(1792)
Born in 1758, died in 1794; elected a Deputy to the States-General in 1789;
leader of the Extreme Left in the Assembly and one of the chief orators of the
Jacobin Club; after the death of Mirabeau, his influence increasing, opposed
the Girondists; became a member of the Committee of Public Safety and was
closely identified with the horrors of The Reign of Terror; finally overthrown
and put to death.
THE ASSEMBLY 1 has
unwittingly been drawn far from the actual question. There is no question of a
trial. Louis is not an accused; you are not judges; you are only, you can be
only, statesmen, and the representatives of the nation. You have no sentence to
render for or against a man; but a measure of public safety to take, an act of
national providence to perform. A dethroned king, in a Republic, is good only
for two purposes—either to trouble the
tranquility of the State and to unsettle liberty, or to establish both. But I
maintain that the character which your deliberation has hitherto taken on tends
directly against the goal.
Louis was king and the Republic is founded; the great question which occupies
you is decided by these words alone. Louis has been dethroned for his crimes;
Louis denounced the French people as rebels; to chastise them he has invoked
the arms of his brother tyrants. Victory and the people have decided that he
was the rebel: hence Louis can not be judged; he is judged already. He is
condemned, or the Republic is not absolved. To propose a trial for Louis XVI.
In any way whatever is to retrograde toward royal and constitutional despotism;
it is a counter-revolutionary idea, for it is putting the revolution itself on
trial.
Indeed, if Louis can still be the object of a trial, Louis can be absolved; he
can be innocent. What do I say? He is presumed to be so until he is judged. But
if Louis is absolved, if Louis can be presumed to be innocent, what does the
Revolution become? If Louis is innocent, all the defenders of liberty become
calumniators. All the rebels were friends of truth and the defenders of
oppressed innocence; all the manifestoes of foreign courts are but legitimate
protestations against a ruling faction. Even the confinement which Louis has
suffered until the present time is an unjust persecution; the confederates, the
people of Paris, all the patriots of the French dominion are guilty; and this
great trial pending in the court of nature, between crime and virtue, between
liberty and tyranny, is finally decided in favor of crime and tyranny.
When a nation has been forced to resort to the right of insurrection it returns
to a state of nature as regards its tyrant. How can the latter invoke the
social compact? He has annihilated it. The nation can preserve it still, if it
thinks fit, in whatever concerns the interrelations of its citizens: but the
effect of tyranny and insurrection is to break it entirely as regards the
tyrant; it is to throw them into mutual war; the tribunals, the judiciary
procedures, are made for the members of the city. It is a gross contradiction
to suppose that the Constitution can preside over this new state of things;
that would be to suppose that it survived itself. What are the laws which
replace it? Those of nature, which is the basis of society itself; the safety
of the people. The right to punish the tyrant and that to dethrone him are the
same thing. The one does not admit of different forms from the other. The
tyrant’s trial is insurrection; his judgment
is the fall of his power; his penalty, whatever the liberty of the people
demands.
Peoples do not judge like judiciary courts. They pass no sentences; they hurl
the thunderbolt. They do not condemn kings: they thrust them back into
oblivion; and this justice is not inferior to that of courts. If they arm
themselves against their oppressors for their own safety, why should they be
bound to adopt a mode of punishing them which would be a new danger to
themselves?
We have allowed ourselves to be misled by foreign examples which have nothing
in common with us. Since Cromwell caused Charles I. to be judged by a tribunal
which he controlled, and
A trial for Louis XVI.! But what is this trial, if it is not the call of
insurrection to a tribunal or to some other assembly? When a king has been
annihilated by the people, who has the right to resuscitate him in order to
make of him a new pretext for trouble and rebellion? And what other effects can
this system produce? In opening an arena to the champions of Louis XVI. you
resuscitate all the strife of despotism against liberty; you consecrate the
right to blaspheme against the Republic and against the people, because the
right to defend the former despot involves the right to say everything that
concerns his cause. You arouse all the factions; you revive, you encourage
dying royalism. The people might freely take part for or against it. What more
legitimate, what more natural than to repeat everywhere the maxims that his
defenders would be free to profess at your bar and from your very tribune? What
kind of a Republic is it whose founders raise up adversaries on every side to
attack it in its cradle!
It is a great cause, it is said, which must be judged with wise and slow
circumspection. It is you who make a great cause of it. What do I say? I say
that it is you who make a cause of it. What do you find great in it? Is it its
difficulty? No. Is it the person? In the eyes of liberty there is none more
vile; in the eyes of humanity there is none more guilty. He can impose again
only on those who are more cowardly than himself. Is it the utility of the result?
