The King Who Lost His Head
On this day · 21 January 1793
On a foggy winter morning in 1793, France severed eighteen centuries of monarchy with a single fall of the blade.
On the cold, foggy morning of 21 January 1793, Louis XVI rode an hour and a half through Paris from the Temple prison to the Place de la Révolution. Days earlier, the National Convention had convicted the former king of conspiracy against liberty and condemned him to death by a razor-thin margin.
Stripped of his royal title, he was tried simply as Louis Capet. At the scaffold he addressed the crowd, declaring himself innocent and hoping his blood might “cement the good fortune of the French.” Then he was strapped to a plank and guided beneath the guillotine.
“Thus, on 21 January 1793, Louis Capet, formerly King of France, was beheaded by the guillotine.”
The machine, championed as a swift and egalitarian instrument of death, fell. The executioner lifted the king’s head, and shouts of “Vive la République!” rolled across the square. The killing of a reigning monarch shocked the courts of Europe, hardened the Revolution, and helped ignite years of war and the coming Terror.
Sources & references
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