Demonic_ How the Liberal Mob Is Endangering America - Ann Coulter [60]
Antoinette had found out her husband had been guillotined when a guard mockingly called her “the widow Capet.” She found out her best friend, the Princess Lamballe, had been executed when the princess’s head was bounced on a pike outside her prison window. Her son had been torn away from her. Now she sat trapped in a prison cell with riffraff hurling invective at her, in the liberal style.
But the mob still saw Marie Antoinette as a threat to their “liberty.” This is how liberals would treat Sarah Palin.
On October 13, Antoinette was informed that her trial before the Revolutionary Tribunal would begin the next day. Her written request for time to prepare was ignored. And so the trial of Marie Antoinette commenced on October 14, 1793, before a jury of eleven men, chosen from the lowest classes.
To the delight of the spectators, Antoinette was accused of presiding over plots, conspiracies, and “midnight orgies,” and of being the “scourge and the blood-sucker of the French.”37 In the words of Scottish historian Thomas Carlyle, the witnesses against her were “Patriot Washerwomen,” with “much to say of Plots [and] Treasons.”38
Antoinette answered each accusation with politeness, calmly revealing the emptiness of the charges against her. As Carlyle reports, “Her answers are prompt, clear, often of laconic brevity; resolution, which has grown contemptuous without ceasing to be dignified, veils itself in calm words. ‘You persist then in denial?’—‘My plan is not denial: it is the truth I have said, and I persist in that.’ ”39 Among the charges was the accusation by Hébert that she kept a religious book containing a “counterrevolutionary” image of Jesus inscribed with the words “Heart of Jesus! Have pity on us!”40
Then came Hébert’s monstrous allegation that Antoinette’s son had accused his mother and aunt of having sex with him—an idea Hébert had himself implanted in the boy through his vile underling, Simone. Hébert testified:
Simone said to me, “I am surprised at young Capet committing so many indecencies”—(too gross to mention). Astonished at seeing this child so initiated in wickedness, I asked him who were his instructors. He replied, with all the ingenuousness and candour of his age, that he had learnt all these abominations of his mother and aunt. I shall not offend your ears with recounting the impurities which this child related; I shall content myself with saying, that he has had an incestuous intercourse with his mother and his aunt and that young Capet has been ill of a disorder which was brought on by these debaucheries.41
Antoinette ignored the vile accusation, until a juror demanded that she answer it. Antoinette famously replied, “I remain silent on that subject because nature holds all such crimes an abhorrence. I appeal to all mothers who are present in this Auditory—is such a crime possible?”42
According to Carlyle, at that moment, Robespierre cursed the stupidity of Hébert for making such a despicable charge and risking a sympathetic response from the jurors.43 Robespierre underestimated the inhumanity of a mob. For having passionately denied the charge, one spectator complained of Antoinette’s arrogance, another of her pride, while one of the jurors sneered, “A mother like you …”44
When Antoinette said nothing, the jury was enraged by her silence and demanded an answer. When she answered, denying the grotesque accusation, the jury denounced her as arrogant. It’s almost as if the mob would accept no answer she gave. As Le Bon says, a crowd “accepts as real the images evoked in its mind, though they most often have only a very distant relation with the observed fact.”45
The proceedings against Antoinette were irrelevant in any event. The verdict was preordained. After two days