The French Revolution: A Short History

by R. M. Johnston

On the same day, the 3rd of December, without accepting Robespierre's point of view, the Convention voted that the King should be brought to trial. The Gironde, feeling the current now drawing them fast to a catastrophe, attempted, in feeble fashion, to change its direction, urging that an appeal should be made to the country. This failed, and a week later Louis was brought before the assembly.

The royal family had been kept in very strict confinement at the Temple. The Commune officials in whose charge they were placed were for the most part men of the lower classes, brutal, arrogant, suspicious, and somewhat oppressed with responsibility and the fear of possible attempts at a rescue. In these conditions the royal family suffered severely, and, under suffering, rapidly began to regain some of the ground they had lost while fortune smiled. Against insult the royal dignity asserted itself, and in adversity the simplicity and {166} kindliness of Louis began rather suddenly to look like something not so very remote from saintliness; such is the relation of surroundings and background to the effect produced by a man's life and character.

Before the Convention, on the 11th of December, Louis, mild and dignified, listened in some bewilderment to a long list of so-called charges, of which the most salient accused him of complicity with Bouillé in a plot against his subjects, and of having broken his oath to the constitution. When asked what answer he had to make, he denied the charges, and demanded time to prepare a defence and to obtain legal assistance. This was granted, and an adjournment was taken. From all of which it appears that Louis accepted the false ground which the Convention had marked out for him, and lacked the logical sense of Robespierre.

During the adjournment, which was for two weeks, the Girondins made one more attempt to dodge the issue, to refer the trial of the King to the electorate. Behind them was a great mass of opinion. The department of Finisterre passed resolutions demanding the suspension of Marat, Robespierre and {167} Danton; it approached the neighbouring departments with a view to combining their armed forces and sending them to Paris. Even with such demonstrations to strengthen their hands the Girondins were in too false a position, were too much orators and not men of action, to save themselves; Paris held them inexorably to their detested task.

On the 26th, the trial was resumed, and, save for judgment, concluded. Louis was in charge of Santerre, commanding the national guard of Paris. His advocates, Malesherbes, Tronchet and de Sèze, did their duty with courage and ability, after which the King was removed, and the Convention resolved itself into a disorderly and clamorous meeting in which the public galleries added as much to the din as the members themselves.

More debates followed, of which the turn was reached on the 3rd of January. On that day Barère, most astute of those who sat in the centre, keenest to detect the tremor of the straw that showed which way public passion was about to blow, ascended the tribune and delivered his opinion. Anxiously the house hung on the words of the oracle of moral cowardice, and heard that oracle pronounce {168} the destruction of the King as a measure of public safety. From that moment all attempts to save him were in vain.

The Girondins did not confine themselves to numerous efforts to displace the responsibility of judging from the Convention to the people. Three days after Barère's speech Dumouriez arrived in Paris. As La Fayette had a few months before, so did Dumouriez now, appear to be the man of the sword so dreaded by Robespierre, the successful soldier ready to convert the Revolution to his own profit, or if not to his own to that of his party, the Girondins. During more than two weeks Dumouriez remained in the city, casting about for some means of saving the King, but constantly checked by the Jacobins, who through Pache, minister of war, kept control of the artillery and troops near Paris.

On the 15th of January the Convention came to a vote, amid scenes of intense excitement. Was Louis guilty? And if so what should be his punishment? Six hundred and eighty-three members voted affirmatively to the first question. Three hundred and sixty-one voted the penalty of death. About the same number equivocated in a variety of forms, the most popular proving the one that declared for {169} imprisonment or exile, to be changed to death in case of invasion. Vergniaud, as president, at the end of a session that lasted 36 hours, declared the sentence of the Convention to be death.

On the 19th of January one last effort was made. A motion for a respite was proposed, but was rejected, 380 to 310; and the Convention then fixed the 21st as the day for the King's execution. On that day Louis accordingly went to the scaffold. The guillotine was set up in the great open space known at various epochs as the Place Louis XV, de la Revolution, and de la Concorde. Louis, after a touching farewell from his family, and after confessing whatever he imagined to be his sins, was driven from the Temple to the place of execution; he was dressed in white. The streets were thronged. The national guard was out in force, and when Louis from the platform attempted to speak, Santerre ordered his drums to roll. A moment later the head of King Louis XVI had fallen, and many mourning royalists were vowing loyalty in their hearts to the little boy of eight, imprisoned in the temple, who to them was King Louis XVII.