Chapter XXX: The King Led to Trial

Assassination of Royalists at Versailles.--Jacobin Ascendency.--The
National Convention.--Two Parties, the Girondists and the
Jacobins.--Abolition of Royalty.--Madame Roland.--Battle of
Jemappes.--Mode of life in the Temple.--Insults to the Royal
Family.--New Acts of Rigor.--Trial of the King.--Separation of the
Royal Family.--The Indictment.--The King begs for Bread.

The massacre of the Royalists in Paris was not followed by any general violence throughout the kingdom, for it was in Paris alone that the Patriots were in imminent danger. In Orleans, however, there were a number of Royalists imprisoned under the accusation of treason. These prisoners were brought to Versailles on the night of the 9th of September to be tried. A band of assassins from Paris rushed upon the carriages, dispersed the escort, and most brutally murdered forty-seven out of fifty-three.[375] They then went to the prison, where twelve were taken out, and, after a summary trial, assassinated.

In the mean time elections were going on for the National Convention. The Jacobin Clubs, now generally dominant throughout France, almost every where controlled the elections. Some sober Patriots hoped that the Convention would be disposed and able to check the swelling flood of anarchy. But others, when they saw that the most violent Revolutionists were chosen as deputies, and that they would be able to overawe the more moderate Patriots by the terrors of the mob, began to despair of their country. Paris sent to the Convention Robespierre, Danton, Marat, Chabot, and others who have attained terrible notoriety through scenes of consternation and blood. The Girondists in the Convention, Vergniaud, Condorcet, Barbaroux, Gensonne, though much in the minority, were heroic men, illustrious in intelligence and virtue. There was no longer a Royalist party, not even a Constitutional Royalist party, which dared to avow itself in France. The court and the Allies had driven France to the absolute necessity of a Republic.

On the 20th of September the Legislative Assembly was dissolved, and at the same hour and in the same hall the National Convention commenced its session. The spirit of the Girondists may be seen in their first motion.

"Citizen representatives," said M. Manuel, "in this place every thing ought to be stamped with a character of such dignity and grandeur as to fill the world with awe. I propose that the President of the Assembly be lodged in the Tuileries, that in public he shall be preceded by guards, that the members shall rise when he opens the Assembly. Cineas, the embassador of Pyrrhus, on being introduced to the Roman senate, said that they appeared like an assembly of kings."

This proposition was contemptuously voted down by the Jacobins. Collot d'Herbois, one of the leading Jacobins, then proposed the immediate abolition of royalty. "The word king," said he, "is still a talisman, whose magic power may create many disorders. The abolition of royalty therefore is necessary. Kings are in the moral world that which monsters are in the natural. Courts are always the centre of corruption and the work-houses of crime."

No one ventured to oppose this, and the president declared that by a unanimous vote _royalty was abolished_. It was then voted the 22d of September, 1792, should be considered the first day of the first year of the Republic, and that all documents should follow the date of this era. It was on the eve of this day that intelligence arrived of the cannonade of Valmy, in which the Patriot armies had beaten back the foe. For one short night Paris was radiant with joy.

The most illustrious of the Girondists met that evening in the saloon of Madame Roland, and celebrated, with almost religious enthusiasm, the advent of the Republic. Madame Roland, in the accomplishment of the most intense desire of her heart, appeared radiant with almost supernatural brilliance and beauty. It was observed that M. Roland gazed upon her with a peculiar expression of fondness. The noble and gifted Vergniaud conversed but little, and pensive thoughts seemed to chasten his joy.

At the close of the entertainment he filled his glass, and proposed to drink to the eternity of the Republic.

"Permit me," said Madame Roland, "after the manner of the ancients, to scatter some rose-leaves from my bouquet in your glass."

Vergniaud held out his glass, and some leaves were scattered on the wine. He then said, in words strongly prophetic of their fate, "We should quaff, not roses, but cypress-leaves, in our wine to-night. In drinking to a republic, stained at its birth with the blood of September, who knows that we do not drink to our own death? No matter; were this wine my blood, I would drain it to liberty and equality."

To this all responded with the words _Vive la Republique_. But a few months elapsed ere almost every individual then present perished on the scaffold.

In the mean time Dumouriez, with thirty-five thousand men, was pursuing a division of the retreating Allies, consisting of twenty-five thousand Austrians, under General Clairfayt, through Belgium. On the 4th of November he overtook them strongly intrenched upon the heights of Jemappes. One day was consumed in bringing up his forces and arranging his batteries for the assault. Sixty thousand men were now arrayed for a deadly strife. One hundred pieces of cannon were in battery to hurl into the dense ranks destruction and death. On the morning of the 6th the storm of war commenced. All the day long it raged with pitiless fury. In the evening ten thousand of the dying and the dead covered the ground, and the Austrians were every where retreating in dismay. This new victory caused great rejoicing in Paris, and inspired the revolutionary party with new courage.

The day at length arrived for the trial of the king. It was the 11th of December. For four months the royal family, with ever-alternating hopes and fears, which had been gradually deepening into despair, had now endured the rigors of captivity. The king, with that wonderful equanimity which distinguished him through all these days of trial, immediately upon taking possession of his gloomy abode introduced system into the employment of his time.

His room was on the third story. He usually rose at six o'clock, shaved himself, and carefully dressed his hair. He then entered a small room or closet, which opened from his sleeping-room, and engaged in devotional reading and prayer for an hour. He was not allowed to close the door, for a municipal officer ever stationed in his room was enjoined never to allow the king to leave his sight. He then read till nine o'clock, during which time his faithful servant, Clery, put the room in order, and spread the table for the breakfast of the royal family. At nine o'clock the queen, the children, and Madame Elizabeth came up from the rooms which they occupied below to breakfast.

The meal occupied an hour. The royal family then all descended to the queen's room, where they passed the day. The king employed himself in instructing his son, giving him lessons in geography, which was a favorite study of the king; teaching him to draw and color maps, and to recite choice passages from Corneille and Racine. The queen assumed the education of her daughter, while her own hands and those of Madame Elizabeth were busy in needle-work, knitting, and working tapestry.

At one o'clock, when the weather was fine, the royal family were conducted by four municipal officers into the spacious but dilapidated garden for exercise and the open air. The officials who guarded the king were frequently changed. Sometimes they chanced to be men of humane character, who, though devoted to the disinthrallment of France from the terrible despotism of ages, still pitied the king as the victim of circumstances, and treated him with kindness and respect. But more generally these men were vulgar and rabid Jacobins, who exulted in the opportunity of wreaking upon the king the meanest revenge. They chalked upon the walls of the prison, "The guillotine is permanent and ready for the tyrant Louis." "Madame Veto shall swing." "The little wolves must be strangled." Under a gallows, to which a figure was suspended, was inscribed the words, "Louis taking an air-bath." From such ribald insults the monarch had no protection.

A burly brutal wretch, named Rocher, was one of the keepers of the Tower. He went swaggering about with a bunch of enormous keys clattering at his belt, seeming to glory in his power of annoying, by petty insults, a _king_ and a _queen_. When the royal family were going out into the garden he would go before them to unlock the doors. Making a great demonstration in rattling his keys, and affecting much difficulty in finding the right one, all the party would be kept waiting while he made all possible delay and noise in drawing the bolts and swinging open the ponderous doors. At the side of the last door he not unfrequently stationed himself with his pipe in his mouth, and puffed tobacco-smoke into the faces of the king, the queen, and the children. Some of the guards stationed around would burst into insulting laughter in view of these indignities, which the king endured with meekness which seems supernatural.

The recital of such conduct makes the blood boil in one's veins, and leads one almost to detest the very name of liberty. But then we must not forget that it was despotism which formed these hideous characters; that, age after age and century after century, kings and nobles had been trampling upon the people, crushing their rights, lacerating their heart-strings, dooming fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, by millions upon millions, to beggary, degradation, and woe. It was time for the people to rise at every hazard and break these chains. And while humanity must weep over the woes of Louis XVI. and his unhappy household, humanity can not forget that there are other families and other hearts who claim her sympathies, and that this very Louis XVI. was at this very time doing every thing in his power, by the aid of the armies of foreign despots, to bring the millions of France again under the sway of the most merciless despotism. And it can not be questioned that, had kings and nobles regained their power, they would have wreaked a more terrible vengeance upon the re-enslaved people than the people wreaked upon them.

For an hour the royal family continued walking in the garden. From the roofs of the adjacent houses and the higher windows they could be seen. Every day at noon these roofs and windows were crowded by those anxious to obtain a view of the melancholy group of captives. Frequently they were cheered by gestures of affection from unknown friends. Tender words were occasionally unrolled in capital letters, or a flower to which a pebble was attached would fall at their feet. These tokens of love, slight as they were, came as a balm to their lacerated hearts. So highly did they prize them, that regardless of rain, cold, and snow, and the intolerable insults of their guards, they looked forward daily with eagerness to their garden walk. They recognized particular localities as belonging to their friends, saying, "such a house is devoted to us; such a story is for us; such a room is loyal; such a window friendly."

At two o'clock the royal family returned to the king's room, where dinner was served. After dinner the king took a nap, while the queen, Madame Elizabeth, and the young princess employed themselves with their needles, and the dauphin played some game with Clery, whose name should be transmitted with honor to posterity as faithful in misfortune. When the king awoke from his nap he usually read aloud to his family for an hour or two until supper-time. Soon after supper, the queen, with her children and Madame Elizabeth, retired to their rooms for the night. With hearts bound together by these terrible griefs, they never parted but with a tender and sorrowful adieu.[376]

Such was the monotonous life of the royal family during the four months they occupied the Temple before the trial of the king. But almost every day of their captivity some new act of rigor was enforced upon them. As the armies of the Allies drew nearer, and city after city was falling before their bombardments, and Paris was in a phrensy of terror, apprehensions of a conspiracy of the king with the Royalists, and of their rising and aiding the invaders with an outburst of civil war, led to the adoption of precautions most irksome to the captives.

Municipal officers never allowed any member of the royal family to be out of their sight, except when they retired to bed at night. They then locked the doors, and placed a bed against the entrance to each apartment, and there an officer slept, so as to prevent all possibility of egress. Every day Santerre, commander of the National Guard, made a visit of inspection to all the rooms with his staff. At first the royal family had been allowed pen, ink, and paper, but this privilege was soon withdrawn, and at last the cruel and useless measure was adopted of taking from them all sharp instruments, such as knives, scissors, and even needles, thus depriving the ladies not only of a great solace, but of the power of repairing their decaying apparel. It was not the intention of the Legislative Assembly that the royal family should be exposed to needless suffering. Four hundred dollars were placed in their hands at the commencement of their captivity for their petty expenses, and the Governor of the Temple was ordered to purchase for them whatever they might need, five hundred thousand francs ($100,000) having been appropriated by the Convention for their expenses.[377]

They were not allowed to see the daily journals, which would have informed them of the triumphant march of the Allies, but occasionally papers were sent to them which recorded the victories of the Republic. Clery, however, devised a very shrewd expedient to give them some information of the events which were transpiring. He hired a newsman to pass daily by the windows of the Temple, under the pretense of selling newspapers, and to cry out the principal details contained in them. Clery, while apparently busy about the room, was always sure to be near the window at the appointed hour, listening attentively. At night, stooping over the king's bed to adjust the curtains, he hastily whispered the news he had thus gathered. All this required the greatest caution, for a municipal officer was always in the room, watching every movement.

Early in the morning of the 11th of December all Paris was in commotion to witness the trial of the king, which was to commence on that day. The beating of drums in the street, the mustering of military squadrons at their appointed places of rendezvous, the clatter of hoofs, and the rumbling of artillery over the pavements penetrated even the gloomy apartments of the Temple, and fell appallingly upon the ears of the victims there.

The royal family were at breakfast as they heard these ominous sounds, and they earnestly inquired the cause. After some hesitation the king was informed that the Mayor of Paris would soon come to conduct him to his trial, and that the troops gathering around the Temple were to form his escort. He was also required immediately to take leave of his family, and told that he could not be permitted to see them again until after his trial. Expressions of heart-rending anguish and floods of tears accompanied this cruel separation. The king pleaded earnestly and with gushing eyes that, at least, he might enjoy the society of his little son, saying,

"What, gentlemen! deprive me of even the presence of my son--a child of seven years!"

But the commissioners were inexorable. "The Commune thinks," said they, "that, since you are to be _au secret_ during your trial, your son must necessarily be confined either with you or his mother; and it has imposed the privation upon that parent who, from his sex and courage, was best able to support it."

The queen, with the children and Madame Elizabeth, were conducted to the rooms below. The king, overwhelmed with anguish, threw himself into a chair, buried his face in his hands, and, without uttering a word, remained immovable as a statue for two hours. At noon M. Chambon,[378] the Mayor of Paris, with Santerre, commander of the National Guard, and a group of officers, all wearing the tricolored scarf, entered the king's chamber.

Chambon, with solemnity and with a faltering voice, informed the king of the painful object of their mission, and summoned him, in the name of the Convention, as _Louis Capet_, to appear before their bar.

"Gentlemen," replied the king, "Capet is not my name. It is the name of one of my ancestors. I could have wished that my son, at least, had been permitted to remain with me during the two hours I have awaited you. However, this treatment is but a part of the system adopted toward me throughout my captivity. I follow you, not in obedience to the orders of the Convention, but because my enemies are more powerful than I."

Immediately rising, he put on his great-coat, took his hat, and, following the mayor, and followed by the staff of officers, descended the stairs of the tower.

Before the massive portal of the Temple the carriage of the mayor was drawn up, surrounded by a guard of six hundred picked men. A numerous detachment of cavalry, as an advance-guard, dragging six pieces of cannon, led the melancholy procession which was conducting a monarch to the judgment-bar and to death. A similar body of cavalry followed in the rear with three pieces of cannon. These precautions were deemed necessary to guard against any possible rescue by the Royalists. Every soldier was supplied with sixteen rounds of cartridges, and the battalions marched in such order that they could instantly form in line of battle. The National Guard lined the streets through which they passed, one hundred thousand men being under arms in Paris that day.

The cavalcade passed slowly along the Boulevards. The house-tops, the windows, the side-walks, were thronged with countless thousands. The king, deprived of his razor, had been unable to shave, and his face was covered with shaggy hair; his natural corpulence, wasted away by imprisonment, caused his garments to hang loose and flabby about him; his features were wan through anxiety and suffering. Thus, unfortunately, every thing in his personal appearance combined to present an aspect exciting disgust and repulsion rather than sympathy. The procession passed down the Place Vendome and thence to the Monastery of the Feuillants. The king alighted. Santerre took his arm and led him to the bar of the Convention. There was a moment of profound silence. All were awe-stricken by the solemnity of the scene. The president, Barrere,[379] broke the silence, saying,

"Citizens! Louis Capet is before you. The eyes of Europe are upon you. Posterity will judge you with inflexible severity. Preserve, then, the dignity and the dispassionate coolness befitting judges. You are about to give a great lesson to kings, a great and useful example to nations. Recollect the awful silence which accompanied Louis from Varennes--a silence that was the precursor of the judgment of kings by the people." Then, turning to the king, Barrere said, "Louis, the French nation accuses you. Be seated, and listen to the Act of Accusation." It was then two o'clock in the afternoon.

The formidable indictment was read. The king was held personally responsible for all the acts of hostility to popular liberty which had occurred under his reign. A minute, truthful, impartial recapitulation of those acts, which we have recorded in the previous pages, constituted the accusation. The king listened attentively to the reading, and without any apparent emotion. The accusation consisted of fifty-seven distinct charges. As they were slowly read over, one by one, the president paused after each and said to the king, "What have you to answer?" But two courses consistent with kingly dignity were open for the accused. The one was to refuse any reply and to take shelter in the inviolability with which the Constitution had invested him. The other was boldly to avow that he had adopted the measures of which he was accused, believing it to be essential to the welfare of France that the headlong progress of the Revolution should be checked. Neither would have saved his life, but either would have rescued his memory from much reproach. But the king, cruelly deprived of all counsel with his friends, dragged unexpectedly to his trial, and overwhelmed with such a catalogue of accusations, unfortunately adopted the worst possible course. The blame of some of the acts he threw upon his ministers; some facts he denied; and in other cases he not only prevaricated but stooped to palpable falsehood. When we reflect upon the weak nature of the king and the confusion of mind incident to an hour of such terrible trial, we must judge the unhappy monarch leniently. But when the king denied even the existence of the iron chest which the Convention had already found, and had obtained proof to demonstration that he himself had closed up, and when he denied complicity with the Allies, proofs of which, in his own handwriting, were found in the iron safe, it is not strange that the effect should have been exceedingly unfavorable to his defense.[380]

This interrogation was continued for three hours, at the close of which the king, who had eaten nothing since his interrupted breakfast, was so exhausted that he could hardly stand. Santerre then conducted him into an adjoining committee-room. Before withdrawing, however, the king demanded a copy of the accusation, and counsel to assist him in his defense. In the committee-room the king saw a man eating from a small loaf of bread. Faint with hunger, the monarch approached the man, and, in a whisper, implored a morsel for himself.

"Ask aloud," said the man, retreating, "for what you want." He feared that he should be suspected of some secret conspiracy with the king.

"I am hungry," said Louis XVI., "and ask for a piece of your bread."

"Divide it with me," said the man. "It is a Spartan breakfast. If I had a root I would give you half."

