Unheard of: in 1793, the convention sitting for the occasion as a revolutionary court voted the death sentence of the “Citizen Capet”, Louis XVI, except for one vote, for high treason. Already in 1792, Robespierre “the incorruptible” had accused him of being a “criminal once morest humanity”. For the first time in history, an assembly drawn from the ranks of the people pronounced a death sentence once morest its monarch. Like every January 21, today they are a handful of diehard monarchists to attend the mass in memory of the king and Marie-Antoinette in the expiatory chapel of the square Louis XVI in Paris to wash the Republic of its original crime.
From the Merovingians to the Capetians
The beheading of Louis XVI was erected as the first regicide of a new era, because decided by the people. Remembering school books, the first regicide that comes to mind is that of the “Good King Henry”, stabbed on May 14, 1610 in Paris by François Ravaillac, a fanatical Catholic, as he was going to see his minister Sully. On May 27, 1610, the assassin was quartered in Place de Grève, the current Place de l’Hôtel-de-Ville.
In line with the Capetians, in the midst of a religious war, the first victim of regicide was Henri III, killed on August 1, 1589 by a young monk, Jacques Clément. Before that, we must go back to the Merovingians. In December 575, Sigebert I, king of the Franks, was killed by two pages. Just like his brother Chilperic I, in September 584. Not to mention ancient Rome, quite accustomed to this practice to settle political conflicts or successions.
A Russian tradition?
In Russia, the House of Romanov was not spared either. The most famous remains that of the execution of Nicolas II by the Bolsheviks in 1918 during the Russian revolution. But before him, Tsar Alexander II died on March 13, 1881 in a bomb attack fomented by the terrorist group Narodnaya Volia following having escaped eleven assassination attempts. We can add to this list Paul I, killed by a group of soldiers who conspired with his own son, Alexander I. Before them, Ivan VI and Peter III had been killed in prison following coups.
Beheading a king does not come out of a French specificity either, of a kind of tradition inaugurated by the revolutionaries of 1789. On January 30, 1649, the head of Charles I of England fell to the ground following being decapitated with an ax by the executioner. Found guilty of high treason three days earlier, his death sentence was signed by 68 commissioners of the realm, including future Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell. His death from sepsis will allow him to escape prison or suffer the same fate as his monarch a few years later when the monarchy returns.
