THE TRIAL OF THE KING.
On the seventh of November the Girondists began the indictment against
the king, assisted by the fatal deposit of papers in the iron safe,
although those were missing which were confided to Mme. Campan. After
Gamain's opening the press, which was to have so severe an effect on
the prisoners in the temple, Roland had taken them all to his office,
where he read them and docketed them, though he vainly searched for the
evidence of Danton's oft-cited venality. Besides, Danton had resigned
as Minister of Justice.
This great trial was to crown the victory of Valmy, which had made
the defeated King of Prussia almost as angry as the news of the
proclamation of the Republic in Paris.
This trial was another step toward the goal to which men blundered like
the blind, always excepting the Invisibles; they saw things in the
mass, but not in detail. Alone on the horizon stood the red guillotine,
with the king at the foot of the scaffold on which it rose.
In a materialistic era, when such a man as Danton was the head of the
indulgent party, it was difficult for the wish not to be outrun by the
deed; yet only a few of the Convention comprehended that royalty should
be extirpated, and not the royal person slain.
Royalty was a somber abstraction, a menacing mystery of which men were
weary, a whited sepulcher, fair without, but full of rottenness.
But the king was a different matter; a man who was far from interesting
in his prosperity, but purified by misfortune and made great by
captivity. Even on the queen the magic of adversity was such that she
had learned, not to love--for her broken heart was a shattered vase
from which the precious ointment had leaked out--but to venerate and
adore, in the religious sense of the word, this prince, though a man
whose bodily appetite and vulgar instincts had so often caused her to
blush.
Royalty smitten with death, but the king kept in perpetual
imprisonment, was a conception so grand and mighty that but few
entertained it.
"The king must stand trial," said the ex-priest Gregoire to the
Convention; "but he has done so much to earn scorn that we have no room
for hatred."
And Tom Paine wrote:
"I entreat you to go on with the trial, not so much of this king as the
whole band of them; the case of this individual whom you have in your
power will put you on the track of all. Louis XVI. is useful as showing
the necessity of revolutions."
So great minds like Paine and great hearts like Gregoire were in tune
on this point. The kings were to be tried, and Louis might even be
allowed to turn state's evidence.
This has never been done, but it is good yet to do. Suppose the charge
against the Empress Catherine, Pasiphæ of the north; who will say there
would not come out instruction to the world from such a revelation?
To the great disappointment of the Rolands, we repeat, the papers in
the iron safe did not compromise Dumouriez and Danton, while they
earned Gamain a pension, little alleviating the pangs of his ailment,
which made him a thousand times regret the guillotine to which he
consigned his master. But they injured the king and the priests,
showing up the narrow mind, sharp and ungrateful, of Louis, who only
hated those who wanted to save him--Necker, Lafayette, and Mirabeau.
There was nothing detrimental to the Girondists.
Who was to read the dread indictment? Who was to be the sword-bearer
and float over the court like the destroying angel? St. Just, the pet
of Robespierre, a pale young man with womanly lips, who uttered the
atrocious words. The point was that the king must be killed. The speech
made a terrible impression; not one of the judges but felt the repeated
word enter his soul like steel. Robespierre was appalled to see his
disciple plant the red flag of revolution so far ahead of the most
advanced outposts of republicanism.
As time progressed, the watch over the prisoners was closer, and
Clery could learn nothing; but he picked up a newspaper stating that
Louis would be brought before the bar of the House on the eleventh of
December.
Indeed, at five that morning the reveille was beaten all over Paris.
The temple gates were opened to bring in cannon; but no one would tell
the captives the meaning of the unusual stir.
Breakfast was the last meal they partook of in company; when they
parted, the prince was left playing a numerical game with his father,
who kept the truth from him.
"Curse sixteen," said the boy, on losing three times running; "I
believe you are bad luck!"
The king was struck by the figure.
At eleven the dauphin was removed and the king left in silence, as the
officials did not intrude, for fear he would question them. At one
o'clock Santerre arrived with officers, and a registrar who read the
decree calling "the prisoner Louis Capet" before the House.
The king interrupted to say that Capet was not his name, but that of an
ancestor. He stopped the reading on the grounds that he had read it in
the papers.
As it was raining, they had a carriage in which to carry him.
On alighting, Santerre laid his hand on his shoulder and led him to the
same spot at the bar, by the same chair, where he had taken the oath to
the Constitution.
All the members save one had kept their seats as he entered; this one
saluted him. The astonished king recognized Gilbert. He wished him
good-day.
"Are you acquainted with Doctor Gilbert?" asked Santerre.
"He was my physician once, so I hope no ill feeling will be harbored
because he was polite to me."
The examination began. Unfortunately, the glamour of misfortune
vanished before duplicity; not only did the king answer the questions
put to him, but he did so badly, stammering, hesitating, trying to
evade direct issues, chaffering for his life like a pettifogger arguing
a party-fence case in a county court.
The king did not appear at his best in broad day.
The examination lasted five hours. Though he refused refreshment
offered, he asked a grenadier for a piece of the bread he saw him
eating.
On crossing the yard to step into the carriage, the mob sung with
marked emphasis the line of the "Marseillaise" about "the impure blood
should fertilize our furrows."
