_THE TRIAL OF LOUIS--Indecision of the Girondists, and its
Effects--The Royal Family insulted by the Agents of the
Community--The King deprived of his Son's society--The King
brought to trial before the Convention--His first
Examination--Carried back to Prison amidst Insult and
Abuse--Tumult in the Assembly--The King deprived of Intercourse
with his Family--Malesherbes appointed as Counsel to defend the
King--and De Seze--Louis again brought before the
Convention--Opening Speech of De Seze--King remanded to the
Temple--Stormy Debate--Eloquent Attack of Vergniaud on the
Jacobins--Sentence of DEATH pronounced against the King--General
Sympathy for his Fate--Dumouriez arrives in Paris--Vainly tries
to avert the King's Fate--LOUIS XVI. BEHEADED on 21st January,
1793--MARIE ANTOINETTE on the 16th October thereafter--The
Princess ELIZABETH in May 1794--The Dauphin perishes, by
cruelty, June 8th, 1795--The Princess Royal exchanged for La
Fayette, 19th December, 1795._
[Sidenote: INDECISION OF THE GIRONDISTS.]
We have already said, that the vigorous and masculine, as well as
virtuous exhortations of Madame Roland, were thrown away upon her
colleagues, whose fears were more than female. The Girondists could not
be made to perceive that, though their ferocious adversaries were
feared through France, yet they were also hated. The moral feeling of
all Frenchmen who had any left, detested the authors of a long train of
the most cold-blooded murders; the suspicions of all men of property
were attached to the conduct of a party, whose leaders rose from
indigence to affluence by fines, confiscations, sequestrations, besides
every other kind of plunder, direct and indirect. If the majority of the
Convention had adopted the determination of boldly resisting their
unprincipled tyrants, and preventing, at whatever hazard, the murder of
the King, the strength of the country would probably have supported a
constituted authority against the usurpations of the Community of Paris,
which had no better title to tyrannize over the Convention, and by so
doing to govern France at pleasure, than had the council of the meanest
town in the kingdom.
The Girondists ought to have been sensible, that, even by thwarting this
favourite measure, they could not increase the hatred which the Jacobins
already entertained against them, and should have known that further
delay to give open battle would only be regarded as a timid indecision,
which must have heated their enemies, in proportion as it cooled their
friends. The truckling, time-serving policy which they observed on this
occasion, deprived the Girondists of almost all chance of forming a
solid and substantial interest in the country. By a bold, open, and
manly defence of the King, they would have done honour to themselves as
public men, willing to discharge their duty at the risk of their lives.
They would have been sure of whatever number could be gathered, either
of Royalists, who were beginning to raise a head in Bretagne and La
Vendée, or of Constitutionalists, who feared the persecution of the
Jacobins. The materials were already kindled for those insurrections,
which afterwards broke out at Lyons, Marseilles, Toulon, and generally
through the south and west of France. They might have brought up five or
six thousand Federates from the departments, and the force would then
have been in their own hands. They might, by showing a bold and animated
front, have regained possession of the national guard, which was only
prevented by a Jacobin commander and his staff officers, as well as by
their timidity, from throwing off a yoke so bloody and odious as that
which they were groaning under. But to dare this, it was necessary that
they should have the encouragement of the Convention; and that body,
managed as it was by the Girondists, showed a timorous unwillingness to
support the measures of the Jacobins, which implied their dislike
indeed, but also evinced their fear.
[Sidenote: ROYAL FAMILY IN THE TEMPLE.]
Meantime the King, with the Queen, his sister, and their children, the
Dauphin and the Princess Royal, remained in the tower of the Temple,
more uncomfortably lodged, and much more harshly treated than state
prisoners before the Revolution had been in the execrable Bastile.[331]
The royal prisoners were under the especial charge of the Commune of
Paris, who, partly from their gross ignorance, partly from their desire
to display their furious Jacobinical zeal, did all in their power to
embitter their captivity.
Pétion, whose presence brought with it so many cruel recollections,
studiously insulted him by his visits to the prison. The municipal
officers, sent thither to ensure the custody of the King's person, and
to be spies upon his private conversation, were selected among the worst
and most malignant Jacobins. His efforts at equanimity, and even
civility, towards these brutal jailors, were answered with the most
gross insolence. One of them, a mason, in his working dress, had thrown
himself into an arm-chair, where, decorated with his municipal scarf, he
reposed at his ease. The King condescended to ask him, by way of
conversation, where he wrought. He answered gruffly, "at the church of
Saint Genevieve."--"I remember," said the King, "I laid the foundation
stone--a fine edifice; but I have heard the foundation is
insecure."--"It is more sure," answered the fellow, "than the thrones of
tyrants." The King smiled and was silent. He endured with the same
patience the insolent answer of another of these officials. The man not
having been relieved at the usual and regular hour, the King civilly
expressed his hopes that he would find no inconvenience from the delay.
"I am come here," answered the ruffian, "to watch your conduct, not for
you to trouble yourself with mine. No one," he added, fixing his hat
firm on his brow, "least of all you, have any business to concern
themselves with it." We have seen prisons, and are sure that even the
steeled jailor, accustomed as he is to scenes of distress, is not in the
habit, unprovoked and wantonly, of answering with reproach and insult
such ordinary expressions of civility, when offered by the worst
criminals. The hearts of these men, who, by chance as it were, became
dungeon-keepers, and whose first captive had been many years their King,
must have been as hard as the nether millstone.[332]
While such scenes occurred within the prison, those who kept watch
without, either as sentinels or as patrols of the Jacobins, (who
maintained stern vigilance in the environs of the prison,) were equally
ready to contribute their share of vexation and insult. Pictures and
placards, representing the royal family under the hands of the
executioner, were pasted up where the King and Queen might see them. The
most violent patriotic songs, turning upon the approaching death of
Monsieur and Madame Veto, were sung below their windows, and the most
frightful cries for their blood disturbed such rest as prisoners can
obtain. The head of the Princess of Lamballe was brought under their
window on the 3d September, and one of the municipal officers would have
enticed the royal family to the window that they might see this ghastly
spectacle, had not the other, "of milder mood," prevented them from
complying. When questioned concerning the names of these two
functionaries by some less savage persons, who wished to punish the
offending ruffian, Louis would only mention that of the more humane of
the two; so little was this unhappy prince addicted to seek revenge,
even for the most studied cruelties practised against him.[333]
The conduct of the Community increased in rigour, as the process against
Louis seemed to draw nearer. The most ordinary points of personal
accommodation were made subjects of debate ere they could be granted,
and that upon the King's being permitted to shave himself, lasted a long
while. Every article was taken from him, even to his toothpick and
penknife, and the Queen and princesses were deprived of their scissors
and housewives. This led to a touching remark of Louis. He saw his
sister, while at work, obliged to bite asunder a thread which she had no
means of cutting, and the words escaped him, "Ah! you wanted nothing in
your pretty house at Montreuil."--"Dearest brother," answered the
princess, whose character was that of sanctity, purity of thought, and
benevolence, "can I complain of any thing, since Heaven has preserved me
to share and to comfort, in some degree, your hours of captivity?" It
was, indeed, in the society of his family that the character of Louis
shone to the greatest advantage; and if, when on the throne, he did not
always possess the energies demanded of his high situation, in the
dungeon of the Temple misfortune threw around him the glories of a
martyr. His morning hours were spent in instructing or amusing the young
dauphin, a task for which the King's extensive information well
qualified him. The captives enjoyed, as they best might, a short
interval, when they were permitted to walk in the gardens of the Temple,
sure to be insulted (like Charles I. in the same situation) by the
sentinels, who puffed volumes of tobacco-smoke in their faces as they
passed them, while others annoyed the ears of the ladies with licentious
songs, or the most cruel denunciations.[334]
All this Louis and his family endured with such sainted patience, that
several who obtained access to his person were moved by the spectacle of
royalty reduced to a situation so melancholy, yet sustained with such
gentleness and fortitude. Some of the municipal officers themselves
became melted, and changed their ideas of the King, when they beheld him
in so new and singular a light.
