reluctance that Washington entered upon the duties
of the office of chief magistrate of the nation for a second term. "To
you," he said in a letter to Colonel Humphreys (then abroad) soon after
his inauguration--"To you, who know my love of retirement and domestic
life, it is unnecessary to say, that in accepting this reappointment I
relinquish those personal enjoyments to which I am peculiarly attached.
The motives which induced my acceptance are the same which ever ruled my
decision when the public desire--or, as my countrymen are pleased to
denominate it, the _public good_--was placed in the scale against my
personal enjoyments and private interest. The latter I have ever
considered as subservient to the former; and perhaps in no instance of
my life have I been more sensible of the sacrifice than at the present;
for at my age the love of retirement grows every day more and more
powerful, and the death of my nephew will, I apprehend, cause my private
concerns to suffer very much."[43]

On account of this death, Washington made a hurried visit to Mount
Vernon in April, and while there the important intelligence reached him
that France had declared war against England and Holland, an event which
prophesied a general European war. Almost simultaneously with this
intelligence came that of the execution of King Louis, by order of the
National Convention of France. The king, who had been a mere
shuttle-cock of faction for two years, was beheaded on the twenty-first
of January, with circumstances of brutality which make humanity shudder.
His death had been long predestinated by the ferocious men who ruled
France, and, to accomplish it with a semblance of justice, he had been
accused of crimes of which he was utterly innocent. Even at the last
moment, when standing before the implement of death, he was made to feel
the brutality of men in power. He looked complacently upon the vast
multitude who came to see him die, and was about to say a few words,
when the officer in charge, with ferocious emphasis, said, "_No
speeches! come, no speeches!_" and ordered the drums to be beaten and
the trumpets to be sounded. Louis was heard to say, "I forgive my
enemies; may God forgive them, and not lay my innocent blood to the
charge of the nation! God bless my people!" Thus perished a monarch,
patriotic and amiable, but too weak in intellectual and moral power to
control the terrible storm of popular vengeance which a long series of
abuses