Maria Antoinette

Embarrassing position of La Fayette

The position of La Fayette at this time was about as embarrassing as it could possibly have been; and he was virtually the jailer of the royal family, answerable with his life for their safe keeping. He had always been a firm friend of civil and religious liberty. He was very anxious to see France blessed with those free institutions and that recognition of popular rights which are the glory of America, but he also wished to protect the king and queen from outrage and insult; and a storm of popular fury had now risen which he knew not how to control or to guide. He, however, resolved to do all in his power to protect the royal family, and to watch the progress of events with the hope of establishing constitutional liberty and a constitutional throne over France.

The palace rigorously guardedThe queen grossly insultedDespair of the king

The palace was now guarded, by command of the Assembly, with a degree of rigor unknown before. The iron gates of the courts and garden of the Tuileries were kept locked. A list of the persons who were to be permitted to see the royal family was made out, and none others were allowed to enter. At every door sentinels were placed, and in every passage, and in the corridor which connected the chambers of the king and queen, armed men were stationed. The doors of the sleeping apartments of the king and queen were kept open night and day, and a guard was placed there to keep his eye ever upon the victims. No respect was paid to female modesty, and the queen was compelled to retire to her bed under the watchful eye of an unfeeling soldier. It seems impossible that a civilized people could have been guilty of such barbarism. But all sentiments of humanity appear to have fled from France. One of the queen's women, at night, would draw her own bed between that of the queen and the open door, that she might thus partially shield the person of her royal mistress. The king was so utterly overwhelmed by the magnitude of the calamities in which he was now involved, that his mind, for a season, seemed to be prostrated and paralyzed by the blow. For ten days he did not exchange a single word with any member of his family, but moved sadly about in the apathy of despair, or sat in moody silence. At last the queen threw herself upon her knees before him, and, presenting to him her children, besought him, for her sake and that of their little ones, to rouse his fortitude. "We may all perish," she said, "but let us, at least, perish like sovereigns, and not wait to be strangled unresistingly upon the very floor of our apartments."

Supremacy of the mobA brutal assemblageFerocious inscriptionsAttack upon the palaceThe mob force an entranceFearlessness of the kingThe mob awedCourage of Madame ElizabethCries of the mob

