What’s the Big Deal about King Louis and His Constitution? Getting Your King Louis’s Straight!

Gentle musical readers,

MCE will be singing about King Louis and his constitution in the sea chantey “Haul Away, Joe” at the Independence Day Concert at Pickering Barn in Issaquah on June 24, 2012.

When we sing of King Louis “who got his head cut off which spoiled his constitution” we are referring to Louis XVI of France and NOT Louis XIV or Louis XV. It matters. In my experience, not all French people have this straight, so pay attention and you will be ahead all the way around.

 Louis XIV was perhaps the most fortunate of the three kings. He had Versailles remodeled to house his adoring courtiers. He had numerous mistresses and had a long, busy, productive life as the “Sun King”. He is famous for saying “I am the state” (“L'état, c’est moi).

Louis XV had a fairly happy, if ineffectual, life with plenty of mistresses. He had some inkling that his policies were leading to disaster, because he cheerfully commented, “After me, comes the flood” (“Après moi, le déluge”). When he died of smallpox, it was the turn of his grandson.

Louis XVI was a sober, plodding individual who did not at all enjoy being king. It scared him. He had no mistresses and was boringly faithful to his wife, Marie Antoinette, who did not really say “Let them eat cake”. Apparently she said, “Let them eat brioches”, which was really intended to be a kindness in suggesting that day-old baked goods could be had from the bakeries at a discount.

At the beginning of the French Revolution there was no thought of removing or executing the king. The early provisional governments were mostly composed of political moderates and even aristocrats who favored keeping Louis on as a constitutional monarch. So they drafted a constitution and Louis was forced to sign it (Constitution, get it?). But in time, the moderates were replaced by extremists, some of whom considered all aristocrats as criminal parasites who had no right to live.

For awhile, Louis was considered an “all right guy” who could be useful to the newly formed nation of France, and he did rule with constitutional limitations for a short period.

But evidence began accumulating that he and the queen were plotting against the Revolution—that they were conspiring with other European monarchs to combat the revolutionary government with armed force. When the royal family were caught near the French border in an attempted escape, that was the last straw. King Louis and his constitution had to go.

And you know, gentle musical readers, His Majesty Louis XVI, King of France, really tried to do his best, and he was not a bad person. History was against him. Absolute monarchy was on the way out in France, and republican government was on the way in. He just got crunched in the middle.

If you want to know more about the saga of King Louis and the French Revolution, and the hair-raising attempted escape of the royal family, you are on your own.

Good luck.

Roberta DeBruler

MCE Musical Correspondent