LOUIS XVI
MARIE ANTOINETTE
During the Revolution by
NESTA -H -WEBSTER
author of “The French Revolution” etc.
i: lat bed
Since 1914 Mrs. ARTHUR WEBSTER
has made a special study of revolution in general and of the French Revolution in particular, her first book on the subject being The Chevalier de Bouffiers. This was followed by The French Revolution: A Study in Demo- cracyv*® (1919); World Revolution (1921) ; Secret Societies and Sub- versive movements (1924); and The Surrender of an Empire (1931).
In 1936 her Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette : before the Revo- lution® was published, a study to which this present book is a sequel.
* For some appreciations of these two earlier books,
see the back flap of this wrapper.
LOUIS XVI AND MARIE ANTOINETTE
Mrs. Webster's earlier book, to which the present volume ts a sequel, ts entitled ;
LOUIS XVI AND MARIE ANTOINETTE : BEFORE THE REVOLUTION
‘There is certainly no adequate life of Louis XVI in English, and historians, wise after the event, have tended to assume a patronising tone in dealing with him. More recent French historians have shown a more Open mind; and Mrs. Webster would be fully justified in claiming that in no other English work has the precise attitude of the King and Queen towards the events and problems of their reign been so clearly brought out, or so thorough an attempt been made to disentangle exactly what they said, wrote and did on these occasions from the web of legend and calumny in which it has become involved.
‘Her account is written with conviction, liveliness and enthusiasm, and on the human side her feminine eye for telling personal touches adds vividness to her story.’— Times Literary Supplement.
‘Both Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette have been much maligned, and the Queen especially has been the victim of a propaganda, which reached its zenith of blackguardism in the Revolution. Popular writers still cling to Count Fersen; but in this admirable book the author shows that this romantic scandal has no firmer foundation than the others.
‘Mrs. Webster dredges wide and deep: the climax of her fascinating book is devoted to that ‘‘ mystery of iniquity,” the affair of the Diamond Necklace.’
Morning Post.
Mrs. Webster ts also the author of : THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
‘A book has at last appeared which traces the origin of the revolutionary movement in France, shows how it was engineered, and explains its appal- ling effects on the lot of the French proletariat.’
Morning Post.
‘, . . A most valuable study of the Revolution, the more so to-day because it will undoubtedly help us to a better understanding of the conditions prevailing in Russia and in other parts of Europe.’
The Sunday Times.
Photo: Giraudon
LOUIS XVI From the Portrait by an Unknown Artist.
It bears the inscription ““Donné par le Roi a M. Le C. de Moussy Lacontour le 30 May 1787 ”
LOUIS XVI AND MARIE ANTOINETTE
During the Revolution
BY
NESTA H. WEBSTER (MRS. ARTHUR WEBSTER)
AUTHOR OF ‘THE CHEVALIER DE BOUFFLERS’ ‘THE FRENCH REVOLUTION: A STUDY IN DEMOCRACY’ * LOUIS XVI AND MARIE ANTOINETTE : BEFORE THE REVOLUTION’
CONSTABLE AND COMPANY LTD LONDON
PUBLISHED BY Constable and Company Ltd. LONDON The Macmillan Company of Canada, Limited TORONTO
First published in 1937
Printed in Great Britain by T. and A. Constasie Lip. at the University Press, Ediaburgh
CONTENTS
PREFACE . ; ‘ : : :
AUTHORITIES QUOTED
CHAP. I.
Il.
Il.
IV.
Vv.
VI.
VII.
VIII.
X.
XI.
AITI.
XIV.
XV.
XVI.
XVII.
XVIII.
THE STATES GENERAL.
THE REVOLUTION OF 1789 ; THE OCTOBER DAYS
PRISONERS OF THE TUILERIES . , MIRABEAU . ; , ; THE QUESTION OF FERSEN
PLANS FOR FLIGHT
THE DRAMA OF VARENNES
THE CONSTITUTION .
L’APPEL A L’ETRANGER
THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY FERSEN’S SECRET VISIT TO PARIS . THE GIRONDIN MINISTRY . , ; THE TWENTIETH OF JUNE
THE FALL OF THE MONARCHY
THE TEMPLE . , .
LOUIS XVI BEFORE THE CONVENTION
THE MURDER OF THE KING ‘ .
PAGE Vil
144 175 195 226 256 278 202 313 336 358 382
408 430
vi LOUIS XVI AND MARIE ANTOINETTE
CHAP.
PAGE
XIX. THE CONCIERGERIE ; ; ; 454
XX. LAST DAYS OF THE QUEEN 477
XXI. CONCLUSION 510
APPENDIX I. , 522 APPENDIX II. , . ; ; , ; . 524 INDEX . . ; ; . , . , . 525
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
LOUIS XVI. . . . . ; . Frontispiece A” FACING PAGE
LOUIS XVI DONNANT DES AUMONES . 10 THE BEDROOM OF MARIE ANTOINETTE AT VERSAILLES 82 THE CHATEAU OF VERSAILLES . ; . . . 86 MADAME ELISABETH AND THE DAUPHIN . ; 138 MARIE ANTOINETTE IN I7QI_. ; . ; . 234 THE DAUPHIN , . ; . . 322 LA PRINCESSE DE LAMBALLE . . ; . - 390 MARIE ANTOINETTE AS A WIDOW IN THE TEMPLE . 454
MARIE ANTOINETTE PARTANT POUR L’ECHAFAUD
506
PREFACE
In order to make this book complete in itself it is necessary to repeat the explanation given in the Preface to its pre- cursor, Louts XVI and Marie Antoinette: before the Revolution, that it does not set out to examine all the causes of the Revolution or to relate its entire history, but to view it from the standpoint of the King and Queen of France, that it is in fact the Revolution seen through the Palace windows just as my French Revolution: a study in democracy was the Revolution seen from the streets. Only where the royal family and the people come in contact has it been impossible to avoid a repetition of the same incidents, though in a varied and briefer form of narrative; for a more detailed account of those popular days of tumult readers are referred back to my earlier work.
It will doubtless be said in certain quarters that too much has already been written on the French Revolution, though since the admirable Essays on the French Revolution by John Wilson Croker, published more than a hundred years ago, very little has been written in the English language revealing the truth about that great upheaval or showing any evidence of original research amongst the documents of the period. We shall notice, moreover, that the above objection is seldom raised in the case of books glorifying the Revolution, however inaccurate; only when an attempt is made to show the revers de la médaille and do justice to the King, the cry goes up: Hold! enough! The axiom laid down by Collot d’Herbois in 1793 evidently still holds good—
vil
viii LOUIS XVI AND MARIE ANTOINETTE
‘tout est permis pour quiconque agit dans le sens de la Révolution.’
The present work is in reality the first biography of Louis XVI in English, nor is an adequate one to be found in French. Where the Queen is concerned it is not a case of ‘yet another book on Marie Antoinette’ but of an answer to all the rest, the only counterblast, so far as I know, that has yet been offered to the flood of calumny recently poured out against her on the strength of newly discovered docu- ments.1 In the course of this volume the real evidence these documents provide will be carefully examined for the first time; the popular books built on them, such as those of Pierre Nezeloff and Stefan Zweig, cannot enter into the discussion. Since, however, they appear to have been taken by the less well informed public as presenting true portraits of the Queen, I have contributed an article dealing with them to The Nineteenth Century and After for March 1937.
With regard to the incredulity expressed by certain reviewers as to the influence attributed to Grand Orient Freemasonry and Illuminism in the first part of this work, I would point out that this is no strange theory of my own but one which has become so widely recognized in France as to be almost a platitude. The Freemasons of that country, whilst minimizing the importance of the part played by their Order in the engineering of the Revolution when writing for the general public, have always boasted of it in the Lodges, which still to-day remain forcing-grounds for revolu- tionary ideas. It would be interesting to know whether the British critics who dismiss this view as fantastic have ever examined the question for themselves, and if so, to hear their reasons for forming a contrary opinion. If, however, they
? See article on these in the front page of the Times Literary Supplement for February 7, 1935.
PREFACE ix
have never given it any serious attention I would suggest that they might consider the evidence I brought forward in my book on Secret Soctettes and Subversive Movements, the chapter devoted to the subject by the Socialist Louis Blanc in his Histotre de la Révolution Frangaise, the works of M. Copin- Albancelli and many other modern French writers, not forgetting those of Augustin Cochin, whose brilliant studies of the French Revolution, refuting Aulard, were unfortun- ately cut short by his early death. They would also do well to realize that warnings against the Grand Orient have been constantly issued to the Lodges of this country by leading British Freemasons, notably by the late Lord Ampthill, Pro Grand Master, and by the late Colonel Cecil Powney. A most interesting article by the latter, entitled ‘Continental Freemasonry, showing the revolutionary character of the Lodges in France, Spain, Portugal and elsewhere, appeared in the Transactions of the Manchester Association for Masonic Research in 1934 and has certainly been justified by recent events.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
In the first part of this work, Louts XVI and Marie Antoinette : before the Revolution, p. 15, when referring to the legend that Marie Antoinette, hearing that the people had no bread, said: ‘Then let them eat cake!’ I gave as the probable origin of the story the remark attributed by the Comtesse de Boigne to Madame Victoire: ‘Mais, mon Dieu, s’il pouvait se résigner a manger de la crotite de paté!’ I have, however, since found an earlier origin in the Relation d’un Voyage & Bruxelles et. a Coblentz en 1791 by the Comte de
1 Capitaine Augustin Cochin was killed in the battle of the Somme on July 8, 1916. .
x LOUIS XVI AND MARIE ANTOINETTE
Provence, published in 1823, where the author says on p. 59: ‘Aussi en mangeant la crofite avec le paté, nous songeames a la reine Marie Thérése qui répondit un jour que l’on plaignait devant elle les pauvres gens qui n’ont pas de pain: “‘Mais, mon Dieu, que ne mangent-ils de la crofite de paté?”’ It was thus the wife of Louis XIV who was supposed by the royal family to have uttered the famous remark erroneously attributed by the Comtesse de Boigne, writing in her old age, to Madame Victoire. The testimony of the Comte de Provence effectually disposes of the fable that 1t was ever made by Marie Antoinette.
AUTHORITIES QUOTED
In order to shorten footnotes and indicate editions used, the following abbreviations have been adopted :
CONTEMPORARY pb’ ALLONVILLE.
Mémoires Secrets de 1770 a 1830 par le Comte d’Allonville. 6 vols. (1838-1841.)
DUCHESSE D’ANGOULEME. Duchesse d’Angouléme (Madame Royale). Relation de la Captivité de la Famille Royale 4 la Tour du Temple. (1862.)
ARMOIRE DE FER. — Troisiéme Recueil, Piéces imprimées d’aprés le decret de la Convention Nationale du 5 decembre, 1792. . . . Deposées a la Commission Extra- ordinaire des Douze, établie pour le depouillement des papiers trouvés dans Parmoire de fer au Chdteau des Tuileries, etc. Paris. De I’Imprimerie Nationale. (1793.)
BAILLY. Mémoires de Bailly. 3 vols. (1821.)
BEAucourT. Captivité ... de Lous XVI. Marquis de Beaucourt, Captivité et Derniers Moments de Louis XVI, récits originaux et documents officiels. 2 vols. (1892.)
BEAULIEU. C. F. Beaulieu, Essais Historiques sur les Causes et les Effets de la Révolution Frangatse. 6 vols. (1801.)
BERTRAND DE MOLLEVILLE. A. F. de Bertrand Moleville, Mémoires particuliers pour servir & Ll’ Histoire de la fin du régne de Louis XVI. 2 vols. (1823.) [This Minister of Louis XVI is usually known as Bertrand de Molleville, hence the above difference in spelling. ]
BESENVAL. | Mémoires du Baron de Besenval. 2 vols. (1827.)
xii LOUIS XVI AND MARIE ANTOINETTE
BouiL.té. Mémoires. Marquis de Bouillé, Mémoires. (1821.) fThe author of these Mémoires was the General of Louis XVI. The Marquis de Bouillé, whose Souvenirs et Fragments are occasionally referred to, was his eldest son.]
Bucuez ET Rovx. Eistoire Parlementaire de la Révolution Frangaise par J. B. Buchez et P, C. Roux. 40 vols. (1834-1838.)
Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France. Written in 1790. Edmund Burke, Selections. Nelson.
CAMPAN. Mme Campan, Mémoires sur la Vie de Marie Antoinette. 1886. Journal de Cleéry. Journal de ce qui s’est passé a la Tour du Temple pendant la Captivité de Louis XVI, Rot de France, par Cléry. (1823.) f Jean Baptiste Cant-Hanet Cléry, the author of this Journal, was first the valet de chambre of the Dauphin, then of the whole royal family at the Temple. P. L. Hanet Cléry, whose Mémoires are occasionally referred to, was his brother and the valet de chambre of Madame Royale. |] Mémoires de Dumouriez.
Vie et Mémoires du Général Dumouriez. 4 vols. (1882.) Correspondance de Madame Elisabeth.
editée par Feuillet de Conches. (1868.)
FERRIERES. Mémoires du Marquis de Ferriéres. 3 vols. (1822.)
FLAMMERMONT, Correspondances Diplomatiques. Jules Flammermont, Rapport sur les Correspondances des Agents Dip- lomatiques Etrangers en France. (1896.)
GEORGEL, Mémoires. Mémoires pour servir 4 Vhistoire des événements 1760-1806, par Abbé Georgel. 6 vols. (1817.) |
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS. Diary and Letters of Gouverneur Morris. 2 vols. (1889.)
D’HERICAULT, Documents. Documents pour servir a [Histoire de la Révolution Frangatse, publiés sous la direction de Ch. d’Héricault et Gustave Bord. 2 vols. (1884.)
AUTHORITIES QUOTED X1il Db’ HEZECQUES. Félix, Comte de France d’Hézécques, Baron de Mailly, Souvenirs d’un Page. (1895.) [The author of these Souvenirs was a page of Marie Antoinette and wrote in 1804.]
Hue, Derniéres Années ... de Louis XVI. Francois Hue, Derniéres Années du régne et de la vie de Louis XVI. and edition. (1816.)
Joseru II er Leorotp II. Joseph II, Leopold II und Kauniiz: thr Briefwechsel. (1873.) Edited by A. Beer. |
KLINcKOwstTROM, Le Comte de Fersen. Le Comie de Fersen et la Cour de France: Extraits des Papiers du Grand Maréchal de Suéde, Comte Jean Axel de Fersen, publiés par son petit neveu le Baron R. M. de Klinckowstrém. 2 vols. (1877-1878.)
Mémoires de La Fayette. Mémoires, correspondance et manuscrits du Général La Fayette publiés par sa famille. 6 vols. (1837.)
Mémoires de Mme de la Tour du Pin. Marquise de la Tour du Pin, Journal d’une Femme de Cinquante Ans. 2 vols. (1914.)
LEMAIRE. Histoire dela Révolution Frangaise par M.H. Lemaire. 3 vols. (1816).
Le RICHE, Histoire des Facobins en France ou Examen des Principes anarchiques et des organisateurs de la Révolution Frangaise. 2 vols. (1795.)
LESCURE, Correspondance Secreéte. Correspondance Secréte inédite sur Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, la Cour et de la Ville editée par M. de Lescure. 2 vols. (1866.) The author of this correspondence is unknown. Lettres de Marie Antoinette. Lettres de Marie Antoinette editées par Maxime de la Rocheterie et le Marquis de Beaucourt. 2 vols. (1895.)
MALOUET. Mémoires de Malouet. 2 vols. (1868.)
MARMONTEL. Mémoires de Marmontel. 4 vols. (1805.)
xiv LOUIS XVI AND MARIE ANTOINETTE
MERCIER. Le Nouveau Paris. 6 vols. (1798.) Mirabeau et La Marck.
Correspondance entre le Comte de Mirabeau et le Comte de la Marck editée par Ad. de Bacourt. 2 vols. (1851.)
Monryjorr, Histoire de Marie Antoinette. Galart de Montjoie (Ventre de la Touloubre), Histoire de Marie Antoinette Fosephe Jeanne, Archiduchesse d’Autriche, Reine de France. 2 vols. (1797.)
This book is extremely rare; the Comte d’Hézécques, in his Mémoires (p. 19) written 130 years ago, says it had then become very rare and describes Montjoie as ‘one of the most truthful authors of our time.’ (Jbid., p. 307.) The copy of the first edition used for this book is in my possession.
Monryjo1z, Conjuration d’ Orléans. Histoire de la Conjuration de Louis Philippe Joseph d’Orldans. 3 vols. (1796.)
Monryo1r, Eloge de Louis XVI. Eloge Historique et Funébre de Louis XVI. (1814.)
Moniteur. Journal edited by Panckoucke which appeared for the first time on November 24, 1780.
Dr. Moore, Journal. A Journal during a Residence in France from the beginning of August to the middle of December 1792, by John Moore, M.D. 2 vols. (1793.)
Mounreer, Appel au Tribunal. Appel au Tribunal de ? Opinion Publique. (1790.)
MounikR, Recherches sur les Causes. Recherches sur les causes qui ont empéché les Frangais de devenir libres. 2 vols. (1792.)
Procédure du Chételet. Procédure criminelle instruite au Chdtelet de Paris sur la dénonciation des
faits arrivés a Versailles dans la journée du 6 octobre 1789. Imprimée par ordre de l’ Assemblée Nationale. (1790.)
PRUDHOMME, Crimes de la Révolution.
L. Prudhomme, Histoire Générale des Crimes commis pendant la Révolution Frangaise. 6 vols. (1796.)
AUTHORITIES QUOTED XV
Mme Ro.anp, Mémoires. Mémoires de Madame Roland publiés par Cl. Perroud. 2 vols. (1905.)
CoMTE DE SEGuR, Mémoires. Mémoires, souvenirs et anecdotes par le Comte de Ségur. 2 vols. (1890.)
SOULAVIE. J. F. Soulavie, Mémoires historiques et politiques.
MMe DE TourzeEL, Mémoires. Mémoires de Mme de Tourzel, gouvernante des Enfants de France publiés par le Duc des Cars. 2 vols. (1883.)
VAISSIERE, Lettres d’ Aristocrates. Pierre de Vaissiére, Lettres d’Aristocrates: la Révolution racontée par des correspondances privées 1789-1794. {1907.)
Watsu, Journées Mémorables. Journées Mémorables de la Révolution Frangaise par le Vicomte Walsh. 5 vols. (1882.) An earlier edition appeared in 1839.
{The author, Joseph Alexis, Vicomte Walsh (1782-1860), was of English origin, a descendant of a Jacobite who had followed James II into exile. Under the Restoration he became Postmaster at Nantes. He published several works on Brittany and La Vendée. (See Souvenirs du Baron de Frénilly (1908), p. 462.)]
WEBER. Joseph Wéber, Mémoires concernant Marie Antoinette. 3 vols. (1804- 1806), partly written by the Comte de Lally-Tollendal.
Younc, ARTHUR. Travels in France. Travels in France during the years 1787, 1788, 1789. Edition of 1912.
HISTORICAL BEAUCHESNE, Louis XVII.
M. A. de Beauchesne, Louis XVII, sa Vie, son Agonie, sa Mort. 2 vols. (1852.)
{Founded partly on the oral tradition received by the author from eye-witnesses of events. |
Bir£, Journal d’un Bourgeois. Journal d’un Bourgeois de Paris pendant la Terreur par Edmond Biré. 5 vols. (1911.) [The history of the Terror reconstructed from contemporary documents. |
xvi LOUIS XVI AND MARIE ANTOINETTE
DE FALLOUX. : Le Vicomte de Falloux, Louis XVJ. gi*™e édition. (1846.)
GEFFROY, Gustave IIT, A. Geffroy, Gustave III, et la Cour de France. 2 vols. (1867.) ROCHETERIE. Histoire de Marie Antoinette par Maxime de la Rocheterie. 2 vols. (18g0.) A. SODERHJELM, Fersen et Marie Antoinette. Alma Sdderhjelm, Fersen et Marie Antoinette: Journal Intime et Correspondance du Comte Axel de Fersen. Grasset. (1930.) TAINE. Hippolyte Adolphe Taine, Les Origines de la France Contemporaine. 8 vols. (1909.) ViEL CASTEL, Marie Antoinette.
Marie Antoinette et la Révolution Frangaise par le Comte Horace de Viel Castel. (1859.)
CHAPTER I THE STATES GENERAL
THE fateful year of 1789 had dawned, the year when we have been led to believe that a France reduced to the lowest depth of misery and starvation, crushed beneath the yoke of servitude and without hope of alleviation by reforms, had reached the pitch of exasperation that made revolution not only the inevitable but the necessary corollary.
Yet what was the real state of France at the beginning of this year? Vastly different to that of France in 1774 described in the earlier part of this work.1 The fifteen years during which Louis XVI had reigned were the most prosperous the country had ever known, and de Tocqueville declares that ‘at no period following the Revolution did public prosperity develop more rapidly than during the twenty years preceding it.’ ?
I referred in my French Revolution to Carlyle’s absurd method of detaching isolated passages from Arthur Young’s Travels in France—passages often torn from their context in such a way as to alter their meaning completely—in order to conjure up a dark picture of widespread misery, and I contrasted with these the account given by Dr. Rigby of the fertile countryside, the splendid state of cultivation, the happy faces and dancing peasants he observed on a journey he made through France at the same date as Arthur Young. Since then the report of another British traveller has been published, John Campbell Sutherland, whose journal of A Your in France in 1788 appeared in the
1 Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette: before the Revolution, chap. 1i1. 2 D’Allonville, iii. 145; de Tocqueville, L’Ancten Régime et la Révolution (1887), p. 255- A
2 LOUIS XVI AND MARIE ANTOINETTE
National Review for September 1930 endorsing Rigby’s de- scription of the people ‘looking gay and happy.’
