5 - Upon the Threshold

Summary

Monday – January 7, 1793

A new year begins, a sickly child born to a mother cruelly beaten, crushed. The mother is France in 1792, a year that began in strife and ended in sorrow. A year ago there was suffering, people rioting for food, dying of hunger and despair. Then the country was besieged by war.

The summer was no better; the citizens of Paris went crazy and stormed the Tuileries Palace, taking the king and the royal family captive and throwing them in a cold, dark prison. The people spat on the faces of the monarchs and their children, treating them all like criminals. Violence, rioting, and more massacres followed. In September bloodthirsty mobs murdered hundreds of innocent people, including priests imprisoned solely because they did not swear allegiance to a civil constitution. Overnight the face of Paris changed. A radical Commune took over the government, and the gates to the city closed.

The trial of the King of France filled our hearts with trepidation. Louis-Auguste XVI was condemned like a common felon, judged in a courtroom full of disloyal subjects, people who turned against a monarch who was once considered the father of the nation. Today Louis XVI was declared guilty. His lawyers could not convince the jury that King Louis meant no harm to the nation. His accusers will ask for the death penalty.

A new year sneaked up on us without fanfare, as subtle as time when day becomes night; I hardly noticed it.