"Louis XVI" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... centuries, and classing all the votes of the poorer electors in a limited number of centuries, or giving each man a personal vote, and giving the holders of property, in addition, more votes for their property; as one for every pound of direct taxes paid. Louis XVI. proposed a plan of this sort to Turgot before the Revolution; but that minister, deeply embued with the principles of democracy, rejected it; and Neckar, following out his views, practically established universal suffrage. Possibly the plan, if adopted and honestly carried ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... France?" The distant, squeaky voice of Thiers trying to penetrate space, said, "La force ne fonde rien, parce qu'elle ne resout rien." And when I was hoping to comprehend why "La force" did not "fonder" anything I would hear Mr. Hoffman whisper, "When you think that Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette passed the last evening they ever spent in Versailles in this theater!" "Really," I replied vaguely. My other neighbor remarked, "You know the 'Reds' are concentrating for a sortie to Versailles." "You don't say so!" I answered, dreadfully confused. ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... by American 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 ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... 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 following letter to ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... hotel, where soon after their arrival they engaged "a governess for the girls." She proved to be "a furious royalist," teaching the children that "Washington was a rebel, Lafayette a monster, and Louis XVI a martyr." Under the rule of returned royalists was attempted the exclusion of even the name of Bonaparte from French history. "My girls," Cooper wrote, "have shown me the history of France—officially prepared for schools, ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips
... Congress, but as it turned out, the plan failed through adverse influences in the quarter where Washington least expected them. He believed that this Canadian plan had been put into Lafayette's mind by the cabinet of Louis XVI., and he could not imagine that a policy of such obvious wisdom could be overlooked by French statesmen. In this he was completely mistaken, for France failed to see what seemed so simple to the American general, that the opportunity had come to revive ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... which Germany will be judged more gently than the Allies can judge her to-day. We do not now look on the French Revolution as our forefathers looked on it. We see, because recent historians have impressed it on us, that it was a violent uprising against, not Louis XVI., but a Louis XIV. What France really made her great Revolution to bring about was the establishment of a Constitution. Horrible deeds were perpetrated in the name of Liberty, but it was not due to any horrible national spirit that they were perpetrated. ...
— Before the War • Viscount Richard Burton Haldane
... King Louis, who at the first glance had sounded the abyss on which the monarchy hung suspended,—"to fall, and learn of that fall by telegraph! Oh, I would rather mount the scaffold of my brother, Louis XVI., than thus descend the staircase at the Tuileries driven away by ridicule. Ridicule, sir—why, you know not its power in France, and yet you ought to ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... courageous exposition of Paine's revolutionary opinions, and from that day to this has played no small part in moulding public thought. The extreme candour of his observations on monarchy led to a prosecution, and he had to fly to France. There he pleaded for the life of Louis XVI., and was imprisoned for ten months during the Terror. He left France bitterly disappointed with the failure of the republic, and passed the rest of his days in America. "Paine's ignorance," says Sir Leslie Stephen, "was vast, and his language brutal; but he had the gift of a true demagogue—the ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... Guillemeau, a physician, and formerly a member of the Legislative Council of the island. When eight years of age, Ollier was sent to a private school taught by Captain Rault, a seaman who had served under Louis XVI. This work was supplemented by lessons every Saturday under the Reverend Father Rock, who was impressed with the boy's ability, and with the consent of his parents taught him the elements of English and Latin. Allowed to use the library of Mr. Rault, Ollier early became acquainted ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... first aerial voyage undertaken by Pilatre des Rosiers and the Marquis d'Arlandes, four months after the discovery of balloons. Louis XVI. refused his consent to this voyage; two condemned criminals were to have first attempted aerial travelling. Pilatre des Rosiers was indignant at this injustice and, by means of artifice, succeeded in setting out. ...
— A Voyage in a Balloon (1852) • Jules Verne
... novelties, a little ashamed, it may be, of Marengo and Arcola, extricated itself from its predicament with the statue of the Duc d'Angouleme. The cemetery of the Madeleine, a terrible pauper's grave in 1793, was covered with jasper and marble, since the bones of Louis XVI. and Marie ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... adopted a constitution. Provoked at this, the friends of absolute monarchy withdrew from France, and incited the other powers of Europe to interpose in effort to restore to Louis XVI. his lost power. The result was that Louis lost his head as well as his power, and that France became a republic. War with all Europe followed, which elevated that matchless military genius, Napoleon Bonaparte, first to the head of France's armies, then to her throne, to be ...
