Old and New Paris: Its History, Its People, and Its Places, v. 1Edwards, H. Sutherland (Henry Sutherland)
History
Old and New Paris: Its History, Its People, and Its Places, v. 1
Edwards, H. Sutherland (Henry Sutherland)
Paris (France) -- Description and travel; Paris (France) -- History
Probably, however, he thought it prudent not to invite general attention
to words which by a large portion of his subjects would have been
accepted as true. It has been said by the defenders of the "regicide"
that Philippe Égalité did his best not to be present at the sitting of
the Convention when sentence had to be passed on the unfortunate king;
and that he was threatened by his friends of the Left with assassination
unless he voted with them for the "death of the tyrant." However that
may be, he took his seat among the judges by whom the fate of his royal
kinsman was to be decided; and when it came to his turn to deliver
his opinion, he did so in these words: "Occupied solely with my duty,
convinced that all those who have attacked or might afterwards attack
the sovereignty of the people deserve death, I pronounce the death of
Louis." Philippe Égalité had looked for general approval, and had voted
in fear of that death which awaited him nevertheless, and which came to
him in the very form in which a few months before it had been inflicted
on the unhappy Louis. When his vote was made known, cries of indignation
from all sides warned him that he had transgressed one of the great
moral laws which are observed even by men who violate all others. A
former soldier of the king's body-guard, hearing of Philippe Égalité's
unnatural offence, resolved to kill him; but not being able to find him,
killed another less guilty "regicide" in his place.
Very different was the feeling excited by the conduct of Philippe
Égalité in the breast of the king himself. "I don't know by what
chance," says the Abbé Edgeworth in his "Relation sur les derniers
Moments du Roi," "the conversation fell upon Philippe. The king seemed
to be well acquainted with his intrigues, and with the horrid part he
had taken at the Convention. But he spoke of him without any bitterness,
and with pity rather than anger. 'What have I done to my cousin,' he
exclaimed, 'that he should so persecute me? What object could he have?
Oh, he is more to be pitied than I am. My lot is melancholy, no doubt,
but his is much more so.'"
Under the Directory, when the worst period of the Revolution was at
an end, and the Republic itself was disappearing, the Place de la
Révolution was called Place de la Concorde, and this name was preserved
under the Consulate and the Empire.
[Illustration: PLACE DE LA CONCORDE, FROM THE TERRACE OF THE TUILERIES.]
At the time of the Restoration, when endeavours were made to revive in
every form the associations of the old French monarchy, the name of
Place de la Concorde was set aside for the original one of Place Louis
XV., which, however, in obvious reference to the execution of Louis XV's
successor, was changed in 1826 to Place Louis XVI. It was at the same
time decreed that a monument should be erected to the memory of the
unfortunate monarch, but the decree was never acted upon.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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