Imprisonment, Trial and Execution
In 1792, Madame du Barry was suspected of financially assisting émigrés who had fled the French Revolution. The following year she was arrested. The Revolutionary Tribunal of Paris accused her of treason and condemned her to death. She had tried to save herself by revealing the hiding places of the gems she had hidden.
On the way to the guillotine, she collapsed in the tumbrel and cried "You are going to hurt me! Why?!" Terrified, she screamed for mercy and begged the crowd for help. Her last words to the executioner were: "One more moment, Mr. Executioner, I beg you!". On 8 December 1793, Madame du Barry was beheaded by guillotine on the Place de la Révolution (nowadays, Place de la Concorde). Her corpse was disposed of in the Madeleine Cemetery, where many victims of the Terror—including Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette—had also been buried.
Her French estate went to the Tribunal de Paris. However, the jewels she had smuggled out of France to England were sold by auction at Christie's in London in 1795. Colonel Johann Keglevich the brother of Major General Stephan Bernhard Keglevich took part in the Battle of Mainz in 1795 with Hessian mercenaries who were financed by the British Empire with the money from this sale.
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