THE KING LED TO TRIAL.
Assassination of Royalists at Versailles.--Jacobin Ascendency.--The
National Convention.--Two Parties, the Girondists and the
Jacobins.--Abolition of Royalty.--Madame Roland.--Battle of
Jemappes.--Mode of life in the Temple.--Insults to the Royal
Family.--New Acts of Rigor.--Trial of the King.--Separation of the
Royal Family.--The Indictment.--The King begs for Bread.
The massacre of the Royalists in Paris was not followed by any general
violence throughout the kingdom, for it was in Paris alone that the
Patriots were in imminent danger. In Orleans, however, there were
a number of Royalists imprisoned under the accusation of treason.
These prisoners were brought to Versailles on the night of the 9th of
September to be tried. A band of assassins from Paris rushed upon the
carriages, dispersed the escort, and most brutally murdered forty-seven
out of fifty-three.[375] They then went to the prison, where twelve
were taken out, and, after a summary trial, assassinated.
In the mean time elections were going on for the National Convention.
The Jacobin Clubs, now generally dominant throughout France, almost
every where controlled the elections. Some sober Patriots hoped that
the Convention would be disposed and able to check the swelling
flood of anarchy. But others, when they saw that the most violent
Revolutionists were chosen as deputies, and that they would be able to
overawe the more moderate Patriots by the terrors of the mob, began to
despair of their country. Paris sent to the Convention Robespierre,
Danton, Marat, Chabot, and others who have attained terrible notoriety
through scenes of consternation and blood. The Girondists in the
Convention, Vergniaud, Condorcet, Barbaroux, Gensonné, though much
in the minority, were heroic men, illustrious in intelligence and
virtue. There was no longer a Royalist party, not even a Constitutional
Royalist party, which dared to avow itself in France. The court and the
Allies had driven France to the absolute necessity of a Republic.
On the 20th of September the Legislative Assembly was dissolved, and at
the same hour and in the same hall the National Convention commenced
its session. The spirit of the Girondists may be seen in their first
motion.
"Citizen representatives," said M. Manuel, "in this place every thing
ought to be stamped with a character of such dignity and grandeur as to
fill the world with awe. I propose that the President of the Assembly
be lodged in the Tuileries, that in public he shall be preceded by
guards, that the members shall rise when he opens the Assembly. Cineas,
the embassador of Pyrrhus, on being introduced to the Roman senate,
said that they appeared like an assembly of kings."
This proposition was contemptuously voted down by the Jacobins. Collot
d'Herbois, one of the leading Jacobins, then proposed the immediate
abolition of royalty. "The word king," said he, "is still a talisman,
whose magic power may create many disorders. The abolition of royalty
therefore is necessary. Kings are in the moral world that which
monsters are in the natural. Courts are always the centre of corruption
and the work-houses of crime."
No one ventured to oppose this, and the president declared that by a
unanimous vote _royalty was abolished_. It was then voted the 22d of
September, 1792, should be considered the first day of the first year
of the Republic, and that all documents should follow the date of this
era. It was on the eve of this day that intelligence arrived of the
cannonade of Valmy, in which the Patriot armies had beaten back the
foe. For one short night Paris was radiant with joy.
The most illustrious of the Girondists met that evening in the saloon
of Madame Roland, and celebrated, with almost religious enthusiasm,
the advent of the Republic. Madame Roland, in the accomplishment of
the most intense desire of her heart, appeared radiant with almost
supernatural brilliance and beauty. It was observed that M. Roland
gazed upon her with a peculiar expression of fondness. The noble and
gifted Vergniaud conversed but little, and pensive thoughts seemed to
chasten his joy.
At the close of the entertainment he filled his glass, and proposed to
drink to the eternity of the Republic.
"Permit me," said Madame Roland, "after the manner of the ancients, to
scatter some rose-leaves from my bouquet in your glass."