This view finds confirmation in a most remarkable series of articles by M. Lenotre,! the last written by him and published after his death in 1935 which was so deeply regretted by all lovers of his brilliant writing and genius for historical research, in this country as in France. ‘The series opens with the words:
‘Amongst the multiple causes of the Revolution there is one which people have generally omitted to point out: France in the time of Louis XVI was too happy. She flattered herself with the illusion that only a small effort would be needed in order to propagate her happiness and transform all Europe into an earthly Paradise.’
The eminent historian goes on to draw a charming picture of France under the old régime, the gaiety of village life— ‘partout on danse’—the prosperity of industry and com- merce, the attention given to works of charity, to the relief of the poor, the old, the blind, the parents of large families. And Mercier, the revolutionary journalist, is quoted as saying: ‘Never did any century so multiply good works, never was good done with so much care and intelligence.’
It is true that the Eden Treaty of September 26, 1786, drawn up by Sir William Eden, afterwards Lord Auckland, and Vergennes, the Foreign Minister of France, was said to have dealt a blow to French industry by reducing the tariffs on British goods, and it undoubtedly created considerable unemployment in certain manufacturing centres; never- theless it increased the trade between England and France.? Arthur Young, during his travels in France in 1787, reported that, although it was violently condemned at Abbeville and Rouen, ‘at Bourdeaux they think it a wise measure, that tends equally to the benefit of both countries.’ * No modern
1 La Vie a Paris pendant la Révolution in the Revue des Deux Mondes for Dec. 153 1935, and following numbers, quoting Rigby’s account and confirming it. * Arthur Young, Travels in France, p. 8 footnote quoting Knight’s History of. England, vi. 797. 3 Ibid., p. 69.
THE STATES GENERAL 3
historian would certainly regard it as a serious factor in the Revolution; neither M. Lenotre nor M. Madelin mention it at all. M. Casimir Stryienski describes it as actually ‘advantageous from the economic point of view.’ !
The same picture of a prosperous France was drawn by Edmund Burke in 1791. The population had gone on increasing steadily, and from the 18 millions at the end of the seventeenth century had risen to 25 millions—a vast popula- tion compared with that of England, which in 1789 num- bered only 1o millions. Burke, after commenting on this point, goes on to controvert the current theory of French misery in the light of his own personal observations :
‘Indeed, when I consider the face of the kingdom of France; the multitude and opulence of her cities; the useful magnificence of her spacious high roads and bridges; the opportunity of her artificial canals and navigations opening the conveniences of maritime communication through a solid continent of so immense an extent; when I turn my eyes to the stupendous works of her ports and harbours, and to her whole naval apparatus, whether for war or trade; when I bring before my view the number of her fortifications ... when I recollect how very small a part of that extensive region is without cultivation . . . when I reflect on the excellence of her manufactures and fabrics . . . when I contemplate the grand foundations of charity, public and private ; when I survey the state of all the arts that beautify and polish life . . . I behold in all this something which awes and commands the imagination . . . and which demands that we should very seriously examine what and how great are the latent vices that could authorize us at once to level so specious a fabric to the ground. I do not recognize, in the view of things, the despotism of Turkey. Nor do I discern the character of a government that has been on the whole so oppressive, or so corrupt, or so negligent, as to be utterly unfit for all reformation.’ 2
1 Le Dix-Huitiéme Siecle (1913), p. 310. | 2 Reflections on the Revolution in France (Nelson), p. 344.
4 LOUIS XVI AND MARIE ANTOINETTE
The late Sir Bernard Mallet, in his book on his ancestor Mallet du Pan, who sat in the States General, quotes his authority for saying:
‘France had experienced something like a resurrection during the last six years. Under a king, for so he described Louis XVI, who had shown nothing but virtuous. and benevolent intentions, and who in the course of seven [fifteen?} years had chosen more upright Ministers than a whole reign often supplies, she had recreated her navy and her policy ... seemingly dealt a fatal blow at the commercial monopoly of her rival (England). The resources of the country were immense, her natural wealth, the industry of her inhabitants and the taste displayed in her varied manu- factures gave her a natural monopoly,’ etc.}
And besides material prosperity what progress had been made in human thought! What a change had come over the minds of the ruling classes!
‘A breath of humanity,’ says Taine, ‘that grew daily stronger, more penetrating, more universal had softened their hearts. . . . It is enough to read the cahiers of the Etats Généraux to see, that from Paris, the spirit of philanthropy had spread into the chateaux and abbeys of the provinces.’ The character of the seigneurs is in no way feudal, they are ‘men of feeling, gentle, very polite, nothing is further from them than the old harsh and despotic temperament. They wish to relieve the people and at home they spare them in every way they can.’* ‘The most active pity filled all hearts,’ says Lacretelle, ‘what rich men feared the most was to appear unfeeling.’ 3
As to the King, how far had he shown himself, during these fifteen years of his reign, the feeble nonentity he has been represented in the pages of history? As events proved he had made two great mistakes—in recalling the Parle- ments and in consenting, against his better judgement, to the entry of France into the War on behalf of American inde-
* PP- 345 35- * Taine, i. 55, 56. 8 Lactetelle, HAiistotre de France au XVITI*™ Siécle, v. 2.
THE STATES GENERAL 5
pendence. But these, like all his concessions, were made in deference to the people’s wishes. As Soulavie, never too indulgent to the King, points out: ‘Amidst the various measures proposed to him by his Ministers Louis X VI made choice of the most popular. He convoked the Notables upon the suggestion of Calonne, he convoked the States General upon that of Loménie, he doubled the Tiers Etat upon the recommendation of Necker,’ 1 and Soulavie might have begun by saying he recalled the Parlements on the advice of Maurepas.
_ But, it will be objected, his choice of Ministers was bad. It is certainly true that, as Bertrand de Molleville pointed out, his great misfortune was not to have ‘stronger, cleverer and more enlightened Ministers’ 2; the principal mistakes of his reign ‘were made by them, not by himself. But were such men to be found? Except for his possible error in passing over Choiseul it is difficult to see what better appoint- ments he could have made. In the words of the Marquis de Bouillé ‘he chose for his Ministers men believed to be the wisest and most honest and who had a reputation for probity or talents,’ ? men admired not only by contem- poraries but by posterity. Turgot, Malesherbes, Necker, Calonne, Loménie de Brienne, were men of ability who have found apologists, if not panegyrists, amongst historians. Who could have foreseen that they would one and all prove broken reeds, capable of no greater firmness and of less courage and wisdom than the King himself? As Soulavie observed:
‘It is not known to the world that he dismissed M. Turgot, M. de Malesherbes, M. de Saint-Germain, twice M. Necker, M. Calonne and M. de Loménie because he perceived that the plans of these different Ministers tended to subvert the monarchy; he appreciated exactly their operation in his private meditations; during the incomprehensible blindness of these Ministers, the King alone beheld from a distance
1 Soulavie, ii. 23. 2 Mémoires, 1. 16. 3 Bouillé, Mémoires, p. 60.
6 LOUIS XVI AND MARIE ANTOINETTE
the destiny and ruin of France. He was endowed with a spirit of foresight of which the Ministers above mentioned, the principal authors of his misfortunes, were totally destitute.’ !
Yet for all this Soulavie is bound to admit that Louis X VI ‘detached one by one the jewels from his crown.’ How did this come to pass? How is it that the Revolution, which might with far more reason have occurred under the reign of Louis XV, broke out under a monarch whose one thought was to redress the grievances from which the people had suffered so long?
In the first place because Louis XV, though no stronger a character than Louis XVI, had made himself feared. At the first sign of rebellion he would have given the order to fire. The fearful end of Damiens who had attempted his life acted as a warning to all would-be regicides. The air of majesty he carried with him to the end imposed on all beholders. The very word ‘King’ still held a magic for the French people, profoundly monarchic at heart. The benevolent aspect of Louis XVI dispelled the awe in which the person of the King was held, and his extreme concern for the people’s welfare deprived him of the respect which Louis XV by his very selfishness had inspired. As Soulavie says again, under former kings the monarch was the idol of the nation, under Louis XVI, on the contrary, the nation was the object almost of adoration to the King.?
Under Louis XV, sedition was put down with an iron hand; the spirit of rebellion would not have been allowed to spread. Under Louis XVI the new ideas of ‘liberty,’ subversive of the royal authority, were not only given a free vent-—-according to the cherished ‘safety valve’ theory of our own day-——-but were actually encouraged by Ministers who went beyond the demands of the people. It is thus, says Beaulieu, that ‘the cause of revolutions must not be found in the dispositions of the people but in the conduct of governments who work out their own destruction by wishing
1 Mémoires, ii. 4. 2 Ibid., 11. 20.
THE STATES GENERAL 7
to apply to the people new theories opposed to deeply-rooted customs legalized by time.’ }
It has been well said that revolutions come from above. No powerful State can be brought low by popular insurrec- tion, but only by the voluntary surrender of those in auth- ority. And in France, not only the King’s Ministers but— as in Russia before 1917—‘liberally-minded’ nobles, fired with visionary ideas of ‘liberty,’ were busy sawing away the branch on which they sat. The Comte d’Entraigues, who was later to become one of the most vigorous opponents of the Revolution, in his Memoir on the States General, attacked the monarchy, glorified republicanism, represented the French as a herd of slaves and wrote this call to in- surrection: ‘There is no form of disorder that is not prefer- able to the disastrous tranquillity procured by absolute power.’ 2. We seem to have heard something of this necessity for rousing uneducated masses from their placid contentment in our own day.
It was thus not amongst the people, but amongst the upper classes and the intelligentsia that the idea of the Revolution originated. The general spirit of fronde, of vague discontent with all existing conditions, which under the influence of the philosophers had made itself felt at the beginning of the reign, had now become a definite spirit of revolt; the necessity for a total overthrow of the present system of government was openly proclaimed. The magical words of ‘liberty,’ ‘equality’ were ‘repeated with enthusiasm by those who afterwards attributed to them all their mis- fortunes.’ 3
For whilst the tendency to insubordination and the passion for ridiculing their rulers which has always characterized the French nation—and never more than in our own time —had been given an impetus by the philosophers, it had not been carried beyond the region of words. Voltaire, Rous- seau, Diderot, d’Alembert, had constructed theories, coined
1 i, p. xiv. 2 Rocheterie, i. 575. 3 Comte de Ségur, Mémoires, i. 14.
8 LOUIS XVI AND MARIE ANTOINETTE
phrases, in a word, created an atmosphere; it was left to the lodges of the Freemasons and their auxiliaries the clubs to provide the organization of armed revolt.
These clubs, penetrated with Masonic influences, which had sprung into existence directly after the American war, now covered the whole country and formed centres where, as John Campbell Sutherland observed, ‘the abuses to be abolished and the reforms to be effected were heatedly discussed.?? In 1786 a central club named the Club de la Propagande had been instituted by the Duc de la Roche- foucauld, Condorcet and the Abbé Sieyés with the object of controlling public opinion. The club was the direct outcome of the Loge du Contrat Social, where the high Masons met in a council, second only in importance to the central committee of the Grand Orient.2, The Jacobin clubs that followed later were the development of the same system.
It was thus that Freemasonry which, at the time of the Guerre des Farines, had been able to make its influence felt only in an abortive revolt, was now provided with a machinery for carrying theory into action. With the secret discussions in the Lodges and the open propaganda of the clubs, a perfect organization had been devised by which in a moment the word of command could be given at every point of France. A demonstration of its efficacy was seen in the ‘Grand Peur’ which broke out simultaneously all over the country on July 28, 1789.
But the factor that contributed more than anything to Its success was its conjunction with the Orléaniste scheme for a change of dynasty. As Grand Master of the Grand Orient, Philippe d’Orléans had the vast organization of Freemasonry at his disposal; without this his plans of usurpation might have proved no more effectual than the intrigues of the Comte de Provence. On the other hand, without the money of the Duc d’Orléans the Lodges, even with the clubs at their command, would have lacked the
1 National Review for September 1930, p. 650. 2 Barruel, ii. 327.
THE STATES GENERAL 9
means for paying the orators, agitators and other instruments of revolution. It was the coalition of Orléanism and iluminized Freemasonry that made the force of the Revolution of 1789.
In the face of this formidable conspiracy, what measures of defence were taken? In studying the Mémoires and letters of the period it becomes evident that the King and his Ministers were not alone in their weakness; the whole ruling class seems to have been struck by paralysis. A spirit of unreasoning optimism combined strangely with a spirit of defeatism. On one hand ‘society’ according to its usual custom in all times and countries shut its eyes resolutely to everything that was going on outside its own narrow circle and declined to believe anything unpleasant; so ‘the salons having decided that all will be well, then all will be well (les salons ayant décidé que tout ira bien, tout ira bien).’ ! On the other hand, the few who foresaw danger seemed afraid to act. The monomania of the period, says a con- temporary, was egoism; ‘I do not want to compromise myself,’ was the phrase constantly heard in the salons.?
This blindness of society must not be attributed to ‘French frivolity’ alone. The British ambassador, the Duke of Dorset, seems to have taken the situation no more seriously than the salons. ‘The Duke of Dorset,’ says M. Flam- mermont, ‘entirely given up to his social amusements with the Comte d’Artois and the Polignacs, readily abandoned serious affairs to his assistants... .’ In 1788 he enlivened Lent by a series of charming ¢thés dansanis at which the “Court party’ were always to be found.?
It was not that the noblesse were indifferent to the people; on the contrary they idealized them, and their eagerness to relieve their sufferings was shown during the bread shortage of 1789.
This grievous affliction which, as J have shown earlier,
1 Taine, 1. 259. 2 Walsh, Fournées Mémorables, ii. 93. 5 Flammermont, Correspondances Diplomatiques, pp. xix and 508. * Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette : before the Revolution, pp. 42-45.
10 LOUIS XVI AND MARIE ANTOINETTE
was liable to recur at intervals throughout the history of France, had been provoked in 1789 by no mismanagement on the part of the Government, but by a malevolent out- break of Nature which no one could have foreseen or averted. On July 13, 1788, the most terrible hailstorm within the memory of man burst over France, killed cattle, game and human beings and destroyed vast areas of crops. The King himself, returning from the chase, nearly fell a victim to the storm. Under these circumstances the ‘possessing classes’ did all in their power to relieve distress. The subscription lists for this object and for the four new hospitals Louis XVI had so long desired to build, brought in no less than 24 million livres—nearly £ 1,000,000 sterling. In the environs of Paris one rich man alone distributed 40,000 francs (£1750) to the poor around him—and was massacred by the revolutionaries in the following year.? During the terribly severe winter that followed, everyone contributed to relieve distress, ‘the rich vied with each other in protecting the artisans, the workmen and the poor.’ ‘The sacrifices that were made at this time were incalculable ; the Duchesse de l’Infantado alone spent 300,000 livres (£13,125). The Archbishop of Paris contributed all his revenues and further ran into debt to the amount of about 400,000 livres (£17,500).’ In the palaces, in the hdétels of the nobles, tables were laid in well-warmed rooms where all could come and feed; ‘everyone was admitted indis- criminately.’ In front of the houses of well-known families and in all the public squares huge fires were kept burning, at which night and day the poor came to warm themselves.? Louis XVI, says his page the Comte de Semallé, came himself to inspect these scenes, ‘with his pockets full of gold which he scattered lavishly on all those who were feeling the rigour of the season. The picture in the Museum at Versailles representing the King visiting the unfortunate is of a rare accuracy. I can affirm this, for twice when I was
1 D’Allonville, i. 185. 2 Mémoires de Mme Vigée Le Brun, i. 115. 3 Taine, i. 52; Montjoie, Conjuration d’Orléans, i. 201, 202.
"Saj]WS19A ap agSNJA ay} ul quassazy Aq duruiwg ay} woLy SAHNOWNV SHd LNVNNOC IAX SINO'T
0JOUd 66 r ”
THE STATES GENERAL II
on duty I took part in these beneficent excursions.”1 The picture in question is reproduced on the opposite page.
At the same time the Government raised an enormous sum to feed the people. It is important to note that the famous article on the *‘Pacte de Famine’ which appeared in the Moniteur of September 16, 1789—two months after the siege of the Bastille—attributed to the King the credit for saving the country: ‘It was only by a sacrifice of 40 millions (£1,750,000) that Louis X VJ—during the most distressing situation in which the finances had ever been found-——preserved France from the horrors which threatened her on all sides.’
This testimony from a revolutionary source effectually absolves Louis XVI from the accusation of complicity with the monopolizers which had been brought against Louis XV. For monopolizers there were, though not the brothers Leleu, successors to the Compagnie Malisset of 1767. According to innumerable contemporaries it was the Duc d’Orléans and his agents who bought up supplies in order to drive the people to insurrection. The story of this infernal plot is given by Montjoie in his Histoire de la Conjuration de Louis Philippe Joseph d’Orléans and was discussed at length in my French Revolution.
Such then was the state of affairs when the States General met at Versailles on May 5, 1789. The people still had genuine causes for discontent ; ancient abuses had not yet been entirely swept away; the reformation so far had only begun. But in the cahiers de doléances or lists of grievances they had been invited to send in from all over the country, they were able to make their voice heard, and the King was not only ready but eager to listen to their complaints and to redress their wrongs. ‘There was therefore every reason for hope and none for despair.
But the deputies of the Tiers Etat arrived at Versailles full of prejudices against the Court and ready to detect
1 Souvenirs du Comte de Semallé, page de Louis XVI, publiés . . . par son petit-fils (1898), p. 17.
12 LOUIS XVI AND MARIE ANTOINETTE
slights or deceptions at every turn. Nearly all visited Trianon in order to see the splendour and luxury on which they had been told the Queen had squandered millions. The extreme simplicity of the little country-house, however, disappointed them deeply; they declared that the ex- pensively furnished rooms were being concealed from them, and demanded to be shown the one incrusted everywhere with diamonds and adorned by pillars covered with rubies and sapphires. The Queen could not get over her amuse- ment at these wild stories, and entertained the King with them; he suggested that their origin might be found in the paste stones with which Louis XV had decorated the theatre at Fontainebleau.?
The deputies had also been told that the King habitually over-indulged in food and drink. It is true that, like his ancestors, he had an enormous appetite, owing partly to a peculiar conformation of the Bourbon interior; Louis XIV, who could consume a prodigious quantity at a meal,? was found at the autopsy which took place after his death, to have a stomach double the normal size.? Added to this peculiarity inherited from the French side, was the Polish strain descending from Marie Leczinska, the grandmother of Louis XVI. Slavs are notoriously large eaters ; the good Queen Marie Leczinska and her father Stanislas were no exceptions to the rule. In those days everyone ate more than they do to-day; the Girondin Isnard was known to devour a whole turkey at a sitting, except for the beak and the claws, even scrunching up the bones with his teeth, ‘which were as strong as his stomach.’* ‘The appetite of Louis XVI, of which so much capital has been made by his
1 Campan, p. 299.
4°The King (Louis XIV), the late Monsieur (the Duc d’Orléans), M. le Dauphin and the Duc de Berri were very large eaters. I have often seen the King eat four plates of different kinds of soup, a whole pheasant, a partridge, a large helping of salad, roast mutton with garlic, two good slices of ham, a plate of pastry and then fruit and confitures.’ Mémoires de... la Duchesse d’ Orléans, Princesse Palatine, Mére du Regent. Paris (1832), p. 53.
3 Jacques Boulenger, Le Grand Siécle (1912), p. 181.
* Victor du Bled, Orateurs et Tribuns (1891), p. 161.
THE STATES GENERAL 13
detractors, was therefore hereditary, the accompaniment of his powerful physique, and provides no proof of gluttony.
The accusation of drink was equally unfounded. Mme Campan and one of the King’s pages, the Comte d’Hézéc- ques, both explain it by the fact that when he returned from hunting at Rambouillet he frequently went to sleep in his coach, and on arrival at Versailles would stumble upstairs rubbing his eyes and only half awake. Then some habitué of the Palais Royal would say loudly enough to be heard by all bystanders: ‘He is dead drunk.’ On one occasion a man who had uttered these words was arrested by the Guards, and the King, seeing him led away, asked what he had done. On being told, Louis XVI burst into a hearty laugh and said: ‘Come then! I do not wish an imbecile like that to be imprisoned. Lead him outside the railings of the Chateau and tell him I am going to drink his health in a glass of lemonade.’
Never, says the Comte d’Hézécques, even after his hunt- suppers at which some of the company ‘who had not his temperance’ indulged too freely, did he see the King in the least affected by drink.}
The deputies of the Tiers Etat, disappointed in their hopes of seeing with their own eyes evidence of the Queen’s extravagance or of the King’s intemperance, cast about them for every imaginable grievance. When on the 2nd of May — the whole Assembly went to the Chateau to be presented to the King, an invidious distinction was detected in the fact that he received the noblesse and clergy in his private room and the Tiers Etat in the room known as the Salle de Louis XIV.2 Then the only deputy to whom the King addressed a word was one of the few representatives of ‘Labour,’ the Pére Gérard. Louis XVI, struck by his peasant’s dress, said to him: ‘Good day, my good man.’ 3
1 D’Hézécques, p. 7. 4 Beaulieu, i. 93. 8 Lettre d’un Député Breton, published by d’Heéricault, Documents, liére Série, p. 11g.
14 LOUIS XVI AND MARIE ANTOINETTE
This was enough to rouse furious jealousy in the breasts of the bourgeois deputies.
On the following day, when the Court and the Assembly went in solemn procession to the churches of Notre-Dame and of Saint Louis at Versailles to call down the blessing of God on their labours, the Tiers Etat discovered a fresh series of grievances.
First of all, their dress. As a matter of convenience the three Orders had been commanded to wear distinctive costumes so that it could be seen at a glance to which Order a deputy belonged. The Tiers Etat did not so much object to this arrangement as to the fact that the noblesse were dressed more smartly than themselves. For although both wore black cloth coats and breeches and black silk cloaks— the usual attire of Councillors of State—the nobles had a gold trimming on their coats and cloaks, wore white stockings instead of black, lace jabots, and white feathers in their hats 4 la Henri IV, whilst the cravats of the Tiers Etat were only of muslin and their hats were unadorned even by a button! ! The discontent caused by this arrangement was represented by Mirabeau to his constituents as likely to have political consequences because ‘it was a humiliation for the Tiers Etat not to be allowed lace or feathers,’ and it led them to believe ‘that the other Orders must be proud of this distinction.’ ?
