Louis XVI

So where did it all begin? To understand, we have to go back to the French Revolution in 1789.

That spring, Francis King Louis XVI convened a meeting known as the Estates General, bringing together representatives from three groups, or estates – the clergy, the nobility, and the Third Estate, which represented the common people.

A few months later in July, this assembly became the Constituent Assembly.

Their task was to draft a new constitution for France.

As guests arrived for Alva's Ball in her brand new mansion on the corner of 5th Avenue and 52nd Street, noted photographer Jose Mora was on hand to pose each guest and capture their costumes for eternity.

Maura captured Alice alone, but also in another famous photograph, Alice with her husband, Cornelius Vanderbilt II, dressed as Louis XVI in white wig, heavily embroidered long coat, and holding a feathered tricorn hat.

Despite the actual photographic documentation of Alice and her famous dress, there have been countless myths that have surrounded Alice's dress even to the present day.

That it actually lit up and that she had a battery pack in her bodice to light up the torch that we see in the photograph.

The episode that follows my interview with Elizabeth Randolph, collections manager for costumes and textiles at the Museum of the City of New York, was conducted in the presence of the actual dress itself, as well as the accessories that Alice wore on that night of Alba's Balls.

As we began to chat, Liz provided me with an additional surprise.

Alice's husband, Cornelius Vanderbilt II's costume as Louis XVI also exists, and she had pulled his costume from storage for me as well.

Do not miss my photographs posted on Instagram, atarlthegildedgentleman, to see these extraordinary artifacts from the Gilded Age for yourself.

So the Place de la Concorde won.

The Place de la Concorde was once home to the guillotine and the death of hundreds, including Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.

Check out episode 2 and number 40 for more.

After the Revolution, the First Empire, and the Restoration, Paris's squares and streets went through more than a few name changes.

The demonstrations have caused many to cite the French Revolution of 1789, which began when Parisians stormed the Bastille, attacking the medieval prison to seize gunpowder and weapons.

the guillotine claimed the lives of King Louis XVI, Queen Marie Antoinette, and thousands of ordinary citizens.

Then came the Reign of Terror, during which 20,000 to 40,000 people were executed.

As Dr. Ryan Dennison notes, the French Revolution was, in many ways, an attempt to establish a godless version of American democracy.

Residents of the suburbs of Saint-Antoine and of the Temple enjoyed peculiar privileges in this respect.

Louis XVI enlarged still further the prerogatives of the Saint-Antoine suburb in the design of collecting an immense number of operatives there, or, as that unfortunate monarch phrased it, being desirous of showing a new mark of our favour to the workmen of the st antoine suburb and relieving them from burdens which are alike injurious to their interests and to the freedom of trade toward the period of the revolution the number of factories manufactures and blast furnaces had become so great at paris as to alarm the government industrial progress had aroused strange fears in the mind of officials a decree of council in seventeen eighty two declares that the king fearing lest the rapid increase of factories should lead to so large a consumption of firewood as to deprive the city of its proper supply prohibits the establishment of new works of this kind within fifteen leagues of the capital no one suspected the real danger to be apprehended from the agglomeration of workmen it was thus that paris became the mistress of france and thus that the army that was to master paris was mustered it is generally admitted nowadays i believe that administrative centralization and the omnipotence of paris have had much to do with the fall of the various governments we have had during the last forty years I shall have but little difficulty in proving that the ruin of the old monarchy was in a great measure due to the same causes, and that they exercised no small influence in bringing about that revolution which was the parent of all the others.

The Old Regime and the Revolution by Alexis de Tocqueville.

Translated by John Bonner.

It became more valuable as the taxes swelled.

When the taille was but 1.2 million livres under Charles VII, the privilege of not being bound to contribute was not worth much.

But it was considerable when the tax yielded 80 million under Louis XVI.

When the taille was the only tax from which the nobility were exempt, their privileges might pass unnoticed.

Exactly.

Years later, according to the sources, a young Austrian princess named Marie Antoinette travels to France to marry the future King Louis XVI.

And she brings her customs, her tastes, and her favorite foods with her to Versailles.

So she brings this crescent-shaped victory bread to the French court.