French+Revolution+-+Execution+of+Louis+XVI

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=The Execution of Louis XVI=

King Louis XVI's Rule
Ascending the throne in 1774, Louis inherited a realm driven nearly bankrupt through his predecessors Louis XVI and XV. After donning the crown, things only got worse. The economy declined (unemployment in Paris in 1788 estimated at 50%), the price of food soared. The people were not happy. To top it off, Louis had the misfortune to marry a foreigner, the Austrian Marie Antoinette. The anger of the French people, fueled by xenophobia, targeted Marie as a prime source of their problems. In 1788, Louis was forced to reinstate France's National Assembly relinquishing a lot of his power. The mobs of Paris stormed the hated prison at the Bastille. Feeling that power was shifting to their side, the mob forced the imprisonment of Louis and his family. In 1792, the National Convention declared France a republic and brought Louis to trial for crimes against the people.
 * Was not very knowledgeable of France and its people.
 * Only left the area around Paris and Versailles once, to inspect a harbor in the city of Cherbourg.
 * Ignored reforms which lead to the French Revolution
 * Forced to accept reforms for a republican government
 * Monarchy Dissolved by The Convention
 * Jacobins, a group of affluent French men, Brought Louis XVI To court, fearing he was a threat to the republic.
 * He was sentenced to death by guillotine on January 21, 1793

The execution of Louis XVI by guillotine on January 21, 1793 was a major event of the French Revolution and a message from the French revolutionaries to the European monarchies. After the events which saw the fall of the monarchy after the Parisians' attack on the Tuileris, Louis was arrested, interned in the prison with his family, he was tried for high treason before the National Convention and was condemned to death by a majority. His execution made him the first victim of the Reign of Terror and his wife Marie Antoinette was guillotined on October 16, the same year.



[] The actual indictment and trial of Louis XVI

[]

"The Execution of Louis XVI, 1793," EyeWitness to History, [|www.eyewitnesstohistory.com] (1999).

E. L. Higgins, ed., //The French Revolution as Told by Contemporaries// (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1966), pp. 392

(2009). Execution of Louis XVI. //Wikipedia//. Retrieved (2009, November 11) from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Execution_of_Louis_XVI

Louis XVI's government's financial problems were significant, and by the late 1780s his inability to deal with these decisively led directly to the meeting of the Estates-General in 1789, and to that body's declaration of a National Assembly (French Revolution). In the context of popular riots, and his own return to Paris from Versailles in October 1789, Louis accepted the National Assembly and worked with it as a constitutional monarch. However, his anti-revolutionary sympathies were made evident in June 1791, when he attempted to escape from France. He was captured at Varennes, returned to Paris, and suspended until he accepted the new constitution, which he did in September. He subsequently failed to follow the constitution, exemplified by his dismissal of his ministers in June 1792 after which his position became even more tenuous. In late June 1792 his quarters in the Tuileries Palace were stormed; and in August 1792 when a similar rising occurred, the Assembly suspended the monarchy. As the course of the French Revolutionary Wars turned against France, pressure for more decisive action against internal opponents grew, culminating in the abolition of the monarchy and the declaration of the republic in September 1792. In December Louis was tried by the Convention for crimes against the revolution. Found guilty unanimously, he was sentenced to death: and despite some discussion of a reprieve and of holding a popular referendum on his sentence, he was executed in January 1793. “Louis XVI”, __A-Z of Modern Europe Since 1789__, 2000 ed. The King, a devout man, was unhappy about the Civil Constitution and tried to flee. The flight to Varennes (June 1791) made it clear that Louis had not accepted the Revolution and was followed by demands for a republic. A demonstration demanding this was crushed at the Champ de Mars in July but few believed the King when he took an oath to uphold the new Constitution, which drastically limited his powers, in September 1791. Yet it seemed likely that the Constitution and the monarchy would survive. What prevented this was war with Austria, which began the French Revolutionary Wars in April 1792. This was one of the most important events of the Revolution, which affected nearly everything that happened in France afterwards. The King and Marie Antoinette were suspected — with reason — of wanting an Austrian victory: on 10 August 1792 the palace of the Tuileries was attacked in another revolutionary //journée,// the King was imprisoned and in September a new Assembly, the Convention, abolished the monarchy. In the same month the Prussian invasion of France caused panic in the capital, where the September massacres took place, but the danger to Paris was averted by the French victory at the battle of Valmy. The King was tried and executed in January 1793 and a month later the war was extended, when the Convention declared war on Britain and Holland. “French Revolution (1789-1799).” __The New Penguin Dictionary of Modern History 1789-1945__, 1995 ed.

