The Tragedy of King Lewis the Sixteenth

St. Paul writes in the New Testament that 'our wrestling is not against flesh and blood; but...against the spirits of wickedness in the high places.' To the unhappy King Louis XVI of France, these words were particularly applicable. The play that has given its name to this volume of collected poetry presents the true tale of the only King of France who was tried and put to death by a revolutionary government that, at least in the world of the play, served as the unwitting scourge of God. The Enlightenment of the eighteenth century was animated by a rationalist Skepticism that in France especially militated against the Catholic Church. Because Louis and his two predecessors delayed in consecrating France to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Who to avert a catastrophe had requested the consecration through a devout French nun in 1689, on June 17, 1789, exactly one hundred years later, Louis XVI was challenged by the self-styled National Assembly, initiating the French Revolution. He was later stripped of his powers and guillotined like a criminal; France became engulfed in the horrors of the Revolutionary Terror.