Marie Antoinette

by Antonia Fraser

  In the meanwhile nothing that had happened so far had alleviated the food crisis. There were bread riots in Versailles itself where a baker was half-hanged on 13 September for allegedly favouring his richer customers with better-quality loaves. In Paris, approaching starvation made the women increasingly aggressive on behalf of their families. Mayor Bailly at the Hôtel de Ville had to receive angry deputations on the subject of the bakers from women who shouted publicly that “men understood nothing.”30 These demonstrations existed in parallel with the discussions of the National Assembly on the King’s surviving powers. Should he have an absolute right of veto on legislation or was the legislative power of the Assembly paramount? And there were, of course, many shades of opinion in between. What both movements had in common was a growing feeling that matters would go better if the King, absent since 17 July, returned to Paris.

  There were changes. The vanishing of the Duchesse de Polignac, Royal Governess for nearly seven years, meant that she had to be replaced in this position of such vital concern to the royal mother. The new choice was summed up by the Queen herself. She was confiding her children to “Virtue,” whereas with the Duchesse they had been confided to “Friendship.” The Marquise de Tourzel was at the age of forty a widow with five children; her husband, like herself a devoted adherent of the royal family, had been killed in 1786 while out hunting with Louis XVI, but they had enjoyed twenty years of perfect conjugal felicity. A strong character as well as a famously upright one, the Marquise de Tourzel would be nicknamed “Madame Severe” by the lively little Dauphin although he also loved her, and in particular he adored her eighteen-year-old daughter Pauline who accompanied Madame Severe into the royal household.

  The Marquise’s rectitude was, however, accompanied by two absolute beliefs. The first concerned the divinely ordained place of royalty in the world, at the head of a hierarchy where others also had their allotted places. Her motto was “Faithful to God and the King,” the latter being only a little lower than the former. It was this consciousness, as well as the kindnesses she had received from the King and Queen, that made the Marquise accept the post, although she foresaw dangers ahead that might threaten Pauline. The second belief concerned “the precious trust” that she personally had been given by their “august” Majesties. As a result, the Marquise intended to dedicate her life to the royal children she called “divinities.”31 In 1789 this concept of duty, which meant she must always be at the Dauphin’s side, seemed to have no disadvantages.*71

  The arrival of the new Royal Governess gave Marie Antoinette an opportunity to display her common-sense approach as a mother in a long memorandum on the subject of her son’s character.32 It was not a starry-eyed document and the child delineated was not quite the healthy, merry little peasant boy of her letters to Princess Louise of Hesse-Darmstadt. One may discern in it not only Marie Antoinette’s dissatisfaction with the way her husband had been brought up (a dissatisfaction that he himself shared) but also, perhaps, memories of her own less than helpful upbringing, an injudicious mixture of spoiling and neglect. Certainly the admonition to the Royal Governess not to neglect Marie Thérèse entirely for her brother—a temptation generally felt by servants where the male heir is concerned—may also have its roots in Maria Teresa’s favouritism of Marie Christine. The very frankness of the document also makes it valuable as a clue to certain aspects of Louis Charles’s nature, already present at the age of four and a half.

  The Queen described Louis Charles’s chief fault as being a strong tendency to indiscretion. He would repeat all too easily what he had overheard and at the same time, without exactly meaning to lie, he would embellish the truth still further with things that he imagined he had witnessed. The Marquise de Tourzel was to take particular care to curb the Dauphin in this weakness. He was also nervous, with a hatred of loud noises; in particular the barking of the many Versailles dogs, if allowed to come too close, frightened him. The little boy was, however, loyal, affectionate and especially fond of his sister; if he was given anything, he immediately asked for the same gift to be bestowed on her. But Louis Charles was also quick-tempered and hated to have to say the word “sorry” above all things, going to great lengths to avoid it. Yet as his mother admitted, this “inordinate pride” in himself might one day be to the Dauphin’s advantage if he conducted himself well; she was presumably thinking of his father’s unfortunate lack of self-esteem.

