The most recommended books on Louis XVI

I am perhaps more familiar with – and fonder of – Marie Antoinette than I am of any other historical personage. Emersed in French history since an early age, I have had a near-lifetime fascination for this complicated woman – who never said, “Let them eat cake!” 

Having researched Antoinette exhaustively (most recently, in connection with her periodic appearances in my own books), since first reading Evelyn Lever’s masterful, beautifully-written work some twenty years ago, I have found myself frequently returning to it. I am drawn to it for its depth and detail, as well as her balanced treatment of an, in many ways, controversial figure. I recommend it as it is a perfect introduction to the life of a captivating woman, as well as presenting a highly satisfying experience for any lover of fine biography. 

At the celebrations on 14 July 1790 for the first anniversary of the storming of the Bastille, Louis XVI took an oath to work with the National Assembly as a constitutional monarch. Less than a year later, on 20 June 1791, the royal family tried to flee the Revolution. The king’s flight convinced masses of French people that he was a perjurer: the monarchy never recovered its mystique.

In contrast, his capture near the border with Luxembourg convinced the crowned heads of Europe that the royal family was in mortal danger. Ten months later France was at war with Marie-Antoinette’s native Austria, and Europe was engulfed in a generation of bloodshed. The great American historian of the Revolution, Timothy Tackett, recounts the engrossing story of the botched flight and its repercussions for a cast of unforgettable characters.    

This final choice reprises the idea that a miner’s life was hard, though that isn’t the focus of the story. The plot sounds unpromising, but I loved Pure! Set in the time of Louis XVI, a provincial engineer is tasked with demolishing a Parisian church and relocating the bones of its graveyard. He employs a motley crew of coal miners to carry out the work as he knows they’ll have the necessary strength, stamina, and skill. One little episode that featured them stayed with me. The engineer stands on a platform to address the miners but years of crouching in narrow coal seams have bent and misshapen them so much that they can’t stand straight enough to see him. He was shocked. I wasn’t.

Susan Nagel charted Marie-Thérèse's life during the turmoil of the French Revolution. The only survivor of the royal family locked in Temple Prison, despite the harrowing experience of her family’s demise and the French Revolution, Marie Antoinette’s daughter emerged as a remarkably strong figure in French history.

Marie-Thérèse journeyed from the horrors of the Temple prison and her family’s death to a dignified role at court when she married her cousin and the monarchy returned after the Revolution and Napoleon’s empire. I was amazed at how little I knew about Marie-Thérèse—she was even queen for 20 minutes when her husband reigned and abdicated!

Juliet Gray brought Marie Antoinette to life in this book. We got to understand her from such a young girl who had so much pressure put on her. We see her as kind and childlike but we also see how Marie does mature into a woman who strives to have a loving marriage with her husband while they rule France.

I read the French edition of this book, and I found it most helpful as a reference for my own writing because Campan was close to Marie Antoinette as her servant and confidant. Moreover, Campan did not sugarcoat the queen’s life but rather offered an unbiased view of the queen's character.

Having read many current biographies of Marie Antoinette, I was thrilled to find Madam Campan’s because it was a unique and firsthand account of Marie Antoinette’s life at the court of Versailles. More importantly, Campan revealed why Marie Antoinette often behaved the way she did and debunked some of the scandals—some of which are still espoused today. In my opinion, Campan’s writing conveys sincerity and authenticity. On the other hand, some critics feel she is a bit biased.

Although Alexandre Dumas’ story of the famous missing diamond necklace is part of a series, it portrays the simmering unrest of the French people and their growing distaste for the monarchy and their queen, in particular. Unfortunately, the queen was falsely accused of the exorbitant purchase.

Preferring to read historical nonfiction, I still love this blend of history and fiction with fast-paced adventure at the court of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette as the resentment for the queen grows due to the false rumor that she purchased an expensive diamond necklace, the French people are also suffering from hunger, crying for bread. Dumas uses the scandal to create an explosive political climate that foretells the coming of the Revolution.

Napoleon Bonaparte brought a decade of revolutionary upheaval to an end when he seized power with the army in November 1799, but he had been made a general by the Revolution and was one of its most celebrated soldiers. The Revolution opened up opportunities for this Corsican “outsider” which would have been impossible before the Revolution: he grabbed them. Dwyer’s prize-winning account of Napoleon’s checkered rise to power at the age of thirty is also a gripping narrative of the unpredictability and drama of the revolutionary decade. It reveals the making of a man whose brilliance, military genius, and vision was qualified by his cynicism, cruelty, and vanity. 

Poor George III: ridiculed in caricatures and the object of attempted assassinations!

This enormous book is a real page-turner. Its aim is to show that the changing meanings of words had a huge impact on the politics of the 1790s in Britain. The fourteenth-century statute of treason listed among its crimes that of ‘imagining the king’s death.’

In the reign of Edward III, that meant actually planning the death of the monarch, but by the 1790s, the word ‘imagine’ had taken on the modern definition of ‘envisaging’ or ‘fantasising.’ This much wider definition of ‘imagining’ had dire consequences for reformers who had no intention of arranging the death of the king but whose language might be loose enough to open them up to the charge of ‘imagining’ it. 

The great strength of this book is that as well as offering a major reinterpretation of Louis, XVI, it is also a pleasure to read. John Hardman has pioneered the reappraisal of Louis that has been underway over the last twenty years. The unfortunate king has traditionally been portrayed as either reactionary or incompetent (or both). In place of this caricature, Hardman convincingly presents the monarch as a man of high intelligence who was prepared to make many more compromises with the Revolution than historians have allowed. In his view, Louis’ real weakness was not intellectual but psychological: crises of depression that paralysed him at crucial moments after 1789.