Days of Splendor, Days of Sorrow

by Juliet Grey

  “I do not know from whence they derive such power, such authority.” Louis groaned, speaking of the Third Estate. “Other than sheer numbers. Perhaps, in hindsight, it was a mistake for me to extend them the privilege of voting by head rather than en bloc.”

  He had experimented with being a progressive leader in an attempt to mollify the bourgeoisie, a course I had not supported in the least; in fact I had strongly advised him against it. I could almost hear Maman’s warning in my head: Give the rabble an inch and they will take a country.

  “The duc d’Orléans has become the most popular man in Paris, even if he has to subsidize his acclaim,” Artois declared rhetorically, thumbing through a volume of Candide. “I am certain it is he who convinced the clergy and nobility to join the Third Estate.”

  “I would agree. It is all part of a plot to discredit you and to turn himself into a man of the people. Something must be done to stop him. To stop all of them,” I insisted. “How much longer are you going to wait?” My husband’s indecisiveness was costing us precious time.

  “I would advise you, Sire, to issue an edict immediately disbanding them,” said the comte de Mercy. “Two days ago, the Third Estate managed to convince most of the deputies from the first two Estates to make common cause with them. Some of the men have been highly persuasive—Mirabeau, Malesherbes, a provincial lawyer named Maximilien Robespierre, and of course your turncoat cousin Philippe. And this morning the entirety declared themselves a wholly new body—a legislative body that has decreed all taxes illegal and immoral. They are calling themselves the National Assembly.”

  My skin pebbled with fear; I wanted to vomit. The Bourbon brothers released a torrent of exclamations.

  “Idiot bourgeoisie! If no one pays taxes, how is anything supposed to run?” Monsieur snorted, his perennial distaste for the lower orders evident in every sneered syllable. Of course, my brother-in-law paid no taxes himself, but was adamant that the populace should know its place and continue to finance the well-being of those who belonged to the two superior Estates.

  Artois dropped the novel and thumped his fist on the gilded table. “I vote we separate the ringleaders from the rabble and execute them. A lesson like that becomes an immediate deterrent.”

  Mercy concurred. “Violence may be the only viable way to save the monarchy, Votre Majesté.”

  I clutched the padded arm of my chair, digging my nails into the silk, scarcely able to believe what I was hearing. The monarchy of France, venerated, ancient, courtly, sophisticated—was it all to be blown away in a fetid puff of angry rhetoric, fanned by the powerful bellows of men like the conniving duc d’Orléans and the unkempt comte de Mirabeau?

  Louis raised his hand for silence. “Mes frères! I am the king,” he said weakly. “And, monsieur le comte,” he said to Mercy, with a sidelong glance at me, “France does not receive her instructions from Austria.”

  More haranguing followed. But the king remained disinclined to make any abrupt decisions. The following day he decided to conduct a special royal session of the Estates General five days hence, on the twenty-third of the month. But every hour of delay seemed like two that were lost to our cause. The self-proclaimed National Assembly continued to convene, and on the twentieth of June, when they arrived at the Salle des Menus Plaisirs to find troops guarding the great iron padlocks that had been placed across the front doors, did they stop to wonder that perhaps it was because of the extensive preparations taking place inside, arrangements that were necessary for their unprecedented convocation only three days later? Of course not! The hotheads who called themselves statesmen were immediately convinced that a royal conspiracy was underfoot, and they handily managed to sway their colleagues into believing the same.

  Despite the downpour, nearly twelve hundred strong sought shelter elsewhere, a frightening sea of humanity flooding the narrow rues in search of a venue large enough to house them all, ultimately finding it in a jeu de paume, an enclosed tennis court.

  “What do they want?” Louis lamented, his question nearly rhetorical.

  Once again we were in the king’s library. The collective mood was as gloomy as the weather; outside the raindrops spattered upon the Cour Royale, staining the white pebbles ochre.

  “The National Assembly is determined to remain in the tennis court, meeting day and night if need be, until France has a Constitution,” Necker told us.

