The Life of Marie Antoinette

by Charles Duke Yonge

  In this way they passed a fortnight, when the monotony of their lives was fearfully disturbed. The Jacobins had established their ascendency. They had created a Revolutionary Tribunal, which at once began its course of wholesale condemnation, sending almost every one who was brought before it to the scaffold with merely a form of trial; the guillotine being erected, as it was said, en permanence, that the deaths of the victims might never be delayed for want of means to execute them; while, that a succession of victims might never be wanting, Danton, in his new character of Minister of Justice, instituted a search of every house for arms or papers, or any thing which might afford evidence or even suggest a suspicion that the owners disliked or feared the new authorities.

  But it was not enough to strike terror into all the peaceful citizens. The Girondins had always been objects of jealous rivalry to the Jacobins. Fanatical and relentless as they were in their cruelty, they had recently given proofs that they disapproved of the furious blood-thirstiness that was beginning to decimate the city, and they had carried the Assembly with them in a vote for the dissolution of the new Municipal Council. At the same time, intelligence of the Prussian successes readied the capital, intelligence which, it seemed possible, might animate the Royalists to some fresh effort; and, lest they should find means of reconciling themselves to Vergniaud and his party, the Jacobins and Cordeliers resolved to give both a lesson by a deed of blood which should strike terror into them. We may spare ourselves the pain of relating the horrors of the September massacre, when, for more than four days, gangs of men worse than devils, and of women unsexed by profligacy and cruelty till they had become worse even than the men, gave themselves up to the work of indiscriminate slaughter, deluging the streets with blood, and where they could spare time, aggravating the pangs of death by superfluous tortures. It will be sufficient for our purpose to record the fate of one of the most innocent of all the victims, who owed her death to the fact that she had long been the queen's most chosen friend, and whose murder was gloated over with special ferocity by the monsters who perpetrated it, as enabling them to inflict an additional pang on her wretched friend and mistress.

  Madame de Lamballe, as we have seen, had accompanied the queen to the Temple on the first day of her captivity, and had subsequently been removed to one of the city prisons known as La Force. It was on the prisoners in the different places of confinement that the work of death was to be done: and she had been specially marked out for slaughter, not solely because she was beloved by Marie Antoinette, but also, it was understood, because, as she was very rich, and sister-in-law to the Duc d'Orleans, that detestable prince desired to add her inheritance to his OWD already vast riches. She was dragged before Hebert, one of the foulest of the Jacobin crew, who had taken his seat at the gate of the prison to preside over the trials, as they were called, of the prisoners in La Force. "Swear," said he, "devotion to liberty and to the nation, and hatred to the king and queen, and you shall live." "I will take the first oath," she replied, "but the second never; it is not in my heart. The king and queen I have ever loved and honored." Almost before she had finished speaking she was pushed into the gate-way. One ruffian struck her from behind with his sabre. She fell. They tore her into pieces. A letter of the queen's fell from her hair, in which she had hidden it. The sight of it redoubled the assassins' fury. They stuck her head on a pike, and carried it in triumph to the Palais Royal to display it to D'Orleans, who was feasting with some of the companions of his daily orgies, and then proceeded to the Temple to brandish it before the eyes of the queen.

  It was about three o'clock.[4] Dinner had just been removed, and the king and queen were sitting down to play backgammon, when horrid shouts were heard in the street. One of the soldiers on guard in the room, who had not yet laid aside every feeling of humanity, closed the window and even drew the curtain. Another of different temper insisted that Louis should come to the window and show himself. As the uproar increased, the queen rose from her seat, and the king asked what was the matter. "Well," said the man, "since you wish to know, they want to show you the head of Madame de Lamballe." No event that had yet occurred had struck the queen with such anguish. The uproar increased. Those who bore the head had wished even to force the doors, and bring their trophy, still bleeding, into the very room where the royal family were, and were only prevented by a compromise which permitted them to parade it round their tower in triumph. As the shouts died away, Petion's secretary arrived with a small sum of money which had been issued for the king's use. He noticed that the queen stood all the time that he was in the room, and fancied she assumed that attitude out of respect to the mayor. She had never stirred since she had heard of the princess's death, but had stood rooted, as it were, to the ground, stupefied and speechless with horror and anguish. It was long before she could be restored; and all through the night the rest of the princesses, if at least they could have slept, was broken by her sobs, which never ceased.

