and political indecision that undermined royal authority, and his 1789 convocation of the Estates General, intended to address the crisis, instead touched off the revolutionary upheaval that included the storming of the Bastille and the abolition of feudal privileges. His failed attempt to flee France in the Flight to Varennes in 1791 destroyed public confidence in his commitment to constitutional reform, and after his arrest during the Insurrection of August 1792 he was tried for treason by the National Convention and executed by guillotine in January 1793, ending over a thousand years of continuous French monarchy.