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

by Susie Kelly

  On the first anniversary of the fall of the Bastille – 14th July – their captors forced the royal pair to appear at the celebrations. Anticipating that attempts would be made on their lives, they both wore protective breastplates to resist blade or bullet. Louis wore his only to put his wife’s mind at rest. By now the portrait of Charles I of England had obviously made a deep impression on him. He recognised that what had happened to England and its monarch was happening in France and would happen to him. He knew that his death was already planned, but that it would not be by assassination.

  August 10th 1792 turned up on the calendar, and with it a vast crowd of heavily armed Parisians screaming for blood, bearing down once again upon the miserable Tuileries palace. Louis dithered, dillied and dallied, waiting until the last moment before he and his family fled the Tuileries for the final time. They ran next door to the protection of the National Assembly, where there they spent 18 hours crammed into a tiny cubicle normally used by journalists.

  Behind them fierce fighting was taking place at the Tuileries between the mob and the loyal Swiss Guard. Hoping to avoid further bloodshed, Louis signed an order for the Swiss Guard to lay down their arms. It was the death warrant for his royal bodyguard. Once they surrendered they were brutally massacred and their bodies mutilated.

  Meanwhile, throughout their long and intensely uncomfortable ordeal Louis managed to chomp his way contentedly through several meals. To her friends, his wife confessed that she was much disturbed by the fact that no situation, no matter how grave, could blunt the King’s appetite. This gave an entirely false and very unfavourable impression to those who did not know him.

  As their situation became increasingly precarious, she must have been wondering just how long the nightmare was going to continue and how much worse it could get. The answer was not much longer, but very much worse.

  All these extraordinary events had happened on and around the ground on which we were standing. During her imprisonment the Queen would have walked on the same ground where we now walked. I wondered what thoughts had gone through her mind when she did so. I tried to imagine how she would have felt as the preparations for the escape had advanced. Was she was confident they would succeed, or was she was afraid? What was she thinking when she ran through the corridors and streets to find the carriage waiting to take them out of Paris on the first stage of their flight? Did Axel Fersen walk on these same paths when he came to visit her? Did they stand beside each other at a window in the palace looking down onto the gardens?

  The footsteps of the good and the great and the low and wicked had all left their imprints in the garden of the Tuileries, and the bodies of several hundred Swiss Guard had lain here in their blood.

  I felt as if we were standing on a vast stage, empty now, the cast having taken their final bow and disappeared behind the curtains. If we looked around we would see them dispersing, dressed in finery, uniforms or rags, climbing into their carriages, marching away with their pikes over their shoulders, shouting or singing, or climbing onto waiting horses and clattering away on the cobbles.

  It would be easy, but a shame to only see in the garden sculptures and trees, ponds and fountains, velvety lawns, neat paths, and views to the Arc de Triomphe. Because it is far more than that: it is the arena where one of France’s greatest dramas was enacted.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  With Their Heads Held High

  “All our life is but a going out to the place of execution, to death.” John Donne

  “When fate summons, monarchs must obey.” John Dryden

  The Chapelle Expiatoire at Square Louis XVI

  NO longer safe at the Tuileries, the prisoners were moved to the sinister Temple prison. There they would suffer their cruellest and most brutal treatment. For father and son it would be their final address.

  With the family went a handful of loyal companions including the Queen’s closest friend, the Princesse de Lamballe. Three servants accompanied them, but very quickly all except one were removed until only a single valet remained. Heavily guarded as much for their own protection as to prevent a further escape attempt, the King and Queen were free to walk in the gardens, play cards, and educate and entertain their children. Although their gaolers delighted in insulting and humiliating them as often and offensively as possible, Marie-Thérèse noted that her father ‘suffered it all with gentleness’, and her mother bore it with dignity. Not only did he have access to a fine library, but Louis’ appetite was also well catered for. A staff of thirteen ensured that his mid-day meal comprised an excellent and huge selection of dishes and wines.