  As time passed on, the prospects of the unhappy prisoners became still more gloomy. On the 21st of September the Convention met, and its first act was to abolish royalty and declare the government a republic, and an officer was instantly sent to make proclamation of the event under the Temple walls; and, as if the establishment of a republic authorized an increase of insolence on the part of the guards of the prisoners, the insults to which they were subjected grew more frequent and more gross. Sentences both menacing and indecent were written on the walls where they must catch their eye: the soldiers puffed their tobacco-smoke in the queen's face as she passed, or placed their seats in the passages so much in her way that she could hardly avoid stumbling over their legs as she went down to the garden. Sometimes they even assailed her with direct abuse, calling her the assassin of the people, who in their turn would assassinate her. More than once the whole family had to submit to a personal search, and to empty their pockets, when the officers who made the search carried off whatever they chose to term suspicious, especially their knives and scissors, so that, when at work, the queen and princess were forced to bite off the threads with their teeth. And amidst all this misery no one ever heard Marie Antoinette utter a word to lament her own fate, or to ask pity for herself. She mourned over her husband's fall; she pitied Elizabeth, to whom malice itself could not impute a share in the wrongs of which Danton and Vergniaud had taught the people to complain. Most of all did she bewail the ruined prospects of her son; and more than once she brought tears into Clery's eyes by the earnest tenderness with which she implored him to provide for the safety of the noble child after his parents should have been destroyed.

  The insults increased, each being an additional omen of the future. The most painful injuries were reserved for the queen. Toward the end of October the dauphin was removed from her apartment to that of the king, that she might thus be deprived of the comfort of ministering to his daily wants. But Louis himself was not spared. One day an order came down to deprive him of his sword; on another he was stripped of his different decorations and orders of knighthood. The system of espial, too, was carried out with increased severity. Their linen, when it came hack from the washer-woman, and even their washing-bills, were held to the fire to see if any invisible ink had been employed to communicate with them. Their loaves and biscuits were cut asunder lest they should contain notes. The end was approaching. A week or two later the king was removed to another tower, and was only permitted to see his family during a certain portion of the day. At last it was determined to bring him to trial. On the 11th of December he was suddenly informed that he was to be brought before the Convention; and from that day forth he was cut off from all intercourse with his family, even his wife being forbidden to see or hear from him. The barbarous restriction afforded him one more opportunity of showing his amiable unselfishness and fortitude. The regulation had been made by the Municipal Council, not by the Assembly; and its inhuman and unprecedented severity, coupled with a jealousy of the Council, as seeking to usurp the whole authority of the State, ind
uced the Assembly to rescind it, and to grant permission, for Louis to have the dauphin and his sister with him. Yet, lest these innocent children should prove messengers of conspiracy between him and the queen and Elizabeth, it was ordered at the same time that, so long as they were allowed to visit him, they should be separated from their mother and their aunt; and Louis, though never in greater need of comfort, thought it so much better for the children themselves that they should be with the queen, that for their sakes he renounced their society, and allowed the decree of the Council to be carried out in all its pitiless cruelty.

  And, again, we may spare ourselves from dwelling on the details of what, in hideous mockery, was called the king's trial, though it was in fact a mere ceremonious prelude to his murder, which had been determined on before it began. Deep as is the disgrace with which it has forever covered the nation which tolerated such an abomination, it was relieved by some incidents which did honor to the country and to human nature. The murderers of Louis, in their ignoble pedantry, wearied the ear with appeals to the examples of the ancient Romans, of Decius[5] and of Brutus. But no Roman ever gave a nobler proof of contempt of danger, and devotion to duty, than was afforded by the intrepid lawyers, Malesherbes, De Seze, and Tronchet, who voluntarily undertook the king's defense, though Louis himself warned them that their utmost efforts would be fruitless, and would only bring destruction on themselves without saving him. One member, too, of the Convention, Lanjuinais, though originally he had been a member of the Breton Club, and had latterly been generally regarded as connected with the Girondins, made more than one eloquent effort in the king's behalf, provoking the Jacobins and Girondins to their very wildest fury by his contemptuous defiance of their menaces. And even when the verdict was being given; when Jacobins, Girondins, and Cordeliers, Robespierre, Vergniaud, Danton, and the infamous Duc d'Orleans were vying with one another in the eagerness with which they pushed forward to record their votes of condemnation; and when a mob of hired ruffians, who thronged the hall, were cheering every vote for death, and holding daggers to the throat of every one from whom they apprehended a contrary judgment; one noble of frail body, but of a spirit worthy of his birth and rank, the Marquis de Villette, laughed in the faces of his threateners, looked the assassins in the face, and told them that he would not obey their orders, and that they dared not kill him; and with a loud voice pronounced a vote of acquittal.

