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Louis XVI   Listen
Louis XVI

noun
1.
King of France from 1774 to 1792; his failure to grant reforms led to the French Revolution; he and his queen (Marie Antoinette) were guillotined (1754-1793).






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"Louis XVI" Quotes from Famous Books



... was a true book collector, and the magnificent library now preserved in the British Museum owes its origin to his own judgment and enthusiastic love for the pursuit. Louis XVI. cared but little for books until his troubles came thick upon him, and then he sought solace from their pages. During that life in the Temple we all know so well from the sad reading of its incidents, books were not denied to the persecuted royal family. There was a small ...
— How to Form a Library, 2nd ed • H. B. Wheatley

... means he'll be here! He's so horribly fastidious, he's sure to make remarks about my putting an Italian loggia on a Louis XVI drawing-room. It does seem that with all the time and money we've spent on this place—Isn't ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice

... of this century the University of Pennsylvania, which had played so great a part in the Revolution, and to which Louis XVI had, in 1786, made so generous a donation, was removed to its new home in the spacious buildings erected for the executive mansion. The Philadelphia Library, which had been Franklin's first scheme for public improvement, and which had been enriched ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth

... our perception of the real culture and brilliance found in the higher social circles of colonial Philadelphia and New York. One of the most beautiful women of the day, Mrs. Bingham, added to a good education, the advantage of much travel abroad, and a lengthy visit at the Court of Louis XVI. Her beauty and elegance were the talk of Paris, The Hague, and London, and Mrs. Adams' comment from London voiced the general foreign sentiment about her: "She is coming quite into fashion here, and is very much admired. The hair-dresser ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday

... they were privileged, on their way back, to visit the house of Miss Coleman, on Centre street, there to see the wonderful wax figure of a baby six months old, said to be the likeness of the Dauphin of France, the unfortunate son of Louis XVI. When Mrs. Gordon learned that this was brought to Nantucket in 1786, by one of her own sea-captains, she became very much excited over it. As she realized then that her knowledge of French history was too meagre to fully ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 3 • Various

... to work to destroy all that interfered with their plans of general equality. The guillotine, a recently invented machine for beheading, was set in all the chief market-places, and hundreds were put to death on the charge of "conspiring against the nation." Louis XVI. was executed early in 1793; and it was enough to have any sort of birthright to be thought dangerous and ...
— History of France • Charlotte M. Yonge

... breathes the Loyalists' spirit. They thanked his Excellency for his message, and assured him that "it was with horror they had heard that the most atrocious act which ever disgraced society had been perpetrated in France (alluding to the recent decapitation of the unfortunate Louis XVI.), and that it was with concern and indignation they now learned that the persons exercising the supreme authority there had declared war against ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson

... about revolutionary labor like revolutionary capital is that it is tired. Revolutionary labor is not spirited. It is as soggy-minded, thoughtless and automatic to be a revolutionist to-day as it is to be a Louis XVI. ...
— The Ghost in the White House • Gerald Stanley Lee

... low life, let the reader pass for a few moments to the Salon de la Paix at Versailles, where King Louis XVI received petitioners. ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon

... the first of these friendships was that formed with Madame de Berny, nee (Laure-Louise-Antoinette) Hinner. She was the daughter of a German musician, a harpist at the court of Louis XVI, and of Louise-Marguerite-Emelie Quelpec de Laborde, a lady in waiting at the court of Marie Antoinette. M. Hinner died in 1784, after which Madame Hinner was married to Francois-Augustin Reinier de Jarjayes, adjutant-general of ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd

... was transferred to the Castle of Joux, near Pontarlier, where, on June 11, 1775, festivities were held, as at other places, to honour the coronation of Louis XVI. Here Mirabeau enjoyed a sort of half freedom, being allowed to visit in Pontarlier, and the event ensued which, it must sorrowfully be owned, tarnished his name. In a word, we see Mirabeau "ruin himself," by a fatal intimacy with the young wife of the aged Marquis of Monnier. The two fled to ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various

... copies having been sold in England alone; but it made it necessary for him to escape to France to avoid prosecution. Arrived in that country he was elected to the National Convention. He opposed the execution of Louis XVI., and was, in 1794, imprisoned by Robespierre, whose fall saved his life. He had then just completed the first part of his Age of Reason, of which the other two appeared respectively in 1795 and 1807. ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin

... suburbs. One of the laws passed at the same time by the Parliament of Paris directed that the graves in the cemeteries should not be marked with stones, and that all epitaphs and inscriptions should be placed on the walls, a regulation which appears to have been greatly honoured in the breach. In 1776 Louis XVI., recognizing the benefit which Paris had derived from the city decree, prohibited graveyards in all the cities and towns of France, and rendered unlawful interments in churches and chapels; and in 1790 the National Assembly passed an Act ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent

... example is furnished in a recent issue of the Bibliotheca Sacra. A class in history was studying the French Revolution, and the pupils were asked to look the matter up, and report next day by what vote Louis XVI was condemned. Nearly half the class reported that the vote was unanimous. A considerable number protested that he was condemned by a majority of one. A few gave the majority as 145 in a vote of 721. How utterly irreconcilable these reports seemed! Yet for each the authority of reputable historians ...
— The Great Doctrines of the Bible • Rev. William Evans

... satins, and velvets are made. Lyons, you know, is a famous silk-making city. It was there that Philippe de la Salle, the great silk designer, lived. Because he did such beautiful work he was decorated by Louis XVI with the Order of Saint Michel and was given a pension of six mille livres. Think of that! Alas, such things do not happen now. That was long ago—between 1723 and 1803. His good fortune did not, however, last long, for ...
— The Story of Silk • Sara Ware Bassett

... going to make some remarks on the changes in the order of the peerage since the days of Louis XVI.—going, in fact, to be very sensible and historical—when there was a slight commotion among the people at the other end of the room. Lacqueys in quaint liveries must have come in from behind the tapestry, I suppose (for I never saw them enter, though I sate right opposite to the doors), and ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell

... industries created wealth. As the mercantile system found a great minister in Colbert to carry those opinions into effect on a national scale, so the Physiocrats found in Turgot(22) a minister, under Louis XVI, who gave them a national field in which to try the doctrines of the new school. Benevolently devoted to bettering the condition of the people while Intendant of Limoges (1751), he was made comptroller-general of the finances by Louis XVI in 1774. Turgot ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill

... his associates, among whom were A. Darthe and P. M. Buonarroti, the ex-members of the Convention, Robert Lindet, J. A. B. Amar, M. G. A. Vadier and Jean Baptiste Drouet, famous as the postmaster of Saint-Menehould who had arrested Louis XVI., and now a member of the Council of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various

... candlesticks, carved in choice woods by her own father, who had the "turning" mania. From 1770 to 1780 it was the fashion among rich people to learn a trade, and Monsieur Lousteau, the father, was a turner, just as Louis XVI. was a locksmith. These candlesticks were ornamented with circlets made of the roots of rose, peach, and apricot trees. Madame Hochon actually risked the use of her precious relics! These preparations and this sacrifice increased ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac

... nation a right to judge Louis XVI. as a legal tribunal?" demands Lamartine. "No! Because the judge ought to be impartial and disinterested—and the nation was neither the one nor the other. In this terrible but inevitable combat, in which, under the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various

... Hunters', handsomely and artistically furnished. The woodwork and furniture are in the period of Louis XVI. The walls and furniture are covered with yellow brocade, and the curtains are of the same golden material. At the back are two large windows which give out on Fifth Avenue, opposite the Park, the trees of which are seen across the way. At Left is a double doorway, leading into the ...
— The Climbers - A Play in Four Acts • Clyde Fitch

... those feudal institutions which France had outgrown, and which had, as we have seen, disappeared gradually in England after the rebellion of Wat Tyler (SS250, 252). At first the revolutionists received the hearty sympathy of many of the Whig party (S479), but after the execution of Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette,[1] England became alarmed not only at the horrible scenes of the Reign of Terror but at the establishment of the French democratic republic which seemed to justify them, and joined an alliance of the principal European powers for the purpose of restoring ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery

... and burnt on the place of torment, and the noble lords and ladies who had gloated over the scene returned to their homes. It is not at all improbable that among those who witnessed the torments of Damiens in 1757 for an assault upon a King's sacred person there were some who lived to see Louis XVI. mount the scaffold ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell

... way of imitation to equal Codlingsby, if it be not The Tale of Drury Lane, by W. S. in the Rejected Addresses, of which it is said that Walter Scott declared that he must have written it himself. The scene between Dr. Franklin, Louis XVI., Marie Antoinette, and Tatua, the chief of the Nose-rings, as told in The Stars and Stripes, is perfect in its way, but it fails as being a caricature of Cooper. The caricaturist has been carried away beyond and above his model, by his ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope

... whole of France, no corner so remote but that, sooner or later, this great upheaval has penetrated to it. Louis XVI.—or Louis Capet, as he is now more generally spoken of—has been arraigned, condemned and executed. The aristocrats are in full emigratory flight across the frontiers—those that have not been rent by the vassals they had brought to bay, the people they had outraged. ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini

... TIME.—In the general corruption of morals, which rose to its height during the reign of Louis XVI., gambling kept pace with, if it did not outstrip, every other licentiousness of that dismal epoch.(61) Indeed, the universal excitement of the nation naturally tended to develope every desperate passion of our nature; and that the revolutionary troubles and agitation of the empire helped to increase ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz

... when the Gobelins set the task of becoming a portrait maker. (Plate facing page 133.) The work was done, it was bound to be, as royalty backed the demand. Portraits were woven of Louis XV (to be seen now at Versailles), and his queen, of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, and others less well known. A better scheme for limiting the talent of the weaver could not have been suggested by his most ingenious enemy. He was a man of talent or his art had not reached so high, and as such must be untrammelled; but ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee

... have defined the meaning of the word. Relentless,—yes, that's what we need. This is a war that shows no mercy. The blood-thirsty are in the ascendant. The regicides have beheaded Louis XVI; we will quarter the regicides. Yes, the general we need is General Relentless. In Anjou and Upper Poitou the leaders play the magnanimous; they trifle with generosity, and they are always defeated. In the Marais and the country of Retz, where the leaders are ferocious, everything goes ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various

... Chickasaw Indians, to Sevier, to the ladies of the Southwestern Territory, to the American arms, and, finally, "to the true liberties of France and a speedy and just punishment of the murderers of Louis XVI." The word "Jacobin" was used as a term of reproach for ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt

... the servant was at last bringing a lighted lamp Gerard made his appearance. The past-century charm of the old Louis XVI. drawing-room, with its pale woodwork, again became apparent in the soft light. In order that his mother might not be over-saddened by his failure to dine with her that evening the young man had put on an air of brisk gaiety; and when he had explained that some ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... France—perhaps to revenge himself on the nobility; or some notary become mayor of his parish: all people crushed with business, who, if they attain their end, are literally killed in its attainment. In France the usage is to glorify wigs. Napoleon, Louis XVI., the great rulers, alone have always wished for young men to fulfil ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac

... residence is directly in front of the great palace where so many kings have made their homes, the prince of whom was Louis XIV. The palace is now unoccupied. No ruler has dared to take up his residence here since Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette were driven from it by the mob from Paris on the 8th of October, 1789. The town looks like the wreck of what it once was. At the commencement of the first revolution, it contained ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown

... the dramatic embodiment of this conception was prepared as a court spectacle for the enjoyment of fashionable society. Thus we find ourselves in the presence of conditions not unlike those which produced the tomfooleries of the court of Louis XVI and the musettes, bergerettes ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson

... example those two miniatures you were looking at last night, Mrs. Evelyn," the young man went on; "Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette what would you have more unrefined, more heavy, more animal, than the face of that descendant ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell

... all this while?' he asked. 'Do you suppose they will stand by, idle and indifferent spectators to the contest? Will Louis XVI. be asleep all this time? Believe me, no! When Louis XVI. shall be satisfied, by our serious opposition and our Declaration of Independence, that all prospect of a reconciliation is gone, then, and not till then, will he furnish us with arms, ammunition, and clothing: and not with them ...
— Elsie's Vacation and After Events • Martha Finley

... murder of the innocent and unfortunate Louis XVI. had been perpetrated by the National Convention—an act which Napoleon long afterwards pronounced "a grand political error; sufficient to stamp the government not merely with guilt, but with infatuation." The French minister at the Court of St ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various

... style of the First Napoleon's Empire was not a very fortunate style,—too stiff, too absurdly pseudo-classic, unworthy of France, a poor enough successor of the dainty and playful art of Louis XV, or the somewhat more refined and restrained art of Louis XVI: but he would say that it was art still, and the period a not wholly inartistic period; and even of the dull times of the Napoleon of Peace, from 1830 to 1848, while he would confess to a great deal of languor ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various

... What do you see in this fact? You see how religious ideas had permeated the minds even of soldiers. They were not strong enough or brave enough to fight the ideas of their age. Why did not the troops of Louis XVI. defend the Bastille? They were strong enough; its cannon could have demolished the whole Faubourg St. Antoine. Alas! the soldiers who defended that fortress had caught the ideas of the people. They fraternized with ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord

... signifies an avoidance of immodesty of style. Beaumont and Fletcher, Rochester, Dean Swift, wrote under monarchies—their pruriencies are not excelled by any republican authors of ancient times. What ancient authors equal in indelicacy the French romances from the time of the Regent of Orleans to Louis XVI.? By all accounts, the despotism of China is the very sink of indecencies, whether in pictures or books. Still more, what can we think of a writer who says, that "the ancients have not left us one piece of pleasantry that is excellent, unless one may except the Banquet of ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... productions of his hand is small, but objects which came from the studio after his death are tolerably plentiful since his four sons carried on the business, though not the inspiration; contemporaries characterised them as "apes." Two commodes which were in Louis XVI.'s bedroom at Versailles are now in the Bibliotheque Mazarin, and a chest which was forgotten in the Custom House at Havre now belongs to the museum of that city. A cabinet is in the Mobilier National, and a pedestal is in the Gruenes Gewoelbe at Dresden. ...
— Intarsia and Marquetry • F. Hamilton Jackson

