Political and Confidential Correspondence of Lewis the Sixteenth from the French by Helen Maria Williams

The Political and Confidential Correspondence of Lewis the Sixteenth was published in 1803, an English translation by Helen Maria Williams. However, the original letters had not been written by the French monarch, since the documents had been forged by the editors of the French edition. The Political and Confidential Correspondence appeared in three volumes and, apart from the letters, the work includes commentaries or “observations” in which Williams discusses the political and historical context of the letters. In these observations, Williams gives her arguments in favor of the legitimacy of the French Revolution and presents the king as unable to be a successful ruler. Nevertheless, she regrets the king’s execution. The prefect Dubois of the Parisian police ordered the confiscation of the first edition copies of Williams’s translation, since the content of the work was considered sympathetic toward the monarchy. In Britain, Williams’s native country, her translation was viewed in a completely different light. The press attacked the Correspondence for promoting the French Revolution and for damaging the reputation of Louis XVI. From a royalist point of view, French emigré Bertrand de Moleville published Refutation of the Libel on the Memory of the Late King of France (1804), in which he attacks Helen Maria Williams and her works.