The long and dreary months of the autumn, the winter, and the spring thus passed away, with occasional gleams of hope visiting their minds, but with the storm of revolution, on the whole, growing continually more black and terrific. General anarchy rioted throughout France. Murders were daily committed with impunity. There was no law. The mob had all power in their hands. Neither the king nor queen could make their appearance any where without exposure to insult. Violent harangues in the Assembly and in the streets had at length roused the populace to a new act of outrage. The immediate cause was the refusal of the king to give his sanction to a bill for the persecution of the priests. It was the 20th of June, 1792. A tumultuous assemblage of all the miserable, degraded, and vicious, who thronged the garrets and the cellars of Paris, and who had been gathered from all lands by the lawlessness with which crime could riot in the capital, were seen converging, as by a common instinct, toward the palace. They bore banners fearfully expressive of their ferocity, and filled the air with the most savage outcries. Upon the end of a pike there was affixed a bleeding heart, with the inscription, "The heart of the aristocracy." Another bore a doll, suspended to a frame by the neck, with this inscription, "To the gibbet with the Austrian." With the ferocity of wolves, they surrounded the palace in a mass impenetrable. The king and queen, as they looked from their windows upon the multitudinous gathering, swaying to and fro like the billows of the ocean in a storm, and with the clamor of human passions, more awful than the voice of many waters, rending the skies, instinctively clung to one another and to their children in their powerlessness. Madame Elizabeth, with her saint-like spirit, and her heaven-directed thoughts, was ever unmindful of her own personal danger in her devotion to her beloved brother. The king hoped that the soldiers who were stationed as a guard within the inclosures of the palace would be able to protect them from violence. The gates leading to the Place du Carrousel were soon shattered beneath the blows of axes, and the human torrent poured in with the resistlessness of a flood. The soldiers very deliberately shook the priming from their guns, as the emphatic expression to the mob that they had nothing to fear from them, and the artillery men coolly directed their pieces against the palace. Axes and iron bars were immediately leveled at the doors, and they flew from their hinges; and the drunken and infuriated rabble, with clubs, and pistols, and daggers, poured, an interminable throng, through the halls and apartments where kings, for ages, had reigned in inapproachable pomp and power. The servants of the king, in terror, fled in every direction. Still the crowd came rushing and roaring on, crashing the doors before them, till they approached the apartment in which the royal family was secluded. The king, who, though deficient in active energy, possessed passive fearlessness in the most eminent degree, left his wife, children, and sister clinging together, and entered the adjoining room to meet his assailants. Just as he entered the room, the door, which was bolted, fell with a crash, and the mob was before him. For a moment the wretches were held at bay by the calm dignity of the monarch, as, without the tremor of a nerve, he gazed steadily upon them. The crowd in the rear pressed on upon those in the advance, and three friends of the king had just time to interpose themselves between him and the mob, when the whole dense throng rushed in and filled the room. A drunken assassin, with a sharp iron affixed to a long pole, aimed a thrust violently at the king's heart. One blow from an heroic citizen laid him prostrate on the floor, and he was trampled under the feet of the throng. Oaths and imprecations filled the room; knives and sabers gleamed, and yet the majesty of royalty, for a few brief moments, repelled the ferocity of the assassins. A few officers of the National Guard, roused by the peril of the king, succeeded in reaching him, and, crowding him into the embrasure of a window, placed themselves as a shield before him. The king seemed only anxious to withdraw the attention of the mob from the room in which his family were clustered, where he saw his sister, Madame Elizabeth, with extended arms and imploring looks, struggling to come and share his fate. "It is the queen!" was the cry, and a score of weapons were turned toward her. "No! no!" exclaimed others, "it is Madame Elizabeth." Her gentle spirit, even in these degraded hearts, had won admiration, and not a blow fell upon her. "Ah!" exclaimed Madame Elizabeth, "why do you undeceive them? Gladly would I die in her place, if I might thus save the queen." By the surging of the crowd she was swept into the embrasure of another window, where she was hemmed in without any possibility of extrication. By this time the crowds were like locusts, climbing up the balconies, and pouring in at the windows, and every foot of ground around the palace was filled with the excited throng. Shouts of derision filled the air, while the mob without were incessantly crying, "Have you killed them yet? Throw us out their heads."

The red bonnet

Almost miraculously, the friends surrounding the king succeeded in warding off the blows which were aimed at him. One of the mob thrust out to the king, upon the end of a pike, a red bonnet, the badge of the Jacobins, and there was a general shout, "Let him put it on! let him put it on! It is a sign of patriotism. If he is a patriot he will wear it." The king, smiling, took the bonnet and put it upon his head. Instantly there rose a shout from the fickle multitude, "Vive le roi!" The mob had achieved its victory, and placed the badge of its power upon the brow of the humbled monarch.

First glimpse of Napoleon

There was at that time standing in the court-yard of the palace a young man, with the blood boiling with indignation in his veins, in view of the atrocities of the mob. The ignominious spectacle of the red bonnet upon the head of the king, as he stood in the recess of the window, seemed more than this young man could endure, and, turning upon his heel, he hastened away, exclaiming, "The wretches! the wretches! they ought to be mown down by grape-shot." This is the first glimpse the Revolution presents of Napoleon Bonaparte.

The queen's apartments invadedInsulted by abandoned womenThe queen's childrenThe young girl

