2 Sol Kingdom of France (843-1791) Bronze Louis XVI of France (17 ...

Denomination: 2 Sols Mint Place: Metz (AA) References: KM-603.2 Mint year: 1793 (Year 5 of the Revolution)

Material: Bronze or Brass Weight: 20.65gm Diameter: 33mm

Obverse: Head of Louis XVI left. Legend: LOUIS XVI ROS DES FRANCAIS (privy mark) 1793 . (AA). Reverse: Liberty cap on fasces, splitting value inside wreath. Legend: . L’AN 5 DE LA LIBERTE . LA NATION LA LOI LE ROI

In 1792 the early reverses of the French army in the war with Austria and Prussia and threat of the Duke of Brunswick to destroy Paris if the royal family were harmed infuriated the Paris sans-culottes. The king and his family were imprisoned on August 10 in the Temple, and in September, as the Prussians were defeated at Valmy, the Convention declared a Republic. Incriminating evidence against Louis was later found, and he was tried and found guilty by a unanimous vote. He was guillotined on 21 January 1793. Although the king’s portrait is known on issues dated 1793, his rule ended with his imprisonment in 1792.

Louis XVI or Louis-Auguste de France (Versailles 23 August 1754 – 21 January 1793 in Paris) ruled as King of France and Navarre from 1774 until 1791, and then as King of the French from 1791 to 1792. Suspended and arrested during the 10th of August 1792 Insurrection, he was tried by the National Convention, found guilty of treason, and executed by guillotine on 21 January 1793. He was the only king of France to be executed.

Although Louis was beloved at first, his indecisiveness and conservatism led some elements of the people of France to eventually hate him as a symbol of the perceived tyranny of the Ancien RÃegime. After the abolition of the monarchy in 1792, the new republican government gave him the surname Capet, a reference to the nickname of Hugh Capet, founder of the Capetian dynasty, which the revolutionaries wrongly interpreted as a family name. He was also informally nicknamed Louis le Dernier (Louis the Last), a derisive use of the traditional nicknaming of French kings. Today, historians and Frenchmen in general have a more nuanced view of Louis XVI, who is seen as an honest man with good intentions, but who was probably unfit for the herculean task of reforming the monarchy, and who was used as a scapegoat by the revolutionaries.