Stories of the insults which he daily received, and of the meekness with
which he sustained them, began to circulate among the citizens of the
higher classes; and, joined to their fear of falling completely under
the authority of the Sans-Culottes, led many of the Republicans to cast
back their thoughts to the constitution of 1791, with all its faults,
and with its monarchical executive government.
The more wise and sensible of the Girondists began to suspect that they
had been too hasty in erecting their favourite republic, on ground
incapable of affording a sound and secure foundation for such an
edifice. Buzot gives testimony to this, dated later, no doubt, than the
period we are treating of; but the grounds of the reasoning existed as
much at the King's trial as after the expulsion of the Girondists. The
passage is remarkable. "My friends," says this distinguished Girondist,
"preserved a long time the hopes of establishing a republic in France,
even when all seemed to demonstrate that the enlightened classes,
whether from prejudice or from just reasoning, felt indisposed to that
form of government. That hope did not forsake my friends when the most
wicked and the vilest of men obtained possession of the minds of the
inferior classes, and corrupted them by the opportunities they offered
of license and pillage. My friends reckoned on the lightness and
aptitude to change proper to the French character, and which they
considered to be peculiarly suitable to a republican nation. I have
always considered that conclusion as entirely false, and have repeatedly
in my heart despaired of my darling wish to establish a republic in my
country." In another place he says, "It must not be dissembled that the
majority of Frenchmen earnestly desired royalty, and the constitution of
1791. In Paris, the wish was general, and was expressed most freely,
though only in confidential society, and among private friends. There
were only a few noble and elevated minds who felt themselves worthy to
be Republicans, and whom the example of the Americans had encouraged to
essay the project of a similar government in France, the country of
frivolity and mutability. The rest of the nation, with the exception of
the ignorant wretches, without either sense or substance, who vomited
abuse against royalty, as at another time they would have done against a
commonwealth, and all without knowing why,--the rest of the nation were
all attached to the constitution of 1791, and looked on the pure
Republicans as a very well-meaning kind of madmen."[335]
In these lines, written by one of the most sincere of their number, we
read the condemnation of the Girondists, who, to adventure the
precarious experiment of a republic, in which they themselves saw so
many difficulties, were contented to lend their arms and countenance to
the destruction of that very government, which they knew to be desired
by all the enlightened classes of France except themselves, and which
demolition only made room for the dreadful triumvirate,--Danton,
Robespierre, and Marat.
[Sidenote: LOUIS SEPARATED FROM HIS SON.]
But we also see, from this and other passages, that there existed
feelings, both in Paris and in the departments, which, if the Convention
had made a manly appeal to them, might have saved the King's life, and
prevented the Reign of Terror. There began to arise more obvious signs
of disaffection to the rulers, and of interest in the King's fate. These
were increased when he was brought before the Convention for
examination--an occasion upon which Louis was treated with the same
marked appearance of premeditated insult, which had been offered to him
when in his dungeon. He had as yet been allowed to enjoy the society of
his son, though his intercourse with the other members of the family had
been much abridged. He was passionately attached to this unhappy son,
who answered his affection, and showed early token of talents which were
doomed never to blossom. It was the cruel resolution of his jailors to
take the boy from his father on the very morning [December 11] when
Louis was to undergo an interrogatory before the Convention. In other
words, to give the deepest blow to his feelings, at the very moment when
it was necessary he should combine his whole mental powers for defending
his life against his subtle and powerful enemies.
This cruel measure produced in some respect the effect desired. The King
testified more deep affliction than he had yet manifested. The child was
playing at the game called Siam with his father, and by no effort could
the dauphin get beyond the number _sixteen_. "That is a very unlucky
number," said the child. This petty omen seemed soon accomplished by the
commissioners of the Assembly, who, without deigning further explanation
than that Louis must prepare to receive the Mayor of Paris, tore the
child from his father, and left him to his sorrow. In about two hours,
during which the trampling of many horses was heard, and a formidable
body of troops with artillery were drawn up around the prison, the mayor
appeared, a man called Chambon, weak and illiterate, the willing tool of
the ferocious Commune in which he presided. He read to the King the
decree of the Convention, that Louis Capet should be brought to their
bar. "Capet," answered Louis, "is not my name--it was that of one of my
ancestors. I could have wished, sir, that I had not been deprived of the
society of my son during the two hours I have expected you, but it is
only of a piece with the usage I have experienced for four months. I
will attend you to the Convention, not as acknowledging their right to
summon me, but because I yield to the superior power of my
enemies."[336]
The crowd pressed much on the King during the passage from the Temple to
the Tuileries, where the Convention had now established their sittings,
as men who had slain and taken possession. Loud cries were heard,
demanding the life of the tyrant; yet Louis preserved the most perfect
composure, even when he found himself standing as a criminal before an
assembly of his native subjects, born most of them in a rank which
excluded them from judicial offices, till he himself had granted the
privilege.[337]
"Louis," said the president--the versatile, timorous, but subtle
Barrère, "be seated."[338] The King sat down accordingly, and listened
without apparent emotion to a long act of accusation, in which every
accident that had arisen out of the Revolution was gravely charged as a
point of indictment against the King. He replied by short laconic
answers, which evinced great presence of mind and composure, and alleged
the decrees of the National Assembly as authority for the affair of
Nancy, and the firing on the people in the Champ-de-Mars, both of which
were urged against him as aggressions on the people. One or two replies
we cannot omit inserting.
"You are accused," said the president, "of having authorised money to be
distributed to poor unknowns in the suburb of Saint Antoine. What have
you to reply?"--"That I know no greater pleasure," answered Louis, "than
in giving assistance to the needy."--"You held a review of the Swiss at
five o'clock in the morning of the 10th of August."--"I did," replied
the King, "review the troops that were about my person. It was in
presence of the constituted authorities, the department, and the Mayor
of Paris. I had sent in vain to request from the Convention a deputation
of its members, and I came with my family to place myself in their
hands."--"Why did you double the strength of the Swiss Guards at that
time!" demanded the president.--"It was done with the knowledge of all
the constituted authorities," said the King, in a tone of perfect
composure; "I was myself a constituted authority, it was my duty to
defend my office."--"You have caused," said the president, "the blood of
Frenchmen to be shed. What have you to reply?"--"It was not _I_ who
caused it," answered Louis, speaking with more emphasis than he had
before used.
The King was carried back to his prison, amid threats and abuse from
the same banditti whose ranks he had before traversed.
