On the 20th of January, Santerre, with a deputation from the municipality, presented himself before the king and formally read the sentence. Louis received it with unshaken firmness and demanded a respite of three days in which to prepare for heaven; he also solicited an interview with his family and a confessor. The last two demands alone were conceded, and the execution was ordered for the following morning at ten o'clock. For The king's last interview with his family was a heart-rending scene. At half past eight in the evening, the door of his apartment opened and the queen appeared leading by the hand the princess-royal and the princess Elizabeth, the sister of Louis: they all rushed into his arms. some minutes there ensued a profound silence broken only by the sobs of the afflicted family. The king then sat down, having the queen on his left, the princess-royal on his right, Elizabeth in front and the dauphin between his knees. This terrible scene lasted nearly two hours. Louis at length rose; the royal parents each gave a parting blessing to the dauphin, while the princesses still held the king around the waist. he approached the door, they uttered the most piercing cries. "I assure you," said Louis, "I will see you again in the morning at eight." "Why not at seven?" they exclaimed. "Well, then, at seven," answered the king. He then pronounced the word "adieu!" but in so mournful an accent that the lamentations redoubled, and the princess-royal fainted at his feet. The king finally tore himself from them and turned for consolation to the Abbé Edgeworth, who spent the remainder of the night with him and heroically discharged the perilous duty of attending his last moments. As At nine o'clock, on the 21st of January, Santerre reappeared to conduct his sovereign to the scaffold. In passing through the court of the Temple, Louis gave a last look at the tower which contained all that was dear to him in the world; and, immediately summoning his courage, he calmly seated himself in the carriage beside his confessor and opposite two gend'armes. During the passage to the place of execution, which occupied two hours, he continued to repeat the psalms pointed out to him by his confessor. The streets were filled with an immense crowd who beheld the mournful procession in silent dismay: a large body of troops surrounded the carriage, and a double file of soldiers and National Guards with a formidable train of artillery rendered hopeless any attempt at rescue. When the procession arrived at the designated spot, between the garden of the Tuileries and the Champs Elysées, Louis descended from the carriage and disrobed himself without the aid of the executioners; but he manifested a momentary indignation when they began to bind his hands. The Abbé Edgeworth checked him, saying with almost inspired felicity, "submit to this outrage, as the last resemblance to the Saviour, who is about to recompense your sufferings." He mounted the scaffold with a firm step; with a single look he imposed silence on twenty drummers placed there to prevent his being heard, and said with a loud voice "I die innocent of all the crimes laid to my charge; but I pardon the authors of my death and pray God that my wrongs may never be visited upon France. And you, unhappy people" At these words, Santerre ordered the drums to beat; the executioners seized the king and the axe terminated his existence. One of the attendants grasped the head and waved it in the air, and the blood was sprinkled over the confessor who knelt beside the lifeless corse of his sovereign. The body of the king, immediately after the execution, was removed to the ancient cemetery of the Madeleine at the end of the Boulevard Italienne and placed in a grave six feet square. Large quantities of quick lime were thrown on the body, so that when, in 1815, the remains were sought after, that they might be conveyed to the Royal Mausoleum in St. Denis, scarcely any part could be discovered. The king was executed in the centre of the Place Louis XV. on the same spot where afterward, the queen, the princess Elizabeth and many other noble victims of the Revolution perished; where, also, Robespierre and Danton were executed; and where the Emperor Alexander and the allied sovereigns took their station, when their victorious armies entered Paris on the 31st of March, 1814. Thus, the greatest of revolutionary crimes and the greatest of revolutionary punishments took place on the same spot: nor has modern Europe another scene to exhibit fraught with equally interesting recollections. It is now ornamented by the colossal obelisk of blood-red granite which was brought from Thebes, in Upper Egypt, in 1833, by the French government. That monument, which witnessed the march of Cambyses, and survived the conquests of Cæsar and Alexander, is destined to mark to the latest generation the scene of the martyrdom of Louis and of the final triumph of his immortal avenger. The character of this monarch cannot be better described than in the words of Mignet, the ablest of the Republican writers of France. "Louis inherited a revolution from his ancestors: his qualities were better fitted than those of any of his predecessors to have prevented or terminated it; for he was capable of effecting reform before it broke out, and of discharging the duties of a constitutional throne under its influence. He was perhaps the only monarch who was subject to no passion, not even that of power, and who united the two qualities essential to a good king, fear of God and love of his people. He perished, the victim of passions which he had no share in exciting; the passions of his supporters with which he was unacquainted, and the passions of the multitude which he had done nothing to awaken. Few kings have left so venerated a memory. History will write for his