The Life of Marie Antoinette

by Charles Duke Yonge

  [5] Feuillet de Conches, i, p. 195.

  [6] Apparently she means the Notables and the Parliament.

  [7] The Duc de Guines.

  [8] See ante, ch. xviii.

  [9] "'Il faut,' dit-il, avec un mouvement d'impatience qui lui fit honneur, 'que, du moins, l'archeveque de Paris croie en Dieu.'"- Souvenirs par le Duc de Levis, p. 102.

  [10] The continuer of Sismondi's history, A. Renee, however, attributes the archbishop's appointment to the influence of the Baron de Breteuil.

  [11] "Son grand art consistait a parler a chacun des choses qu'il croyait qu'on ignorait."-De Levis, p. 100.

  [12] The loan he proposed in June was eighty millions (of francs); in October, that which he demanded was four hundred and forty millions.

  [13] It is worth noticing that the French people in general did not regard the power of arbitrary imprisonment exercised by their kings as a grievance. In their eyes it was one of his most natural prerogatives. A year or two before the time of which we are speaking, Dr. Moore, the author of "Zeluco," and father of Sir John Moore, who fell at Corunna, was traveling in France, and was present at a party of French merchants and others of the same rank, who asked him many questions about the English Constitution, When he said that the King of England could not impose a tax by his own authority, "they said, with some degree of satisfaction, 'Cependant c'est assez beau cela.'"... But when he informed them "that the king himself had not the power to encroach upon the liberty of the meanest of his subjects, and that if he or the minister did so, damages were recoverable in a court of law, a loud and prolonged 'Diable!' issued from every mouth. They forgot their own situation, and turned to their natural bias of sympathy with the king, who, they all seemed to think, must be the most oppressed and injured of manhood. One of them at last, addressing himself to the English politician, said, 'Tout ce que je puis vous dire, monsieur, c'est que votre pauvre roi est bien a plaindre.'"-A View of the Society and Manners in France, etc., by Dr. John Moore, vol. i., p. 47, ed. 1788.

  CHAPTER XXII. [1] Feuillet de Conches, i., p. 205.

  [2] M. Foulon was about this time made paymaster of the army and navy, and was generally credited with ability as a financier; but he was unpopular, as a man of ardent and cruel temper, and was brutally murdered by the mob in one of the first riots of the Revolution.

  [3] The king.

  [4] Necker.

  [5] Feuillet de Conches, i., p. 214.

  [6] Ibid., p. 217.

  [7] On one occasion when the Marquis de Bouille pointed out to him the danger of some of his plans as placing the higher class at the mercy of the mob, "dirige par les deux passions les plus actives du coeur humain, l'interet et l'amour propre, ... il me repondit froidement, en levant les yeux au ciel, qu'il fallait bien compter sur les vertus morales des hommes."-Memoires de M. de Bouille, p. 70; and Madame de Stael admits of her father that he was "se fiant trop, il faut l'avouer, a l'empire de la raison," and adds that he "etudia constamment l'esprit public, comme la boussole a laquelle les decisions du roi devaient se conformer."- Considerations sur la Revolution Francaise, i., pp. 171, 172.

  [8] Her exact words are "si ... il fasse reculer l'autorite du roi" (if he causes the king's authority to retreat before the populace or the Parliament).

  [9] "Histoire de Marie Antoinette," par M. Montjoye, p. 202.

  [10] Madame de Campan, p. 412.

  [11] This edict was registered in the "Chambre Syndicate," September 13th, 1787.-La Reine Marie Antoinette et la Rev. Francaise, Recherches Historiques, par le Comte de Bel-Castel, p. 246.

  [12] There is at the present moment so strong a pretension set up in many constituencies to dictate to the members whom they send to Parliament as if they were delegates, and not representatives, that it is worth while to refer to the opinion which the greatest of philosophical statesman, Edmund Burke, expressed on the subject a hundred years ago, in opposition to that at a rival candidate who admitted and supported the claim of constituents to furnish the member whom they returned to Parliament with "instructions" of "coercive authority." He tells the citizens of Bristol plainly that such a claim he ought not to admit, and never will. The "opinion" of constituents is "a weighty and respectable opinion, which a representative ought always to rejoice to hear, and which he ought most seriously to consider; but authoritative instruction, mandates issued which the member is bound blindly and implicitly to obey, to vote, and to argue for, though contrary to the clearest conviction of his judgment and his conscience; these are things utterly unknown to the laws of this land, and which arise from a fundamental mistake of the whole order and tenor of our constitution. Parliament is not a congress of embassadors from different and hostile interests...but Parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole, where not local purposes, not local prejudices ought to guide, but the general good resulting from the general reason of the whole. You choose a member indeed; but when you have chosen him, he is not member of Bristol, but he is a member of Parliament."-General Election Speech at the Conclusion of the Poll at Bristol, November 3d, 1774, Burke's Works, vol. iii., pp. 19, 20, ed. 1803.

  [13] De Tocqueville considers the feudal system in France in many points more oppressive than that of Germany.-Ancien Regime, p. 43.

  [14] Silence des grenouilles. Arthur Young, "Travels in France during 1787, '88, '89," p. 537. It is singular proof how entirely research into the condition of the country and the people of France had been neglected both by its philosophers and its statesmen, that there does not seem to have been any publication in the language which gave information on these subjects. And this work of Mr. Young's is the one to which modern French writers, such as M. Alexis de Tocqueville, chiefly refer.

  [15] "The lettres de cachet were carried to an excess hardly credible; to the length of being sold, with blanks, to be filled up with names at the pleasure of the purchaser, who was thus able, in the gratification of private revenge, to tear a man from the bosom of his family, and bury him in a dungeon, where he would exist forgotten and die unknown."-A. Young, p. 532. And in a note he gives an instance of an Englishman, named Gordon, who was imprisoned in the Bastile for thirty years without even knowing the reason of his arrest.

  [16] Arthur Young, writing January 10th, 1790, identifies Les Enrages with the club afterward so infamous as the Jacobins. "The ardent democrats who have the reputation of being so much republican in principle that they do not admit any political necessity for having even the name of the king, are called the Enrages. They have a meeting at the Jacobins', the Revolution Club which assembles every night in the very room in which the famous League was formed in the reign of Henry III." (p. 267).

  [17] M. Droz asserts that a collector of such publications bought two thousand five hundred in the last three months of 1788, and that his collection was far from complete.-Histoire de Louis XVI., ii., p. 180.

  [18] "Tout auteur s'erige en legislateur."-Memorial of the Princes to the King, quoted in a note to the last chapter of Sismondi's History, p. 551, Brussels ed., 1849.

  [19] In reality the numbers were even more in favor of the Commons: the representatives of the clergy were three hundred and eight, and those of the nobles two hundred and eighty-five, making only five hundred and ninety-three of the two superior orders, while the deputies of the Tiers- Etat were six hundred and twenty-one.-Souvenirs de la Marquise de Crequy, vii., p. 58.

  [20] "Se levant alors, 'Non,' dit le roi, 'ce ne peut etre qu'a Versailles, a cause des chasses.'"-LOUIS BLANC, ii., p. 212, quoting Barante.

  [21] "La reine adopta ce dernier avis [that the States should meet forty or sixty leagues from the capital], et elle insista aupres du roi que l'on s'eloignat de l'immense population de Paris. Elle craignait des lors que le peuple n'influencat les deliberations des deputes."-MADAME DE CAMPAN, ch 83.

  [22] Chambrier, i., p. 562.

  CHAPTER XXIII. [1] It was called "L'insurrection du Faubourg St. Antoine."

  [2] The best account of this riot is
to be found in Dr. Moore's "Views of the Causes and Progress of the French Revolution," i., p. 189.

  [3] Madame de Campan specially remarks that the disloyal cry of "Vive le Duc d'Orleans" came from "les femmes du peuple" (ch. xiii.).

  [4] Afterward Louis Philippe, King of the French.

  [5] "View of the Causes and Progress of the French Revolution," by Dr. Moore, i., p. 144.

  [6] The dauphin was too ill to be present. The children were Madame Royale and the Duc de Normandie, who became dauphin the next month by the death of his elder brother.

  [7] "Aucun nom propre, excepte le sien, n'etait encore celebre dans les six cents deputes du Tiers."-Considerations sur la Revolution Francaise, pp. 186, 187

  [8] In the first weeks of the session he told the Count de la Marck, "On ne sortira plus de la sans un gouvernement plus ou moins semblable a celui d'Angleterre."-Correspondance entre le comte de la Marck, i., p. 67.

  [9] He employed M. Malouet, a very influential member of the Assembly, as his agent to open his views to Necker, saying to him, "Je m'adresse donc a votre probite. Vous etes lie avec MM. Necker et de Montmorin, vous devez savoir ce qu'ils veulent, et s'ils ont un plan; si ce plan est raisonnable je le defendrai."-Correspondance de Mirabeau et La Marck, i., p. 219.

  [10] There is some uncertainty about Mirabeau's motives and connections at this time. M. de Bacourt, the very diligent and judicious editor of that correspondence with De la Marck which has been already quoted, denies that Mirabeau ever received money from the Duc d'Orleans, or that he had any connection with his party or his views. The evidence on the other side seems much stronger, and some of the statements of the Comte de la Marck contained in that volume go to exculpate Mirabeau from all complicity in the attack on Versailles on the 9th of October, which seems established by abundant testimony.

