There were certain characteristic details connected with the execution
of Louis XVI. that are not recorded in history. They were recounted to
me by an eye-witness* and are here published for the first time.
* This eye witness was one Leboucher, who arrived in Paris
from Bourges in December, 1792, and was present at the
execution of Louis XVI. In 1840 he recounted to Victor Hugo
most of these details which, as can easily be imagined, had
impressed themselves deeply upon his mind.
The scaffold was not, as is generally believed, erected in the very
centre of the Place, on the spot where the obelisk now stands, but on a
spot which the decree of the Provisional Executive Council designates in
these precise terms: “between the pied d’estal and the Champs-Elysées.”
What was this pedestal? Present generations who have seen so many things
happen, so many statues crumble and so many pedestals overthrown do
not quite know what meaning to give to this very vague designation,
and would be embarrassed to tell for what monument the mysterious stone
which the Executive Council of the Revolution laconically calls the
“pied d’estal” served as a base. This stone had borne the statue of
Louis XV.
Let it be noted _en passant_ that this strange Place which had been
called successively the Place Louis XV., Place de la Revolution, Place
de la Concorde, Place Louis XVI., Place du Garde-Meuble and Place des
Champs-Elysées, and which could not retain any name, could not keep any
monument either. It has had the statue of Louis XV., which disappeared;
an expiatory fountain which was to have laved the bloody centre of the
Place was projected, but not even the first stone was laid; a rough
model of a monument to the Charter was made: we have never seen anything
but the socle of this monument. Just when a bronze figure representing
the Charter of 1814 was about to be erected, the Revolution of July
arrived with the Charter of 1830. The pedestal of Louis XVIII. vanished,
as fell the pedestal of Louis XV. Now on this same spot we have placed
the obelisk of Sesostris. It required thirty centuries for the great
Desert to engulf half of it; how many years will the Place de la
Revolution require to swallow it up altogether?
In the Year II of the Republic, what the Executive Council called the
“pied d’estal” was nought but a shapeless and hideous block. It was a
sort of sinister symbol of the royalty itself. Its ornaments of marble
and bronze had been wrenched off, the bare stone was everywhere split
and cracked. On the four sides were large square gaps showing the places
where the destroyed bas reliefs had been. Scarcely could a remnant of
the entablature still be distinguished at the summit of the pedestal,
and beneath the cornice a string of ovolos, defaced and worn, was
surmounted by what architects call a “chaplet of paternosters.” On the
table of the pedestal one could perceive a heap of debris of all kinds,
in which tufts of grass were growing here and there. This pile of
nameless things had replaced the royal statue.
The scaffold was raised a few steps distant from this ruin, a little
in rear of it. It was covered with long planks, laid transversely, that
masked the framework. A ladder without banisters or balustrade was
at the back, and what they venture to call the head of this horrible
construction was turned towards the Garde-Meuble. A basket of
cylindrical shape, covered with leather, was placed at the spot where
the head of the King was to fall, to receive it; and at one of the
angles of the entablature, to the right of the ladder, could be
discerned a long wicker basket prepared for the body, and on which one
of the executioners, while waiting for the King, had laid his hat.
Imagine, now, in the middle of the Place, these two lugubrious things, a
few paces from each other: the pedestal of Louis XV. and the scaffold of
Louis XVI.; that is to say, the ruins of royalty dead and the martyrdom
of royalty living; around these two things four formidable lines of
armed men, preserving a great empty square in the midst of an immense
crowd; to the left of the scaffold, the Champs-Elysees, to the right
the Tuileries, which, neglected and left at the mercy of the public had
become an unsightly waste of dirt heaps and trenches; and over these
melancholy edifices, over these black, leafless trees, over this gloomy
multitude, the bleak, sombre sky of a winter morning, and one will have
an idea of the aspect which the Place de la Revolution presented at the
moment when Louis XVI., in the carriage of the Mayor of Paris, dressed
in white, the Book of Psalms clasped in his hands, arrived there to die
at a few minutes after ten o’clock on January 21, 1793.
Strange excess of abasement and misery: the son of so many kings, bound
and sacred like the kings of Egypt, was to be consumed between two
layers of quicklime, and to this French royalty, which at Versailles had
had a throne of gold and at St. Denis sixty sarcophagi of granite, there
remained but a platform of pine and a wicker coffin.
