Louis XVI of France
Louis XVI, husband of Marie Antoinette and friend of the American Revolution, is remembered as the last King of France, beheaded during the French Revolution, a victim of his despotism. This is unfair, and inaccurate. Louis deeply cared about the people of France and worked to establish reforms to help them, in opposition to the nobility and the church which fought against the French Revolution. Louis has long been portrayed as an inept bungler and a fool, neither of which correctly depicts the personality of the King who rescued America’s liberty at the expense of his own.
As a boy Louis received the education of the nobility, at which he excelled, and enjoyed healthy exercise and horseplay with his brothers. His quickness of mind and understanding of mechanics led him to develop an interest in locks, of all size and types, and he tinkered with them endlessly. In time he developed the skills of a locksmith, able to design, repair, and pick locks. His fascination with locks and keys became a lifelong hobby, and a subject of discussion with Benjamin Franklin, who held a similar interest in mechanical devices.
A locksmith requires deft handiwork; good vision and steady hands are imperative. Physical strength is not as important as it is for someone such as, say, a blacksmith. Louis had the physical strength of a blacksmith because he was a blacksmith. As King, in the Palace at Versailles outside of Paris, Louis had a private library to which he could resort for absolute privacy, a rare luxury for the King. The library led to a room above where Louis had two anvils installed, and with the instruction of the Palace blacksmith, a man named Gamin, Louis learned the art of working iron and other metals.
Although Marie Antoinette complained of her husband frequently retiring to their private rooms with the gritty, blackened hands of a blacksmith (she was concerned about his soiling the furniture and linens) she did not greatly object to His Majesty’s hobby. Many of the Court did, considering the activity to be beneath the dignity of the King, and an acknowledgment of the lower classes which was unseemly among the high-born of the court.
Louis was held under house arrest in the Palace of the Tuileries in Paris as the Assembly debated his fate. His family and children were held with him. Even as the date of his execution on the guillotine was being decided Louis took the time to explain the tools of the locksmith and their proper use to his son, while the locks on their rooms were being changed by the revolutionaries. In August 1792 the King was imprisoned in Paris, and he was beheaded in January 1793.