Meanwhile the clergy were attired in cloaks and surplices, the cardinals distinguished by their red capes and the bishops by their violet cassocks and square caps.
The pageant of May 4 must have been marvellously picturesque. After a wet day the weather had turned fine and sunny; at ten o’clock the King set forth with his family in a carriage and pair, the horses splendidly har- nessed, with plumes on their heads, and preceded by the royal household, squires and pages on horseback, the falconers with their hawks on their wrists—a brave sight indeed !
1 Ferriéres, i. 18; d’Hézécques, p. 288. 2 Moniteur, i. 27.
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At the Church of Notre-Dame the Assembly were waiting and the procession set forth on foot through the streets of Versailles, hung with rich tapestries, to the Church of Saint Louis. At the head marched the Tiers Etat, then came the noblesse, then the clergy, the Archbishop of Paris, bearing the sacrament, under a sumptuous canopy supported by the King’s brothers and their sons. After these the King and Queen walked side by side. Louis XVI, who had refused a canopy, saying he wished for no distinction before God on whom he depended for strength to carry on his troubled reign, was dressed in cloth of gold studded with jewels, Marie Antoinette in a magnificent gown, her fair hair wreathed with flowers, her head carried with great dignity on her graceful neck and shoulders but with deep sorrow on her face. For whilst the band played joyous marches, the drums beat and the trumpets blared, a little boy of seven lay on a balcony looking down sadly on the gay procession— the Dauphin with hardly a breath left in his wasted body and who had only one month more to live.
On arrival at the Church of Saint Louis the Tiers Etat found a fresh grievance awaiting them—the seats arranged for them were behind those of the noblesse and the clergy. Thereupon a passage at arms took place between one of the deputies, Larevelliére-Lépeaux, and the master of the ceremonies, the Marquis de Dreux-Brézé, whose appearance in his jewelled mantle and plumed hat again awoke the envy of the Tiers Etat.
‘Well, Monsieur the grand master of ceremonies,’ asked Larevelliére, ‘what places have you reserved for us?’
‘Monsieur, that goes without saying, the seats arranged in the two lateral naves.’
“Then, Monsieur the grand master of ceremonies, you place the deputies of the nation behind the two small privileged bodies which are only a feeble fraction of it? This shall not be!’ And Larevelliére thereupon seated himself firmly on one of the seats in the larger nave, declaring that he would not budge.
1 LOUIS XVI AND MARIE ANTOINETTE
‘But, monsieur,’ expostulated Dreux-Brézé, ‘I have made my arrangements.’
‘Then they are impertinent arrangements that you ought not to have made.’
During this altercation the clergy and the noblesse were held up in the doorway, and Dreux-Brézé then pointed out very politely that the whole Court was being kept waiting outside. Failing, however, to dislodge Larevelliére, he appealed to the rest of the Tiers Etat, who ended by rising and carrying off the fractious deputy to the seats provided for them.
But this was not all. In the sermon he delivered at this service, Monseigneur de la Fare, Bishop of Nancy, made use of the words: ‘Sire, receive the homage of the clergy, the respects of the noblesse and the very humble supplications of the Tiers Etat.’
The distinction here made was enough to do for the Bishop, who from that day lost all his popularity.’
What can one think of these men, who, summoned from all parts of France on this tremendous occasion to deliberate on issues of supreme importance to the whole nation, entrusted by the people to place their real grievances before the King, could waste themselves in brooding over imagi- nary slights, in hankering after lace jabots and plumed hats, could rage because they were asked to occupy that part of the church which would best accommodate their number? The noblesse were to be asked to surrender all their pecuniary and feudal privileges—which was what mattered to the people—and the Tiers Etat were not to yield even on the point of precedence. How truly did Napoleon observe: “It was vanity that made the Revolu- tion; liberty was only the pretext.” Such being the spirit of the Tiers Etat, what hope was there for the people?
In reality the so-called ‘deputies of the nation’ were representative mainly of the bourgeoisie; amongst them
1 Mémoires de Larevellidre-Lépeaux (1895), i. 66, ® Beaulieu, i. 93.
THE STATES GENERAL 17
were included 210 lawyers, 175 tradesmen and cultivators-— not peasants—162 magistrates, 12 country gentlemen and two bishops, many of them men of wealth and position, making a total of 622. This preponderance over the other Orders was further increased by the composition of the representatives of the clergy, comprising no less than 280 curés or village priests imbued with prejudices against the ‘privileged orders,’ who were thus vastly outnumbered from the outset. Individually and in their own homes probably few members of the Tiers Etat were subversive, but once in Paris they found themselves not only in the thick of political discussions but in a hotbed of intrigue.
Marie Antoinette had recognized from the beginning the folly of allowing the States General to meet at Versailles, and urged that they should be convoked at some town sixty leagues away from the capital. But Necker had overruled this wise opinion, and the deputies from the provinces were thus exposed to the strife of party interests and the corrupt influences of the Palais Royal.
This once peaceful garden of the Duc d’Orléans had now been transformed into a political arena, like the corner of Hyde Park near the Marble Arch in our own day, where self-appointed legislators, convinced of their own ability to regenerate the State, to draw up a constitution or dictate to the Government, were able all at the same time to address the crowds assembled, and ‘soap-box orators’ could inveigh against the nobles and the clergy. The effect of this agitation carried out under the eyes of the Duc and largely paid for by him was seen during the procession of May 4, when the cries of ‘Vive le Duc d’Orléans’ were uttered by women of the people with so menacing an intonation as the Queen passed by that she almost fainted at the sound.
The official opening of the States General took place next day, May 5, in the Salle des Menus Plaisirs at Ver- sailles. On the entry of the King everyone rose to their feet and cries of ‘Vive le Roi!’ resounded throughout the hall. The Queen was dressed in a velvet tunic and a white
B
18 LOUIS XVI AND MARIE ANTOINETTE
skirt sewn with silver spangles, a plain band of diamonds and a heron’s feather on her head.
Louis XVI, magnificently attired and glittering with jewels, seated himself on the throne where, says his page the Comte d’Hézécques, he always appeared at his best, ‘noble and majestic.” Marie Antoinette took her place in an armchair at his side. A deep silence reigned. Then the King rose to make his speech, the Queen rose also, the King signed to her to sit down, the Queen with a graceful curtsey declined and remained standing with the rest of the Assembly. Louis XVI spoke in a firm voice and with the greatest dignity. ‘Messieurs,’ he said, ‘the day which my heart has long desired has come at last, and I see myself surrounded by the representatives of the nation which I glory in commanding.’
He went on to speak of the state of finances, of the inequality of taxation, paying a tribute to the noblesse for their offer, made on December 20, 1788, to renounce their. pecuniary privileges, and expressing the hope that all three Orders would co-operate with him for the good of the State. He appealed to the traditional love of the French nation for their kings, and assured them that they could count on his interest for the public good as their sovereign and the best friend of his people. He ended by saying:
‘May a happy accord reign, messieurs, in this Assembly, and may this epoch become for ever memorable for the welfare and prosperity of the kingdom. This is the wish of my heart, the most ardent of my desires; it is the prize I expect in return for the justice of my intentions and my love for the people.’
Whilst the King was speaking, a shaft of sunlight pierced through the curtained dome of the hall and illumined his forehead as if a blessing from Heaven had rested on him. The Assembly, impressed by this happy augury, gave vent to loud applause as he resumed his place on the throne.
The garde des sceaux, Barentin, in a longer speech then developed the King’s views, referring to his desire to see
THE STATES GENERAL 19
the burden of taxation fairly shared by the noblesse and clergy, to introduce greater liberty of the press, to bring about reforms in the punishment of crime, and reminding the Assembly that the King had already taken the first steps towards the abolition of all forms of servitude. Barentin also ended by entreating them to work together in harmony, to abjure the hatreds which had recently alarmed France and threatened public security, and to let zeal for the welfare of the nation fire their patriotic hearts.
The speech of the Comptroller General that followed somewhat damped the ardour aroused by the King and his mouthpiece. Taking a gigantic note-book from his pocket, Necker proceeded to speak for an hour and a half on the finances, then when his voice gave out he handed his manuscript to a substitute, who continued for another hour to read the interminable report. One cannot but admire the fortitude with which all three Orders sat for nearly two and a half hours on their backless benches listening to this array of figures. What wonder that an atmosphere of boredom settled down on the Assembly? The gist of it all was that the annual deficit amounted to 56,150,000 livres (£2,456,562), a large sum for those days but which, as Burke points out, could have been made up by ‘a very moderate and proportioned assessment on the citizens without dis- tinction.’ M. Jacques Bainville confirms this opinion: ‘France then had about 25 million habitants; it was a matter of 6 or 7 francs a head. . . . One cannot therefore say the situation was desperate.’ ? It is indeed impossible to imagine that a great country like France with all her natural resources and flourishing industry could have gone bankrupt for a matter of less than 24 million pounds sterling. Bertrand de Molleville declares that if Necker had had good intentions and half the talents he was supposed by his partisans to possess, the restoration of the finances would have been child’s play to him.
1 Reflections on the Revolution in France, p. 330. 2 Histoire de France, p. 320. 3 Mémoires, 1. 34.
20 LOUIS XVI AND MARIE ANTOINETTE
But whether the task was really beyond him, or whether his whole attention was absorbed in gaining popularity for himself, or whether, as Montjoie and Ferriéres assert, he had been won over by the Orléanistes and was secretly working against the King, Necker now proved the most broken reed of all. And neither Necker nor the Tiers Etat took any steps to discover the real cause of the bread shortage. For although corn riots had been occurring throughout that spring and, as the Duke of Dorset reported on May 7, the scarcity of grain was general throughout the kingdom, although the people were crying out at the price of what bread there was, and everyone knew that supplies were being cornered by monopolizers, the Tiers Etat continued to quarrel over such questions as the union of the three Orders in a single Chamber, whether voting should go by Order or by heads, so that, as the Socialist Louis Blanc observes, ‘the sacred question of feeding the people was lost to sight’ and ‘the Assembly in a way passed over social misery and the hunger of the people to other subjects’!!!
This is not the place to relate the history of the States General, of which some account was given in my French Revolution ; suffice it only to indicate briefly the factions that divided the Assembly and the principal points of dispute.
Broadly speaking, there were four groups at the outset:
I. The staunch Monarchists in the Chamber of the noblesse, corresponding to our modern Tories, most of them favourable to reforms provided they did not weaken the authority of the King. Of these, one of the more democratic nobles, the Marquis de Ferriéres, wrote: ‘I can say this in justice to the noblesse, it was less their personal interest that touched them than that inviolable and sacred attachment they had always had for their King and country. The noblesse would have sacrificed their rights and privileges with joy; but they wanted to save the King and events proved that their fears were well founded.’ }
1 Mémoires, i. 66.
THE STATES GENERAL | 21
II. The Reformers, who might be described as Liberals, perfectly sincere and disinterested, loyal to the King, but often carried away by their zeal for the people into visionary schemes and flights of oratory that led further than they intended. The representatives of this party were the Comte de Lally-Tollendal, the Comte de Virieu, the Comte de Clermont-Tonnerre in the Chamber of the noblesse and Pierre Victor Malouet and Jean Joseph Mounier in that of the Tiers Etat. These men, who were known as the ‘Royalist Democrats’—advocates of a constitutional monarchy on the lines of England !~—all recognized their illusions later on and bitterly regretted the impetus they had unwittingly given to the Revolution.
III. The Orléanistes in the Chamber of the noblesse whose aim was to make the Duc d’Orléans lieutenant-general of the kingdom and ultimately King of France. These included the Duc d’Aiguillon, the Comte de Mirabeau, the Marquis de Sillery, the Baron de Menou, the Comte de la Touche, Adrien Duport, and Alexandre de Lameth.
IV. The Subversives, with as yet no definite ideas of a Republic but only of class hatred and the overthrow of all authority. This group, small and uninfluential, which comprised Robespierre, Pétion, and Rabaut Saint Etienne, known as the ‘Enragés,’ formed the nucleus of the future Jacobin faction.
The two points mostly in dispute at the opening of the States General were (1) the union of the three Orders of noblesse, clergy and Tiers Etat in a single Chamber de- manded by parties III and IV, agreed to by No. II, but resisted by No. I, and (2) the demand of the Tiers Etat that voting should go by heads and not by Order so as to give them the advantage of their numerical superiority.
It is necessary to understand all this in order to realize the problems by which Louis XVI was faced after the opening of the States General.
1 Mémoire du Comite de Lally-Tollendal, janvier 1790, p. 122.
22 LOUIS XVI AND MARIE ANTOINETTE
At this moment the King and Queen were both distracted by a private grief. The little Dauphin, once so pretty and flourishing, had become in the space of a few months a wasted shadow, with bent back and legs so feeble that he could only walk a few steps with support, like a decrepit old man, says Mme Campan. His mind had aged as well as his body, and he would use phrases that came strangely from the lips of so young a child. Before his health failed he had a little garden in which he was fond of working. One day, whilst eating potatoes, he remarked: ‘I prefer this food to any other because I cultivated it myself. I wish next year if I am better to sow corn, look after it and have it ground. This will make me care more for the poor people who provide it for us. They are perhaps not sufficiently esteemed.’ } During his illness his sick fancy had inspired him with imaginary prejudices against his gouvernante, the Duchesse de Polignac, and he was heard to say: ‘Go out, Duchesse, you have a passion for scents that upset me,’ and the Duchesse used no scent at all. On the other hand he was devoted to his gentleman in waiting, and a short time before his death asked him for a pair of scissors. ‘Then cutting off a lock of his hair he wrapped it carefully in paper and said: ‘Here, monsieur, this is the only present I can make you, having nothing else at my disposal, but when I am dead you will present this pledge to my father and mother, and in being reminded of me I hope they will remember you.’ ?
The Queen sat often at his bedside with tears in her eyes. When she asked him if he suffered much he would answer: “My good Maman, I only suffer when I see you weep.’ 3
And now the end had come. On June 4, exactly a month from the day when he had watched the procession of the States General from his couch on the balcony of the Petite Ecurie, the little Dauphin breathed his last. The Queen was crushed with grief; the King shut himself up in his rooms ordering that he should be left alone and that no one
1 Lescure, Correspondance Secréie, 11. 301. 2 Campan, 230, 231. 3 Montjoie, Histoire de Marie Antoinetie, i. 208.
THE STATES GENERAL 23
under any pretext whatever should intrude upon his sorrow. But the Tiers Etat chose this moment to demand an audience for a deputation which presented itself at the Chateau and expressed great resentment at not being admitted. Louis XVI, informed of this, said sadly: ‘Then there are no fathers amongst the Tiers Etat!’ and the deputation was received on June 6.}
Throughout this month the quarrels in the States General continued. On June 17 the Tiers Etat, considering them- selves the sole representatives of the nation, took the name of ‘National Assembly,’ declaring that it was not necessary to wait for the King’s sanction—‘had the United States waited for the sanction of the King of England?’ As M. Louis Madelin observes: ‘It was a cry of revolt.’
On June 19 the question of the ‘famine’ was at last men- tioned, but although a number of discussions took place and a ‘Comité de Subsistances’ was formed, nothing was done to get at the root of the trouble and bring the monopolizers to book. The Moniteur in its article on the ‘Pacte de Famine’ does not attempt to explain this point. All it can find to say with regard to Necker is that he ‘always saw with horror an establishment which rested on human bones,’ but that ‘he was forced to follow the system he found established and could not succeed in overthrowing it... .’ Pressed on this matter by a representative of the Commune of Paris and asked why he had not destroyed this murderous association, he answered with the words: ‘I was unable (je nel’ai pu).’ 2
This was the marvellous man for whom the people had clamoured and whose dismissal set all Paris aflame in the rising that led to the siege of the Bastille! The Moniteur article certainly tends to confirm Montjoie’s opinion that Necker was afraid to irritate the monopolizers lest in revenge they should starve France completely, nor had he the courage to expose the Duc d’Orléans: therefore ‘not daring to fight him he preferred to be his friend.? Malouet who, no doubt rightly, absolves Necker from actual com-
1 Wéber, li. 24. 2 Moniteur, 1. 474, note.
24 LOUIS XVI AND MARIE ANTOINETTE
plicity with the plot, attributes his attitude to ‘want of energy. !
How then can Louis XVI alone be accused of weakness and lethargy? ‘What struck me most,’ Malouet goes on to say, ‘was the inconceivable pusillanimity of the King’s Council.’ 2 It is difficult indeed to see what Louis XVI could do when the Assembly, chosen by the free vote of the people, and the Minister they acclaimed as their saviour, showed neither the energy nor even the desire to relieve their distress, and when the Duc d’Orléans, whom they had also made their idol, was employing agents to deprive them of bread.
Louis XVI at this crisis did, however, display a sudden energy. Finding himself frustrated in his efforts to introduce reforms through the National Assembly, owing to the recalcitrance of the Tiers Etat, he resolved to deliver an ultimatum to the effect that if they did not stop their quarrels and get on with the work of reform, he would carry through the necessary legislation on his own authority. In other words, he would dissolve the Assembly and rule himself.
This was the real meaning of the Séance Royale announced by edict on June 20, which has never been clearly explained by historians, but which appears quite obvious from the King’s speech on that occasion. The Tiers Etat quickly guessed that this was his intention, and seeing their existence threatened, prepared to hold a stormy debate, but on arrival at their hall, the Salle des Menus Plaisirs, they found the door closed. The reason for this, alleged to have been a mere pretext, was quite a reasonable one; the hall of the Tiers Etat being the only one large enough to accommodate the whole Assembly for the Séance Royale, the halls of all three Orders were closed down so that the Salle des Menus Plaisirs could be got ready for the occasion. The fury of the Tiers Etat at finding themselves shut out was increased by the fact that it was a wet day, and the angry crowd of deputies who
1 Malouet, Mémoires, i. 249, * Ibid., p. 281.
THE STATES GENERAL 25
collected under their umbrellas at the entrance thereupon decided to repair to the Jeu de Paume or Tennis Court in order to hold an indignation meeting. This was done, and on the proposal of Mounier they swore not to separate until the Constitution had been firmly established. The oath was subscribed to unanimously but for one exception, a certain Martin d’Auch, who refused to lend himself to what he rightly considered as an act of revolt against the royal authority. In vain the other deputies overwhelmed him with insults, threatened him, in vain the astronomer Bailly, President of the Assembly, implored him to reconsider his decision, Martin d’Auch to his eternal honour stood firm and had to be smuggled out of the hall—with the help of Bailly—in order to escape the fury of the populace.1. The papers afterwards announced that he was mentally de- ranged,? an accusation frequently brought in our own day against anyone who opposes the plans of revolutionaries, and which it is interesting to find dating back to so early a precedent. In the light of after events Martin d’Auch appears to have been the sanest man present, for Mounier lived to realize the folly of his action, and in 1792, driven from France by the Revolution, expressed his regret at having proposed the Oath of the Tennis Court.3 Bailly perished miserably at the hands of the revolutionaries during the Reign of Terror.
Undeterred by the protests of the Tiers Etat, Louis XVI held the proposed Séance Royale on June 23. His speech had been drawn up with the help of Necker, who at the last moment basely deserted him, alleging as a pretext for remaining away from the Séance that certain alterations had been made in the text. These, however, were very slight, and the programme put forward by the King embodied a vast plan of reforms from which Necker could have no reason to disassociate himself. It 1s impossible to imagine anything more conciliatory than the manner in which the King
1 Bailly, i. 192. 2 Le Riche, i. 19. 8 Mounier, Recherches sur les Causes, i. 296.
26 LOUIS XVI AND MARIE ANTOINETTE
appealed to the better feelings of the Assembly. Thus he began by saying:
‘Messieurs, I thought I had done everything in my power for the good of my people when I resolved to assemble you, when I had surmounted all the difficulties by which your convocation was surrounded, when I went forward, so to speak, to meet the wishes of the nation by making plain beforehand what I wished to do for its happiness. It seemed to me that you had only to finish my work... .’
But the King went on to say:
‘The States General have been open nearly two months and have not yet been able to agree on the preliminaries of their operations. A perfect understanding should have arisen if only from love of their country, but a disastrous disaccord fills all minds with alarm. I wish to believe and I like to think that the French are not changed... .
‘I owe it to the common good of my kingdom, I owe it to myself to make these disastrous divisions cease. It is with this resolve, messieurs, that I have again assembled you around me, it is as the common father of all my subjects, it is as the defender of the laws of my kingdom. . . .”
A secretary of state then read out the King’s commands. The resolutions of the Tiers Etat on June 17, claiming to be the National Assembly, were declared unconstitutional—as indeed they were—and therefore null and void. The States General were to continue their sittings in separate chambers, the three Orders were to debate in common on matters of general utility, but not on the prerogatives of the noblesse and clergy which were to be discussed by them in their own chambers and then, if desired, by representatives of each chamber in common. The King also ordered that the public should not be admitted to the sittings of the Tiers Etat which had been a cause of great disorder. Both Arthur Young and the Duke of Dorset expressed their astonishment at the liberty given to spectators in the galleries to interrupt the debates by ‘clapping their hands and other noisy expressions of approbation.’ Besides the confusion this
THE STATES GENERAL 27
created, the temptation to win popularity distracted the deputies from serious discussion. The most trivial incidents were allowed to interrupt the proceedings as, on September 19, when ‘patriotic gifts’ were being made to the nation, and it was solemnly announced that Madame veuve Presvost had presented the Assembly with two large plates and a soup tureen.? It was essential to the dignity of the ‘debates that such ‘playing to the gallery’ should be done away with, but the deputies resented any restrictions as an infringement of ‘liberty.’
