The Marquis

by Laura Auricchio

  Lafayette arrived in the midafternoon. By then, a crush of people had stormed the Hôtel de Ville, forcing their way through the courtyard, past barriers and guards, up the stairs, and into the assembly hall. There, Lafayette found a makeshift tribunal—having lost control of the situation, electors had been ordered by the crowd to judge the prisoner—that was doing its best to forestall a lynching. The room fell silent as Lafayette issued a personal plea. Noting that the people of France knew him well and had named him their general, he declared that his position “obliges me to speak to you with the liberty and frankness that form the basis of my character. You want to execute without trial this man before you: it is an injustice that would dishonor you, that would dishonor me, that would dishonor all the efforts I have made on behalf of liberty if I were to be weak enough to permit it; I will not permit it.” Lafayette insisted that he did not wish to defend Foulon. He wished “only that the law be respected, the law without which there is no liberty, the law without which I would not have contributed to the revolution of the New World and without which I will not contribute to the Revolution in progress.” As the Journal de Paris reported, Lafayette’s was a speech of rare eloquence. The paper praised “the justice of the ideas, the grace of the expressions, the truth of the movements.” Lafayette concluded by ordering that Foulon be conducted to the prison at the Abbey of Saint-Germain. Unfortunately, the words of the “orator hero” could not be heard above the din on the Place de Grève, and thus “served only to prove his talents.”

  A grand commotion ensued. Bailly wrote that “impatience began to turn into fury, violent clamors arose on the Place; cries announced that the Palais-Royal and the Faubourg Saint-Antoine”—neighborhoods that had become synonymous with revolutionary agitation—“were coming to take the prisoner.” A wave of people surged toward the desk, and then toward the chair in which the captive was seated. Foulon was lost. Whisked across the room, down the stairs, and out the door, he was hanged from a lamppost on the Place de Grève—a plaza that had served for centuries as the site of some of France’s most gruesome public executions. But Foulon’s ordeal was not yet over. According to the Révolutions de Paris, no sooner had Foulon been hoisted aloft than the rope broke, sending him crashing to the ground. Instantly “it was reattached, a thousand hands, a thousand arms occupied themselves with his torture: soon, he was no more.” Foulon’s bloody head was impaled on a pike, a pitchfork full of hay stuffed into the open mouth as a reminder of the hated man’s contempt for the starving.

  In a gruesome spectacle of a type that was becoming all too familiar, the severed head was carried through the streets. By sheer happenstance, Foulon’s son-in-law Louis-Bénigne-François Berthier de Sauvigny, formerly the royal intendant of Paris, had been taken prisoner in Picardy on suspicion of keeping grain from reaching Paris in order to drive up the price of wheat. Berthier was being transported through Paris in an open cabriolet escorted by 500 armed cavalry when it was spotted by celebrants rallying beneath Foulon’s hay-filled head near the Hôtel de Ville. “Kiss Papa!” cried the crowd, as the bearer of the gory standard waved his trophy in Berthier’s face. So grisly was the scene that a drawing of it was omitted from the series of prints published in multiple editions between 1791 and 1817 under the title Tableaux de la Révolution française. In its place, the Tableaux offered a more decorous, bird’s-eye view of the Place de Grève with Foulon’s unfolding ordeal barely discernible in the far distance. The Révolutions de Paris had no such qualms. It included an engraving of the unwelcome family reunion, noting in the caption that Berthier had inevitably suffered the same fate as his father-in-law.

  Jean-Louis Prieur’s drawing Foulon’s Head Shown to Berthier, rejected from the Tableaux de la Révolution française in favor of a less grisly view of the same episode. (illustration credit 14.1)

  Lafayette was profoundly unsettled. Just over one year earlier he had lamented the lassitude of his countrymen in a letter to Washington. The French, he had written, could not be roused to extremes. “Passive discontent” was the strongest response he had envisioned. Now he was obliged to look on in horror as men were murdered in the streets. The following day, he submitted his resignation, explaining in a letter to Bailly that “the people did not heed my advice; and the day I lack the confidence they promised me I must, as I said in advance, leave a position in which I can no longer be useful.” The resignation was refused. Emissaries from the sixty districts of Paris flocked to Lafayette, beseeching him to remain in his post. Once more, his election was affirmed by general acclaim. On July 24, he wrote to a confidant. “What to do? I am in despair … I cannot abandon the citizens who place all of their confidence in me, and if I remain, I am in the terrible situation of witnessing evil without remedying it.” In the end, he kept his commission, reasoning that if he could not rein in the violence, no one could.