But while the king was enduring their tortures in one apartment, the queen was suffering indignities and outrages equally atrocious in another. Maria Antoinette was, in the eyes of the populace, the personification of every thing to be hated. They believed her to be infamous as a wife; proud, tyrannical, and treacherous; that, as an Austrian, she hated France; that she was doing all in her power to induce foreign armies to invade the French empire with fire and sword; and that she had instigated the king to attempt escape, that he might head the armies. Maria, conscious of this hatred, was aware that her presence would only augment the tide of indignation swelling against the king, and she therefore remained in the bed-chamber with her children. But her sanctuary was instantly invaded. The door of her apartment had been, by some friend, closed and bolted. Its stout oaken panels were soon dashed in, and the door driven from its hinges. A crowd of miserable women, abandoned to the lowest depths of degradation and vulgarity, rushed into the apartment, assailing her ears with the most obscene and loathsome epithets the language could afford. The queen stood in the recess of a window, with queenly pride curbing her mortal apprehension. A few friends had gathered around her, and placed a table before her as a partial protection. Her daughter, an exceedingly beautiful girl of fourteen years of age, with her light brown hair floating in ringlets over her fair brow and shoulders, clung to her mother's bosom as if she thought not of herself, but would only, with her own body, shield her mother's heart from the dagger of the assassin. Her son, but seven years old, clung to his mother's hand, gazing with a bewildered look of terror upon the hideous spectacle. The vociferations of the mob were almost deafening. But the aspect of the group, so lovely and so helpless, seemed to disarm the hand of violence. Now and then, in the endless crowd defiling through the room, those in the advance pressed resistlessly on by those in the rear, some one more tender hearted would speak a word of sympathy. A young girl came crowded along, neatly dressed, and with a pleasing countenance. She, however, immediately began to revile the queen in the coarsest language of vituperation.

"Why do you hate me so, my friend?" said the queen, kindly; "have I ever done any thing to injure or to offend you?"

"No! you have never injured me," was the reply, "but it is you who cause the misery of the nation."

"Poor child!" rejoined the queen, "you have been told so, and have been deceived. Why should I make the people miserable? I am the wife of the king – the mother of the dauphin; and by all the feelings of my heart, as a wife and mother, I am a Frenchwoman. I shall never see my own country again. I can only be happy or unhappy in France. I was happy when you loved me."

The heart of the girl was touched. She burst into tears, and exclaimed, "Pardon me, good queen, I did not know you; but now I see that I have indeed been deceived, and you are truly good."

Meeting of the National AssemblyThe king's friends derided

Hour after hour of humiliation and agony thus rolled away. The National Assembly met, and in vain the friends of the king urged its action to rescue the royal family from the insults and perils to which they were exposed. But these efforts were met by the majority only with derision. They hoped that the terrors of the mob would compel the king hereafter to give his assent to any law whatever which they might frame. At last the shades of night began to add their gloom to this awful scene, and even the most bitter enemies of the king did not think it safe to leave forty thousand men, inflamed with intoxication and rage, to riot, through the hours of the night, in the parlors, halls, and chambers of the Tuileries. The president of the Assembly, at that late hour, crowded his way into the apartment where, for several hours, the king had been exposed to every conceivable indignity. The mysterious authority of law opened the way through the throng.

"I have only just learned," said the president, "the situation of your majesty."

"That is very astonishing," replied the king, indignantly, "for it is a long time that it has lasted."

The president of the AssemblyThe mob retires

The president, mounted upon the shoulders of four grenadiers, addressed the mob and urged them to retire, and they, weary with the long hours of outrages, slowly sauntered through the halls and apartments of the palace, and at eight o'clock silence reigned, with the gloom of night, throughout the Tuileries. The moment the mob became perceptibly less, the king received his sister into his arms, and they hastened to the apartment of the queen. During all the horrors of this awful day, her heroic soul had never quailed; but, now that the peril was over, she threw herself upon the bosom of her husband, and wept in all the bitterness of inconsolable grief. As the family were locked in each other's arms in silent gratitude for their preservation, the king accidentally beheld in a mirror the red bonnet, which he had forgotten to remove from his head. He turned red with mortification, and, casting upon the floor the badge of his degradation, turned to the queen, with his eyes filled with tears, and exclaimed, "Ah, madame, why did I take you from your country, to associate you with the ignominy of such a day as this!"

Deputies visit the royal family

After the withdrawal of the mob, several of the deputies of the National Assembly were in the apartment with the royal family, and, as the queen recounted the horrors of the last five hours, one of them, though bitterly hostile to the royal family, could not refrain from tears. "You weep," said she to him, "at seeing the king and his family so cruelly treated by a people whom he always wished to make happy."