 // **T** // he problem of what to do with Louis XVI rested on the question of whether the King of France can be tried. There wasn't a right answer. The Constitution of 1791 protected the monarch from any penalty worse than dethronement, and no court in the land had legitimate jurisdiction over him. Yet Robespierre's argument that a trial was unnecessary was generally rejected: Louis couldn't be condemned without a trial. So, with no other alternative before them, the Convention took on the role of a court. In most respects this was contrary to accepted judicial principles; but it was expedient, and there seemed to be no other viable course.  //**L**//ouis' defense centered on his rights under the Constitution and on the illegality of the institution trying him. Constitutionally his case was unassailable - provided he could convince the deputies that he had honestly intended to become a constitutional monarch. The evasiveness of many of his replies under cross-examination did not inspire confidence that he had so intended. By ordinary standards his trial was illegal, as the defense ably argued; but the Convention had absolute powers, and this changed the terms of the discussion. It was inconceivable that the King could be allowed to commit treason without being punished. If deputies found him guilty, the legal penalty was death, and the only way of averting this was to place politics above justice. To allow Louis to live would undermine the principle of revolutionary justice, but relieve the consciences of those who doubted the Convention's right to act as a court.  //**P**//aris was hostile to the King and the issues of the trial were avidly discussed. From late December the Girodins urged a nationwide referendum, to shift responsibility and remove any suspicion of Parisian intimidation. Most deputies rejected this //appel au peuple//, since it seemed likely to promote civil war.  //**F**//or the participants the trial was traumatic and dangerous. In the venomous debates in the Convention the right classed all Parisians as //septembriseurs//, radical supporters of street violence, and all those favoring regicide as tainted by bloodlust. Those in favor of executing the King accused their opponents of royalism, a deadly insult to men whose true concern was Parisian extremism or who were opposed in principle to capital punishment, as Robespierre had been in the past. All the deputies knew they were risking their lives; the anti-regicides remembered the September massacres, the regicides feared royalist vengeance. Yet few abstained from voting, and changes of direction continued until the end of the debate. At the first vote, the 693 deputies present unanimously voted Louis guilty and the call for a referendum was rejected by 424 to 283. The death penalty was carried 387 to 334. Seventy-two deputies asked for a reprieve, but an extra vote saw their demand rejected by 380 to 310. On each occasion deputies answered individually to their names. The process spread over five days. On January 21, 1793, Louis was driven through troop-lined streets to the guillotine and decapitated. []

After the death of Louis XVI in 1793, the Reign of Terror began.

L ouis XVI, king of France, arrived in the wrong historical place at the wrong time and soon found himself overwhelmed by events beyond his control. Ascending the throne in 1774, Louis inherited a realm driven nearly bankrupt through the opulence of his predecessors Louis XIV and XV. After donning the crown, things only got worse. The economy spiraled downward (unemployment in Paris in 1788 is estimated at 50%), crops failed, the price of bread and other food soared. The people were not happy. To top it off, Louis had the misfortune to marry a foreigner, the Austrian Marie Antoinette. The anger of the French people, fueled by xenophobia, targeted Marie as a prime source of their problems. In 1788, Louis was forced to reinstate France's National Assembly (the Estates-General) which quickly curtailed the king's powers. In July of the following year, the mobs of Paris stormed the hated prison at the Bastille. Feeling that power was shifting to their side, the mob forced the imprisonment of Louis and his family. Louis attempted escape in 1791 but was captured and returned to Paris. In 1792, the newly elected National Convention declared France a republic and brought Louis to trial for crimes against the people. On January 20, 1793, the National Convention condemned Louis XVI to death, his execution scheduled for the next day. Louis spent that evening saying goodbye to his wife and children. The following day dawned cold and wet. Louis arose at five. At eight o'clock a guard of 1,200 horsemen arrived to escort the former king on a two-hour carriage ride to his place of execution. Accompanying Louis, at his invitation, was a priest, Henry Essex Edgeworth, an Englishman living in France. Edgeworth recorded the event and we join his narrative as he and the fated King enter the carriage to begin their journey:

