em. It was now six o'clock in the
morning, and the gray light of the dawn was mingled with the gleam of
torches. The prince refused to have his eyes bandaged--the word was
given, and he fell. The body, dressed as it was, was immediately thrown
into a grave--which had been prepared beforehand; at least, so say all
the witnesses, except M. Savary.

To resume our notice of the mere informalities of the procedure:--1. The
sentence was altogether unsupported by the evidence, except as to the
mere fact of D'Enghien's having borne arms against France; but this
could be no crime in him: he owed no allegiance to the French
government; on the contrary, he and all his family had been expressly
excepted from every act of amnesty to emigrants, and thereby constituted
_aliens_. 2. The execution took place immediately after the sentence was
pronounced; this is contrary to the laws of all civilised nations, and
in direct contradiction to an article in the French code then in force,
which gave twenty-four hours to every prisoner convicted by a
court-martial, that he might, if he chose, appeal from their sentence.
But, 3rdly, the publications (long afterwards extorted) of Savary and
Hullin, prove that the court, perplexed with the difficulty of making
their sentence appear to have any conformity with the charge and the
evidence, drew up in fact, two different _sentences_: one before the
duke was executed, which bore the article, "immediate execution"; the
other a more careful document, intended alone to meet the public eye, in
which not a word about immediate execution occurs. The duke was _not_
executed, therefore, at six in the morning of the 21st of March, upon
that sentence which was made public at the time, as the authority for
his death.

Every circumstance in the dismal tale, from the quantity of linen packed
up at Strasburg, to the preparation of the grave in the ditch of
Vincennes, attests the fact that the fate of the unfortunate young man
(for he was but 32 years old when he fell) had been determined on, to
the minutest particular, long before he was summoned to a mock trial,
before an incompetent tribunal. If ever man was murdered, it was the
Duke d'Enghien.

Such was the fate of the gallant and generous youth, who, by his fiery
courage, won the battle of Bertsheim; and who, when his followers, to
whom the republicans had so often refused quarter, seemed disposed to
retaliate in the hour of victory, threw himself between t