I need info on the execution of Louis XVI!!!!?

Question

...quotes, dialogue....i need to put together a skit

Answer 1

right here in this page is everything!!!!

http://au.dir.yahoo.com/new/20050713/Regional/Countries/France/Arts_and_Humanities/Humanities/History/
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and here are other sources that might help you gather all you needto make your work!!!
Whatever can be said of Louis XVI's performance during his reign and the early parts of the French Revolution, there can be no doubt he died bravely and like a king.
He met his fate only a day after the National Convention condemned him to death and only hours after saying goodbye to his queen Marie-Antoinette and their children the previous night. It had taken two hours for a large escort of cavalrymen to bring him to the Place de la Revolution through a massive crowd that had gathered to witness the historical moment.
Journeying in the green carriage with Louis XVI was an English priest, Henry Edgeworth, who gave him a book of psalms to read.
According to Edgeworth's description of the proceedings the carriage stopped in the middle of a large space left around the scaffold. Surrounding that were cannons and further away "an armed multitude extended as far as the eye could reach."
As the guards prepared to get out Louis stopped them and said "I recommend to you this good man (Edgeworth); take care that after my death no insult be offered to him - I charge you to prevent it."
Then he alighted and three soldiers moved to take off his brown coat to prepare him for the blade.
Edgeworth said: "But he repulsed them with haughtiness - he undressed himself, untied his neckcloth, opened his shirt, and arranged it himself."
Then the guards, who for a while were taken aback, then surrounded him again and moved to seize his hands. The indignant king fought them off, but was calmed by Edgeworth.
The priest's description of the next moments of the execution are particularly moving.
"The path leading to the scaffold was extremely rough and difficult to pass; the King was obliged to lean on my arm, and from the slowness with which he proceeded, I feared for a moment that his courage might fail; but what was my astonishment, when arrived at the last step, I felt that he suddenly let go my arm, and I saw him cross with a firm foot the breadth of the whole scaffold."
Edgeworth said that "by his look alone" the crowd was silenced and then the king spoke in a loud voice: "I die innocent of all the crimes laid to my charge; I pardon those who have occasioned my death; and I pray to God that the blood you are going to shed may never be visited on France."
Edgeworth continued: "He was proceeding, when a man on horseback, in the national uniform, and with a ferocious cry, ordered the drums to beat."
"Many voices were at the same time heard encouraging the executioners. They seemed reanimated themselves, in seizing with violence the most virtuous of Kings, they dragged him under the axe of the guillotine, which with one stroke severed his head from his body. All this passed in a moment."
"The youngest of the guards, who seemed about eighteen, immediately seized the head, and showed it to the people as he walked round the scaffold; he accompanied this monstrous ceremony with the most atrocious and indecent gestures."
It should be noted that in another description of the execution a witness describes it taking two drops of the guillotine to sever Louis' head, due to the corpulence of his neck.
The time of death of France's king was 10.15am, five-and-a-quarter hours after he rose from his bed.
Other reports have members of the crowd dipping material into the king's blood that ran from the scaffold so they could keep them as souvenirs.
After his death Louis' body was taken to the cemetery at the Church of the Madeleine where it put into a large pit, close to the wall of the Rue d’Anjou, and then smothered in quicklime.
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http://daphne.palomar.edu/marguello_students/Fall_2003/005215123/Thomas%20Paine.htm
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http://www.victorianweb.org/victorian/authors/carlyle/vandenbossche/4g.html

Answer 2

Louis XVII Some info: louis XVI's son

Answer 3

In October 1789, angry and hungry women of the Parisian underclass marched to Versailles, the palace where the royal family lived, and brought them back to Paris to deal with a food shortage.

On 21 June 1791, Louis attempted to flee secretly from Paris to modern-day Belgium (then part of the Austrian Empire) with his family in the hope of forcing a more moderate swing in the revolution than was deemed possible in radical Paris. However, flaws in the escape plan caused sufficient delays to enable them to be recognised and captured at Varennes. Supposedly Louis was captured while trying to make a purchase at a store, where the clerk recognized him. According to the legend, Louis was recognized because the coin used as payment featured an accurate portrait of him. He was returned to Paris, where he remained indubitably as constitutional king, though under effective house-arrest until 1792.

On 25 July 1792 Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick-Luneburg, commander of the Prussian forces, issued a manifesto (the so-called Brunswick Manifesto) threatening the inhabitants of Paris with exemplary vengeance if the Royal family was harmed and threatening the French public with exemplary punishment if they resisted the Imperial and Prussian armies or the forced reinstatement of the monarchy. The manifesto was taken to be the final proof of a collusion between Louis and foreign powers in a conspiracy against his own country. Louis was officially arrested on 13 August 1792 and sent to the Temple, an ancient Paris fortress used as a prison. On 21 September 1792, the National Assembly declared France to be a republic.

Louis was tried (from 11 December 1792) and convicted of high treason before the National Convention. He was sentenced to death (21 January 1793) by guillotine by 361 votes to 288, with 72 effective abstentions.