In replying to the articles alleged against him, Louis had followed a
different course from Charles, who refused to plead before the tribunal
at which he was arraigned. The latter acted with the high spirit of a
prince, unwilling to derogate from the honour of the crown he had worn;
the former, as a man of honour and probity, was desirous of defending
his character wherever it should be attacked, without stopping to
question the authority of the court which was met to try him.
A great tumult followed in the Assembly the moment the King had
withdrawn. The Jacobins became sensible that the scene which had just
passed had deeply affected many of the neutral party, and was not
unlikely to influence their final votes. They demanded an instant decree
of condemnation, and that in the name of the oppressed people. "You who
have heard the tyrant," said Billaud-Varennes, "ought in justice to hear
the people whom he has oppressed." The Convention knew well what was
meant by the appearance of the people at the bar, and while they
trembled at this threat, Duhem[339] exclaimed, "I move that Louis be
hung this very night." Some received this with a triumphant laugh; the
majority, however, retained too much sense of shame to permit themselves
to be hurried farther that evening. They indulged the King with the
selection of counsel to defend him.[340]
The monarch, on returning to his prison, had found he was doomed to
solitary confinement. All intercourse with his family was denied him. He
wept, but neither wife, sister, nor child, was permitted to share his
tears. It was for the fate of his son that he showed the deepest
interest. Yet, anxious as his apprehensions were, they could not reach
the extremities to which the child was reduced. The heart of man could
not have imagined the cruelty of his lot.
[Sidenote: LOUIS CHOOSES HIS COUNSEL.]
Louis chose for his counsel two lawyers of celebrity, carefully
selecting such as he thought would incur least risk of danger by the
task imposed. One of these, Tronchet,[341] was too sensible to the
honour of his profession to hesitate a moment in accepting the perilous
office; but the other, Target, refused to undertake it. The phrase used
by this unworthy jurisconsult, in his letter to the President of the
Convention, seemed to involve the King's condemnation. "A free
Republican," he said, "ought not to undertake functions of which he
feels himself incapable." Timid as the Convention was, this excuse was
heard with disapprobation. It was declaring, that the defence of the
King was untenable by any friend of the present system.[342]
Several persons offered their services[343] with voluntary devotion, but
the preference was claimed by Lamoignon-Malesherbes,[344] who, twice
called by Louis to be a member of his council, when the office was the
object of general ambition, alleged his right to a similar function,
when others might reckon it dangerous.[345] This burst of honourable
self-devotion awakened a sentiment of honour in the Convention, which,
could it have lasted, might have even yet prevented a great national
crime.
Paris began to show symptoms of returning interest in the person of
Louis. The oft-repeated calumnies against him seemed to lose their
influence on all but the ignorant multitude, and hired bandits. The
honest devotion of Malesherbes, whose character was known through the
nation as a man of talent, honour, and probity, reflected a forcible
light on that of his royal client, who had, in the hour of need, found
such a defender.[346] Deséze, an excellent lawyer, was afterwards added
to the King's band of counsel;[347] but the King gained little more by
this indulgence, excepting the consolation of communicating with such
men as Malesherbes and his two associates, at a time when no other
friend was suffered to approach him, excepting the faithful Cléry, his
valet-de-chambre.[348]
The lawyers entertained some hopes, and, in the spirit of their
profession, exulted when they saw how facts contradicted the charges of
the prosecutors. "Moderate your satisfaction, my friends," said Louis;
"all these favourable circumstances are well known to the gentlemen of
the Convention, and if they considered them as entitled to weight in my
favour, I should not be in this difficulty. You take, I fear, a
fruitless task in hand, but let us perform it as a last duty." When the
term of his second appearance at the Convention arrived, he expressed
anxiety at the thoughts of appearing before them with his beard and hair
overgrown, owing to his being deprived of razors and scissors. "Were it
not better your Majesty went as you are at present," said the faithful
Cléry, "that all men may see the usage you have received?"--"It does not
become me," answered the King, "to seek to obtain pity."[349] With the
same spirit, he commanded his advocates to avoid all appeals to the
passions or the feelings of the judges and audience, and to rest his
defence exclusively upon logical deductions from the evidence
produced.[350]
When summoned to the Convention, [Dec. 26,][351] Louis was compelled to
wait for a time in the outer hall, where he walked about conversing with
his counsel. A deputy who passed, heard Malesherbes during this
intercourse use to his royal client the courtesies of "_Sire--Your
Majesty_." "What renders you so bold," he said, "that you utter these
prohibited expressions?"--"Contempt of life," answered the generous
Malesherbes.[352]
[Sidenote: OPENING SPEECH OF DESEZE.]
Deséze opened his case with great ability. He pleaded with animation the
right which the King had to the character of inviolability, a right
confirmed to him by the Legislative Assembly after the flight to
Varennes, and which implied a complete indemnity for that crime, even
supposing a journey from his capital in a post carriage, with a few
attendants, could be deemed criminal. But he urged that, if the
Convention did not respect his inviolability--if, in a word, they did
not consider him as a King, he was then entitled to the formal
securities provided for every citizen by the laws. He ridiculed the idea
that, with a trifling force of Swiss, Louis could meditate any serious
injury against the Convention. "He prepared," said Deséze, "for his
defence, as you citizens would doubtless do, when you heard that an
armed multitude were on their way to surprise you in your sanctuary." He
closed an excellent pleading with an enumeration of the benefits which
Louis had conferred on the French nation, and reminded them that their
King had given them liberty so soon as they desired to be free. Louis
himself said a few words with much firmness.[353] He was remanded to the
Temple, and a stormy debate commenced.
[Sidenote: DEBATE.]
At first, the Jacobins attempted to carry all by a clamorous demand of
the vote. Lanjuinais replied to them with unexpected spirit, charged
them with planning and instigating the assault on the 10th of August,
and then with turning on the King the blame which justly lay with
themselves alone. Dreadful outcries followed this true and intrepid
speech. "Let the friends of the despot die with him!" was the general
exclamation of the Jacobins; "to the Abbaye--to the scaffold with the
perjured deputy, who slanders the glorious 10th of August!"--"Be it so,"
answered Lanjuinais; "better death, than the crime of pronouncing an
unjust sentence."
The Girondists were too much themselves accessory to the attack on the
Tuileries to follow this bold and manly line of defence, and Lanjuinais
stood unsupported in his opinion.
Saint Just and Robespierre eagerly called for a doom of death. The
former accused the King of a design to cheat the people out of their
liberties by a pretended show of submission to their will, and an
affected moderation in exercising his authority. On the 10th of August,
(he had the effrontery to state this,) the King, entering the hall of
the Legislature with armed followers, (the small escort who had
difficulty in protecting him through the armed crowd,) had violated the
asylum of the laws. "Besides," as he triumphantly concluded, "was it for
a people who had declared war against all tyrants, to sorrow for the
fate of their own?"[354] Robespierre openly disowned the application of
legal forms, and written rubrics of law, to such a case as was before
the Convention.[355] The people who had asserted their own right in
wresting the sceptre from the hands of Louis, had a right to punish him
for having swayed it. He talked of the case being already decided by the
unanimous voice and act of the people, from whom all legal authority
emanated, and whose authority was paramount to that of the Convention,
which were only their representatives.
