The Life of Louis XVI, by John Hardman

Abstract

In this book, John Hardman returns to a theme which he has made his own. Over three decades he has been adding stealthily to our understanding of France’s most ill-starred Bourbon monarch. The latest offering is unquestionably a Life, inasmuch as it takes the king’s story back to his early upbringing and to his father, Louis-Ferdinand, in an attempt to uncover the factors which shaped the outlook in adulthood of the notoriously uncommunicative monarch. In fact, the bulk of the book (some 300 pages) consists of an analysis of Louis’ behaviour in response to a series of domestic and international upsets and challenges prior to the momentous events of 1789. The picture that emerges is not dramatically different from that which we have come to expect from Hardman’s earlier works. Louis was certainly not intellectually limited, nor was he congenitally indolent. The author depicts a man who was well read and knowledgeable in matters of finance and foreign policy; a man, moreover, who contrived to distil from his childhood and teenage years certain guiding principles. However, these principles were apt to produce tensions when translated into policies for the day-to-day running of his kingdom. In a tellingly paradoxical phrase, Hardman refers to Louis as a ‘dévot-philosophe’ monarch. On the debit side of his character, Louis seems to have been prone to debilitating episodes of depression and mental paralysis; he rarely explained himself to ministers, probably for emotional reasons, and he was not altogether reliable.