The King’s plans for reform were then read out. The most important were as follows:
Article I. No fresh taxes were to be imposed without the consent of the representatives of the nation.
IV. The States General were to examine the state of the finances, which should be clearly put before them.
IX. When the formal intentions put forward by the clergy and noblesse of renouncing their pecuniary privileges had been carried out in their debates, it was the intention of the King to sanction them so that in the matter of pecuniary contributions there should exist no privileges or distinctions of any kind. |
X. The taille to be abolished throughout the kingdom and either added to the vingtiéme or replaced in some way without distinction of rank or birth.
XI. Francfief to be abolished.
XVI. Greater liberty to be given to the press, with due respect to religion and morals.
XXVI. The gabelle to be seriously discussed and means found for alleviating it.
XXVII. Other forms of taxation to be seriously considered, but with a view to maintaining the balance between the revenues and expenditure of the State.
XXVIII. The criminal laws to be discussed and reformed.
1 Moniteur, 1. 493.
28 LOUIS XVI AND MARIE ANTOINETTE
XXX. The corvée to be entirely and for ever abolished throughout the kingdom.
XXXII. The right of main-morte to be abolished according to the example set by the King in his domains.
XXXII. The capitainertes or game laws to be restrained according to regulations the King proposes to make affecting his own pleasures.
The King ended the Séance with a short speech in which he said :
“You have heard, messieurs, the result of my inclinations and my views which are in conformity with my keen desire to bring about public welfare, and if, by a fatality far from my thoughts, you abandon me in so fine an enterprise, alone I shall accomplish the welfare of my people, alone I shall consider myself as their true representative; and knowing your cahiers, knowing the perfect accord that exists between the general wishes of the nation and my benevolent intentions, I shall have all the confidence that so rare a harmony should inspire, and I shall walk towards the goal I wish to attain with all the courage and firmness with which it should inspire me.’
The King then ordered the Assembly to separate and left the hall, followed by the noblesse and part of the clergy. But the Tiers Etat remained seated in gloomy silence. It was then, on the repeated order of the master of the ceremonies, the Marquis de Dreux-Brézé, to clear the hall in obedience to the King’s command that Mirabeau uttered his famous apostrophe: ‘We will only leave our places by the force of bayonets.’ The utterance was senseless, since there was no question of using force nor was there any object in the Tiers Etat continuing a sitting which they were free to resume on the following day. It is easy, however, to understand the indignation of the Tiers Etat. The King’s last speech was undoubtedly in the nature of a threat, intimating as it did that if they continued to obstruct the work of reform he would carry it through without them.
THE STATES GENERAL 29
Apart from the possibility of dissolution the Tiers Etat saw in this a blow to their power. Whatever happened now the King had taken the wind out of their sails. If every- thing was to be settled peacefully with the consent of the clergy and the noblesse, what pretext would be left for agitation? Dr. Guillotin put the matter succinctly when, in answer to a fellow-deputy who asked his opinion of the King’s declared intentions, he replied: ‘Alas, they are only too favourable, which will perhaps rob us of the happiness of having a revolution.1 And indeed, had they been accepted in the spirit in which they were intended, Dr. Guillotin’s famous machine might never have come into play, which would have deprived its inventor of his sole claim to immortality.
The failure of the Séance Royale was undoubtedly due mainly to the defection of Necker. Was this prearranged with the Duc d’Orléans? It is certainly significant that Bailly should have been awakened in the middle of the preceding night by three leading Orléanistes, including the Duc d’Aiguillon, who had come to tell him that Necker disapproved of the measures the King was to propose and would not be present at the Séance.* As President of the Assembly Bailly was informed, evidently in the hope that he would give the Tiers Etat the line to follow. At any rate the fact that their idol had stayed away naturally conveyed both to the Assembly and the people that he was not in agreement with the King. Necker did nothing to allay this suspicion. When, after the Assembly had risen, most of the Tiers Etat presented themselves before him in a body, Mme Necker threw fuel on the fire by telling them that Necker had offered to resign—news that created general consternation.
But once again Marie Antoinette intervened on behalf of Necker. Though cut to the heart by his desertion of the King, she seems to have clung to him as a sort of mascot, convinced that he alone could sway the public mind. So
1 D’Allonville, ii. 154. 2 Bailly, i. 206.
go LOUIS XVI AND MARIE ANTOINETTE
indeed he could at this moment, but Necker had no intention of using his power except to increase his own popularity. Summoned to the Queen’s apartment, he agreed after a long colloquy not to hand in his resignation, then on going out, carefully chose to walk across the Cour des Princes—a way the Ministers were never accustomed to take—in order to receive the plaudits of the crowd assembled there. Cries of ‘Vive Necker!’ arose on every side; a man of the people threw himself on his knees crying out: ‘Monsieur, are you staying?’ ‘Yes, my children,’ said Necker unctuously, ‘I am staying with you.’ The idol was then led home in triumph, ‘everyone was in a state of emotion and intoxication of delight.’ }
So whilst the Minister received the ovation he had done nothing whatever to deserve, the King had met only with angry murmurs. Entering the petits appartements on his return to the Chateau, Louis XVI noticed the De Imitatione Christi of Thomas 4 Kempis lying on the table, and as the cheers for Necker rose and fell beneath the windows he said sadly to Marie Antoinette: ‘My dear, learn resignation from this book, for before long we shall have great need of it. Our happy days are passing away.’ 2
Yet at the Séance Royale, where he displayed the greatest firmness, he had gone further to meet the demands of the people than any King of France had ever done before. Arthur Young, in Paris at the time, could not understand why his programme was resented. ‘The propositions were known to all the world: the plan was a good one; much was granted to the people in great and essential points.’ 3 But for the defection of Necker this would no doubt have been recognized by the public.
It will be seen indeed that in the above quoted articles important reforms were ordained and the way was paved for others of a still more sweeping kind. If by Article IX the King did not deprive the noblesse and clergy of their
1 Moniteur, i. 97. * Walsh, Journées Mémorables, i, 141. 8 Travels in France, p. 175.
THE STATES GENERAL 31
pecuniary privileges straight away, and if by Articles XII and XIII he declared that the rights of property should be respected and he did not abolish feudal and seigneurial rights or exemption from personal charges, it was because in the first place he had not the power to do so; his position at this moment was not secure enough to permit of his antagonizing the strongest supporters of the throne. In the second place such a step would not have accorded with his ideas of justice; the noblesse had on their own initiative offered in 1788 to renounce their pecuniary privileges and had renewed this offer, since the opening of the States General, on May 23 when, in obedience to the demands of the cahiers, that is to say of the noblesse of all France, their representatives had, as the King stated in Article IX, ‘announced their formal intention’ of carrying this offer into effect. As to their willingness to relinquish feudal rights, this was seen on August 4 when in one night the whole feudal system was abolished by them at a blow.
In allowing the noblesse therefore to have the credit for making their own sacrifices Louis XVI displayed a wisdom and a sense of ‘fair play’ that in normal times must have met with appreciation, but, as Arthur Young observed, the minds of the people had now been so inflamed by the seditious meetings at the Palais Royal and by the flood of revolutionary literature poured out since the assembling of the States General that ‘nothing the King or Court could do would now satisfy them.’ !
1 Travels in France, p. 177.
CHAPTER II THE REVOLUTION OF 1789
In following the course of what is collectively called ‘The French Revolution’ it is essential to remember that the term covers a series of revolutions inspired by different aims and carried out by different leaders. Thus there was the Orléaniste Revolution of 1789, the Girondiste Revolution of 1792, the Jacobin Revolution of 1793, and the Thermi- dorien Revolution of 1794. All these were the work of separate factions, and although certain agitators passed from one faction to another, the aims of each remained distinct. |
The Revolution of 1789 was in no sense a Republican movement; it would hardly be too much to say that no one at that date, with the exception of La Fayette, thought of a Republic. This so-called Revolution was in fact nothing more than an Orléaniste rising backed by the Lodges with a change of dynasty as its immediate object. On this point the evidence of all contemporaries is so overwhelming that it admits of no dispute.
The conspiracy which had hitherto manifested itself only in spasmodic outbreaks—the attack on the house of the paper-maker Réveillon on April 27, 1789, and the bread riots during which, as in the Guerre des Farines, supplies were again not captured but destroyed—after the Séance Royale of June 23 was able to organize a state of continuous Insurrection and disorders.
On June 25 the benevolent Archbishop of Paris, Mon- selgneur de Juigné, who had ruined himself to feed the poor, now accused of intriguing against the popular cause and of instigating the Séance Royale, was attacked by a
32
THE REVOLUTION OF 1789 33
mob and only escaped with his life through the speed of his horses and the intrepidity of his coachman.! On the same day the Duc d’Orléans at the head of a minority of the noblesse joined the Tiers Etat. A majority of the clergy followed suit.
Louis XVI, now distracted by the turn events had taken, listened alternately to Necker and the party which urged more concessions, and to the Court faction of the Comte d’Artois and the Polignacs who implored him to stand firm. Convinced of the necessity for putting down disorders, he assembled troops round Paris; but at last persuaded that the union of the three Orders was the only way to stop popular agitation, he went back on his declaration of the Séance Royale, and on June 27 ordered the majority of the noblesse and the minority of the clergy to join the Tiers Etat. This command met with strong protests from the noblesse, animated more by a desire to maintain the King’s authority than by a consideration of their own interests, ‘Messieurs,’ said M. de Beaumetz, deputy of the noblesse of Artois, ‘our duty is dictated to us by the device of two members seated here: “‘Fais ce que dois, advienne que pourra!’’’2 In this debate, carried on ‘in consternation and despair,’ it was d’Eprémesnil, the one-time revolutionary parlementaire, who figured as the most resolute opponent of the union of the three Orders.’
The resistance of the noblesse was finally overcome by a second royal command. The Duc de Luxembourg, who had gone to report to Louis XVI on the result of their deliberations, returned with a letter in which the King assured them that his personal safety depended on their compliance, and even the Comte d’Artois now wrote to the same effect. The nobles then hesitated no longer. ‘Messieurs,’ cried the Marquis de Saint-Simon, springing into the middle of the hall, ‘the King has told us that his life is threatened ; let us hasten to the Chateau and form a
1 Moniteur, 1. 97. 2 Duc des Cars, Mémoires (1890), p. 86. 3 Moniteur, 1. 121. C
34 LOUIS XVI AND MARIE ANTOINETTE
rampart for him with our bodies!’ ‘It is no longer a matter for debating, messieurs,’ added the Duc de Luxembourg, ‘but of saving the King. His life appears to be in danger ; which of us could hesitate for a moment?’ At these words the nobles rose in silence, and, joined by the majority of the clergy, made their way gloomily to the hall of the Tiers Etat.}
The decision was a momentous one, as momentous as would be the abolition of the House of Lords in the midst of a national crisis. And, except for a momentary revival of the King’s popularity, it did nothing to relieve the situation. Fresh pretexts for agitation were immediately created.
Two days earlier Louis XVI had been given the only advice that might have stopped the Revolution. It came from d’Eprémesnil, now the ardent defender of the throne, who, after obtaining an audience of the King, expressed contrition for his past conduct and put forward a plan of campaign which was briefly as follows: The King should assemble the members of the Parlement, denounce the Duc d’Orléans and his principal accomplices, judge them on the spot between closed doors, arrest them and hang them at once on the railings of the Palais Royal. The people would be too stupefied to move. Then the National Assembly should be dissolved as unfaithful to its mandates, and at the same time the King should be asked to accord the reforms asked for by the majority of the cahiers such as he had already expressed his intention to grant.?
Advice of the same kind was given to the King a little later by Foulon, but in the form of two alternatives: either to arrest the Duc d’Orléans or to go to the Assembly and demand the cahiers so as to satisfy the real wishes of the people. D’Eprémesnil’s plan of the double course to follow was wiser, providing as it did an invaluable formula for stopping a revolution, namely: ‘Arrest the agitators and meet the just demands of the people.’ For to arrest the agitators without meeting just demands would be only to provide a
1 Ferriéres, i, 69. 2 D’Allonville, ii. 155. ® Campan, p. 242; G. Bord, La Conspiration Révolutionnaire de 1789, p. 195.
THE REVOLUTION OF 1789 35
legitimate grievance; on the other hand, to meet just demands without arresting the agitators would lead simply to the creation of fictitious grievances. It was necessary to do both simultaneously and at once. The gentle Malouet came to much the same conclusion when he wrote later that the best thing for the King to do would have been to accede to the people’s wishes, give them the liberties they asked for and then say: ‘The first sedition-monger who tries to stir up trouble and insurrections will be judged and executed on the spot.’ }
But d’Eprémesnil’s project revolted the kindly spirit of Louis XVI, to whom all violent methods were abhorrent. It is questionable, moreover, whether it was not now too late. In order to carry out the scheme proposed it would have been necessary to have reliable forces at one’s disposal and a Napoleon to lead them. And by this time the army was not to be relied on. The inflammatory propaganda of the Palais Royal, the seductions of the filles de jote employed by the conspirators, the doctrines of the Masonic lodges into which the soldiers had been lured, and above all the gold of d’Orléans, had enticed too many of the French Guards from their allegiance; only the foreign regiments of Swiss and Germans, whose ignorance of the French language had made them proof against the teaching of sedition, could be depended on to stand firm. If the plan proposed ‘by d’Eprémesnil had been followed earlier, directly after the Affaire Réveillon, if the Duc d’Orléans had then been arrested and the Palais Royal closed down, the Revolution might have been nipped in the bud, but now things had gone too far and any display of force could only lead to civil war, the one thing Louis XVI would never bring himself to face.
Even the maintenance of law and order was represented as an infringement of the liberty of the people. The as- sembling of troops round Paris had been a necessary measure after the attack on the Archbishop of Paris, not only for the
1 Malouet, i. 282. |
36 LOUIS XVI AND MARIE ANTOINETTE
protection of peaceful citizens but of the Assembly itself, and also for the convoying of food supplies. But the popu- lace, worked up by Mirabeau’s violent oratory, rose against this as an act of despotism. Eleven deserters from the Guards imprisoned at the Abbaye as a matter of ordinary military discipline were delivered by a mob of 20,000 people. The King, in response to the supplications of the Assembly, pardoned the insurgents.
But the revolutionary character of the Assembly had now become apparent. ‘Everything,’ says Marmontel, ‘that could animate, irritate and stir up the people was permitted and provoked, everything that could restrain or repress their movements aroused the strongest protests in the States General. They called liberty the right to ex- tinguish all liberty.’+ Dumont observes that the principal instigators of insurrection were to be found amongst the ‘minority of the noblesse,’ that is to say the Orléanistes, even more than amongst the Tiers.?
Finding himself in this complete impasse, it seems that Louis XVI again contemplated the plan of dissolving the States General and ruling himself; the intention was not openly declared, but his change of Ministry at this crisis lends colour to the supposition. For as long as Necker remained at the helm it was clear that he would continue to be the veritable King of France and that all considerations of public interest would be subordinated to his craving for popularity at the expense of the royal authority. The Comte d’Artois hated him and so far forgot himself as to shake his fist in his face, calling him a ‘fichu bourgeois’ and telling him to go back to his own little native town. The day after this outburst, July 11, Necker received the order to resign and leave the kingdom. The other Ministers left at thesame time and anew Ministry was formed under the Baron de Breteuil, with the Maréchal de Broglie as Minister of War and Foulon as Comptroller General in place of Necker.
1 Marmontel, iv. 140. 2 Etienne Dumont, Souvenirs sur Mirabeau (1832), p. 70.
THE REVOLUTION OF 1789 37
In looking back on those days of July 1789 it is amazing to think that the dismissal of so insignificant a personality as Necker should have led to an insurrection culminating in an event as momentous as the destruction of the Bastille. Left to themselves, the people would certainly not have been roused by the news of Necker’s departure to the pitch of frenzy which seized Paris on the 12th of July. The insurrection had been skilfully engineered. Whether Necker himself was a party to the agitation is problematic, but one incident lends colour to Montjoie’s opinion that he kept in touch with the Orléaniste conspirators.
Necker had been dismissed with the utmost gentleness. The King reminded him that he had four times expressed the wish to resign, and now the moment had come to accept his resignation. Louis XVI therefore asked him to retire as quietly as possible, adding that he hoped later on to give him marks of favour. It was generally believed that Necker had acceded to the King’s request, and Lally-Tollendal, who still retained his faith in him, announced his dismissal in touching terms to the Assembly, saying he ‘had left so quietly that his most faithful servants, his dearest friends, even his family, knew nothing of his departure.’ Yet Necker, for all his secrecy, had not omitted to whisper a word into the ear of Latouche, the Chancellor of the Duc d’Orléans.1. Surely a strange circumstance—this one confidant! Thus the news quickly reached the Palais Royal and the signal was given for the rising.
That Necker had admirably served the purpose of the conspirators is shown by the extraordinary volte-face executed at this juncture by the anonymous authors of the chronicle printed later by the Moniteur.?
On June 19 a Comité de Subsistances had been formed in
1 Ferriéres, 1. go, 1 110
2 The Moniteur, not published till November 178g, is retrospective, beginning with the assembling of the States General in May of that year, and including a daily chronicle, of which the authorship is unknown. A great part of this is identical with the Histoire de la Révolution par deux Amis de la Liberté of which Carlyle made so much use. See my French Revolution, p. xii.
38 LOUIS XVI AND MARIE ANTOINETTE
the Assembly which had at last decided to deal with the question of the scarcity of corn. The report of the Committee was read to the Assembly on July 4, and at the same time a memoir of Necker’s announcing that the King had provided fresh supplies which had cost him no less than 25,000,000 livres—over a million pounds sterling—and adding that, in order to economize wheat, rye bread would be eaten by all classes without distinction and served on the King’s table. Necker here paid a handsome tribute to Louis XVI, saying: “We can conjecture what our misfortunes would have been without the help due to the foreseeing solicitude of the King . .. the subsistence of the town of Paris and the surround- ing provinces is a matter of daily solicitude to his Majesty. The King continues to make the greatest efforts to obtain the little assistance one can hope for in all the countries of Europe. ... I must not omit to say that the King has this year multiplied help in money in order to alleviate the lot of the poorest class of the people . . . amidst the scarcity and with the high price (of bread) the King has done all that was humanly possible and all that could be hoped for from a monarch and a father. Bread, already very dear in Paris, would have gone up considerably in price but for the subsidies the King has accorded to the bakers and that he continues to pay.’! And soon. This testimony to the King’s solicitude is omitted in the report given by the Moniteur but is to be found in the Archives Parlementatres.? The chronicle afterwards published by the Moniteur, mouth- piece of the revolutionaries at this date, now concluding that Necker was not to be depended on to betray the King’s cause, proceeded under the date of July 10, to make an attack on the Government and particularly on Necker. Referring to the Comité de Subsistances it said that evidently the King’s Ministers were unable to find a remedy for the famine and that the Committee had appealed to Necker for an explanation, but ‘the Government took refuge in a guilty silence and would communicate nothing. Everyone
1 Moniteur, i. 124. ® Buchez et Roux, i. 192.
THE REVOLUTION OF 1789 39
knows the memoir of M. Necker,’ it goes on to say, ‘the Committee asked for documentary evidence, or at any rate a summary of the proofs on which it was based. He replied that he would speak about it. We ask ourselves why a Minister who has received so many tokens of affection both from the people and the States General should behave towards them in such an insignificant manner.’ On the following day the Montteur chronicle refers to the Govern- ment as the ‘most guilty, the most criminal Ministry of France.’ 4
But in the very next number, dated two days later, the dismissal of the Ministry having intervened, this event is declared to have caused universal consternation whilst Necker is described as departing ‘with tranquillity of soul, the reward of a clear conscience. .. . It would be impossible to describe the depression into which all citizens have fallen. Everyone seemed to be regretting his father, grief was depicted on every countenance.’* ‘The exile of this one man,’ the chronicle adds a few pages later, ‘becomes a public calamity. One cannot think of his disgrace without a shudder; it is to be regarded as the signal for three frightful scourges, famine(!), bankruptcy and civil war.’ 3
So the man who had been accused of holding up informa- tion which would have enabled the Comité de Subsistances to feed the country was now proclaimed to be the only defence against the famine, and the fall of ‘the most guilty and criminal Ministry of France’ was to be regarded as a public calamity! As long as Necker had seemed disposed to uphold the King’s authority he had been treated with contempt by the Orléanistes and Mirabeau had referred to him as ‘that charlatan of a Necker, the king of the canaille.24 But now that he had failed the King, Mirabeau declared that they ‘could only regard with terror the abyss of misfortune into which the country would be dragged by his exile,’ § and his name was coupled with that of the Duc d’Orléans. The
Monitteur, i. 145. ® Ibid. p. 153. — ® Ibid., p. 170. 4 D’Allonville, u. 104. ® Bailly, i. 332.
40 LOUIS XVI AND MARIE ANTOINETTE
wax busts of these two saviours of the country were paraded through the streets of Paris as a signal for the rising which was to place Orléans on the throne with Necker as his Minister.
At Versailles the news of the frightful confusion into which the capital had been thrown was received with satisfaction by the revolutionary elements in the Assembly, with in- credulity at the Chateau. The riotous scenes taking place at the Palais Royal, the call to arms, the formation of a milice bourgeoise for the protection of the citizens against hordes of brigands, the ‘charge’ of the Prince de Lambesc, the attack on the Invalides and finally the march on the Bastille—all these events following each other in rapid succession were announced by couriers hasting from the demented city; yet no one seems to have realized their full significance. In the night of July 12 to 13, Joly de Fleury, Attorney-General of the Parlement, had hurried to Ver- sailles in order to urge the King to take measures against the impending insurrection and, unable to obtain an audi- ence, sought the Minister for War, Maréchal de Broglie, but could not succeed in persuading him that the situation was serious.! During the day of the 14th, whilst the cannon of the Bastille could be heard at Versailles, the inhabitants of the Chateau regarded this as a good augury, showing that the city was being well defended. When towards nightfall people arrived in haste from Paris saying that the Bastille was in the hands of the mob and that de Launay with some of his officers had been barbarously butchered, they were received with derision and old army men declared it was impossible that the Bastille, defended by trained soldiers, could have been captured by a crowd of ill-armed civilians, ‘such a thing,’ said they, ‘has never been known.’
