LS in French, signed “Louis,” one page, 6 x 7.75, February 28, 1792. Letter to Mathieu Philibert Sicard, in part (translated): "You have…courageously defended and mightily helped to save the life of a citizen on the 27th of November last at Brest. I thought that such an act of civic duty and gallantry should not remain unrewarded. I give you a gold medal, upon which I have had engraved an inscription, recording the beautiful deed you performed. Be faithful always to the Nation, the Law and the King." In very good to fine condition, with scattered light toning, and some seal-related staining to the document.
Louis XVI presented this gold medal in his capacity as king under the constitutional monarchy, an office which he had assumed the previous year after his disastrous flight to Varennes. Arrested and confined to Tuileries Palace in Paris, the king was increasingly undermined in his credibility as a leader, and the turbulence of the French Revolution took hold. Tuileries Palace fell to the hands of an insurrectionary mob on August 10, 1792, the prelude to the Legislative Assembly's abolishment of the monarchy. King Louis XVI was tried for treason and condemned to death, executed on January 21, 1793.
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