The severity with which the prisoners were treated was carried into every
detail of their life. The officers who guarded them took away their
chessmen and cards because some of them were named kings and queens, and
all the books with coats of arms on them; they refused to get ointment for
a gathering on Madame Elisabeth's arm; they, would not allow her to make a
herb-tea which she thought would strengthen her niece; they declined to
supply fish or eggs on fast-days or during Lent, bringing only coarse fat
meat, and brutally replying to all remonstances, "None but fools believe
in that stuff nowadays." Madame Elisabeth never made the officials
another request, but reserved some of the bread and cafe-au-lait from her
breakfast for her second meal. The time during which she could be thus
tormented was growing short.
On 9th May, 1794, as the Princesses were going to bed, the outside bolts
of the door were unfastened and a loud knocking was heard. "When my aunt
was dressed," says Madame Royale, "she opened the door, and they said to
her, 'Citoyenne, come down.'--'And my niece?'--'We shall take care of her
afterwards.' She embraced me, and to calm my agitation promised to return.
'No, citoyenne,' said the men, 'bring your bonnet; you shall not return.'
They overwhelmed her with abuse, but she bore it patiently, embracing me,
and exhorting me to trust in Heaven, and never to forget the last commands
of my father and mother."
Madame Elisabeth was then taken to the Conciergerie, where she was
interrogated by the vice-president at midnight, and then allowed to take
some hours rest on the bed on which Marie Antoinette had slept for the
last time. In the morning she was brought before the tribunal, with
twenty-four other prisoners, of varying ages and both sexes, some of whom
had once been frequently seen at Court.
"Of what has Elisabeth to complain?" Fouquier-Tinville satirically asked.
"At the foot of the guillotine, surrounded by faithful nobility, she may
imagine herself again at Versailles."
"You call my brother a tyrant," the Princess replied to her accuser; "if
he had been what you say, you would not be where you are, nor I before
you!"
She was sentenced to death, and showed neither surprise nor grief. "I am
ready to die," she said, "happy in the prospect of rejoining in a better
world those whom I loved on earth."
On being taken to the room where those condemned to suffer at the same
time as herself were assembled, she spoke to them with so much piety and
resignation that they were encouraged by her example to show calmness and
courage like her own. The women, on leaving the cart, begged to embrace
her, and she said some words of comfort to each in turn as they mounted
the scaffold, which she was not allowed to ascend till all her companions
had been executed before her eyes.
[Madame Elisabeth was one of those rare personages only seen at distant
intervals during the course of ages; she set an example of steadfast piety
in the palace of kings, she lived amid her family the favourite of all and
the admiration of the world .... When I went to Versailles Madame
Elisabeth was twenty-two years of age. Her plump figure and pretty pink
colour must have attracted notice, and her air of calmness and contentment
even more than her beauty. She was fond of billiards, and her elegance and
courage in riding were remarkable. But she never allowed these amusements
to interfere with her religious observances. At that time her wish to
take the veil at St. Cyr was much talked of, but the King was too fond of
his sister to endure the separation. There were also rumours of a
marriage between Madame Elisabeth and the Emperor Joseph. The Queen was
sincerely attached to her brother, and loved her sister-in-law most
tenderly; she ardently desired this marriage as a means of raising the
Princess to one of the first thrones in Europe, and as a possible means of
turning the Emperor from his innovations. She had been very carefully
educated, had talent in music and painting, spoke Italian and a little
Latin, and understood mathematics.... Her last moments were worthy of her
courage and virtue.--D'HEZECQUES's "Recollections," pp. 72-75.]
"It is impossible to imagine my distress at finding myself separated from
my aunt," says Madame Royale. "Since I had been able to appreciate her
merits, I saw in her nothing but religion, gentleness, meekness, modesty,
and a devoted attachment to her family; she sacrificed her life for them,
since nothing could persuade her to leave the King and Queen. I never can
be sufficiently grateful to her for her goodness to me, which ended only
with her life. She looked on me as her child, and I honoured and loved
her as a second mother. I was thought to be very like her in countenance,
and I feel conscious that I have something of her character. Would to God
I might imitate her virtues, and hope that I may hereafter deserve to meet
her, as well as my dear parents, in the bosom of our Creator, where I
cannot doubt that they enjoy the reward of their virtuous lives and
meritorious deaths."
Madame Royale vainly begged to be allowed to rejoin her mother or her
aunt, or at least to know their fate. The municipal officers would tell
her nothing, and rudely refused her request to have a woman placed with
her. "I asked nothing but what seemed indispensable, though it was often
harshly refused," she says. "But I at least could keep myself clean. I
had soap and water, and carefully swept out my room every day. I had no
light, but in the long days I did not feel this privation much . . . .
I had some religious works and travels, which I had read over and over. I
had also some knitting, 'qui m'ennuyait beaucoup'." Once, she believes,
Robespierre visited her prison:
[It has been said that Robespierre vainly tried to obtain the hand of
Mademoiselle d'Orleans. It was also rumoured that Madame Royale herself
owed her life to his matrimonial ambition.]
