Marie Antoinette: The Journey

by Antonia Fraser

As a further precaution, they came for Marie Antoinette at the dead hour when humanity’s resistance is at its lowest, two o’clock in the morning. The Queen had undressed. As a foretaste of what was to come, she was not allowed the luxury of dressing in private; the municipals, headed by the once compliant Michonis, insisted on being in attendance, as though this frail, unarmed, middle-aged woman could somehow elude them. Marie Antoinette listened to the decree of the Convention against her without any visible emotion. She was then permitted to make up a little bundle of necessities, including a handkerchief and some smelling-salts. Marie Antoinette’s last instruction to Marie Thérèse was to obey her aunt in all things and treat her as a second mother. On her passage downwards—Madame was finally coming down from her Tower—Marie Antoinette banged her head hard on the last and lowest beam. She was asked whether she was hurt. The former Queen replied blankly that she felt no pain at all.34

  So the heavily armed party crossed the silent Temple gardens and went back into the palace itself, where that uncomfortable dinner had taken place on the first night of their imprisonment on 13 August 1792, a moment when Marie Antoinette still believed this princely residence was to be their prison. At the steps of the palace, there were two or three ordinary hackney carriages waiting and a body of soldiers. Marie Antoinette was conveyed as part of a strongly guarded cortège through the sleeping city, over the Pont Notre-Dame into the Conciergerie itself, beside the Palais de Justice. Her guards knocked loudly on the door with their bayonets.

  It was the turnkey Louis Larivière who answered. He was extremely sleepy but even so he recognized the former Queen, all in black and dramatically pale, since as a boy he had once worked at Versailles as a pastry-cook. The jailer-registrar either did not or would not perform a similar feat of recognition. It was his duty to admit “Prisoner no. 280,” accused of having conspired against France. When he asked the new inmate for her name, she simply replied, “Look at me.” One assumes that this answer sprang not so much from hauteur, as from the former Queen’s inability to frame a suitable reply. Was she to be Marie Antoinette d’Autriche et Lorraine? Cidevant Queen of France? Or Antoinette Capet? The first two answers would have been unacceptable to her jailers, the last to herself. The heat was growing as the dawn began to break and Marie Antoinette had to wipe the sweat from her face with her handkerchief.35

  Inside the prison her reception was more respectful. Madame Richard, the wife of the jailer, had been warned of her arrival during the previous day. After dinner she told her young maid Rosalie Lamorlière in a low voice: “Tonight, Rosalie, we shan’t go to bed. You will sleep on a chair. The Queen is going to be transferred from the Temple to this prison.” In order to prepare a suitable cell, General de Custine, who had commanded the French army in the Rhineland but was now accused of treachery, had to be turned out of the former Council Chamber. The two women did, however, manage to get hold of some good linen and a lace-edged pillow. With this they tried to soften the grim impression of the cell, brick-floored and quite damp, with its table and prison chairs; a warder had merely added from the prison store a canvas bed, two mattresses, a bolster, a light coverlet—and a bucket.36

  Some time after three o’clock in the morning, Madame Richard hastily aroused Rosalie in her chair: “Hurry, hurry, wake up, Rosalie,” she said, pulling at her arm. Trembling, the girl went down the long dark corridor and at the far end found the Queen already in Custine’s cell. She was looking round at its spartan contents and then transferred her gaze in turn to Madame Richard and Rosalie. The latter had brought a stool from her own room. Marie Antoinette proceeded to climb on it and with the help of a convenient nail already in the wall, hung up her gold watch—a watch that Maria Teresa had given her.

  The Queen then proceeded to undress. Rosalie offered to help. “Thank you, my child,” replied Marie Antoinette. “But since I no longer have anyone [of my household] with me, I will look after myself.” She spoke pleasantly and without any undue arrogance, according to Rosalie. Daylight grew stronger. The two women extinguished their torches and left. Marie Antoinette lay down alone on the bed, which the sympathetic Rosalie at least thought “unworthy of her.”37

  The Conciergerie was now the vast antechamber to the Revolutionary Tribunal, a warren full of people of all sorts who had incurred the suspicion of the state. On the Quai d’Horloge of the Seine, it had once been a sumptuous royal palace hailed as more beautiful than any yet seen in France, taking its name from the concierge or keeper in charge of the King’s residence. Since the late fourteenth century it had, however, been a much less comfortable prison. The Conciergerie’s proximity to the river meant that most of its cells were damp, and given the age of the predominantly Gothic structure, most of them were also dark.