... the court, and therefore I was not at all displeased to have it thought so; for except Mademoiselle de Meneville, (who had her admirers,) there was none that could pretend to dispute it" Memoirs of the Comte de Rochfort, 1696, p. 210. See also Anquetil, Louis XVI. sa Cour et le ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton

... association, in which we conversed freely on all topics, kept us fully informed as to what passed in the Commission, and even in the Legislative Assembly itself. Although originally a Royalist (in his youth he had been enrolled amongst the bodyguards of Louis XVI.), he was unconnected with any party or intrigue, scrupulously conscientious, even timid when conviction did not call for the exercise of courage, little inclined to politics by taste, and, under any circumstances, one of the last men to form an extreme resolution, ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... He took the side of Maupeou in the struggle between the chancellor and the parlements, and in 1788 declared that the integrity of the constitution must be maintained. He emigrated owing to the weakness of Louis XVI., but refused to share in the plans for the invasion of France, and returned to his native country in 1790. Arrested by order of the National Convention in 1793, he was acquitted, but was reduced to poverty by the confiscation of his possessions. He afterwards received a pension, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various

... charged against it by the cynical criticisms of St. Vincent. At this time, also, he made a trip to France, upon the occasion of sinking the first cone of the great Cherbourg breakwater, designed to give the French navy a first-class arsenal upon the Channel,—a purpose which it now fulfils. Louis XVI. was present at this ceremony, and treated Saumarez with much attention. This was the only time that he ever set foot upon French soil, although his home was in sight of the coast and he spoke the ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan

... printed on ancient yellow silk; the furniture was of some rich brown finish with streaks and lusters of bronzy yellow, and a glass chandelier, all spangles and teardrops of crystal, hung from a round golden panel in the ceiling. Over a severe Louis XVI mantel was a large oil portrait of Pius IX, and on the opposite wall a portrait head of a very beautiful young girl. Chestnut hair, parted in the fashion of the late sixties, formed a silky frame round an oval face, and the features were small and well proportioned. The most remarkable part of the ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan

... had been reared in the court of Louis XVI., and had adorned that of the emperor. Cultivated in her mind, accomplished in her manners, and elegant in all she said or did, her society was courted on all sides. Her habits were expensive; luxury reigned throughout her apartments, and presided at her board; and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 405, December 19, 1829 • Various

... became distinguished-in the Church and in trade, as in the army. Thus, speaking only of France, an Irishman-Edgeworth-was chosen by Louis XVI. to prepare him for death and stand by him during his last ordeal of ignominy; another-Lally Tollendal-would have wrested India from England, if his ardent temperament had not brought him enemies where he ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... of kings and princes, I do not know that there was anything more interesting than a little brass cannon, two or three inches long, which had been a toy of the unfortunate Dauphin, son of Louis XVI. There was a map,—a hemisphere of the world,—which his father had drawn for this poor boy; very neatly done, too. The sword of Louis XVI., a magnificent rapier, with a beautifully damasked blade, and a jewelled scabbard, but without a hilt, is likewise preserved, as is the ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... D', famed, as described in Carlyle's "French Revolution," for "breeches of a new kind in this world"; brother of Louis XVI., and afterwards CHARLES ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... The miracles of Clovis consisted of a shield, which was picked up after having fallen from the skies; the anointing oil, conveyed from heaven by a white dove in a phial, which, till the reign of Louis XVI. consecrated the kings of France; and the oriflamme, or standard with golden flames, long suspended over the tomb of St. Denis, which the French kings only raised over the tomb when their crown was ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli

... "where is France? where is Spain? where is Holland? the natural enemies of Great Britain. Where will they be all this while? Do you suppose they will stand by, idle and indifferent spectators of the contest? Will Louis XVI. be asleep all this time? Believe me, no! When Louis XVI. shall be satisfied by our serious opposition, and our Declaration of Independence, that all prospect of a reconciliation is gone, then, and not till then, will he furnish us with arms, ammunition, and clothing; and not ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various

... However that may be, Mrs. Grote always maintained that her genius lay full as much in her head as in her heels. I am not sure that the finest performance of hers that I ever witnessed was not a minuet in which she danced the man's part, in full court-suit of the time of Louis XVI., with most admirable grace ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble

... Antoinette, then but fifteen years of age, and marvelously beautiful, was married to the young dauphin of France, subsequently the unhappy Louis XVI. As she left Vienna, for that throne from which she was to descend to the guillotine, her mother sent by her hand the ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott

... of the son of Louis XVI of France, whose father and mother were put to death by the people. He was thus left an orphan, and was sent to live with a wicked man and woman who tried to teach him all manner of wrongdoing. But when they tried to persuade him ...
— Fifty-Two Story Talks To Boys And Girls • Howard J. Chidley

... still retained a touch of Genevan intolerance, Jews came within his religious requirements for citizenship by their belief in Providence and in future rewards and punishment. It has to be remembered that in spirit, if not in will-power or influence, Louis XVI was of the school of the benevolent despots, and it was he who signed the edict of November 13, 1791, which for the first time in European history placed Jews on the same level as the adherents of all other creeds as regards civil ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various

... going on in Paris and especially of the work of our great minister to the court of Louis XVI. ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller

... was part of the flattery of the imperial jurists to their master, to tell him that he was above the laws, legibus solutus. In the trial of Louis XVI., the Sovereign People, or they who called themselves such, dispensed with certain legal formalities on that same plea. Against the law at Athens, the generals who had fought at Arginusae were condemned by one collective sentence, the ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.

... chief part on the nature of the actions which have been habitually performed under this particular state of the mind. A man, for instance, may know that his life is in the extremest peril, and may strongly desire to save if; yet, as Louis XVI. said, when surrounded by a fierce mob, "Am I afraid? feel my pulse." So a man may intensely hate another, but until his bodily frame is affected, he cannot be ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin

... and bring on the catastrophe prepared for centuries; it was a scaffold that the vengeance of the Templars demanded. The secret movers of the French Revolution had sworn to overturn the Throne and the Altar upon the Tomb of Jacques de Molai. When Louis XVI. was executed, half the work was done; and thenceforward the Army of the Temple was to direct all ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... ruining him; but he discovered corruption on the part of the judge, and thereupon wrote his Memorials, of which the wit, keenness, and vivacity made him famous. He then rendered a private, personal, and important service to Louis XV., and soon afterwards another to the young Louis XVI. His capacity for secret usefulness gave him further occupation and carried him much to London. There he wrote the "Barber of Seville," and there also he fell in with Arthur Lee and became indoctrinated ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.

... gentlemen of the highest rank. The audience took place at Versailles, on the morning of the 20th of March. Each of the American envoys rode in his own carriage, attended by the usual retinue of servants. On the way they were cheered with the utmost enthusiasm by the crowd. The king, Louis XVI., received them with extreme courtesy, and the queen, Marie Antoinette, was marked in her attentions to Franklin. The British ambassador, Lord Stormont, was so enraged, that, regardless of all the claims of courtesy, he immediately returned to England, ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott

... and his second, Captain de Langle, were sent by Louis XVI, in 1785, on a voyage of circumnavigation. They embarked in the corvettes Boussole and the Astrolabe, neither of which were again heard of. In 1791, the French Government, justly uneasy as to the fate of these two sloops, ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne

... 28. One of the greatest curiosities in Lucerne is the monument to those brave Swiss guards who were slain for their unshaken fidelity to the unhappy Louis XVI. In a sequestered spot the rocky hill side is cut away, and in the living strata is sculptured the colossal figure of a dying lion. A spear is broken off in his side, but in his last struggle he still defends a shield, marked with the fleur de lis of France. Below are inscribed ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... "Louis XVI was executed because they said he was dishonorable and a criminal," came into Pierre's head, "and from their point of view they were right, as were those too who canonized him and died a martyr's death for his sake. Then Robespierre ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... died the scum had so thoroughly poisoned the great current of life in France that it is probable that even had there been far wiser heads at the helm of State than Louis XVI. and his councillor they would have found it difficult, if not impossible, to prevent a bloody reckoning, for the love of peace and reverence for justice, the cool judgment and mature wisdom which swayed ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various

... blue-prints. On my way to the dance I wanted to go in and tie one of Shiela's cunning little lace morning caps under your chin, but Jessie wouldn't go with me. They're perfectly sweet and madly fashionable—these little Louis XVI caps. I'll show you ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers

... the Tillmans' house. The walls are white woodwork, framing in old tapestries of deep foliage design, with here and there a flaming flamingo; white furniture with old, green brocade cushions. The room is in the purest Louis XVI. The noon sunlight streams through a window on the left. On the opposite side is a door to the hall. At back double doors open into a corridor which leads to the ballroom. At left centre are double doors to ...
— The Girl with the Green Eyes - A Play in Four Acts • Clyde Fitch

... glance—certainly it is a most remarkable freak of nature. The rough back of the mountain forms the exact profile of the human countenance, as if regularly hewn out of the rock. What is still more singular, it is said to be a correct portrait of the unfortunate Louis XVI. The landlord said it was immediately recognized by all Frenchmen. The road followed the course of the Traun, whose green waters roared at the bottom of the glen below us; we walked for several miles through a fine forest, ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor

... France, according to the custom of many of the wealthy families of the Colony. Although confined for five years—from the age of fourteen to that of nineteen—in the rigid and aristocratic convent of Picpus, she had been enabled to see much of Paris life, during the waning epoch of Louis XVI's reign and the times of morbid fashionable excitement immediately preceding the great Revolution. Her natural disposition, and the curiosity incident to her previous Colonial training, led her to mingle with keen interest in all the ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance

... about to break out between France and "the king of Bohemia and Hungary." He was well received at first, but after the 10th of August 1792 he was no longer officially recognized at court, and on the execution of Louis XVI. (21st of January 1793) he was given eight days to leave England. After an unsuccessful embassy in Tuscany, he was imprisoned as a suspect during the Terror, but freed after the 9th Thermidor. Under Napoleon he became a member of the council of state, and from 1812 to 1814 he governed ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various

... from the Duke de Penthieore and the Princess de Lamballe, to whom he had been presented by the Chevalier de Florian; the condescension this Princess had displayed in taking him to Versailles, and in commending him to the kindly notice of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI.; the promises made by their majesties, and lastly the promptitude with which the Duke, as a proof of his interest, had attached him to his own household. So Philip was on the highway to wealth and honor at last. The Princess de Lamballe ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet

... globe, burn, as before so many shrines, to our glory! But look at this matter in other lights; weigh it in all sorts of scales; see what we whalemen are, and have been. Why did the Dutch in DeWitt's time have admirals of their whaling fleets? Why did Louis XVI. of France, at his own personal expense, fit out whaling ships from Dunkirk, and politely invite to that town some score or two of families from our own island of Nantucket? Why did Britain between the years and pay to her whalemen in bounties upwards of 1,000,000 pounds? And lastly, ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville

... the fruits of ambition. This he learns in the purgatory of conquerors, where he sees the figures of the Stuarts, of William the Deliverer, and of George the Third, "with eyebrows white and slanting brow," intentionally confused with Louis XVI. to avoid a charge of treason. But the strength of Landor's sympathy with the French Revolution and of his contempt for George III. was more evident in the first form of the poem. Parallel with the quenching in Gebir of the conqueror's ambition, and with the ruin of ...
— Count Julian • Walter Savage Landor

... couturier is the first who has known how to draw up big bills, or that the modern lingere is the first who has dared to charge two hundred dollars for a chemise and half as much for a pocket-handkerchief. Dress has always reigned supreme in France at least. Louis XVI. has been guillotined, Napoleon I. exiled, Charles X. dismissed, Louis Philippe and Napoleon III. replaced without their leave by a new form of government. But dress has never been dethroned; and, just as in our own days Dupin thundered in the Senate against the desperate ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various

... promised to be magnificent; the plans provided for a thousand private operating rooms, each beautifully furnished in Louis XVI style, a restaurant, a tea room, a marriage licence bureau, and an emergency chapel where first aid clergymen were to be always ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers

... had always lived in the province—his own province of Dauphine. He had grown up in the old house at Saint-Laurent, where every nook and corner kept for him its own sweet memory of his childhood and youth. The great white drawing-room with its wainscotings of the time of Louis XVI., which opened out upon a flight of steps leading down into a terraced garden; the portraits of obscure ancestors: lawyers in powdered wigs and wearing the robes of the members of the Third estate, fat and rosy with double chins resting upon their broad cravats, amiable old ladies ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie

... tiny embroidered flowers of yellow silk. The portieres were of a grayish blue and the chairs were of all shapes, of all sizes; scattered about the room were couches and large and small easy-chairs, all covered with Louis XVI. brocade, or Utrecht velvet, a cream colored ground ...
— Bel Ami • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant

... salute," he said, "the Dauphin and Dauphiness, names that bind the past to the future, calling up touching and noble memories, indicating the own son and the successor of the monarch, names under which we find the liberator of Spain and the daughter of Louis XVI. The Child of Europe, the new Henry, thus makes one step toward the throne of his ancestor, and his young mother guides him to the throne that she might ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand

... taste; but the stone is unfortunately of a coarse grain and of a dingy colour. Of the BRIDGES thrown across the Seine, connecting all the fine objects on either side, it must be allowed that they are generally in good taste: light, yet firm; but those, in iron, of Louis XVI. and des Arts, are perhaps to be preferred. The Pont Neuf, where the ancient part of Paris begins, is a large, long, clumsy piece of stone work: communicating with the island upon which Notre Dame is built. But if you look eastward, towards old Paris, from the top of this ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... several persons of importance. Reasons were easily found to justify such an alliance. The Treaty of Paris in 1763 had dispossessed France of her colonies in America and had left her inferior to England in other parts of the world. Here was her chance to take revenge. The new King, Louis XVI, had for Foreign Minister Count de Vergennes, a diplomat of some experience, who warmly urged supporting the cause of the American Colonists. He had for accomplice Beaumarchais, a nimble-witted playwright and seductive ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer

... not your masters, at Westminster; you must have a National Convention of the People, not a House of the Confiscating Classes."[605] Readers will no doubt remember the French National Convention and its reign of terror and crime which culminated in the execution of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette. ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker

... the Count de La Prouse and his subordinate, Captain de Langle, were sent by King Louis XVI of France on a voyage to circumnavigate the globe. They boarded two sloops of war, the Compass and the Astrolabe, which were never ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne

... confined understanding: he has but slender judgment, and will see with no eye but his own." Louis XV augured ill of his successor's reign, and imagined that the cabinet of Vienna would direct that of Versailles at pleasure. His late majesty was mistaken; Louis XVI is endowed with many rare virtues, but they are unfortunately clouded over by his timidity and want of self-confidence. The open and undisguised censure passed by the whole court upon the conduct of Louis XV was not the only thing which annoyed his majesty, who perpetually tormented himself with ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon

... but five great geniuses—Newton, Bacon, Leibnitz, Montesquieu, and myself." His natural vanity was undoubtedly fostered by the adulation which he received from those in authority. He saw his own statue placed in the cabinet of Louis XVI., with the inscription "Majestati Naturae par ingenium." Louis XV. bestowed upon him a title of nobility, and crowned heads "addressed him in language of the most exaggerated compliment." Buffon's conduct and conversation were marked throughout by a certain coarseness ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... brought back to the rooms in which once they lived, planned, and plotted were the ghosts of Mme. de Pompadour, Louis XVI, Murat, Napoleon I, and Napoleon III. We could imagine the first Emperor standing with his hands clasped behind him in front of the marble fireplace, his figure reflected in the full-length mirrors, his features in gold looking down at him from ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis

... unless the people felt they owed it their allegiance. When the main support of the throne of Charles was withdrawn, the support of popular ideas, and this support given to the House of Commons, at issue with the sovereign, what could he do? What could Louis XVI. do one hundred and fifty years afterwards? What could Louis Philippe do in our times? A king, without the loyalty of the people, is a phantom, a mockery, and a delusion, unless he have physical force to sustain him; and even ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord

... consider one noteworthy victim of destiny, Louis XVI. Never, it would seem, did relentless fatality clamour so loudly for the destruction of an unfortunate man; of one who was gentle, and good, and virtuous, and honourable. And yet, as we look more closely into the pages of history, do ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck

... work, Ethocratie ou Gouvernement fond sur la Morale, Amsterdam, Rey, 1776, is interesting mainly for its unfortunate dedication and peroration, inscribed to Louis XVI, who was hailed therein ...
— Baron d'Holbach - A Study of Eighteenth Century Radicalism in France • Max Pearson Cushing

... rebels and then supplanted by the Manchus in 1644, was also a man who in the Elysian fields might well hold up his head among monarchs. He seems to have inherited with the throne a legacy of national disorder similar to that which eventually brought about the ruin of Louis XVI of France. With all the best intentions possible, he was unable to stem the tide. Over-taxation brought in its train, as it always does in China, first resistance and then rebellion. The Emperor was besieged in Peking by a rebel army; the Treasury was empty; there were too few soldiers ...
— China and the Chinese • Herbert Allen Giles

... extravagant monarch, was succeeded by Louis XVI., a man of refined habits, pious and benevolent in disposition, but unpossessed of the moral power requisite for the extermination of the evils deeply rooted in the government. His queen, Marie Antoinette, sister to Joseph ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks

... that they were on the island at that very time, and it is not unlikely that the smoke was actually a signal made by them to attract his attention. The Comte de la Perouse, who had been despatched on a voyage of discovery by Louis XVI. on the eve of the Revolution, handed his journals to Governor Phillip in Botany Bay for transmission to Europe in 1788, and neither he, nor his two frigates, nor any of their company were ever seen again. Their fate produced so painful an impression in France that the National Assembly, ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards

... citizens. I should feel myself to be sacrificing my honor, since I was born a king, if I made any concessions on the subject of the White Flag of my family. With respect to other things I may concede; but as to that, never, never! The only thing for which I have ever reproached Louis XVI. was for having for one moment suffered the bonnet rouge to be placed upon his head to save his royalty. Now you are proposing to me to do the same thing. No!' The count had drawn up a constitution for France after his own ideas, but he would show it to no man. No human being had any power ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer

... word of French—his ideas as to the decadence of all poetry and the inferiority of the new schools. He was attached to the old style—the narrative ballad—and he began to sing to me the one which he deemed the prettiest of them. The subject of it was the death of Louis XVI. He burst into tears, and when he got to Santerre's beating of the drums he could not continue. Rising proudly to his feet, he said: "If the king could have spoken, the spectators would have rallied to him." ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan

... game is very different from the modern lawn-tennis which is now so popular: it was always the game of the select few, and not of the many, like its precocious offspring; and there are only thirty-one tennis-courts in England at the present day. The court attached to the palace of the French King Louis XVI. at Versailles was the scene of some very exciting meetings in the early days of ...
— Old English Sports • Peter Hampson Ditchfield

... my child, which is the most destructive of all the consequences entailed by the Revolution? You would never guess. In Louis XVI. the Revolution has decapitated every head of a family. The family has ceased to exist; we have only individuals. In their desire to become a nation, Frenchmen have abandoned the idea of empire; in proclaiming the equal rights of all children to their father's inheritance, ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac

... took a childlike pleasure in looking after them, in gently wiping off the dust which settled on their sides, and in carefully replacing them in their usual corners. She would hold silent conversations with them. She would smile at the fine Louis XVI. round-topped bureau, which was the only piece of old furniture she had. Every day she would feel the same joy in seeing it. She was always absorbed in going over her linen, and she would spend hours standing ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland

... the building is largely Vermont marble, and the style that of the modern Renaissance, somewhat in the manner of the period of Louis XVI, with certain modifications to suit the conditions of to-day. It is rectangular in shape, 390 feet long and 270 feet deep, built around two inner courts. It has a cellar, basement or ground floor, and ...
— Handbook of The New York Public Library • New York Public Library

... Peyrouse, about the best method of treating savage people, "Sir," said he, "I have sometimes been compelled to commit hostilities upon them, but never without suffering the most poignant regret; for, independent of my own feelings on the occasion, his Majesty's (Louis XVI) last words to me, de sa propre bouche, when I took leave of him at Versailles, were: 'It is my express injunction, that you always treat the Indian nations with kindness and humanity. Gratify their wishes, ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench

... it," said Napoleon, quickly, "and I believe I shall sleep in the royal Prussian palace, and in the bed of the Russian emperor, as comfortably as I did in the Tuileries and in the bed of Louis XVI." ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach

... the French Revolution to shine with its own life, the more brilliantly and truly that this life has been lighted up by his. Where in history is there a picture greater than that of the execution of Louis XVI.? With a few strokes how many a vivid portrait does he paint, and each one vivid chiefly from its faithfulness to personality and to history. And then his full-length, more elaborated likenesses, of the king, of the queen, of the Duke of Orleans, of ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert

... Dissipation," after Hogarth, and also a handsome old print of the Savior in the Pharisee's House, all of which were purchased at the same time. Two alabaster ornaments are memories of my earliest childhood, one of which was a column casting a shadow that formed a likeness of Louis XVI. ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur

... were over; but a few months later her parents decided to send her back to the Abbey for another year, and that her sister Lucy should go too. That was in the autumn of 1792, when the French Revolution was just beginning. On January 21, 1793, the terrible news came of the murder of the unhappy King, Louis XVI. All Europe, and England especially, were horrified at the cruel deed; and at the Abbey, where there was a strong French Royalist element, feeling ran particularly high. "Monsieur and Madame went into ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood

... knowledge among all classes of people, to ensure such a happy state of society. It was probably owing to this consideration, however, that he did not immediately attempt the reformation of the political system under which his own nation had long been oppressed. That Louis XVI. was mild, humane, and anxious for the good of his subjects, we are not disposed to doubt. But the ancient regime was unquestionably despotic; and in the hands of ambitious or selfish ministers, liable to be an instrument of injustice and oppression. And those who have long ...
— Memoirs of General Lafayette • Lafayette

... tough and simple stock will not, as I have just been saying, prove variable in religion; nor will they get nearer to apostasy than a mere external conformity like that of Naaman in the house of Rimmon. When Louis XVI., in the words of the edict, "convinced by the uselessness of a century of persecutions, and rather from necessity than sympathy," granted at last a royal grace of toleration, Cassagnas was still Protestant; and to a man, it is so to this ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... prolonged, ear-splitting yell, wrung from him by the still-increasing torment of his fell disease, the unhappy bird expands his Paradise-Lost pinions, and, with the speed of a comet passing its perihelion, sweeps away to that rock; for, like Louis XVI., he ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... its punishment. If the principle of sovereignty is eternal, so shall its punishment be eternal. The law ought to chastise the voluntary representatives, the willing heirs of a principle which the people have abolished." He went on to vindicate the execution of Louis XVI., and declared that those who voted against the death of that monarch, meditated a return to royalty, and reminded the Assembly that among those who voted for the execution, was the grandfather of the princes whose banishment was sought to be repealed. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various



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