That is one more reason for hastening it. A great cause is a project of popular
law; a great cause is that of an unfortunate oppressed by despotism. What is
the motive of these everlasting delays which you recommend to us? Are you
afraid of wounding popular opinion? As if the people themselves feared anything
but the weakness or ambition of their mandatories! As if the people were a vile
troop of slaves, stupidly attached to the stupid tyrant whom they have
proscribed, desiring at whatever price to wallow in baseness and servitude! You
speak of opinion; is it not for you to direct it, to fortify it? If it goes
astray, if it becomes depraved, who must it blame for it if not you yourselves?
Are you afraid of displeasing the foreign kings leagued against us? Oh! Without
doubt, the way to conquer them is to appear to fear them: the way to confound
the criminal conspiracy of the despots of
Why then do you aspire to the glory of emancipating the human race? By what
contradiction do you suppose that the nations which have not been astonished by
the proclamation of the rights of humanity will be terrified by the
chastisement of one of its most cruel oppressors? Finally, you fear, it is
said, the verdict of posterity. Yes, posterity will be astonished indeed at
your inconsistency and your weakness; and our descendants will laugh both at
the presumption and the prejudices of their ancestors. It has been said that
genius is necessary to penetrate this question. I maintain that it requires
only good faith: it is much less a matter of self-enlightenment than of not
willfully blinding one’sself. Why does a
thing which seems clear to us at one time seem obscure at another?
I have heard the defenders of inviolability advance a bold principle which I
should have almost hesitated to express myself. They said that those who would
have slain Louis XVI. on the tenth of August would have performed a virtuous
action. But the sole basis of this opinion can be the crimes of Louis XVI. and
the rights of the people. Has an interval of three months changed his crimes or
the rights of the people? If then he was snatched away from public indignation it
was without doubt solely that his punishment, solemnly ordered by the National
Convention in the name of the nation, should be more imposing to the enemies of
humanity; but to bring up the question whether he is guilty or whether he can
be punished is to betray the trust of the French people.
Of what importance to the people is the contemptible person of the last of the
kings? Representatives, what is important to them, what is important to
yourselves, is that you fulfill the duties which their confidence has imposed
upon you. You have proclaimed the Republic, but have you given it to us? We
have not yet made a single law which justifies that name; we have not yet
reformed a single abuse of despotism. Away with names; we have still tyranny
complete, and in addition, factions more vile and charlatans more immoral, with
new ferments of troubles, and of civil war. The Republic! and Louis still
lives! and you still place the person of the king between us and liberty! Let
us fear to make criminals of ourselves on account of our scruples; let us fear
that by showing too much indulgence for the guilty we may place ourselves in
his place.
A new difficulty! To what punishment shall we condemn Louis? The punishment of
death is too cruel. No, says another, life is more cruel still. I ask that he
may live. Advocates of the king, is it through pity or cruelty that you wish to
save him from the penalty of his crimes? As for me, I abhor the penalty of
death so lavish in your laws, and I have neither love nor hatred for Louis.
Crimes only I hate. I have asked the Assembly, which you still call
Constituent, for the abolition of the death penalty, and it is not my fault if
the first principles of reason seem to it moral and political heresies. But if
you never bethought yourselves to invoke them in favor of so many unfortunates
whose offenses are less their own than those of the government, by what
fatality do you remember them only to plead the cause of the greatest of all
criminals? You ask an exception to the death penalty for him alone against whom
it can be legitimate! Yes, the penalty of death generally is a crime, and for
that reason alone, according to the indestructible principles of nature, it can
be justified only in cases when it is necessary for the safety of individuals
or the social body. Public safety never demands it against ordinary offenses,
because society can always guard against them by other means and make the
offender powerless to harm it. But a dethroned king in the bosom of a
revolution which is anything but cemented by laws, a king whose name suffices
to draw the scourge of war on the agitated nation, neither prison nor exile can
render his existence immaterial to the public welfare: and this cruel exception
to ordinary laws which justice approves can be imputed only to the nature of
his crimes.
It is with regret that I utter this fatal truth. But Louis must die, because
the country must live. Among a people at peace, free and respected at home and
abroad, the counsels to generosity given you might be entertained. But a people
whose liberty is still contested after so many sacrifices and combats; a people
among whom the laws are still inexorable only toward the unfortunate; a people
among whom the crimes of tyranny are still the subjects of debate, must long
for vengeance; and the generosity with which we are flattered would seem too
much like that of a band of brigands dividing the spoils.
I move to resolve forthwith upon the fate of Louis XVI. As for his wife, you
will send her back to the courts, as well as all other persons accused of the
same criminal attempts. His son shall be guarded at the
Note 1. Delivered in the Convention on
December 3, 1792.Translated for this edition by Scott Robinson from the
original text as given in Stephens’s “Orators of the French Revolution.” Robespierre spoke in opposition to the Girondists,
who desired to have the king tried in a ceremonious and impressive manner.
from "The World's Great
Orations" ed. by William Jennings Bryan, 1906, published in full by
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