  But no courage or devotion of a few honest men could save Louis. One vote by an immense majority pronounced him guilty; a second refused all appeal to the people; a third, by a majority of fifty voices, condemned him to death. And on the morning of the 20th of January, 1793, Louis was roused from his bed to hear his sentence, and to learn that it was to be carried out the next day.

  While the trial lasted, the queen and those with her had been kept in almost absolute ignorance of what was taking place. They never, however, doubted what the result would be,[6] so that it was scarcely a shock to them when they heard the news-men crying the sentence under their windows -the only mercy that was shown to either the prisoner who was to die, or to those who were to survive him, being that they were allowed once more to meet on earth. At eight in the evening the queen, his children, and his sister were to be allowed to visit him. He prepared for the interview with astonishing calmness, making the arrangements so deliberately that, when he noticed that Clery had placed a bottle of iced water on the table, he bid him change it, lest, if the queen should require any, the chill should prove injurious to her health. Even that last interview was not allowed to pass wholly without witnesses, since the Municipal Council refused, even on such an occasion, to relax their regulation that their guards were never to lose sight-of the king; and all that was permitted was that he might retire with his family into an inner room which had a glass door, so that, though what passed must be seen, their last words might not be overheard. His daughter, Madame Royale, now a girl of fourteen, and old enough, as her mother had said a few months before, to realize the misery of the scenes which she daily saw around her, has left us an account of the interview, necessarily a brief one, for the queen and princess were too wretched to say much. Louis wept when he announced to them how short was the time which he had to live, but his tears were those of pity for the desolation of those he loved, and not of fear for himself. He was even, in some sense, a willing victim, for, as he told them, it had been proposed to save him by appealing to the primary Assemblies of the nation; but he had refused his consent to a step which must throw the whole country into confusion, and might be the cause of civil war. He would rather die than risk the bringing of such calamities on his people. He even sought to comfort the queen by making some excuses for the monsters who had condemned him; and his last words to his family were an entreaty to forgive them; to his son, an injunction never to seek to revenge his death, even, if some change of fortune should enable him to do so.

  The queen said nothing, but sat clinging to him in speechless agony. At last he begged them to retire, that he might seek rest to prepare himself for the morrow; and then she spoke, to beg that at least they might meet again the next morning. "Yes," said he, "at eight o'clock." "Why not at seven?" asked she. "Well, then, at seven." But, after she had left him he determined to avoid this second meeting, not so much because he feared its unnerving himself, but because he felt that the second parting must be too terrible for her.

  When she returned to her own chamber she had scarcely strength left to place the dauphin in his bed. She threw herself, dressed as she was, on her own bed, where her sister-in-law and daughter heard her, as the little princess describes her state, "shivering with cold and grief the whole night long.[7]"

  Even if she could have slept, her rest would soon have been disturbed by the movement of troops, the beating of the drums, and the heavy roll of the cannon passing through the street. For the miscreants who bore sway in the city knew well that the crime which they were about to commit was viewed with horror by the great majority of the nation, and even of the Parisians, and to the last moment were afraid of a rescue. But no one could interpose between Louis and his doom; and the next intelligence of him that reached his wife, who was waiting the whole morning in painful anxiety for the summons to see him once more, was that he had perished beneath the fatal guillotine, and that she was a widow.

  CHAPTER XXXIX. The Queen is refused Leave to see Clery.-Madame Royale is taken Ill.- Plans are formed for the Queen's Escape by MM. Jarjayes, Toulan, and by the Baron de Batz.-Marie Antoinette refuses to leave her Son.-Illness of the young King.-Overthrow of the Girondins.-Insanity of the Woman Tison.-Kindness of the Queen to her.-Her Son is taken from her, and intrusted to Simon.-His Ill-treatment.-The Queen is removed to the Conciergerie.-She is tried before the Revolutionary Tribunal.-She is condemned.-Her last Letter to the Princess Elizabeth.-Her Death and Character.

  Shouts in the streets announced to her and those around her that all was over. All the morning she had alarmed the princesses by the speechless, tearless stupor into which she seemed plunged; but at last she roused herself, and begged to see Clery, who had been with Louis till he left the Temple, and who, therefore, she hoped, might have some last message for her, some last words of affection, some parting gift. And so indeed he had;[1] for the last act of Louis had been to give that faithful servant his seal for the dauphin, and his ring for the queen, with a little packet containing portions of her hair and those of his children which he had been in the habit of wearing. And he had bid him tell them all-"the queen, his dear children, and his sister-that he had promised to see them that morning, but that he had desired to save them the pain of so cruel a separation. How much," he continued, "does it cost me to go without receiving their last embraces! You must bear to them my last farewell."