  The scene was set for the events of October 1789, when the inviolate image of the French monarchy—that image cherished, for example, by the dutiful Marquise de Tourzel—was shattered for ever. Tragically, it was the very attempt to prove the security of the royal family in such an ominous situation that turned out to be the spark that led to the conflagration. The Royal Flanders Regiment was brought from Douai to Versailles and on 1 October a banquet was given in the theatre at Versailles, at which the King’s bodyguards fraternized with the new arrivals, being seated alternately. The King and Queen, the latter with her new policy of retirement, did not, however, plan to attend. It was only the wild enthusiasm of the soldiers that prompted an unwise courtier to suggest that they appeared.33

  So not only Louis XVI, but Marie Antoinette decided to be present. The Queen was dressed in white and pale blue, with matching feathers in her hair and a turquoise necklace. She carried Louis Charles, wearing a lilac-coloured sailor suit, in her arms and led Marie Thérèse, in green and white, by the hand. The young Pauline de Tourzel never forgot the enthusiasm that greeted her, the cheers, the tears, the cries of loyalty and devotion . . . As Saint-Priest wrote later in his memoirs, the whole scene was inspired by “wine and zeal.”34 Appropriately enough, as it seemed at the time, it was a celebrated song by the composer Grétry from his opera of 1784, Richard Coeur-de-Lion, that provided the theme of the evening. With the words “O Richard! O mon roi!” the minstrel Blondel called for his imprisoned master, and it now found an echo in a mass of loyal hearts.

  Unfortunately the whole occasion was transformed in the Parisian press the next day into something that was a deliberate affront to the new national regime. “In the course of an orgy,” according to the revolutionary newspaper L’Ami du Peuple, the tricolour cockade had been trampled underfoot. This was a charge strongly denied by those who were there, although Madame Campan, a witness at the behest of the Queen, admitted that certain cockades worn by the few National Guards present were turned inside out to show their white linings; white being the royalist colour.35 The fervent songs of Grétry and others were construed as incitements to counter-revolution. Thus were the flames lit.

  On Monday, 5 October, the routine at Versailles still had a semblance of normality. The Queen was at the Petit Trianon. Count Fersen had arrived at Versailles a week earlier, to spend the winter there in a house he had acquired in the town. It is therefore not improbable that he was present at some point with the Queen on what was to be the very last day she spent in her “pleasure house.” The King was out shooting in the woods above Meudon and was having some good sport. He had killed some eighty-one head when he received an urgent message from Saint-Priest as Minister of the Royal Household, and, as his Journal recorded, this prowess was “interrupted by events.”36 The events in question concerned a march of market-women who had set out from Paris at ten o’clock that morning. They were intending to demand grain or flour from their sovereign at Versailles, as well as his assent, hitherto denied, to certain constitutional changes proposed by the Assembly which would have formally diminished his authority (Louis argued for seeing the new Constitution as a whole). The King turned immediately for home at top speed, galloping all the way up the Grand Avenue. He was back by three o’clock. At the same time a message was sent to the Queen, and she too returned. The Dauphin’s daily outing in his carriage was cancelled.

  A series of agitated discussions took place as to how the royal family should prepare for the expected invasion. They knew the mob to be surging towards them, undaunted by patches of thick fog on the road and hea
vy downpours of rain. Would it not be more secure to decamp to Rambouillet, twice the distance of Versailles from Paris and far more secure than the latter ever-open palace? There was a strong body of opinion that the Queen and children at least should be transported away; this would not be difficult to achieve, since, as the Marquise de Tourzel pointed out later, the horses were still hitched to the Dauphin’s carriage. François Hüe, the Dauphin’s premier valet for the last two years, an intelligent and loving man, thought the advice to go to Rambouillet, urged by Saint-Priest, was good: “If only it had been God’s will that it should be followed.” It was Marie Antoinette who initially rejected the idea and for the same reasons that she had elected to remain in France in July: her place was at the King’s side. Louis XVI, for his part, could not make up his mind to flee, expressing deep reluctance to become a “fugitive King.”37