— History of the United States, Volume 2 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... 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 the army. M. ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... reading Execution of three generations Familiarity with death in 1793 Sanson Public executioners The 'Chambre noire' Violation of correspondence Toleration of Ennui Prisoners of State M. and Madame de La Fayette Mirabeau and La Fayette Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette Evils of Democratic despotism Ignorance and indolence of 'La jeune France' Algeria a God-send Family life in France Moral effect of Primogeniture Descent of Title Shipwreck off Gatteville Ampere ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... 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 in imminent peril. No future king of France can be anointed with ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... revolted slaves held their own against their enemies, declaring in favor of the king, Louis XVI., and against the revolutionists. On the other hand, the English came to the aid of the whites, and the island was thrown into a state of horrible confusion, increased by the interference of the Spaniards, who held the eastern section ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... mean-spirited and selfish to feel the beauty of this brave action; but when, fourteen years later, Louis XVI came to the throne, he decreed that a pension should be given to the family as long as a male representative remained to bear the name of D'Assas. Poor Louis XVI had not long the control of the treasure of France; but a century of changes, wars, and revolutions ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... young magistrate, a few years older than Aurore. He was twenty-six years of age and she was twenty-one. He was the great-nephew of the counsel who pleaded for Louis XVI. There was, therefore, in his family a tradition of moral nobility, and the young man had inherited this. He had met Aurore at Bordeaux and again at Cauterets. They had visited the grottoes of Lourdes together. Aurelien had appreciated the young wife's charm, although she had not attempted ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... 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 ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... idea of rest and sleeping. If period furniture is used, the drawing room usually gives the dominant note, which should be carried out (in more or less modified form) throughout the other rooms. Do not make too abrupt contrasts in using period furniture. Late Louis XVI and Early Empire have much in common. But it is a shock to find Louis XV and Late Empire in the same room. Sheraton and Rococo, Early Jacobean oak and late eighteenth century English mahogany do not mix. If your rooms are Colonial ...
— Prepare and Serve a Meal and Interior Decoration • Lillian B. Lansdown
... 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 ...
— The Girl with the Green Eyes - A Play in Four Acts • Clyde Fitch
... Dicky was Louis XVI. watch-making while waiting for the guillotine to happen. So we were the guillotine, and he was executed ...
— Oswald Bastable and Others • Edith Nesbit
... 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
... pretty little Pompadour overcome by that Parisian infirmity so pleasantly described by M. de Maurepas in that quatrain which cost him his protracted disgrace and certainly contributed to the disasters of Louis XVI's reign: ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... Frejus, that renegade priest, to whom is attributed the ferocious saying, when called on to give his vote on the condemnation of Louis XVI., "La mort—sans phrases." Some few years after the Directory sent Sieyes as ambassador to Berlin. He invited a prince of the blood royal of Prussia to dine at the embassy with him; but the prince took the invitation and scored across it ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... 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 said ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... 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 ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... ready for departure. The Dauphin was with the Dauphiness, waiting together for the news of the king's demise. AN IMMENSE NOISE, AS IF OF THUNDER, WAS HEARD IN THE NEXT ROOM; it was the crowd of courtiers, who were deserting the dead king's apartment, in order to pay their court to the new power of Louis XVI. Madame de Noailles entered, and was the first to salute the queen by her title of Queen of France, and begged their Majesties to quit their apartments, to receive the princes and great lords of the court desirous to pay ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... 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
... American minister to the court of Louis XVI, was considerably enriched, at the close of the reign of terror, by plate, jewels, furniture, paintings, coaches, and so on, left in his charge by members of the French nobility, that they might not be confiscated in the sack of the city by the sans culottes; ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... not but be a source of congratulation to the French. The United States regarded France as her natural ally and immediately sent Benjamin Franklin to Versailles with the hope of obtaining the aid of the new French king, Louis XVI. The king's ministers were doubtful whether the colonies could long maintain their resistance against the overwhelming strength of the mother country. It was only after the Americans had defeated Burgoyne ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... from the pustules of a case on the twelfth or thirteenth day of the illness. As early as 1673 the practice was a common one in Denmark, Bartholinus tells us. In France inoculation had been widely practiced; on June 18, 1774, the young king Louis XVI., was inoculated for smallpox, and the fashionable ladies of the day wore in their hair a miniature rising sun and olive tree entwined by a serpent supporting a club, the "pouf a l'inoculation" of Mademoiselle Rose ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... find Louis XV. giving the Marquis de Marigny, her brother, an order for two hundred and thirty thousand francs, to assist him in paying the debts of the marchioness. (Journal of Louis XV., published at the trial of Louis XVI.) ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... for dejeuner, no matter what awaits him. It is the hour when lovers meet, too. Edmond, working in the atelier for the reproduction of Louis XVI furniture, meets Louise coming from her work on babies' caps in the rue des Saints-Peres at precisely twelve-ten on the corner of the rue Vaugirard and the Boulevard Montparnasse. Louise comes without ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith
... hostess 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 understand its historical import, although she appreciated its ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 3 • Various
... later the new treaty was to receive formal recognition, and the American commissioners were to be presented to Louis XVI in their public capacity. Franklin intended to wear the regular court costume at the presentation, but was balked of his desire. The costume did not come in time; and when the perruquier brought his wig it refused to sit on the Doctor's head. Franklin suggested that the wig might be too ...