Unfeeling remark

"True, madame," unfeelingly replied the deputy, "I weep for the misfortunes of a beautiful and sensitive woman, the mother of a family. But do not mistake; not one of my tears falls for either king or queen. I hate kings and queens. It is the only feeling they inspire me with. It is my religion."

Hopeless condition of the royal family

But time stops not. The hours of a dark and gloomy night, succeeding this terrible day, lingered slowly along, but no sleep visited the eyelids of the inmates of the Tuileries. Scowling guards still eyed them malignantly, and the royal family could not unbosom to one another their sorrows but in the presence of those who were hostile spies upon every word and action. Escape was now apparently hopeless. The events of the past day had taught them that they had no protection against popular fury. And they were filled with the most gloomy forebodings of woes yet to come.

Breast-plate for the king

These scenes occurred on the 20th of June, 1792. On the 14th of July of the same year there was to be a magnificent fête in the Champ de Mars, as the anniversary of the independence of the nation. The king and queen were compelled to be present to grace the triumph of the people, and to give the royal oath. It was anticipated that there would be many attempts on that day to assassinate the king and queen. Some of the friends of the royal family urged that they should each wear a breast-plate which would guard against the first stroke of a dagger, and thus give the king's friends time to defend him. A breast-plate was secretly made for the king. It consisted of fifteen folds of Italian taffeta, and was formed into an under waistcoat and a wide belt. Its impenetrability was tried, and it resisted all thrusts of the dagger, and several balls were turned aside by it. Madame Campan wore it for three days as an under petticoat before an opportunity could be found for the king to try it on unperceived. At length, one morning, in the queen's chamber, a moment's opportunity occurred, and he slipped it on, saying, at the same time, to Madame Campan, "It is to satisfy the queen that I submit to this inconvenience. They will not assassinate me. Their scheme is changed. They will put me to death in another way."

Dagger-proof corset for the queenFête in the Champ de MarsThe last appearance of the royal family in public

A dagger-proof corset had also been prepared for the queen without her knowledge. She, however, could not be persuaded to wear it. "If they assassinate me," she said, "it will be a most happy event. It will release me from the most sorrowful existence, and may save from a cruel death the rest of the family." The 14th of July arrived. The king, queen, and dauphin were marched, like captives gracing an Oriental triumph, at the head of the procession, from the palace to the Champ de Mars. With pensive features and saddened hearts they passed along through the single file of soldiers, who were barely able to keep at bay the raging mob, furious for their blood, and maledictions fell heavily upon their ears from a thousand tongues. The fountain of tears was dry, and despair had nerved them with stoicism. They returned to the palace in the deepest dejection, and never again appeared in the streets of Paris till they were borne to their execution.

Chapter IX.

Imprisonment in the Temple

1792Apprehension of poisonThe queen daily insultedAn assassin in the queen's chamber

Every day now added to the insults and anguish the royal family were called to endure. They were under such apprehension of having their food poisoned, that all the articles placed upon the table by the attendants, provided by the Assembly, were removed untouched, and they ate and drank nothing but what was secretly provided by one of the ladies of the bed-chamber. One day the queen stood at her window, looking out sadly into the garden of the Tuileries, when a soldier, standing under the window, with his bayonet upon his gun, looked up to her and said, "I wish, Austrian woman, that I had your head upon my bayonet here, that I might pitch it over the wall to the dogs in the street." And this man was placed under her window ostensibly for her protection! Whenever the queen made her appearance in the garden, she encountered insults often too outrageous to be related. An assassin, one night, with his sharpened dagger, endeavored to penetrate her chamber. She was awoke by the noise of the struggle with the guard at the door. The assassin was arrested. "What a life!" exclaimed the queen. "Insults by day, and assassins by night! But let him go. He came to murder me. Had he succeeded, the Jacobins would have borne him to-morrow in triumph through the streets of Paris."

The allied army

The allied army, united with the emigrants, in a combined force of nearly one hundred and fifty thousand men, now entered the frontiers of France, to rescue, by military power, the royal family. They issued a proclamation, in which it was stated that "the allied sovereigns had taken up arms to stop the anarchy which prevailed in France – to give liberty to the king, and restore him to the legitimate authority of which he had been deprived." The proclamation assured the people of Paris that, if they did not immediately liberate the king and return to their allegiance, the city of Paris should be totally destroyed, and that the enemies of the king should forfeit their heads. This proclamation, with the invasion of the French territory by the allied army, fanned to the intensest fury the flames of passion already raging in all parts of the empire. Thousands of young men from all the provinces thronged into the city, breathing vengeance against the royal family. In vain did the king declare his disapproval of these violent measures on the part of the allies. In vain did he assert his readiness to head the armies of France to repel invasion.

Parties in FranceThe Royalists, Girondists, and JacobinsConsternation in ParisThe king's dethronementScene from the palaceGathering of the mobThe queen with her childrenBrutal remarks of the troops

There were now three important parties in France struggling for power. The first was that of the king, and the nobles generally, wishing for the re-establishment of the monarchy. The second was that of the Girondists, wishing for the dethronement of the king and the establishment of a republic, with the power in the hands of the most influential citizens in intelligence and wealth. The third was that of the ultra Democrats or Jacobins, who wished to raise the multitude from degradation, penury, and infamy, into power, by the destruction of the throne, and the subjection of the middling classes, and the entire subversion of all the distinctions of wealth and rank. The approach of the allies united both of these latter classes against the throne. A motion was immediately introduced into the Assembly that the monarchy be entirely abolished, and a mob rioting through Paris threatened the deputies with death unless they dethroned the king. But an army of one hundred and fifty thousand men were marching upon Paris, and the deputies feared a terrible retribution if this new insult were heaped upon their sovereign. No person can describe the confusion and consternation with which the metropolis of France was filled. The mob declared, on the 9th of August, that, unless the dethronement were that day pronounced, they would that night sack the palace, and bear the heads of the royal family through the streets upon their pikes. The Assembly, undecided, and trembling between the two opposing perils, separated without the adoption of any resolve. All knew that a night of dreadful tumult and violence must ensue. Some hundreds of gentlemen collected around the king and queen, resolved to perish with them. Several regiments of soldiers were placed in and around the palace to drive back the mob, but it was well known that the troops would more willingly fraternize with the multitude than oppose them. The sun went down, and the street lamps feebly glimmered through the darkness of the night. The palace was filled with armed men. The gentlemen surrounding the king were all conscious of their utter inability to protect him. They had come but to share the fate of their sovereign. The queen and the Princess Elizabeth ascended to an upper part of the palace, and stepped from a low window into the dark shadow of a balcony to look out upon the tumultuous city. The sound, as of the gathering of a resistless storm, swept through all the streets, and rose loud and threatening above the usual roar of the vast metropolis. The solemn tones of the alarm bells, pealing through the night air, summoned all the desperadoes of France to their several places of rendezvous, to march upon the palace. The rumbling of artillery wheels, and the frequent discharge of musketry, proclaimed the determination and the desperation of the intoxicated mob. In darkness and silence, the queen and her sister stood listening to these fearful sounds, and their hearts throbbed violently in view of the terrible scene through which they knew that they must pass. The queen, pale but tearless, and nerved to the utmost by queenly pride, descended to the rooms below. She walked into the chamber where her beautiful son was sleeping, gazed earnestly upon him for a moment, bent over him, and imprinted upon his cheek a mother's kiss – and yet without a tear. She entered the apartment of her daughter – lovely, surpassingly lovely in all the blooming beauty of fifteen. The princess, comprehending the peril of the hour, could not sleep. Maria pressed her child to her throbbing heart, and the pride of the queen was soon vanquished by the tenderness of the mother, as with convulsive energy she embraced her, and wept in anguish almost unendurable. Shouts of unfeeling derision arose from the troops below, stationed for the protection of the royal family, and their ears were assailed by remarks of the most brutal barbarity. Hour after hour of the night lingered along, the clamor without incessantly increasing, and the crowds surrounding the palace augmenting. The excitement within the palace was so awful that no words could give it utterance. The few hundred gentlemen who had come so heroically to share the fate of their sovereign were aware that no resistance could be made to the tens of thousands who were thirsting for their blood.