A very good afternoon I was thinking as its Autumn and i have lots of Cat loving friends and followers I would make my post of that day for my Autumn cat loving friends. ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ป๐ป
It was an execution that defined an era. On January 21, 1793, four days after he had been convicted of high treason and crimes against the state by 693 of the 721 deputies of the National Convention, King Louis XVI was guillotined. The gruesome event took place on the Place de la Rรฉvolution (formerly the Place Louis XV, soon to be the Place de la Concorde) and came to represent, both in France and abroad, the changing nature of the French Revolution.
Of course, the way artists at the time depicted Louis XVIโs execution depended on their own political convictions โ or, lacking those, the political convictions of their patrons or audience. The primary sentiment many throughout Europe felt was fear that this act of violence was a prelude to others. This is clearly evident in the English print Hell Broke Loose, where a swarm of devils beat drums and blow trumpets among the free-floating words รa ira (โItโll be fineโ, an emblematic song of the French Revolution) and Vive la Nation (โLong live the nationโ).
The English cartoonist Isaac Cruikshank emphasized the brutality of the execution by first portraying it inaccurately but symbolically, in a picture that has the Duke of Orleans (who, though he supported the Revolution, would be guillotined ten months later) holding an axe over Louisโ head while Marie Antoinette (who would be guillotined nine months later) pleads for mercy. Within a few days, another Cruikshank cartoon was published in which Louis is depicted as a martyr standing beside the guillotine, whose newfangled workings (the beheading machine had only been invented the year before, in 1792) are explained.