subterranean
galleries. A sum of L20,000 was voted for expenses, until the
Convention in September disposed of the king.

With no severer effort than the signing of an order, Lewis might have
called up other regiments of Swiss, who would have made the stronghold
of monarchy impregnable. And it would have been in his power, before
sunset that day, to march out of Paris at the head of a victorious
army, and at once to proclaim reforms which enlightened statesmen had
drawn up. His queen was active and resolute; but she had learnt, in
adversity, to think more of the claims of authority and the historic
right of kings. She shared Burke's passionate hatred for men whose
royalism was conditional. At every step downward they were the authors
of their own disaster. The French Republic was not a spontaneous
evolution of social elements. The issue between constitutional
monarchy, the richest and most flexible of political forms, and the
Republic one and indivisible (that is, not federal), which is the most
rigorous and sterile, was decided by the crimes of men, and by errors
more inevitably fatal than crime. There is another world for the
expiation of guilt; but the wages of folly are payable here below.

XVI

THE EXECUTION OF THE KING

The constitutional experiment, first tried on the Continent under
Lewis XVI., failed mainly through distrust of the executive and a
mechanical misconstruction of the division of power. Government had
been incapable, the finances were disordered, the army was
disorganised; the monarchy had brought on an invasion which it was now
the mission of the Republic to repel. The instinct of freedom made way
for the instinct of force, the Liberal movement was definitely
reversed, and the change which followed the shock of the First
European Coalition was more significant, the angle more acute, than
the mere transition from royal to republican forms. Unity of power was
the evident need of the moment, and as it could not be bestowed upon a
king who was in league with the enemy, it had to be sought in a
democracy which should have concentration and vigour for its dominant
note. Therefore supremacy was assured to that political party which
was most alert in laying its grasp on all the resources of the State,
and most resolute in crushing resistance. More than public interests
were at stake. Great armies were approaching, guided by vindictive
_emigres_, and they had announced the horrors they were pr