His Most Christian Majesty King Louis XVI of France and Navarre. Born in 1754 he succeeded his grandfather Louis XV as king in 1774. His intervention in the American Revolution was critical to the winning of independence by the United States. After 1791 he was forced to become a more limited monarch as the French Revolution began to grow in strength. The following year he was deposed and arrested. In 1793 the National Convention ordered his execution by the guillotine. Historians have since admitted the gross injustice of this as Louis XVI was a good man, well intentions, effectively delivered a disaster on a plate and told to deal with it. His death signalled the start of the "Terror" in France, a period of unmatched chaos and butchery. Today he is remembered as a martyr for the French monarchy and a symbol of the old Kingdom of France that was swept away by the horrors of the Revolution.