— Benjamin Franklin • Paul Elmer More
... the emperor commenced, and matters gradually got worse and worse. Alfieri witnessed the events of the terrible 10th of August, when the Tuileries was taken by the mob after a bloody conflict, and Louis XVI. virtually ceased to reign. Seeing the great danger to which they would be exposed if they remained longer in Paris, they determined on a hasty flight; and after procuring the necessary passports, started on the 18th of the same month. They had a narrow escape on passing the barriers. A mob of ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... then the savour and the tone are not so piquant. I know nothing in the 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
... then in Revolution days (1791) he quitted France, and, with the dream of discovering the North-West Passage, set sail to America. If he did not make any geographical discovery, Chateaubriand found his own genius in the western world. The news of the execution of Louis XVI. decided him to return; a Breton and a royalist should show himself among the ranks of the emigrants. To gratify the wish of his family, he married before crossing the frontier. Madame de Chateaubriand ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... which ended in the execution of Louis XVI in 1793, was engineered by England with the aid of the Jews and the Judaized Masons. Only the Jews profited by the French Revolution, even as they profited by the English Revolution, attaining in the general turmoil equal rights with the native ...
— The History of a Lie - 'The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion' • Herman Bernstein
... Man Who Knew" in triumph, "it is known and is employed. It was known as long ago as the days of the Borgias. It was employed in France in the days of Louis XVI. It has been, to some extent, rediscovered and used in lunatic asylums ...
— The Man Who Knew • Edgar Wallace
... "is the first aerial voyage undertaken by Pilatre des Rosiers and the Marquis d'Arlandes, four months after the discovery of balloons. Louis XVI. refused to consent to the venture, and two men who were condemned to death were the first to attempt the aerial ascent. Pilatre des Rosiers became indignant at this injustice, and, by means of intrigues, obtained permission to make the experiment. The car, which renders the management ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... 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 ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... soldiers. A gentleman named George Washington took the command, and they declared they would fight for freedom from the mother country. The French were beginning to think freedom was a fine thing, and at first a few French gentlemen came over to fight among the Americans, and then the king Louis XVI., quarreled with George III., ...
— Young Folks' History of England • Charlotte M. Yonge
... narrow stairs, now in single file, and into a bedroom—evidently Knight's—full of canvases, sketching garb, fishing-rods and reels lining the walls; and then into another—evidently the guest's room—all lace covers, cretonne, carved chests, Louis XVI furniture, rare old portraits, and easy-chairs, the Sculptor opening each closet in turn, grumbling, "Just like him to try and fool us," but no ...
— The Man In The High-Water Boots - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... faint shadow of a very prosaic resemblance to the National Assembly of that era, . . and our weak efforts to cure cureless grievances, and to deafen our ears to crying evils, are very similar to the clumsy attempts made by Louis XVI. and his partisans to botch up a terribly bad business. Oh, the people, the people! ... They are unquestionably the flesh, blood, bone, and sinew of the country,—and the English people, say what sneerers will to the contrary, are a GOOD people,—patient, plodding, forbearing, strong, ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... 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 been accustomed to govern, ...