  CHAPTER XXIV. [1] A letter of Madame Roland dated the 26th of this very month, July, 1789, declares that the people "are undone if the National Assembly does not proceed seriously and regularly to the trial of the illustrious heads [the king and queen], or if some generous Decius does not risk his life to take theirs."

  [2] This story reached even distant province. On the 24th of July Arthur Young, being at Colmar, was assured at the table-d'hote "That the queen had a plot, nearly on the point of execution, to blow up the National Assembly by a mine, and to march the army instantly to massacre all Paris." A French officer presumed but to doubt of the truth of it, and was immediately overpowered with numbers of tongues. A deputy had written it; they had seen the letter. And at Dijon, a week later, he tells us that "the current report at present, to which all possible credit is given, is that the queen has been convicted of a plot to poison the king and monsieur, and give the regency to the Count d'Artois, to set fire to Paris, and blow up the Palais Royal by a mine."-ARTHUR YOUNG'S Travels, etc., in France, pp. 143, 151.

  [3] "Car des ce moment on menacait Versailles d'une incursion de gens armes de Paris."-MADAME DE CAMPAN, ch. xiv.

  [4] Lacretelle, vol. vii., p. 105.

  [5] She meant to say, "Messieurs, je viens remettre entre vos mains l'epouse et la famille de votre souverain. Ne souffrez pas que l'on desunisse sur la terre ce qui a ete uni dans le ciel."-MADAME DE CAMPAN, ch. xiv.

  [6] Napoleon seems to have formed this opinion of his political views: "Selon M. Gourgaud, Buonaparte, causant a Ste. Helene le traitait avec plus de mepris [que Madame de Stael]. 'La Fayette etait encore un autre niais. Il etait nullement taille pour le role qu'il avait a jouer.... C'etait un homme sans talents, ni civils, ni militaires; esprit borne, caractere dissimule, domine par des idees vagues de liberte mal digerees chez lui; mal concues.'"-Biographie Universelle.

  [7] In his Memoirs he boasts of the "gaucherie de ses manieres qui ne se plierent jamais aux graces de la Cour," p. 7.

  [8] See her letter to Mercy, without date, but, apparently written a day or two after the king's journey to Paris, Feuillet de Conches, i., p. 238.

  [9] "Souvenirs de Quarante Ans" (by Madame de Tourzel's daughter), p. 30.

  [10] Feuillet de Conches, i., p. 240.

  CHAPTER XXV. [1] "Memoires de la Princesse de Lamballe," i., p. 342.

  [2] Les Gardes du Corps.

  [3] Louis Blanc, iii., p. 156, quoting the Procedure du Chatelet.

  [4] "Souvenirs de la Marquise de Crequy," vol. vii, p. 119.

  [5] There is some uncertainty where La Fayette slept that night. Lacretelle says it was at the "Maison du Prince de Foix, fort eloignee du chateau." Count Dumas, meaning to be as favorable to him as possible, places him at the Hotel de Noailles, which is "not one hundred paces from the iron gates of the chapel" ("Memoirs of the Count Dumas," p. 159). However, the nearer he was to the palace, the more incomprehensible it is that he should not have reached the palace the next morning till nearly eight o'clock, two hours after the mob had forced their entrance into the Cour des Princes.

  [6] Weber, i., p. 218.

  [7] Le Boulanger (the king), la Boulangere (the queen), et le petit mitron (the dauphin).

  [8] "Souvenirs de la Marquise de Crequy," vii., p. 123.

  [9] Weber, ii, p. 226.

  [10] "Souvenirs de Quarante Ans," p. 47.

  CHAPTER XXVI. [1] Madame de Campan, ch. xv.

  [2] F. de Conches, p. 264.

  [3] Madam de Campan, ch. xv.

  [4] See a letter from M. Huber to Lord Auckland, "Journal and Correspondence of Lord Auckland," ii, p. 365.

  [5] La Marck et Mirabeau, ii., pp. 90-93, 254.

  [6] "Arthur Young's Travels," etc., p. 264; date, Paris, January 4th, 1790.

  [7] Feuillet de Conches, iii., p. 229.

  [8] Joseph died February 20th.

  [9] "Je me flatte que je la meriterai [l'amitie et confiance] de votre part lorsque ma facon de penser et mon tendre attachement pour vous, votre epoux, vos enfants, et tout ce qui peut vous interesser vous seront mieux connus."-ARNETH, p. 120. Leopold had been for many years absent from Germany, being at Florence as Grand Duke of Tuscany.