epitaph that, with a little more force of mind, he would have been unrivalled as a sovereign." CHAPTER III. STATE OF EUROPE PRIOR TO THE WAR. It was not to be expected that so great an event as the French Revolu. tion, rousing as it did the passions of one portion and exciting the apprehensions of the other portion of mankind all the world over, could long remain an object of passing observation to the adjoining states. It ad. dressed itself to the hopes and prejudices of the great body of the people in every country; and, by exciting their ill-smothered indignation against their superiors, added to a sense of their real injuries the more powerful stimulus of revolutionary ambition. A ferment accordingly began to spread through the neighboring kingdoms; extravagant hopes were formed, chi merical anticipations indulged, and the laboring classes, inflated by the rapid elevation of their brethren in France, believed the time was approaching when the distinctions of society were to cease and the miseries of poverty expire, amid the universal dominion of the people. Austria, Russia and England were at this time the great powers of Europe, and they therefore bore a principal part in the long and desperate struggle that ensued. Her Nine years of peace had enabled Great Britain to recover in a great degree from the exhaustion of the American war. If she had lost an empire in the Western, she had gained one in the Eastern world. national debt, amounting to £244,000,000 sterling (ten hundred and sixty millions of dollars,) on which the annual interest was £9,317,000 (forty-four millions of dollars,) was a severe burden on the industry of the people; while the yearly taxes, though light in comparison with what were subsequently imposed, were still felt to be oppressive. The resources of the kingdom were, nevertheless, enormous. Commerce, agriculture and manufactures had rapidly increased, the trade with the independent States of North America was found to exceed in value what it had been when that country was in a state of colonial dependence, and the exertion of individuals to improve their condition had produced a surprising effect on the accumulation of capital and the state of public credit. The three per cents., which were at 57 at the close of the war, had risen to ⚫99, and the overflowing wealth of the cities was already finding its way into the most circuitous foreign trade and hazardous distant investments. The national revenue amounted to £16,000,000 (seventy-six millions of dollars,) and the army included thirty-two thousand soldiers in the British Isles, besides an equal, force in the East and West Indies and thirty-six regiments of yeomanry. After the commencement of the war, and previous to 1796, the entire regular army of Great Britain amounted to two hundred and six thousand men, including forty-two thousand militia. More than half of this force, however, was required for the service of the colonies; and experience has proved that Britain can never collect more than forty thousand at any one point on the continent of Europe. The strength of England consisted in her inexhaustible wealth, in the public spirit and energy of her people, in the moral influence of centuries of glory, and in a fleet of a hundred and fifty ships of the line which gave her the undisputed command of the seas. The opinions of the people on the French Revolution were greatly divided. The young, the ardent, the philosophical, the factious, the restless and the ambitious were sanguine in their expectations of its success, and exulted in its promise of benefit to the human race: while the great majority of the aristocracy, the adherents of the Church, the holders of office under the monarchy, and in general the opulent ranks of society beheld it with disgust and alarm. At the head of the first party, was Mr. Fox, the eloquent and illustrious champion of universal freedom. Descended from a noble family, he inherited the love of liberty, and by the impetuous torrent of his eloquence long maintained his place as leader of the opposition of the British Empire. Mr. Pitt was the leader of the second party, which, at the commencement of the French Revolution, was in full possession of the government and had a decided majority in both houses of Parliament. Modern history can scarcely furnish another character of such eminence. His early career was distinguished by the sentiments and principles inherited from his father, the first Lord Chatham, and his great abilities gave him from the outset a prominent place in Parliament. On the 12th of January, 1784, before he was five-and-twenty years of age, he took his seat in the House of Commons, as Chancellor of the Exchequer; and never did a more arduous struggle await a minister. The opposition, led by the impetuous energy of Fox, aided by the experience, influence and admirable temper of Lord North, possessed at that time a large majority in the lower House, and they treated with the utmost scorn this attempt of a young man of four-and-twenty to disposses them of the government. But it was soon evident that Pitt's transcendent talents were equal to the task. Invincible in resolution, cool in danger, fertile in resource, powerful in debate, and possessed of a moral courage which nothing could overcome, Pitt exhibited a combination of great qualities which, for political contest, was never excelled; he successfully withstood the most formidable parliamentary majority which had appeared in England since the days of Cromwell, and ultimately remained victorious in the struggle. Mr. Burke was the leader of a third party composed of the old Whigs who supported the principles of the English, but opposed those of the French, Revolution. This celebrated man had long stood side by side with Mr. Fox in the opposition, but on the breaking out of the