Even in the first days of the Convention the feud broke out. The Girondins condemned the September massacres and dreaded the Parisian populace. Barbaroux accused Robespierre of aiming at a dictatorship, and Buzot demanded a guard recruited in the departments to protect the Convention. In October Louvet reiterated the charge against Robespierre, and Barbaroux called for the dissolution of the Commune of Paris. But the Girondins gained no tangible result from this wordy warfare. For a time the question how to dispose of the king diverted the thoughts of all parties. It was approached in a political, not in a judicial spirit. The Jacobins desired the death of Louis, partly because they hated kings and deemed him a traitor, partly because they wished to envenom the Revolution, defy Europe and compromise their more temperate colleagues. The Girondins wished to spare Louis, but were afraid of incurring the reproach of royalism. At this critical moment the discovery of the famous iron chest, containing papers which showed that many public men had intrigued with the court, was disastrous for Louis. Members of the Convention were anxious to be thought severe lest they should be thought corrupt. Robespierre frankly demanded that Louis as a public enemy should be put to death without form of trial. The majority shrank from such open injustice and decreed on the 3rd of December that Louis should be tried by the Convention. Trial and execution of Louis XVI. A committee of twenty-one was chosen to frame the indictment against Louis, and on the 11th of December he was brought to the bar for the first time to hear the charges read. The most essential might be summed up in the statement that he had plotted against the Constitution and against the safety of the kingdom. On the 26th Louis appeared at the bar a second time, and the trial began. The advocates of Louis could plead that all his actions down to the dissolution of the National Assembly came within the amnesty then granted, and that the Constitution had proclaimed his person inviolable, while enacting for certain offences the penalty of deposition which he had already undergone. Such arguments were not likely to weigh with such a tribunal. The Mountain called for immediate sentence of death; the Girondins desired an appeal to the people of France. The galleries of the Convention were packed with adherents of the Jacobins, whose fury, not confined to words, struck terror into all who might incline towards mercy. In Paris unmistakable signs announced a new insurrection, to be followed perhaps by new massacres. On the question whether Louis was guilty none ventured to give a negative vote. The motion for an appeal to the people was rejected by 424 votes to 283. The penalty of death was adopted by 361 votes against 360 in favour of other penalties or of postponing at least the execution of the sentence. On the 21st of January 1793 Louis was