And because they just didn’t like him. Murder as a method of social transformation (basically ideology eugenics) was one of the constants of radical leftwing politics during the French Revolution, so killing was just the “natural” way of getting rid of a monarch you don’t want in your republic. That’s where the whole “no man can reign innocently” thing comes from; the pro-execution wing (aka the Mountain) tended to think of Louis XVI as categorically deserving of death, with what he actually did being mostly secondary. I mean, these are the guys who would run France during the Reign of Terror.
Yeah… They didn’t kill the king because he was rich. They killed him because he was believed to be a traitor to the nation and to the revolution.
And because they just didn’t like him. Murder as a method of social transformation (basically ideology eugenics) was one of the constants of radical leftwing politics during the French Revolution, so killing was just the “natural” way of getting rid of a monarch you don’t want in your republic. That’s where the whole “no man can reign innocently” thing comes from; the pro-execution wing (aka the Mountain) tended to think of Louis XVI as categorically deserving of death, with what he actually did being mostly secondary. I mean, these are the guys who would run France during the Reign of Terror.