On December 11, 1792 King Louis XVI was brought to trial in front of the National Convention, which acted as the jury. The King was charged with conspiring against the nation. His attorney was his former minister of affairs and a philosopher, Malsherbes. But with the convincing arguments of the Girondins, Jacobins and the Montagnards, and the unveiling of Louis's secret safe ,which held his secret papers about bribing the city officals, the people's case was more then rock solid. With all of this evidence against him, the convention agreed that Louis XVI, King of France, was guilty of conspiring against the people of France and sentenced him to death by guillotine on January 21,1793.
Louis XVI's morning started off when Santerre of the National Guard and two representatives from the Commune showed up at 8:00 a.m. to the Place de la Revolution. He rode in a coach through the heavily guarded streets. The Commune hired thousands of armed men to make sure that no one tried to free the king. He arrived to the place of execution at ten in the morning. With his hands tied behind his back, he went up the stairs of the scaffold holding the guillotine, and he got up there and started speaking: "I die innocent. I pardon my enemies and I hope that my blood will be useful to the French, that it will appease God's anger...."1 His words were cut off by the roll of drums. Then Charles Sanson, the executioner, strapped him down and pulled the rope. Louis' head head fell off into a basket. Sanson's son picked up the head to the shouts coming from the crowd of "Vive la Nation! Vive la République!"2 The execution was over, and afterwards the people tried to dip their handkerchiefs in the blood of the deceased King.
After the execution of King Louis XVI, the French nation continued to struggle. In January, 1793 the revolutionary government declared war on Britain, a war for world dominion which would continue for another twenty years. Meanwhile a counterrevolution in France erupted, and the Paris Commune continued to pressure the new government for more radical change. The French Revolution was not over