  Briefly the family were able to lead a fairly undemanding life, apart from living in perpetual fear of what would happen to them next.

  They were right to be fearful, because things would soon become very nasty indeed. The Princess de Lamballe went to England in an attempt to raise support for the French royals. Against the advice of her friends she returned to France where she was arrested and taken to the La Force prison. There, refusing to denounce the monarchy, she met a most gruesome and violent death. While the King and Queen were playing cards in the afternoon they were disturbed by shouting outside the prison. Through the high window they saw the severed head of the princess being waved on a spike by a mob who wanted to show their Queen what they had done to her dearest friend.

  In their adversity the family were strong and united. The Queen and her daughter mended and patched their clothing and cleaned their rooms. Louis lamented the fact that Marie-Antoinette had been brought so low because she had married him. She responded that hers was the glory and noble honour of being the wife of one of the best and most persecuted of men. I found the mutual loyalty and support of this odd couple very touching. Each of them could have justifiably blamed the other for their dire situation.

  His wife was not blind to Louis’ weaknesses, but explained:

  ‘The King is not a coward; he possesses abundance of passive courage, but he is overwhelmed by an awkward shyness, a mistrust of himself, which proceeds from his education as much as from his disposition. He is afraid to command, and, above all things, dreads speaking to assembled numbers. He lived like a child, and always ill at ease under the eyes of Louis XV, until the age of twenty-one. This constraint confirmed his timidity. Circumstanced as we are, a few well-delivered words addressed to the Parisians, who are devoted to him, would multiply the strength of our party a hundredfold: he will not utter them.’ [Madame Campan’s Memoires of Marie Antoinette]

  France proclaimed herself a Republic on 21st September 1792. Louis was no longer a king, and with his crown gone he no longer had need of a head. He was accused of treason and sent to trial, doubtless well aware of the inevitable outcome. While he waited to learn his fate he is said to have asked his defence counsel, M. de Malesherbes:

  “Have you not met near the Temple the White Lady?”

  “What do you mean?” replied he.

  “Do you not know,” resumed the King with a smile, “that when a prince of our house is about to die, a female dressed in white is seen wandering about the palace?” [Madame Campan’s Memoires of Marie Antoinette]

  Isolated from his family, Louis spent a solitary Christmas day writing his will. On the 20th January 1793 he was allowed to see his wife, his children and sister. The following day at just after 8.00 am, apart from shedding a tear at being unable to say a final farewell to his family, he set off from the Temple to his execution. He bore himself with his habitual composure, as if he was going to play a game of cards. In the carriage with him went Henry Essex Edgeworth de Firmont, a cleric of English birth, long time friend of the royal family, and Louis’ confessor. Edgeworth was the rather reluctant vicar of Paris, a position bequeathed to him by the city’s Archbishop who had fled the country to save his own life. Like Malesherbes, Edgeworth expected to pay with his life for his loyalty to the King. He recounted Louis’ journey to the scaffold, and his execution:

  ‘The King, finding himself seated in the
carriage, where he could neither speak to me nor be spoken to without witness, kept a profound silence. I presented him with my breviary, the only book I had with me, and he seemed to accept it with pleasure: he appeared anxious that I should point out to him the psalms that were most suited to his situation, and he recited them attentively with me. The gendarmes, without speaking, seemed astonished and confounded at the tranquil piety of their monarch, to whom they doubtless never had before approached so near.

  ‘The procession lasted almost two hours; the streets were lined with citizens, all armed, some with pikes and some with guns, and the carriage was surrounded by a body of troops, formed of the most desperate people of Paris. As another precaution, they had placed before the horses a number of drums, intended to drown any noise or murmur in favour of the King; but how could they be heard? Nobody appeared either at the doors or windows, and in the street nothing was to be seen, but armed citizens –

  citizens, all rushing towards the commission of a crime, which perhaps they detested in their hearts.