  “What?” I glanced at the marble clock atop the mantel and watched the golden pendulum sway for a few beats between a pair of Doric columns. It was barely eleven in the morning. “This is not America!” My cheeks and poitrine flushed with choler. “I regret now that we sent those rebellious colonists a single sou, for our ill-conceived alliance fed revolutionary ideas into the bellies of loyal and honest Frenchmen. Here the monarch does not share his power with anyone. Louis—will you permit a pack of madmen to dictate to a king?”

  “They need the whip, Majesté,” shouted Artois. The king’s brothers wished to send the royal guards into the jeu de paume, trapping the hogs in their pen and spitting each of the new legislators upon the point of a bayonet.

  But Necker advised conciliation. “Sire, they only want to be heard. If you give them a voice—”

  I looked at Axel, who had been journeying back and forth to Paris to keep us apprised of the mood in the capital. “If you give the people a voice they will shout ‘À bas la monarchie!’ Count von Fersen has heard them! They are jubilant. There is one man in particular, a man with a stammer, even! Camille … ?” I turned to Axel, for I had forgotten the name.

  “Desmoulins.”

  “Oui—Desmoulins. A failed lawyer from nowhere with pretensions to journalism. And he cannot even speak well. Yet he climbs a tree or a bench and shouts obscene things about us and people rally around him. Give the people a voice? Monsieur Necker, you have lost your mind!”

  More interested in devising a solution to the dilemma than in decimating his enemies, Louis split the difference—which frustrated all concerned. He sent four thousand soldiers to clear the tennis court but the jeu de paume was like a tinderbox waiting for the aggressive strike of a flint; and so the troops never even entered the hall.

  On June 23, at the séance royale, the king declared the National Assembly not only null but illegal, continuing to recognize the three Estates only as distinct entities. But the deputies of the Third Estate refused to depart to their separate chambers. “I warn you, if you endeavor to interfere with my efforts to improve the lot of my people, there will be consequences,” Louis cautioned, “and I will continue my labors alone.” But his threats were perceived as empty and the deputies defiantly stood pat. The king raged and stormed and fumed, but finally, afraid he was being made to appear the fool, caved in to the Third Estate, shouting, “Damn it! Then let them stay!”

  Louis’s only conciliations to Necker at the séance royale were a begrudging acquiescence to the principles of individual freedom, a free press, and equal taxation for all. No one ended the day satisfied.

  Axel’s assessment of the situation in Paris worried the king enough to order reinforcements to join the troops already garrisoned there. The men were commanded to prepare themselves, should they be required to keep the peace. As the days went by we seemed to be holding our breath, terrified to exhale. I would awaken each morning hoping I had merely dreamt the events of the previous day. But Louis was invariably of two minds on any given thing, which meant that ultimately, he refused to act at all. “Don’t you realize that the duc d’Orléans is bribing the laborers of the Parisan faubourgs to rise up against the crown?” I would cry. “Where is your pride?” I demanded. “What legacy will Louis Seize leave? And what will be left of France for your little son to govern?” I would actually tear my hair in exasperation, for my husband had become so petrified that he would sit for hours in his study staring at a volume of world history as if it held the answer to our woes.

  He would not be consoled, nor was there time for coddling. “If you will not st
rike a blow, Monsieur will do it for you. Or Artois, Or Necker!” I exclaimed. “Any one of them will act in your name so that Philippe d’Orléans and the National Assembly do not declare your obsolescence.”

  Jacques Necker had handed the king his resignation and Louis was panic-stricken. “You mustn’t let him leave, Toinette. It will be a disaster if he departs, for everyone will believe that I dismissed him. He is the only minister who is popular with the people.”

  “His Majesty does not heed a word of my advice,” Necker said, when I went to plead the king’s case. He had already begun to pack his quills and inkstands in a large wooden box. His thin lips were pressed together in an expression of resolution.

  I laid my hand on his arm to halt the progress of this proud, intelligent man. “You and I have not always agreed, Monsieur Necker. But I respect your gifts. And I am fond of your family. Do not forget that His Majesty and I had the honor of attending your daughter’s wedding.” I drew a deep breath. “We are witnessing an unprecedented series of events. The king rules by divine right, but he is not immortal. He is entitled to doubt. And he is entitled to be afraid. Permit yourself, monsieur, the secret satisfaction of knowing that in many circles you are more beloved than he. And continue to endear yourself to his royal person by remaining in his government.”

  So Necker stayed. But the citizens of France remained restless. On the first of July Louis ordered another ten regiments—twelve thousand troops—most of them German and Swiss mercenaries, to march to Paris under the command of baron de Besenval.

  Upon hearing that the National Assembly had become alarmed over the mustering, Louis maintained, “Only the ill disposed could mislead my people about the precautionary measures I am taking.” While the royal family and the court fretted about the future, the king himself remained resolutely optimistic. “The people of France are good,” he continued to insist. “They have always had an unbreakable, sacred bond with their sovereign.” And when I would weep he reminded me that the people had rioted in the days of his grandfather and even in the time of the Sun King, protesting high taxes and shortages of bread, harsh winters, and bad harvests. And their queens had been foreign-born as well. “Kings have been called names before. I did not permit their adulation to swell my head when they called me ‘Louis le Desiré’ on the day of my ascension, nor do I countenance their cruel sobriquets now.” He placed his hands on my shoulders and leaned over to kiss my cheek. “You shall see; we will weather this storm, ma petite.”

  I wanted to believe him.

  “Rien. Departure of Monsieur Necker,” read the entry in Louis’s hunting journal on the twelfth of July—rien because he had not ridden to hounds that day. What the king did not write was that he had dismissed every one of his ministers, not just the progressive Contrôleur-Général. Charged now with overseeing a brand-new administration was the competent and loyal baron de Breteuil, who as the king’s Minister of the Household had stood by the Crown during the diamond necklace debacle.

  At Versailles we went about our day, tamping down our apprehension as we awaited news from Paris. The weather was stifling hot, so I took Mousseline and the dauphin for a boat ride on the Grand Canal, and then we strolled about the hameau at le Petit Trianon, visiting the laiterie because the walls of whitewashed stucco made a cool and inviting spot for two cranky children on such a sultry day. The dauphin wished to milk one of the cows and as I was explaining that such things took some skill, one of the farmers happened by and offered to teach the children of France how to do it. Madame Royale disdained to touch either Bonjour or Bonsoir—“They smell!” she declared, wrinkling her nose—but the dauphin cheerfully sat upon the farmer’s broad lap as the pair of them perched on the milking stool.

  “Pour toi, Maman,” said my son, offering me a monogrammed Sèvres jug of warm milk some minutes later.

  Upon our return to the palace we were met with a sea of anxious faces. I summoned the duchesse de Polignac and asked her to see to the children. Her nails were bitten to the quick with worry. “They are rioting in the capital,” she whispered to me, drawing me aside. “When word reached Paris of Necker’s dismissal, rumors spread like fire over dry straw, and no one has paused to wonder whether or not they are true.”

  With one eye still on my son and daughter, I asked the duchesse, “What has happened?”

  Though her voice was low, her tone was angry, becoming increasingly cynical as she described the situation. “After the hussars and dragoons from the baron de Besenval’s regiments took up their positions in the Place Louis Quinze near the Swiss Guards, the tale was given out that the king had ordered them to plant explosive devices under the meeting hall of the National Assembly, intending to detonate the building and incinerate everyone inside. That awful stammering Desmoulins—he jumped upon a chair and shouted that the mustering was a ‘s-s-signal’ for another ‘S-S-Saint’ Bartholomew’s Day Massacre.”

  “That’s the most preposterous thing I’ve ever heard! What possible parallel could he draw to an attack perpetrated hundreds of years ago by a Catholic government against Paris’s Protestants to the king’s efforts to safeguard all of his subjects against a potential threat from a crowd of political rabble-rousers? And in any event, not a word of what this man said was true!”

  Gabrielle nodded vehemently. “I’m sure that most of the people listening to him were impoverished citizens who had no idea what he meant, but he managed to terrify them by claiming that Besenval’s mercenaries had come to cut their throats.”