"The officers showed him great respect; the people in the Tower did not
know him, or at least would not tell me who he was. He stared insolently
at me, glanced at my books, and, after joining the municipal officers in a
search, retired."
[On another occasion "three men in scarfs," who entered the Princess's
room, told her that they did not see why she should wish to be released,
as she seemed very comfortable! "It is dreadful,' I replied, 'to be
separated for more than a year from one's mother, without even hearing
what has become of her or of my aunt.'--'You are not ill?'--'No, monsieur,
but the cruellest illness is that of the heart'--' We can do nothing for
you. Be patient, and submit to the justice and goodness of the French
people: I had nothing more to say."--DUCHESSE D'ANGOULEME, "Royal
Memoirs," p. 273.]
When Laurent was appointed by the Convention to the charge of the young
prisoners, Madame Royale was treated with more consideration. "He was
always courteous," she says; he restored her tinderbox, gave her fresh
books, and allowed her candles and as much firewood as she wanted, "which
pleased me greatly." This simple expression of relief gives a clearer
idea of what the delicate girl must have suffered than a volume of
complaints.
But however hard Madame Royale's lot might be, that of the Dauphin was
infinitely harder. Though only eight years old when he entered the
Temple, he was by nature and education extremely precocious; "his memory
retained everything, and his sensitiveness comprehended everything." His
features "recalled the somewhat effeminate look of Louis XV., and the
Austrian hauteur of Maria Theresa; his blue eyes, aquiline nose, elevated
nostrils, well-defined mouth, pouting lips, chestnut hair parted in the
middle and falling in thick curls on his shoulders, resembled his mother
before her years of tears and torture. All the beauty of his race, by
both descents, seemed to reappear in him."--[Lamartine]--For some time the
care of his parents preserved his health and cheerfulness even in the
Temple; but his constitution was weakened by the fever recorded by his
sister, and his gaolers were determined that he should never regain
strength.
"What does the Convention intend to do with him?" asked Simon, when the
innocent victim was placed in his clutches. "Transport him?"
"No."
"Kill him?"
"No."
"Poison him?"
"No."
"What, then?"
"Why, get rid of him."
For such a purpose they could not have chosen their instruments better.
"Simon and his wife, cut off all those fair locks that had been his
youthful glory and his mother's pride. This worthy pair stripped him of
the mourning he wore for his father; and as they did so, they called it
'playing at the game of the spoiled king.' They alternately induced him
to commit excesses, and then half starved him. They beat him mercilessly;
nor was the treatment by night less brutal than that by day. As soon as
the weary boy had sunk into his first profound sleep, they would loudly
call him by name, 'Capet! Capet!' Startled, nervous, bathed in
perspiration, or sometimes trembling with cold, he would spring up, rush
through the dark, and present himself at Simon's bedside, murmuring,
tremblingly, 'I am here, citizen.'--'Come nearer; let me feel you.' He
would approach the bed as he was ordered, although he knew the treatment
that awaited him. Simon would buffet him on the head, or kick him away,
adding the remark, 'Get to bed again, wolfs cub; I only wanted to know
that you were safe.' On one of these occasions, when the child had fallen
half stunned upon his own miserable couch, and lay there groaning and
faint with pain, Simon roared out with a laugh, 'Suppose you were king,
Capet, what would you do to me?' The child thought of his father's dying
words, and said, 'I would forgive you.'"--[THIERS]
The change in the young Prince's mode of life, and the cruelties and
caprices to which he was subjected, soon made him fall ill, says his
sister. "Simon forced him to eat to excess, and to drink large quantities
of wine, which he detested . . . . He grew extremely fat without
increasing in height or strength." His aunt and sister, deprived of the
pleasure of tending him, had the pain of hearing his childish voice raised
in the abominable songs his gaolers taught him. The brutality of Simon
"depraved at once the body and soul of his pupil. He called him the young
wolf of the Temple. He treated him as the young of wild animals are
treated when taken from the mother and reduced to captivity,--at once
intimidated by blows and enervated by taming. He punished for
sensibility; he rewarded meanness; he encouraged vice; he made the child
wait on him at table, sometimes striking him on the face with a knotted
towel, sometimes raising the poker and threatening to strike him with it."
[Simon left the Temple to become a municipal officer. He was involved in
the overthrow of Robespierre, and guillotined the day after him, 29th
July, 1794.]
