Posterity's tribunal has judged France's ill-starred Louis XVI as lacking (among other qualities) the martial spirit of his most assertive Bourbon forebears. Yet, as a careful reconstruction of his early years by Pierrette Girault de Coursac has revealed, this prince did not escape indoctrination in the patriotic prejudices of the country he was destined to rule starting in May 1774 at the age of twenty. “A king of France,” wrote the youthful and earnest due de Berri seven years before his accession, “if he is always just, will always be the first and most powerful sovereign of Europe and can easily become arbiter of the Continent.” As for France's neighbors: the Spanish might be “proud…noble and generous” and the Swiss “faithful,” but the Italians were “clever,…vindictive and jealous,” the Dutch “avaricious,” the unduly thriving English “swelled up with pride, jealous, [and] presumptuous,” and the Prussians (under Frederick II) ever seeking territorial gains at the expense of other kingdoms. Such a prince as Berri, grown to manhood and garbed in royalty, might not wish to emulate his ancestors in the lists of combat – but could he effectively resist the notion that his realm must continue to pursue its destiny as a Great Power, as, indeed, the arbiter of Europe?

For such was the challenge placed before the young monarch by the new minister of foreign affairs, Charles Gravier, comte de Vergennes.