French Revolution, he took part with the government. With great political sagacity he exerted his talents to oppose the levelling principles which that convulsion introduced; and his work on that subject produced a greater impression on the public mind than, perhaps, any other book which has yet appeared in the world. It abounds in eloquent passages and profound wisdom; but vast as was its influence, and unrivalled as was its reputation, its value was not fully understood till the progress of events demonstrated the justice of its principles. The division on this vital question for ever alienated these two illustrious men from each other, and drew tears from both of them in the House of Commons where it took place: a striking token of the effects which the Revolution, out of its immediate sphere, produced on the charities of private life, and of the variance which it occasioned in the bosom of families and between friendships that “had stood the strain of a whole life." Austria was the most formidable rival of the French Republic on the continent of Europe. This great empire, containing at the time nearly twenty millions of inhabitants, and having a revenue of ninety millions of florins, held the richest and most fertile districts of Europe among its provinces. The possession of the Low Countries gave Austria an advanced post immediately in contact with the French frontier, while the mountains of the Tyrol formed a vast fortress, garrisoned by an attached and warlike people, and placed at a salient angle between Germany and Italy. Her armies, numerous and highly disciplined, had acquired great renown in the wars of Maria Theresa and maintained a creditable position, under Daun and Laudohn, in the scientific campaigns with the Great Frederic. Her government, nominally a monarchy, but really an oligarchy in the hands of the great nobles, possessed all that firmness and tenacity of purpose by which aristocratic powers have always been distinguished, and which, under unparalleled difficulties and disasters, at last brought her successfully through the long struggle in which she was soon afterward engaged. The Austrian forces, at the commencement of the war, amounted to two hundred and forty thousand infantry, thirty-five thousand cavalry, and one hundred thousand artillery; while the extent of the empire and the warlike disposition of the inhabitants furnished inexhaustible resources for the maintenance of the contest. The military strength of Prussia, raised to the highest pitch of which its resources would admit, by the genius of the great Frederic, rendered this once inconsiderable kingdom a first-rate power on the Continent. Its army, one hundred and sixty thousand strong, including thirty-five thousand cavalry, was in the best state of discipline and equipment; and this force, considerable as it was, formed but a small part of the strength of the kingdom. By an admirable system of organization, the whole of the Prussian youth were compelled to serve a limited number of years in the army, so that not only was a taste for military habits universally diffused, but the country always possessed an immense reserve of experienced troops who might in any emergency be called to its defence. The states which composed the Prussian monarchy were by no means so coherent as those of the Austrian dominions. Nature had traced out for them no limits like the Rhine, the Alps or the Pyrenees, to designate their boundaries; no great rivers or mountain chains protected their frontiers; and few fortified towns guarded them from the incursions of the military nations by which they were environed. Their surface consisted of fourteen thousand square leagues, and their population amounted to nearly eight millions, composed of different races, professing different creeds and speaking different languages. Toward Russia and Austrian Poland, a frontier of two hundred leagues was destitute of places of defence; Silesia, alone, enjoyed the double advantage of three lines of fortresses and the strongest natural barriers. The national security rested entirely on the army and the courage of the inhabitants. The government was a military despotism, and the liberty of the press was unknown; nevertheless, the public administration was tempered by the wisdom and beneficence of its state-policy. In no country of Europe were private rights more thoroughly respected, or justice more rigidly observed, than in the courts and domestic government of Prussia. The immense Empire of Russia-comprehending nearly half of Europe and Asia, backed by inaccessible regions of frost, secured from invasion by the extent of its surface and the severity of its climate, inhabited by a patient and indomitable race who were ever ready to exchange the luxuries and adventure of the south for the hardships and monotony of the north-was daily becoming formidable to the liberties of Europe. The infantry of Russia had long been celebrated for its immovable firmness; and the cavalry, though inferior to its present state of discipline and equip ment, was inured to service in the war with the Turks, and mounted on a hardy and admirable race of horses. The artillery was more distinguished for the obstinate valor of its men, than for the condition of its guns. The armies were recruited by a certain proportion of conscripts drawn from every hundred of male inhabitants; a mode of supply in a large and rapidly increasing population, that was not easily exhausted. The entire force in 1792 amounted to two hundred thousand men, exclusive of the youth of the military colonies, and of the well-known Cossacks of the Don. This irregular force, composed of the pastoral tribes in the southern provinces of the Empire, was a very slight expense to the government: it was necessary only to issue an order for a certain number of these |