THE SACRIFICE OF BLOOD.
The Abbé, meanwhile, prayed unceasingly in an outer chamber, and
separated only from the King’s by a wooden partition.
He and Cléry, the recently-appointed but faithful attendant on
the King, heard the condemned man’s breath regular and peaceful,
uninterrupted by cries or restlessness. His heart beat regularly,
with no more fear than is experienced by clockwork which has nearly
run down, and is about to stop.
At five, it was necessary to awaken the King.
“Has it struck five?” he inquired, of Cléry.
“Not yet, by the town clock,” the man replied “but several bells have
sounded the hour.”
“I have slept heartily,” remarked the King; “I suppose because,
yesterday, I was very much fatigued.”
Cléry now lighted the fire, and helped his dying master to dress.
The King “communicated,” the altar being raised in the room in which
he usually sat.
He took the substantiated, or, rather, consecrated, bread, with awful
gravity, but with utter calmness.
While the priest was disrobing, the King retired to the little
turret; and here, being joined by Cléry, the good servant knelt, and
requested the King’s blessing.
Louis XVI raised his hand, and desired him to convey that blessing,
through himself, to all who loved their King, and especially to those
of his gaolers who had shown to the royal family anything like pity
or kindness.
Then, leading the valet to the window, he gave him, so that those
watching through the glass of the doors should not see the act, a
seal, which he had detached from his watch, a small parcel, taken
from his bosom, and the wedding-ring with which, at their royal
marriage, the Queen had pledged her faith to him. This ring he took
from the hand upon which he had worn it since placed there at his
marriage.
“When I am dead,” he said, “you will give this seal to my son, and
this ring to the Queen. Tell her that I give it up with great pain,
and only because I do not will that it should share in the profanity
to which, of course, my body will be subjected. And this little
parcel has in it locks of the hair of all my family. Give it, also,
to my lady. Say to the Queen, and to my most dear children, and to my
sister, that though I promised to see them this morning, I meant to
spare them the grief of another bitter separation. It costs me more
than I can describe, to go without kissing them again!”
Here he wept, for the last time in his life, it being one of the very
few occasions when he was moved to tears.
“I give to you,” he added, in a sweet, low, suppressed voice,—“I give
to you my last farewell, to take to those I love!”
Cléry retired, weeping, though his tears were an evidence against him
which might cost him his life.
A moment passed, and the King, leaving the little room, asked one of
the gaolers for a pair of scissors.
“What for, citizen?”
“I wish the Citizen Cléry to cut off my hair; it is the only legacy I
have to leave my family.”
“’Tis well,” said the gaoler.
And Cléry performed this ghastly office.
Cléry, turning to the commissaires, said, “And now, citizens, I beg
that I may be allowed to accompany the Citizen Louis Capet”—he dared
not call him King; to do so would have terminated his own life—“to
the scaffold. I seek permission to perform this last office, and that
it may not be left to the executioner.”
“Bah! The executioner is good enough for _him_!” cried one of the
more influential commissaires.
The King turned away.
The Abbé, following him some moments afterwards, found the King
calmly warming himself near the stove, and evidently contemplating
his approaching end with a certain calm joy which was to be envied by
very many of those who had condemned him.
“Good heavens!” he cried, “how glad I am that while on the throne,
I maintained my faith in the Eternal! What now would be my
sufferings, if I had not steadfast hope in the world to come! Oh,
yes; above there is a Judge of courage, who cannot be influenced or
threatened—who will judge me honestly, and accord to me that justice
which has been denied me in this world.”
The winter day now broke, and light struggled between the bars and
planks which combined to shut out light from the royal prisoners, one
of whom was now destined soon to be free.
The roll of the drum, on one side or the other far and near,
now was heard; hurried steps passed; the click of arms could be
distinguished; and soon horses, heavily mounted, were heard beating
along the street.
A heavier sound—cannon, and strongly-built tumbrils or wagons were
heard, taking up their position in the court-yard of the prison, and
about its entrance.
The King, true to the last to his marvellous character—which his
friends describe, as one not to be swayed by passion, which his
enemies analyzed to be one of callousness and incapability of
feeling, not only with regard to others, but even for himself—the
King commented on these sounds, not as though they affected him and
his life, but as though they were an agreeable puzzle he was putting
together.
“’Tis probably the National Guard assembling,” he said, in a half
curious voice, to the still praying Abbé, when the first roll of the
drum swept through the cold morning air.
A few moments passed, and the trampling of horses’ hoofs at the foot
of the tower attracted his attention. Then followed the voices of
officers, giving military directions.
“They are come,” he said.
He spoke without impatience or fear, after the manner of a friend
quietly waiting for a friend, and at last hearing the amicable step
upon the stair.
And now the King’s last torture—not his execution, for that was in
mercy extended to him—commenced.
