The party of violence insisted on the death of those whom they regarded as hostages, the Girondins, for the rising in the south, the queen for the rising in the west. An attempt to save the life of Marie Antoinette had been made by the government, with the sanction of Danton. Maret was sent to negotiate the neutrality of minor Italian States by offering to release her. Austria, not wishing the Italians to be neutral, seized Maret and his companion Semonville, in the passes of the Grisons, and sent them to a dungeon at Mantua. The queen was sent to the Conciergerie, which was the last stage before the Tribunal; and as her nephew, the emperor, did not relent, in October she was put on her trial, and executed. The death of the queen is revolting, because it was a move in a game, a concession by which Robespierre paid his debts to men at that time more violent than himself, and averted their attack. We have already seen that the advice she gave in decisive moments was disastrous, that she had no belief in the rights of nations, that she plotted war and destruction against her own people. There was cause enough for hatred. But if we ask ourselves who there is that comes forth unscathed from the trials that befell kings and queens in those or even in other times, and remember how often she pleaded and served the national cause against royalist and _emigre_, even against the great Irishman[2] whose portrait of her at Versailles, translated by Dutens, was shown to her by the Duchess of Fitzjames, we must admit that she deserved a better fate than most of those with whom we can compare her. [2] Burke, _Reflections on the French Revolution_.