King Louis XVI’s own handwritten copy of the speech that triggered the French revolution in 1789 will go on public sale in England next month, auctioneers said on Thursday.
The three and a half page speech, put for sale by a private collector, will go under the hammer in Swindon, western England, on June 26.
”It is the most important French document in private hands. It is not even there in the French museums,” Richard Westwood-Brookes of Dominic Winter Book Auctions said.
”It’s the last act of the ancien regime, and is a defining document in the French history.”
”It is rare to have the privilege of handling a document which can truly be described as a piece of history.”
The manuscript is expected to fetch 400 000 euros. The king, who was executed in 1793, wrote the speech at a time when he was facing intense pressure to reform the monarchy and feudal aristocracy.
The Third Estate, a fledgling bourgeois parliament, met on June 20 1789 and swore not to dissolve until France had secured a proper constitution.
Louis convened a special session of all three houses of the French assembly — this time also including clerics and nobility — three days later to annul the decisions of the Third Estate, making only limited concessions.
He told it: ”If you abandon me in this great enterprise, I will work alone for the welfare of my people … I command you to separate at once”.
His statement infuriated reformers who stepped up their protests. Less than a month later a mob stormed the Bastille fortress in Paris.
Years of revolution led to the rise of Napoleon. Although the monarchy was later re-established, its power was for ever diminished and it was eventually phased out altogether in the 19th century. ? Sapa-AFP