  With the constant arrival and departure of prisoners, lawyers, hopeful or disappointed visitors, the general commotion of the Conciergerie was in complete contrast to the seclusion of the Temple with its tiny band of prized captives. In the case of Marie Antoinette, she was no longer a grand lady in Madame’s Tower but an ordinary prisoner who would, like the rest of the occupants, soon be brought to judgement. But, of course, the widowed ci-devant Queen was also a figure of tragic celebrity—or notoriety, according to the point of view. With the connivance of good-natured jailers, intent on pleasing the public where possible (for money), Marie Antoinette now became one of the sights of the Conciergerie. Asked later whether she had recognized any particular individual, she was able to shrug and say with some plausibility: “There were so many . . .”38

  The Tower, before the King’s death, had brought a kind of private family life of which most royal parents only dreamt; now the Conciergerie, in another reversal of expectations, removed all Marie Antoinette’s privacy. The gendarmes were in the outer section of her cell day and night.*108 There was a half-curtain four feet high, which enabled her to wash, perform her natural functions and carry out her very limited toilette, for all of which the guards allowed her “no liberty.”39 But, of course, the public access, whether based on sympathy or ghoulish curiosity, together with the existence of fellow prisoners nearby, brought certain advantages undreamt of at the Temple.

  It was relevant, for example, that there were many former nuns in the Conciergerie, imprisoned for their faith. Marie Antoinette saw one stretching up her hands, evidently in prayer on her behalf, out of the low barred window that looked on to the Women’s Courtyard. Then there were non-juror priests inside the Conciergerie, and other clandestine priests who were still at liberty might be able to visit the former Queen in disguise. Saying the Mass required very little in the way of equipment; the forbidden pastors, as in all countries where a religion is proscribed, were becoming expert at organizing it. The presentation of an already consecrated Communion wafer was an even simpler matter. The eminent Abbé Emery was one of those known to have done this. The former Superior of the Seminary of Saint-Sulpice was imprisoned at the beginning of August, and, with the help of loyal clergy who brought him hosts wrapped in white handkerchiefs, continued his mission.40

  In this context the story of a certain Mademoiselle Fouché—that she brought the non-juror Abbé Magnin into the prison to solace the Queen—is perfectly plausible. Mademoiselle Fouché was a young woman from a respectable family in Orléans; Magnin was the former Superior of the Little Seminary at Autun, now living in Paris disguised as a Fouché uncle under the name of “Monsieur Charles.” Mademoiselle Fouché told of smuggling him in on several occasions; at one point Magnin spent an hour and a half with the Queen, courtesy of Richard and his “good gendarmes”—plenty of time for confession and Communion.41

  Marie Antoinette’s religion had become increasingly important to her over the years as her ordeal intensified. The laughing girl, who had protested to the Abbé de Vermond that nothing would make of her a dévote, had developed into a woman who was markedly pious, much as her mother had been. At Easter 1792, still in the Tuileries, the Queen had got up at five o’clock in the morning to attend a secr
et Mass celebrated by a non-juror cousin of Madame Campan.42 Her close relationship with her sister-in-law, ending in months of exclusive companionship, was also significant; political differences were forgotten, and at the Temple it had been back to the affectionate intimacy that the two had enjoyed when Marie Antoinette first arrived at Versailles, and Elisabeth became her little protégée—except that, where religion was concerned, Madame Elisabeth was now the leader.

  The other possibility that this semi-public access presented was not so much spiritual nourishment as physical escape. It is difficult to estimate the seriousness of the various private attempts made to free the Queen while she was in the Conciergerie. However, unlike the 1791 flight, which might have been achieved but failed for extraneous reasons, one suspects that none of them had any real practical chance of success. In the case of the best-known attempt, the so-called Carnation Plot of late August and early September, the issue is clouded rather than clarified by the arrest of the conspirators and the subsequent testimonies, where everyone concerned tried to exonerate or protect themselves.

  The plot took its name from the flower that a certain Alexandre de Rougeville dropped at the Queen’s feet in her cell. Rougeville had formerly been part of the Comte de Provence’s military establishment. He had plucked the carnation from the garden of his landlady Sophie Dutilleul. Rougeville had been introduced into the Conciergerie by the ever assiduous police administrator Michonis; the idea was for Marie Antoinette to be spirited away in a waiting carriage to the château of Madame de Jarjayes and so to Germany. Trembling, since she recognized a former Knight of the Order of Saint Louis, Marie Antoinette picked up the flower. Inside the petals was concealed a tiny note, which the Queen attempted to answer by pricking out a message with a pin. Hüe heard that her response was “negative.” But if she did indicate her readiness to escape, this plan foundered when Gilbert, one of the gendarmes who was in regular attendance in the Queen’s cell, gave the game away.43 Either he betrayed Marie Antoinette’s confidence, envisaging danger to himself if she escaped, or he simply deduced what was going on from Rougeville’s repeated visits and decided, for similarly self-preservative reasons, to have no part in it. Nevertheless one cannot help being sceptical as to how far the Queen really got on the path to freedom on this occasion.

  The same sad scepticism must attend the Wigmakers’ Conspiracy a few weeks later, in which a group of Parisian professionals whose work had depended on the lifestyle of the old regime, including pastry-cooks and lace-workers and lemonade-makers as well as the eponymous wigmakers, paid touching tribute to the Queen who had been their patroness and plotted to free her. The wigmakers and their colleagues were, however, betrayed. Another plot, in which the Baron de Batz was once more involved, was discovered thanks to an informer in the prison, Jean Baptiste Carteron.44

  In later years, of course, it would be romantic to talk of trying and failing to free the tragic Queen of France. An example of this kind of enterprise (for which there is no independent corroboration) was provided by Charlotte Lady Atkyns, the pretty wife of an English baronet who had once been an actress at the Drury Lane Theatre. A friend of the Princesse de Tarante, she had formed a devotion to Marie Antoinette during her visits to France and conceived the idea of smuggling the Queen out of the Conciergerie. Putting both her thespian talents and her husband’s money to good use, Charlotte Atkyns bribed a National Guard with 1000 louis to let her in, wearing his uniform. She then tried in vain to persuade the Queen to change clothes with her. Madame Guyot, head nurse at a hospice, had a similar plan—and a similar failure. She wanted to get the Queen transferred to her care, on the grounds of her health, whereupon she would be smuggled away to freedom, disguised as a young pregnant woman, Madame de Blamont.45

  What is quite clear, however, is that these and other well-meaning private ventures were in marked contrast to the supine behaviour of Marie Antoinette’s Austrian relations. The little people could get in, thanks to their obscurity, but practically speaking they could not get the Queen out. The great people with their armies and their treasuries had a much better chance of success—but showed no real signs of making the attempt. Two of the Queen’s supporters in Brussels, Count Fersen and the Comte de La Marck, were both driven frantic by the caution—or was it sheer indifference?—with which any idea of liberating the Emperor’s aunt was greeted. Fersen, the man of action, suggested riding in from the Belgian frontier with a troop of gallant men and simply lifting the Queen from the Conciergerie. Mercy gave this idea a “freezing” reception. Mercy’s own notion, put to the allied commander, the Prince of Saxe-Coburg, was for some more measured military initiative. It was Coburg who poured cold water on this idea. The Queen might even be dead by now; besides, “To menace savage men when you cannot do anything about it, is to make them yet more ferocious.” But perhaps the key sentence in Coburg’s response was this: he had to think not only of the Queen, but of “the real interests of the [Austrian] monarchy.”46

  There was still the question of the four commissioners of the Convention brought over by Dumouriez. The Prince of Coburg did moot the possibility of an exchange with them in a postscript to a letter to Mercy in Brussels of 16 August. In his reply two days later, however, Mercy described such a plan as “very delicate and not to be undertaken lightly.”47 He proposed to reflect on it. And there the matter rested.