Vergniaud held out his glass, and some leaves were scattered on the
wine. He then said, in words strongly prophetic of their fate, "We
should quaff, not roses, but cypress-leaves, in our wine to-night.
In drinking to a republic, stained at its birth with the blood of
September, who knows that we do not drink to our own death? No matter;
were this wine my blood, I would drain it to liberty and equality."
To this all responded with the words _Vive la République_. But a few
months elapsed ere almost every individual then present perished on the
scaffold.
[Illustration: BATTLE OF JEMAPPES.]
In the mean time Dumouriez, with thirty-five thousand men, was pursuing
a division of the retreating Allies, consisting of twenty-five thousand
Austrians, under General Clairfayt, through Belgium. On the 4th of
November he overtook them strongly intrenched upon the heights of
Jemappes. One day was consumed in bringing up his forces and arranging
his batteries for the assault. Sixty thousand men were now arrayed for
a deadly strife. One hundred pieces of cannon were in battery to hurl
into the dense ranks destruction and death. On the morning of the 6th
the storm of war commenced. All the day long it raged with pitiless
fury. In the evening ten thousand of the dying and the dead covered
the ground, and the Austrians were every where retreating in dismay.
This new victory caused great rejoicing in Paris, and inspired the
revolutionary party with new courage.
The day at length arrived for the trial of the king. It was the 11th
of December. For four months the royal family, with ever-alternating
hopes and fears, which had been gradually deepening into despair, had
now endured the rigors of captivity. The king, with that wonderful
equanimity which distinguished him through all these days of trial,
immediately upon taking possession of his gloomy abode introduced
system into the employment of his time.
His room was on the third story. He usually rose at six o'clock,
shaved himself, and carefully dressed his hair. He then entered a
small room or closet, which opened from his sleeping-room, and engaged
in devotional reading and prayer for an hour. He was not allowed to
close the door, for a municipal officer ever stationed in his room
was enjoined never to allow the king to leave his sight. He then read
till nine o'clock, during which time his faithful servant, Clery, put
the room in order, and spread the table for the breakfast of the royal
family. At nine o'clock the queen, the children, and Madame Elizabeth
came up from the rooms which they occupied below to breakfast.
The meal occupied an hour. The royal family then all descended to the
queen's room, where they passed the day. The king employed himself
in instructing his son, giving him lessons in geography, which was a
favorite study of the king; teaching him to draw and color maps, and
to recite choice passages from Corneille and Racine. The queen assumed
the education of her daughter, while her own hands and those of Madame
Elizabeth were busy in needle-work, knitting, and working tapestry.
At one o'clock, when the weather was fine, the royal family were
conducted by four municipal officers into the spacious but dilapidated
garden for exercise and the open air. The officials who guarded the
king were frequently changed. Sometimes they chanced to be men of
humane character, who, though devoted to the disinthrallment of France
from the terrible despotism of ages, still pitied the king as the
victim of circumstances, and treated him with kindness and respect. But
more generally these men were vulgar and rabid Jacobins, who exulted
in the opportunity of wreaking upon the king the meanest revenge. They
chalked upon the walls of the prison, "The guillotine is permanent and
ready for the tyrant Louis." "Madame Veto shall swing." "The little
wolves must be strangled." Under a gallows, to which a figure was
suspended, was inscribed the words, "Louis taking an air-bath." From
such ribald insults the monarch had no protection.
A burly brutal wretch, named Rocher, was one of the keepers of
the Tower. He went swaggering about with a bunch of enormous keys
clattering at his belt, seeming to glory in his power of annoying,
by petty insults, a _king_ and a _queen_. When the royal family were
going out into the garden he would go before them to unlock the doors.
Making a great demonstration in rattling his keys, and affecting much
difficulty in finding the right one, all the party would be kept
waiting while he made all possible delay and noise in drawing the
bolts and swinging open the ponderous doors. At the side of the last
door he not unfrequently stationed himself with his pipe in his mouth,
and puffed tobacco-smoke into the faces of the king, the queen, and
the children. Some of the guards stationed around would burst into
insulting laughter in view of these indignities, which the king endured
with meekness which seems supernatural.
