The Valley Of Heaven And Hell_Cycling In The Shadow Of Marie Antoinette

by Susie Kelly

  Doubtless I looked rather strange, apart from my general appearance, standing on the pavement with my eyes closed and sniffing the air. A beautifully modulated voice asked if Madame was feeling unwell. When I opened my eyes Terry was fifty yards away fiddling with his camera, and a very thin, tall man with lots of wild black hair and designer stubble was looking at me with some concern. If my face wasn’t already scarlet, I would have blushed with embarrassment but I was past caring. I explained that I was merely trying to soak up some ancient atmosphere of the infamous old prison building.

  “But it was not so sinister, really,” said the tall man, switching instantly into perfect English. (So humiliating after living here for so long that a Frenchman instantly recognises from my accent that I’m English.)

  “The Bastille has a bad reputation, but it was built to protect the people of Paris – from the English,” he smiled, “during the war of one hundred years.”

  “But surely it was the worst prison in France?” I said.

  “No, not at all. In fact it was not really so bad. The people who were sent there were usually aristos, political prisoners, and their conditions were good. They could bring their own furniture and they had fine food – and wine! They lived well.”

  Well, maybe that was true. However it was a place where people could be imprisoned without knowing why or what for, just because the King so wished. If and when they were lucky enough to be released, it was only on the condition that they never talked of their arrest and imprisonment. If they did they’d be whisked back in again faster than they could say Jacques Robinson. The mysterious Man in the Iron Mask spent thirty-four years of uncomfortable captivity there until he was released by the Grim Reaper. I call that a pretty sinister kind of place. But I didn’t want to argue with this new-found friend.

  Where the grim walls and turrets once stood there is now a towering column – la Colonne de Juillet. It’s topped by a bronze sculpture of a naked, winged, and as my new friend pointed out, manifestly masculine figure known as The Spirit of Freedom. I glanced around and waved to Terry.

  “That’s my husband,” I said.

  He nodded, and continued: “Do you know what this monument means?”

  “Well, yes, it’s to commemorate the French revolution, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it is! But which one?”

  “Was there more than one?”

  “Oh, we are quite good at having revolutions! This column remembers the people who died in the revolution in 1830. But that was quite a small one, it only lasted three days and not too many people died.” [After Napoleon’s defeat and exile, the Bourbon dynasty was restored to the French throne under Louis XVI’s brother, Louis XVIII, who died in 1824. His younger brother, Charles X took over and was an unpopular monarch who abdicated and fled the country following the July 1830 revolution, called The July Revolution. His son was king Louis XIX for an ignominious 20 minutes, before he too abdicated and fled abroad. It was all rather a mess. In 1848 the then king, Louis-Phillipe 1 succeeded in sparking yet another revolution, the February Revolution, and scuttled out of France, having named his 10-year-old grandson as his successor. But by then the French had had quite enough of the monarchy.]

  I asked him if he was a historian, and he replied that he was a lover of history but that his job was something to do with the SNCF, the French national railway network.

  “It is a pity that I have to go to work today, because otherwise I would be so happy to show you and your husband,” – he nodded towards Terry, who had arrived and was wondering why I was talking to a strange man – “anywhere in Paris that interests you.”

  Terry was glaring rather belligerently. I introduced him to my friend, whose name was Arthur. When I explained that today we were interested primarily in Marie-Antoinette’s last months in Paris, he nodded.

  “It was a terrible thing, a great miscarriage of justice, I believe. But they were very bad times. So, you will visit la Conciergerie, of course?”

  “Yes, and La Chapelle Expiatoire. But first of all we’re going to les Tuileries.”

  “Did you already visit Versailles?”

  I nodded.

  “Ah, it’s very wonderful, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” I agreed politely. “It is quite spectacular.”

  He looked at his watch, and said ruefully: “I must excuse myself, because I have to be in my office. It has been a great pleasure to talk with you and to find English people who are so interested in our history. I wish you a very enjoyable stay, and many good visits today.” He loped away with a wave. What a delightful man.