— Memoirs of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... bearing baskets of fruit and flowers on their heads. These houses were the first in Paris to be numbered, odd numbers on one side, even on the other, and were the first to be demolished when, on the eve of the Revolution, Louis XVI. ordered the bridges ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... St. Cloud. But the Seine is at all times less inviting for such an excursion than our Thames; and in the summer months many insulated spots may be seen in the centre of the French river. At the next bridge (Louis XVI.) there was a general muster of carriages, each adapted for six or eight passengers, and drawn by one or two horses. Here was a loud clamour of "St. Cloud" and "Versailles" among the drivers, some of whom were even more officious than the Jehus of Greenwich, or the wights of Charing Cross ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 330, September 6, 1828 • Various
... 1793, the cruel 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." ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... pervaded the mass was, evidently, by no means unfriendly to the Royal family, and it was as evidently misunderstood by them, for, suddenly, as if by fatality, on the very spot where Louis XVI. was beheaded, just beyond the Pont Tournant, on the pavement of the Obelisk of Luxor, the whole party, with no apparent necessity, came to a dead and complete halt. Instantly the multitude was crowded upon them, and this augmented their terror. The King dropped the Queen's arm and ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... was appointed Minister of Finance by the new King, Louis XVI, and during the two years before he was removed from office he attempted to carry out many needed political and social reforms. Duruy [14] has summarized his ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... themselves a national assembly, and commenced work upon a constitution under the direction of Sieyes, who well merited the epithet, "indefatigable constitution-grinder," applied to Paine by Cobbett. Not long after, the attempted coup d'etat of Louis XVI. failed, the Bastille was demolished, and the political Saturnalia of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... hand wrought metal Lighting fixtures inspired by Adam mirrors The staircase in the Bayard Thayer house The drawing-room should be intimate in spirit The fine formality of well-placed paneling The living-room in the C.W. Harkness house at Morristown, New Jersey Miss Anne Morgan's Louis XVI boudoir Miss Morgan's Louis XVI lit de repos A Georgian dining-room in the William Iselin house Mrs. Ogden Armour's Chinese paper screen Mrs. James Warren Lane's painted dining-table The private dining-room in the Colony ...
— The House in Good Taste • Elsie de Wolfe
... buckles and powdered hair usually mark the high tide of imaginative originality among this sort of people. So it was to be the inevitable Louis XVI fete—or as near to it as attenuated, artistic intelligence could manage, and they altered Duane's very clever and correct sketches to suit themselves, careless of anachronism, and sent the dainty water-colour drawings to town ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... que le tiers etat?" which then absorbed all the public favour. In 1791, "La Chaumiere Indienne" was published: and in the following year, about thirteen days before the celebrated 10th of August, Louis XVI. appointed St. Pierre superintendant of the "Jardin des Plantes." Soon afterwards, the King, on seeing him, complimented him on his writings and told him he was happy to have found a worthy ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... the dismemberment of France, or to impose upon it by force any particular constitution. I say that, as far as we have been able to trace what passed at Pilnitz, the declaration there signed referred to the imprisonment of Louis XVI; its immediate view was to effect his deliverance, if a concert sufficiently extensive could be formed with other sovereigns for that purpose. It left the internal state of France to be decided by the King restored to his liberty, with the free consent ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... marble steps leading to the altar beneath which the seventh Emperor was to be laid were just finished when Louis XVIII. came to fill the tomb, which was just prepared, with the bones of Louis XVI., to depose the Emperor, to complete the marble pavement, and to extend the fleurs de lys ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... first year 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 by the generous gifts of James Logan, was ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... disappointment and horror. In the month of December of the very year in which he had been thus honored by the Legislative Assembly, Schiller was on the point of writing an appeal to the French nation in defense of Louis XVI. The King's head, however, had fallen before this defense was begun. Schiller, a true friend of true liberty, never ceased to express his aversion to the violent proceedings of the French revolutionists. ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... win! We shall win!" he said without even the physical demonstration of a gesture and in a hard, even voice which was like that of the machinery of modern war itself, a voice which the aristocratic sniff, the Louis XVI. curls, or any of the old gallery-display heroes would have thought utterly lacking in histrionics suitable to the occasion. He remained rigid after he had spoken, ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... Eagle," the old courtier announced to his child. "Louis XVII, the son of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, survives in this wreck. How he escaped from prison we do not know. Why he is here unrecognized in England, where his claim to the throne was duly acknowledged on the death of his father, we do not know. But we who have often seen the ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... her to assume, and which she has never abandoned. The army of the old monarchy had, during the latter part of the reign of Louis XV. sunk into gradual decay, both in numerical force, and in efficiency of equipment and spirit. The laurels gained by the auxiliary regiments which Louis XVI. sent to the American war, did but little to restore the general tone of the army. The insubordination and licence, which the revolt of the French guards, and the participation of other troops in many of the first excesses of the Revolution introduced among ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... It had an enormous circulation, 1,500,000 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. It is directed alike against Christianity ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... seated at a table. His elbows are on a big military map. A telephone is at his hand. He waits—to hear the results of orders he has given. And while he waits he chews an unlighted cigar and divides his attention between the map and the clock—an old Louis XVI timepiece with marble columns, which ticks off the minutes almost soundlessly. How slowly its hands go round! How interminable seems ...
