revolution_fr | 21 January 1793 and 1763

Though it is fast waning, today marks the 216th anniversary of the execution of Louis Capet, ci-devant roi des Français, as well as Augustin Robespierre's 246th birthday.

To commemorate the first event, I've taken the liberty of translating Michel Vovelle's article on the subject written for the bicentennial and originally published in l'Humanité on 21 January 1993. My translation comes from the version of the article republished in the anthology of his essays, Combats pour la Révolution française.

THE DEATH OF THE KING

Thus, the celebration of the two hundredth anniversary of the death of the king will take on the appearance of a national event. Nostalgics missing royalty, fundamentalists missing fundamentalism, publicists missing publicity have decided it. Thrilled by the godsend, the media have followed it, radios and televisions are on the watch, dailies and weeklies are mobilizing: the congestion is such that out fly the headlines, to formulate the only question of the day: “Was it necessary to kill Louis XVI?” Surprised, the Republican State observes… silence. Elementary prudence. Opinion takes it, resigned. In the Europe of the twelve [countries], six sovereigns observe us.

It would be as imprudent to underestimate the importance of this media micro-event as to make a dish of it [to overreact] – even the traditional veal’s head of republicans of the last [19^th] century, on 21 January. Nothing is ever insignificant, on the level of symbolism, in a France that celebrated the bicentennial of the Republic quite modestly four months ago.

The republicans of 1993 will not celebrate the king’s death. There is no reason for them to shut themselves up in the mournful silence of badly dissimulated shame.

The king’s death was an important event in the short-term of the revolutionary decade; it has remained so in the long-term of our republican history, for Jaurès wrote: “The kings will return” – between 1815 and 1848 – … “They will be nothing but ghosts.”

A turning point in the Revolution? The major caesura that the trial and death of the king represents by its spectacular character, must not lead to its being dissociated from the events that shed light on it, explaining it and extending it: a drama in three acts – and perhaps even four… On 10 August 1792, the Parisian people in arms, seconded by the provincial fédérés, already gave their verdict in taking the Tuileries, “repair” of monarchical power; on 21 September, the political body issued from the elections to the Convention, the first, even imperfect, experiment with universal suffrage, sanctioned that “second revolution” of 10 August in proclaiming the Republic. In the summer of 1793 – and this would indeed be the fourth act – the Convention will vote the Constitution of Year I and its new Declaration of Rights – an expression of democratic hope unsurpassed until the most contemporary era. That anniversary, which is liable to be written off like that of 10 August was, we few will remember it. To insert the king’s death in the context that gives it its significance is not to minimize its importance: but to tell the truth, it is fitting to put it into perspective, for we bring this revelation without pretending to exclusivity: on 21 January 1793, Louis XVI was already dead. And, we add: several times.

He was dead – that sovereign by divine right – in the summer of 1789 when Jefferson, fascinated witness, had seen him come make amends on 17 July before the Parisians the day after the Bastille was taken. The constituent bourgeoisie had given him a chance: the flight to Varennes in June 1791 had revealed what he had done with it. The convoy returning the king and his family is a funereal one, welcomed by the icy silence of the Parisians. Put back in the saddle by a political class that cannot resign itself to getting by without him, but discredited in a [public] opinion, that, in fierce prints gives the successor of Henri IV the bestialized features of the pig-king, Louis XVI, traitor to the nation that preserved his powers, will be swept away from spring to summer of 1792 by the crisis of the foreign war, which he himself had wished for and contributed to foment underhandedly.

One would be tempted to see, in the last episodes that we’ve evoked, only one conclusion, inexorably prepared by the preceding years. But we will respect the terms of the problem: no more than the historians – from Michelet to Louis Blanc, to Jaurès, to our contemporaries, at last – who have confronted this necessary passage, no more, let us say, than the conventionnels themselves will we side-step the problem, the string of questions posed to us: was this trial legitimate; was the procedure regular, the verdict merited, the execution opportune.

Was it legitimate to judge the king, detained in the Temple prison since 10 August? The gesture was of course sacrilege for all the monarchists loyal to the image of the sovereign by divine right, as for the coalition powers, challenged through the [challenge to] the royal institution. For part of the political class still in power – for the Girondins who were subjected to and accompanied 10 August more than they had wished it, the argument of inviolability recognized for the head of the executive power by the constitution of 1791 was not negligible. And had not all actions anterior to 1792 been amnestied? This was to forget that the fall of the monarchy had precisely created an entirely new situation, properly revolutionary, rendering obsolete all references to yesterday’s institutions. In rising up, the people had taken back their sovereignty, to delegate it to the Convention, charged with posing the bases of the new regime.