  The murders of Foulon and Berthier were still fresh in the collective mind of the deputies to the National Assembly on August 4, 1789, when they voted to alter the French power structure so fundamentally that the date has gone down in history as “the night the Old Regime ended.” In a single marathon session that ran from six in the evening until two in the morning, the nation’s representatives passed sweeping resolutions abolishing a host of feudal privileges that had endured for centuries. Lafayette was not at the assembly that night, but two men in his circle, the Vicomte de Noailles and the Duc d’Aiguillon, were among the most vocal advocates for reform, which they cast as the surest way to quiet the uprisings that had by then spread beyond Paris and were stirring up the countryside. Reading from prepared texts, they argued that the people had every reason to agitate for changes to a system that was inherently unjust and out of step with Enlightenment values.

  Before the night was over, more than a dozen men—nobles, clergymen, and commoners alike—had highlighted injustices in need of redress. The Vicomte de Beauharnais proposed that “all ecclesiastical, civil, and military posts” should be open to “all classes of citizens” and that criminals should expect “equality of punishment” regardless of social status. The bishop of Chartres condemned the exclusive hunting rights enjoyed by the landed estates as “a curse” on rural areas that had been “battered by the elements for more than a year”; with so little nourishment available, “humanity and justice” demanded that peasants be permitted to hunt for food. Throwing itself into a frenzy of reform, the assembly approved all of these motions. It also voted to eliminate serfdom, to strip the nobility of its right to impose local taxes, to end the practice of purchasing military offices, and much else. Even the profoundly conservative Marquis de Ferrières assented to the changes, evidently out of fear. “It would have been useless, even dangerous,” he explained to a friend, the Chevalier de Rabreuil, on August 7, “to oppose the general will of the nation. It would have designated you, you and your possessions, as victims of the furor of the multitude.”

  The significance of August 4 was lost on no one. Before adjourning, the deputies commissioned a commemorative medal immortalizing the date and arranged for a Te Deum to be sung. A deputation was dispatched to the royal chambers to share the news and to hail Louis XVI as the “Restorer of French liberty.” At this early moment in the French Revolution, Louis was still widely seen as a benevolent monarch whose sanctioning of reforms had earned him the gratitude of his people. The hopefulness of that day proved to be short-lived, but it was felt deeply and celebrated widely.

  In Paris, Lafayette’s allies in the press ensured that he, too, would be lauded for his role in bringing about the nation’s transformation. Although Lafayette had not been among the deputies who passed the historic legislation, cadre of journalists, artists, and printers reminded the public that his Declaration of the Rights of Man and his leadership after the fall of the Bastille had helped make the change possible. For instance, one triumphant hand-colored print, probably published shortly after August 4, bears the caption “The French nation aided by Lafayette defeats the despotism and
feudal abuses that oppressed the people.” Seen from a low vantage point, two monumental standing figures tower over their surroundings. Lafayette appears at the right, dressed in the uniform of a militia commander with the sword of authority raised high above his head and the National Guard arrayed behind him, the tricolor flag rising up from a collection of bayonets. Idealizing Lafayette’s appearance, the image depicts his tall, slender body positioned in a balletic stance, striking a graceful pose befitting his status. He is not an aggressor but, rather, a well-bred partner who gently holds the outstretched left hand of an allegorical female figure of uncommon strength. Dressed in red and blue, the colors of Paris, this handsome woman sports the helmet and sandals of Athena (the ancient goddess of war and wisdom), clutches in her right hand a sheaf of lightning bolts—the favored weapon of Zeus himself—and wears around her shoulders a blue robe dotted with golden insignia, evoking the traditional regalia of the king of France. The bulging muscles of her exposed calves and the hideous writhing of the winged, humanoid monster trapped beneath her firmly planted right foot attest that her might is not merely a costume. With Lafayette’s assistance, the image suggests, the French nation is all powerful—a pleasant interpretation of events but, unfortunately, not an accurate one.

  Through the late summer and early fall of 1789, fiscal and political reform ground to a halt in Versailles while hunger and anger reached new heights in Paris. Although the National Assembly approved a final version of the Declaration of the Rights of Man on August 26, October arrived without the king signing off on it; Louis also neglected to sanction the abolition of feudal privileges approved by the deputies on August 4. As the nation despaired, unscrupulous individuals from every walk of life tried to turn the crisis to their own benefit. With flour scarce and bread prohibitively expensive, the Parisian bakers’ guild, angered by the city’s imprisonment of one of its members, threatened to go on strike if he was not released. Gouverneur Morris, who was considering going into the business of supplying Paris with flour and other foodstuffs, suspected municipal officials of “casting about for the Ways and Means to make Money out of the present Distress.” Worst of all, Morris heard rumors that the Duc d’Orléans was fomenting agitation in the streets, the press, and the assembly, “plunging himself into Debts and Difficulties to support the present factious Temper”—hoping to seize power from Lafayette, Louis, and anyone else who might be toppled in the process. As Lafayette put it in a late August letter, “All hell has conspired against us.”

  The French Nation Helped by Mr de la Fayette Stops the Despotism and Abuses of the Feudal King Who Oppresses His People. Engraving. 1791. (illustration credit 14.2)

  On October 2—a “rainy disagreeable Day” in Paris—Morris felt that it was time to have a heart-to-heart talk with the overmatched marquis. After dinner at the Rue de Bourbon, Morris took Lafayette aside to warn him that he was losing control of the National Guard and, by extension, the city. Believing danger to be imminent, Morris urged that Lafayette “immediately discipline his Troops and make himself obeyed,” emphasizing “that this Nation is used to be governed and must be governed, that if he expects to lead them by their Affection he will be the Dupe.” Morris evidently agreed with Jefferson that a “canine appetite for popularity” was Lafayette’s fatal flaw, but this view was not quite right. Glory, honor, and lasting fame were the treasures Lafayette sought—and his attempts to acquire them sometimes made him deeply unpopular. He expressed affection for the National Guard not because he craved adulation but because he could not imagine, blinded as he was by optimism, that his troops deserved anything less. Regardless of circumstance, Lafayette seldom foresaw the pitfalls ahead.

  After months of hunger, the people of Paris became enraged when they learned of a feast held on October 1 in the royal opera house at Versailles. The revolutionary papers described it not merely as a spectacle of gluttony but as an “orgy.” Leaders of the King’s Bodyguard and officers of a recently arrived Flanders regiment broke bread together, drank toasts to Louis XVI, and sang songs in his honor seated at enormous tables on the opera’s stage, while an orchestra provided musical accompaniment to the great delight of spectators who filled the theater’s boxes. According to the Révolutions de Paris, when Marie Antoinette and the dauphin—both of whom were much beloved by the assembled officers—appeared before the celebrants, cries of “joy and jubilation” echoed through the hall and a lone voice could be heard above the din shouting, “Down with the colored cockades; long live the black cockade!” With that, the revelers began ripping from their hats the ornamental rosettes made of red and blue fabric that signified the revolution, sending a shower of cockades raining to the floor to be gleefully trampled under scores of boots. Soon, the women and children of the court, along with clergymen and other royalists, were merrily distributing black cockades, which may have been intended as a nod to the colors of the queen’s native Austria (black and yellow) but in any case were certainly a signal of opposition to the revolution. A group of officers even had the audacity to wear these “insulting signs”—as the Révolutions de Paris called them—while reviewing a division of the National Guard.