Vergniaud, the most eloquent of the Girondists, found nothing better to
propose, than that the case of Louis should be decided by an appeal to
the nation. He alleged that the people, who, in solemn federation had
sworn, in the Champ-de-Mars, to recognise the Constitution, had thereby
sworn the inviolability of the King. This was truly said; but, such
being the case, what right had the Convention to protract the King's
trial by sending the case from before themselves to the people? If his
inviolability had been formally admitted and sworn to by the nation,
what had the Convention more to do than recognise the inviolability with
which the nation had invested the monarch, and dismiss him from the bar
accordingly?
The explanation lay here;--that the eloquent orator was hampered and
constrained in his reasoning, by the difficulty of reconciling his own
conduct, and that of his associates, to the principles which he was now
willing to adopt as those that were just and legal. If the person of the
King was indeed inviolable, what was to be thought of their consistency,
who, by the means of their daring and devoted associates, Barbaroux and
Rebecque, had actually brought up the force of Marseillois, who led the
van, and were, in fact, the efficient and almost the only means by which
the palace of that inviolable sovereign was stormed, his guards
slaughtered, his person committed to prison, and, finally, his life
brought in danger? It was the obvious and personal answer arising out of
their own previous manœuvres, the _argumentum ad hominem_, as it is
called by logicians, which hung a padlock on the lips of the eloquent
Vergniaud, while using the argument which, in itself most just and true,
was irreconcilable with the revolutionary measures to which he had been
an express party. "Do not evil, that good may come of it," is a lesson
which may be learned, not indeed in the transcendental philosophy which
authorises the acting of instant and admitted wrong, with the view of
obtaining some distant, hypothetical, and contingent good; but in the
rules of Christian faith and true philosophy, which commands that each
case be weighed on its own circumstances, and decided upon the immutable
rules of right or wrong, without admitting any subterfuge founded on the
hope of remote contingencies and future consequences.
But Vergniaud's oratory was freed from these unhappy trammels, when,
with the fervour of a poet, and the inspiration of a prophet, he
declaimed against the faction of Jacobins, and announced the
consequences of that sanguinary body's ascending to supreme power, by
placing their first step on the body of Louis. The picture which he drew
of the coming evil seemed too horrible for reality; and yet the scenes
which followed even more than realized the predictions of the baffled
Republican, who saw too late and too clearly the tragic conclusion of
the scenes in which he had borne so active a part.
The appeal to the people or to the nation, had been argued against by
the Jacobin speakers, as opening the nearest road to civil war. Indeed
it was one of the many objections to this intermediate and evasive plan,
that the people of France, convened in their different bodies, were
likely to come to very different conclusions on the King's impeachment.
Where the Jacobin clubs were strong and numerous, they would have been
sure, according to the maxim of their union, to use the compulsory but
ready means of open violence, to disturb the freedom of voting on this
important question, and would thus have carried by forcible measures the
vote of death. In departments in which Constitutionalists and Royalists
had strong interest, it was probable that force would have been repelled
by force; and, upon the whole, in France, where the law had been long a
dead letter, the arbitrement of the nation on the King's fate must and
would have proved a bloody one.
But from that picture which must have followed the success of his party
on this memorable occasion, Vergniaud endeavoured to avert the thoughts
of his hearers, while he strove to fix them on the crimes and criminal
ambition of the Jacobins. "It is _they_ who wish civil war," he
exclaimed, "who threaten with daggers the National Convention of
France--they who preach in the tribune, and in the market-place,
doctrines subversive of all social order. _They_ are the men who desire
civil war, who accuse justice of pusillanimity, because she will not
strike before conviction--who call common humanity a proof of
conspiracy, and accuse all those as traitors to their country who will
not join in acts of robbery and assassination--those, in fine, who
pervert every sentiment and principle of morality, and by the grossest
flatteries endeavour to gain the popular assent and countenance to the
most detestable crimes."
He dissected the arts of the demagogues in terms equally just and
severe. They had been artfully referred to the Temple as the cause of
every distress under which the populace laboured; after the death of
Louis, which they so eagerly pursued, they would have the same reasons
and the same power for directing the odium of every distress or
misfortune against the Convention, and making the representatives of
France equally obnoxious to the people, as they had now rendered the
dethroned King. He concluded with a horrible picture of Paris under the
domination of Jacobinism, which was, however, exceeded by the facts that
ensued. "To what horrors," he said, "will not Paris be delivered, when
she becomes the prey of a horde of desperate assassins? Who will inhabit
a city, where Death and Desolation will then fix their court? Who will
console the ruined citizen, stripped of the wealth he has honourably
acquired, or relieve the wants of his family, which his exertions can no
longer supply? Go in that hour of need," he continued, "and ask bread of
those who have precipitated you from competence into ruin, and they will
answer, 'Hence! dispute with hungry hounds for the carcasses of those we
have last murdered--or, if you would drink, here is the blood we have
lately shed--other nourishment we have none to afford you!'"
The eloquence of Vergniaud,[356] and the exertions of his associates,
were in vain. Barrère, the auxiliary of the Jacobins, though scarcely
the partaker of their confidence, drew off as usual many of the timid
host of neutrals, by alleging specious reasons, of which the convincing
power lay in this, that they must consult their own safety rather than
the cause of justice. The appeal to the people, on which the Girondists
relied as the means of reprieving rather than saving the King--of giving
their consciences the quieting opiate, that he died not by their direct
agency--was rejected by 423 voices against 281. A decisive appeal was
made to the Convention on the question, to what punishment the dethroned
monarch should be subjected.[357]
[Sidenote: LOUIS CONDEMNED.]
The bravoes of the Jacobins surrounded the place of meeting on every
point of access while this final vote was called, and, to men already
affrighted with their situation, added every motive of terror that
words, and sometimes acts of violence, could convey. "Think not," they
said, "to rob the people of their prey. If you acquit Louis, we go
instantly to the Temple to destroy him with his whole family, and we add
to his massacre that of all who befriended him." Undoubtedly, among the
terrified deputies, there were some moved by these horrible arguments,
who conceived that, in giving a vote for Louis's life, they would
endanger their own, without saving him. Still, however, among this
overawed and trembling band of judges, there were many whose hearts
failed them as they reflected on the crime they were about to commit,
and who endeavoured to find some evasion stopping short of regicide.
Captivity till the peace was in general proposed as a composition. The
philosophic humanity of Condorcet threw in fetters, to make the
condition more acceptable to the Jacobins. Others voted for death
conditionally. The most intense anxiety prevailed during the vote; and
even the banditti in the tribunes suspended their usual howls, and only
murmured death to the voter, when the opinion given was for the more
lenient punishment. When the Duke of Orleans, who had returned from
England on the fall of La Fayette, and sat as a member of the
Convention, under the absurd name of Citizen L'Egalité--when this base
prince was asked his vote, there was a deep pause; and when the answer
proved Death, a momentary horror electrified the auditors.[358] When the
voices were numbered, the direct doom was carried by a majority of
fifty-three, being the difference between 387 and 334. The president,
Vergniaud, announced that the doom of DEATH was pronounced against Louis
Capet.[359]
Let none, we repeat, dishonour the parallel passage in England's
history, by comparing it with this disgraceful act of murder, committed
by a few in rabid fury of gain, by the greater part in mere panic and
cowardice. That deed, which Algernon Sidney pronounced the bravest and
justest ever done in England--that _facinus tam illustre_ of Milton--was
acted by men, from whose principles and feelings we differ entirely; but
not more than the ambition of Cromwell differed from that of the
bloodthirsty and envious Robespierre, or the political views of
Hutchinson and his associates, who acted all in honour, from those of
the timid and pedantic Girondists.