Through two long hours was this poor man tortured by a refinement
of cruelty for which there can be found no extenuation, to which no
parallel can be discovered.
Through these two hours came frequent summonses at the door. Upon
each occasion the King rose, ready. Upon each occasion some poor,
petty excuse was made. He himself (the King) opened the door,
answered the wretch and coward who tortured him, bowed civilly when
he learnt his presence was not required, and closing the door, waited
until a fresh summons beat upon his heart.
Ah, posterity cannot forgive those acts! Long must the question
remain unsettled whether or not Louis XVI was rightfully put to
death. Possibly he but paid the debt his ancestors had incurred.
Millions had died of starvation. Taxes annihilated industry through
generations previous to the uprising of the people. Even salt was
weighted with a tax which caused it to be sold at an enormous
rate—thirty pence a pound. Finally, Louis may have been guilty, as
a man who was false to his oaths to keep the land of France free of
enemies, of calling foreign help to France. It must be felt that
when his throne was sinking from beneath him, other kings, in the
interests of thrones, being desirous of maintaining Louis upon his,
would willingly offer that foreign aid which it is felt Louis had
been more than humanly self-denying in refusing. He fell a sacrifice
to the errors of the two Louises who had preceded him on the
throne—a blood compensation for the waste, luxury, and sensuality of
half a dozen generations of French nobles.
The measure of the people’s misery being full, they rose, and rose
successfully. Their mistake—one which ultimately suffocated all the
good it was intended they should effect—took the shape of success,
intoxicating itself with victory.
Give a lesson to kings not to exceed their duty—yes. All France knew
that the English Revolution, which sent Charles I to the block, had
resulted in a social condition in England which offered an example
for France to follow.
But having once passed upon a man the dignity of approaching death;
having thrown round him the darkness of the coming tomb—to crush his
heart—to humiliate him—to embitter his last moments—to play with his
life as a cat with a poor, palpitating mouse—to try to resuscitate
the desire to live—to seek to change the calmness of resignation back
into the whirlpool of despair—these are not the acts of men, but
demons.
Yet let not these acts be set down to the people. In times of
trouble, all the scum boils to the surface, and it is the surface we
see, not the clarified water below it. Few, very few men completed
the murders of September; seven-eighths of all France knew nothing
about these wholesale murders until they were achieved.
But the miserable attempt to torture the King’s last hour upon earth
failed utterly—he was beyond attack. His soul had already passed away.
At nine o’clock there was a tumultuous noise upon the staircase, and
now there was a summons at the door. It was thrown open.
As far as the King’s eyes could stretch were armed men—all gazing
towards Louis.
Santerre appeared, attended by twelve municipals, and ten gendarmes,
all of whom fell into two lines in the apartment.
The King turned to the little turret door, and with his hand upon it,
looked towards Santerre.
In this final moment all the reserve and imperiousness of a prince
returned to Louis XVI.
“You are come for me,” he said. “Await me—and for a mere moment.”
He paused, closed the door, and knelt at the minister’s feet.
“It is finished,” he said. “Bless me, and let me go.”
A moment, and he rose, came out, placed himself smilingly between the
double row of armed men. In his hand was a paper. It was his will.
Addressing himself to the man who appeared to be the chief of the
squad, he said, “I pray you to give this letter to the Queen.”
The Republicans started, and the act reminded the King of the error
he had committed.
“To my wife,” he said, correcting himself, to please the Republican
ears.
“It’s no affair of mine,” replied the man addressed, and in savage
tones. “I’m not here to carry messages to your wife, but to take you
to the scaffold.”
This unhappy creature, one Jacques Roux, had actually been a priest,
who had thrown off the cassock and joined the revolutionary army.
“True,” said the King, his head falling.
But the name of a man in those ranks was to be made illustrious
amongst pitying and tender-hearted men. The King, looking up, glanced
rapidly along the two lines of faces to find one pitying look.
His eyes rested upon one Gobeau, a man with a frightful name, but
possessed of a far better heart.
“I pray you give this paper to my wife.”
Gobeau hesitated, and looked from the King to his comrades, from his
comrades back to Louis.
“You may read it—if you will. ’Tis but my wishes, which I trust the
Commune may read.”
The man Gobeau asked the consent of his comrades, and then took the
paper.
The morning was very cold, and to complete the resemblance between
the fates of the two beheaded Kings, Charles I of England, and Louis
XVI of France, exactly as Charles’s valet put a cloak round his
master, so that he should not appear to tremble at the scaffold, so
Cléry, knowing nothing of the parallel, put a cloak about his master.
Both kings were beheaded towards the end of January.
“I do not require a cloak,” he said. “Give me my hat.”
As he took it, he shook the faithful Cléry’s hand. Then, turning to
Santerre, and looking him full in the face, he said, “I am ready.”
