Demonic_ How the Liberal Mob Is Endangering America - Ann Coulter [55]
By the end of 1792, the Jacobins were demanding the king’s head. Louis XVI had already tried to flee Paris, but the French wouldn’t let him. The entire royal family had been held captive, under constant guard, behind multiple locked doors in the Temple prison for four months, and in the Tuileries before that. But that wasn’t enough. Louis XVI was such an object of hatred for the masses that, at some revolutionary clubs, members with the “hideous” name “Louis” were forced to change their names to “Montagnard,” as a tribute to the most liberal political faction.43
The trial of Louis XVI—or “Citizen Louis Capet”—took place in December 1792, before the entire National Convention. Erstwhile American patriot Thomas Paine attended as a member of the Convention. Unknown to the hapless Paine, he was watching the original show trial. Citizen Capet was charged with a series of crimes that he knew, “as did his accusers, he had never been party to.”44 Of course, the principal accusation against him was treason for having been king—though it was not a crime to be so until that very moment.
Robespierre was putatively opposed to capital punishment, but like our liberal friends, he was willing to make exceptions on a case-by-case basis depending on the defendant. Fiercely championing death for the king, he argued that even holding a trial was “counterrevolutionary” (the French version of “politically incorrect”). Robespierre said that Citizen Capet was “a criminal toward humanity” and killing him was merely “a measure of public safety.” The king “must die,” he said, “because the country must live.”45 Johnnie Cochran’s summations made more sense.
The Convention debated the king’s fate much the way the UCLA faculty debated a resolution to condemn the Iraq War five days after the fall of Baghdad46 (180 for; 7 against; wild applause). After a unanimous vote of guilt, the Convention then debated whether Louis Capet would be sentenced to detention, deportation, or death. “Give us the head of that fat pig,” yelled the Jacobins. “The nation demands his death!”47
Thousands of the sansculottes ruffians poured into the streets during the trial, shouting for the king’s death,48 because this is how liberals participate in civic affairs. Some wandered inside to the public seats in the upper balconies to cheer deputies who called for death and heckle those leaning toward imprisonment. Seeing the bloodthirsty mobs in the streets, Madame Roland, a supporter of the Revolution, commented wryly, “What charming freedom we now enjoy in Paris.”49
The vote inside went back and forth for 72 hours,50 indicating that even the French revolutionaries were more evenhanded than the typical college faculty. Finally, the king’s own cousin, with the promising revolutionary name “Phillipe Egalité,” swung the vote by standing and saying, “I vote death.”51
The Convention ordered the king to be guillotined the following day. So on January 21, 1793, Louis XVI became the only French king ever to be executed. It will not surprise close observers of the Left to learn that the deputies had engaged in vote fraud, with thirteen votes cast illegally, including that of the bloodthirsty “angel of death,” Louis-Antoine-Léon de Saint-Just, who was too young to vote.52
The night before his execution, the king said good-bye to his family, giving his children religious instruction and telling them to forgive his assassins. The next morning at 5 a.m., he took communion. A few hours after that, the drums began. Hearing the drums, signaling the coming execution, Louis XVI’s priest said, his blood ran cold.53
Arriving to take the king to the guillotine was a former priest, Jacques Roux, who had renounced his faith and joined the most radical revolutionary sect, the Enrages, or “the Rabid.” The king handed him a package containing some personal effects and his last will and testament, asking that it be given to his wife. Roux responded, “I have not come here to do your errands, I am here to take you to the scaffold.”54 The king was taken by cart to