Primary Source

Long Live Liberty

Engraving of King Louis XVI lets birds representing liberty out of a cage

Annotation

Cartoonists extrapolated more and more on a new Louis as the Revolution went along. Here, a rather rumpled King, dressed more like a shopkeeper than a monarch, opens a cage to let liberty out. Many scholars argue that the King was already desacralized as much as a couple of decades before the Revolution. Still Louis is associated with liberty here, and this treatment was mild compared with the personal attacks and the execution that would follow.

How to Cite This Source

"Long Live Liberty," in World History Commons, https://worldhistorycommons.org/long-live-liberty [accessed March 27, 2024]