Santerre and his troop rather followed than escorted him.
The King passed down the staircase slowly, and without any signs of
tremor. Now, it is in descending a staircase that a man, convulsed by
agitation, is almost sure to stumble.
The King did not make one false step.
Reaching the foot of the steps, the King encountered one Mathey.
“Citizen Mathey,” said Louis, “you offended me very cruelly last
night, and I replied angrily. For the sake of this hour, pray pardon
me.”
Mathey, instead of replying, pretended to turn his head away, and not
see the King. However, it is only just to say, in some extenuation
of the brutality of most of those to whom the King addressed himself
during the last hour of his existence, that death was now so quickly
dealt to any man whose words could be twisted into an expression
of even pity for fallen royalty, that it was only at the risk of
exposing life that a man could be humane in an answer to any question
addressed to him by any one of the royal family.
The King was now crossing the court-yard. He had achieved half the
distance before his heart failed him; and, turning yearningly, he
looked towards the tower within which the Queen was confined. A
moment, and his face was towards the people glaring in at the gate.
Once more he looked, as he passed out of the court-yard; then he,
death, and eternity were alone!
A carriage awaited him, an armed man standing each side the door.
One of these men entered the carriage, and took a front seat; the
King followed, and took the place of honor—the right, facing the
horses. The Abbé Edgeworth followed, and sat beside Louis. The second
gendarme now entered, and slammed and fastened the door, and the
carriage was at once started.
Sixty drums lead the way, incessantly sounding, and a mass of armed
men surrounded the victim.
The reign of terror had begun, in truth. A Governmental order had
been issued, forbidding any citizen to show himself at a window;
and the infraction of such an order was, in itself, probably a
condemnation to death. The citizens were also forbidden to cross any
of the streets upon the line of march.
A strange effect was this procession.
The morning was lowering, cold, dead, and damp; and the noisy sixty
drums, purposely used to drown any cry that might be raised, led the
way for a hurried, half-disciplined, half-armed horde of armed men;
in their midst, a carriage, half-filled with two such as those who
formed the escort.
And this procession marched through a double row of steel—of pikes
and bayonets, held by silent men. At distances were squads of the
regulars, armed and prepared as for an action in the field.
A strange sight! Thousands of armed men—soldiers with cannon and
musket, prepared against a numerous foe; a swiftly passing crowd of
men, armed to the teeth, jealously guarding a carriage half-filled
with two such as they themselves were,—all against—what?
Sixty drums beating to drown—utter silence! Two hundred thousand men,
to keep order amongst—space! Armed men—and that was all!
On the line, not a human being to be seen beyond the serried lines
of armed men. Not a woman’s form for the eye to rest on—every window
blind, every street passed, a desert. Paris was a city of the dead.
Even the marketplaces were silent, and not even the voice of a child
was to be heard.
Cannon gaped at every street corner, the artillerymen holding lighted
matches; in a word, on all sides were to be seen evidences of
preparations to meet a formidable enemy—on not one was the shadow of
an enemy to be seen.
The King could scarcely be perceived though the forest of steel in
which he was lost. He wore a brown coat and a white waistcoat. His
hair was raised up already for the executioner’s hands.
So great was the noise created by the drums, that he could not hear
what the Abbé Edgeworth said, or even what he himself said to that
self-devoted gentleman.
Therefore he took the minister’s breviary, and opened it at those
particular psalms which he had learnt in his captivity, suited to
his situation. These he began to recite while the priest prayed
beside him.
It is said the expression of the two men-at-arms were those of
astonishment and admiration.
All these warlike preparations were met by the opposition of seven or
eight opponents.
The procession moved from the Temple up to the boulevards, the line
of which was kept by the procession, until it reached the place of
execution, on that spot which is now the Place de la Concorde. At
that point on the line of march which now lies between the Portes St.
Denis and St. Martin, occurred the one sign of any opposition to the
tragedy which was about to be completed.
There was a sudden stir; and, suddenly, seven or eight young men,
sword in hand, rushed from the Rue Beauregard, dashed forward through
the line of armed men, and even reached the carriage, they crying,
“Help, help, those who would save the King!”
The leader of these frantically-daring young men was one Baron de
Batz, a man of extremely adventurous tendencies. Chiefly by his
means, three thousand young men had combined to effect this diversion
in the King’s favor, and they were to respond to the call to arms led
by Batz.
The three thousand made no reply; the seven or eight devoted men
stood alone in the midst of nearly a quarter of a million of armed
enemies.
But some mercy was shown them, for those about them did not massacre
the youths,—they were all very young. They even escaped into a side
street; but here they were fallen upon by a squad of gendarmes,
rapidly told off for that purpose; and being caught sword-in-hand,
they were shot down, and left where they fell.