The Girondins did not confine themselves to numerous efforts to displace the responsibility of judging from the Convention to the people. Three days after Barere's speech Dumouriez arrived in Paris. As La Fayette had a few months before, so did Dumouriez now, appear to be the man of the sword so dreaded by Robespierre, the successful soldier ready to convert the Revolution to his own profit, or if not to his own to that of his party, the Girondins. During more than two weeks Dumouriez remained in the city, casting about for some means of saving the King, but constantly checked by the Jacobins, who through Pache, minister of war, kept control of the artillery and troops near Paris. On the 15th of January the Convention came to a vote, amid scenes of intense excitement. Was Louis guilty? And if so what should be his punishment? Six hundred and eighty-three members voted affirmatively to the first question. Three hundred and sixty-one voted the penalty of death. About the same number equivocated in a variety of forms, the most popular proving the one that declared for {169} imprisonment or exile, to be changed to death in case of invasion. Vergniaud, as president, at the end of a session that lasted 36 hours, declared the sentence of the Convention to be death. On the 19th of January one last effort was made. A motion for a respite was proposed, but was rejected, 380 to 310; and the Convention then fixed the 21st as the day for the King's execution. On that day Louis accordingly went to the scaffold. The guillotine was set up in the great open space known at various epochs as the Place Louis XV, de la Revolution, and de la Concorde. Louis, after a touching farewell from his family, and after confessing whatever he imagined to be his sins, was driven from the Temple to the place of execution; he was dressed in white. The streets were thronged. The national guard was out in force, and when Louis from the platform attempted to speak, Santerre ordered his drums to roll. A moment later the head of King Louis XVI had fallen, and many mourning royalists were vowing loyalty in their hearts to the little boy of eight, imprisoned in the temple, who to them was King Louis XVII. {170} CHAPTER XII THE FALL OF THE GIRONDE The disappearance of Louis XVI from the scene left the Mountain and the Gironde face to face, to wage their faction fight, a fight to the knife; while France in her armies more nobly maintained her greater struggle on the frontier. There for a while after Valmy all had prospered. Brunswick had fallen back to Coblenz. A French army under the Marquis de Custine had overrun all the Rhineland as far as Mainz. Dumouriez, transferred from the Ardennes to the Belgian frontier, had invaded the Austrian Netherlands. On the 6th of November he won a considerable victory at Jemmappes, and towards the end of December, he controlled most of the province.