[Sidenote: DUMOURIEZ ARRIVES IN PARIS.]
In Paris there was a general feeling for the King's condition, and a
wish that he might be saved; but never strong enough to arise into the
resolution to effect his safety.[360] Dumouriez himself came to Paris
with all the splendour of a conqueror, whose victory at Jemappes had
added Belgium, as Flanders began to be called, to the French nation; and
there can be no doubt, that whatever might be his ulterior design, which
his situation and character render somewhat doubtful, his purpose was,
in the first place, to secure the person of Louis from farther danger or
insult. But conqueror as he was, Dumouriez, though more favourably
placed than La Fayette had been upon a similar attempt, was far from
being, with respect to Paris, in the same independent situation in which
Cromwell had been to London, or Cæsar to Rome.
The army with which he had accomplished his victories was yet but half
his own. Six commissioners from the Convention, Danton himself being the
principal, had carefully remained at his head quarters, watching his
motions, controlling his power, encouraging the private soldiers of each
regiment to hold Jacobin clubs exclusive of the authority of the
general, studiously placing in their recollection at every instant, that
the doctrines of liberty and equality rendered the soldier to a certain
point independent of his commander; and reminding them that they
conquered by the command of Dumouriez, indeed, but under the auspices of
the Republic, to whom the general, as they themselves, was but a servant
and factor.[361] The more absolute the rule of a community, the more do
its members enjoy any relaxation of such severe bonds; so that he who
can with safety preach a decay of discipline to an army, of which
discipline is the very essence, is sure to find willing listeners. A
great part of Dumouriez's army was unsettled in their minds by
doctrines, which taught an independence of official authority
inconsistent with their situation as soldiers, but proper, they were
assured, to their quality of citizens.
The manner in which Pache, the minister of war, who, brought into office
by Roland, deserted his benefactor to join the Jacobin faction, had
conducted his branch of the administration, was so negligent, that it
had given ground for serious belief that it was his intention to cripple
the resources of the armed force (at whatever risk of national defeat)
in such a manner, that if, in their disorganized state, Dumouriez had
attempted to move them towards Paris for ensuring the safety of Louis,
he should find them unfit for such a march.[362] The army had no longer
draught-houses for the artillery, and was in want of all with which a
regular body of forces should be supplied. Dumouriez, according to his
own account, both from the want of equipments of every kind, and from
the manner in which the Jacobin commissioners had enfeebled the
discipline of his troops, could not have moved towards Paris without
losing the command of the army, and his head to boot, before he had got
beyond the frontiers of Belgium.
Dumouriez had detached, however, according to his own statement, a
considerable number of officers and confidential persons, to second any
enterprise which he might find himself capable of undertaking in the
King's behalf. While at Paris, he states that he treated with every
faction in turn, attempting even to move Robespierre; and through means
of his own intimate friend Gensonné[363] he renewed his more natural
connexions with the Girondists. But the one party were too determined on
their bloody object to be diverted from it; the other, disconcerted in
viewing the result of their timid and ambiguous attempt to carry through
an appeal to the people, saw no further chance of saving the King's life
otherwise than by the risk of their own, and chose rather to be
executioners than victims.
Among the citizens of Paris, many of whom Dumouriez states himself to
have urged with the argument, that the Convention, in assuming the power
of judging the King, had exceeded the powers granted to them by the
nation, he found hearers, not indeed uninterested or unmoved, but too
lukewarm to promise efficient assistance. The citizens were in that
state, in which an English poet has said of them,--
"Cold burghers must be struck, and struck like flints,
Ere their hid fire will sparkle."
With the natural sense of right and justice, they perceived what was
expected of them; but felt not the less the trammels of their situation,
and hesitated to incur the fury of a popular insurrection, which
passiveness on their own part might postpone or avert. They listened to
the general with interest, but without enthusiasm; implored him to
choose a less dangerous subject of conversation; and spoke of the power
of the Jacobins, as of the influence of a tempest, which mortal efforts
could not withstand. With one man of worth and confidence, Dumouriez
pressed the conversation on the meanness of suffering the city to be
governed by two or three thousand banditti, till the citizen looked on
the ground and blushed, as he made the degrading confession,--"I see,
citizen-general, to what conclusion your argument tends; but we are
cowards, and the King MUST perish. What exertion of spirit can you
expect from a city, which, having under arms eighty thousand
well-trained militia, suffered themselves, notwithstanding, to be
domineered over and disarmed by a comparative handful of rascally
Federates from Brest and Marseilles?" The hint was sufficient.
Dumouriez, who was involved in much personal danger, desisted from
efforts, in which he could only compromise his own safety without
ensuring that of the King. He affirms, that during twenty days'
residence near Paris, he witnessed no effort, either public or private,
to avert the King's fate; and that the only feelings which prevailed
among the higher classes, were those of consternation and apathy.
It was then especially to be regretted, that an emigration, certainly
premature, had drained the country of those fiery and gallant nobles,
whose blood would have been so readily ventured in defence of the King.
Five hundred men of high character and determined bravery would probably
have been seconded by the whole burgher-force of Paris, and might have
bid open defiance to the Federates, or, by some sudden and bold attempt,
snatched from their hands their intended victim. Five hundred--but five
hundred--of those who were winning barren laurels under Condé, or, yet
more unhappily, were subsisting on the charity of foreign nations, might
at this moment, could they have been collected in Paris, have
accomplished the purpose for which they themselves most desired to live,
by saving the life of their unhappy sovereign. But although powerful
reasons, and yet more aggrieved feelings, had recommended the emigration
from that country, it operated like the common experiment of the Leyden
phial, one side of which being charged with an uncommon quantity of the
electrical fluid, has the effect of creating a deficiency of the same
essence upon the other. In the interior of France, the spirit of loyalty
was at the lowest ebb; because those upon whom it especially acted as a
principle, were divided from the rest of the nation, to whom they would
otherwise have afforded both encouragement and example.
The sacrifice, therefore, was to be made--made in spite of those who
certainly composed the great majority of Paris, at least of such as were
capable of reflection,--in spite of the commander of the army,
Dumouriez,--in spite of the consciences of the Girondists, who, while
they affected an air of republican stoicism, saw plainly, and were fully
sensible of the great political error, the great moral sin, they were
about to commit.
Undoubtedly they expected, that by joining in, or acquiescing in at
least, if not authorising, this unnecessary and wanton cruelty, they
should establish their character with the populace as firm and unshaken
Republicans, who had not hesitated to sacrifice the King, since his life
was demanded at the shrine of freedom. They were not long of learning,
that they gained nothing by their mean-spirited acquiescence in a crime
which their souls must have abhorred. All were sensible that the
Girondists had been all along, notwithstanding their theoretical
pretensions in favour of a popular government, lingering and looking
back with some favour to the dethroned prince, to whose death they only
consented in sheer coldness and cowardice of heart, because it required
to be defended at some hazard to their own safety. The faults at once of
duplicity and cowardice were thus fixed on this party; who, detested by
the Royalists, and by all who in any degree harboured opinions
favourable to monarchy, had their lives and offices sought after by the
whole host of Jacobins in full cry, and that on account of
faint-spirited wishes, which they had scarcely dared even to attempt to
render efficient.