  We wandered along to the Rue St Antoine, where, although it had nothing to do with Marie-Antoinette, a most dramatic episode in French history had taken place. It warranted at least a few minutes of our time. Whether you believe Nostradamus’ predictions were genuine, or merely clever, airy-fairy mumbo-jumbo that could be interpreted to fit a particular situation, I thought that he came fairly close to the mark when he foretold in 1558:

  The young lion will overcome the older one,

  On the field of combat in a single battle;

  He will pierce his eyes through a golden cage,

  Two wounds made one, then he dies a cruel death.

  Just one year later celebrations were in full swing to mark a newly signed peace treaty between France, Spain and England. Ignoring the warnings of Nostradamus and others who foresaw his death, and the entreaties of his wife, King Henri II took part in a joust. The lance of his opponent, Gabriel Montgomery, of the King’s Scottish Guards, accidentally entered the King’s golden visor. The lance splintered, piercing the King’s eye and exiting through his ear.

  Notwithstanding the attentions of the most skilful surgeons in Europe, Henri died a lengthy and agonising death. While his great love Diane de Poitiers was sidelined, his wife Catherine de Medici, breaking free from her back-room role, went to ingenious lengths to try to save him. She had surgeons experiment on the newly decapitated heads of criminals, poking into them splintered pieces of wood to try and reproduce Henri’s wounds and find a way to cure them. But his injuries were far beyond the help of man, and on the eleventh day after the event the King died. In her excellent book Catherine de Medici, Leonie Frieda gives a riveting account of the incident and the effect it would have on the future of France.

  Whilst I quickly get bored looking at historic buildings and sights per se, when I close my eyes and visualise the events that have taken place there and the characters involved, they become magical. I imagined the initial disbelief of the spectators when the King swayed in his saddle. The dawning horror as the extent of Henri’s injuries was discovered; the shock and grief of his family and mistress; the terror of his opponent when he realised the enormity of what he had done. I could picture people running in all directions, spreading the news in shouts, in whispers and in written messages. Messengers galloping to find the surgeons, and diplomats hastening to send word to their countries, already scheming and plotting how this tragedy could be turned to their advantage. And all this had happened where we were standing.

  At school history and geography were my most hated classes. Both teachers were patently bored by their own subjects and their pupils. It was only the spotty swots who applied themselves to learning the long lists of dry facts, names and dates that held no interest or inspiration for those of us who were not by nature academics. But to stand on the spot where an event of such dramatic and historic enormity had taken place, and to let my mind travel back to that time makes my hair tingle and stand on end. Absolutely thrilling.

  We had agreed that we would as far as possible follow Louis and Marie-Antoinette’s trail in chronological order. We had more or less done that so far, and I wanted to continue doing so in Paris. It was from the Tuileries that she and Louis and their family had made their escape attempt, and it was to the Tuileries that they had been brought back, so that was our first call.

  Strolling along, we passed a tiny park, really no more than a handkerc
hief-sized patch of grass with a couple of benches shaded by trees. There a handsome man in a crumpled cream linen suit and Panama hat sat mournfully playing a flute as if he was the saddest man in the world. His plaintive notes trailed behind us like small lost children.

  Across the river from the resplendent Town Hall we could see the Conciergerie, and Terry said it would make sense go straight there as it was so close. I insisted that we had to see places in the correct order. Terry sighed and said that he thought that was a daft idea, but he couldn’t persuade me to change my mind. Nobody can once it’s made up. It was rather illogical, I knew, but something inside me said that it was important for this personal pilgrimage to be done in the correct sequence.

  We took the Batobus down the Seine. It was a heavenly day of cloudless blue skies and brilliant sunshine. As we motored along I noticed that my knees were turning an interesting shade of pink that harmonised with the various red shades on my upper half, and contrasted dramatically with the startling pallor of my lower legs.