— Foch the Man - A Life of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Armies • Clara E. Laughlin
... Chancellor of France, M. de Pontchartrain. When only fourteen years old Louis had made him Secretary of State for the Marine, as a consolation to his grandfather for his dismissal; and he continued in office till the accession of Louis XVI., when he was appointed Prime Minister. He was not a man of any statesmanlike ability; but Lacretelle ascribes to him "les graces d'un esprit aimable et frivole qui avait le don d'amuser un vieillard toujours porte a un elegant badinage" (ii. 53); and in a subsequent letter ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... spots on their faces, of which I think I've told you my horror, and scarcely six decent pictures in the whole enormous collection; but I had never been in the Tuilleries before, and it was curious to go through the vast dingy rooms by which such a number of dynasties have come in and gone out—Louis XVI., Napoleon, Charles X., Louis Philippe, have all marched in state up the staircase with the gilt balustrades, and come tumbling down again presently.—Well, I won't give you an historical disquisition in the Titmarsh manner upon this, but reserve ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... 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 put ...
— History of France • Charlotte M. Yonge
... July 22, 1746, left his native village at the age of fourteen years, never to return. What was his career, and what functions did he fulfil? Honore de Balzac says that his father was secretary to the Grand Council under Louis XV, and Laure Surville, his sister, wrote that under Louis XVI he was attorney to the Council. He himself, in an invitation to the marriage of his second daughter, Laurence, described himself as former secretary to the King's Council. During the revolution he was secretary to the minister of the navy, Bertrant ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... national assembly, and commenced work upon a constitution under the direction of Siyes, who well merited the epithet, "indefatigable constitution-grinder," applied to Paine by Cobbett. Not long after, the attempted coup d'tat of Louis XVI. failed, the Bastille was demolished, and the political Saturnalia ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... 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
... eighteenth century there came on the scene as a designer of gardens one, De Neufforge. His work was a prelude to the classicism of the style of Louis XVI which was to come. There was, too, at this time a disposition towards the English garden, but only a slight tendency, though towards 1780 the conventional French garden had been practically abandoned. The revolution in the art of garden-making therefore preceded that of the world ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... miraculous. Bonaparte is deposed, but alive; subdued, but allowed to choose his place of residence. The island of Elba is the spot he has selected for his ignominious retreat. France is holding forth repentant arms to her banished sovereign. The Poissardes who dragged Louis XVI. to the scaffold are presenting flowers to the Emperor of Russia, the restorer of their legitimate king! What a stupendous field for philosophy to expatiate in! What an endless material for thought! What humiliation to the pride of mere human greatness! How are the mighty fallen! Of all that ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... this pale and too eager moralist were written these remarkable words: "Deficiency of ethical instincts," followed by something to the effect that he knew no mercy (which is certainly untrue), and by some nonsense about a retreating forehead, a peculiarity which he shared with Louis XVI and with half the people ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... April, 1793, a British packet brought the news to New York that Louis XVI had been guillotined and that France was at war with England and Spain. The ominous tidings brought President Washington post-haste from Mount Vernon to Philadelphia. Summoning his advisers, he put before them the perplexing questions which had arisen in his mind. Neutrality ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... his first sudden appearance, their conjectures were endless; the stranger had conferred one more benefit upon them by diverting their minds. Again, and again, they said, when he next came to see them as he promised, to celebrate the sad anniversary of the death of Louis XVI., he could ...