Stripped of all titles and honorifics by the egalitarian, Republican government, Citizen Louis Capet was guillotined in front of a cheering crowd on 21 January 1793. On his death, his eight-year-old son, Louis-Charles, automatically became to royalists and some foreign states the de jure King Louis XVII of France, despite France having been declared a republic.

Answer 4

On January 20, 1793, the National Convention condemned Louis XVI to death, his execution scheduled for the next day. Louis spent that evening saying goodbye to his wife and children. The following day dawned cold and wet. Louis arose at five. At eight o'clock a guard of 1,200 horsemen arrived to escort the former king on a two-hour carriage ride to his place of execution. Accompanying Louis, at his invitation, was a priest, Henry Essex Edgeworth, an Englishman living in France. Edgeworth recorded the event and we join his narrative as he and the fated King enter the carriage to begin their journey:

ADVERTISMENT
"The King, finding himself seated in the carriage, where he could neither speak to me nor be spoken to without witness, kept a profound silence. I presented him with my breviary, the only book I had with me, and he seemed to accept it with pleasure: he appeared anxious that I should point out to him the psalms that were most suited to his situation, and he recited them attentively with me. The gendarmes, without speaking, seemed astonished and confounded at the tranquil piety of their monarch, to whom they doubtless never had before approached so near.

The procession lasted almost two hours; the streets were lined with citizens, all armed, some with pikes and some with guns, and the carriage was surrounded by a body of troops, formed of the most desperate people of Paris. As another precaution, they had placed before the horses a number of drums, intended to drown any noise or murmur in favour of the King; but how could they be heard? Nobody appeared either at the doors or windows, and in the street nothing was to be seen, but armed citizens - citizens, all rushing towards the commission of a crime, which perhaps they detested in their hearts.

The carriage proceeded thus in silence to the Place de Louis XV, and stopped in the middle of a large space that had been left round the scaffold: this space was surrounded with cannon, and beyond, an armed multitude extended as far as the eye could reach. As soon as the King perceived that the carriage stopped, he turned and whispered to me, 'We are arrived, if I mistake not.' My silence answered that we were. One of the guards came to open the carriage door, and the gendarmes would have jumped out, but the King stopped them, and leaning his arm on my knee, 'Gentlemen,' said he, with the tone of majesty, 'I recommend to you this good man; take care that after my death no insult be offered to him - I charge you to prevent it.'… As soon as the King had left the carriage, three guards surrounded him, and would have taken off his clothes, but he repulsed them with haughtiness- he undressed himself, untied his neckcloth, opened his shirt, and arranged it himself. The guards, whom the determined countenance of Marie Antoinettethe King had for a moment disconcerted, seemed to recover their audacity. They surrounded him again, and would have seized his hands. 'What are you attempting?' said the King, drawing back his hands. 'To bind you,' answered the wretches. 'To bind me,' said the King, with an indignant air. 'No! I shall never consent to that: do what you have been ordered, but you shall never bind me. . .'

The path leading to the scaffold was extremely rough and difficult to pass; the King was obliged to lean on my arm, and from the slowness with which he proceeded, I feared for a moment that his courage might fail; but what was my astonishment, when arrived at the last step, I felt that he suddenly let go my arm, and I saw him cross with a firm foot the breadth of the whole scaffold; silence, by his look alone, fifteen or twenty drums that were placed opposite to me; and in a voice so loud, that it must have been heard it the Pont Tournant, I heard him pronounce distinctly these memorable words: 'I die innocent of all the crimes laid to my charge; I Pardon those who have occasioned my death; and I pray to God that the blood you are going to shed may never be visited on France.'

The executionHe was proceeding, when a man on horseback, in the national uniform, and with a ferocious cry, ordered the drums to beat. Many voices were at the same time heard encouraging the executioners. They seemed reanimated themselves, in seizing with violence the most virtuous of Kings, they dragged him under the axe of the guillotine, which with one stroke severed his head from his body. All this passed in a moment. The youngest of the guards, who seemed about eighteen, immediately seized the head, and showed it to the people as he walked round the scaffold; he accompanied this monstrous ceremony with the most atrocious and indecent gestures. At first an awful silence prevailed; at length some cries of 'Vive la Republique!' were heard. By degrees the voices multiplied and in less than ten minutes this cry, a thousand times repeated became the universal shout of the multitude, and every hat was in the air."

Answer 5

http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/louis.htm

whole lot of information on this page.

Answer 6

The Indictment of Louis XVI (December 11, 1792)

Louis, the French people accuses you of having committed a multitude of crimes in order to establish your tyranny by destroying its liberty.

1. On 20 June, 1789, you attacked the sovereignty of the people by suspending the assemblies of its representatives and by driving them by violence from the place of their sessions. . . .

2. On 23 June you wished to dictate laws to the nation; you surrounded its representatives with troops; you presented them with two royal declarations, subversive of every liberty, and you ordered them to separate. Your declarations and the minutes of the Assembly establish these outrages undeniably.

3. You caused an army to march against the citizens of Paris; your satellites caused their blood to flow, and you withdrew this army only when the capture of the Bastille and the general insurrection apprised you that the people were victorious. . . .

