plank, with his face towards the Tuileries; and that, either from the hurry of this struggle, or from the bascule being fitted for a taller person, the axe fell closer to the head than was usual, and there was more mutilation than ordinary. But Mercier is very loose authority on any subject: the print and the letter of Sanson, which we have already referred to, which will be found in the Appendix, affords decisive evidence against Mercier's assertion.
We transcribe from Prudhomme, a trustworthy witness on this point, the following account of the scene that immediately followed:—
"Some individuals steeped their handkerchiefs in his blood. A number of armed volunteers crowded also to dip in the blood of the despot their pikes, their bayonets, or their sabres. Several officers of the Marseillese battalion, and others, dipped the covers of letters in this impure blood, and carried them on the points of their swords at the head of their companies, exclaiming 'This is the blood of a tyrant!' One citizen got up to the guillotine itself, and, plunging his whole arm into the blood of Capet, of which a great quantity remained, he took up handfuls of the clotted gore, and sprinkled it over the crowd below which pressed round the scaffold, each anxious to receive a drop on his forehead. 'Friends,' said this citizen, in sprinkling them, 'we were threatened that the blood of Louis should be on our heads; and so you see it is!!'"— Révolutions de Paris, No. 185, p. 205.[1]
- ↑ An atrocious though ridiculous instance of the malignant credulity of the French of that day, and indeed of all revolutionary days, about England, is the assertion that "an Englishman dipped his handkerchief
