The royal family waited helplessly for any news of the foreign armies or developments at the National Convention through an increasingly elaborate system of secret signals with their few remaining loyal staff. Louis-Charles and Marie-Thérèse were quick to collude in any secret communication, watching out for guards or playing noisily as information was exchanged; a favorite game was “pony” where Louis-Charles would gallop from one person to another with suitably loud and distracting sound effects. Turgy, the king’s waiter, developed a particularly successful code, using his right hand for good news and his left hand for bad news as he waited on the family at dinner. If, for example, he rubbed his right eye, this denoted that the armies of the French Republic were in retreat. During the autumn, they learned that any chance of rescue had all but vanished as the Prussian armies were beaten back across the French frontier and Austrians and émigrés were forced to flee from Brussels as French forces overran Belgium. More worrying still was the news from Paris. When Turgy passed his hand through his hair, this denoted that the National Convention was discussing the future of the royal family. And during November, this issue came to the fore.
Since its first meeting, the National Convention—of which almost half of the 749 deputies were drawn from the legal profession—had been preoccupied with whether the king should be brought to trial. Many of the more moderate members, drawn from the Girondin faction, maintained that according to the constitution, “the person of the king is inviolable and sacred,” and therefore, he could not be tried. They were opposed by those, like Maximilien Robespierre and Louis-Antoine Saint-Just, who argued that the king had “violated the constitution” in his “counterrevolution” of August 10 in which good patriots had died, and consequently he had no rights. Robespierre had secured seats for many of his radical allies at the National
Convention; they became known as the
Montagnards
—the Mountain party—because they occupied raised seats. They argued that the only way to consolidate the gains of the Revolution and to “save the
Patrie
” was for the king to die. Since the king was already a guilty man, there was no need even for a trial. Robespierre considered that Louis had already been “judged” on August 10, when those who attacked the palace “stood proxy for the whole of France.” These arguments were couched in such forceful terms that any moderates who challenged this view were in danger of being branded as “traitors” of the Republic. The momentum for action gained pace during November when the king’s secret correspondence hidden in an iron chest in the Tuileries was discovered. This revealed that Louis XVI had indeed found the constitution “detestable” and he had only agreed to it because he was coerced. It became easy to cast the duplicitous “Louis Capet” as an enemy of the Republic. The mood in France hardened against the former king and by late November the Convention decided to act.
On December 6, 1792, Cléry’s wife came to the Tower with a friend for her customary Thursday visit to see her husband. She was only permitted to see him once a week, in the Council Chamber, the commissioners’ room on the ground floor. While his wife distracted the jailers by talking in loud voice about domestic matters, her friend whispered to Cléry as distinctly as she dared, “Next Tuesday they take the king to the Convention. His trial will begin. He may get counsel. All this is certain.”
Cléry was greatly shocked by this, but it was impossible to find out any more while they were watched by jailors and he could hardly bear to convey this worrying news to the king. That night, as Louis went to bed, he seized a brief chance to pass on what he had heard. The next day, after breakfast, the king had an opportunity to talk to the queen. “I could see by her look of sorrow that he was telling her what I had told him,” wrote Cléry.
With news of the impending trial, the mood in the Tower became increasingly desperate. In order not to compromise their loyal valet, the family had agreed to behave as though they knew nothing. On Tuesday, December 11, at five o’clock in the morning, “we were made very anxious by the beating of drums and the arrival of the guards at the Temple,” wrote Marie-Thérèse.
Cannons were brought into the garden of the Temple and they could hear the
générale
—call to arms—echoing around Paris. The commissioners told them nothing and the family had breakfast together as usual. “This continual torture for all the family of never being able to show any emotion, any effusion of feeling at a moment when so many fears agitated them was one of the most refined cruelties of their tyrants,” observed Cléry, “and the one in which those tyrants took most delight.”
That morning, the little dauphin was eager to play
Siam
with his father—a game similar to ninepins. His manner was “so urgent,” wrote Cléry, that the king, in spite of growing anxiety, could not refuse him. At eleven, two commissioners entered the room and ordered Louis-Charles to be separated from his father and taken to his mother. Sensing that his father was in danger, Louis-Charles became distressed at leaving him. The former king had to wait a further two hours alone, before the leader of the Commune, Anaxagoras Chaumette, and other officials entered his room with a decree summoning “Louis Capet” before the National Convention for interrogation.
“Capet is not my name,” commented Louis. “It is the name of one of my ancestors. I could have wished, Monsieur,” he added, “that the commissioners had left my son with me during the two hours I have passed in waiting for you.” He was under no illusion that he would see his family again.
The king was taken by carriage to the National Convention and stood at the bar. The president announced, “Louis, the French Nation accuses you of having committed various crimes to reestablish tyranny on the ruins of liberty.” A long list of treasonable charges then followed, including attempting to flee the country “in order to return as a conqueror,” and firing on his people on three occasions. Much was made of his secret papers in the Tuileries, which were used to allege that Louis was plotting with France’s enemies. The most harmful documents were payments to his former bodyguard. Louis had paid them to ease their monetary worries but to his accusers, this was nothing less than payments to a secret army.
At first, Marie-Antoinette was “in a such a state of anxiety,” said her
daughter, “that it is impossible to express.” For the first time, the queen deigned to question the guards, but “these men would tell her nothing.” That night, when the king returned to the Temple she begged repeatedly to be permitted to see him. In his rooms, too, the king made urgent requests to see his family. Yet this was denied. “At least,” asked the king, “my son can sleep in my room? His bed and personal belongings are here.” This, too, was refused. Until the trial was over he was permitted to see his children only if they were separated from their mother. Faced with such a cruel choice, he could not bring himself to take seven-year-old Louis-Charles from his mother and he gave up the chance to see them.
“My brother spent that first night of the king’s trial in my mother’s room,” said Marie-Thérèse. “He had no bed so she gave him hers, and remained up all night in a gloom so great we did not like to leave her.” Unable to eat in her state of great anxiety, Marie-Antoinette again begged to see her husband the next day, without success. Meanwhile, Élisabeth took Cléry aside, asking “with a species of terror” if he had heard “anything of what might happen to the queen.” Ever resourceful, Cléry was able to help the royal princesses obtain fragments of news; notes were smuggled between rooms hidden in balls of wool or string to conceal them from the watchful eyes of Madame Tison. On December 19, 1792, it was Marie-Thérèse’s fourteenth birthday, yet still the family could not meet. Marie-Thérèse, who was close to her father, could hardly endure the “torture” of his trial, and her health began to decline. Some of the more charitable guards tried “to reassure us that my father would not be put to death.” However, rumors were rife that he would be condemned, or if he were spared, he and the dauphin would be imprisoned for life.
Alone on Christmas day, unable to see his family and confined in his small, dark room in the Temple, Louis made his will. “I pray to God especially to cast his merciful eyes on my wife, my children and my sister,” he wrote, “who have shared for a long time in my sufferings, that He will sustain them with His grace should I be taken from them.” He begged his wife, “to forgive me for all the ills she is suffering for me, and the griefs I may have caused her in the course of our union.” As for his devoted sister,
Élisabeth, he asked her “to be a mother to my children should they have the misfortune to lose theirs.” He urged his children to “remain united with each other … and to regard Élisabeth as a second mother.” In particular, he asked Louis-Charles “if he has the misfortune to become king,” to remember “that he must dedicate himself entirely to the happiness of his fellow-citizens.” He urged him “to feel no hate or resentment about the misfortunes his father is suffering,” and to care for “those persons undergoing misfortunes on his father’s account.”