  ‘The carriage proceeded thus in silence to the Place de Louis XV, and stopped in the middle of a large space that had been left round the scaffold: this space was surrounded with cannon, and beyond, an armed multitude extended as far as the eye could reach. As soon as the King perceived that the carriage stopped, he turned and whispered to me, “We are arrived, if I mistake not.” My silence answered that we were. One of the guards came to open the carriage door, and the gendarmes would have jumped out, but the King stopped them, and leaning his arm on my knee, “Gentlemen, ” said he, with the tone of majesty. “I recommend to you this good man; take care that after my death no insult be offered to him – I charge you to prevent it.” As soon as the King had left the carriage, three guards surrounded him, and would have taken off his clothes, but he repulsed them with haughtiness – he undressed himself, untied his neckcloth, opened his shirt, and arranged it himself. The guards, whom the determined countenance of the King had for a moment disconcerted, seemed to recover their audacity. They surrounded him again, and would have seized his hands. “What are you attempting? ” said the King, drawing back his hands. “To bind you, ” answered the wretches. “To bind me, ” said the King, with an indignant air. “No! I shall never consent to that: do what you have been ordered, but you shall never bind me. ”

  ‘The path leading to the scaffold was extremely rough and difficult to pass; the King was obliged to lean on my arm, and from the slowness with which he proceeded, I feared for a moment that his courage might fail; but what was my astonishment, when arrived at the last step, I felt that he suddenly let go my arm, and I saw him cross with a firm foot the breadth of the whole scaffold; silence, by his look alone, fifteen or twenty drums that were placed opposite to me; and in a voice so loud, that it must have been heard it the Pont Tournant, I heard him pronounce distinctly these memorable words: “I die innocent of all the crimes laid to my charge; I Pardon those who have occasioned my death; and I pray to God that the blood you are going to shed may never be visited on France.”

  ‘He was proceeding, when a man on horseback, in the national uniform, and with a ferocious cry, ordered the drums to beat. Many voices were at the same time heard encouraging the executioners. They seemed reanimated themselves, in seizing with violence the most virtuous of Kings, they dragged him under the axe of the guillotine, which with one stroke severed his head from his body. All this passed in a moment. The youngest of the guards, who seemed about eighteen, immediately seized the head, and showed it to the people as he walked round the scaffold; he accompanied this monstrous ceremony with the most atrocious and indecent gestures. At first an awful silence prevailed; at length some cries of “Vive la Republique!” were heard. By degrees the voices multiplied and in less than ten minutes this cry, a thousand times repeated became the universal shout of the multitude, and every hat was in the air.’

  Louis’ body was thrown into a large pit at the cemetery of the Church of the Madeleine close to the wall of the Rue d’Anjou, then smothered in quicklime. He was 39 years old.

  Edgeworth managed to escape from Paris and, eventually, from France. M. de Malesherbes was not so lucky. He had known that by acting as the King’s defence counsel he was signing his own death warrant. But could he have foreseen that before he laid his 73-year-old head on the block he would be forced to sit beside the guillotine and witness the deaths of his daughter, granddaughters and their spouses?

  When Louis went to his execution, his son the Dauphin became the de facto King of France, Louis XVII. Six months after his father’s death, he was taken from his mother to another part of the prison, and put into the care of rough guardians. He would never see any of his family again, although his mother stood for long hours at the window trying to catch sight of her son. Two years later, in his tenth year, Louis died in the Temple from illness, cruelty and neglect. Frightened, lonely, tormented, corrupted, dressed in rags and most of the time in solitary confinement in the dark. How could that have been allowed to happen to a small boy?

  Despite her dismal circumstances and prematurely white hair, Marie Antoinette had many admirers, even amongst those who had once been her fiercest enemies.

  ‘As soon as the most violent Jacobins had an opportunity of seeing the Queen near at hand, of speaking to her, and of hearing her voice, they became her most zealous partisans; and even when she was in the prison of the Temple several of those who had contributed to place her there perished for having attempted to get her out again.’ [Madame Campan: Memoirs of Marie Antoinette.]

