The execution was performed four days later by Charles-Henri Sanson, then High Executioner of the French First Republic and previously royal executioner under Louis. Often viewed as a turning point in both French and European history, Louis' death inspired various reactions around the world.
"The Death of Louis XVI King of France from an English engraving, published 1798. Edgeworth, Louis' Irish confessor, wrote in his memoirs:
A popular but apocryphal legend holds that as soon as the guillotine fell, an anonymous Freemason leaped on the scaffolding, plunged his hand into the blood, splashed drips of it onto the crown, and shouted, " Jacques de Molay, tu es vengé! " (usually translated as, "Jacques de Molay, thou art avenged").
Denis Diderot - Man will never be free until the last king... Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.
Peace and Freedom will prevail. George W. Bush. Freedom Peace Will. Freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought. Pope John Paul II. Freedom Doing Right. Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream.
" May the last king be strangled in the bowels of the last priest " is a famous anti-religious and anti-establishment dictum, originating in the writings of the atheist priest Jean Meslier (1664 – 1729) and popularized by French Revolution philosophe Denis Diderot (1713 – 1784).
Denis Diderot popularized the dictum in two lines from the poem " Les Éleuthéromanes " (1796):
Journey from the Temple prison to the Place de la Révolution. Louis XVI awoke early in the morning. After dressing with the aid of his valet Jean-Baptiste Cléry, he went to meet with the non-juring Irish priest Henry Essex Edgeworth to make his confession. He heard his last Mass, served by Cléry, and received Communion.
Henri Sanson. "Execution of Louis XVI" – German copperplate engraving, 1793, by Georg Heinrich Sieveking. In his Causeries, Alexandre Dumas refers to a meeting circa 1830 with Henri Sanson, eldest son of Charles-Henri Sanson, who had also been present at the execution.
After initially refusing to permit Sanson and his assistants to bind his hands together, Louis XVI relented when Sanson proposed to use his handkerchief instead of rope. The executioner's men cut the king's hair, removed his shirt's collar, and followed him up the scaffold.
Here are some unknown details. The executioners numbered four; two only performed the execution; the third stayed at the foot of the ladder, and the fourth was on the wagon which was to convey the King's body to the Madeleine Cemetery and which was waiting a few feet from the scaffold.
Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. "Day of 21 January 1793 the death of Louis Capet on the Place de la Révolution " – French engraving. The execution of Louis XVI by guillotine, a major event of the French Revolution, took place publicly on 21 January 1793 at the Place de la Révolution ("Revolution Square", formerly Place Louis XV, ...
Louis was to be hidden in a house in the rue de Cléry belonging to the Count of Marsan . The Baron leaped forward calling "Follow me, my friends, let us save the King!", but his associates had been denounced and only a few had been able to turn up. Three of them were killed, but de Batz managed to escape.
On Edgeworth's advice, Louis avoided a last farewell scene with his family. At 7 o'clock he confided his last wishes to the priest. His royal seal was to go to the Dauphin and his wedding ring to the Queen. After receiving the priest's blessing, he went to meet Antoine Joseph Santerre, Commander of the Guard.