— An Episode Under the Terror • Honore de Balzac
... visited Versailles without discovering that the hameau still existed; so to chance upon it in the sunset glow of that winter evening seemed to carry us back to the time when the storm-cloud of the Revolution was yet no larger than a man's hand; to the day when Louis XVI., making for once a graceful speech, presented the site to his wife, saying: "You love flowers. Ah! well, I have a bouquet for you—the Petit Trianon." And his Queen, weary of the restrictions of Court ceremony—though it must be admitted that the willful Marie Antoinette ever declined to ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd
... replied the empress, heartily amused. "You are affianced to his grandson, who one of these days will be called Louis XVI." ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... Louis XVI., immediately after his coronation at Rheims, in 1775, went to the Abbey of St. Remi to pay his devotions, and to touch for the evil. The ceremony took place in the Abbey Park, and is thus described in a paper entitled Coronation of the Kings ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 69, February 22, 1851 • Various
... life, let the reader pass for a few moments to the Salon de la Paix at Versailles, where King Louis XVI ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon
... 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 ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to imitate or avoid, losing sight of nothing, from Gregory VII. to Gutenberg, from papal obscurantism to the Reformation's blaze of light; from Wallenstein's murder to the treaty of Utrecht; from Richelieu to the scaffold of Louis XVI., and while calculating every catastrophe, keeping steadily ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... opinion that to make war on France was as legitimate as to make war on pirates and bandits; and the Directory, though it took little notice at the time, remembered it when Godoy, the favorite, in his endeavors to save the lives of Louis XVI and his family entered into correspondence with the French ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk
... She required only that America should never restore the King's sovereignty in order to secure peace. Certain sections of opinion in America were suspicious of France. Was she not the old enemy who had so long harassed the frontiers of New England and New York? If George III was a despot what of Louis XVI, who had not even an elected Parliament to restrain him? Washington himself was distrustful of France and months after the alliance had been concluded he uttered the warning that hatred of England ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... the king makes a peer of 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 Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... message 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 ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... declared that he would neither accept any condition nor grant a single guarantee as to the character of his future rule. Above all, he declared that he would never give up the white flag of the ancien regime. In his eyes the tricolour, which, shortly after the fall of the Bastille, Louis XVI. had recognised as the flag of France, represented the spirit of the Great Revolution, and for that great event he had the deepest loathing. As if still further to ruin his cause, the Count announced his intention of striving with all his might for the restoration of the Temporal Power of the ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... 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 knows geography. ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... that 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 ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... 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 ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... Napoleon, joyously. "Come in, Narbonne, come in!" And he hastened to meet the count, who entered the cabinet, and, as an experienced cavalier of the court of Louis XVI., made his bows in strict ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... Breton—for he could not speak a 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." Poor ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... Marquis de Lafayette and his shy girl bride were presented at court. The benevolent king, Louis XVI, was then reigning. The queen, Marie Antoinette, was the head of a social life that was elaborately formal and splendid. Marie Antoinette herself was young and light-hearted, and was at this time without fears from misadventure at the hands of the state or from any personal ...
— Lafayette • Martha Foote Crow
... has marched out to slaughter and be slaughtered with a sullen pride in the daring that this mightier ferocity has put upon it. When it has mastered its Drusus, its Domitian, its Nero, its Vespasian and its Louis XVI, it has indulged in wanton excesses of rage and destruction until, spent with exhaustion, a new master has arisen to tie it up like a whipped dog. It was this gloomy and savage force that crowded into the greatest tribunal of all history, and yelled with discordant and frenzied rage into the ...
— On the Vice of Novel Reading. - Being a brief in appeal, pointing out errors of the lower tribunal. • Young E. Allison
... Faustina or Valentinian. 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
... into the light of day, and then Rabaut St. Etienne stood up in the Constituent Assembly at Paris, in 1787, and claimed the rights of his Protestant fellow-countrymen—the rights of "2,000,000 useful citizens." Louis XVI. granted them an Edict of Tolerance, about a hundred years after Louis XIV. had revoked the Edict of Nantes; but the measure proved too late for the King, and too late for France, which had already been sacrificed to the intolerance ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... occur to every thoughtful reader of history. If, as might easily have happened, Hannibal after the battle of Cannae had taken and burned Rome, and transferred the supremacy of the world to a maritime commercial State upon the Mediterranean; if, instead of the Regency, Louis XV. and Louis XVI., France had passed during the eighteenth century under sovereigns of the stamp of the elder branch of the House of Orange or of Henry IV., or of the Great Elector, or of Frederick the Great; if, at the French Revolution, the supreme military genius had been connected with the character of ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... 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 commanding that ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent
... not the day of display or snobbery. The king of snobs, Louis XVI., had died to some purpose, for a wave of manliness had swept across human thought at the beginning of the century. The world has rarely been the poorer for the demise ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman |
