Antoine de Baecque takes a look at the very public death of the great orator and libertine, Mirabeau; describes the pageantry of the procession carrying Voltaire's body to the Pantheon; and investigates the sexually-charged myths surrounding the murder of Marie Antoinette's intimate friend, the Princesse de Lamballe. He recreates the tense and awe-inspiring spectacle of Louis XVI's execution, and examines the agonizing final hours of the defeated and disfigured Robespierre."--BOOK JACKET.