"The King, finding himself seated in the carriage, where he could neither speak to me nor be spoken to without witness, kept a profound silence. I presented him with my breviary, the only book I had with me, and he seemed to accept it with pleasure: he appeared anxious that I should point out to him the psalms that were most suited to his situation, and he recited them attentively with me. The //gendarmes//, without speaking, seemed astonished and confounded at the tranquil piety of their monarch, to whom they doubtless never had before approached so near. The procession lasted almost two hours; the streets were lined with citizens, all armed, some with pikes and some with guns, and the carriage was surrounded by a body of troops, formed of the most desperate people of Paris. As another precaution, they had placed before the horses a number of drums, intended to drown any noise or murmur in favour of the King; but how could they be heard? Nobody appeared either at the doors or windows, and in the street nothing was to be seen, but armed citizens - citizens, all rushing towards the commission of a crime, which perhaps they detested in their hearts. The carriage proceeded thus in silence to the Place de Louis XV, and stopped in the middle of a large space that had been left round the scaffold: this space was surrounded with cannon, and beyond, an armed multitude extended as far as the eye could reach. As soon as the King perceived that the carriage stopped, he turned and whispered to me, 'We are arrived, if I mistake not.' My silence answered that we were. One of the guards came to open the carriage door, and the //gendarmes// would have jumped out, but the King stopped them, and leaning his arm on my knee, 'Gentlemen,' said he, with the tone of majesty, 'I recommend to you this good man; take care that after my death no insult be offered to him - I charge you to prevent it.'… As soon as the King had left the carriage, three guards surrounded him, and would have taken off his clothes, but he repulsed them with haughtiness- he undressed himself, untied his neckcloth, opened his shirt, and arranged it himself. The guards, whom the determined countenance of the King had for a moment disconcerted, seemed to recover their audacity. They surrounded him again, and would have seized his hands. 'What are you attempting?' said the King, drawing back his hands. 'To bind you,' answered the wretches. 'To bind //me//,' said the King, with an indignant air. 'No! I shall never consent to that: do what you have been ordered, but you shall never bind me. . .' The path leading to the scaffold was extremely rough and difficult to pass; the King was obliged to lean on my arm, and from the slowness with which he proceeded, I feared for a moment that his courage might fail; but what was my astonishment, when arrived at the last step, I felt that he suddenly let go my arm, and I saw him cross with a firm foot the breadth of the whole scaffold; silence, by his look alone, fifteen or twenty drums that were placed opposite to me; and in a voice so loud, that it must have been heard it the Pont Tournant, I heard him pronounce distinctly these memorable words: '//I die innocent of all the crimes laid to my charge; I Pardon those who have occasioned my death; and I pray to God that the blood you are going to shed may never be visited on France//.' He was proceeding, when a man on horseback, in the national uniform, and with a ferocious cry, ordered the drums to beat. Many voices were at the same time heard encouraging the executioners. They seemed reanimated themselves, in seizing with violence the most virtuous of Kings, they dragged him under the axe of the guillotine, which with one stroke severed his head from his body. All this passed in a moment. The youngest of the guards, who seemed about eighteen, immediately seized the head, and showed it to the people as he walked round the scaffold; he accompanied this monstrous ceremony with the most atrocious and indecent gestures. At first an awful silence prevailed; at length some cries of 'Vive la Republique!' were heard. By degrees the voices multiplied and in less than ten minutes this cry, a thousand times repeated became the universal shout of the multitude, and every hat was in the air." "The Execution of Louis XVI, 1793," EyeWitness to History, www.eyewitnesstohistory.com (1999).