  [10] Feuillet de Conches, iii., p. 260.

  [11] As early as the second week in October (La Marck, p. 81, seems to place the conversation even before the outrages of October 5th and 6th; but this seems impossible, and may arise from his manifest desire to represent Mirabeau as unconnected with those horrors), Mirabeau said to La Marck, "Tout est perdu, le roi et la reine y periront et vous le verrez, la populace battra leurs cadavres."

  [12] Lese-nation.

  CHAPTER XXVII. [1] Arthur Young's "Journal," January 4th, 1790, p. 251.

  [2] Feuillet de Conches, i., p. 315.

  [3] "Le mal deja fait est bien grave, et je doute que Mirabeau lui-meme puisse reparer celui qu'on lui a laisse faire."-Mirabeau et La Marck, i., p. 100.

  [4] La Marck et Mirabeau, i., p. 315.

  [5] Ibid., p. 111.

  [6] Feuillet de Conches, i., p. 345.

  [7] Mirabeau et La Marck, i., p. 125.

  [8] He alludes to Maria Teresa's appearance at Presburg at the beginning of the Silesian war.

  [9] "Il lui [a l'Assemblee] importait de faire une epreuve sur toutes les Gardes Nationales de France, d'animer ce grand corps dont tous les membres etaient encore epars et incoherents, de leur donner une meme impulsion.... Enfin, de faire sous les yeux de l'Europe une imposante revue des force qu'elle pourrait un jour opposer a des rois inquiets ou courrouces."- LACRETELLE, vii., p. 359.

  CHAPTER XXVIII. [1] We learn from Dr. Moore that there was a leader with five subaltern officers and one hundred and fifty rank and file in each gallery of the chamber; that the wages of the latter were from two to three francs a day; the subaltern had ten francs, the leaders fifty. The entire expense was about a thousand francs a day, a sum which strengthens the suspicion that the pay-master (originally, at least) was the Duc d'Orleans.-DR. MOORE'S View of the Causes, etc., of the French Revolution, i., p. 425.

  [2] Mirabeau et La Marck, ii., p. 47.

  [3] Feuillet de Conches, i., p. 352.

  [4] Marie Antoinette to
Mercy, Feuillet de Conches, i., p. 355.

  [5] Ibid., i., p. 365.

  [6] Arneth, p. 140.

  [7] It is remarkable that he, like one or two of the Girondin party, belonged by birth to the Huguenot persuasion, and Marat had studied medicine at Edinburgh.

  [8] The Marquise de Brinvilliers had been executed for poisoning several of her own relations in the reign of Louis XIV.

  [9] Madame de Campan, ch. xvii.; Chambrier, ii., p. 12.

  [10] He said to La Marck, "Aucun homme seul ne sera capable de ramener les Francais an bon sens, le temps seul peut retablir l'ordre dans les esprits," etc., etc.- Mirabeau et La Marck, i., p. 147.

  [11] Feuillet de Conches, i., p, 376.

  [12] Marie Antoinette to Leopold, date December 11th, 1790, Arneth, p. 143.

  CHAPTER XXIX. [1] The Marshal de Bouille, who was La Fayette's cousin, says, in October of this year, "L'eveque de Pamiers me fit le tableau de la situation malheureux de ce prince et de la famille royale ... que la rigueur et durete de La Fayette, devenu leur geolier, rendent de jour en jour plus insupportable."-Memories de De Bouille, pp. 175, 181. And in June he had remarked, "Que sa popularite (de La Fayette) dependait plutot de la captivite du roi, qu'il tenait prisonnier, et qui etait sous sa garde, que de sa force personnelle, qui n'avait plus d'autre appui que la milice Parisienne."

  [2] Ibid., p. 130.

  [3] The letter to the King of Prussia is given by Lamartine; its date is December 3d, 1790.-Histoire des Girondins, book v., Sec. 12.

  [4] Mercy to Marie Antoinette, from The Hague, December 17th, 1790, Feuillet de Conches, i., p. 398.

  [5] Feuillet de Conches, i., p. 401.

  [6] Ibid., p. 403, date December 27th, 1790.

  [7] "Mirabeau et La Marck," ii., pp. 57-61.

  [8] Letter to the queen, date February 19th, 1791; "Correspondance de Mirabeau et La Marck," ii., p. 229.

  [9] "Mirabeau et La Marck," ii., pp. 153, 194, et passim.

  [10] "Souvenirs de Quarante Ans," p. 54.

  [11] "Mirabeau aurait prefere que Louis XVI. sortit publiquement, et en roi, M. de Bouille pensait de meme."-Mirabeau et La Marck, i., p. 172.