[Sidenote: DEATH OF LOUIS XVI.]
On the 21st of January, 1793,[364] Louis XVI. was publicly beheaded in
the midst of his own metropolis, in the _Place Louis Quinze_, erected to
the memory of his grandfather. It is possible for the critical eye of
the historian to discover much weakness in the conduct of this unhappy
monarch; for he had neither the determination necessary to fight for his
rights, nor the power of submitting with apparent indifference to
circumstances, where resistance inferred danger. He submitted, indeed,
but with so bad a grace, that he only made himself suspected of
cowardice, without getting credit for voluntary concession. But yet his
behaviour, on many trying occasions, effectually vindicated him from the
charge of timidity, and showed that the unwillingness to shed blood, by
which he was peculiarly distinguished, arose from benevolence, not from
pusillanimity.
Upon the scaffold, he behaved with the firmness which became a noble
spirit, and the patience beseeming one who was reconciled to Heaven. As
one of the few marks of sympathy with which his sufferings were
softened, the attendance of a confessor, who had not taken the
constitutional oath, was permitted to the dethroned monarch. He who
undertook the honourable but dangerous office, was a gentleman of the
gifted family of Edgeworth of Edgeworthstown; and the devoted zeal with
which he rendered the last duties to Louis, had like in the issue to
have proved fatal to himself.[365] As the instrument of death
descended, the confessor pronounced the impressive words,--"Son of
Saint Louis, ascend to Heaven!"
[Sidenote: LOUIS'S LAST TESTAMENT.]
There was a last will of Louis XVI. circulated upon good authority,
bearing this remarkable passage:--"I recommend to my son, should he have
the misfortune to become King, to recollect, that his whole faculties
are due to the service of the public; that he ought to consult the
happiness of his people, by governing according to the laws, forgetting
all injuries and misfortunes, and in particular those which I may have
sustained. But, while I exhort him to govern under the authority of the
laws, I cannot but add, that this will be only in his power, in so far
as he shall be endowed with authority to cause right to be respected,
and wrong punished; and that, without such authority, his situation in
the government must be more hurtful than advantageous to the
state."[366]
Not to mingle the fate of the illustrious victims of the royal family
with the general tale of the sufferers under the Reign of Terror, we
must here mention the deaths of the rest of that illustrious house,
which closed for a time a monarchy, that, existing through three
dynasties, had given sixty-six kings to France.
It was not to be supposed, that the Queen was to be long permitted to
survive her husband. She had been even more than he the object of
revolutionary detestation; nay, many were disposed to throw on Marie
Antoinette, almost exclusively, the blame of those measures, which they
considered as counter-revolutionary. She came to France a gay, young,
and beautiful princess--she found in her husband a faithful,
affectionate, almost an uxorious husband. In the early years of her
reign she was guilty of two faults.
In the first place, she dispensed too much with court-etiquette, and
wished too often to enjoy a retirement and freedom, inconsistent with
her high rank and the customs of the court. This was a great though
natural mistake. The etiquette of a court places round the great
personages whom it regards, a close and troublesome watch, but that very
guard acts as a barrier against calumny; and when these formal witnesses
are withdrawn, evil tongues are never wanting to supply with infamous
reports a blank, which no testimony can be brought to fill up with the
truth. No individual suffered more than Marie Antoinette from this
species of slander, which imputed the most scandalous occupations to
hours that were only meant to be stolen from form and from state, and
devoted to the ease which crowned heads ought never to dream of
enjoying.
Another natural, yet equally false step, was her interfering more
frequently with politics than became her sex; exhibiting thus her power
over the King, and at the same time lowering him in the eyes of his
subjects, who, whatever be the auspices under which their own domestic
affairs are conducted, are always scandalized if they see, or think they
see, any thing like female influence directing the councils of their
sovereigns. We are uncertain what degree of credit is to be given to the
Memoirs of Bezenval, but we believe they approach near the truth in
representing the Queen as desirous of having a party of her own, and
carrying points in opposition to the ministers; and we know that a
general belief of this sort was the first foundation of the fatal
report, that an Austrian cabal existed in the Court of France, under the
direction of the Queen, which was supposed to sacrifice the interests of
France to favour those of the Emperor of Germany.
The terms of her accusation were too basely depraved to be even hinted
at here. She scorned to reply to it, but appealed to all who had been
mothers, against the very possibility of the horrors which were stated
against her.[367] The widow of a king, the sister of an emperor, was
condemned to death, dragged in an open tumbril to the place of
execution, and beheaded on the 16th October, 1793. She suffered death in
her thirty-ninth year.[368]
The Princess Elizabeth, sister of Louis, of whom it might be said, in
the words of Lord Clarendon, that she resembled a chapel in a king's
palace, into which nothing but piety and morality enter, while all
around is filled with sin, idleness, and folly, did not, by the most
harmless demeanour and inoffensive character, escape the miserable fate
in which the Jacobins had determined to involve the whole family of
Louis XVI. Part of the accusation redounded to the honour of her
character. She was accused of having admitted to the apartments of the
Tuileries some of the national guards, of the section of Filles de Saint
Thomas, and causing the wounds to be looked to which they had received
in a skirmish with the Marseillois, immediately before the 10th of
August. The princess admitted her having done so, and it was exactly in
consistence with her whole conduct. Another charge stated the ridiculous
accusation, that she had distributed bullets chewed by herself and her
attendants, to render them more fatal, to the defenders of the castle of
the Tuileries; a ridiculous fable, of which there was no proof whatever.
She was beheaded in May, 1794, and met her death as became the manner in
which her life had been spent.[369]
We are weary of recounting these atrocities, as others must be of
reading them. Yet it is not useless that men should see how far human
nature can be carried, in contradiction to every feeling the most
sacred, to every pleading whether of justice or of humanity. The Dauphin
we have already described as a promising child of seven years old, an
age at which no offence could have been given, and from which no danger
could have been apprehended. Nevertheless, it was resolved to destroy
the innocent child, and by means to which ordinary murders seem deeds of
mercy.
[Sidenote: DEATH OF THE DAUPHIN.]
The unhappy boy was put in charge of the most hard-hearted villain whom
the Community of Paris, well acquainted where such agents were to be
found, were able to select from their band of Jacobins. This wretch, a
shoemaker called Simon, asked his employers, "What was to be done with
the young wolf-whelp was he to be slain?"--"No."--"Poisoned?"--"No."--
"Starved to death?"--"No."--"What then?"--"He was to be got rid
of."[370] Accordingly, by a continuance of the most severe treatment; by
beating, cold, vigils, fasts, and ill usage of every kind, so frail a
blossom was soon blighted. He died on the 8th of June, 1795.[371]
After this last horrible crime, there was a relaxation in favour of the
daughter, and now the sole child, of this unhappy house. The Princess
Royal, whose qualities have since honoured even her birth and blood,
experienced, from this period, a mitigated captivity. Finally, on the
19th December, 1795, this last remaining relic of the family of Louis
was permitted to leave her prison and her country, in exchange for La
Fayette and others, whom, on that condition, Austria delivered from
captivity. She became afterwards the wife of her cousin the Duke
d'Angoulême, eldest son of the reigning monarch of France, and obtained,
by the manner in which she conducted herself at Bourdeaux in 1815, the
highest praise for gallantry and spirit.