A sacrilegious trial for some, a useless trial for others among the most listened to orators, like for the Parisian popular movement such as it expressed itself at the Commune and in the sections. Was not the treason, and therefore the culpability, averred? Had the king not had his Swiss guards fire on the people? Louis XVI was not to be judged, but to be treated as an enemy: he, among you, who “has done you the most harm”: that’s what Robespierre and a newcomer, a rather young man, Saint-Just, said to the Convention: “I say that the king must be judged an enemy; we have less to judge him than to combat him… One cannot reign innocently. Every king is a rebel and a usurper.” And Robespierre, going one step further: “Peoples do not judge like judiciary courts; they render no sentence, they cast thunderbolts. They do not condemn kings, they plunge them back into oblivion.”

It is useful to emphasize – what many want to forget – that this line was not adopted. Marat himself – so often presented as a bloodthirsty demagogue – defended the principle of a trial, exposition and demonstration of the king’s crimes. This solitary man expressed for once the opinion shared by the large majority of the conventionnels.

The dossier was overwhelming: the king’s conduct until 10 August furnished the illustration. The tangible proofs – writing testimonies, correspondences – were missing in the beginning, or remained uncertain: the discovery of the armoire de fer of the Tuileries, where Louis XVI had locked away part of his secret correspondence, furnished important ones, revealing by ricochet the corruption sustained between the sovereign and part of the political class – from Mirabeau to Barnave… and a few others. The posthumous defenders of Louis XVI, in the conservative historiography, object that the conventionnels did not have decisive evidence: in this case the secret correspondence sustained with the foreign sovereigns, the plots hatched by the intermediary of Fersen, the queen’s friend. All things known since then, and which are on the order of averred treason. A strange argument that finds itself constrained to produce this damning evidence to recuse the judgment. But the proofs and presumptions were massive enough to conclude the king’s culpability: and on this point, the Convention found itself almost unanimous.

The other argument invoked to affirm the illegitimacy of the proceedings rests on the exceptional character, outside of the legal forms of the authorities who had to come to a decision: why, if even the point of inviolability was rejected, did they not have recourse to the ordinary tribunals, to the new guarantees that the reform of the justice system had just installed in 1791 – the double jury of accusation and judgment? That is what the king’s lawyers objected: they were in their role. But the response was forcefully obvious there too. The deposed sovereign could be judged in a context where the ordinary exercise of justice was suspended, only by the sovereign people, in the persons of the representatives they had just elected to the Convention, erected as a form of high court. To deny their character of representatives was to deny the legitimacy of the Revolution itself and of its principles. For the rest, it is known that they took care to surround themselves with formalities and guarantees. Louis XVI was assisted by three lawyers, Tronchet; his old chancellor Malesherbes, who had offered his services; and the young De Sèze, who held the weight of the defense. The briefing was hasty, not careless; the evidence produced and examined during the trial, even if the king persists, against all evidence, in refusing to recognize his signature on that which was presented to him.

Let no one speak to us therefore of the “ancestor of Stalinist trials”: it unfolded following an entirely new, but solemn, procedure, during the two appearances of the king – humiliated, certainly, at being called “Louis,” but with no affront to a personal dignity he conserved from beginning to end. When it came time to pass to the decisive votes, the deputies opined one by one, aloud: care for transparency corresponding to what was expected of them. They did not shirk there, conscious of their responsibility, and the insinuation, constant in the other historiography, of votes under influence – of the galleries, of the street – resists neither the examination of testimonies, nor the reality of the close votes, wherein each had to decide according to his conscience.

It is known that the debate on the legitimacy of the proceedings was not limited to the primary question of the Convention’s competency: the Girondins, in a combat in retreat to save the king’s life, multiplied, against a background of political second-thoughts wherein their conflict with the Montagne and the Parisian popular movement held an essential place, propositions destined to avoid the verdict. They demanded – this was one of the essential incidents of the debate – that the judgment, or at least its ratification, be submitted to the French, in their primary assemblies, from whom they expected more indulgence in a kind of referendum procedure. A ruse that outrages, among others, Jaurès in his Histoire Socialiste: under the appearance of respect for direct democracy, this was for the Convention to abandon its role as representative of the sovereign people, to take in advance the risk of having its verdict be contested, worse still to unburden themselves of a responsibility that it fell to them to assume like cowards on a people who did not have the evidence from the dossier in hand. In its majority, the Convention had the courage to refuse this proceeding, proper for plunging the country into anarchy.

It remained to take responsibility for the verdict, and it is here that the question of opportunity must be posed: once the culpability of the king is admitted, what punishment to apply to him? It is on this plane that the whole series of Girondin backfires was deployed. The Gironde leaned towards indulgence. It knew how to find eloquent accents, by the voice of Vergniaud, but also other spokesmen – Buzot, Pétion, Brissot. If the considerations of the political power-struggle facing it off against the Montagne are essential here, there is no reason to suspect the sincerity of an approach that was done a disservice by the pettiness of the means of delay put to the fore: detention, banishment, and again, almost in extremis, the suspension of sentence.

The Girondin argument was nourished by considerations of interior politics – would the king’s death not unleash civil war – like those of exterior politics – was it not taking the risk of reinforcing the coalition of monarchical powers, against which they had, a year earlier so blithely pushed for war?

The Montagnard counter-argument reversed the terms of the debate: was it not, on the contrary, enflaming the civil and foreign war to preserve this encumbering hostage alive, and incite every undertaking to deliver him? For the rest, this reasoning was not limited to this consideration of circumstance. For the Montagnards, the king’s death indeed represented the only means of founding the Republic, of anchoring it in an endeavor without return. They rallied the deputies of the Plain to their positions, and one can say that a decisive turning-point was marked by the speech of Barère, spokesman of these deputies of the Center, when he opined for capital punishment as an “act of national providence.”

Knocking the hesitant part of the Convention off balance, such an intervention contributes to shedding light on the definitive verdict such as it was rendered, issuing from the roll call on the questions proposed to the deputies: a verdict contestable even upon examination of the vote? The conservative, if not counterrevolutionary, tradition has long raised controversy about the analysis of the votes: the majority required being of 361, death was voted by 387 representatives including 361 – the count is there whatever might have been said – for death pure and simple, 26 for death under the conditions, envisioning the suspension; 334 wanted to avoid death in proposing reclusion or banishment.

A close vote, but not a contestable one, reflecting the case of conscience with which the deputies were confronted: they expressed it in often beautiful and always worthy phrases… “We have come ashore on the island of Liberty and we have burned the vessels which have brought us there.”

The king’s conduct, facing his execution 21 January, is also deserving of respect: it was the death as a Christian of he who neither could nor wished to understand History. Confined in the sentiment of his legitimacy and his rights, he was doubtless not touched by a sentiment of guilt, or even of responsibility, and it is entirely in Christian charity that he could pardon those who put him to death.

“The times have changed, they will change again,” Robespierre will write. The times have changed: our present sensibilities are not, doubtless, those of the Revolution’s contemporaries and we see the death penalty with other eyes. A majority of the French still remain, today, hostile to capital punishment, without letting themselves be led by the reaction of fear of the Americans, rediscovering it in these last decades. If our current publicists dared to make a poll a bit more sophisticated than usual by juxtaposing two questions – are you for the reestablishment of the death penalty – do you approve of the death of Louis XVI? I wonder if the foreseeable response might not paradoxically group together many of those who weep for the son of Saint Louis, but do not retreat today before the ultimate means of safeguarding the order of which they are the defenders, so much is it true that mentalities are rather funny things…

We will not celebrate the condemnation of Louis XVI any more than we will deplore it. We can at least understand it, and assume this historical heritage, just as we can, following the example of a Michelet or a Jaurès, pay a tribute of esteem to those who took that responsibility before History.

It is perhaps presumptuous, not to say abusive, to ask the good French bourgeois of today to make this effort of comprehension in regard to their ancestors who perhaps ate veal’s head on 21 January in the last century. In the meanwhile, nothing is preventing them from reveling in the affairs of current reigning families to fulfill their eventual nostalgias, if it is true that in every Frenchman there is a sleeping monarchist.

And in honor of Augustin's birthday, a picture of a bust of him by Deseine, the same sculptor who made the bust of Maximilien in my icon:

Joyeux anniversaire, Bonbon !