The city of Louisville is named for King Louis XVI of France. Louis is best known for being the unfortunate French monarch who met his end, along with his wife Marie Antoinette, during the French Revolution in 1793. King of France from 1775 until his death, Louis was instrumental in aiding the Americans in winning the Revolutionary War. However, it would be the involvement in the war that would lead to Louis’s downfall.
Louis succeeded his unpopular grandfather Louis XV and was recognized as absolute monarch in France. Tensions were already rising in France, as Louis’s marriage to Marie Antoinette (Archduchess of Austria) dragged the French into the disastrous Seven Years War (1756-63). When France entered the Revolutionary War on the side of the Americans in 1778, two unforeseen consequences arose for Louis. First, it showed the French people that monarchs could be overthrown and the French involvement in the war nearly bankrupted the country.
To his credit, Louis did attempt to reform the financial situation. However, the aristocracy hardly noticed, and it was the poor that suffered the most as food costs skyrocketed. Dissatisfaction led to riots, and the eventual replacement of the absolute monarchy with a constitutional one led by the National Assembly in 1791. Thus began the French Revolution. Continued unrest led to Louis being arrested in 1792, and his execution the following year. His wife followed him shortly.
Louis’s downfall can be credited to his inability to endear himself to the people, and his poor management of the country. Whole books have been written on Louis and his troubles, but a few facts are important to note. He and his wife had difficulty consummating children early in their marriage, though they would produce several children. Louis furthered French interests in places such as India, Indo-China (Vietnam especially), and in the Americas. Such endeavors would aide in France’s trade, but the financial crisis still loomed over his reign. His involvement in the Revolutionary War was more in the want to defeat his old enemy in Britain; unfortunately for the king, the success of democracy would spread to his own country.
Given Louis’s faults his role in the creation of the United States is undeniable. In 1780 the Virginia General Assembly named the settlement of Louisville in his honor (Kentucky was still a part of the Commonwealth of Virginia). They saw him as a noble king, though others disagreed. Other cities in the United States were named Louisville as well, though Louisville, Kentucky is the first and most well-known. A statue of the French monarch stands across City Hall, a gift from Louisville’s sister city of Montpellier, France in 1967. The statue stands as a monument to an unlucky monarch that’s efforts helped the United States to be born.
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