Yet when Simon was removed the poor young Prince's condition became even
worse. His horrible loneliness induced an apathetic stupor to which any
suffering would have been preferable. "He passed his days without any
kind of occupation; they did not allow him light in the evening. His
keepers never approached him but to give him food;" and on the rare
occasions when they took him to the platform of the Tower, he was unable
or unwilling to move about. When, in November, 1794, a commissary named
Gomin arrived at the Temple, disposed to treat the little prisoner with
kindness, it was too late. "He took extreme care of my brother," says
Madame Royale. "For a long time the unhappy child had been shut up in
darkness, and he was dying of fright. He was very grateful for the
attentions of Gomin, and became much attached to him." But his physical
condition was alarming, and, owing to Gomin's representations, a
commission was instituted to examine him. "The commissioners appointed
were Harmond, Mathieu, and Reverchon, who visited 'Louis Charles,' as he
was now called, in the month of February, 1795. They found the young
Prince seated at a square deal table, at which he was playing with some
dirty cards, making card houses and the like,--the materials having been
furnished him, probably, that they might figure in the report as evidences
of indulgence. He did not look up from the table as the commissioners
entered. He was in a slate-coloured dress, bareheaded; the room was
reported as clean, the bed in good condition, the linen fresh; his clothes
were also reported as new; but, in spite of all these assertions, it is
well known that his bed had not been made for months, that he had not left
his room, nor was permitted to leave it, for any purpose whatever, that it
was consequently uninhabitable, and that he was covered with vermin and
with sores. The swellings at his knees alone were sufficient to disable
him from walking. One of the commissioners approached the young Prince
respectfully. The latter did not raise his head. Harmond in a kind voice
begged him to speak to them. The eyes of the boy remained fixed on the
table before him. They told him of the kindly intentions of the
Government, of their hopes that he would yet be happy, and their desire
that he would speak unreservedly to the medical man that was to visit him.
He seemed to listen with profound attention, but not a single word passed
his lips. It was an heroic principle that impelled that poor young heart
to maintain the silence of a mute in presence of these men. He remembered
too well the days when three other commissaries waited on him, regaled him
with pastry and wine, and obtained from him that hellish accusation
against the mother that he loved. He had learnt by some means the import
of the act, so far as it was an injury to his mother. He now dreaded
seeing again three commissaries, hearing again kind words, and being
treated again with fine promises. Dumb as death itself he sat before
them, and remained motionless as stone, and as mute." [THIERS]
His disease now made rapid progress, and Gomin and Lasne, superintendents
of the Temple, thinking it necessary to inform the Government of the
melancholy condition of their prisoner, wrote on the register: "Little
Capet is unwell." No notice was taken of this account, which was renewed
next day in more urgent terms: "Little Capet is dangerously ill." Still
there was no word from beyond the walls. "We must knock harder," said the
keepers to each other, and they added, "It is feared he will not live," to
the words "dangerously ill." At length, on Wednesday, 6th May, 1795,
three days after the first report, the authorities appointed M. Desault to
give the invalid the assistance of his art. After having written down his
name on the register he was admitted to see the Prince. He made a long and
very attentive examination of the unfortunate child, asked him many
questions without being able to obtain an answer, and contented himself
with prescribing a decoction of hops, to be taken by spoonfuls every
half-hour, from six o'clock in the morning till eight in the evening. On
the first day the Prince steadily refused to take it. In vain Gomin
several times drank off a glass of the potion in his presence; his example
proved as ineffectual as his words. Next day Lasne renewed his
solicitations. "Monsieur knows very well that I desire nothing but the
good of his health, and he distresses me deeply by thus refusing to take
what might contribute to it. I entreat him as a favour not to give me
this cause of grief." And as Lasne, while speaking, began to taste the
potion in a glass, the child took what he offered him out of his hands.
"You have, then, taken an oath that I should drink it," said he, firmly;
"well, give it me, I will drink it." From that moment he conformed with
docility to whatever was required of him, but the policy of the Commune
had attained its object; help had been withheld till it was almost a
mockery to supply it.
The Prince's weakness was excessive; his keepers could scarcely drag him
to the, top of the Tower; walking hurt his tender feet, and at every step
he stopped to press the arm of Lasne with both hands upon his breast. At
last he suffered so much that it was no longer possible for him to walk,
and his keeper carried him about, sometimes on the platform, and sometimes
in the little tower, where the royal family had lived at first. But the
slight improvement to his health occasioned by the change of air scarcely
compensated for the pain which his fatigue gave him. On the battlement of
the platform nearest the left turret, the rain had, by perseverance
through ages, hollowed out a kind of basin. The water that fell remained
there for several days; and as, during the spring of 1795, storms were of
frequent occurrence, this little sheet of water was kept constantly
supplied. Whenever the child was brought out upon the platform, he saw a
little troop of sparrows, which used to come to drink and bathe in this
reservoir. At first they flew away at his approach, but from being
accustomed to see him walking quietly there every day, they at last grew
more familiar, and did not spread their wings for flight till he came up
close to them. They were always the same, he knew them by sight, and
perhaps like himself they were inhabitants of that ancient pile. He
called them his birds; and his first action, when the door into the
terrace was opened, was to look towards that side,--and the sparrows were
always there. He delighted in their chirping, and he must have envied
them their wings.
