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The Student of History: Louis

The Register of Ramsay, in Huntingdonshire, mentions four hundred people mers immediately began by their noise to Louis XV, and under the monument drown the sound of the king's voice; and raised to that prince by the city of Sens; six executioners brought him to the centre but the Convention rejected his petition, of the scaffold. He exclaimed again: "I and ordered the executive council to see die innocent; I ever desired the good of that Louis was buried like other criminals. my people," but his voice could be heard only by the executioners and the priest.

He then knelt down, in order to place his head in the appointed spot; the confessor who died there of the plague, in or about bending over him said: "Son of St. Louis, February, 1665, and that it was introduced ascend to heaven!" The spring of the into the place by a gentleman, who first machine was touched, the heavy axe caught the infection by wearing a coat, descended in its grooves, and the once the cloth of which came from London; royal head was severed from the body. the tailor who made the coat, with all his Samson, the chief executioner, took up family, died, as did no less than the numthe bleeding head by the hair, and walked ber above mentioned. three times round the scaffold, holding it But the ravages made by the plague in up at arm's-length to show it to the peo- London, about 1665, are well known; it ple.

The troops and the spectators was brought over from Holland in some shouted: "Vive la Republique!" put Levant goods, about the close of the year their hats and caps upon their bayonets 1664; its progress was arrested, in a great and pikes, and waved them in the air, degree, by a hard frost, which set in in with prolonged and re-echoing cries of the winter; but as the spring of 1665 ad- "Vive la Republique!" "Vive la Nation!" vanced, its virulence advanced. Infected "Vive la Liberte!" Many of the savage houses were shut up, and red crosses men standing near the scaffold dipped painted on the doors, with this inscriptheir pike-heads into the king's blood, and tion: "Lord have mercy upon us." Perothers their handkerchiefs-not as a sons going to market took the meat off the sacred memento, but as a symbol of the hooks themselves, for their own security, downfall of all kings; they even paraded and for the butcher's, dropped their money these gore-stained objects before the win- into pans of vinegar, for it was supposed dows of the Temple, that perchance the that even their provisions were tainted queen and her children might see them. with the infection. In the months of The headless trunk of Louis was put into August and September the greatest mora large wicker-basket, placed in the coach, tality occurred, for the deaths of one week have been estimated at ten thousand! and carried to the cemetery of La Madeleine, where, without coffin or shroud, it was thrown into a deep pit, partly filled up with quick-lime.

It may be supposed that no great accuracy existed in the Registers, to afford a correct estimate; for, in the parish of Stepney, it is said they lost, within the On that same morning, one Benoit Leduc, a tailor, who had on some occa- year, one hundred and sixteen sextons, sions worked for Louis, presented a peti- grave-diggers and their assistants; and, as tion to the Convention, praying to be the disorder advanced, the church-yards allowed, at his own expense, to bury the were incapable of holding more bodies, body of the king by the side of his father, and large pits were therefore dug in several parts, to which the dead were Thespians were killed. The fate of the Thebrought by cartloads, collected by the bans is uncertain; according to some they ringing of a bell, and the mournful cry of surrendered to the Persians. One Spar- "Bring out your dead." Add to this that tan, Aristodemus, who was prevented by these carts worked in the night, and no illness from partaking in the combat, exact account was kept, as the clerks and returned home, and was received with sextons were averse to a duty exposing scorn, but in the following year retrieved them to such dangerous consequences, his honor by a heroic death at Plateau. and often carried off before such accounts Many other battles took place at Theras they had taken were delivered in. All mopylæ in later times. the shops were shut up, grass grew in the The pass is now of little importance as most public streets, until about Decem- a strategic point. Nature has widened it ber, 1665, when the plague abated, and into a swampy plain. At the southern the citizens who had left their abodes for end of the pass is a mound, supposed to the country, crowded back again to their be that to which the Spartans finally residences. The computation is, that this retreated and on which they were slain. horrible disease carried off one hundred In a small plain is the Polyandrium, one thousand persons in London: it is singu- of the sepulchral monuments of the lar that the only parish quite exempt Greeks who fell at Thermopylæ, and a from infection was St. John the Evan- few miles beyond are the remains of a gelist, in Watling Street. wall, built for defence, which can be traced from the Maliac gulf to the gulf of Corinth.