From that moment all
attempts to save him were in vain.

The Girondins did not confine themselves to numerous efforts to
displace the responsibility of judging from the Convention to the
people. Three days after Barere's speech Dumouriez arrived in Paris.
As La Fayette had a few months before, so did Dumouriez now, appear to
be the man of the sword so dreaded by Robespierre, the successful
soldier ready to convert the Revolution to his own profit, or if not to
his own to that of his party, the Girondins. During more than two
weeks Dumouriez remained in the city, casting about for some means of
saving the King, but constantly checked by the Jacobins, who through
Pache, minister of war, kept control of the artillery and troops near
Paris.

On the 15th of January the Convention came to a vote, amid scenes of
intense excitement. Was Louis guilty? And if so what should be his
punishment? Six hundred and eighty-three members voted affirmatively
to the first question. Three hundred and sixty-one voted the penalty
of death. About the same number equivocated in a variety of forms, the
most popular proving the one that declared for {169} imprisonment or
exile, to be changed to death in case of invasion. Vergniaud, as
president, at the end of a session that lasted 36 hours, declared the
sentence of the Convention to be death.

On the 19th of January one last effort was made. A motion for a
respite was proposed, but was rejected, 380 to 310; and the Convention
then fixed the 21st as the day for the King's execution. On that day
Louis accordingly went to the scaffold. The guillotine was set up in
the great open space known at various epochs as the Place Louis XV, de
la Revolution, and de la Concorde. Louis, after a touching farewell
from his family, and after confessing whatever he imagined to be his
sins, was driven from the Temple to the place of execution; he was
dressed in white. The streets were thronged. The national guard was
out in force, and when Louis from the platform attempted to speak,
Santerre ordered his drums to roll. A moment later the head of King
Louis XVI had fallen, and many mourning royalists were vowing loyalty
in their hearts to the little boy of eight, imprisoned in the temple,
who to them was King Louis XVII.

{170}

CHAPTER XII

THE FALL OF THE GIRONDE

The disappearance of Louis XVI from the scene left the Mountain and the
Gironde face to face, to wage their faction fight,