  I gasped, my own hand reflexively flying to my neck. “But this is madness.”

  “It gets worse.” The duchesse began to say something, but when the dauphin, who had grown bored as his maman and governess conversed, began to run down the hall, gathering speed with each waddling step, I feared he might do himself some injury, and sent Gabrielle after him. “Does His Majesty know?” I cried.

  I entered Louis’s library in the midst of another argument. “There will be absolutely no show of force. I will never fire upon my people!” Louis thundered, his broad face scarlet with rage.

  “Besenval has retreated,” Artois announced as I closed the door behind me. “He cannot countenance the notion of one Frenchman shedding another’s blood.”

  “Permit me to speak for myself, Your Royal Highness.” Older, of course, than he was when he was the eminence grise of my Trianon set, the courtly baron rose to his feet. “The comte d’Artois simplifies the picture. We did experiment with the use of force at first, something that would have satisfied both yourself, Majesté, and monsieur le comte. Your cousin, the prince de Lambesc, an excellent horseman, rode at the head of the Royal-Allemand, one of the mercenary regiments under my command. To break up a group of rioters he rode straight into their midst, saber aloft. Women, children, and an unarmed guardsman who had deserted his post and joined the citizenry, were trampled under the hooves of his mount. Needless to say, the violent display on behalf of the Crown had the worst repercussions—resulting in a call to arms among the hostile elements of the populace. And that is merely point one.”

  The baron gave Louis’s enormous globe a savage spin. “Point two: I regret to say that having spent these past few days in Paris, we cannot rely upon the loyalty of the guardsmen, Your Majesty. This summer’s oppressive heat has made every temper testy, and the troops are exhausted and demoralized. For nearly a year they have had to contend with riots over the lack of bread and keeping order in a city that is flooded with destitute families from the countryside hoping to find employment. Many of these soldiers rather like the notion of a free press, even if they don’t understand what one is. And they very much like the idea of a comte d’Artois or a Cardinal de Rohan paying as much tax as they do.”

  “Are you saying that it is unwise of us to arm our own guards?” Louis asked incredulously.

  A tense silence hung over the room like a fetid cloud. After pacing about the library for several moments the sixty-seven-year-old baron finally came to roost beside th
e king’s chair. He opened and closed his snuffbox repeatedly, punctuating his phrases with nervous clicks. “Afraid that the Crown intends to crush the National Assembly’s infant cries for democratic reforms, the citizens have formed their own militia. Owing to his substantial military expertise, they have asked the marquis de Lafayette to command it—and he has accepted.”

  Louis, who, uncharacteristically, had not slept blissfully through the previous night, seemed to deflate before my eyes with the news that a creature of his own advancement had betrayed him. “I cannot comprehend it,” he muttered, repeating the phrase many times, and bien sûr, each time it was employed it could have been applied to yet another stunning turn of events.

  And still, perhaps surprisingly, Versailles remained much as it ever was, the most democratic of palaces, where anyone properly attired, from a duchesse to a poissarde, could gain admission. The uprisings in Paris and even the violent roistering that attended the final meetings of the Estates General just beyond the château grounds had not changed the age-old etiquette governing entry to the residence of the royal family, no matter how viciously we were derided.

  Among the visitors on the morning of July 14 was the seventy-one-year-old Maréchal-Général Broglie, arriving in such a state of agitation that he did not even pause to remove his hat upon reaching the Salon d’Hercule at the top of the grand marble staircase. He nearly sprinted down the length of the Hall of Mirrors, though his legs were bowed not only with the frailties of his age, but from so many years in the saddle. After halting in the Salon de Mars to see if the king was holding court there, he resumed his progress through the Galerie des Glaces, rounding the corner into the Oeil de Boeuf hoping to find his sovereign in the King’s Bedchamber, where the former monarch customarily received petitions. A footman finally directed the bewildered maréchal to the king’s private apartments, where he found Louis in heated conference with his cousin the prince de Condé, freshly arrived from Chantilly.