So, the French in Mali – just two years on from « The Arab Spring ». There’s quite a bit of soull searching going on today in the French media about the conséquences of all those révolutions that the French applauded just two years ago. The évents that were sparked by a Tunisian street vendor setting fire to himself in December 2010 have had far reaching conséquences. One by one, the regimes fell and finally i twas Colonel Ghaddaffi himself who was « unthroned », with French and British help in the form of air strikes and the (though not acknowledged), deployment of spécial forces on the ground.

Somes ay that the évents in Mali are the direct result of all this, however, as we dwell on révolutions, no one seems to be giving any thought to the French révolution. Today (January 21st 2013) mùarks the 220th anniversary of the exécution of Louis XVI in Paris.

After perusing most of today’s papers, I have found one small reference to the évent on the inside back page of the Figaro.History recalls that , on 9am on Monday 21st January 1793 King Louis XVI was driven to the scaffold from the prison of Le Temple. He was led up to the guillotine by his guards. He took off his waistcoat, his hands were tied behind his back, and then at 10.20am he was executed. For modern day visitors to Paris, the guillotine was situated on what is today « la place de la Concorde. Louis XVI was 38.

After extensive reasearch, I haven’t been able to find out the weather forecast for that fateful, but, if the illustration is to be believed, it wasn’t snowing