The Execution of Louis XVI

JAN 21 1793 · 12:00

Execution of Louis XVI on the Place de la Revolution, 21 January 1793. German copperplate engraving, 1793. Place: Place de la Révolution (today Place de la Concorde), Paris Figures: Louis XVI, deposed king, tried as Louis Capet · Maximilien Robespierre, regicide · Charles-Henri Sanson, executioner · the National Convention, 749 deputies voting The Vote of the Convention The trial opens on 11 December 1792. The Convention sits as both court and jury. Robespierre's argument is theoretical and total: the king need not be tried for specific crimes, because his very existence is incompatible with the Republic. Louis doit mourir parce qu'il faut que la patrie vive. The proceedings nonetheless run for six weeks. The final roll-call on the sentence runs through the night of 16 to 17 January 1793. Each deputy mounts the tribune and says his vote aloud. The count: 387 for death, 334 for detention or conditional sentence. The margin is one vote in a hundred. Philippe d'Orléans, the king's own cousin, votes for death. The cousin will himself be guillotined within ten months. What the Blade Does to the Westphalian System At 10:22 on the morning of 21 January, the blade falls. The sovereign of 1648 (the prince, by divine right, as the Peace of Westphalia (see [[peace-of-westphalia-1648]]) had codified him) is killed in person by the sovereign of 1789 (the nation, by Article 3 of the Declaration of the Rights of Man, as the Bastille (see [[fall-of-the-bastille-1789]]) had launched her). The two principles cannot share a body politic. One has now killed the other on a public scaffold. European monarchies recoil. Within weeks Britain, the Dutch Republic, Spain, Naples, and the Holy Roman Empire form the First Coalition. The wars that follow run, with brief pauses, until 1815. France faces them by inventing, in August (see [[levee-en-masse-1793]]), the first national-conscription army in modern history. The Revolution has demonstrated that popular sovereignty, taken literally, can dispose of the person at the apex of the old order. The rest of Europe organizes to make sure it does not happen twice. Video: Sandbrook and Holland on the Convention's vote, the appeal, and the guillotine at the Place de la Revolution.