The truth is that no one then dreamt ofa revolution. As Mme de la Tour du Pin, at Versailles that summer, observed later on: ‘Ah! it is very easy now, fifty years after those events, and when one has seen the consequences of the
1 D’Allonville, it. 163.
THE REVOLUTION OF 1789 4t
Court’s weakness, to say how it ought to have acted! But at that time, when no one even knew what a revolution was, it was not such an easy thing to make up one’s mind what to do.’
The King, however, took the situation more seriously than his entourage; whilst the courtiers displayed their usual gaiety he said: ‘Messieurs, I could not laughas you do.’
‘But,’ replied the Comte de Vergennes, ‘can the King really believe the exaggerated reports which have been brought to his Majesty?’
‘“Messieurs,’ said Louis XVI, ‘much has been said about bleod having been shed and faithful servitors massacred ; I do not know yet whether all this is true, but doubt alone should prevent one smiling.’
Meanwhile, seeing in the disorders of Paris only the work of brigands, he steadfastly refused to accede to the reiterated demands of the Assembly that the troops should be with- drawn. It has often been related, as proof of his ‘imbecility,’ that when the news of the fall of the Bastille was finally brought him by the Duc de Liancourt, he contented himself with observing: ‘But this 1s a revolt!’ to which the Duc replied: ‘No, Sire, it is a revolution.’ M. Madelin, quoting this famous anecdote, places it in the evening of July 14, saying that the Duc de Liancourt, bringing the news, had gone ‘to wake up the King who naturally had been hunting all day.’ But this does not at all accord with the account given by the Moniteur in its report of the debate in the Assembly on July 14. For during that momentous day the representatives of the nation were engaged in discussing the proposed Constitution and the Declaration of the Rights of Man, displaying a detachment from events no less remark- able than that attributed to the King by the story that he had gone hunting. It was not till after they had resumed their sitting at five o’clock in the evening that a messenger brought the news that an attack on the Bastille was in progress. At that moment a deputation from the Assembly was with the King, again urging him to withdraw the troops.
42 LOUIS XVI AND MARIE ANTOINETTE
A second deputation was now sent to tell him that the people had marched on the Bastille, and it evidently found him wide awake, for he replied with extreme lucidity that he had ordered the troops to co-operate with the multce bourgeoise, and he added: ‘The anxiety you express with regard to the disorders of the city must be felt by all hearts and deeply affects mine.’ A deputy of the noblesse now arrived from Paris at the Assembly bringing the news of the murder of de Launay and presumably of the fall of the Bastille, but either this was not passed on to the King or was represented to him by his advisers as an unconfirmed rumour, for he showed no knowledge of it in the message he sent later to the Assembly by the second deputation, in which he said: *“Messieurs, you rend my heart more and more by the account you give me of the troubles of Paris; it is not possible to believe that the orders given to the troops can - be the cause. You know the reply I made to your previous deputation and I have nothing to add to it. No, comments Marmontel, these orders certainly were not the cause, for they were confined simply to policing the city and keeping the peace.?
What then becomes of de Liancourt’s story of waking up the King with the news that the Bastille had fallen? The source is at once suspect, for de Liancourt was an Orléaniste. Moreover, the Baron de Besenval, in command of troops that day in Paris, relates that it was he who first brought the news of the great event to Louis XVI. After the fall of the Bastille, Besenval says: ‘I went to Versailles where the astonishment felt in no way corresponded to the importance of what had happened. This is the reason. No one had cared to tell the King the whole story of this disastrous day, so that he only knew of events by fragments which left him in uncertainty. He learnt from me all the facts in their full significance both for the present and the future.’ 3
Much has been made of the entry in the King’s diary for this day which consists of the one word ‘Rien.’ But the
1 Moniteur, i. 159, 160. 4 Marmontel, iv. 204. 8 Besenval, ti. 372.
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point never explained is that the record kept by Louis XVI, preserved in the Archives Nationales, was in no sense a journal of events but simply a note-book in which he jotted down personal memoranda—his private engagements, the days on which he took medicine or went to mass, but above all hunting and shooting notes. The bag is always carefully noted; in fact the diary was more than anything a game- book. One would not look in Mr. Lloyd George’s golfing diary during the Great War for an account of Passchendaele. The word ‘rien’ thus clearly signifies that the King had not gone hunting that day, or the fact would have been duly noted, and the Moniteur shows that he was occupied with public affairs. He had probably not heard of the fall of the Bastille when he made the entry that night in his diary.
Louis XVI, however, was deeply affected when all the events of July 14 were related to him. It was not the destruction of the Bastille that distressed him, for a plan to demolish the old fortress and replace it by a ‘Public Square to the glory of Louis XVI’ had been drawn up by the official architect, Corbet, in 1784. This plan is still pre- served at the Musée Carnavalet. But the story of the hideous crimes committed in Paris and of the continual disorder in that city cut him to the heart, and on the follow- ing day he went on foot to the Assembly, without his guard, accompanied only by his two brothers, and in a touching speech implored its aid in restoring law and order. ‘It is I, who am one with my nation, it is I who trust in you! Help me in these circumstances to ensure the salvation of the State: I await this from the National Assembly, from the zeal of the representatives of my people... .’ Then, yield- ing to the demands of the Assembly, he agreed to the with- drawal of the troops, leaving it to the milice bourgeoise to keep order in Paris.
This concession, like all concessions made to popular clamour, elicited momentary applause, only to be followed by redoubled violence. When the King ended his speech the Assembly rose as one man around him; outside the hall
44 LOUIS XVI AND MARIE ANTOINETTE
a cheering crowd awaited him. So immense was the concourse that it took him an hour and a half to reach the Chateau. Walking between his two brothers and followed by the Assembly, which had formed itself into his escort, his triumphal progress might well have led him to believe that the step he had taken was the right one, and that in yielding to the will of the Assembly he had regained the love and loyalty of the people. How could he realize that the people had no will of their own, but were swayed to and fro at the bidding of the agitators like an orchestra at the movement of the conductor’s baton? The deluded crowds had really been made to believe that the troops assembled to protect the citizens of Paris had presented a menace to their liberty and now shouted themselves hoarse with cries of ‘Vive le Roi!’; even the bodyguard and the Swiss, later to be massacred in the name of liberty, caught the contagion and joined in the applause. So amidst waving banners, to the sound of military marches, of beating drums and trumpets blowing fanfares, Louis XVI at last reached the foot of the marble staircase.
On the balcony of the Cour de Marbre the royal family had assembled, awaiting his return: the Queen with the little Duc de Normandie, now the Dauphin, on one arm, holding Madame Royale by the hand; the Comtesses de Provence and d’Artois and Madame Elisabeth on either side of her. Soon the sons of the Comte d’Artois arrived and kissed the Queen’s hand. The Queen embraced them and held the Dauphin towards them; the little princes pressed him to their hearts and kissed him again and again; Madame Royale, slipping her head under the Queen’s arm, joined in the caresses. But the people were calling for the King, and Louis XVI arriving at that moment appeared on the balcony amidst the shouts and benedictions of the crowd,
All now appeared to be peace and joy. But beneath the acclamations that had greeted the King on his way from the Assembly angry murmurs had arisen, mainly against
THE REVOLUTION OF 1789 45
the Comte d’Artois—‘ Vive le Roi! in spite of you, Mon- seigneur, and of your opinions!’ several voices cried. Other murmurs were directed against the Queen and the Polignacs. As Marie Antoinette appeared on the balcony, Mme Campan, mingling with the crowd, heard a woman whose features were concealed beneath a black lace veil say to the man beside her: ‘Ah, the Duchesse is not with her!’ ‘No,’ said the man, ‘but she is still at Versailles, she is like a mole, she is working underground, but we shall know how to dig her out.’
Marie Antoinette was well aware of the hatred Mme de Polignac had incurred and had been careful not to let her appear on this occasion. Mme Campan had been sent to fetch the Dauphin from her, and the Duchesse, understanding the reason for this order, had burst into tears, saying: ‘Ah, Madame Campan, what a blow this is to me!’ Now at last she understood how fatal her friendship had been to the Queen.
But the people were wrong in identifying Marie Antoinette with the Polignac set at this moment. Many writers have fallen into the same error by including her in what was known as the ‘Court party’ consisting of the Comte d’ Artois, the Princes de Condé and Conti, the Polignacs and their friends. In reality the Queen now occupied an isolated position; wrapped up in her grief at the death of the first Dauphin she had little heart for public affairs. As early as April of this year the Comte de Salmour, the Saxon ambassador, had written: ‘The Queen only shows herself once or twice a month at Mme de Polignac’s or Mme de Lamballe’s, not moving out of her apartments where she lives absolutely alone.’ 1 What her political opinions were it is difficult to know precisely, for a gap occurs here in her published correspondence, but that they differed widely from those of the ‘Court party’ is certain. The breach that had arisen between her and the Comte d’Artois over the double representation of the Tiers Etat was never
1 Flammermont, Correspondances Diplomatiques, p. 227.
46 LOUIS XVI AND MARIE ANTOINETTE
healed. Again, whilst he and the Polignacs detested Necker, the Queen continued to believe in him and, as we have seen, even after his defection at the Séance Royale which had deeply grieved her, had urged him not to resign. The Comte de Vaudreuil, the lover of Mme de Polignac and the Comte d’Artois’ greatest friend, relates that in the morning of that day, whilst the King was at the Assembly, he went to the Chateau fearing for the life of the Queen and resolved to protect her. But she received him coldly, saying: ‘We need no longer to be guarded; the King is granting more than anyone dared to hope, those who are evilly disposed are disarmed, unity will be restored.’
‘Dare I ask the Queen,’ answered Vaudreuil, ‘whether M. Necker has followed the King to the Assembly?’
‘No, why do you ask this question?’
‘Because if action is not taken against the principal Minister to-day, the monarchy will be destroyed to-morrow.’
The Queen dismissed Vaudreuil with an imperious gesture. The Comte, backing towards the door, said, bowing deeply : ‘I am grieved to see that I have incurred disgrace with the Queen, but never will I hesitate between favour and my duty.’
But when the July revolution broke out and the cries of ‘Vive Necker!’ mingled with those of ‘Vive le Duc d’Orléans!’, Marie Antoinette admitted to him she had been mistaken. ‘Vaudreuil,’ she said, ‘you were right. Necker is a traitor. We are lost!’ and the tears rolled from her eyes.
The appointment of Foulon on the dismissal of Necker, made at the instance of the ‘Court party,’ was also clearly not in accordance with the views of the Queen, For Marie Antoinette distrusted Foulon. When it had been a question of the recall of Necker in 1788 she had written to Mercy: ‘There is also Foulon if M. Necker absolutely refused. But I think him a very bad man (trés malhonnéte homme)
1 Correspondance Intime du Comte de Vaudreuil et du Comie d’ Artois, éditée par Léonce Pingaud (1889), i. pp. xxvii, xCvill.
THE REVOLUTION OF 1789 47
and public confidence would not be restored by him.’ } In these last words the Queen judged rightly, for although the saying attributed to Foulon: ‘Let the people eat grass’ was proved to be a fable, and he was shown to have spent large sums in providing work for the people, he had made himself unpopular and his appointment in succession to Necker was ill-advised.
It was therefore from ignorance of the Queen’s real opinions that the people included her in the ‘Court party’ during that summer of 1789. There is no mention by contemporaries of her presence in the Orangerie of the Chateau, where the Comte and Comtesse d’Artois, the Comtesse de Provence, the King’s aunts and the Polignacs were said to be making merry whilst the siege of the Bastille was in progress. In reality it seems that they had merely walked there, listening to the military bands of the regiments quartered at Versailles, and that Mme de Polignac with the idea of stimulating their loyalty had regaled the soldiers with refreshments and drinks which perhaps raised their spirits too effectually. But as Ferriéres who relates this incident observes, ‘they only knew confusedly what was going on in Paris’ and the news of the siege of the Bastille had not yet reached Versailles.
It now became clear, however, to the King and Queen that no one’s life was safe in France and for a moment they contemplated flight. But in the end Louis XVI determined to stay and face the situation—a decision he afterwards deeply regretted. Marie Antoinette, urged perpetually by Joseph II to seek refuge with him, firmly declined to leave her husband and children and replied to her brother with the words: ‘My duty is to remain where Providence has placed me and to present my body to the daggers of the assassins who wish to reach the King.’ ?
But whilst the King and Queen resolved to remain at their posts they felt it essential to ensure the safety of their family and friends. Already a placard demanding the head of the
1 Lettres de Marie Antoinetie, il. 122. 4 D’Allonville, ii. 176.
48 LOUIS XVI AND MARIE ANTOINETTE
Comte d’Artois had been posted up in Paris; the impreca- tions uttered against him and against Mme de Polignac had reached the ears of the King. Accordingly Louis XVI ordered his brother to leave the kingdom, and he set forth with his wife and children on the night of the 16th. The same order was addressed to the Prince de Condé, who at first refused to obey, but ended by taking his departure ‘shedding tears of rage.’
That evening the Queen sent for her friend and begged her to fly during the night. But the Duchesse de Polignac answered: ‘No, Madame, I will not leave, they can do what they like with me but I must share your dangers,’ 3
Then the Queen, weeping bitterly, said: ‘But think! the King is going to-morrow to Paris. If they asked him... Yes, I fear everything. In the name of our friendship, go whilst there is still time; remember that you are a mother.’ And as the King entered the room at this moment, she said: ‘Come, Monsieur, help me to persuade our faithful friends that they must leave us!’
‘Yes,’ said Louis XVI, ‘you must follow the Queen’s advice. Go—lI ask you; if necessary, I command you. My misfortune obliges me to send away those I love and respect. I have just given the order to the Comte d’Artois to depart; I give you the same order—go, and do not lose a single moment... .’?
The Polignacs obeyed. At midnight, before starting forth, the Duchesse received a farewell note from the Queen. ‘Good-bye, fondest of friends. . . . How dreadful this word is! butit is necessary. . . . Here is the order for the horses. I have only strength left to embrace you.’ §
At this bitter moment of parting all misunderstandings were forgotten, all differences of opinion blotted out; Marie Antoinette remembered only the friend who had been her solace in the lonely days before her children came to comfort her and who throughout fifteen years had shared
1 D’Allonville, ii. p. 168. 2 Montjoie, Histoire de Marie Antoinette, i. 212. 3 Lettres de Marie Antoinette, 11. 131.
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her joys and sorrows. For in spite of momentary lapses the Duchesse was not ungrateful, and she showed the depth of her devotion by dying of a broken heart when the news of the Queen’s terrible end was brought to her four years later in Vienna.
Meanwhile events had been moving swiftly in Paris. On the evening of the 15th, after the King had returned to the Chateau, a deputation from the Assembly had gone to the capital as ‘angels of peace’! to announce that the troops were being withdrawn, and received a tremendous ovation at the Hotel de Ville, at the end of which La Fayette was proclaimed commander of the Paris militia and Bailly mayor of that city. The cry now went up for the return of Necker.
Louis XVI, anxious to leave nothing undone that could conciliate the people, agreed to recall their idol, and also, at the instance of the Queen, the two Ministers Montmorin and Saint-Priest, whom he had been persuaded by the ‘Court party’ to dismiss as unworthy of confidence at the same time as Necker. The gratitude shown by Saint-Priest to the King, and more particularly to the Queen for her intercession in his favour, may be seen in his published Mémoires, which certainly tend to show that his enemies at the Court were not altogether wrong in their suspicions of his fidelity.
Louis XVI had now yielded on every point, and if, as we are frequently asked to believe, the whole trouble had been caused by the ‘reactionary’ policy of the ‘Court party,’ how is it that now they had all emigrated, that the troops had been withdrawn and Necker was recalled, peace did not ensue? What cause was there left for agitation? But as in the case of every concession made by the King, the result was merely to increase the audacity of the conspirators.
As usual, however, they allowed him to enjoy a brief moment of popularity by way of encouragement to further surrenders.
1 Bailly, ii. 17, D
50 LOUIS XVI AND MARIE ANTOINETTE
With this end in view or, as Montjoie assents, in the deliberate hope of his assassination by the populace, the King was now persuaded to go to Paris. Louis XVI was not wanting in courage; to attribute his concessions to cowardice is to misunderstand his character completely. If he yielded to clamour it was because he honestly believed it was his duty to meet the demands of the people, but never, on a single occasion, did he show fear for his personal safety. When urged not to face the risks this entry into Paris involved, he thought only of the horrors of civil war which he was anxious at all costs to avoid, and cried out uncon- trollably: ‘No, no, J will go to Paris ; numbers must not be sacrificed to the safety of one. I give myself up, I trust myself to my people and they can do what they like with me!’? Accordingly on this 17th of July he entered Paris and presented himself defenceless to a city in arms. For whilst the capital had been cleared of the troops he had assembled to keep the peace, not only the milice bourgeoise but the civil population had been allowed to provide themselves with weapons of every description; even monks and women carried swords and muskets; nearly 200,000 men were under arms. Through this threatening crowd Louis XVI, with only four of his gentlemen and twelve of his bodyguard on foot, passed slowly in his carriage, escorted by La Fayette at the head of the National Guards and preceded by men dragging the guns and the flag of the Bastille. On either side of him were serried rows of people carrying scythes, pickaxes, guns and lances, half-drunken potssardes sang and gambaded amongst the crowd, whilst cannons, their mouths stuffed with flowers, bore the ironical inscription: ‘Your presence has disarmed us!’
No cheers greeted the King along the route, for La Fayette, parading the ranks on his famous white horse, had given orders that hats were not to be raised and that instead of ‘Vive le Roi!’ the people were to cry ‘Vive la Nation !’
1 Montjoie, Eloge de Louis XVI, p. 141.
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At the entrance to Paris, Bailly the Mayor had presented Louis XVI with the keys of the city, saying:
‘These are the same that were presented to Henri IV. He had reconquered his people; now the people have reconquered their King.’
It was indeed a captive monarch who drove at foot’s pace through the streets, pale and distressed, cut to the heart by this reception. As the procession turned out of the Place Louis XV into the Rue Royale a shot was fired. Both Beaulieu and also Montjoie, whose account is most circum- stantial in its details, declare that the ball was aimed deliberately at the King but, missing its mark, passed close behind his carriage and struck a tall woman in the crowd who fell back dead. It was held inadvisable to make any enquiry into this affair.
So the King arrived unharmed at the Hétel de Ville and entered the doorway beneath a threatening archway of naked swords and pikes—‘ that vault of steel,’ says the Comte de Virieu’s biographer, ‘formed by Masonry triumphant.’ !
Bailly then came forward again and presented Louis XVI with the tricolore cockade, the colours of the Duc d’Orléans, but also of the town of Paris, and the King, accepting it as the latter, placed it on his hat. Again applause greeted the act of surrender, and for the first time cries of ‘ Vive le Roi!’ were heard as Louis XVI, wearing the badge of the enemy, showed himself on the balcony to the crowd.
But the King was not deceived by these acclamations, and when asked to address the assembled councillors could only say brokenly: ‘My people can always count on my love.’ Amongst the crowd collected in the hall were, however, some still loyal subjects, some whose eyes filled with tears, who stretched out their hands towards him, crying out: ‘Our King, our father !’
The speech of the ‘Liberal’ noble, the Comte de Lally- Tollendal, paying a touching tribute to the King for all he had done in the cause of liberty, evoked more applause and
1 Costa de Beauregard, Le Roman d’un Royaliste, p. 152, cf. Bailly, 11, 65, note.
52 LOUIS XVI AND MARIE ANTOINETTE
even impassioned cries of ‘Vive le Roi!’ and as Louis XVI re-entered his carriage to return to Versailles it seemed indeed as if it was he who had reconquered his people.
At the Chateau the Queen had spent the day shut up in her rooms grieving for the friends who had left her, racked with anxiety for the safety of the King, and she was now waiting with her children and Madame Elisabeth in an agony of suspense on the great marble staircase.
‘This princess, as virtuous as she was amiable,’ says a contemporary writer, Lemaire, ‘whom monsters later on accused of never having loved her husband, was absolutely in despair. As soon as she heard the King’s carriage entering the Cour Royale she ran towards him holding the Dauphin in her arms, then breathless and almost fainting she fell into those of the King who was no less moved than she was. Holding out one hand to his children who covered it with kisses, with the other wiping the tears from the eyes of Marie Antoinette and Madame Elisabeth, Louis XVI smiled again and knowing nothing of the incident that had taken place in the Place Louis XV, he kept on repeating: ‘Happily no blood was shed and I swear that not a drop of French blood shall ever be shed by my orders.’ !
Only five days later the ghastly murders of Foulon and Berthier showed how delusive was the peace that Bailly and Lally-Tollendal imagined to have been established in Paris. Foulon had clearly incurred his fate by advising the King to arrest the Duc d’Orléans, for according to Mme Campan his memoir to this effect was read aloud by Madame Adélaide in the presence of the Comte Louis de Narbonne, who repeated it to Mme de Staél, through which channel it reached the ears of the Orléanistes. Berthier de Sauvigny, the intendant of Paris, on the other hand, had incurred the animosity of the conspirators by his energy in provisioning the capital which they were trying to starve into rebellion. Thus as Bailly the Mayor of Paris observed: ‘A plan had been formed to kill these two men who had been fetched
1 Lemaire, i. 365; Poujoulat, p. 121.
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(to Paris) on purpose and the people had been stirred up against them.’ }
Six days later occurred that astounding phenomenon known as la Grande Peur (the Great Fear) when ‘couriers dispatched by a dark and occult power’ * appeared simultane- ously in towns and villages spreading false alarms so that on the same day, July 28, and almost at the same hour, all over France the panic-stricken people flew to arms.
From this moment anarchy reigned throughout the country, not only were chateaux burnt down and nobles driven from their estates, but harmless and benevolent bourgeois were made victims of atrocities too horrible to relate.
The abandonment of all feudal rights and privileges by the noblesse on August 4, that ‘night of sacrifices,’ in accordance with the King’s desires expressed at the Séance Royale of June 23, did nothing to stem the tide of revolution; on the contrary, it only increased the fury of the revolutionaries whose great scheme from the beginning had been to en- courage the people to believe that the nobles and clergy would never give up their seigneurial rights. The ath of August thus upset all their calculations and they set to work with redoubled energy on their campaign of massacres and burnings.
There was, of course, the usual outburst of popular rejoic- ing when at the end of the sitting on this famous night Louis XVI, on the proposal of Lally-Tollendal, was pro- claimed ‘restorer of French liberty.” Once more the unhappy King, accepting this title, imagined that the Revolution was ended, and on August 13 led a thanksgiving to Almighty God for the splendid manner with which the noblesse had crowned his own work of reform. ‘I accept with gratitude the title you give me,’ said the King, ‘it answers to the motives that guided me when I collected around me the representatives of my nation. My desire 1s now to ensure
1 Bailly, ii. 124. ® Lombard de Langres, Histoire des Facobins (1820), p. 37.
54 LOUIS XVI AND MARIE ANTOINETTE
public liberty with you by the return to peace and order which is so necessary. Your enlightened views and your intentions inspire me with the greatest confidence in the result of your deliberations. Let us go and pray Heaven to help us and render thanks to Him for the generous feelings that prevail in your Assembly.” The King and the Assembly then repaired to the chapel to sing a Te Deum.!
After interminable discussion on the King’s right of ‘Veto’ and on the framing of the Constitution had taken up the time of the Assembly, Louis XVI was asked to sanction the decrees of August 4 with regard to the abolition of feudal rights and privileges. The King, who had not yet been formally deprived of his authority to give or withhold his consent to the framing of laws, naturally supposed that he was expected to express his opinion on the new decrees and therefore went through them with great attention. On these occasions he was always most methodical and, writing-paper being one of his pet economies, he would tear a sheet in two or four to provide the exact space required for his notes. Then with the same remarkable common-sense he had shown in his annotations to the schemes of Turgot and to Vergennes’ memoir on the American War, he drew up a long report on the decrees, analysing them clause by clause and either expressing his approval or suggesting certain difficulties that might stand in the way, wording such criticisms in the most gentle and conciliatory Janguage—‘would it not be more advantageous to do so and so?’ ‘Would not the Assembly consider this point?’ Nowhere did the King strike a despotic note, or place any obstacle in the path of reform. He ended with the words: ‘Therefore I approve the greater number of these articles and I will sanction them when they have been drawn up into laws.’? This report was read to the Assembly on September 18.
But the Assembly were determined to rob the King of the last vestige of authority, and on the motion of Le Chapelier, seconded by Mirabeau, the King was informed that he was
1 Moniteur, 1. 335- 2 Ibid., i. 487.
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not asked to sanction the decrees but to promulgate them. Louis XVI, disregarding the insolence of this message, very sensibly pointed out that laws could only be promulgated when they had been drawn up in legal form; however, as the Assembly persisted, he accorded his ‘sanction pure and simple.’ 1
This was on September 21. On the following day it was announced in the Assembly that in order to help the finances of the kingdom Louis XVI had decided to send all his plate to the mint. The Assembly protested, but the King replied: ‘I am much touched by the sentiments the Assembly expresses for me but I persist none the less in my resolution which is only fitting, owing to the scarcity of money. Neither the Queen nor I attach the least importance to this sacrifice.’ ?
On September 24 Necker, in a debate on the finances, informed the Assembly that the King and Queen proposed to have only one house, which might lead to an economy of 20 millions.
Louis XVI had now shown himself ready to meet the just demands of the people on every point: he had dismissed the Ministers objected to by them and given them back their idol Necker, he had withdrawn the troops whose presence they resented, without regard for his own safety, during his visit to Paris on July 17, he had, in the words of Necker, ‘done everything that was humanly possible’ to alleviate the scarcity of bread, he had introduced sweeping reforms and sanctioned the destruction of the feudal system to the point of imprudence, he had sent his own brother and other princes of the blood out of the country, and with them friends to whom he was personally attached, in order to remove any suspicion of ‘reactionary’ influences at the Court. Every genuine grievance had now been redressed.
It should be remembered, moreover, that the great reforms of Louis XVI were not extorted from him by force on the part of the revolutionary leaders, but were those he had endeavoured of his own free-will to introduce from the
1 Moniteur, p. 496. 2 Ibid., p. 501; Bailly, ii. 389. 8 Moniteur, i. 507.
56 LOUIS XVI AND MARIE ANTOINETTE
moment he ascended the throne. Much indeed had already been accomplished before the Revolution began. The enlightened legislation carried out during his reign may be best appreciated by the following chronology:
1774. Immediately on his accession Louis XVI had started the work of reformation by placing Turgot in control of the finances and introducing the free circulation of grain. In the same year he founded the School of Medicine in Paris.
1775. The droits d’octrot were reduced, prison reform was begun, the death penalty for deserters was abolished.
1776. The King signed the six edicts of Turgot com- prising the abolition of the corvée which only the resistance of the Parlements had prevented from becoming law. In the same year he reduced his household.
1778. Tailles and vingtiémes were reduced.
1779. The King abolished servitude and the right of mainmorte in his domains.
1780. Further reductions were made in the King’s household, hospital reform was begun, prison reform continued, the form of torture known as la question prépara- toire was abolished.
1784. Relief was given to the Jews.
1786. Hospital reform was actively carried out; help had already been given to the deaf mutes and provision made for lost children.
1787. Fresh steps were taken towards the abolition of the corvée throughout the kingdom, more reductions were made in the King’s household, liberty was given to Protestants and Jews.
1788. The administration of justice was reformed, all forms of torture were done away with, greater liberty given to the press, steps taken towards the abolition of lettres de cachet.
THE REVOLUTION OF 1789 57
And now in 1789, by the decrees of the Séance Royale of June 23, the King on his own initiative had renounced the right of the Crown to impose taxes without the consent of the representatives of the people, he had sanctioned the equality of taxation, he had abolished the taille, francfief, the corvée and the right of mainmorte throughout the kingdom, he had urged the alleviation of the gabelle and the reform of criminal laws, he had restrained the game laws and given still greater freedom to the press. Finally, on August 4, all the abuses of the feudal system had been swept away by the free-will of the privileged classes and the King had given his sanction to these decrees.
Thus the work of reform on which for fifteen years the King’s mind had been set was now complete. Yet the result of his efforts and his many sacrifices had been to raise against him a host of enemies. By conferring greater freedom on the press and liberating the Protestants and Jews he had antagonized the Catholics and encouraged the anti-religious spirit; on the other hand, writers took ad- vantage of the licence given them by publishing seditious pamphlets and obscene libels on the Queen, whilst Protest- ants and Jews showed the King little gratitude, and in many cases joined themselves to his assailants. As to the people, though in the main loyal at heart, they were prevented by the agitators from realizing all the King had done for them, whilst the benefits bestowed on them roused _ hostility amongst some of the ‘privileged.’ Thus Louis XVI found himself confronted by two classes of antagonists among the noblesse: the Orléanistes who, for the purpose of placing their own candidate on the throne, represented the King as an autocrat, and those supporters of the old régime to whom all progressive ideas were abhorrent, who cursed him for his too democratic spirit. It should be noted that the derisive comments on the King’s bourgeois appearance and manners emanated too often from men whose privileges he had attacked; many of the coarse epithets hurled at him by the mobs during the later stages of the Revolution had
58 LOUIS XVI AND MARIE ANTOINETTE
been coined not only in the Palais Royal but in the Chil de Boeuf at Versailles. It is true that the opponents of reform constituted only a minority of the noblesse, but their com- plaints were loud enough to swell the chorus of invective against the King.
Even in the eyes of certain nobles who remained true to him Louis XVI was held to have gone too far along the path of reform. Royalists, both past and present, have declared that he displayed deplorable weakness, that he betrayed the interests of the privileged classes and even the rights of the throne; thus, writes a contemporary, ‘Louis XVI was the author of his own death.’ And the Marquis de Bouillé observes that ‘the monarch placed himself at the head of a conspiracy against the monarchy which he sacrificed in the hope of making his subjects happier, for no prince ever loved his people better and none ever suffered so much from their ingratitude.’ 2
But in order to understand the King’s conduct one must endeavour to see the situation from his point of view and to enter into his ideas, which necessarily remained in- comprehensible to his contemporaries since they were far ahead of his time and can only be explained in the political phraseology of our own day. ‘Thus it may be said that Louis XVI was by temperament and conviction a Liberal, in that he felt it his duty to yield, even against his better judgement, to what appeared to be the popular will and to ‘explore every avenue’ with a view to conciliation rather than oppose measures which seemed to him inadvisable by obstinate resistance. In the fight for the monarchy which followed later he showed himself a ‘non-resister,’ through no spirit of cowardice but because he believed, as sincere Pacifists do to-day, that wars settle nothing and quarrels should be settled by peaceful arbitration. Devoted as he was to the people and unable to detect the intrigues of the
1 Correspondance secréte de plusieurs grands personnages . . . pendant les derniéres années du régne de Louis XVI, par P. J. A. Roussel, Paris, 1802, p. i. 2 Bouillé, Mémoires, p. 59.
THE REVOLUTION OF 1789 59
conspirators acting in their name, he could not imagine that in the end the appeal to reason would not prove wiser than the appeal to force; thus as time went on he was led from one concession to another until at last only two courses were open to him—complete surrender to the will of the people represented by the Assembly, or civil war. Between these there was soon to be no middle path. And because he had determined, as he said, that not a drop of French blood should ever be shed on his account he was prepared to follow this policy of conciliation to the bitter end, at the cost of his throne and his life. That it would also cost the lives of thousands of his subjects and lead to the shedding of seas of French blood, who could have foretold at the time? He could but walk by the light of his own day when the wildest imagination could not have conceived the developments to which the Revolution was to lead.
However mistaken we can now see Louis XVI to have been and bitterly as he might be blamed by those of his contemporaries who held that his first duty was to uphold the royal authority, modern opinion, which is so largely impregnated with the ideas of Liberalism and Pacifism, cannot logically condemn him.
CHAPTER III THE OCTOBER DAYS
THE position of the Queen was now more isolated than ever. The loss of her friends had brought her no compensation in the form of restored popularity.
‘Everyone is flying,’ she wrote to the Duchesse de Polignac on August 12, ‘and I am only too happy to think that all those who interest me are far away from me. So I see nobody and I am alone in my rooms all day. My children are my only resource and I have them with me as much as possible.’ 1
In another letter which M. de la Rocheterie gives under the date of August 23, 1790, but which both the con- temporaries, Montjoie and d’Allonville, place a year earlier, she wrote again to Mme de Polignac:
‘I am assured that the way by which this letter will reach you is a safe one. So I can tell you, dear heart, that I love you tenderly. My health keeps up but my heart is over- whelmed with troubles, sorrows and anxieties. Every day we hear of new misfortunes and the greatest of all for me is to be separated from all my friends. I neither see nor meet eyes or hearts that understand me. I should be too happy if I only knew they were all in safety. . . . Adieu, dear heart, nothing but death can make me cease to love you
. speak of me to your husband, your daughter and Armand; I love them all three with my whole heart.’ ?
The Marquise de Tourzel had now taken the place of Mme de Polignac as gouvernante to Madame Royale and the Dauphin. Louise Elisabeth Félicité de Croy d’Havré was the widow of the Marquis de Tourzel who had been killed
1 Lettres de Marie Antoinette, ii. 140. 3 Ibid., i. p. 193. 60
THE OCTOBER DAYS 61
out hunting with Louis XVI three years earlier, and she was living in retreat when called upon to take charge of the King’s children.1 Marie Antoinette, in handing them over to her care, had said:
‘I had entrusted them to friendship; I entrust them now to virtue.’
In a long memoir written out for her guidance the Queen gave Mme de Tourzel minute details on the Dauphin’s health and temperament and instructions on the training of his character. He is good-hearted and affectionate but violent in his temper. ‘He is of great fidelity when he has promised anything but he is very indiscreet, he easily repeats what he has heard said, and often without wishing to tell an untruth he adds what his imagination suggests. It is his greatest fault and which must be well corrected. . . . He will say and do all one wishes when he is in the wrong but he will only utter the word pardon with tears and the greatest difficulty.’ 2
It was characteristic of Marie Antoinette that even at this critical moment she was able to give her mind calmly to the task of preparing her children for the position they were born to occupy. Always sanguine to the end, she never dreamt that in three years the monarchy would have ceased to exist. This faculty for living in the present moment was an unfailing source of strength; at the least improvement in the situation she took fresh heart and believed all would yet be well.
Yet the Queen had now become the principal object of hatred to the conspirators who never ceased vilifying her in speech and print. Throughout this year of 1789 a fresh flood of pornographic libels—of leaflets, pamphlets and brochures—were poured forth by the gutter press which the police were either unable or unwilling to suppress. The Essai Historique sur la Vie de Marte Antoinette, which had
1 Mme de Tourzel was created a hereditary duchess by Louis X VIII under the Restoration. 2 Lettres de Marie Antoinette, 11. 133.
62 LOUIS XVI AND MARIE ANTOINETTE
appeared in 1781, was now republished, then came LT? Autrichienne en Goguettes ou ? Orgie Royale, Le Petst Charles IX ou Médécis justifiée, the Fugement Général de toutes les Putains frangotses et de la Reine des Garces, and many more. Amidst volleys of insane abuse the Queen is accused of liaisons with a host of lovers—‘le beau Dillon,’ the Comte de Vaudreuil, the Baron de Besenval, even the old Abbé de Vermond her former preceptor, and her arch enemy the Cardinal de Rohan. It is significant to note that the name of Fersen, which flows so readily from the pens of modern libellists, rarely occurs in these contemporary tirades and then only as a passing fancy of which she had quickly tired. No, the one lover attributed to her throughout all these is still the Comte d’Artois whom she had never even liked and with whom she was now barely on speaking terms, whilst again and again recurs the vilest accusation of all, that of un- natural affection, not only for the Duchesse de Polignac, but for Mme de la Motte, the thief of the diamond necklace to whom she had never spoken in her life!
These libels must be seen to be believed; nothing of the kind could be printed under the free Constitution of our own country to-day. I have glanced through a number of them, ranging from 1789 to 1792, with a feeling of physical nausea at the realization that the human mind could be capable of such imaginings—the foulest language accom- panied by pictures of an obscenity that only a sex maniac could devise. Mercifully these are for the most part hidden from the public eye; the Bibliothéque Nationale assigns them to what is aptly known as ‘l’Enfer’ where all such filth lies buried. For indeed to look into them is like a glimpse of hell itself; here is no ordinary malevolence born of human passions, of envy, hatred or the spirit of revenge, but the blasphemings of devils to whom all nobility, all virtue is abhorrent, revelling in lust and moral perversion in its most hideous forms. Verily the powers of darkness were arrayed against this unhappy woman. One shudders as one thinks that she herself, so gentle, so sensitive to beauty,
THE OCTOBER DAYS 63
so filled with simple, kindly emotions—too kind, say those who knew her, to believe in the malignance of her enemies— may have had to look on these things.
But, apart from revilings which can only be attributed to an Occult Power, what was the reason for the hatred directed against Marie Antoinette by her political opponents? Well- informed contemporaries explain it by her strength of character. Just as Pitt was feared and hated by the revolutionaries of France because it was his genius which checked the spread of their doctrines abroad, Marie Antoinette, by her strength and courage, provided the principal obstacle to the success of their plans in France. She had, says the Comte de la Marck, ‘a power of prompt decision and an energy of will of which she gave proof on more than one occasion. It was precisely this force of resolution that Louis XVI lacked; the enemies of the monarchy early realized this and directed all their attacks against the one whose influence they feared. So it will be observed that from the first days of the Revolution they spoke of the King’s virtues but were silent on those of the Queen. Emboldened by their successes the revolutionaries did not hesitate to designate Marie Antoinette as the great culprit because they guessed she had in her an energy and courage which would offer a firm resistance to them.’ 4
This opinion is confirmed by the royalist Democrat Mounier, eye-witness of the events of October 1789, who says that when the march on Versailles was planned by those who wished to destroy the King’s authority, they intended to lead him to Paris and. keep him there under their control, but that ‘in order to carry out this project it was necessary to remove the King’s Guards and all those who might have defended his liberty. They feared the courage of the Queen and therefore it was necessary to give her up to the fury of the people.’ 2
Hence the murder of the Guards in the morning of
1 Mirabeau et La Marck, i, 112, 9 Appel au Tribunal, 1. 65.
64 LOUIS XVI AND MARIE ANTOINETTE
October 6, and the hideous imprecations uttered that day against Marie Antoinette.
The march on Versailles was no spontaneous movement of the hungry women of Paris such as it has frequently been represented in the pages of history; the whole thing had been arranged by the Orléanistes many weeks beforehand, and as early as August 30 an abortive attempt had been made by the Marquis de Saint Huruge, one of the Duc d’Orléans’ noisiest agitators, who had set forth at the head of 1500 unarmed men but had been turned back by La Fayette. Rumours of the intended invasion had reached the Court and again for a moment the King contemplated flight, but the idea of running away from danger was always repellent to him, and in the end he decided to remain and face the situation.
The Comte d’Estaing, commander of the National Guard of Versailles, hated the Queen and sympathized with the revolutionary party, but in consultation with the Comte de Saint-Priest, who had received a warning letter from La Fayette, he now advised reinforcing the defences of Versailles with troops that could be absolutely relied on, and it was decided that the Régiment de Flandres, dis- tinguished for its excellent discipline, should be brought in to support the National Guard of Versailles and the King’s bodyguard. According to a decree of the National Assembly it was necessary to obtain the permission of the municipality before calling fresh troops into a town, and this was obtained on September 18, the municipality declaring in an official report that ‘it was indispensable for the safety of the town, of the National Assembly and of the King to have as soon as possible the assistance of a thousand men belonging to disciplined troops’ and the King was asked to authorize this reinforcement.!
It was thus not by the wish of the King but by the request of the municipality of the town that the Régiment de Flandres was moved to Versailles on September 23. The
1 J. A. Le Roi, Journées du 5 ef 6 Octobre (1867), p. i.
THE OCTOBER DAYS 65
spirit of the regiment was excellent, as was that of the Chasseurs de Lorraine quartered near by at Meudon; these added to the King’s bodyguard would have been well able either to cover the King’s retreat or defend the Chateau if they had stood firm and had been given freedom of action. But the moment they arrived at Versailles the conspirators started to corrupt them by the same methods of money and filles de joe that they had employed with the Guards of Paris. The Duc d’Orléans raised a loan of six million livres in Holland for the purpose.!_ Moreover, the colonel of the regiment, the Comte de Lusignan, was an Orléaniste and a member of the minority of the noblesse in the Assembly who had gone over to the Tiers Etat on the 25th of June. Under these influences the regiment that had arrived crying ‘Vive le Roi!’ adopted the tricolore and was soon turned from its allegiance.
Now it was the custom for a regiment already quartered in a town to entertain a fresh one arriving there, at a banquet; accordingly the bodyguard of Versailles invited the Régiment de Flandres to a magnificent repast in the opera hall of the Chateau on October 1. The officers of the regiment of the Trois Evéchés and of the National Guard of Versailles were also invited. It is possible that, as Beau- lieu declared, this entertainment was arranged not only as a matter of custom, but as a means for counteracting the seditious propaganda of the Orléanistes and reanimating the loyalty of the troops. If so it was a perfectly legitimate and diplomatic measure.
At any rate the banquet had the desired effect, and the soldiers became so ardent in their expressions of attachment to the King and the royal family that a message was dispatched, asking them to honour the feast with their presence. The King had just returned from hunting, and the Queen was sitting sadly alone in her apartments when her ladies came to tell her of the gay scene taking place, begging her to go and see it, taking the Dauphin with her.
| 1 Ferriéres, i, 273. E
66 LOUIS XVI AND MARIE ANTOINETTE
Marie Antoinette at first refused, realizing instinctively that such an action might be misconstrued, but when it was suggested that the sight would amuse the Dauphin, she relented, and the King coming in at that moment, they decided all to go together.
The effect on the soldiers was indescribable. As the royal family took their places in a box overlooking the banquet, the whole hall rang with shouts of ‘Vive le Roi! Vive la Reine! Vive le Dauphin! Vive la famille royale!’
Such was the enthusiasm that the Queen was persuaded to go down to the great horse-shoe table where the feasters sat and show the Dauphin to them. In a white silk gown with bands of pale blue, with blue and white feathers in her curled and lightly powdered hair, and a necklace of turquoises around her throat, she had never appeared more beautiful. On one arm she carried her little son dressed in a sailor suit of lilac taffetas, with a white sash fringed with silver, a lace collar framing his childish white neck, his beautiful fair hair falling in curls over his shoulders; with the other hand she led Madame Royale wearing green and white. The King walked beside her, still in his hunting clothes.+
One of the Swiss officers then asked to be allowed to take the Dauphin, and the Queen handed him over with a beating heart. But the little boy knew no fear, and having been placed on the table, walked along it smiling happily, undisturbed by the shouts of applause that rose around him. The Queen received him back into her arms with relief and kissed him fondly.
What wonder that at the sight of this charming and tragic family the gallant men assembled at the banquet, rose and drew their swords, swearing eternal fidelity to their King? What wonder if, as the Queen moved amongst them, they vowed to protect her from the malevolent designs of her enemies? What wonder if, in the flood of their restored loyalty, five or six of the officers of the Régiment
1 Walsh, Fournées mémorables, ii. 88.
THE OCTOBER DAYS 67
de Flandres tore off the Orléaniste cockades and cried: ‘Down with the tricolore cockade. Vive the white cockade, it isthe right one.’ It was said afterwards they had trampled the tricolore under foot; if they had done so it would hardly have been surprising, but the story, circulated by the Duc d’Orléans himself, was proved to be a fable. The band of the Régiment de Flandres did, however, play the air from Richard Ceur de Lion:
‘O Richard! 6 mon Roi! Punivers t’abandonne!’
At this expression of their own feelings the soldiers burst into renewed applause, and it seems probable that after the royal family had retired the banquet became, as regimental dinners are apt to do, a scene of revelry at which loyalty was expressed in noisy language. But by the Orléanistes it was represented as a drunken orgy and used as a fresh pretext for stirring the people to insurrection.
The King and Queen, however, little suspecting these manceuvres, had left the scene happily. ‘You see,’ Louis XVI said to Marie Antoinette, ‘that we are still loved.’ Two days later when a deputation of the National Guard came to thank the Queen for the flags she had presented to them on September 30, she said, in replying to them: ‘I was enchanted with Thursday [the day of the banquet] ; the nation and the army must be attached to the King just as we are to them.’ These words were repeated to the people as meaning that the Queen had expressed her delight at the insults offered to ‘the nation’ at the banquet of the bodyguard.
On the day Marie Antoinette received this deputation a glowing tribute was paid to Louis“XVI by the Assembly which, in an address on ‘national bankruptcy,’ referred to his action in sending all his plate to the mint, as follows:
‘Since the crisis in our finances patriotic gifts have increased in number. It is from the throne whose majesty a benevolent prince enhances by his virtues, that the finest example has emanated. Oh, you, so justly loved by your people! King, good man and good citizen! you have cast
68 LOUIS XVI AND MARIE ANTOINETTE
your eye on the magnificence that surrounds you; you have willed it and ostentatious metals have been turned into national resources, you have done away with objects of luxury, but your supreme dignity has received from this a fresh lustre, etc.’ }
Can it be believed that these words were addressed to the King only two days before his palace was invaded by a revolutionary mob, whilst the Assembly sat quietly debating on the Constitution and the Declaration of the Rights of Man, and did not lift a finger in his defence?
In view of these assurances of loyalty both from the troops and the Assembly, the King and Queen felt no further alarm, and when the fateful 5th of October dawned, they had no conception that the threatened march on Versailles had at last materialized. The fact that the King went out shooting is therefore not as remarkable as it has usually been made to appear. Reassuring messages were brought him early in the morning, and the later couriers carrying the news that the march was beginning, were stopped by the mob on the road from Paris.
Just as the King was about to start, however, a message arrived from the Assembly asking him to sanction the first principles of the Constitution and the Declaration of the Rights of Man. Louis XVI agreed to sanction the former, although he admitted they did not ‘present indiscriminately to him the idea of perfection’ and could only be judged on their completion. But he added: ‘If however they will fulfil the wishes of my people, and assure the tranquillity of the kingdom, I accord, in conformity with your wishes, my consent to these articles, but on the express condition, from which I shall never depart, that in accordance with the result of your deliberations, the executive power shall reside wholly with the monarch (ait son entier effet entre les mains du monarque).’ In these words Louis XVI simply stipulated that he should not be deprived of the power accorded to him by the Constitution itself, of which Article III ran: ‘The
1 Moniteur, ii. 6.
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supreme executive power resides with the King (réside dans les mains du roi). }
As to the Declaration of the Rights of Man, Louis XVI admitted himself frankly puzzled, and well he might be. What indeed was one to make of Article III: ‘Nature has made men free and equal in rights; social distinctions must therefore be founded on common utility’? Or Article IV: ‘Men in order to be happy must have the free and entire exercise of all their physical and moral faculties’?
The King therefore replied that the Manifesto contained “excellent maxims,’ but could only be ‘justly appreciated when its real meaning had been defined by the laws to which it must serve as the basis.’
This reply provoked an explosion of rage amongst the revolutionary elements in the Assembly which went on to discuss the criminal code.
The day was wet and windy, nevertheless the King set out for Meudon at ten o’clock with perfect tranquillity of mind. The young Comte de Semallé, who was with him on that occasion, relates, as evidence of the insubordination which had now become general, that a number of poachers were shooting at the game in all directions. But the King with undisturbed good humour turned to de Semallé, saying: “Go and tell those men to move further on as they might injure someone in my suite.’ The poachers received the order respectfully.
The rest of the royal family were equally untroubled. Madame Elisabeth remained peacefully at Montreuil, and Marie Antoinette, profiting by a momentary break in the rain, went out, escorted only by a footman, to spend the afternoon alone at the Petit Trianon.
Meanwhile the march on Versailles had begun. Between half-past three and four an advance guard of women reached the Chateau, and collected in a threatening group around the railings. ‘Will posterity believe it?’ says Montjoie, ‘it was only then that the Comte de Saint-Priest wrote to the
1 Moniteur, i. 390, 503, 504.
70 LOUIS XVI AND MARIE ANTOINETTE
King to tell him of the movement taking place.’ Ferriéres attributes this inertia of the Ministers to ineptitude on the part of some, to complicity on the part of others. The point should be borne in mind when reading the Mémoires of Saint-Priest who assigns to himself-a heroic rdéle on this day, and blames the King’s weakness for the disasters that followed.
At the same time a messenger was dispatched to the Queen at ‘Trianon.
Marie Antoinette, after visiting the hameau, was resting in a grotto half concealed in a ravine close to the Belvédeére. The dreary autumn day was drawing to its close, all around yellow leaves were falling, forming a sodden carpet on the ground. Inside the grotto, illumined only by a shaft of light that shone through a crevice, the Queen sat on a seat of moss, listening to the sound of the rain and the stream trickling at her feet, and thinking sadly of the past. She thought of the happy summer days spent in the garden with her children playing around her on the lawns, she thought of her flowers, her animals, of the friends she had gathered round her, of the brilliant fétes that had turned Trianon into a fairy scene with the sound of music and the scent of roses in the air. But now the garden was silent and empty, the flowers had withered, the friends had fled, two of her children had died in her arms, and she was alone—alone amidst a sea of enemies. Suddenly through the crevice in the rock she saw a page arriving with a note in his hand. It was the message from Saint-Priest summoning her back to the Chateau, telling her that an armed mob was marching from Paris on Versailles. Then she rose and, after taking a last look at her little kingdom that she was never to see again, she made her way back through the wind and rain, her feet stepping lightly as ever over the dead autumn leaves that strewed her path.
The King had not returned from shooting when she reached the Chateau, and the Ministers were sending for him desperately in all directions.
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At last one of the King’s equerries, the Marquis de Cubiéres, succeeded in finding him in the woods of Meudon, and gave him the note from Saint-Priest. The King opened it and turning to his gentlemen said: ‘Monsieur de Saint- Priest writes that there has been a rising in the market, and that the women of Paris have come to ask me for bread. Alas!’ he added with tears in his eyes, ‘if I had any I should not wait for them to come and ask me for it. Let us go and talk to them.’
Then calling for his horse he put his foot in the stirrup when a bystander, M. de la Devéze, seeing his emotion, which he took for fear, threw himself on his knees, and cried : ‘Sire, you are being deceived, I have just come from the Ecole Militaire where I found only some women who said they had come to Versailles to ask for bread. I beg your Majesty not to be afraid.’
‘Afraid, monsieur!’ the King said with some warmth, ‘I have never been afraid in my life!’ and springing on to his horse he set forth at full gallop down a steep pathway through the wood and arrived at the Chateau just as the first detachment of women had collected round the railings. Such was his speed that he passed by them into the Cour des Ministres before they had time to stop him. Hardly had he set foot to the ground when the Comte de Luxembourg came up to ask him whether he had any orders to give to the bodyguard. The King replied laughing:
‘Orders? Orders of war against women? You must be joking, M. de Luxembourg.’
M. de Narbonne-Fritzlar now begged the King to allow him some troops and cannon with which to guard the bridges, and the mob being turned aside in the direction of Meudon, to bombard them from the heights, afterwards pursuing them with cavalry so that not one would return alive to Paris.
But Louis XVI would not consent to this massacre. It must be remembered that he knew nothing about the real clements of which the procession was composed; Saint-
72 LOUIS XVI AND MARIE ANTOINETTE
Priest had only told him that they were poor women asking for bread. To sweep them away with cannon fire would naturally have seemed to him brutal. Without any means of communication with Paris, since his couriers had been stopped on the road, without any sort of secret service that would have informed him of the plans of the conspirators, he could not guess that the supposed army of hungry women comprised 700 or 800 men drawn from the lowest rabble of Paris armed with scythes and pikes and muskets, filles de joie and their souteneurs from the Palais Royal, harridans of the Faubourgs clutching knives tied to broomsticks, and besides these a number of men in women’s clothes, as at the time of the Guerre des Farines, masquerading as poissardes, amongst whom it was said afterwards several of the Orléaniste leaders—Laclos, Chamfort, Latouche, Siulery, the Duc d’Aiguillon 1—were recognized. The few respectable work- ing-women who had been torn from their labours and forced to join the march made up only a very small proportion of the army. The conspirators had cleverly made use of these to mask their designs, and keeping their armed forces at the rear of the procession advanced on Versailles behind a screen of petticoats.
Orders were now given to the troops to defend the entrance to the Chateau, and the King’s bodyguard, the Régiment de Flandres, the chasseurs of the Trois Evéchés and detachments of the Garde Nationale of Versailles took up their positions on the Place d’Armes.
Louis XVI then summoned his council of eight Ministers at which opinions were divided on the measures to be taken. The Comte de Saint-Priest advised the King to send the Queen and royal family to Rambouillet and at the same time to defend the bridges of Sévres, Saint-Cloud and Neuilly, finally to ride out himself at the head of his troops to meet the advancing army. The Maréchal de Beauvau,
2 Son of the Duc d’Aiguillon who had been the Queen’s enemy at the beginning of the reign (see Louts XVI and Marie Antoinette : before the Revolution, pp. 22 and 64), and who died in 1780,
THE OCTOBER DAYS 73
the Comtes de la Luzerne and de la Tour du Pin seconded the proposal. Necker and Montmorin, however, opposed it, saying that it would precipitate civil war, and persuaded the King to abandon the idea. Whether this counsel was as perfidious as royalists afterwards declared is an open question; Louis XVI had none of the instincts of a military leader and his appearance in this capacity might not have had the desired effect. As to defending the bridges, Mme de la Tour du Pin, daughter-in-law of the Minister of War, herself declares in her Mémoires that even before the return of the King to the Chateau it was too late to defend the Pont de Sévres—the mob had already crossed it. The King’s real mistake seems to have consisted less in not taking the leader- ship himself than in forbidding the troops to fire on the mob. So strict were his injunctions that no violence was to be used that as the troops were taking up their position on the Place d’Armes the King’s bodyguard were heard to call out to the others: ‘Gently, messieurs, be careful not to wound any- body! 2
But still, it must be remembered, the King imagined that it was only a question of dealing with women driven to revolt by hunger and their wretched appearance after the ten-mile march through the rain and mud was calculated to inspire pity rather than fear. Pale, and perished with cold, they looked, says an eye-witness, like corpses that had been dragged up from the bottom of the sea.?
This illusion of genuine distress was increased when Mounier arrived from the Assembly which had been invaded by the marchers at the head ofa deputation of twelve women who came to ask the King for bread. Louis XVI was at this moment in the Salle du Conseil with his Ministers, but when the deputation was announced he went into his bedroom next door and Mounier with five of the women were intro- duced. The King received them with the greatest cordiality. Mounier, no less illusioned than the King as to the real object of the march, explained the terrible situation of Paris
1 Vaissiére, Lettres d’ Artstocrates, p. 104. ? Beaulieu, ii. 178.
74 LOUIS XVI AND MARIE ANTOINETTE
and begged Louis XVI to procure supplies if this was in his power. It was, of course, not in his power, since supplies were being deliberately held up; however, he replied feelingly, expressing his deep regret at the sufferings of the people. ‘Then one of the women, Louison Chabry, a pretty flower-seller of seventeen from the Palais Royal, was put forward by her companions to ask the King for bread.
“You must know my heart,’ answered Louis XVI. ‘I will order all the bread in Versailles to be collected and given to you.’
At this, Louison was so much overcome that she fell faint- ing to the ground. Louis XVI ordered wine to be given her out of a great golden goblet: smelling salts were brought, Louison revived and throwing herself at the King’s feet begged to be allowed to kiss his hand.
‘She deserves better than that!’ said Louis X VI, embrac- ing her.
The women, enchanted with their visit, left the room crying ‘Vive le Roi!’ and narrowly escaped being hanged to a lamp-post by the crowd.
The pacific ending to the deputation seems in fact to have given the signal for hostilities. From that moment every effort was made to provoke the troops to make use of their arms in order to provide a pretext for attacking the Chateau.! The King, informed that this was the plan of the con- spirators, ordered the Comte de Luxembourg not to use force, and although shots were fired by the mob and a few skirmishes took place, fresh orders were sent to the soldiers not to shoot, with the usual result that the agitators were encouraged to further violence.
Meanwhile, Mounier continued to importune the King for his unconditioned sanction to the principles of the Constitution and the Declaration of the Rights of Man, declaring that nothing else would allay the tumult in the Assembly, and Louis XVI, whilst repeating that his sanction at this stage would be premature, ended by yielding to
1 Bailly, in. 93; Ferriéres, i. 311.
THE OCTOBER DAYS 75
Mounier’s persuasions and appended his signature to the document. But to the crowds of women who had invaded the benches of the Assembly and who by now were really hungry, these philosophical maxims meant even less than they did to the King, and Mounier, returning triumphantly with the royal sanction, was met withrenewed cries for bread.
Darkness had now fallen, and from the windows of the Chateau a red glare could be seen on the Place d’Armes where the marchers had bivouacked and were collected around huge fires at one of which they were cooking a horse of the bodyguard killed in the fray. Borne on the wind came that most terrifying sound, the deep murmur of an angry crowd, which rose and fell like the waves of a stormy sea, whilst from time to time gunshots rang out and savage howls froze the blood of those who listened.
At eleven o’clock news was brought that troops composed of the French Guards led by La Fayette and followed by an armed mob from the Faubourgs were advancing on Ver- sailles with the object of bringing the King to Paris. Then the Comte de Saint-Priest urged Louis XVI to take refuge in flight, either to Normandy or only as far as Rambouillet. But the King, to whom this idea was hateful, continued to pace the room exclaiming: ‘A fugitive king! A fugitive king!’
‘Sire,’ said the Comte de Saint-Priest, ‘if you are taken to-morrow to Paris you will have lost your crown.’
Then the King consented to leave for Rambouillet. Six carriages were ordered; the Queen said to her ladies: ‘Pack your things quickly; we are starting in half an hour.’
But here a terrible error of judgement was committed. Instead of arranging that the royal family should leave the Chateau on foot and join the carriages at a safe distance as they did before the flight to Varennes, the King’s equerry, de Cubiéres—presumably acting on instructions from the Comte de Saint-Priest—ordered the carriages to come round to the gate of the Orangerie, which necessitated their crossing the Place d’Armes through the thick of the crowd, who
76 LOUIS XVI AND MARIE ANTOINETTE
stopped four of them, calling out: ‘The King is going off!’ The first two, driven at a greater pace, succeeded in reaching the gate of the Orangerie, but this was found to be locked, and some of the insurgents seized them in the name of the nation and cut the traces.
The Comte de la Tour du Pin and the Comte de Saint-Priest then offered their carriages to the King, but Necker and Montmorin succeeded in persuading him to give up the idea of flight. Marie Antoinette, who seems on the contrary to have advocated it, yielded to the decision of Louis XVI and sent to her ladies saying: ‘All is over; we are staying.’
By this time it was indeed probably too late. Mme de Tourzel observes that the royal family could easily have escaped earlier in the afternoon, for the horses had been harnessed to the Dauphin’s carriage to take him for his usual drive, and the Queen with her children could have got into it, joined the King at Meudon and been driven away to safety. But no one thought of this; perhaps because the dangers of the situation were not yet apparent. By night-time the mob had become far more threatening and flight would have been attended by considerable danger. The Comte de Saint-Priest, who attributes the whole failure of the attempt to the King’s indecision, was in reality more to blame than anyone for his delay in letting the King know that the marchers were arriving; the counsels he now gave were several hours too late.
Moreover, apart from the risks entailed, the King’s flight at this crisis would have played directly into the hands of his enemies, and even if he had saved his life he would probably have lost his crown. For the conspirators were only waiting for him to fly in order to declare that he had abdicated and to proclaim the Duc d’Orléans king in his place. By standing his ground Louis XVI outwitted this design, and the Orléanistes now concentrated on their alternative plan of assassinating the Queen and bringing the King in chains to Paris.
THE OCTOBER DAYS 77
It was nearly midnight when La Fayette at the head of his revolutionary army arrived at Versailles. The General, who had been forced against his will to lead it, with, he declared, a bayonet placed against his chest, was in despair at the sinister intentions expressed by his followers, and on reaching the end of the Avenue de Paris near the hall of the Assembly made a feeble attempt to restore discipline by ranging the Paris militia in order of battle and making them swear fidelity ‘to the nation, the law and the King.’ But, as Mounier observes, ‘what sense was there in this oath at the moment when their presence at Versailles without the order of the King’ was ‘an infraction of all laws and an act of open rebellion against the authority of the monarch?’ }
However, the farce completed, La Fayette entered the Assembly and assured Mounier of the law-abiding intentions of his followers, then going on to the Chateau he was admitted with several of his officers to the room where the King was sitting in council with the Comte de Provence, Necker, his commanding officers and others.
‘Sire,’ cried La Fayctte, ‘you see before you the most miserable of men. If I had believed I could be of more service to your Majesty by losing my head on the scaffold I should not be here, but I thought it better to come and die at the feet of your Majesty than to perish needlessly on the Place de Gréve.’
To these faint-hearted heroics Louis XVI replied calmly :
“You need not doubt, M. de la Fayette, ‘that it is always a pleasure to me to see you and my good Parisians. What is it they want?’
‘The people are asking for bread and the Guards wish to resume their former posts around your Majesty.’
‘Well, then, let them resume them.’
La Fayette descended to the courts and posted some of the Guards around the Chateau, whilst the rest were ordered to take up their position on the Place d’Armes.
1 Appel au Tribunal, p. 165.
78 LOUIS XVI AND MARIE ANTOINETTE
The inside defences of the Chateau were left to the body- guard. La Fayette then went to the Assembly to say that all was well.
Whilst these preparations were being made the women of the Court were racked with suspense, pacing silently up and down the long Galerie des Glaces, scene of all the splendours of the monarchy. The Queen remained in her great bedroom with Madame Elisabeth and the Comtesse de Provence, whilst the adjoining salon was filled with her ladies sitting on stools and tables and talking in hushed whispers.
Amidst the general agitation Marie Antoinette showed perfect tranquillity, her face was calm and showed not the slightest trace of anxiety, she reassured everyone around her, thought of everything and received a number of deputies from the Assembly whom she entertained with no sign of emotion. ‘Everyone except the Queen,’ one of these men said afterwards, ‘was in consternation.’ }
When about midnight Marie Antoinette proposed going to bed, the deputies begged to be allowed to remain with her until everything had quieted down. At this moment a note was brought to her; the Queen read it, then put it in her pocket and, turning to the men around her, said:
“No, messieurs, I do not wish you to stay with me, retire to rest, I demand it; to-morrow will prove to you that you had need of rest to-night.’
The note was from a Minister and contained these words: ‘Madame, make your plans; to-morrow morning at six o’clock you will be murdered.’
But still Marie Antoinette showed no alarm. ‘I know,’ she said, ‘that they have come from Paris to ask for my head, but I learnt from my mother not to fear death, and I shall await it with firmness.’ ?
Several of the Court councillors now begged her to
1 Montjoie, Histoire de Marie Antoinette, ii. 221; Procédure du Chdtelet, evidence of witness CLX XVII, de Frondeville, conseiller du Roi. ® Montjoie, Histoire de Marie Antoinette, i. 222; Le Maire, 1. 400.
THE OCTOBER DAYS 79
consider a plan of escape, telling her that indeed she would be murdered on the morrow, but she answered:
‘If the Parisians come here to assassinate me it shall be at the feet of my husband; but I will not fly.’ }
One of the deputies, the President de Frondeville, on behalf of several of her gentlemen, asked for permission to take horses from the royal stables to defend her in case she was attacked, but Marie Antoinette said:
‘I consent to giving you the order you ask for on one condition, that if the life of the King is in danger you should make use of it at once, but if I alone am in peril you will not use it.’ ?
The Queen was then urged to spend the night with the King, but knowing now that she was the intended victim, she refused firmly to risk his safety. Earlier in the evening she had instructed Mme de Tourzel to bring her children to her if any disturbances occurred during the night, but after the warning of her intended assassination had been brought to her, she ordered the Marquise to take them instead to the King, saying: ‘If any danger is incurred I would rather face it myself and keep it away from the person of the King and of my children.’ 3
La Fayette, however, assured the King that now he had unconditionally accepted the articles of the Constitution and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and had permitted the Gardes Frangaises to take up their posts around the Chateau, everything would calm down, that the people were satisfied, and that the army from Paris would return thither at break of day. Besides this, he declared that the Chateau was well guarded and the fidelity of the Gardes Frangaises absolutely to be relied on, so, he added: ‘I beg your Majesty to go to bed, to trust entirely to my care; I answer for everything.’
Louis XVI, reassured by these promises, therefore went
1 Procés Criminel de Marie Antoinette (1793), evidence of Comte d’Estaing,
p. 56. 2 Procédure du Chételet, evidence of de Frondeville, witness CLX XVII. 8 Mme de Tourzel, Mémoires, i. 12.
80 LOUIS XVI AND MARIE ANTOINETTE
to bed at two o’clock, and Marie Antoinette, although she did not trust La Fayette, believing that he would not dare to risk his reputation as a general unless he was sure of his facts, retired at the same hour and slept peacefully till dawn.