Though so little could be done to alleviate his sufferings, a moral
improvement was taking place in him. He was touched by the lively
interest displayed by his physician, who never failed to visit him at nine
o'clock every morning. He seemed pleased with the attention paid him, and
ended by placing entire confidence in M. Desault. Gratitude loosened his
tongue; brutality and insult had failed to extort a murmur, but kind
treatment restored his speech he had no words for anger, but he found them
to express his thanks. M. Desault prolonged his visits as long as the
officers of the municipality would permit. When they announced the close
of the visit, the child, unwilling to beg them to allow a longer time,
held back M. Desault by the skirt of his coat. Suddenly M. Desault's
visits ceased. Several days passed and nothing was heard of him. The
keepers wondered at his absence, and the poor little invalid was much
distressed at it. The commissary on duty (M. Benoist) suggested that it
would be proper to send to the physician's house to make inquiries as to
the cause of so long an absence. Gomin and Larne had not yet ventured to
follow this advice, when next day M. Benoist was relieved by M. Bidault,
who, hearing M. Desault's name mentioned as he came in, immediately said,
"You must not expect to see him any more; he died yesterday."
M. Pelletan, head surgeon of the Grand Hospice de l'Humanite, was next
directed to attend the prisoner, and in June he found him in so alarming a
state that he at once asked for a coadjutor, fearing to undertake the
responsibility alone. The physician--sent for form's sake to attend the
dying child, as an advocate is given by law to a criminal condemned
beforehand--blamed the officers of the municipality for not having removed
the blind, which obstructed the light, and the numerous bolts, the noise
of which never failed to remind the victim of his captivity. That sound,
which always caused him an involuntary shudder, disturbed him in the last
mournful scene of his unparalleled tortures. M. Pelletan said
authoritatively to the municipal on duty, "If you will not take these
bolts and casings away at once, at least you can make no objection to our
carrying the child into another room, for I suppose we are sent here to
take charge of him." The Prince, being disturbed by these words, spoken
as they were with great animation, made a sign to the physician to come
nearer. "Speak lower, I beg of you," said he; "I am afraid they will hear
you up-stairs, and I should be very sorry for them to know that I am ill,
as it would give them much uneasiness."
At first the change to a cheerful and airy room revived the Prince and
gave him evident pleasure, but the improvement did not last. Next day M.
Pelletan learned that the Government had acceded to his request for a
colleague. M. Dumangin, head physician of the Hospice de l'Unite, made
his appearance at his house on the morning of Sunday, 7th June, with the
official despatch sent him by the committee of public safety. They
repaired together immediately to the Tower. On their arrival they heard
that the child, whose weakness was excessive, had had a fainting fit,
which had occasioned fears to be entertained that his end was approaching.
He had revived a little, however, when the physicians went up at about
nine o'clock. Unable to contend with increasing exhaustion, they
perceived there was no longer any hope of prolonging an existence worn out
by so much suffering, and that all their art could effect would be to
soften the last stage of this lamentable disease. While standing by the
Prince's bed, Gomin noticed that he was quietly crying, and asked him.
kindly what was the matter. "I am always alone," he said. "My dear
mother remains in the other tower." Night came,--his last night,--which
the regulations of the prison condemned him to pass once more in solitude,
with suffering, his old companion, only at his side. This time, however,
death, too, stood at his pillow. When Gomin went up to the child's room
on the morning of 8th June, he said, seeing him calm, motionless, and
mute:
"I hope you are not in pain just now?"
"Oh, yes, I am still in pain, but not nearly so much,--the music is so
beautiful!"
Now there was no music to be heard, either in the Tower or anywhere near.
Gomin, astonished, said to him, "From what direction do you hear this
music?"
"From above!"
"Have you heard it long?"
"Since you knelt down. Do you not hear it? Listen! Listen!" And the
child, with a nervous motion, raised his faltering hand, as he opened his
large eyes illuminated by delight. His poor keeper, unwilling to destroy
this last sweet illusion, appeared to listen also.
After a few minutes of attention the child again started, and cried out,
in intense rapture, "Amongst all the voices I have distinguished that of
my mother!"
These were almost his last words. At a quarter past two he died, Lasne
only being in the room at the time. Lasne acquainted Gomin and Damont,
the commissary on duty, with the event, and they repaired to the chamber
of death. The poor little royal corpse was carried from the room into
that where he had suffered so long,--where for two years he had never
ceased to suffer. From this apartment the father had gone to the
scaffold, and thence the son must pass to the burial-ground. The remains
were laid out on the bed, and the doors of the apartment were set
open,--doors which had remained closed ever since the Revolution had
seized on a child, then full of vigour and grace and life and health!