[Illustration: LOUIS XVI. AND THE ROYAL FAMILY IN THE TEMPLE.]
The recital of such conduct makes the blood boil in one's veins, and
leads one almost to detest the very name of liberty. But then we must
not forget that it was despotism which formed these hideous characters;
that, age after age and century after century, kings and nobles had
been trampling upon the people, crushing their rights, lacerating their
heart-strings, dooming fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, by
millions upon millions, to beggary, degradation, and woe. It was time
for the people to rise at every hazard and break these chains. And
while humanity must weep over the woes of Louis XVI. and his unhappy
household, humanity can not forget that there are other families and
other hearts who claim her sympathies, and that this very Louis XVI.
was at this very time doing every thing in his power, by the aid of the
armies of foreign despots, to bring the millions of France again under
the sway of the most merciless despotism. And it can not be questioned
that, had kings and nobles regained their power, they would have
wreaked a more terrible vengeance upon the re-enslaved people than the
people wreaked upon them.
For an hour the royal family continued walking in the garden. From the
roofs of the adjacent houses and the higher windows they could be seen.
Every day at noon these roofs and windows were crowded by those anxious
to obtain a view of the melancholy group of captives. Frequently they
were cheered by gestures of affection from unknown friends. Tender
words were occasionally unrolled in capital letters, or a flower to
which a pebble was attached would fall at their feet. These tokens of
love, slight as they were, came as a balm to their lacerated hearts.
So highly did they prize them, that regardless of rain, cold, and
snow, and the intolerable insults of their guards, they looked forward
daily with eagerness to their garden walk. They recognized particular
localities as belonging to their friends, saying, "such a house is
devoted to us; such a story is for us; such a room is loyal; such a
window friendly."
At two o'clock the royal family returned to the king's room, where
dinner was served. After dinner the king took a nap, while the queen,
Madame Elizabeth, and the young princess employed themselves with their
needles, and the dauphin played some game with Clery, whose name should
be transmitted with honor to posterity as faithful in misfortune. When
the king awoke from his nap he usually read aloud to his family for an
hour or two until supper-time. Soon after supper, the queen, with her
children and Madame Elizabeth, retired to their rooms for the night.
With hearts bound together by these terrible griefs, they never parted
but with a tender and sorrowful adieu.[376]
Such was the monotonous life of the royal family during the four months
they occupied the Temple before the trial of the king. But almost every
day of their captivity some new act of rigor was enforced upon them. As
the armies of the Allies drew nearer, and city after city was falling
before their bombardments, and Paris was in a phrensy of terror,
apprehensions of a conspiracy of the king with the Royalists, and of
their rising and aiding the invaders with an outburst of civil war, led
to the adoption of precautions most irksome to the captives.
Municipal officers never allowed any member of the royal family to be
out of their sight, except when they retired to bed at night. They
then locked the doors, and placed a bed against the entrance to each
apartment, and there an officer slept, so as to prevent all possibility
of egress. Every day Santerre, commander of the National Guard, made
a visit of inspection to all the rooms with his staff. At first the
royal family had been allowed pen, ink, and paper, but this privilege
was soon withdrawn, and at last the cruel and useless measure was
adopted of taking from them all sharp instruments, such as knives,
scissors, and even needles, thus depriving the ladies not only of a
great solace, but of the power of repairing their decaying apparel.
It was not the intention of the Legislative Assembly that the royal
family should be exposed to needless suffering. Four hundred dollars
were placed in their hands at the commencement of their captivity
for their petty expenses, and the Governor of the Temple was ordered
to purchase for them whatever they might need, five hundred thousand
francs ($100,000) having been appropriated by the Convention for their
expenses.[377]
They were not allowed to see the daily journals, which would have
informed them of the triumphant march of the Allies, but occasionally
papers were sent to them which recorded the victories of the Republic.