  At the Louvre we disembarked and walked to the Tuileries gardens. After her husband’s shocking death, Catherine de Medici commissioned the building of the Tuileries Palace on the site of an old tile factory from which it took its name. The gloomy great building had been highly significant in the story of Louis and Marie-Antoinette so I was irritated that like the Bastille, angry Parisians had wrecked and burned it during one of their sporadic insurrections. The remains were demolished in 1883. There must have been restless spirits in the building. Some of the ill-fated material found its way to the island of Corsica where it was used to build the Château de la Punta, which seems to have inherited the curse of the palace. Ravaged by fire several times, in 1978 it suffered such severe damage that it has been uninhabited ever since.

  Since 2003 there have been discussions about rebuilding the Tuileries; the cost would be enormous, but who cares? Let’s have it back again. It’s an integral part of the turbulent history of Paris.

  After their brief overnight stop and early morning departure from Meaux, the Royal captives continued their journey to Paris. Notices throughout the city warned: ‘He who applauds the King will be beaten. He who insults him will be hanged.’ During the return journey one of the three deputies, Antoine Barnave, an influential member of the assembly, became increasingly well disposed towards his charges.

  ‘At the moment of entering Paris, Barnave claimed the principal seat. It was no longer the place of honour; it was the place of danger. If a fanatic fired on the King, which was not likely, or at the Queen, which was possible, he would be there to receive the bullet.’ [Alexandre Dumas ‘The Flight To Varennes’]

  Prepared to risk his life for the King and Queen, Barnave’s royalist sympathies would cost him his head in 1793, when he’d climb the steps to the scaffold.

  Louis noted in his diary in his habitually concise fashion: ‘Left Meaux at half-past six. Reached Paris at eight, without halting on the way.’

  His daughter, Marie Thérèse described their day rather more eloquently:

  ‘We started at six, and though it is only ten leagues from Meaux to Paris, we did not reach Bondy, the last post, till midday nor the Tuileries till half-past seven at night. At Bondy the populace showed its desire to massacre our three Gardes du Corps, and my father did all be could to save them, in which, it must be owned, the deputies eagerly seconded him. The crowd we met along the road was innumerable, so that we could scarcely advance. The insults with which the people loaded us were our only food throughout the day. In the faubourgs of Paris the crowd was even greater, and among all those persons we saw but one woman fairly well-dressed who showed by her tears the interest she took in us.

  ‘On the Place Louis XV. was M. de la Fayette, apparently at the summit of joy at the success of the blow he had just struck; he was there, surrounded by a people submissive to his orders; he could have destroyed my father at once, but he preferred to save him longer in order that he might serve his own designs. We were made to drive through the garden of the Tuileries, surrounded by weapons of all sorts, and muskets which almost touched us. When the deputies said anything to the people they were instantly obeyed, and it is no doubt to their intentions (good or bad) that my father owed his preservation at that moment; for had those deputies not been with us it is more than likely we should then have been murdered. It was they also who saved the Gardes du Corps. On arriving at the Tuileries and getting out of the carriage, we were almost carried off our feet by the enormous crowd that filled the staircase. My father went up first, with my mother and my brother. As for me, I was to go with my aunt, and one of the deputies took me in his arms to carry me up. In vain did I cry for my aunt; the noise was so dreadful she could not hear me. At last we were all reunited in the King’s room, where were nearly all the deputies of the National Assembly, who, however, seemed very civil and did not stay long.

  ‘My father entered the inner rooms with his family, and seeing them all in safety, I left him and went to my own apartments, being quite worn out with fatigue and inanition. I did not know until the next morning what took place that evening. Guards were placed over the whole family, with orders not to let them out of sight, and to stay night and day in their chambers. My father had them in his room at night, but in the daytime they were stationed in the next room. My mother would not allow them to be in the room where she slept with a waiting-woman, but they stayed in the adjoining room with the doors open. My brother had them also, night and day; but my aunt and I had none. M. de la Fayette even proposed to my aunt to leave the Tuileries, if she wished to do so, but she replied that she would never separate from the King.’