At eight o'clock next morning (9th June) four members of the committee of
general safety came to the Tower to make sure that the Prince was really
dead. When they were admitted to the death-chamber by Lasne and Damont
they affected the greatest indifference. "The event is not of the least
importance," they repeated, several times over; "the police commissary of
the section will come and receive the declaration of the decease; he will
acknowledge it, and proceed to the interment without any ceremony; and the
committee will give the necessary directions." As they withdrew, some
officers of the Temple guard asked to see the remains of little Capet.
Damont having observed that the guard would not permit the bier to pass
without its being opened, the deputies decided that the officers and
non-commissioned officers of the guard going off duty, together with those
coming on, should be all invited to assure themselves of the child's
death. All having assembled in the room where the body lay, he asked them
if they recognised it as that of the ex-Dauphin, son of the last King of
France. Those who had seen the young Prince at the Tuileries, or at the
Temple (and most of them had), bore witness to its being the body of Louis
XVII. When they were come down into the council-room, Darlot drew up the
minutes of this attestation, which was signed by a score of persons.
These minutes were inserted in the journal of the Temple tower, which was
afterwards deposited in the office of the Minister of the Interior.
During this visit the surgeons entrusted with the autopsy arrived at the
outer gate of the Temple. These were Dumangin, head physician of the
Hospice de l'Unite; Pelletan, head surgeon of the Grand Hospice de
l'Humanite; Jeanroy, professor in the medical schools of Paris; and
Laasus, professor of legal medicine at the Ecole de Sante of Paris. The
last two were selected by Dumangin and Pelletan because of the former
connection of M. Lassus with Mesdames de France, and of M. Jeanroy with
the House of Lorraine, which gave a peculiar weight to their signatures.
Gomin received them in the council-room, and detained them until the
National Guard, descending from the second floor, entered to sign the
minutes prepared by Darlot. This done, Lasne, Darlot, and Bouquet went up
again with the surgeons, and introduced them into the apartment of Louis
XVII., whom they at first examined as he lay on his death-bed; but M.
Jeanroy observing that the dim light of this room was but little
favourable to the accomplishment of their mission, the commissaries
prepared a table in the first room, near the window, on which the corpse
was laid, and the surgeons began their melancholy operation.
At seven o'clock the police commissary ordered the body to be taken up,
and that they should proceed to the cemetery. It was the season of the
longest days, and therefore the interment did not take place in secrecy
and at night, as some misinformed narrators have said or written; it took
place in broad daylight, and attracted a great concourse of people before
the gates of the Temple palace. One of the municipals wished to have the
coffin carried out secretly by the door opening into the chapel enclosure;
but M. Duaser, police commiasary, who was specially entrusted with the
arrangement of the ceremony, opposed this indecorous measure, and the
procession passed out through the great gate. The crowd that was pressing
round was kept back, and compelled to keep a line, by a tricoloured
ribbon, held at short distances by gendarmes. Compassion and sorrow were
impressed on every countenance.
A small detachment of the troops of the line from the garrison of Paris,
sent by the authorities, was waiting to serve as an escort. The bier,
still covered with the pall, was carried on a litter on the shoulders of
four men, who relieved each other two at a time; it was preceded by six or
eight men, headed by a sergeant. The procession was accompanied a long
way by the crowd, and a great number of persona followed it even to the
cemetery. The name of "Little Capet," and the more popular title of
Dauphin, spread from lip to lip, with exclamations of pity and compassion.
The funeral entered the cemetery of Ste. Marguerite, not by the church, as
some accounts assert, but by the old gate of the cemetery. The interment
was made in the corner, on the left, at a distance of eight or nine feet
from the enclosure wall, and at an equal distance from a small house,
which subsequently served as a school. The grave was filled up,--no mound
marked its place, and not even a trace remained of the interment! Not
till then did the commissaries of police and the municipality withdraw,
and enter the house opposite the church to draw up the declaration of
interment. It was nearly nine o'clock, and still daylight.
Release of Madame Royale.--Her Marriage to the Duc d'Angouleme.
--Return to France.--Death.
The last person to hear of the sad events in the Temple was the one for
whom they had the deepest and most painful interest. After her brother's
death the captivity of Madame Royale was much lightened. She was allowed
to walk in the Temple gardens, and to receive visits from some ladies of
the old Court, and from Madame de Chantereine, who at last, after several
times evading her questions, ventured cautiously to tell her of the deaths
of her mother, aunt, and brother. Madame Royale wept bitterly, but had
much difficulty in expressing her feelings. "She spoke so confusedly,"
says Madame de la Ramiere in a letter to Madame de Verneuil, "that it was
difficult to understand her. It took her more than a month's reading
aloud, with careful study of pronunciation, to make herself
intelligible,--so much had she lost the power of expression." She was
dressed with plainness amounting to poverty, and her hands were disfigured
by exposure to cold and by the menial work she had been so long accustomed
to do for herself, and which it was difficult to persuade her to leave
off. When urged to accept the services of an attendant, she replied, with
a sad prevision of the vicissitudes of her future life, that she did not
like to form a habit which she might have again to abandon. She suffered
herself, however, to be persuaded gradually to modify her recluse and
ascetic habits. It was well she did so, as a preparation for the great
changes about to follow.