Clery, however, devised a very shrewd expedient to give them some
information of the events which were transpiring. He hired a newsman
to pass daily by the windows of the Temple, under the pretense of
selling newspapers, and to cry out the principal details contained in
them. Clery, while apparently busy about the room, was always sure to
be near the window at the appointed hour, listening attentively. At
night, stooping over the king's bed to adjust the curtains, he hastily
whispered the news he had thus gathered. All this required the greatest
caution, for a municipal officer was always in the room, watching every
movement.
Early in the morning of the 11th of December all Paris was in commotion
to witness the trial of the king, which was to commence on that day.
The beating of drums in the street, the mustering of military squadrons
at their appointed places of rendezvous, the clatter of hoofs, and the
rumbling of artillery over the pavements penetrated even the gloomy
apartments of the Temple, and fell appallingly upon the ears of the
victims there.
The royal family were at breakfast as they heard these ominous sounds,
and they earnestly inquired the cause. After some hesitation the king
was informed that the Mayor of Paris would soon come to conduct him
to his trial, and that the troops gathering around the Temple were to
form his escort. He was also required immediately to take leave of
his family, and told that he could not be permitted to see them again
until after his trial. Expressions of heart-rending anguish and floods
of tears accompanied this cruel separation. The king pleaded earnestly
and with gushing eyes that, at least, he might enjoy the society of his
little son, saying,
"What, gentlemen! deprive me of even the presence of my son--a child of
seven years!"
But the commissioners were inexorable. "The Commune thinks," said they,
"that, since you are to be _au secret_ during your trial, your son
must necessarily be confined either with you or his mother; and it has
imposed the privation upon that parent who, from his sex and courage,
was best able to support it."
The queen, with the children and Madame Elizabeth, were conducted to
the rooms below. The king, overwhelmed with anguish, threw himself into
a chair, buried his face in his hands, and, without uttering a word,
remained immovable as a statue for two hours. At noon M. Chambon,[378]
the Mayor of Paris, with Santerre, commander of the National Guard,
and a group of officers, all wearing the tricolored scarf, entered the
king's chamber.
Chambon, with solemnity and with a faltering voice, informed the king
of the painful object of their mission, and summoned him, in the name
of the Convention, as _Louis Capet_, to appear before their bar.
"Gentlemen," replied the king, "Capet is not my name. It is the name
of one of my ancestors. I could have wished that my son, at least, had
been permitted to remain with me during the two hours I have awaited
you. However, this treatment is but a part of the system adopted toward
me throughout my captivity. I follow you, not in obedience to the
orders of the Convention, but because my enemies are more powerful than
I."
Immediately rising, he put on his great-coat, took his hat, and,
following the mayor, and followed by the staff of officers, descended
the stairs of the tower.
Before the massive portal of the Temple the carriage of the mayor was
drawn up, surrounded by a guard of six hundred picked men. A numerous
detachment of cavalry, as an advance-guard, dragging six pieces of
cannon, led the melancholy procession which was conducting a monarch
to the judgment-bar and to death. A similar body of cavalry followed
in the rear with three pieces of cannon. These precautions were deemed
necessary to guard against any possible rescue by the Royalists.
Every soldier was supplied with sixteen rounds of cartridges, and the
battalions marched in such order that they could instantly form in line
of battle. The National Guard lined the streets through which they
passed, one hundred thousand men being under arms in Paris that day.
The cavalcade passed slowly along the Boulevards. The house-tops,
the windows, the side-walks, were thronged with countless thousands.
The king, deprived of his razor, had been unable to shave, and his
face was covered with shaggy hair; his natural corpulence, wasted
away by imprisonment, caused his garments to hang loose and flabby
about him; his features were wan through anxiety and suffering. Thus,
unfortunately, every thing in his personal appearance combined
to present an aspect exciting disgust and repulsion rather than
sympathy. The procession passed down the Place Vendôme and thence to
the Monastery of the Feuillants. The king alighted. Santerre took his
arm and led him to the bar of the Convention. There was a moment of
profound silence. All were awe-stricken by the solemnity of the scene.