La Fayette is said then to have gone the round of the Chateau inspecting the posts; if indeed he did this he cannot have carried out his inspection very thoroughly, as after events showed. However, having satisfied himself that all was well, he went to the house belonging to his family, the Hotel de Noailles, and snatched two hours of sleep.
This slumber was afterwards bitterly reproached to La Fayette; ‘he slept against his King,’ said Rivarol in a phrase that became famous. The royalists nicknamed him General Morpheus. Louis XVI himself said to him drily on the following day: ‘Had I foreseen that you would be obliged to sleep, I should have remained awake.’ ! It must be remembered, however, that he was really worn out with fatigue, and on arrival at the Chateau had been hardly able to drag himself up the staircase. As Mme de la Tour du Pin observes, the real crime of La Fayette was not so much this brief spell of sleep which he took fully dressed upon a sofa, as the fact that he ignored the Orléaniste conspiracy and treated the whole insurrection as a popular movement which he foolishly believed he was able to control.
For three hours all was quiet in the Chateau. Only a few faithful defenders of the royal family remained on guard. The Queen on going to bed had ordered her women to do the same. Mme Campan was not at the Chateau that night, but her sister, Mme Auguié, and the first waiting- woman, Mme Thibaut, who were in attendance, resolved not to obey this command. Going to the room where the rest of the Queen’s women were collected, Mme Auguié said with tears: ‘Can we go to bed when there are thirty thousand troops, ten thousand brigands and forty-two cannon in the town?’ ‘No, no,’ the women answered, ‘we cannot be guilty of doing what would be so wrong.’ All
1 Georgel, Mémoires, ii. 436.
THE OCTOBER DAYS 81
decided therefore to sit up in their clothes throughout the night, whilst Mme Thibaut and Mme Auguié, taking their two maids with them, seated themselves on chairs against the door of the Queen’s bedroom leading into the adjoining salon. ‘This action saved the life of Marie Antoinette.
But whilst sleep reigned in the Chateau, outside, crime was wide awake. All through the night on the distant Place d’Armes the drums never ceased to beat, and their skins, sodden with the rain, gave out a hoarse note that added a weird horror to the sound. All night, too, the conspirators were on foot, handing out money, inciting the wretched instruments who were to carry out the massacres of the morrow.
At half-past five in the morning the Queen was awoken by a tumult under her windows looking out over the Orangerie. She rang the bell; Mme Thibaut entered.
‘What is that noise?’ asked the Queen.
Mme Thibaut answered that it was no doubt only some of the women marchers who had found nowhere to sleep and were wandering about on the terrace. Satisfied with this reply Marie Antoinette settled down again to rest.
In reality the tumult was caused by the first detachment of the mob that, in spite of La Fayette’s supposed pre- cautions, had been able to get past the guards and penetrate into the courts of the Chateau.
Half an hour passed. Then suddenly at six o’clock a fearful uproar arose on the marble staircase leading to the Queen’s apartments, howls of rage followed by the clash of arms. Mme Thibaut rushed into the Queen’s bedroom to wake her; Mme Auguié, dashing in the opposite direction, opened the door of the antechamber leading into the guard- room to find herself confronted by one of the bodyguard, Miomandre de Sainte-Marie who, with the blood streaming from his face, held his gun across the doorway, crying:
‘Madame, save the Queen, they have come to kill her! I am here alone against two thousand tigers; my comrades have been forced to leave their hall.’
F
82 LOUIS XVI AND MARIE ANTOINETTE
Tigers indeed they were, literally thirsting for blood, shrieking as they rushed up the staircase that they must have the heart of the Queen, that they must eat it and “make cockades of her entrails.’ Already de Varicourt, one of the bodyguard, had been murdered at the door of the guard-room and his head carried down to the courtyard to join that of his fellow guard, Deshuttes, who had been barbarously butchered by the mob. Durepaire was left alone to defend the door of the Queen’s antechamber.
Mme Auguié, obliged to leave the unhappy Miomandre to his fate, closed the door on him, pushed the great bolt and, flying to the Queen’s bedside, cried:
‘Madame, get up, do not stop to dress, escape to the King’s room!’
Marie Antoinette sprang out of bed, her women threw a petticoat over her head, not pausing to tie it, and thrust a wrap round her shoulders; the Queen, carrying her stock- ings in her hand, fled through the door beside her bed into the narrow passage leading through her little dressing-room of the petits appartements into the Gil de Beeuf. But on reaching the door, which was never locked except on her side, she found it had been locked against her. What hand had fastened it on this day of all others? For five agonizing minutes that must have seemed an eternity, she beat on the panels, and at last a young officer of the wardrobe in attend- ance on the King came hurriedly to open it and found the Queen half-clothed and almost fainting with terror on the threshold.
Meanwhile Louis XVI had been awakened at six o’clock by the tumult in the Cour de Marbre, and getting up, in the semi-darkness, went to the window of the Cabinet de la Pendule from which he could see the fearful crowd of brigands and sham fotssardes, armed with every conceivable kind of bloodthirsty weapon, surging towards the door of the marble staircase leading to the Queen’s apartments. Did he see the infamous Duc d’Orléans himself guiding the mob to the doorway, pointing the way up the great staircase,
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THE OCTOBER DAYS 83
telling them which way to turn, as other eye-witnesses declared afterwards? At any rate Louis XVI lost no time in watching and, seeing instantly the Queen’s life was in danger, hurriedly threw on his dressing-gown and rushed to her room through a passage that ran beneath the Gil de Boeuf at the very moment that the Queen was flying for safety along the one overhead. In this way they missed each other, and the King arrived in the Queen’s bedroom to find it occupied only by the guards, for the battle was still raging around the doors of the adjoining salon. Terrified for her fate, he asked where she was, and on being told the way she. had taken, hurried after her, only a few moments before the mob burst into her room and, according to some accounts, finding her bed empty, thrust their pikes furiously into the mattress.4
Meanwhile, the Queen had reached the King’s bedroom, which she entered crying out: ‘My friends, my dear friends, save me and my children!’ and the King entering at that moment she fell fainting into his arms.
What were the men of the Court doing throughout these terrible scenes? Where were the Ministers who had warned her of the fate prepared for her, the deputies who had asked to defend her the night before, the officers and courtiers who might have been expected to form a phalanx in her doorway rather than leave her room to be defended by a handful of guards and a few defenceless women?
Well might Burke write: ‘Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen upon her in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honour, and of cavaliers. J thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult.’ But in all this world of men one only was
1 This point is a matter of dispute. Mme de Tourzel, who was in the Chateau at the time, Montjoie, Histoire de Marie Antoinette, 1. 224, Ferriéres, i. 924, Bailly, it. 1x1, all declare the mob stabbed the Queen’s bed; the
Comte d’Hézécques, p. 312, and Mme Campan, who was not there, p. 252, say they did not. See note on this in P. de Nolhac, Autour de la Reine, p. 201.
84. LOUIS XVI AND MARIE ANTOINETTE
found to rush to her side in the hour of peril, that man was Louis XVI.
The moment after the husband and wife had been united in the King’s great bedroom, Mme de Tourzel entered with the Dauphin in her arms. Marie Antoinette, who had recovered consciousness, then went with the King to fetch Madame Royale and returned leading her, says Mme de Tourzel, ‘with a firmness and dignity remarkable at such a moment.’ Sitting in the embrasure of a window overlooking the Cour de Marbre, with her children and Madame Elisabeth, she set the example of cool courage to everyone around her. But when the litthe Dauphin, playing with his sister’s hair, said plaintively: ‘Maman, I am hungry!’ Marie Antoinette’s eyes filled with tears as she answered that he must be patient and wait until the tumult had ended. Only at one moment her sang-froid deserted her when she saw the Duc d’Orleans walking gaily arm-in-arm with Adrien Duport, and catching the Dauphin up in her arms she cried out incontrollably: ‘They are going to kill my son!’
The rest of the royal family had now collected in the King’s bedroom, whilst Louis XVI joined his Ministers in the Salle du Conseil. The Comte de Provence made no attempt to stand by him. Not until half-past eight did Monsieur make an appearance, when he emerged from his apartment ‘coiffé, powdered, dressed with his usual care and wearing his orders’ with complete unconcern on his countenance; none of the brigands, it was noted, troubled about him at all, a circumstance which gave rise to strong suspicions of his fidelity.
Meanwhile events were moving swiftly in the other parts of the Chateau. The mob, after leaving the Queen’s apart- ments, had surged on to the (Zil de Boeuf, where the few remaining members of the bodyguard had entrenched themselves. Once the doors had been battered in and the guards massacred it would be an easy matter for the murder- ous horde to sweep on through the Chil de Boeuf, the great
1 Marquis de Bouillé, Souvenirs et Fragments, 1. 121.
THE OCTOBER DAYS 85
bedchamber of Louis XIV, then the Council room, and finally back into the bedroom of Louis XVI to murder the whole royal family. But this plan was frustrated by La Fayette who, roused from his slumber by the news of the attack on the Chateau, had hurried to the scene, and sum- moning some of the old grenadiers of his Gardes Frangaises, called on them to take their oath to defend the King and his bodyguard.
It was now seen that La Fayette had not miscalculated the loyalty of his men to the person of their commander, and the grenadiers, who had but yesterday marched against the King, were to-day, at a word from La Fayette, turned back to their former allegiance and ready to stand between the royal family and their assassins. Reaching the Gil de Boeuf they joined forces with the bodyguard and together drove the mob from the Chateau, then following up their victory the grenadiers descended to the Cour de Marbre to defend the lives of ten members of the bodyguard whom some of the still mutinous Gardes Frangaises were preparing to butcher under the King’s windows. Once more La Fayette came to the rescue. Throwing his hat on the ground and opening his coat he cried out that he would no longer command cannibals, and that if the Gardes Frangaises wished to take the lives of these men they could take his as well! This action had the effect of turning the whole tide; the next moment the shout went up from the crowd: ‘The King! The King! we wish to see the King!’
Thereupon Louis XVI, rushing on to the balcony, called out for mercy to be shown to his faithful defenders. The crowd replied with cries of ‘Vive le Roi! Vive la Nation!’ The King was followed by the Queen holding her children by the hand; for a moment the cheers continued, the royal family then withdrew into the great bedroom of Louis XIV.
A few moments later another cry went up: ‘The Queen! The Queen on the balcony!’
1 Flammermont, Correspondances Diplomatiques, Rapport du Comte de Salmour, p. 267.
86 LOUIS XVI AND MARIE ANTOINETTE
Marie Antoinette, again taking her children with her, appeared in the window, but now a menacing shout was heard: ‘The Queen alone! No children !’
The sinister intention of these words was unmistakable, but Marie Antoinettedid nothesitate. Gently pushing herchildren back into the room where Mme de Tourzel received them, she went out on to the balcony alone and faced the raging mob.
Standing there in the light of the bright autumn morning, pale, but dignified as ever, in the little yellow striped wrapper thrown over her nightdress, her beautiful hair disordered, her hands crossed on her breast and her eyes raised to Heaven as if in prayer, she cast so potent a spell over the assembled multitude that curses died on their lips, murderous weapons were lowered, only one man raised his musket to his shoulder and took aim at the Queen, but could not nerve himself to pull the trigger. At this supreme triumph of the spirit even that savage crowd was awed, and the hush that had held them for two minutes was broken at last by a few cries of ‘Vive la Reine!’ which grew into loud applause when La Fayette, carried away with admiration for the Queen’s courage, stepped through the window, and bowing low over her hand, raised 1t to his lips.
So the strange power which protected the King and Queen each time they were brought face to face with the people had baffled the conspirators. The great plot had failed. The beast which lurked in the hearts of the Paris populace had been roused to fury, had been driven forward but had then refused to fall upon its prey. The royal family still lived. The alternative scheme was now put forward and a few voices, or according to Bertrand de Molleville, one voice only, cried: ‘The King to Paris!’
Mme de Staél, an eye-witness of these scenes, says that Marie Antoinette, coming in from the balcony, went up to Mme Necker, Mme de Staél’s mother, and said with stifled sobs: ‘They are going to force us, the King and me, to go to Paris with the heads of our bodyguards carried in front of us on pikes.’
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They were, however, spared this added horror, the heads of the two murdered guards, Deshuttes and de Varicourt, were taken on ahead, two hours before the rest of the pro- cession, Louis XVI had consulted with his Ministers, who arrived on the scene after the Chateau had been cleared of assailants, and ended by consenting to go to Paris, convinced that if he refused the Duc d’Orléans would be proclaimed King. So appearing again on the balcony he called out in a loud voice: ‘My friends, I will go to Paris with my wife and children. I confide all that I hold most dear to the love of my good and faithful subjects.’
At this cheers broke out afresh.
The King then said: ‘My bodyguards have been calumni- ated, their fidelity to me and to the nation must win them the esteem of my people.’
‘Yes, yes!’ the crowd replied. ‘Vive le Roi! Vive les gardes du corps!’
La Fayette then led several men of the bodyguard on to the balcony and embraced them publicly amidst renewed applause. For the moment it seemed that peace had been restored.
But Marie Antoinette had no illusions. When La Fayette said to her: ‘Madame, what are your personal intentions?’ she answered: ‘I know the fate that awaits me but my duty is to die at the feet of the King and in the arms of my children.’ } |
Shots were still being fired in the courtyards of the Chateau, and at one moment a bullet struck the wall close to the window where the Queen was seated. La Luzerne thereupon came and placed himself between her and the window, for her protection. Marie Antoinette however said: ‘I see clearly what is your intention, M. de la Luzerne, and I thank you for it; but I do not wish you to remain there, it is not your place, it is mine,’ and she made the Minister withdraw.?
All the while the cry of ‘To Paris! To Paris!’ could be
1 Rocheterie, 11. 83. 2 Beaulieu, il. 192.
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heard outside. Saint-Priest relates that the King kept going out on to the balcony and then returning to throw himself into an armchair, seemingly stunned by the turn events had taken, and that the Queen said: ‘Why did we not go off yesterday evening?’ ‘It was not my fault,’ answered Saint-Priest. ‘I know,’ said the Queen.
Saint-Priest seems to have taken a malicious delight in impressing on the King the mistake he had made in refusing to follow his advice. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘you will have to go to Paris and consider yourself a prisoner subject to the laws imposed on you.’ It does not seem to have occurred to him that the position of the King would have been infinitely worse if he had been captured whilst attempting to escape instead of surrendering with a semblance of free-will to what was represented to him as the will of the people. The flight to Rambouillet was a measure of highly problematic wisdom.
The Queen, however, would have chosen it if the decision had rested with her, for even now she had not realized the full extent of the Orléaniste conspiracy, so had not the same reasons for remaining at Versailles which had determined Louis XVI to stand his ground. Besides, to her perhaps the usurpation of the throne seemed a matter of less moment than the safety of her husband and children. And in Paris she knew they would not be safe. Mme Campan, who had returned to the Chateau during the morning of October 6, relates that she and her father-in-law were alone with the Queen in her petits appartements the moment before the royal family started for Paris, that Marie Antoinette was in floods of tears and could hardly speak for the sobs that choked her, but, after embracing Mme Campan and giving her hand to M. Campan to kiss, she urged them both to come to Paris where they would be lodged in the Tuileries, adding: ‘We are lost, dragged perhaps to our death, captive kings are very near to that.’
It was indeed as captives that the royal family were led to Paris. Without being given time to pack their things they
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were now hurried from the glorious palace of the Roi Soleil, scene of so much former splendour, and, in a piteous group, descended the great marble staircase still stained with the blood of their bodyguards. Louis XVI, taking a last look at the Chateau and apparently anticipating a further invasion by the mob, said, as he mounted his carriage, to the Comte de la Tour du Pin, who was left behind as military governor: ‘You are in charge here. Try to save my poor Versailles for me.’
But the Chateau, although left intact, had received that day its death-blow. Never again was it to hum with busy life, never again were travellers from foreign lands to look on wonderingly at the brilliant pageant of the Court, unrivalled by any other Court of Europe, as it passed through the great Galerie des Glaces or held its revels, in gleaming satin and brocades, with sparkling jewels and glittering swords, moving rhythmically to the sound of violins and flutes, illumined by a thousand candles. No more was it to be the birthplace of Kings, the cradle of ‘the Children of France,’ no more was the gay trampling of horses to be heard in its courtyards as the King went out to hunt or the Queen to drive abroad in her gilded carriage. All through the Chateau on this sad day of October 6 could be heard the closing of doors and shutters that had not turned on their hinges since the days of Louis XIV; soon all was emptiness and silence. The Chateau had closed its eyes upon the world, never to open them again. Henceforth it was to remain a corpse—a splendid corpse, in which the heart had ceased to beat for ever.
At one o'clock the tragic procession set out for Paris, headed by the Paris army and a mob of women. The first carriage contained the royal family—the King, the Queen, the Dauphin, Madame Royale, Madame Elisabeth, the Comte and Comtesse de Provence—and also the Marquise de Tourzel. Next came the Court, then the suite and the royal servants, and finally a hundred carriages with deputies of the Assembly. Behind the royal carriage walked the
go LOUIS XVI AND MARIE ANTOINETTE
shattered remnant of the bodyguard, disarmed, tattered and bloodstained, led as prisoners of war to Paris.
For the peace concluded by La Fayette proved only a momentary truce: stirred up afresh by the conspirators the mob reverted to its earlier frenzy. Eye-witnesses relate that the annals of savagery could hold nothing so horrible as this procession—the crowd all marching pell-mell, officers and brigands side by side, drunken women riding astride on cannons, and sham fishwives surrounding the royal carriage so closely that it seemed to be borne upon their shoulders, singing vile songs and insulting the Queen with their grimaces. By way of showing that the Court had hoarded stores of grain, the conspirators brought up wagon loads of corn to join the procession, around which the women marched shouting: ‘Nous vous amenons le
boulanger, la boulangére et le petit mitron!’ (We are bringing you the baker, the baker’s wife and the baker’s boy.)
As the procession passed through Passy, the Duc d’Orléans himself was seen on the terrace of the hétel of the Marquis de Boulainvilliers where the affair of the necklace had been planned, looking on with triumph at the humiliation of the royal family.
Throughout this terrible drive that lasted for no less than seven hours, the Queen, wearing a black cloak and no rouge, sat with perfect calm surveying the hideous scene and had so far recovered her composure as to be able to talk to the crowd surrounding the carriage: ‘The King,’ she said, ‘has never wished for anything but the happiness of his people. Many evil things have been said of us to you by those who wished to injure us. We love all the French and we glory in sharing the feelings of our good King.’ To which some of the marchers, touched by the Queen’s goodness, replied: “We did not know you, we have been very much deceived.’ }
‘I saw this sinister procession, I was a witness of this heart-rending spectacle,’ Bertrand de Mbolleville wrote
1 Mme de Tourzel, Mémoires, 1. 20.
THE OCTOBER DAYS gt
afterwards. ‘In the midst of this tumult, of clamour, of songs broken into by frequent discharges of musketry . . . I saw the Queen maintaining the most courageous tran- quillity of mind, an inexpressible air of nobility and dignity and my eyes filled with tears of admiration and of pain.’
It was seven o’clock when the royal family arrived at the entrance to Paris and were received by Bailly, who presented the King with the keys of the city, saying: ‘What a beautiful day is this when the Parisians are to possess your Majesty and his family in their town.’
The King answered with a sigh: ‘I hope, monsieur, that my stay here will bring back peace, concord and submission to law.’ He spoke with difficulty, for all were faint with hunger and fatigue. Throughout this terrible day the royal family had eaten nothing, and the little Dauphin during the drive to Paris had continued to cry out piteously for food. Nevertheless, shattered by the ghastly experiences of the morning and in the last stage of exhaustion, they were now dragged to the Hétel de Ville to listen to long speeches. Bailly, who accompanied them, again spoke of this ‘beautiful day’; the King replied that he came with joy and confidence into his good town of Paris.
Bailly, turning to the people, cried: ‘The King orders me to tell you that he comes with joy into his good town of Paris !’
At this the Queen, raising her voice, said: ‘You forget, monsieur, that the King said also “‘and with confidence.” ’
‘You hear that, messieurs?’ said Bailly, ‘you are more fortunate than if I had said it myself.’
At last the farcical exchange of compliments came to an end, and the royal family were driven through the streets amidst surging crowds of curious spectators. At ten o’clock they entered the Tuileries—their first prison.
CHAPTER IV PRISONERS OF THE TUILERIES
THE great chateau by the Seine to which the royal family were brought as captives on October 6, 1789, was built in 1564 under Catherine de Médicis for her own use, but struck with superstitious forebodings she could not bring herself to live there. In fact, during the two hundred years of its existence it had never been inhabited continuously by the Kings of France; Louis XIV forsook it for Versailles in 1682, and Louis XV, after spending his minority there until 1722, moved, whilst still a boy of only twelve, to the chateau of the Roi Soleil. For some years after this the Tuileries remained empty and deserted, then it was turned into lodgings for hangers-on of the Court, people of all conditions who camped, more or less penuriously, in various parts of the Chateau whilst the State apartments fell into ‘disrepair. Hot in summer and cold in winter, owing to the lack of sufficient fireplaces to warm it, it was quite unfit to be lived in all the year round.
Moreover, on the arrival of the royal family, nothing was ready for their reception. The crowd of lodgers, ordered to clear out at a moment’s notice, had decamped, leaving their furniture behind them, but this did not nearly suffice for the needs of the Court and its vast retinue suddenly transported there en masse from Versailles, and the first night there were not even beds enough to go round.
The Dauphin, looking round at the bare rooms lit only by a few candles, with their worn and faded hangings, said sadly: ‘Everything is very ugly here, Maman.’
‘My son,’ answered Marie Antoinette, ‘Louis XIV lodged here and found it comfortable; we must not be more
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PRISONERS OF THE TUILERIES 93
particular than he was.’ And as if apologizing to her ladies-in-waiting, she turned to