Nine days after the death of her brother, the city of Orleans interceded
for the daughter of Louis XVI., and sent deputies to the Convention to
pray for her deliverance and restoration to her family. Names followed
this example; and Charette, on the part of the Vendeans, demanded, as a
condition of the pacification of La Vendee, that the Princess should be
allowed to join her relations. At length the Convention decreed that
Madame Royale should be exchanged with Austria for the representatives and
ministers whom Dumouriez had given up to the Prince of Cobourg,--Drouet,
Semonville, Maret, and other prisoners of importance. At midnight on 19th
December, 1795, which was her birthday, the Princess was released from
prison, the Minister of the Interior, M. Benezech, to avoid attracting
public attention and possible disturbance, conducting her on foot from the
Temple to a neighbouring street, where his carriage awaited her. She made
it her particular request that Gomin, who had been so devoted to her
brother, should be the commissary appointed to accompany her to the
frontier; Madame de Soucy, formerly under-governess to the children of
France, was also in attendance; and the Princess took with her a dog named
Coco, which had belonged to Louis XVI.
[The mention of the little dog taken from the Temple by Madame Royale
reminds me how fond all the family were of these creatures. Each Princess
kept a different kind. Mesdames had beautiful spaniels; little grayhounds
were preferred by Madame Elisabeth. Louis XVI. was the only one of all his
family who had no dogs in his room. I remember one day waiting in the
great gallery for the King's retiring, when he entered with all his family
and the whole pack, who were escorting him. All at once all the dogs
began to bark, one louder than another, and ran away, passing like ghosts
along those great dark rooms, which rang with their hoarse cries. The
Princesses shouting, calling them, running everywhere after them,
completed a ridiculous spectacle, which made those august persons very
merry.--D'HEZECQUES, p. 49.]
She was frequently recognised on her way through France, and always with
marks of pleasure and respect.
It might have been supposed that the Princess would rejoice to leave
behind her the country which had been the scene of so many horrors and
such bitter suffering. But it was her birthplace, and it held the graves
of all she loved; and as she crossed the frontier she said to those around
her, "I leave France with regret, for I shall never cease to consider it
my country." She arrived in Vienna on 9th January, 1796, and her first
care was to attend a memorial service for her murdered relatives. After
many weeks of close retirement she occasionally began to appear in public,
and people looked with interest at the pale, grave, slender girl of
seventeen, dressed in the deepest mourning, over whose young head such
terrible storms had swept. The Emperor wished her to marry the Archduke
Charles of Austria, but her father and mother had, even in the cradle,
destined her hand for her cousin, the Duc d'Angouleme, son of the Comte
d'Artois, and the memory of their lightest wish was law to her.
Her quiet determination entailed anger and opposition amounting to
persecution. Every effort was made to alienate her from her French
relations. She was urged to claim Provence, which had become her own if
Louis XVIII. was to be considered King of France. A pressure of opinion
was brought to bear upon her which might well have overawed so young a
girl. "I was sent for to the Emperor's cabinet," she writes, "where I
found the imperial family assembled. The ministers and chief imperial
counsellors were also present . . . . When the Emperor invited me to
express my opinion, I answered that to be able to treat fittingly of such
interests I thought, I ought to be surrounded not only by my mother's
relatives, but also by those of my father . . . . Besides, I said, I
was above all things French, and in entire subjection to the laws of
France, which had rendered me alternately the subject of the King my
father, the King my brother, and the King my uncle, and that I would yield
obedience to the latter, whatever might be his commands. This declaration
appeared very much to dissatisfy all who were present, and when they
observed that I was not to be shaken, they declared that my right being
independent of my will, my resistance would not be the slightest obstacle
to the measures they might deem it necessary to adopt for the preservation
of my interests."
In their anxiety to make a German princess of Marie Therese, her imperial
relations suppressed her French title as much as possible. When, with
some difficulty, the Duc de Grammont succeeded in obtaining an audience of
her, and used the familiar form of address, she smiled faintly, and bade
him beware. "Call me Madame de Bretagne, or de Bourgogne, or de
Lorraine," she said, "for here I am so identified with these
provinces--[which the Emperor wished her to claim from her uncle Louis
XVIII.]--that I shall end in believing in my own transformation." After
these discussions she was so closely watched, and so many restraints were
imposed upon her, that she was scarcely less a prisoner than in the old
days of the Temple, though her cage was this time gilded. Rescue,
however, was at hand.
In 1798 Louis XVIII. accepted a refuge offered to him at Mittau by the
Czar Paul, who had promised that he would grant his guest's first request,
whatever it might be. Louis begged the Czar to use his influence with the
Court of Vienna to allow his niece to join him. "Monsieur, my brother,"
was Paul's answer, "Madame Royale shall be restored to you, or I shall
cease to be Paul I." Next morning the Czar despatched a courier to Vienna
with a demand for the Princess, so energetically worded that refusal must
have been followed by war. Accordingly, in May, 1799, Madame Royale was
allowed to leave the capital which she had found so uncongenial an asylum.