The president, Barrere,[379] broke the silence, saying,
"Citizens! Louis Capet is before you. The eyes of Europe are upon you.
Posterity will judge you with inflexible severity. Preserve, then, the
dignity and the dispassionate coolness befitting judges. You are about
to give a great lesson to kings, a great and useful example to nations.
Recollect the awful silence which accompanied Louis from Varennes--a
silence that was the precursor of the judgment of kings by the people."
Then, turning to the king, Barrere said, "Louis, the French nation
accuses you. Be seated, and listen to the Act of Accusation." It was
then two o'clock in the afternoon.
The formidable indictment was read. The king was held personally
responsible for all the acts of hostility to popular liberty
which had occurred under his reign. A minute, truthful, impartial
recapitulation of those acts, which we have recorded in the previous
pages, constituted the accusation. The king listened attentively to the
reading, and without any apparent emotion. The accusation consisted
of fifty-seven distinct charges. As they were slowly read over, one
by one, the president paused after each and said to the king, "What
have you to answer?" But two courses consistent with kingly dignity
were open for the accused. The one was to refuse any reply and to
take shelter in the inviolability with which the Constitution had
invested him. The other was boldly to avow that he had adopted the
measures of which he was accused, believing it to be essential to the
welfare of France that the headlong progress of the Revolution should
be checked. Neither would have saved his life, but either would have
rescued his memory from much reproach. But the king, cruelly deprived
of all counsel with his friends, dragged unexpectedly to his trial, and
overwhelmed with such a catalogue of accusations, unfortunately adopted
the worst possible course. The blame of some of the acts he threw
upon his ministers; some facts he denied; and in other cases he not
only prevaricated but stooped to palpable falsehood. When we reflect
upon the weak nature of the king and the confusion of mind incident
to an hour of such terrible trial, we must judge the unhappy monarch
leniently. But when the king denied even the existence of the iron
chest which the Convention had already found, and had obtained proof
to demonstration that he himself had closed up, and when he denied
complicity with the Allies, proofs of which, in his own handwriting,
were found in the iron safe, it is not strange that the effect should
have been exceedingly unfavorable to his defense.[380]
[Illustration: DISCOVERY OF THE IRON SAFE.]
This interrogation was continued for three hours, at the close of which
the king, who had eaten nothing since his interrupted breakfast, was
so exhausted that he could hardly stand. Santerre then conducted him
into an adjoining committee-room. Before withdrawing, however, the king
demanded a copy of the accusation, and counsel to assist him in his
defense. In the committee-room the king saw a man eating from a small
loaf of bread. Faint with hunger, the monarch approached the man, and,
in a whisper, implored a morsel for himself.
"Ask aloud," said the man, retreating, "for what you want." He feared
that he should be suspected of some secret conspiracy with the king.
"I am hungry," said Louis XVI., "and ask for a piece of your bread."
"Divide it with me," said the man. "It is a Spartan breakfast. If I had
a root I would give you half."
The king entered the carriage eating his crust. The same cavalcade as
in the morning preceded and accompanied him. The same crowds thronged
the streets and every point of observation. A few brutal wretches,
insulting helplessness, shouted _Vive la Révolution!_ and now and then
a stanza of the Marseillaise Hymn fell painfully upon his ear. Chambon,
the mayor, and Chaumette, the public prosecutor, were in the carriage
with the king. Louis, having eaten as much of the half loaf of bread
as he needed, had still a fragment in his hand.
"What shall I do with it?" inquired the simple-hearted monarch.
Chaumette relieved him of his embarrassment by tossing it out of the
window.
"Ah," said the king, "it is a pity to throw bread away when it is so
dear."