  Observers reported that the King showed no sign of distress, but imperturbable as ever enjoyed chicken for dinner. His wife took a bath to wash away the grime of the journey. Under the new regime she was required to leave the bathroom door open. There was a visible indication of how the trauma of their capture had affected her. Her once-blonde hair had, during the previous five days turned white.

  In her new circumstances the Queen had to become something that by nature she was not. She had to develop courage in order to cope with the family’s new situation. Her husband was regarded as a benevolent simpleton. It was she who must use her wits and charm, and try to learn the art of statesmanship to protect her family. She had to become the man her husband wasn’t. From a frivolous and carefree creature she transformed herself into a woman of dignity and pride.

  In a sketch made in 1791 Marie-Antoinette is unrecognisable from the previous portraits of an overdressed and rather vacant-faced doll. It shows a serious and very regal looking woman whose expression seems to indicate that she already knows how her story is going to end.

  Safely in Belgium, the King’s two horrid brothers rejoiced in his capture, each with their eyes fixed on the crown of France. Fersen wrote: ‘There has been the most unseemly joy manifested because the King was taken prisoner; the Count of Artois is positively radiant.’

  Marie-Antoinette had written to Fersen to reassure him that she was safe. She warned him not to return to Paris as his part in the escape attempt was known and he would be arrested immediately if he was seen. But in February 1792 he did return in disguise and managed to get into the Tuileries. He recorded in his diary that he spent the night and the following day with the Queen in her apartments. It was the last time they would see each other, and the date was February 14th – Valentine’s day.

  Assassination attempts on Marie-Antoinette were thwarted. A man carrying a knife was discovered in the corridor outside her room one night. It was suspected that her food may be poisoned. ‘The Austrian’, ‘the bitch’, ‘Madame Deficit’, ‘the lesbian’, ‘the whore’, as she was variously named, knew that it was she who was the target of the people’s hatred far more than the King. She was perfect fodder for the gutter press, the 18th century red-tops, and no accusation was regarded as too vile to level at her.

  Political events, both domestic and foreign, which were beyon
d their control, kept nudging the royals closer and closer towards their fate. In response to warnings by Marie-Antoinette’s brother, the Holy Roman Emperor, that any harm done to the King would have severe consequences, France declared war on Austria. Emigrés who had escaped the Terror plotted and planned to restore Louis to the throne. These actions succeeded only in further angering and alarming the Revolutionary citizens.

  On 20th June of 1792, the first anniversary of their escape attempt, a crowd stormed the Tuileries. Marie-Thérèse remembered:

  ‘Suddenly we saw the populace forcing the gates of the courtyard and rushing to the staircase of the château. It was a horrible sight to see, and impossible to describe – that of these people, with fury in their faces, armed with pikes and sabres, and pell-mell with them women half unclothed, resembling Furies.’

  Madame Campan describes the incident similarly, adding:

  ‘The horde passed in files .. the sort of standards which they carried were symbols of the most atrocious barbarity. There was one representing a gibbet, to which a dirty doll was suspended; the words ‘Marie Antoinette à la lanterne’ were written beneath it. Another was a board, to which a bullock’s heart was fastened, with ‘Heart of Louis XVI’ written round it.’

  With splendid courage and sang froid, almost alone Louis faced these ghouls who had been fuelled with alcohol and primed to assassinate him. Whilst they rampaged through the palace screaming the vilest insults at the royal family he humoured them – putting on the silly red cap that was their symbol. He remained unruffled and courteous in the face of the contempt and jeers of his subjects until the mob eventually disbanded.

  The family lived in continual anxiety and fear knowing that their situation would continue to worsen. Marie-Antoinette, like her husband, had been planning to write her memoirs. Following the attack of 20th June she burned many of the letters and reports that she had collected together. What a loss! What would historians give now to read their stories in their own words, and what an insight it would have given us into their thoughts and feelings.