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Executions have gone out of fashion, but that doesn't mean there weren't times when they could turn into a quirky folk festival.

On January 21, 1793, for example, the Parisians were in such a wonderful mood that some of them painted their mustaches with the blood of the delinquent.

“The women wanted royal blood on their fingers, the men on their sabers, some filled their scabbards with it,” the German journalist and eyewitness Konrad Engelbert Oelsner described the execution.

Louis XVI, who was hit by the guillotine at the age of 39, was considered rather shy - he could only dream of the power of a predecessor like Louis XIV.

And that he now had a pronounced instinct politically cannot be said either: “Nothing”, wrote Her Majesty in her diary on July 13, 1789, the day before the revolution began with the storming of the Bastille.

The entry referred to the fact that the ruler had missed out on the hunt.

The storming of the Bastille prison on July 14, 1789 became the beacon for the revolution

Source: Universal Images Group via Getty

The Bourbone and his wife Marie Antoinette, a daughter of the Austrian Emperor Maria Theresa, were initially popular with the subjects.

When Ludwig ascended the throne at the age of 19, he was even nicknamed "le desiré", the desired.

But in particular the lavish lifestyle of the queen, poor harvests and hunger increased the pressure on the ruling couple.

Even the victory over England, which Ludwig achieved as the first French king of the 18th century, could not secure his position - the interference in the American War of Independence had burdened the state budget without bringing any major advantages.

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In the late 1780s the state was bankrupt and Louis XVI.

had to convene the General Estates to find a way out of the financial misery, an oath of revelation of the absolute ruling monarch.

The revolution followed.

Ludwig's flight to Varennes in 1791 was prepared so amateurishly that nobody could take him seriously anymore.

As a constitutional monarch, he then took the oath on the constitution - and conspired with France's enemies.

At the end of July 1792, the commander of the Austrian and Prussian troops, Duke Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand von Braunschweig, threatened Paris and its citizens with "an unprecedented revenge" in the event that something happened to Ludwig or his family.

As a result, sans-culottes stormed the Tuileries in Paris on August 10th, and Ludwig and his family were imprisoned in the old Templar castle.

From December 1792 Ludwig was on trial.

Because of the "conspiracy against public freedom and the security of the entire state", the National Convention followed the vote of the Jacobin leader Maximilien de Robespierre with a narrow majority: "The king must die because the fatherland should live." A single vote was decisive.

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On January 21, 1793 at 8:30 am the cart drove with the king to the “Revolution Square”, today's “Place de la Concorde”.

Almost 80,000 gunmen and countless spectators had gathered.

Ludwig is said to have again emphasized his innocence before the executioner carried out the sentence, then came the bloodlust.

From now on it was a matter of victory or death for the revolutionaries - they faced each other more and more radical and suspicious.

Tens of thousands died under the guillotine, some of whom had cheered Ludwig's death, Marie Antoinette and Robespierre were also guillotined.

It can be considered a bitter irony that the death of the last king of the Ancien Régime showed this way into the future.

The execution of the king was followed by bizarre scenes

Source: Getty Images

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