In the old ducal castle of Mittau, the capital of Courland, Louis XVIII.
and his wife, with their nephews, the Ducs d'Angouleme
[The Duc d'Angonleme was quiet and reserved. He loved hunting as means of
killing time; was given to early hours and innocent pleasures. He was a
gentleman, and brave as became one. He had not the "gentlemanly vices" of
his brother, and was all the better for it. He was ill educated, but had
natural good sense, and would have passed for having more than that had he
cared to put forth pretensions. Of all his family he was the one most ill
spoken of, and least deserving of it.--DOCTOR DORAN.]
and de Berri, were awaiting her, attended by the Abbe Edgeworth, as chief
ecclesiastic, and a little Court of refugee nobles and officers. With
them were two men of humbler position, who must have been even more
welcome to Madame Royale,--De Malden, who had acted as courier to Louis
XVI. during the flight to Varennes, and Turgi, who had waited on the
Princesses in the Temple. It was a sad meeting, though so long anxiously
desired, and it was followed on 10th June, 1799, by an equally sad
wedding,--exiles, pensioners on the bounty of the Russian monarch,
fulfilling an engagement founded, not on personal preference, but on
family policy and reverence for the wishes of the dead, the bride and
bridegroom had small cause for rejoicing. During the eighteen months of
tranquil seclusion which followed her marriage, the favourite occupation
of the Duchess was visiting and relieving the poor. In January, 1801, the
Czar Paul, in compliance with the demand of Napoleon, who was just then
the object of his capricious enthusiasm, ordered the French royal family
to leave Mittau. Their wanderings commenced on the 21st, a day of bitter
memories; and the young Duchess led the King to his carriage through a
crowd of men, women, and children, whose tears and blessings attended them
on their way.
[The Queen was too ill to travel. The Duc d'Angouleme took another route
to join a body of French gentlemen in arms for the Legitimist cause.]
The exiles asked permission from the King of Prussia to settle in his
dominions, and while awaiting his answer at Munich they were painfully
surprised by the entrance of five old soldiers of noble birth, part of the
body-guard they had left behind at Mittau, relying on the protection of
Paul. The "mad Czar" had decreed their immediate expulsion, and,
penniless and almost starving, they made their way to Louis XVIII. All
the money the royal family possessed was bestowed on these faithful
servants, who came to them in detachments for relief, and then the Duchess
offered her diamonds to the Danish consul for an advance of two thousand
ducats, saying she pledged her property "that in our common distress it
may be rendered of real use to my uncle, his faithful servants, and
myself." The Duchess's consistent and unselfish kindness procured her
from the King, and those about him who knew her best, the name of "our
angel."
Warsaw was for a brief time the resting-place of the wanderers, but there
they were disturbed in 1803 by Napoleon's attempt to threaten and bribe
Louis XVIII. into abdication. It was suggested that refusal might bring
upon them expulsion from Prussia. "We are accustomed to suffering," was
the King's answer, "and we do not dread poverty. I would, trusting in
God, seek another asylum." In 1808, after many changes of scene, this
asylum was sought in England, Gosfield Hall, Essex, being placed at their
disposal by the Marquis of Buckingham. From Gosfield, the King moved to
Hartwell Hall, a fine old Elizabethan mansion rented from Sir George Lee
for L 500 a year. A yearly grant of L 24,000 was made to the exiled
family by the British Government, out of which a hundred and forty persons
were supported, the royal dinner-party generally numbering two dozen.
At Hartwell, as in her other homes, the Duchess was most popular amongst
the poor. In general society she was cold and reserved, and she disliked
the notice of strangers. In March, 1814, the royalist successes at
Bordeaux paved the way for the restoration of royalty in France, and
amidst general sympathy and congratulation, with the Prince Regent himself
to wish them good fortune, the King, the Duchess, and their suite left
Hartwell in April, 1814. The return to France was as triumphant as a
somewhat half-hearted and doubtful enthusiasm could make it, and most of
such cordiality as there was fell to the share of the Duchess. As she
passed to Notre-Dame in May, 1814, on entering Paris, she was vociferously
greeted. The feeling of loyalty, however, was not much longer-lived than
the applause by which it was expressed; the Duchess had scarcely effected
one of the strongest wishes of her heart,--the identification of what
remained of her parents' bodies, and the magnificent ceremony with which
they were removed from the cemetery of the Madeleine to the Abbey of St.
