12. History Would be Quite Different If the French Had Not Guillotined Louis XVI
The French Revolutionary Wars, and later the Napoleonic Wars, roiled Europe and much of the world from the 1790s until the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. They went into high gear after the revolutionary French government chopped off the head of their former king, Louis XVI. That scared the daylights out of the rest of Europe’s monarchs, and guaranteed their undying enmity towards revolutionary France. However, the unfortunate Louis had come quite close to avoiding that fate.
The years after the French Revolution had been tough on Louis XVI and his wife, Marie Antoinette. The absolute monarchy had been drastically weakened, and in October of 1789, the unwashed masses had burst into the Palace of Versailles, and forcibly transferred the royal family to Paris. Ever since, kings and queens lived as virtual prisoners of their subjects. Feeling increasingly humiliated as they were forced to adjust to the role of constitutional monarchs, the royal couple decided to slip out of Paris. They almost got away.