it's honestly very surprising that the manifesto Louis XVI left behind at the Tuileries is glossed over in almost all English works about him. Even Hardman's biography doesn't address it very much. But it's such a critical document to better understanding his mindset, his goals, how he viewed the revolution and was approaching it.
to copy a comment I made on a reblog a bit ago--
It brings to mind Louis XVI’s manifesto left behind before the flight to Montmedy.
While Louis XVI absolutely does address what he views as basic ideological and political concerns, the first detailed complaint (granted he does complain about the attempted murder first before getting into this–) is about the fact that the Tuileries palace wasn’t made ready for them and the layout being annoying:
The King, yielding to the wish expressed by the Parisian army, came to settle with his family at the Château des Tuileries. It was over a hundred years since the Kings had made their habitual residence there, except in the minority of Louis XV.
Nothing was ready to receive the King, and the layout of the old apartments was far from providing the conveniences to which His Majesty was accustomed in the other Royal houses, and which any private individual who was at ease could enjoy.
In the context of the manifesto, he places the complaint about the layout of the palace on the same level as his complaints about the stripping of any real royal power, shutting him out of creating laws or policies in the new government, frustrations regarding the Assembly’s tax plan, addressing the murders of various people associated with the old regime, etc etc.
Aside from being rather ludicrous to read, though, it gives a deeper insight into the impossible mental gap between the royal family and everyone else.
To them, these things that were frankly ridiculous–a palace layout, being seated on a normal chair with a royal cover instead of a throne–were of the utmost importance, on the same level as the attempted murder of the royal family and the actual murder of various people from 1789-1791.
How do you reconcile that with trying to get them to accept the new framework of a constitutional monarchy, even one which (per Barnave's attempts) would allow them more political power than the acting one?
Anyway I feel like in general, Louis XVI's actual writing--or what survives of it--is just not very well studied compared to Marie Antoinette's.
It's kind of like how people obsess over Marie Antoinette's letters to Fersen but only read them in the context of "Were they LOVERS?!?!" and not in the context of "these must be read and understood as being just one of the countless strings of correspondence she was sending out all over Europe at the same time, they are inherently political letters that can't be understood on their own."
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