Denis,--when the escape of Napoleon from Elba in February,1815, scattered
the royal family and their followers like chaff before the wind. The Duc
d'Angouleme, compelled to capitulate at Toulouse, sailed from Cette in a
Swedish vessel. The Comte d'Artois, the Duc de Berri, and the Prince de
Conde withdrew beyond the frontier. The King fled from the capital. The
Duchesse d'Angouleme, then at Bordeaux celebrating the anniversary of the
Proclamation of Louis XVIII., alone of all her family made any stand
against the general panic. Day after day she mounted her horse and
reviewed the National Guard. She made personal and even passionate
appeals to the officers and men, standing firm, and prevailing on a
handful of soldiers to remain by her, even when the imperialist troops
were on the other side of the river and their cannon were directed against
the square where the Duchess was reviewing her scanty followers.
["It was the Duchesse d'Angouleme who saved you," said the gallant General
Clauzel, after these events, to a royalist volunteer; "I could not bring
myself to order such a woman to be fired upon, at the moment when she was
providing material for the noblest page in her history."--"Fillia
Dolorosa," vol. vii., p. 131.]
With pain and difficulty she was convinced that resistance was vain;
Napoleon's banner soon floated over Bordeaux; the Duchess issued a
farewell proclamation to her "brave Bordelais," and on the 1st April,
1815, she started for Pouillac, whence she embarked for Spain. During a
brief visit to England she heard that the reign of a hundred days was
over, and the 27th of July, 1815, saw her second triumphal return to the
Tuileries. She did not take up her abode there with any wish for State
ceremonies or Court gaieties. Her life was as secluded as her position
would allow. Her favourite retreat was the Pavilion, which had been
inhabited by her mother, and in her little oratory she collected relics of
her family, over which on the anniversaries of their deaths she wept and
prayed. In her daily drives through Paris she scrupulously avoided the
spot on which they had suffered; and the memory of the past seemed to rule
all her sad and self-denying life, both in what she did and what she
refrained from doing.
[She was so methodical and economical, though liberal in her charities,
that one of her regular evening occupations was to tear off the seals from
the letters she had received during the day, in order that the wax might
be melted down and sold; the produce made one poor family "passing rich
with forty pounds a year."--See "Filia Dolorosa," vol. ii., p. 239.]
Her somewhat austere goodness was not of a nature to make her popular. The
few who really understood her loved her, but the majority of her
pleasure-seeking subjects regarded her either with ridicule or dread. She
is said to have taken no part in politics, and to have exerted no
influence in public affairs, but her sympathies were well known, and "the
very word liberty made her shudder;" like Madame Roland, she had seen "so
many crimes perpetrated under that name."
The claims of three pretended Dauphins--Hervagault, the son of the tailor
of St. Lo; Bruneau, son of the shoemaker of Vergin; and Naundorf or
Norndorff, the watchmaker somewhat troubled her peace, but never for a
moment obtained her sanction. Of the many other pseudo-Dauphins (said to
number a dozen and a half) not even the names remain. In February,1820, a
fresh tragedy befell the royal family in the assassination of the Duc de
Berri, brother-in-law of the Duchesse d'Angouleme, as he was seeing his
wife into her carriage at the door of the Opera-house. He was carried
into the theatre, and there the dying Prince and his wife were joined by
the Duchess, who remained till he breathed his last, and was present when
he, too, was laid in the Abbey of St. Denis. She was present also when
his son, the Duc de Bordeaux, was born, and hoped that she saw in him a
guarantee for the stability of royalty in France. In September, 1824, she
stood by the death-bed of Louis XVIII., and thenceforward her chief
occupation was directing the education of the little Duc de Bordeaux, who
generally resided with her at Villeneuve l'Etang, her country house near
St. Cloud. Thence she went in July, 1830, to the Baths of Vichy,
stopping at Dijon on her way to Paris, and visiting the theatre on the
evening of the 27th. She was received with "a roar of execrations and
seditious cries," and knew only too well what they signified. She
instantly left the theatre and proceeded to Tonnere, where she received
news of the rising in Paris, and, quitting the town by night, was driven
to Joigny with three attendants. Soon after leaving that place it was
thought more prudent that the party should separate and proceed on foot,
and the Duchess and M. de Foucigny, disguised as peasants, entered
Versailles arm-in-arm, to obtain tidings of the King. The Duchess found
him at Rambouillet with her husband, the Dauphin, and the King met her
with a request for "pardon," being fully conscious, too late, that his
unwise decrees and his headlong flight had destroyed the last hopes of his
family. The act of abdication followed, by which the prospect of royalty
passed from the Dauphin and his wife, as well as from Charles X.--Henri V.
being proclaimed King, and the Duc d'Orleans (who refused to take the boy
monarch under his personal protection) lieutenant-general of the kingdom.
Then began the Duchess's third expatriation. At Cherbourg the royal
family, accompanied by the little King without a kingdom, embarked in the
'Great Britain', which stood out to sea. The Duchess, remaining on deck
for a last look at the coast of France, noticed a brig which kept, she
thought, suspiciously near them.
"Who commands that vessel?" she inquired.
"Captain Thibault."