Suspension of Louis XVI
The Observer, 12 August 1792
By an express received in town yesterday evening from Paris, we learn that on Thursday the motion for the suspension of the King was discussed, and there appeared against the unhappy Louis a great majority. It was then proposed that he should be prosecuted as a traitor to the state. A long and warm debate, or rather contention, ensued; after which, it was determined that this proposition, with the motion for his suspension, should be reserved until the following day, for final decision; when it was expected he would be formally suspended, and the exercise of the Executive Power invested in the hands of the Commissioners.
This may be considered as a prelude to greater enormities. The royal family, stripped of their guards, must fall an easy sacrifice to the cursed fury of the Jacobins – and France, to atone the mighty guild, deluged in blood.
King and Queen of France
The Observer, 19 August 1792
The following particulars respecting the royal family of France, during the dreadful scenes which disgraced Paris last week, have not yet been communicated to the public.
The King, Queen, and their children were thrust into the president’s room, adjoining to the Assembly. This room had in it only a few bare forms, upon which they lay during the nights of Friday and Saturday.
For the first 12 hours of their confinement, not a soul went near them, nor had they any kind of refreshment. At length one of the door-keepers went and purchased, out of his own pocket, a few biscuits and a bottle of wine, which he brought to them.
The feelings of the unhappy monarch, and his consort, it is impossible to imagine – in the momentary dread of insult and outrage – and if spared from the butchering hands of the savages who were demolishing the palace, with the horrid prospect of seeing their children perish for want! Such accumulation of injury and misfortune, no history can parallel!
The National Assembly were obliged to revoke their decree, by which the person of the King was to be in their custody, and under their protection. M Manuel, at the head of the mob, demanded it, and the Assembly durst not refuse.
The King, and his family, are now in close custody in the Temple of the Palace, formerly belonging to the Duke of Orleans, and their keepers are the mob. Whether the King, at this moment, lives, is a circumstance of great and agonising dubiety.
The English messenger, who left Paris on Sunday is positive, that he saw at least 6,000 or 7,000 persons lying dead in the streets of Paris; so that the slaughter must have been still more considerable than we stated it, which was 5,000; while others of our contemporaries sunk it so low as 12 or 1,500. There is reason to apprehend however, that the work of death will not end even here, enormous as are already the crimes of Frenchmen. For the King and his family, the most deplorable and melancholy fate may be, we fear too justly, anticipated.
In addition to the horrid excesses already detailed, the mob have broke into all the prisons at Orleans, and massacred the unfortunate prisoners in cold blood.
In reading such details, which freeze the generous heart with horror, one is led to exclaim – In what are these enormities to end?
Execution of the late Queen of France
The Observer, 10 November 1793
Her majesty has been confined in the prison of the Conciergerie since the 1st of August last, in a room 12 feet long, eight feet broad four feet underground, and with a grated window on a level with it. The furniture was such as the rest of the prison, and originally intended for the meanest criminals; her food was of the coarsest kind, and she was constantly kept in sight by a female prisoner and two light-horsemen.