The day after Christmas, the sound of troops and beating drums in the Temple grounds signalled the continuation of the trial. The king was escorted back under guard to the National Convention. His counsel, the brilliant Romain de Sèze, carefully refuted each of the charges held against him, and then Louis himself rose to make a short, dignified speech, “perhaps the last I shall make before you.” He explained that he had always loved his people and had not been afraid “to spare any trouble in order to avoid bloodshed.” It was indeed a terrible irony, in the words of an American observer, “that the mildest monarch who ever filled the French throne” was defending himself against charges as “one of its most nefarious tyrants.” Yet despite the best efforts of his defense, over the next three weeks, “the bloodthirsty party of Robespierre,” said the British ambassador, “exert every nerve to excite the Convention and the people to terminate the days of their unfortunate monarch.” Injured victims from the insurrection at the Tuileries on August 10 were brought before the deputies to incite anger at the king’s “counter-revolution.” “I demand that the National Convention declare Louis Capet guilty,” roared Robespierre, “and deserving of death.”
On January 15 the trial was brought to a conclusion. Louis was found guilty and, in the evening of the following day, voting began to decide on his penalty. Throughout the night, deputies rose in turn to deliver their verdict. Some members wanted to stop short of execution, recommending imprisonment or banishment; others were determined that the king should die. Robespierre, the leader of the Paris delegation, spoke for many when he declared with passion, “You are not passing sentence for or against a man; you are carrying out an act of national providence … . I vote for death.”
On January 17, when the votes were finally counted, there was a clear majority in favor of death. President Pierre Vergniaud rose to announce the result. “I declare in the name of the Convention that the death penalty is hereby pronounced upon Louis Capet.”
That evening, Chrétien de Malesherbes, a most devoted member of the king’s counsel, went to see Louis to inform him of the result. He spoke to Cléry first. “All is lost. The king is condemned to death.” Cléry, too, was shocked and found “from the moment of Malesherbes’s entrance a great trembling seized me.” The king was alone in his room, waiting, his elbows on the table, and his head in his hands. Malesherbes threw himself at his feet, choked with sobs and quite unable to speak for some time. However, the king showed no surprise or emotion at the news. “You see now that from the first moment I was not deceived,” said Louis, “and that my condemnation had been pronounced before I had been heard.” He seemed most affected to hear that his own cousin, the Duc d’Orléans, now known as “Philippe Égalité,” had voted for his death. The loyal Malesherbes still harbored hopes that the king could yet be saved at the last moment. “All honest men will now come forward to save your Majesty or perish at your feet.” The king would have none of it. “Monsieur de Malesherbes,” he said, “that would compromise a lot of people and start a civil war in France. I would rather die.”
Cléry relates a touching scene that occurred later that night as he prepared the king for his shave. “Such was my fainting state,” Cléry wrote, that “I dared not raise my eyes to my unfortunate master.” Yet as he leaned over Louis, their eyes suddenly met, and Cléry found “tears flowed in spite of myself.” A paleness spread over the king’s face and he blanched suddenly as if the full horror of his plight had only just touched him. They were both being watched. Neither could show their affection for the other, without putting Cléry at risk, too. The king was harboring hopes that Cléry would be able to take care of the dauphin, to give him “all his care in this dreadful place.” He didn’t want Cléry to expose his deep feelings of loyalty to the royal family. Cléry was certain that his knees were about to give way under him. The king gently took his valet’s hands in his and pressed them firmly, murmuring in a low voice, “Come, come, more courage.” Later, he told
Cléry that he did not fear death for himself, “but I cannot contemplate without a shudder the cruel fate that I leave behind me for my family, for the queen and my unfortunate children.”
At two o’clock in the afternoon of Sunday, January 20, the door of the king’s room was suddenly opened. The Minister of Justice and twelve or more officials piled into the tiny room. With due ceremony it was announced that the death penalty would be carried out within twenty-four hours. There was no appeal.
That afternoon, Louis was permitted to see a priest who would hear his confession and give the last rites. The Irish priest, Abbé Edgeworth de Firmont, who was already in danger as a nonjuring priest, had risked his life to come and comfort the dying man. Louis was so overcome to find one man prepared to help him that for the first time, he betrayed his distress. “Forgive me, sir,” he said to the priest as he rallied, “a moment’s weakness.”