"True," replied Chaumette; "my grandmother used to say to me, 'Little
boy, never waste a crumb of bread; you can not make one.'"[381]
"Monsieur Chaumette," Louis rejoined, "your grandmother appears to me
to have been a woman of great good sense."
It was half-past six o'clock, and the gloom of night enveloped the
Temple, when Louis was again conducted up the stairs of the tower to
his dismal cell. He piteously implored permission again to see his
family. But Chambon dared not grant his request in disobedience to the
commands of the Commune.
The most frivolous things often develop character. It is on record
that the toils and griefs of the day had not impaired the appetite
of the king, and that he ate for supper that night "six cutlets, a
considerable portion of a fowl, two eggs, and drank two glasses of
white wine and one of Alicante wine, and forthwith went to bed."[382]
During these dreadful hours the queen, with Madame Elizabeth and the
children, were in a state of agonizing suspense, not even knowing but
that the king was being led to his execution. Clery, however, late in
the evening, went to their room and informed them of all the details he
had been able to gather respecting the king's examination.
"Has any mention been made of the queen?" asked Madame Elizabeth. "Her
name was not mentioned," Clery replied, "in the act of accusation."
"Ah," rejoined the princess, "perhaps they demand my brother's life as
necessary for their safety; but the queen--these poor children--what
obstacle can their lives present to their ambition?"
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 374: Napoleon at St. Helena, 394.]
[Footnote 375: Peltier.]
[Footnote 376: The queen undressed the dauphin, when he repeated the
following prayer, composed by the queen and remembered and recorded by
her daughter: "Almighty God, who created and redeemed me, I love you!
Preserve the days of my father and my family. Protect us against our
enemies. Give my mother, my aunt, my sister, the strength they need to
support their troubles."--_Lamartine, History of the Girondists_, vol.
ii., p. 287.]
[Footnote 377: "We must not exaggerate the faults of human nature, and
suppose that, adding an execrable meanness to the fury of fanaticism,
the keepers of the imprisoned family imposed on it unworthy privations,
with the intention of rendering the remembrance of its past greatness
the more painful. Distrust was the sole cause of certain refusals.
Thus, while the dread of plots and secret communications prevented
them from admitting more than one attendant into the interior of the
prison, a numerous establishment was employed in preparing their food.
Thirteen persons were engaged in the duties of the kitchen, situated
at some distance from the tower. The report of the expenses of the
Temple, where the greatest decency is observed, where the prisoners are
mentioned with respect, where their sobriety is commended, where Louis
XVI. is justified from the low reproach of being too much addicted
to wine--these reports, which are not liable to suspicion, make the
total expenses of the table amount in two months to 28,745 livres
($5749)."--_Thiers_, vol. ii., p. 26.]
[Footnote 378: "M. Chambon, the successor of Bailly and Pétion,
was a learned and humane physician, whom public esteem rather than
Revolutionary favor had raised to the dignity of the first magistrate
of Paris. Of _modéré_ principles, kind and warm-hearted, accustomed,
by his profession, to sympathize with the unfortunate, compelled to
execute orders repugnant to his feelings, the pity of the man was
visible beneath the inflexibility of the magistrate."--_Lamartine,
Hist. des Girondistes_, vol. ii., p. 321.]
[Footnote 379: "Barrere escaped during the different ebullitions of the
Revolution because he was a man, without principle or character, who
changed and adapted himself to every side. He had the reputation of
being a man of talent, but I did not find him such. I employed him to
write, but he displayed no ability. He used many flowers of rhetoric,
but no solid argument."--_Napoleon at St. Helena._]
[Footnote 380: Gamain, the locksmith, who for ten years had worked
for and with the king, and who had aided him in constructing this
iron safe, basely betrayed the secret. The papers were all seized and
intrusted by the Convention to a committee of twelve, who were to
examine and report upon them. This Judas received, as his reward from
the Convention, a pension of two hundred and forty dollars a year. See
France and its Revolutions, by Geo. Long, Esq., p. 241.]