In this report, I will briefly summarize the arguments that St. Just put forward in the first of the two speeches he had given in front of the Convention during the trial of Louis XVI. It occurred on 13 November 1792, and it was young St. Just's inaugural speech. Perhaps the most distinguishing characteristics of St. Just's speech were its theoretical bent, its abstract spirit, and magnificent (or intolerable, depending on one's taste) aura of moral self-righteousness. Already in this speeches we see the trait that made this moral puritan one of the most vilified Jacobins-his willingness to interpret (perhaps even insistence on interpreting) everything and anything outside of his dogma as a sign of weakness, if not an outright counter-revolutionary act.
             He started of by insisting that the King should be judged, contrary to the opinions of his defenders, but he should be judged as an enemy, not as a citizen, as the Committee on Legislation suggested. St. Just berated his colleagues-they, he said, "fell into forms without principles," their "mistaken measures of prudence, delays, and reflections were here truly imprudent." He topped it off by proclaiming that the "subtlety of spirit and of character is a great obstacle to liberty." These remarks are all too easily misconstrued to be those of evil man trying to make the Reign of Terror a reality. They actually were words of a man disgusted with casuistry of his colleagues, their amoral desire to substitute the lack of principles by specious legal arguments.
             St. Just saw very clearly, as should all of us, that nothing, absolutely nothing in the Constitution of 1791, allowed for the King to be deposed, much less tried. But, as we find out from the proceedings of the trial, imagining laws that were convenient, building these phantom castles of sand, were not inventions of the 20th century lawyers. The orators of the Gironde tried to make a citizen out of t...