6. For a long time you contemplated flight;. . . but on 21 June [1791] you made your escape with a false passport; you left a declaration against those same constitutional articles; you ordered the ministers not to sign any documents emanating from the National Assembly, and you forbade the Minister of Justice to deliver the Seals of State. The people’s money was wasted in achieving the success of this treason. . . .

7. On 14 September you apparently accepted the Constitution; your speeches announced a desire to maintain it, and you worked to overthrow it before it even was achieved.

15. Your brothers, enemies of the state, have rallied the émigrés under their colors; they have raised regiments, borrowed money, and contracted alliances in your name; you disavowed them only when you were quite certain that you could not harm their plans. . . .

30. You tried to bribe, with considerable sums, several members of the Constituent and Legislative Assemblies.

31. You allowed the French nation to be disgraced in Germany, in Italy, and in Spain, since you did nothing to exact reparation for the ill treatment which the French experienced in those countries.

32. On 10 August you reviewed the Swiss Guards at five o’clock in the morning; and the Swiss Guards fired first on the citizens.33. You caused the blood of Frenchmen to flow.

[Source: John Hall Stewart ed., A Documentary Survey of the French Revolution (New York: Macmillan, 1951), pp. 386-389, 391.]`

The Execution of Louis XVI (January 21, 1793)
Henry Edgeworth De Firmont

The carriage arrived . . . in the greatest silence, at the Place Louis XV, and came to a halt in the middle of a large empty space that had been left around the scaffold. This space was bordered with cannon; and beyond, as far as the eye could reach, was a multitude in arms. . . .

As soon as the king descended from the carriage, three executioners surrounded him and wished to take off his coat. He repulsed them with dignity and took it off himself. The executioners, whom the proud bearing of the king had momentarily disconcerted, seemed then to resume their audacity and, surrounding him again, attempted to tie his hands. “What are you trying to do?” asked the king, withdrawing his hands abruptly.

“Tie you,” replied one of the executioners.

“Tie me!” returned the king in an indignant tone. “No, I will never consent; do what you are ordered to do, but I will not be tied; renounce that idea.” The executioners insisted, they lifted their voices, and seemed about to call for help in order to use force. . . .

“Sire,” I said to him with tears, “in this new outrage I see only a final resemblance between Your Majesty and the Saviour who is to reward you.”

At these words he lifted his eyes to heaven with a sorrowing look that I cannot describe . . . and, turning to the executioners, said: “Do what you wish; I will drain the cup to the dregs.”

The steps that led to the scaffold were extremely steep in ascent. The king was obliged to hold to my arm, and by the pains he seemed to take, feared that his courage had begun to weaken; but what was my astonishment when, upon arriving at the last step, I saw him escape, so to speak, from my hands, cross the length of the scaffold with firm step to impose silence, by a single glance, upon ten or fifteen drummers who were in front of him, and with a voice so strong that it could be heard at the Pont-Tournant, distinctly pronounce these words forever memorable: “I die innocent of all the crimes imputed to me. I pardon the authors of my death, and pray God that the blood you are about to shed will never fall upon France.”

The executioners seized him, the knife struck him, his head fell at fifteen minutes after ten. The executioners seized it by the hair, and showed it to the multitude, whose cries of “Long live the Republic!” resounded to the very bosom of the Convention, whose place of meeting was only a few steps from the place of execution.

Thus died, at the age of thirty-eight years, four months, and twenty-eight days, Louis, sixteenth of his name, whose ancestors had reigned in France for
more than eight hundred years.

Immediately after the execution, the body of Louis was transported to the cemetery of the ancient Church of the Madeleine. It was placed in a pit six feet square, close to the wall of the Rue d’Anjou, and dissolved instantly by a great quantity of quicklime with which they took the precaution to cover it.

[Source: E. L. Higgins, ed., The French Revolution as Told by Contemporaries (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1966), pp. 272-273.]

Proclamation of the Convention
to the French People (January 23, 1793)

Citizens, the tyrant is no more. For a long time the cries of the victims, whom war and domestic dissensions have spread over France and Europe, loudly protested his existence. He has paid his penalty, and only acclamations for the Republic and for liberty have been heard from the people.

We have had to combat inveterate prejudices, and the superstition of centuries concerning monarchy. Involuntary uncertainties and inevitable disturbances always accompany great changes and revolutions as profound as ours. This political crisis has suddenly surrounded us with contradictions and tumults.

But the cause has ceased, and the motives have disappeared; respect for liberty of opinion must cause these tumultuous scenes to be forgotten; only the good which they have produced through the death of the tyrant and of tyranny now remains, and this judgment belongs in its entirety to each of us, just as it belongs to the entire nation. The National Convention and the French people are now to have only one mind, only one sentiment, that of liberty and civic fraternity.

Now, above all, we need peace in the interior of the Republic, and the most active surveillance of the domestic enemies of liberty. Never did circumstances more urgently require of all citizens the sacrifice of their passions and their personal opinions concerning the act of national justice which has just been effected. Today the French people can have no other passion than that for liberty.

[Source: E. L. Higgins, ed., The French Revolution as Told by Contemporaries (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1966), pp. 392.]