  No decision had been made by the time the first market-women reached Versailles at about four o’clock, with the main body arriving between five and six. A message from La Fayette—that he was bringing his National Guards to secure the situation—was also received about six, giving the royal family the impression that they still had an opportunity to reconsider their position. When a deputation of market-women made its way to the Oeil-de-Boeuf antechamber of the King’s apartments, Louis was conferring with his ministers. In the end he consented to receive a single woman whose appearance and dress, according to one observer, indicated neither “misery nor an abject condition.” (Nonetheless, one of the strongest memories of the ten-year-old Madame Royale was of the near-nakedness of the women—she had never witnessed such utter poverty before.) This individual was certainly strong-minded enough to harangue the King on the need of the people of Paris for bread. When the King offered to tell the directors of two granaries to release all possible stores, she went away to join her comrades, only to return so as to get the King’s order in writing. He gave it to her.38

  There was now an uneasy stand-off between the seething crowds in the courtyard of Versailles and the royal family and their bodyguards. The original objective of securing food had now been overtaken by the idea of transferring the King bodily to Paris. The idea of the royal family departing for Rambouillet, now revived, was found to be impossible since all the traces of the King’s carriages in the courtyard of Versailles had been cut. At the request of the National Assembly, the King—greatly upset—did sign their preliminary decrees to do with the Constitution in an attempt to alleviate the situation.

  There were rumours that men in disguise had participated in the market-women’s march when its members had first been summoned by the tocsins in Paris. That was certainly not impossible. What was extremely unlikely was that the Duc d’Orléans himself had marched as a woman. Although contemporaries were generally convinced that he had encouraged the march, it was psychologically implausible for the Duc to adopt female dress when he was enjoying his popularity with the crowd.*72 But there were now numbers of “armed brigands” present as well as women like one Louise Renée, who was reported in the Journal de Paris as having been straightforwardly excited at the idea of going to Versailles to ask for bread. Louise, incidentally, strongly denied having ever said that “she wanted to come back with the head of the Queen on her sword”; in proof of this, she ingenuously pointed out that she did not have a sword, “only a broomstick.”40

  If Louise Renée personally did not utter threats against the Queen, there were plenty who did. The royal bodyguards were quickly alarmed by the oaths they overheard—vows to cut off Marie Antoinette’s head and worse. There were, for example, the proud declarations of the market-women that they were wearing their traditional working aprons in order to help themselves to her entrails, out of which they intended to make cockades. The Queen’s role as scapegoat for the weaknesses and failures of the monarchy as a whole had never been more evident. In the uneasy calm that spread across the palace of Versailles after midnight, when La Fayette departed, it was the Queen who recognized her peculiar vulnerability. She refused to share the apartments of the King, where she would surely have been safer, in order not to put him—and her children—in danger, but at two o’clock went to lie sleepless on her own bed. Madame Auguié, sister of Madame Campan, was in attendance with Madame Thibault. The Queen told them to go to sleep but their “feelings of attachment” to her prevented them. The Marquise de Tourzel, as was her custom, shared the Dauphin’s bedroom and was instructed in a crisis to take the little boy to his father.*73

  The attack came at about four o’clock in the morning. Madame Auguié heard yells and shouts. Afterwards Marie Antoinette believed that it was inspired by the Duc d’Orléans who wanted to have her killed at the very least. It was a view she passed on to her daughter Marie Thérèse who recorded that “the principal project [of the attack] was to assassinate my mother, on whom the Duc d’Orléans wished to avenge himself because of offences he believed he had received from her.” There was another rumour that Orléans himself, dressed in a woman’s redingote and hat, had guided the surge of people, shouting, “We’re going to kill the Queen!” But although Orléans, as his mistress Grace Elliott admitted, was “very, very violent” against the Queen, there was no need of his active participation.42 The real work of destruction had been done long before by satire, libel and rumour; Marie Antoinette had become dehumanized. The actual assault by a body of people inspiring each other with their bloodthirsty frenzy was the culmination of the process, not the start of it.