The king entered the carriage eating his crust. The same cavalcade as in the morning preceded and accompanied him. The same crowds thronged the streets and every point of observation. A few brutal wretches, insulting helplessness, shouted _Vive la Revolution!_ and now and then a stanza of the Marseillaise Hymn fell painfully upon his ear. Chambon, the mayor, and Chaumette, the public prosecutor, were in the carriage with the king. Louis, having eaten as much of the half loaf of bread as he needed, had still a fragment in his hand.

"What shall I do with it?" inquired the simple-hearted monarch. Chaumette relieved him of his embarrassment by tossing it out of the window.

"Ah," said the king, "it is a pity to throw bread away when it is so dear."

"True," replied Chaumette; "my grandmother used to say to me, 'Little boy, never waste a crumb of bread; you can not make one.'"[381]

"Monsieur Chaumette," Louis rejoined, "your grandmother appears to me to have been a woman of great good sense."

It was half-past six o'clock, and the gloom of night enveloped the Temple, when Louis was again conducted up the stairs of the tower to his dismal cell. He piteously implored permission again to see his family. But Chambon dared not grant his request in disobedience to the commands of the Commune.

The most frivolous things often develop character. It is on record that the toils and griefs of the day had not impaired the appetite of the king, and that he ate for supper that night "six cutlets, a considerable portion of a fowl, two eggs, and drank two glasses of white wine and one of Alicante wine, and forthwith went to bed."[382]

During these dreadful hours the queen, with Madame Elizabeth and the children, were in a state of agonizing suspense, not even knowing but that the king was being led to his execution. Clery, however, late in the evening, went to their room and informed them of all the details he had been able to gather respecting the king's examination.

"Has any mention been made of the queen?" asked Madame Elizabeth. "Her name was not mentioned," Clery replied, "in the act of accusation."

"Ah," rejoined the princess, "perhaps they demand my brother's life as necessary for their safety; but the queen--these poor children--what obstacle can their lives present to their ambition?"

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 374: Napoleon at St. Helena, 394.]

[Footnote 375: Peltier.]

[Footnote 376: The queen undressed the dauphin, when he repeated the following prayer, composed by the queen and remembered and recorded by her daughter: "Almighty God, who created and redeemed me, I love you! Preserve the days of my father and my family. Protect us against our enemies. Give my mother, my aunt, my sister, the strength they need to support their troubles."--_Lamartine, History of the Girondists_, vol. ii., p. 287.]

[Footnote 377: "We must not exaggerate the faults of human nature, and suppose that, adding an execrable meanness to the fury of fanaticism, the keepers of the imprisoned family imposed on it unworthy privations, with the intention of rendering the remembrance of its past greatness the more painful. Distrust was the sole cause of certain refusals. Thus, while the dread of plots and secret communications prevented them from admitting more than one attendant into the interior of the prison, a numerous establishment was employed in preparing their food. Thirteen persons were engaged in the duties of the kitchen, situated at some distance from the tower. The report of the expenses of the Temple, where the greatest decency is observed, where the prisoners are mentioned with respect, where their sobriety is commended, where Louis XVI. is justified from the low reproach of being too much addicted to wine--these reports, which are not liable to suspicion, make the total expenses of the table amount in two months to 28,745 livres ($5749)."--_Thiers_, vol. ii., p. 26.]

[Footnote 378: "M. Chambon, the successor of Bailly and Petion, was a learned and humane physician, whom public esteem rather than Revolutionary favor had raised to the dignity of the first magistrate of Paris. Of _modere_ principles, kind and warm-hearted, accustomed, by his profession, to sympathize with the unfortunate, compelled to execute orders repugnant to his feelings, the pity of the man was visible beneath the inflexibility of the magistrate."--_Lamartine, Hist. des Girondistes_, vol. ii., p. 321.]

[Footnote 379: "Barrere escaped during the different ebullitions of the Revolution because he was a man, without principle or character, who changed and adapted himself to every side. He had the reputation of being a man of talent, but I did not find him such. I employed him to write, but he displayed no ability. He used many flowers of rhetoric, but no solid argument."--_Napoleon at St. Helena._]

[Footnote 380: Gamain, the locksmith, who for ten years had worked for and with the king, and who had aided him in constructing this iron safe, basely betrayed the secret. The papers were all seized and intrusted by the Convention to a committee of twelve, who were to examine and report upon them. This Judas received, as his reward from the Convention, a pension of two hundred and forty dollars a year. See France and its Revolutions, by Geo. Long, Esq., p. 241.]