  In the days that followed, the revolution’s opponents donned black cockades at their own risk. Rumors about the precise meaning of the black rosettes abounded; one story suggested that they might have been adopted by a coalition of thirty thousand noblemen who intended to sequester the king in the citadel at Metz with the aid of the royal guard before waging “war, in his name, against his people.” The Révolutions de Paris reported that five black cockades were confiscated in a single afternoon at the Palais-Royal and that one man was struck down by “a hundred canes” after he removed his cockade, only to hold it up in the air and bestow upon it a “respectful kiss.” Convinced that these small bundles of fabric signified nothing less than treason, one witness to the attack went so far as to argue that wearing black cockades should be prohibited on pain of death: “The law allows the killing of those who threaten our lives; well, anyone who wears a black cockade endangers the political life of the nation and the natural life of each citizen; the first person who wears an anti-patriotic cockade must therefore hang from the nearest lamppost.” It was a twisted bit of logic, but emblematic of the fear and anger raging throughout the capital.

  On October 5, 1789, alarm bells sounded through the gray Paris dawn as thousands of marketwomen streamed toward the Hôtel de Ville. The women—known to their critics as poissardes, or fishwives—wielded pikes and pitchforks as they hauled heavy cannons across the cobblestones of the Place de Grève. When Lafayette reached the scene later that morning, the National Guard had just managed to roust a crowd of would-be arsonists from the government building. The guardsmen strained to stem the furious tide of people pouring into the quays along the Seine and the adjacent streets. Incensed by the soaring price of flour, which left them unable to feed their families, the women were joined by husbands, brothers, and sons, all of whom shouted for bread. They were certain that an aristocratic plot was at the root of their starvation. “To Versailles!” they clamored, as Lafayette struggled to prevent a march that was rapidly becoming inevitable.

  From nine in the morning until four in the afternoon, Lafayette refused to sanction a march to Versailles and forbade the guard, whose loyalties were beginning to waver, to undertake any such action. Back and forth he went, alternating between closed-door meetings with elected representatives of the Paris Commune and high-decibel debates with the crowd on the Place de Grève. Convinced that an attack on Paris was imminent, a young lieutenant in the grenadiers named Mercier cried out, “My general, the king has fooled us all, you and everyone else: he must be deposed.” But still, Lafayette refused. Finally, between four and five, he came to understand that any opportunity to prevent a march had passed, as an intrepid contingent dominated by women and men armed with knives, picks, pikes, and pitchforks had started pulling cannons toward Versailles in the late morning. In the meantime, the weather had grown st
eadily worse—powerful winds had sprung up and a chilling rain was falling—but the crowd’s determination showed no signs of flagging. After obtaining a face-saving command from the Paris Commune—who “authorized … and even ordered him to transport himself to Versailles”—Lafayette mounted his white horse and took charge of several National Guard regiments. Together, Lafayette and his troops accompanied a crowd of some thirty thousand armed and angry Parisians, arrayed six abreast, on a seven-hour trek along fourteen miles of dark and muddy roads.

  According to Marie Antoinette’s lady-in-waiting Madame Campan, news that the National Guard had set out from Paris reached Versailles that afternoon while the king was hunting at Meudon, about six miles away, and the queen was alone, lost in “painful thought,” in her beloved gardens near the Trianon pavilion, not far from the spot where Lafayette’s grandfather Édouard had taken his fatal fall in 1736. The royal household leapt into action: the Marquis de Cubières, equerry to the king, set out on horseback to encourage Louis XVI to abandon that day’s hunt and return to the palace; the Comte de Saint-Priest, secrétaire de l’état de la maison du roi (the government minister charged with overseeing the king’s household), sent a letter to Marie Antoinette urging the royal family to depart immediately for the Château de Rambouillet, some twenty miles southwest of Versailles; and servants began packing bags and loading carriages so that the royal family could be whisked to safety. A few carriages were already on the road when an update arrived—the first Parisian women were drawing near. Versailles had not been designed to withstand a military attack, but now its limited defenses were mobilized: gates that had stood open for a century were pulled shut and locked; the Flanders Regiment assembled on the Place d’Armes, the rounded plaza in front of the château; and the Swiss Guard made ready to stand its ground in the inner courtyards and gardens.