May 5, 2007
Someone Else’s Civil War IV Posted by John Steele Gordon at 08:00 PM EST Let me hasten to assure Fredric Smoler that if Louis XVI’s head was the price of American independence, then, au revoir, Louis, et merci bien. While the counterfactual history of an undivided British Empire is toothsome to contemplate, I prefer what actually happened. Charles de Gaulle, to be sure, dismissed the lot of us as “les Anglo-Saxons,” so I’m not sure how much of a distinction the French make even today among the English-speaking peoples. And while the English do indeed produce that incomparable prince of cheeses, the Stilton, the French nonetheless have an often-justified saying that “hell is where the chefs are British.” Just for the record, Louis XVI was not the grandson of Louis XIV but rather his great-great-great-grandson, Louis XV being the great-grandson of his predecessor and the grandfather of his successor. It is remarkable that only three kings should occupy the French throne between 1643 and 1792. In that same time period the English throne had no fewer than eight occupants (not counting Mary II, who ruled jointly with her husband William III). Had there been no revolution and had Louis XVI lived to be seventy, then the three kings would have reigned for a total of 181 years, averaging more than 60 years each. I was idly thinking this morning that had a committee of wise men deliberately set out in 1774 to design a human being who was as utterly unsuited—intellectually, physically, and psychologically—as possible to be king of France at that point in time, they could not have done better than Louis XVI. He was a decent man, and no stupider than many kings, but the times called for someone who was farsighted, shrewd, attractive, brimming with self-confidence, at ease exerting his royal authority, and willing to be ruthless when crossed. Louis XVI was, alas, none of those things. What France needed right then was Elizabeth I. What it got was a cross between Don Knotts and Casper Milquetoast. And so France, not to mention Louis himself, paid a fearful price.
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