Here are some unknown details. The executioners numbered four; two only
performed the execution; the third stayed at the foot of the ladder, and
the fourth was on the waggon which was to convey the King’s body to the
Madeleine Cemetery and which was waiting a few feet from the scaffold.
The executioners wore breeches, coats in the French style as the
Revolution had modified it, and three-cornered hats with enormous
tri-colour cockades.
They executed the King with their hats on, and it was without taking his
hat off that Samson, seizing by the hair the severed head of Louis XVI.,
showed it to the people, and for a few moments let the blood from it
trickle upon the scaffold.
At the same time his valet or assistant undid what were called “les
sangles” (straps); and, while the crowd gazed alternately upon the
King’s body, dressed entirely in white, as I have said, and still
attached, with the hands bound behind the back, to the swing board,
and upon that head whose kind and gentle profile stood out against the
misty, sombre trees of the Tuileries, two priests, commissaries of
the Commune, instructed to be present, as Municipal officials, at
the execution of the King, sat in the Mayor’s carriage, laughing and
conversing in loud tones. One of them, Jacques Roux, derisively drew the
other’s attention to Capet’s fat calves and abdomen.
The armed men who surrounded the scaffold had only swords and pikes;
there were very few muskets. Most of them wore large round hats or red
caps. A few platoons of mounted dragoons in uniform were mingled with
these troops at intervals. A whole squadron of dragoons was ranged in
battle array beneath the terraces of the Tuileries. What was called the
Battalion of Marseilles formed one of the sides of the square.
The guillotine--it is always with repugnance that one writes this
hideous word--would appear to the craftsmen of to-day to be very badly
constructed. The knife was simply suspended to a pulley fixed in the
centre of the upper beam. This pulley and a rope the thickness of a
man’s thumb constituted the whole apparatus. The knife, which was not
very heavily weighted, was of small dimensions and had a curved edge,
which gave it the form of a reversed Phrygian cap. No hood was placed
to shelter the King’s head and at the same time to hide and circumscribe
its fall. All that crowd could see the head of Louis XVI. drop, and it
was thanks to chance, thanks perhaps to the smallness of the knife which
diminished the violence of the shock, that it did not bound beyond
the basket to the pavement. Terrible incident, which often occurred
at executions during the Terror. Nowadays assassins and poisoners are
decapitated more decently. Many improvements in the guillotine have been
made.
At the spot where the King’s head fell, a long rivulet of blood streamed
down the planks of the scaffold to the pavement. When the execution was
over, Samson threw to the people the King’s coat, which was of white
molleton, and in an instant it disappeared, torn by a thousand hands.
At the moment when the head of Louis XVI. fell, the Abbé Edgeworth was
still near the King. The blood spirted upon him. He hastily donned a
brown overcoat, descended from the scaffold and was lost in the crowd.
The first row of spectators opened before him with a sort of wonder
mingled with respect; but after he had gone a few steps, the attention
of everybody was still so concentrated upon the centre of the Place
where the event had just been accomplished, that nobody took any further
notice of Abbé Edgeworth.
The poor priest, enveloped in his thick coat which concealed the blood
with which he was covered, fled in bewilderment, walking as one in a
dream and scarcely knowing where he was going. However, with that sort
of instinct which preserves somnambulists he crossed the river, took the
Rue du Bac, then the Rue du Regard and thus managed to reach the house
of Mme. de Lézardière, near the Barrière du Maine.
Arrived there he divested himself of his soiled clothing and remained
for several hours, in a state of collapse, without being able to collect
a thought or utter a word.
Some Royalists who rejoined him, and who had witnessed the execution,
surrounded the Abbé Edgeworth and reminded him of the adieu he had
addressed to the King: “Son of St. Louis, ascend to heaven!” These
words, however, memorable though they were, had left no trace on the
mind of him who had uttered them. “We heard them,” said the witnesses of
the catastrophe, still moved and thrilled. “It is possible,” he replied,
“but I do not remember having said such a thing.”
Abbé Edgeworth lived a long life without ever being able to remember
whether he really did pronounce these words.
Mme. de Lézardière, who had been seriously ill for more than a month,
was unable to support the shock of the death of Louis XVI. She died on
the very night of January 21.