JANUARY 21-OCTOBER 16, 1793
On January 21, the most determined revolutionaries execute the king: to tell the population that turning back is impossible, Trotsky will say, thinking of the shooting of the tsar.
"The king's farewell to his family" is the subject of innumerable royalist images. This one is sold on the web.
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| The Death of Louis XVI, English engraving, 1798 / zoom |
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(On July 3, 1793)
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The Dauphin Taken from his Mother by Domenico Pellegrini / zoom |
Marie-Antoinette will wait for hours for a glimpse of him in the courtyard, but otherwise she never sees him again.
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The queen's last portrait shows her as elderly, though she is only 38:
Marie-Antoinette at the Temple prison by Alexandre Kucharski, 1793 / zoom
Guards wake her at 2 a.m., the time when people are most vulnerable. They take her to the Conciergerie, the dark, damp prison where the arrested await trial and an almost certain death sentence.
(On August 2, 1793)
-- Marie-Antoinette by Antonia Fraser, 2001, is the source of most of the information here.
A violent Conciergerie evoked during the opening ceremony of the 2024 Olympic games.
Guards watch her continually, particularly after a rescue attempt fails. People bribe police to gawk at her. The young servant Rosalie Lamorlière does all she can to help her and non-juror priests* come in disguise to say mass. She hemorrhages, probably a sign of cancer.
*Those who refuse to swear loyalty to the Constitution.
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Her show trial is conducted with gratuitous cruelty:
- On October 12, she is awakened two hours after having gone to sleep, for a secret preliminary interrogation in the freezing cold.
- One of her two lawyers arrives in Paris on October 13, with the trial beginning the next day. His request for time to read the documents receives no answer.
- The most outrageous charge: that she abused her little son. She loses her composure and replies "J'en appelle à toutes les mères" (I call out to all mothers). Even the hostile market women say the trial should be stopped.
- It takes place over two days, 8 a.m.-11 p.m. on the first day, 8 a.m. midnight on the second. Though she is ill, her only sustenance is half a cup of bouillon toward 4 p.m. on the second day; the woman bringing it spills the other half.
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| The Trial of Marie Antoinette of Austria at the Revolutionary Tribunal / zoom |
In Europe, royal consorts had been sent to convents but not killed. And nothing against Marie-Antoinette had been proved. Yet at 4 a.m. she was declared guilty on all counts, and told she would be executed in the morning.
Her execution came from her mistakes, from misogyny, from the need for a scapegoat and from baked-in lies.
It was "throwing red meat to the base."
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