Madame de la Motte, who had appeared on her trial coquettishly arrayed,
and bearing herself with the greatest assurance, had become so violent
on hearing her sentence that the _exécuteur des hautes-oeuvres_ was
summoned to the Palais by the magistrates, and strongly recommended to
avoid any public scandal in carrying out the sentence of branding her.
It was proposed to gag her, but it was feared that this would excite the
people, and it was resolved to perform the operation at six o'clock in
the morning, in the court of the Conciergerie. When it came to reading
the sentence to her, four men were required to transport her before the
Commission Parlementaire charged with this duty, and even then she
escaped from their hands and threw herself upon the floor, rolling "in
such convulsions and uttering such cries of a wild beast" that the
reading had to be abandoned.
"When she was stretched on the platform," as the _Mémoires des Sanson_
relate, "the fustigation commenced, and as long as it lasted, her cries
became all the more furious. Her imprecations were especially addressed
to the Cardinal de Rohan; ... she received a dozen blows with the
rods; ... she remained during some moments mute, motionless, and as
though fainting. Charles-Henri Sanson thought to take advantage of this
to carry out the final directions of the sentence. Her dress had been
torn in the struggles she had undergone, and her shoulder was uncovered.
He took an iron from the brazier, and, approaching her, he pressed it
upon the skin. Madame de la Motte uttered the cry of a wounded hyena,
and, throwing herself upon one of the assistants who held her, she bit
his hand with so much fury that she took out a portion of the flesh.
Then, and although tightly bound, she began again to defend herself.
Taking advantage of the care which the executioners exercised in this
struggle against a woman, she succeeded for a long time in paralyzing
all their attempts, and it was only very imperfectly that the iron was
applied a second time, to the other shoulder."
[Illustration: THE GUILLOTINE IN THE PLACE DE LA CONCORDE, FORMERLY THE
PLACE DE LA REVOLUTION, WHERE LOUIS XVI WAS BEHEADED, JANUARY 21, 1793.]
The red-hot iron slipped, and the brand was made on her breast instead.
"This time she uttered a cry more heart-rending and more terrible than
all the others, and fainted. They took advantage of this to put her in
a carriage and convey her to the Salpêtrière."
Such was the administration of justice in the middle of the eighteenth
century, and in the most civilized capital in Christendom!
It is to be regretted that Destiny, with her usual disregard of sound
ethics, should have passed over the heads of the vainglorious Louis XIV
and the corrupt Louis XV to wreak the final vengeance due the Bourbons
on that of their well-intentioned but incapable successor. In the eyes
of Clio, weakness is the Unforgivable Sin. The grandson of Louis XV,
when he ascended the throne in 1774, at the age of twenty, was "a prince
of pure habits, of very limited intelligence, of an extreme timidity
both in character and speech, loving the good, desirous of it, but,
unfortunately, too feeble to be able to impose his will on those around
him. While he was still dauphin, being one day reproached by the
courtiers with his sober humor in the midst of the totally unregulated
court of his grandfather, he replied: 'I wish to be called Louis the
Severe.'" One day his minister, Turgot, entering his cabinet, found him
seriously occupied. "You see," the monarch said to him, "I am working
also." He was drawing up a memoir for the destruction of rabbits in the
neighborhood of cultivated estates!
The reforms instituted by this minister evoked such violent opposition,
even from the Parlement in defence of the odious abuse of the _corvée_
(forced labor on the highways), that the timid king dismissed him, in
1776. He was succeeded by the Genoese banker, Necker, who in his turn
was obliged to resign, five years later, his intelligent efforts to
redeem the hopeless confusion into which the finances had fallen serving
only to increase the number of his enemies, amongst whom the Parlement
was again to be found. The treaty of alliance with the revolted American
colonies, signed February 6, 1778, was made the occasion of solemn
warnings addressed to the king as to the dangerous encouragement he was
thus giving the spirit of unrest and independence. The queen began to
interest herself in the affairs of the government; at her advice, the
direction of the finances was given to Calonne, in 1783, who in three
years increased the debt by the sum of five hundred millions of borrowed
money, and brought things to such a pass that he had no other resource
to offer the distracted monarch but the discarded measures of his
predecessor, Necker.
The quarrels with the Parlement increased in frequency and bitterness;
the king was guilty of irregularity in forcing the enregistering of
certain edicts,--"it is legal because I wish it so," he said; Calonne
was succeeded by Brienne for a year, and the latter by Necker again for
the same length of time, but it was too late; the demands for the _États
Généraux_, or even for an _Assemblée Nationale_, became more and more
peremptory. Brienne was burned in effigy in the streets of Paris, as
Calonne had been, and it was even intended to insult the queen in the
same manner. She was called _Madame Déficit_, and, at the request of the
lieutenant of police, the king promised to prevent her appearing in the
capital. Finally, a decree of the _Conseil du Roi_, December 27, 1788,
convoked the _États Généraux_ to meet at Versailles on the 1st of the
following May, and the beginning of the end had come.
One of the very first of the questions to be settled was that of the
number of representatives of the _tiers état_. Many things had changed
since 1614, when they had been so humiliated, and it was recognized that
an increased representation should be given them, though the nobles
bitterly opposed this reform. A royal decree of the 1st of January,
1789, fixed the total number of members at, at least, a thousand, and
that of the third order at that of the other two combined. This decision
was received with many demonstrations of satisfaction by the Parisians,
and the six corps of the merchants of the capital addressed a
congratulatory letter to the king. The amicable fusion of the three
orders, which took place in the latter part of June, was prefaced by
acrimonious dissensions, in which the king interfered, and was worsted.
The custom, at first, was to permit the deputies of the clergy and
nobility to enter the hall to take their places of honor, and to let
those of the communes wait outside, frequently in the rain, as on the
23d of June,--the scene represented in M. Mélingue's painting,
reproduced on page 35.
The first defections from the ranks of the aristocracy were made on the
13th of June, when three curés of Poitou took their seats with the third
estate. On the 17th, on the motion of the Abbé Sieyès, the communes
declared themselves the National Assembly, and on the 9th of July, the
more clearly to indicate their mission, they added the word
"Constituante." This bold step filled the court with rage, the king was
advised to dissolve the Assembly, but had courage only to close the
doors of the _Salle des Menus_, called the _Salle des Trois Ordres_, in
which the sittings had been held. The president of the _tiers état_,
Bailly, convoked the members in a tennis-court, where, on the 20th of
June, they took a solemn oath not to separate until they had given a
constitution to France. This was the famous _Serment du Jeu de Paume_. A
week later, the king, at the instigation of Necker, invited the two
higher orders to reunite themselves with the third. They obeyed and were
courteously received, "We missed our brothers," said Bailly, "the family
is now complete."
[Illustration: BONAPARTE WATCHING THE MOB IN THE TUILERIES GARDEN, JUNE
20, 1792.