Александр Дюма
The Countess of Charny; or, The Execution of King Louis XVI
CHAPTER XXVI.
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.
CHAPTER XXVII.
THE PARALLEL TO CHARLES I
This worthy priest, of English origin, had escaped the September massacres and was hiding out at Choisy, under the name of Essex, as the Princess Elizabeth knew, and where to find him.
He came to the call, though he believed that he would be killed within an hour of the dreadful scene.
He was not to quit the prisoner till he quitted the world.
The king was allowed to take farewell of his family in the dining-room, where the glass door allowed the guards still to keep him in sight. They knew the trial had taken place, but not the particulars, with which he supplied them. He dwelt particularly on the fact that Petion had not pressed for the death penalty, and that Gilbert had voted to spare his life.
Heaven owed the poor prisoner some comfort, and it came in the love of the queen.
As has been seen in our story, the queen easily let the picturesque side of life attract her. She had that vivid imagination which makes women imprudent even more than disposed; she had been imprudent all her life in her friendship and in her loving.
Her captivity saved her in a moral point of view; she returned to the pure and holy domestic virtues from which youthful passions had led her; and as she could do nothing without extravagance, she fell to loving passionately, in his distress, this royal consort whose vulgar traits were all she could see in the days of felicity. In their first disasters she saw a dullard, almost cowardly, without impulse or resolution; at the temple she began to see that the wife had not only misjudged the husband, but the queen the monarch. She beheld one calm and patient, meek but firm under outrages; all the worldly dryness in her was melted, and turned to the profit of better sentiments.
The same as she had scorned too deeply, she loved too fondly.
"Alas!" the king said to his confessor, "to think that I love so dearly and am loved so much."
In their last interview, the queen seemed to yield to a feeling akin to remorse. When she found that she could not be alone with her lord, she drew him into a window recess, where she would have fallen on her knees at his feet; but he understood that she wanted to ask his forgiveness, so he stayed her and drew his will from his pocket to show her the lines:
"I pray my wife to forgive all the woes I have led her to suffer and the sorrows caused her in the course of our union, as she may be sure that I cherish no ill feeling toward her, if she should think that she had reason to blame herself in any way."
Marie kissed his hands, for while there was full pardon, there was great delicacy, too, in the rest of the phrase.
So this royal Magdalen might die tranquil, late as came her love for her husband, it won her divine and human mercy, and her pardon was bestowed on earth, not in a mysterious whisper as an indulgence, of which the king felt ashamed, but openly and publicly.
Who would reproach her who went toward posterity with the double crown of the martyr and her husband's forgiveness?
The poignant farewell lasted nearly two hours before the condemned went out to his priest.
As day began to break, the drums were beaten throughout the town; the bustle and the sound penetrated the old tower and chilled the blood of the priest and Clery.
At nine o'clock the noise increased and the doors were loudly flung open. Santerre came in, followed by town officers and soldiers, who formed a double row.
The king received the priest's blessing and a prayer for support, and called for his hat, as all the others had kept their hats on. Seeing that Clery had his overcoat ready for fear he would be cold, and the shiver would be taken for that of fright, he said:
"No; nothing but my hat."
He took advantage of the act to shake his hand for the last time.
"Let us go, gentlemen," he said, with the tone of command so rarely used by him.
In crossing the first yard, he turned two or three times to wave a farewell to his dear ones.
With the priest he stepped into a hack, and the procession started, leaving the queen no hope save for a rescue on the road. That of a respite had already vanished.
She fell into a chair, sobbing: "To think of his going without saying good-bye!"
The streets were foggy and deserted, as all citizens were forbidden to be about unless belonging to the armed militia, and there were no faces up at the windows.
All the prisoner saw was a forest of pikes and bayonets, with a large drum corps before the party and cavalry around.
The clamor prevented the king talking with the confessor, who read his prayer-book.
At St. Denis Gate the king lifted his head, for the uproar was marked by a change in the shouts. A dozen young men, sword in hand, rushed through the retinue and shouted:
"Rescue! This way, those who would save the king!"
One Baron de Batz, an adventurer, had engaged three thousand bravoes to make this attempt, but only a handful responded when he sounded the signal-cry. This forlorn hope of royalty, meeting no reply, retreated and slipped away in the confusion.
The incident was of such slight importance that the carriage did not stop; it was at its journey's end when it did.
One of the three brothers Sanson, the Paris executioners, came to open the door.
Laying his hand on the abbe's knee, the king said, in the tone of a master:
"Gentlemen, I recommend this gentleman to you. Take care of him after my death, for he has done nobody harm."
He threw off his coat, not to be touched by the headsman. One had a rope to bind his hands, but he said he would not submit to it. A hand-to-hand fight would rob the victim of all the merit of six months' calmness, courage, and resignation, so the confessor advised him to yield, particularly as one of the Sansons, moved with pity, offered to substitute a handkerchief.
He held out his hands resignedly, saying:
"Do as you like. I shall drain the chalice to the dregs."
The scaffold steps were high and slippery, and he had the priest's arm for support, but on the top step he escaped, so to say, from the spiritual guide, and went to the further end of the platform.
He was flushed in the face, and had never appeared more hale or animated.
The drums began to beat, but he imposed silence by a look as, with a lusty voice, he said:
"I die innocent of all the crimes imputed to me. I forgive the authors of my death, and I pray God that this blood shall not fall on France."
"Strike up, drums!" roared a voice long believed to be Santerre's, but was that of Beaufranchet, Count Oyat, illegitimate son of Louis XV., and a courtesan, the prisoner's natural uncle.
The drums beat, and the king stamped his foot in vain.
"Do your duty!" yelled the pikemen to the executioners, who threw themselves on the king.
He returned with slow steps under the knife, of which he had designed the proper shape only a year ago.
He glanced at the priest who was praying at a corner of the scaffold.
Behind the two upright beams a scuffle went on. The tilting flap fell into place, and the prisoner's head appeared in the ominous gap. A flash, a dull, chopping sound was heard, and a large jet of blood spouted forth.
Then, one of the death's-men taking up the head, sprinkled the by-standers with the dripping fluid. At this sight the pikemen whooped and rushed to dye their weapons in the blood, which they ran to show the town, with shouts of "Long live the Republic!"
For the first time this cry found no echo, though it had oft thrilled hearers with joy. The Republic had a stain on the brow which nothing ever could efface. As a great diplomatist said, it had committed worse than a crime – a blunder.
Thus died, on the 21st of January, 1793, King Louis XVI. He was aged thirty-nine years. He had reigned eighteen, and was over five months a prisoner. His last wish was not accomplished, for his blood not only fell on France, but over the whole of Europe.
