PART SIX

THE DEATH OF LOUIS XVI

[Illustration: GENERAL CHARLES-FRANÇOIS DUMOURIEZ

In Command of the French at Valmy

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INTRODUCTION

After the Battle of Valmy, the French armies, with the beginning of autumn, obtained quite unexpected and, as they were to prove, ephemeral successes. Dumouriez, a man of vast military ability, continued to command. The Republican armies poured over the Low Countries. Coincident with these successes, there came a period of high political excitement in Paris, and the rise of a sort of crusading enthusiasm, to spread the democratic principles throughout Europe and to transform society. It is to this more than to any other cause that we must ascribe the trial and execution of the king. There was, indeed, from the point of view of statesmanship alone, some excuse for the trial and fate of Louis. So long as he lived, he was necessarily a rallying-point round which all the counter-revolution would gather. The royal family having been kept in strict imprisonment, but not without some state and considerable luxury, in the Tower of the Temple (a mediæval building in the north-eastern part of Paris), it was at first uncertain what would be done with them. The first steps in the affair took the form of an examination of the papers found in the palace and of a report on Louis’s conduct. The accusations against the fallen king were formulated on the third of November. There were debates in the Revolutionary Congress as to the legality of trying a former head of the state. The trial was decreed exactly a month later. Louis was to plead at the bar of the Convention,--that is, the national congress,--which had met just before Valmy, and which had voted the Republic. Long before his trial began, he was already separated from the rest of his family, who were given rooms above his own in the Temple. The indictment was framed by a committee, which reported on the tenth of December; on the eleventh Louis appeared at the bar of the Convention. He had three advocates, the chief being the old and highly respected legist Malesherbes. The king appeared for the second time on the twenty-sixth of December, and withdrew after the speeches for the defence had been made. His guilt was pronounced by the unanimous vote of the Parliament, no one voting against, and only five abstaining. What followed I now describe.

[Illustration: LAMOIGNON DE MALESHERBES, COUNSEL FOR THE KING AT HIS TRIAL

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