  When Madame Auguié went to the door of the antechamber leading to the guardroom, she was appalled to see a guard covered in blood who cried out to her: “Save the Queen, Madame, they are coming to assassinate her!” Now the ladies dressed their mistress with frantic haste in the exact obverse of the elaborate daily routine to which she was accustomed, in their panic leaving one ribbon of her petticoat untied. The decision was taken to flee to the safety of the King’s apartments and here the secret staircase played its part—that staircase that had been constructed years before in order that the King might make his nervous “conjugal visits” in more privacy. Scarcely had the Queen left than the howling mob, having put to death two of the bodyguards, broke in. According to several accounts, they pierced the Queen’s great bed with their pikes, either to make sure she was not hiding or as a symbolic act of defiance.43

  It can never be known for sure what they would have done if the bed had still had its royal occupant. After all, it took only one of the invaders to carry out the demonic threats that they were all making for the situation to ignite. The temperament of any crowd is uncertain and this one had just killed two people. Marie Antoinette’s absolute conviction that her assassination had been intended—which marked her for the rest of her life, becoming as formative an experience in its own way as the Diamond Necklace Affair—was therefore hardly unreasonable.*74 Marie Thérèse paid tribute later to her mother’s extraordinary courage and sang-froid throughout her ordeal; Pauline de Tourzel also always remembered her calming gestures and her kind words: “Don’t be frightened, Pauline.”45 But her outwardly brave demeanour coexisted with an inward terror from which she never totally recovered.

  Once the royal family were gathered together in the King’s apartments, he too behaving with commendable resolution, there were hasty conferences as to what to do. With the coming of day, a mass of people had assembled in the courtyard outside the balcony that led from the King’s apartments, and they demanded a royal appearance. Such had been the confusion of the night past that various members of the crowd may have believed that the Queen had been killed or wounded, or even the King; they wanted to check, as it were, the casualty list. But when the King duly appeared, accompanied by his wife and children, that was not what was desired. Marie Antoinette was not to be allowed to make the point that she was still the Mother of the Nation . . . The image was sharply rejected with cries from down below: “No children! No children!”46 Louis Charles and Marie Thérèse, already terrified by the night-time ordeal, in which they
found themselves quickly dressed and removed from their familiar apartments, were duly taken away. Marie Antoinette, very pale and uncertain whether she was supposed to appear alone in order to be shot down by an assassin, nevertheless continued to stand there.

  Soon the loudest cries drowned out all the rest. “To Paris! To Paris!” they were demanding. In view of what had happened and what was happening—the gross insults and threats to the Queen proceeding unabated from an anonymous and perhaps murderous crowd, to say nothing of his children’s security and his own—it was hard for the King to feel he had any alternative. The mob might want to separate the King from his power base at Versailles but on the other hand the National Guard promised more control in Paris than they had been able to exercise at Versailles.

  At twelve-thirty an extraordinary procession set out on the road from Versailles to Paris. It would take nearly seven hours to reach the capital. The raucous crowd cried out in joy the words of a popular song, that they were taking “the Baker, the Baker’s wife, and the Baker’s boy” to Paris, with the implication that bread would now be freely available. Yet this procession—“What a cortège! Great God!” exclaimed the King, as though in sheer disbelief—contained in its midst not only his immediate family still in France, but also the decapitated heads of the bodyguards who had been their familiar companions. The sixteen-year-old Duc de Chartres watched them go, these cousins who had been brought so low, from a balcony at Passy. He raised his eyeglass in order to make out some odd objects carried by the crowd—and found himself staring at the bloody heads.47