This made him lose color.
The return was miserable. In the public hack, swaying on the black,
pestiferous, vile pavement, while the mob surged up to the windows to
see him, he blinked his eyes at the daylight; his beard was long, and
his thin hair of a dirty yellow hue; his thin cheeks fell in folds on
his wrinkled neck; clad in a gray suit, with a dark-brown overcoat, he
mumbled with the Bourbon's automatic memory: "This is such and such a
street."
On remarking that Orleans Street had been changed to Egalite, on
account of the duke having dropped his titles, though that did not save
him from the guillotine, he fell into silence, and so returned into
prison.
He was not allowed to see his family, and had to go to bed without the
meal with them.
"Ah, Clery!" he said to his man, as he undressed him, "I little dreamed
what questions they were going to put to me."
Indeed, almost all the inquiry was based on the contents of the iron
safe, which he did not suspect was discovered, from having no idea that
Gamain had betrayed him.
Nevertheless, he soon sunk to sleep with that tranquillity of which he
had given so many proofs, and which might be taken for lethargy.
But the other prisoners did not bear the separation and the secrecy so
tamely.
In the morning the queen asked to see her husband, but the only
arrangement offered was that the king might see his children on
condition that they should not see their mother or aunt any more. The
king refused this plan.
Consequently, the queen had her son's bed put in her rooms, and she did
not quit him till removed for trial by the Revolutionary Tribunal, as
her husband was by the Convention.
Clery, however, worked communications with a servant of the princesses
named Turgy. They exchanged a few words, and passed notes scratched
with pins on scraps of paper, on the ladies' side; the king could
write properly, as he had writing materials supplied since his trial
commenced.
By means of a string, collected from the pieces around the packets of
candles, Clery lowered pens, ink, and paper to Princess Elizabeth,
whose window was below that of the valet's room.
Hence the family had news of one another daily.
On the other hand, the king's position was morally much worse since he
had appeared before the Convention.
It had been surmised that he would either refuse to answer any
interrogation, like Charles I., whose history he knew so well; or else
that he would answer proudly and loftily in the name of royalty, not
like an accused criminal, but a knight accepting the gage of battle.
Unfortunately, Louis was not regal enough to do either act. He so
entangled himself that he had to ask for counsel. The one he named
fearing to accept the task, it fell to Malesherbes, who had been in
the Turgot Ministry, a commonplace man in whom little did any suspect
contempt for death. (On the day of his execution, for he was beheaded,
he wound up his watch as usual.) Throughout the trial he styled the
king "Sire."
Attacked by a flow of blood to the head, the king asked for Dr. Gilbert
to be allowed to attend him, but the application was refused, and he
was brutally told that if he drank cold water he would not have such
a fullness of blood. As he was not allowed a knife to carve his food,
unless a servant did it before the guards, so he was not let shave but
in the presence of four municipal officers.
On the evening of the twenty-fifth he wrote his will, in which he said
that he did not blame himself for any of the crimes of which he was
accused. He did not say that they were false. This evasive response
was worthy the pupil of the Duke of Vauguyon.
In any case, the twenty-sixth found him ready for any fate, death
included.
His counsel read the defense, which was a purely legal document. It
seems to us that if we had been charged with it, we should not have
spoken for the law, but let St. Louis and Henry IV. defend their
descendants from the crimes of their intermediate successors.
The more unjust the accusation, the more eloquent should have been the
rejoinder.
Hence the Convention asked, in astonishment:
"Have you nothing more to say in your defense?"
He had nothing to say, and went back to the temple. When his defender
called in the evening, he told him of a number of gentlemen who were
pledged to prevent the execution.
"If you do not know them personally," said the king to Lamoignon
Malesherbes, "try to come in touch with them and tell them that I will
never forgive myself for blood shed on my behalf. I would not have it
spilled to save my throne and life, when that was possible; all the
more reason for me not allowing it now."
The voting on the 16th of January, 1793, was on three points:
Is Louis guilty? Shall there be an appeal from the Convention to the
people? State the penalty.
To the first question was the answer of 683 voices, "Yes."
To the appeal question, 281 ayes and 423 noes.
The third decision of the penalty was subdivided into death,
imprisonment, banishment, or death, with the people allowed to reduce
it to imprisonment.
All tokens of approval or displeasure were prohibited, but when a
member said anything but death, murmurs arose.
Once there were groans and hisses when a member spoke for death--when
Philippe Egalite cast his vote for the execution of his kinsman.
The majority for death was seven, and Vergniaud uttered the sentence
with deep emotion.
It was three on the morning of the twentieth, Sunday.
The illustrious culprit was up when Malesherbes bore him the news.
"I was sure of it," he said, shaking hands with his defender. "For two
days I have been trying to find if I have merited my subjects' reproach
for what I have done in the course of my reign. I swear to you in all
sincerity, as a man about to appear before his Maker, that I have
always wished the happiness of my people, and have not framed a wish
contrary to it."
The death-warrant was officially read to him, and he was allowed to
choose his own confessor.
The name of one had been already written down by Princess Elizabeth,
whose confessor this Abbe Edgeworth was.