The Reign of Louis XVI

The first part of this story takes place around the year 1774, or roughly the time when Louis XVI ascended to the throne. For more than a century before Louis XVI's reign, France had suffered under the rule of the self-indulgent monarchy. Wars and poor management of the country's wealth had burdened the population with increasing debt. Those in power—the nobles and the clergy—benefited from the status quo, and so they worked to suppress any measures to make the system more fair. Heavy taxes were imposed upon the peasantry, with attempts to revise the tax codes, such as increasing taxes on property owners, defeated by aristocrats. Religious worship other than in the Catholic Church was severely punished, such as the episode young Hamilton Lindsay describes in “Melon,” in his letter to his cousin, about seeing a Protestant minister hanged in the marketplace...