Part 27 (1/2)
”Louis, you may be seated,” said Barere. ”Answer the questions that shall be put to you.” The King seated himself and listened to the reading of the 'acte enonciatif', article by article. All the faults of the Court were there enumerated and imputed to Louis XVI. personally. He was charged with the interruption of the sittings of the 20th of June, 1789, with the Bed of Justice held on the 23d of the same month, the aristocratic conspiracy thwarted by the insurrection of the 14th of July, the entertainment of the Life Guards, the insults offered to the national c.o.c.kade, the refusal to sanction the Declaration of Rights, as well as several const.i.tutional articles; lastly, all the facts which indicated a new conspiracy in October, and which were followed by the scenes of the 5th and 6th; the speeches of reconciliation which had succeeded all these scenes, and which promised a change that was not sincere; the false oath taken at the Federation of the 14th of July; the secret practices of Talon and Mirabeau to effect a counter-revolution; the money spent in bribing a great number of deputies; the a.s.semblage of the ”knights of the dagger” on the 28th of February, 1791; the flight to Varennes; the fusilade of the Champ de Mars; the silence observed respecting the Treaty of Pilnitz; the delay in the promulgation of the decree which incorporated Avignon with France; the commotions at Nimes, Montauban, Mende, and Jales; the continuance of their pay to the emigrant Life Guards and to the disbanded Const.i.tutional Guard; the insufficiency of the armies a.s.sembled on the frontiers; the refusal to sanction the decree for the camp of twenty thousand men; the disarming of the fortresses; the organisation of secret societies in the interior of Paris; the review of the Swiss and the garrison of the palace on the 10th August; the summoning the Mayor to the Tuileries; and lastly, the effusion of blood which had resulted from these military dispositions. After each article the President paused, and said, ”What have you to answer?” The King, in a firm voice, denied some of the facts, imputed others to his ministers, and always appealed to the const.i.tution, from which he declared he had never deviated. His answers were very temperate, but on the charge, ”You spilt the blood of the people on the 10th of August,” he exclaimed, with emphasis, ”No, monsieur, no; it was not I.”
All the papers on which the act of accusation was founded were then shown to the King, and he disavowed some of them and disputed the existence of the iron chest; this produced a bad impression, and was worse than useless, as the fact had been proved.
[A secret closet which the King had directed to be constructed in a wall in the Tuileries. The door was of iron, whence it was afterwards known by the name of the iron chest. See Thiers, and Scott.]
Throughout the examination the King showed great presence of mind. He was careful in his answers never to implicate any members of the const.i.tuent, and legislative a.s.semblies; many who then sat as his judges trembled lest he should betray them. The Jacobins beheld with dismay the profound impression made on the Convention by the firm but mild demeanour of the sovereign. The most violent of the party proposed that he should be hanged that very night; a laugh as of demons followed the proposal from the benches of the Mountain, but the majority, composed of the Girondists and the neutrals, decided that he should be formally tried.
After the examination Santerre took the King by the arm and led him back to the waiting-room of the Convention, accompanied by Chambon and Chaumette. Mental agitation and the length of the proceedings had exhausted him, and he staggered from weakness. Chaumette inquired if he wished for refreshment, but the King refused it. A moment after, seeing a grenadier of the escort offer the Procureur de la Commune half a small loaf, Louis XVI. approached and asked him, in a whisper, for a piece.
”Ask aloud for what you want,” said Chaumette, retreating as though he feared being suspected of pity.
”I asked for a piece of your bread,” replied the King.
”Divide it with me,” said Chaumette. ”It is a Spartan breakfast. If I had a root I would give you half.”--[Lamartine's ”History of the Girondists,” edit. 1870, vol. ii., p. 313.]
Soon after six in the evening the King returned to the Temple. ”He seemed tired,” says Clery, simply, ”and his first wish was to be led to his family. The officers refused, on the plea that they had no orders. He insisted that at least they should be informed of his return, and this was promised him. The King ordered me to ask for his supper at half-past eight. The intervening hours he employed in his usual reading, surrounded by four munic.i.p.als. When I announced that supper was served, the King asked the commissaries if his family could not come down. They made no reply. 'But at least,' the King said, 'my son will pa.s.s the night in my room, his bed being here?' The same silence. After supper the King again urged his wish to see his family. They answered that they must await the decision of the Convention. While I was undressing him the King said, 'I was far from expecting all the questions they put to me.' He lay down with perfect calmness. The order for my removal during the night was not executed.” On the King's return to the Temple being known, ”my mother asked to see him instantly,” writes Madame Royale. ”She made the same request even to Chambon, but received no answer. My brother pa.s.sed the night with her; and as he had no bed, she gave him hers, and sat up all the night in such deep affliction that we were afraid to leave her; but she compelled my aunt and me to go to bed. Next day she again asked to see my father, and to read the newspapers, that she might learn the course of the trial. She entreated that if she was to be denied this indulgence, his children, at least, might see him. Her requests were referred to the Commune. The newspapers were refused; but my brother and I were to be allowed to see my father on condition of being entirely separated from my mother. My father replied that, great as his happiness was in seeing his children, the important business which then occupied him would not allow of his attending altogether to his son, and that his daughter could not leave her mother.”
[During their last interview Madame Elisabeth had given Clery one of her handkerchiefs, saying, ”You shall keep it so long as my brother continues well; if he becomes ill, send it to me among my nephew's things.”]
The a.s.sembly having, after a violent debate, resolved that Louis XVI.
should have the aid of counsel, a deputation was sent to the Temple to ask whom he would choose. The King named Messieurs Target and Tronchet.
