In stories widely told among the people, Marie Antoinette accidentally stepped on the executioner's foot as she mounted the scaffold, then said, "I'm sorry."
The famous "Deficit Queen" loved holding balls. She became somewhat more restrained after having children, but by then people's impression of her had already solidified. The commoners blamed her entirely for rising prices and bread shortages.
Louis XVI also had final words before mounting the scaffold. He kept asking those around him, "Is there any news of Count of La Pérouse?"
Count of La Pérouse's full name was Jean-François de Galaup. He was widely recognized as one of the greatest navigators after James Cook. Born in Albi, France, in 1741, he entered naval service at fifteen. After inheriting the title of Count of La Pérouse, he became passionate about geography and hoped to strengthen France's power in the Pacific Ocean.
So Louis XVI gave him two merchant ships, which were later converted into warships. One was called the Astrolabe, the other the Compass, and he ordered him to explore the Pacific coasts of Asia and the Americas.
The two ships carried a total of 220 people, including two astronomers, several naturalists, several surgeons, a mathematician, a clockmaker, and several cartographers. They intended to complete the work Captain Cook had left unfinished.
They also used the newly developed navigational instrument, the sextant. Yet in mid-March 1788, when Count of La Pérouse set out from Australia and sailed northwest, he encountered a storm and vanished near the Vanikoro Islands in the Solomon Islands. In 1791, when Louis XVI's own life was in danger, he still dispatched a fleet to search for Count of La Pérouse, but they never found him. It became one of Louis XVI's regrets, so much so that he still thought of it as he