King of France beginning 1774, Louis XVI was guillotined by the French Revolutionary National Convention in 1793. His failed efforts to reform the French aristocracy undermined his popularity, and a debt crisis consequent on his support for the North American colonists in their war for independence from Britain as well as an extravagant court left him vulnerable to the hostility of the French middle and lower classes, and his palace was stormed by a revolutionary mob in 1789.