The former refused his services on the ground that he had discontinued practice since 1785; the latter complied at once with the King's request; and while the a.s.sembly was considering whom to, nominate in Target's place, the President received a letter from the venerable Malesherbes, then seventy years old, and ”the most respected magistrate in France,” in the course of which he said: ”I have been twice called to be counsel for him who was my master, in times when that duty was coveted by every one. I owe him the same service now that it is a duty which many people deem dangerous. If I knew any possible means of acquainting him with my desires, I should not take the liberty of addressing myself to you.”
[Christian Guillaume de Lamoignon de Malesherbes, an eminent French statesman, son of the Chancellor of France, was born at Paris in 1721. In 1750 he succeeded his father as President of the Court of Aids, and was also made superintendent of the press. On the banishment of the Parliaments and the suppression of the Court of Aids, Malesherbes was exiled to his country-seat. In 1775 he was appointed Minister of State.
On the decree of the Convention for the King's trial, he emerged from his retreat to become the voluntary advocate of his sovereign. Malesherbes was guillotined in 1794, and almost his whole family were extirpated by their merciless persecutors.]
Other citizens made similar proposals, but the King, being made acquainted with them by a deputation from the Commune, while expressing his grat.i.tude for all the offers, accepted only that of Malesherbes.
[The Citoyenne Olympia Degonges, calling herself a free and loyal Republican without spot or blame, and declaring that the cold and selfish cruelty of Target had inflamed her heroism and roused her sensibility, asked permission to a.s.sist M, de Malesherbes in defending the King. The a.s.sembly pa.s.sed to the order of the day on this request.--BERTRAND DE MOLLEVILLE, ”Annals,” edit. 1802, vol, viii., p. 254.]
On 14th December M. Tronchet was allowed to confer with the King, and later in the same day M. de Malesherbes was admitted to the Tower. ”The King ran up to this worthy old man, whom he clasped in his arms,” said Clery, ”and the former minister melted into tears at the sight of his master.”
[According to M. de Hue, ”The first time M. de Malesherbes entered the Temple, the King clasped him in his arms and said, 'Ah, is it you, my friend? You fear not to endanger your own life to save mine; but all will be useless. They will bring me to the scaffold. No matter; I shall gain my cause if I leave an unspotted memory behind me.'”]
Another deputation brought the King the Act of Accusation and the doc.u.ments relating to it, numbering more than a hundred, and taking from four o'clock till midnight to read. During this long process the King had refreshments served to the deputies, taking nothing himself till they had left, but considerately reproving Clery for not having supped. From the 14th to the 26th December the King saw his counsel and their colleague M.
de Size every day. At this time a means of communication between the royal family and the King was devised: a man named Turgi, who had been in the royal kitchen, and who contrived to obtain employment in the Temple, when conveying the meals of the royal family to their apartments, or articles he had purchased for them, managed to give Madame Elisabeth news of the King. Next day, the Princess, when Turgi was removing the dinner, slipped into his hand a bit of paper on which she had p.r.i.c.ked with a pin a request for a word from her brother's own hand. Turgi gave this paper to Clery, who conveyed it to the King the same evening; and he, being allowed writing materials while preparing his defence, wrote Madame Elisabeth a short note. An answer was conveyed in a ball of cotton, which Turgi threw under Clery's bed while pa.s.sing the door of his room. Letters were also pa.s.sed between the Princess's room and that of Clery, who lodged beneath her, by means of a string let down and drawn up at night. This communication with his family was a great comfort to the King, who, nevertheless, constantly cautioned his faithful servant. ”Take care,” he would say kindly, ”you expose yourself too much.”
[The King's natural benevolence was constantly shown while in the Temple.
His own dreadful position never prevented him from sympathy with the smaller troubles of others. A servant in the Temple named Marchand, the father of a family, was robbed of two hundred francs,--his wages for two months. The King observed his distress, asked its cause, and gave Clery the amount to be handed to Marchand, with a caution not to speak of it to any one, and, above all, not to thank the King, lest it should injure him with his employers.]
During his separation from his family the King refused to go into the garden. When it was proposed to him he said, ”I cannot make up my mind to go out alone; the walk was agreeable to me only when I shared it with my family.” But he did not allow himself to dwell on painful reflections.
He talked freely to the munic.i.p.als on guard, and surprised them by his varied and practical knowledge of their trades, and his interest in their domestic affairs. On the 19th December the King's breakfast was served as usual; but, being a fast-day, he refused to take anything. At dinner-time the King said to Clery, ”Fourteen years ago you were up earlier than you were to-day; it is the day my daughter was born--today, her birthday,” he repeated, with tears, ”and to be prevented from seeing her!” Madame Royale had wished for a calendar; the King ordered Clery to buy her the ”Almanac of the Republic,” which had replaced the ”Court Almanac,” and ran through it, marking with a pencil many names.
”On Christmas Day,” Says Clery, ”the King wrote his will.”
[Madame Royale says: ”On the 26th December, St. Stephen's Day, my father made his will, because he expected to be a.s.sa.s.sinated that day on his way to the bar of the Convention. He went thither, nevertheless, with his usual calmness.”--”Royal Memoirs,” p. 196.]
On the 26th December, 1792, the King appeared a second time before the Convention. M. de Seze, labouring night and day, had completed his defence. The King insisted on excluding from it all that was too rhetorical, and confining it to the mere discussion of essential points.
[When the pathetic peroration of M, de Seze was read to the King, the evening before it was delivered to the a.s.sembly, ”I have to request of you,” he said, ”to make a painful sacrifice; strike out of your pleading the peroration. It is enough for me to appear before such judges, and show my entire innocence; I will not move their feelings.”--LACRETELLE.]