19. Louis XVI went from universal popularity to being the most hated man in France
Louis XVI, King of France at the time of the French Revolution, was initially a monarch popular with his people and the nobility. During his relatively short reign, his popularity with both dwindled rapidly. The nobility and the church despised him for his weakness in dealing with the earliest symptoms of revolution. The peasantry and merchant class grew to blame him for failing harvests, famine, and rising taxes. The image of the King as a parasite living luxuriously at the expense of his people was propagandized by the revolutionaries, and Louis found himself in danger as France was beset with military enemies. After he attempted to flee, he was arrested and taken to Paris as a prisoner. The revolutionaries presented a case against him of attempting to leave France to raise armies among his fellow crowned heads of Europe to crush the revolution. By then his popularity had ebbed to its nadir, and Louis and his family were among the most hated people in French history. His execution on the guillotine was one of the most memorable events of French history, with his head held aloft to the cheering crowds which witnessed it.