FOOTNOTES:
[331] The reader may compare the account which Marmontel gives of his
residence in the Bastile, with the faithful Cléry's narrative of Louis's
captivity in the Temple.--S.
[332] Cléry, p. 55; Thiers, tom. iii., p. 223; Mignet, tom. i., p. 234;
Lacretelle, tom. x., p. 141.
[333] "The 3d of September, at three o'clock, just after dinner, the
most horrid shouts were heard. The officer on guard in the room behaved
well: he shut the door and the window, and even drew the curtains, to
prevent their seeing any thing. Several officers of the guard and of the
municipality now arrived: the former insisted that the King should show
himself at the windows; fortunately, the latter opposed it; but, on his
Majesty's asking what was the matter, a young officer of the guard
replied, 'Well! since you will know, it is the head of Madame de
Lamballe that they want to show you.' At these words the Queen was
overcome with horror: it was the only occasion in which her firmness
abandoned her."--DUCHESSE D'ANGOULÊME, _Private Memoirs_, p. 18.
[334] Cléry, pp. 60, 142.
[335] See Mémoires de Buzot, par Guadet, p. 87
[336] Cléry, p. 153.
[337] "Before the King entered, Barrère recommended tranquillity to the
Assembly, 'in order that the guilty man might be awed by the silence of
the tomb.'"--LACRETELLE, tom. x., p. 174.
[338] "When the president said to his King, '_Louis, asseyez vous!_' we
feel more indignation even than when he is accused of crimes which he
had never committed. One must have sprung from the very dust not to
respect past obligations, particularly when misfortune has rendered them
sacred; and vulgarity joined to crime inspires us with as much contempt
as horror."--DE STAËL, vol. ii., p. 84.
[339] Duhem was born at Lille in 1760. He afterwards practised physic at
Quesnoi. After the amnesty of Oct., 1795, he returned to his profession,
and died in 1807, at Mentz.
[340] Mignet, tom. i., p. 235; Lacretelle, tom. x., p. 179.
[341] One of Napoleon's first acts on becoming first consul, was to
place Tronchet at the head of the Court of Cassation. "Tronchet," he
said, "was the soul of the civil code, as I was its demonstrator. He was
gifted with a singularly profound and correct understanding, but he
could not descend to developements."-LAS CASES, vol. ii., p. 234.
Tronchet died in 1806, and was buried in the Pantheon.
[342] "Cambacérès declared, that Target's example endangered public
morality. Target attempted in vain to repair the disgrace, by publishing
a short defence of the King."--LACRETELLE, tom. x., p. 182.
[343] "Tronson du Coudrai, who perished in the deserts of Sinamari;
Guillaume, the courageous author of the petition of the twenty thousand;
Huet de Guerville; Sourdat de Troyes; and Madame Olympe de
Gouges.--Lalli de Tolendal, Malouet, and Necker published admirable
pleadings for Louis, but the Convention would not allow them to be
read."--LACRETELLE, tom. x., p. 185.
[344] See _ante_, p. 42.
[345] "Je lui dois le même service, lorsque c'est une fonction que bien
des gens trouvent dangereuse."--See his letter to the President of the
Convention in LACRETELLE, tom. x., p. 182.
[346] "The first time M. Malesherbes entered the Temple, the King
clasped him in his arms, and exclaimed, with tears in his eyes, 'Ah! is
it you, my friend! you see to what the excess of my love for the people
has brought me, and the self-denial which induced me to consent to the
removal of the troops intended to protect my throne and person, against
the designs of a factious assembly: you fear not to endanger your own
life to save mine; but all will be useless: they will bring me to the
scaffold: no matter; I shall gain my cause, if I leave an unspotted
memory behind me."--HUE, _Dernières Années de la Vie de Louis XVI._, p.
42.
[347] Deséze was born at Bourdeaux in 1750. He accepted no office under
Napoleon; but on the restoration of the Bourbons he was appointed First
President of the Court of Cassation, and afterwards created a peer of
France. He died at Paris in 1828.
[348] Cléry we have seen and known, and the form and manners of that
model of pristine faith and loyalty can never be forgotten.
Gentlemanlike and complaisant in his manners, his deep gravity and
melancholy features announced that the sad scenes in which he had acted
a part so honourable, were never for a moment out of his
memory.--S.--Cléry died at Hitzing, near Vienna, in 1809. In 1817, Louis
XVIII. gave letters of nobility to his daughter.
[349] Cléry, p. 187.
[350] "When the pathetic peroration of M. Deséze was read to the King,
the evening before it was to be delivered to the Assembly, 'I have to
request of you,' he said, 'to make a painful sacrifice; strike out of
your pleading the peroration. It is enough for me to appear before such
judges, and show my entire innocence; I will not move their
feelings.'"--LACRETELLE, tom. x., p. 197.
[351] "The King was conveyed in the mayor's carriage. He evinced, on the
way, as much coolness as on former occasions; spoke of Seneca, Livy, and
the public hospitals; and addressed himself, in a delicate vein of
pleasantry, to one of the municipality, who sat in his carriage with his
hat on."--THIERS, tom. iii., p. 277.
[352] Lacretelle, tom. x., p. 199.
[353] "You have heard my defence; I will not recapitulate it; when
addressing you, probably for the last time, I declare that my conscience
has nothing to reproach itself with, and that my defenders have said
nothing but the truth. I have no fears for the public examination of my
conduct; but my heart bleeds at the accusation brought against me, of
having been the cause of the misfortunes of my people; and, most of all,
of having shed their blood on the 10th of August. The multiplied proofs
I have given, in every period of my reign, of my love for my people, and
the manner in which I have conducted myself towards them, might, I had
hoped, have saved me from so cruel an imputation."--THIERS. tom. iii.,
p. 281.
"The King withdrew with his defenders. He embraced M. Deséze, and
exclaimed, 'This is indeed true eloquence! I am tranquil.--I shall at
least have an honoured memory.--The French will regret my
death.'"--LACRETELLE, tom. x., p. 210.
[354] "St. Just, after having searched in vain for authentic facts
against the King, finished by declaring, that 'no one could reign
innocently: and nothing could better prove the necessity of the
inviolability of kings than this maxim; for there is no king who might
not be accused in some way or another, if there were no constitutional
barrier placed around him.'"--DE STAËL, vol. ii., p. 86.
[355] "Il est des principes indestructibles, supérieurs aux rubriques
consacrées par l'habitude et les préjugés."
[356] "Vergniaud was an indolent man, and required to be stimulated; but
when excited, his eloquence was true, forcible, penetrating, and
sincere."--DUMONT, p. 321.
[357] Thiers, tom. iii., p. 290; Lacretelle, tom. x., p. 213;
Toulongeon, tom. iii., p. 187.
[358] His own death, by the guillotine, in the same year, was hardly
sufficient retribution for his fiendlike conduct on this afflicting
occasion.--S.
[359] "When, on the 17th January, M. de Malesherbes went to the Temple
to announce the result of the vote, he found Louis with his forehead
resting on his hands, and absorbed in a deep reverie. Without inquiring
concerning his fate, he said, 'For two hours I have been considering
whether, during my whole reign, I have voluntarily given any cause of
complaint to my subjects; with perfect sincerity I declare, that I
deserve no reproach at their hands, and that I have never formed a wish
but for their happiness.'"--LACRETELLE, tom. x., p. 244.
"On the 18th, the King desired me to look in the library for the volume
of Hume's History which contained the death of Charles I., which he read
the following days. I found, on this occasion, that, since his coming to
the Temple, his Majesty had perused two hundred and fifty
volumes."--CLÉRY, p. 216.--"On the 20th, Santerre appeared with the
Executive Council. The sentence of death was read by Carat. No
alteration took place in the King's countenance; I observed only, at the
word 'conspiracy,' a smile of indignation appear upon his lips; but at
the words, 'shall suffer the punishment of death,' the heavenly
expression of his face, when he looked on those around him, showed them
that death had no terrors for innocence."--CLÉRY, p. 222.
[360] "At the representation of the comedy called 'L'Ami des Lois' at
the Français, every allusion to the King's trial was caught and received
with unbounded applause. At the Vaudeville, on one of the characters in
'La Chaste Susanne' saying to the two Elders, 'You cannot be accusers
and judges at the same time,' the audience obliged the actor to repeat
the passage several times."--CLÉRY, p. 204.
[361] Dumouriez, vol. iii., p. 278; Jomini, tom. ii., p. 265.
[362] "The peculation, or the profuse expenditure, at least, that took
place in the war department during Pache's administration, was horrible.
In the twenty-four hours that preceded his dismission, he filled up
sixty different places with all the persons he knew of who were base
enough to pay their court to him, down to his very hair-dresser, a
blackguard boy of nineteen, whom he made a muster-master."--MAD. ROLAND,
part i., p. 140.
[363] Born at Bourdeaux in 1758--he was involved in the fall of the
Girondists, and guillotined 31st Oct., 1793.
[364] "At seven, the King said to me, 'You will give this seal to my
son, this ring to the Queen, and assure her that it is with pain I part
with it;--this little packet contains the hair of all my family, you
will give her that too. Tell the Queen, my dear children, and my sister,
that although I promised to see them again this morning, I have resolved
to spare them the pangs of so cruel a separation; tell them how much it
costs me to go without receiving their embraces once more!' He wiped
away some tears; then added, in the most mournful accents, 'I charge you
to bear them my last farewell.'"--CLÉRY, p. 249.
"On the morning of this terrible day, the princesses rose at six. The
night before, the Queen had scarcely strength enough to put her son to
bed. She threw herself, dressed as she was, upon her own bed, where she
was heard shivering with cold and grief all night long. At a
quarter-past six, the door opened; the princesses believed that they
were sent for to see the King, but it was only the officers looking for
a prayer-book for the King's mass; they did not, however, abandon the
hope of seeing him, till the shouts of joy of the unprincipled populace
came to tell them that all was over."--DUCHESSE D'ANGOULÊME, p. 52.
[365] "The procession from the Temple to the place of execution lasted
nearly two hours. As soon as the carriage stopped, the King whispered to
me, 'We are at the end of our journey, if I mistake not.' My silence
answered that we were. One of the guards came to open the door, and the
gens-d'armes would have jumped out, but the King stopped them, and
leaning his arm on my knee, 'Gentlemen,' said he, with the tone of
majesty, 'I recommend to you this good man; take care that after my
death no insult be offered to him--I charge you to prevent it.' As soon
as the King had left the carriage, three guards surrounded him, and
would have taken off his clothes, but he repulsed them with dignity; he
undressed himself, untied his neckcloth, opened his shirt, and arranged
it himself. The path leading to the scaffold was extremely rough, and
from the slowness with which the King proceeded, I feared for a moment
that his courage might be failing; but what was my astonishment, when,
arrived at the last step, I felt him suddenly let go my arm, and saw him
cross with a firm foot the breadth of the whole scaffold; he silenced,
by his look alone, fifteen or twenty drums; and I heard him, in a loud
voice, pronounce distinctly these memorable words, 'I die innocent of
all the crimes laid to my charge; I pardon those who have occasioned my
death; and I pray to God that the blood you are going to shed may never
be visited on France.' He was proceeding, when a man on horseback, in
the national uniform, (Santerre,) waved his sword, and ordered the drums
to beat. Upon which, the executioners, seizing the King with violence,
dragged him under the axe of the guillotine, which, with one stroke,
severed his head from his body."--ABBÉ EDGEWORTH, _Last Hours of Louis
XVI._, p. 84.
[366] "The day after the execution, the municipality published the will,
as a proof of the fanaticism and crimes of the King."--LACRETELLE, tom.
x., p. 254.
[367] "Si je n'ai pas répondu, c'est que la nature se refuse à répondre
a une pareille inculpation faite à une mère." (Ici l'accusée paroit
vivement émue,) "J'en appelle à toutes celles qui peuvent se trouver
ici."--_Procès de Marie Antoinette_, p. 29.
[368] "Sorrow had blanched her once beautiful hair; but her features and
air still commanded the admiration of all who beheld her. Her cheeks,
pale and emaciated, were occasionally tinged with a vivid colour at the
mention of those she had lost. When led out to execution, she was
dressed in white; she had cut off her hair with her own hands. Placed in
a tumbril, with her arms tied behind her, she was taken by a circuitous
route to the Place de la Révolution, and she ascended the scaffold with
a firm and dignified step, as if she had been about to take her place on
a throne, by the side of her husband."--LACRETELLE, tom. xi, p. 261.
[369] "Madame Elizabeth was condemned, with many other individuals of
rank. When on the tumbril, she declared that Madame de Serilli, one of
the victims, had disclosed to her that she was pregnant, and was thus
the means of saving her life."--LACRETELLE, tom. xi., p. 424.
"The assassination of the Queen and of Madame Elizabeth excited perhaps
still more astonishment and horror than the crime which had been
perpetrated against the person of the King; for no other object could be
assigned for these horrible enormities, than the very terror which they
were fitted to inspire."--DE STAËL, vol. ii., p. 125.
[370] Lacretelle, tom. xi., p. 233.
[371] "Simon had had the cruelty to leave the poor child, absolutely
alone. Unexampled barbarity! to leave an unhappy and sickly infant of
eight years old, in a great room, locked and bolted in, with no other
resource than a broken bell, which he never rang, so greatly did he
dread the people whom its sound would have brought to him; he preferred
wanting any thing and every thing to the sight of his persecutors. His
bed had not been touched for six months, and he had not strength to make
it himself; it was alive with bugs, and vermin still more disgusting.
His linen and his person were covered with them. For more than a year he
had had no change of shirt or stockings; every kind of filth was allowed
to accumulate about him, and in his room; and during all that period,
nothing of that kind had been removed. His window, which was locked as
well as grated, was never opened; and the infectious smell of this
horrid room was so dreadful, that no one could bear it for a moment. He
passed his days without any kind of occupation. They did not even allow
him light in the evening. This situation affected his mind as well as
his body; and it is not surprising that he should have fallen into a
frightful atrophy."--DUCHESSE D'ANGOULÊME, p. 109.