  She had always inspired love and admiration among many men and women who knew her. One particular gentleman had stalked her devotedly for over ten years. Slightly barmy M. Castelnaux declared himself to be her lover and popped up wherever she went, whether it was at one of the palaces, the theatre or walking in her garden. Told that his constant attentions were unwelcome to the Queen, he promised to desist. However, half an hour later he retracted, saying that his love for her was too strong to deny him her presence. She was generous enough to tolerate his tiresome attentions, and when he learned of her arrest he tried to starve himself to death.

  More than once when facing hostile crowds Marie Antoinette’s dignity and humour won them over. Men were still prepared to risk their lives attempting to rescue her. But their plans were always discovered, leading to further punishment and deprivation for the Queen and making her situation more wretched.

  They came to the Temple at 2.00 in the morning on 2nd August 1793 to waken her and tell her she was to be taken and tried before the Revolutionary Tribunal. Saying farewell to her daughter and her sister-in-law, she collected a small bundle of clothes and went without protest to her next address – the notorious Conciergerie.

  We did not go to the Temple. It was demolished on Napoléon’s orders to prevent it becoming a place of pilgrimage for royalists. I wish the French hadn’t demolished so many historical buildings. Now it is merely the name of a station on the Metro. Surely the ghosts of the White Lady and a little boy must lurk there. Instead we set sail for the Conciergerie.

  From the Batobus our first view of the building quite startled me. I had visualised a sinister place of grimy stones and mean proportions. But reclining beside the river the long building with its witchetty-hatted turrets looks nowhere as grim as I expected. It is rather handsome.

  Terry opted to sit in the sun at a nearby café while I visited Marie-Antoinette’s last home. Although he had fairly patiently indulged my whim to follow the path of the unfortunate woman, he didn’t want to stand in the long and good-natured queue shuffling towards the ticket office. When I pushed through the heavy door, the interior was as much of a surprise as the outside. Far from being dank and slimy-walled, the Guard Room and the Hall of the Men at Arms are beautiful examples of Gothic architecture. Beneath a vaulted ceiling supported on elegant pillars, sunlight fell in warm rays on creamy flagstones.

  Most of my fellow queue shufflers stampeded straight thr
ough to other parts of the building. Almost alone in the two great empty halls, I tried to visualise the scenes here during The Terror. I wondered who had stood on the spot where I was now standing. There must have been sobs, entreaties, threats, bribes, hopes raised, hopes dashed. But I could pick up not a single frisson. This silent place felt as peaceful and safe as a cloister. But then, of course, I was free to walk out of here at any time I wished. The building looked and felt as if it had been vigorously scrubbed and polished to remove any trace of the ignoble events that had taken place there, to erase them forever.

  The most powerful and feared figures of the Revolutionary tribunals, whose names turned people’s blood to ice, had zealously despatched nearly 3,000 victims from here to the guillotine. What terror, hate, fear, treachery and despair these stones had witnessed. And what great reverses in fortune, and for some, almost-divine retribution. Hateful Fouquier-Tinville, blood-thirsty Robespierre, vile Hébert and vacillating Danton must all have strutted and swaggered over these stones, confident of their supreme power over the lives of their prisoners. How much less cocksure they must have been when the scales began to tilt against them, when power slipped through their fingers and they found themselves setting off in the tumbrel for their own personal appointment with the “National Razor”. Robespierre, sentenced without trial, was already half-dead of a gunshot wound when the guillotine finished him off. He faced his executioner with a blood-curdling yell. Marat, if he had been given the choice, might have preferred to lose his head ceremoniously on the scaffold rather than to die so embarrassingly, sitting in his bath with his itchy bottom. I found it most satisfying to know that these loathsome people had met such harrowing ends. Still, it needed an extreme effort to envisage such events in this elegant but sterile place.