  The Comte de La Marck supported what was, frankly, always the most promising approach. Marie Antoinette’s freedom should literally be bought—and at a high price. The finances of the revolutionary government were in no better state than those of the former regime, thanks in both cases to the dangerous extravagance of financing foreign wars. By a law of 10 June, the contents of the royal palaces—“the sumptuous furniture of the last tyrants of France” and “the vast possessions which they reserved to their pleasure”—were now being sold off in aid of “the defence of liberty.” This was often done at a loss: for example, a commode, two corner cupboards and a desk that had belonged to Louis XVI went for 5000 livres, whereas the desk alone had cost nearly 6000 in 1787. Urgency did not lead to good business practice. At the two-day August sale at the Petit Trianon of the former belongings of “the woman Capet,” including “suites of furniture . . . escritoires, consoles with marble tops, chairs with stools covered in damask and silk velvet . . . glass and china for both pantry and parlour use,” it was made clear that these objects could be transported to “foreign parts” without any duty being paid. In a gesture that seemed to indicate that time now stood still at a deserted Versailles, all the Queen’s clocks there were sold.*10948

  Like the precious objects with which she had once surrounded herself, “the woman Capet” might have had considerable value to the Revolution as a hostage to be ransomed. La Marck reported to Mercy that a banker called Ribbes who had lent him 600,000 livres had contacts, including a brother, in Paris. He was prepared to go to the frontier and negotiate, possibly with Danton. For a moment, Mercy hesitated . . . Then at the last moment he decided that the offer of money was unnecessary; it would be enough to offer a free pardon to the revolutionaries in the name of the Emperor once victory was achieved. In vain La Marck beseeched the diplomat “not to wait for a response [from Austria] which may be too late,” but to despatch another courier. His letter of 14 September was full of despair: “They must understand in Vienna how painful, I might even say how amazing, it would be for the imperial government if history could say one day that forty leagues away from formidable and victorious Austrian armies, the august daughter of Maria Teresa has perished upon the scaffold without any attempt being made to save her.”49 But nothing happened.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  THE HEAD OF ANTOINETTE

  “I have promised the head of Antoinette. I will go and cut it off myself if there is any delay in giving it to me.”

  HÉBERT TO THE COMMITTEE OF PUBLIC SAFETY, 2 SEPTEMBER 1793

  With touching faith in the family whose interests she had tried for so long to ser
ve, Marie Antoinette herself continued to keep up the hope that her relations would “reclaim” her. She told this to Rosalie Lamorlière, Madame Richard’s maid who had greeted her on arrival at the Conciergerie and who now became the former Queen’s devoted servant. Rosalie’s previous employer, a Madame Beaulieu, had been a royalist and it was her son, an actor at the theatre close by the Conciergerie, who had recommended the maid to the Richards. Rosalie overcame her repugnance at working in a prison when she found that the jailer and his wife did not try to check her compassionate activities. Not only tender-hearted but naturally quick, despite being virtually illiterate, Rosalie would in old age dictate her memoirs of the Queen’s prison-time, showing a retentive memory for touching details. She described the Queen in a reverie passing her two diamond rings endlessly from finger to finger and back again, or looking up at the sound of a harp, so poignantly reminiscent of her past life, and asking whether some woman prisoner was playing (it was the daughter of one of the glaziers currently working on her windows).1

  Marie Antoinette’s immediate need on arrival at the Conciergerie in the early hours of the morning was clothing. She had the black dress that she wore on her departure from the Temple and acquired another white dress. Supplies of lingerie were brought, handkerchiefs and black silk stockings. She had fichus of crepe and muslin and a petticoat made of Indian cotton. It was not much but it could be made sufficient with the aid of Rosalie, a laundress and, for a while, old Madame Larivière, mother of the turnkey, who had worked for the Duc de Penthièvre for thirty years and therefore knew how things should be done. It was Madame Larivière who skilfully patched the black dress with muslin beneath the arms and at the hem where it had become worn by the stones of the Temple, so that her subsequent replacement by a Madame Harel was regretted. At the Conciergerie the Queen’s plum-coloured (prunelle) slippers with their little heels à la Saint Huberty would become so coated with rust that at one point a friendly guard scraped them down with his sword.2