xperienced from their proper victims. They were obliged to fire on them
with cannon, and many hundreds of the miserable creatures were in thus
way exterminated, by wretches worse than themselves.

No exact account was ever made of the number of persons murdered during
this dreadful period; but not above two or three hundred of the
prisoners arrested for state offences were known to escape, or be
discharged, and the most moderate computation raises the number of those
who fell to two or three thousand, though some carry it to twice the
extent. Truchod announced to the Legislative Assembly, that four
thousand had perished. Some exertion was made to save the lives of those
imprisoned for debt, whose numbers, with those of common felons, may
make up the balance betwixt the number slain and eight thousand who were
prisoners when the massacre began. The bodies were interred in heaps, in
immense trenches, prepared beforehand by order of the community of
Paris; but their bones have since been transferred to the subterranean
catacombs, which form the general charnel-house of the city. In those
melancholy regions, while other relics of mortality lie exposed all
around, the remains of those who perished in the massacres of September,
are alone secluded from the eye. The vault in which they repose is
closed with a screen of freestone, as if relating to crimes unfit to be
thought of even in the proper abode of death; and which France would
willingly hide in oblivion.

After this dreadful massacre, the Jacobins eagerly demanded the life of
Louis XVI. He was accordingly tried by the convention and condemned to
be beheaded.

_Death of Louis XVI. and other Members of the Royal Family._

On the 21st of January, 1793, Louis XVI. was publicly beheaded in the
midst of his own metropolis, in the _Place Louis Quinze_, erected to the
memory of his grandfather. It is possible, for the critical eye of the
historian, to discover much weakness in the conduct of this unhappy
monarch; for he had neither the determination to fight for his rights,
nor the power of submitting with apparent indifference to circumstances
where resistance inferred danger. He submitted, indeed, but with so bad
a grace, that he only made himself suspected of cowardice, without
getting credit for voluntary concession. But yet his behaviour on many
trying occasions effectually vindicate him from the charge of timidity,
and showed that the unwillingness to shed blood, by