Who wore the royal trousers?

Revolutions no longer seem so inevitable, nor the overthrown governments so hopeless, since the failure of the greatest of all European revolutionary regimes, the Soviet Union. In The Fall of the French Monarchy Munro Price analyses, with skill and a light touch, the policies of two celebrated royal failures, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, and of some of their ZmigrZ advisers, during the first years of the French revolution. The central figure is the Baron de Breteuil, an energetic former ambassador and minister, chosen by Louis XVI to co-ordinate resistance to the revolution, both from Versailles during his brief ministry of 12-15 July 1789 and, in the opinion of Munro Price, from exile in Brussels in 1790-2. This excellent, dramatic and important book is based on new material from archives across Europe, above all from the papers of one of Breteuil’s confidential agents, another former ambassador, the Marquis de Bombelles.