Louis XVI was condemned by one vote — on one of four counts

Louis XVI was guillotined in Paris on 21 January 1793, on the Place de la Révolution (today’s Place de la Concorde), after the National Convention convicted him of treason against the Revolution and voted to execute him. The monarchy had been abolished four months earlier, so he died a deposed king, not a reigning one.

Popular accounts often say he was condemned “by a single vote”. That holds for one count only. The Convention actually voted on four separate questions:

Question	Date (1793)	Result
Is Louis guilty?	15 January	693 of 745 deputies voted yes; none voted no
Should the verdict go to a popular vote?	15 January	424 deputies voted no
What penalty?	16–17 January	361 for death without conditions, exactly the 361 needed
Should he be reprieved?	19–20 January	Rejected; death decreed on 20 January

The evidence mattered. Shortly before the trial, a hidden safe in the Tuileries, the armoire de fer, turned up 625 documents, including the king’s own instructions to his ministers to deceive the Assembly and his attempts to bribe deputies.

On the morning of the 21st, Louis rode from the Temple prison in the mayor’s carriage with his confessor, through streets lined four deep with guards, to a square holding some 20,000 people. He began to declare his innocence, but drums drowned him out. The physician Philippe Pinel, made to attend under arms with his section, wrote that only a few words, such as “I forgive my enemies”, could be heard.

Louis was not the first king to be executed by his subjects; England had beheaded Charles I in 1649, years after his army was broken at Naseby. He was buried in quicklime at the Madeleine cemetery. In January 1815, after his brother had restored the monarchy, his remains were moved to the royal crypt at Saint-Denis.