Marie Antoinette was in error when she supposed she would no

Produced by Al Haines

[Frontispiece: Marie Antoinette]

MARIE ANTOINETTE

AND

THE DOWNFALL OF ROYALTY

BY

IMBERT DE SAINT-AMAND

_TRANSLATED BY_

ELIZABETH GILBERT MARTIN

_WITH PORTRAIT_

NEW YORK

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

1899

COPYRIGHT, 1891, BY

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS.

{v}

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER PAGE

I. PARIS AT THE BEGINNING OF 1792 . . . . . . . . . 1

II. COUNT DE FERSON'S LAST JOURNEY TO PARIS . . . . 14

III. THE DEATH OF THE EMPEROR LEOPOLD . . . . . . . . 23

IV. THE DEATH OF GUSTAVUS III . . . . . . . . . . . 32

V. THE BEGINNINGS OF MADAME ROLAND . . . . . . . . 46

VI. MADAME ROLAND'S ENTRANCE ON THE SCENE . . . . . 60

VII. MARIE ANTOINETTE AND MADAME ROLAND . . . . . . . 73

VIII. MADAME ROLAND AT THE MINISTRY OF THE INTERIOR . 85

IX. DUMOURIEZ, MINISTER OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS . . . . . 94

X. THE COUNCIL OF MINISTERS . . . . . . . . . . . . 103

XI. THE FETE OF THE SWISS OF CHATEAUVIEUX . . . . . 110

XII. THE DECLARATION OF WAR . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126

XIII. THE DISBANDING OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL GUARD . . . 137

XIV. THE SUFFERINGS OF LOUIS XVI . . . . . . . . . . 148

XV. ROLAND'S DISMISSAL FROM OFFICE . . . . . . . . . 158

XVI. A THREE DAYS' MINISTRY . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166

XVII. THE PROLOGUE TO JUNE TWENTIETH . . . . . . . . . 176

XVIII. THE MORNING OF JUNE TWENTIETH . . . . . . . . . 186

{vi}

XIX. THE INVASION OF THE TUILERIES . . . . . . . . . 198

XX. MARIE ANTOINETTE ON JUNE TWENTIETH . . . . . . . 210

XXI. THE MORROW OF JUNE TWENTIETH . . . . . . . . . . 219

XXII. LAFAYETTE IN PARIS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229

XXIII. THE LAMOURETTE KISS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239

XXIV. THE FETE OF THE FEDERATION IN 1792 . . . . . . . 248

XXV. THE LAST DAYS AT THE TUILERIES . . . . . . . . . 259

XXVI. THE PROLOGUE TO THE TENTH OF AUGUST . . . . . . 267

XXVII. THE NIGHT OF AUGUST NINTH TO TENTH . . . . . . . 275

XXVIII. THE MORNING OF AUGUST TENTH . . . . . . . . . . 284

XXIX. THE BOX OF THE LOGOGRAPH . . . . . . . . . . . . 299

XXX. THE COMBAT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 306

XXXI. THE RESULTS OF THE COMBAT . . . . . . . . . . . 316

XXXII. THE ROYAL FAMILY IN THE CONVENT OF THE FEUILLANTS 329

XXXIII. THE TEMPLE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 337

XXXIV. THE PRINCESS DE LAMBALLE'S MURDER . . . . . . . 350

XXXV. THE SEPTEMBER MASSACRES . . . . . . . . . . . . 359

XXXVI. MADAME ROLAND DURING THE MASSACRES . . . . . . . 372

XXXVII. THE PROCLAMATION OF THE REPUBLIC . . . . . . . . 384

INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 395

{1}

MARIE ANTOINETTE

AND

THE DOWNFALL OF ROYALTY.

I.

PARIS AT THE BEGINNING OF 1792.

Paris in 1792 is no longer what it was in 1789. In 1789, the old

French society was still brilliant. The past endured beside the

present. Neither names nor escutcheons, neither liveries nor places at

court, had been suppressed. The aristocracy and the Revolution lived

face to face. In 1792, the scene has changed. The Paris of the

nobility is no longer in Paris, but at Coblentz. The Faubourg

Saint-Germain is like a desert. Since June, 1790, armorial bearings

have been taken down. The blazons of ancient houses have been broken

and thrown into the gutters. No more display, no more liveries, no

more carriages with coats-of-arms on their panels. Titles and manorial

names are done away with. The Duke de Brissac is called M. Cosse; the

Duke de Caraman, M. Riquet; the Duke d'Aiguillon, M. Vignerot. The

_Almanach royal_ of 1792 mentions not a single court appointment.

{2}

In 1789, it was still an exceptional thing for the nobility to

emigrate. In 1792, it is the rule. Those among the nobles who have

had the courage to remain at Paris in the midst of the furnace, so as

to make a rampart for the King of their bodies, seem half ashamed of

their generous conduct. The illusions of worldliness have been

dispelled. Nearly every salon was open in 1789. In 1792, they are

nearly all closed; those of the magistrates and the great capitalists

as well as those of the aristocracy. Etiquette is still observed at

the Tuileries, but there is no question of fetes; no balls, no

concerts, none of that elegance and animation which once made the court

a rendezvous of pleasures. In 1789, illusions, dreams, a naive

expectation of the age of gold, were to be found everywhere. In 1792,

eclogues and pastoral poetry are beginning to go out of fashion. The

diapason of hatred is pitched higher. Already there is powder and a

smell of blood in the air. A general instinct forebodes that France

and Europe are on the verge of a terrible duel. On both sides passions

have touched their culminating point. Distrust and uneasiness are

universal. Every day the despotism of the clubs becomes more

threatening. The Jacobins do not reign yet, but they govern. Deputies

who, if left to their own impulses, would vote on the conservative

side, pronounce for the Revolution solely through fear of the

demagogues. In 1789, the religious sentiment still retained power

among the {3} masses. In 1792, irreligion and atheism have wrought

their havoc. In 1789, the most ardent revolutionists, Marat, Danton,

Robespierre, were all royalists. At the beginning of 1792, the

republic begins to show its face beneath the monarchical mask.

The Tuileries, menaced by the neighboring lanes of the Carrousel and

the Palais Royal, resembles a besieged fortress. The Revolution daily

augments its trenches and parallels around the sanctuary of the

monarchy. Its barracks are the faubourgs; its soldiers, red-bonneted

pikemen. Louis XVI. in his palace is like a general-in-chief in a

stronghold, who should have voluntarily dampened his powder, spiked his

cannon, and torn his flags. He no longer inspires his troops with

confidence. A capitulation seems imminent. The unfortunate monarch

still hopes vaguely for assistance from abroad, for the arrival of some

liberating army. Vain hope! He is blockaded in his castle, and the

moment is at hand when he will be compelled to play the buffoon in a

red bonnet.

Glance at the palace and see how closely it is hemmed in by the

earthworks of the Revolution. The abode of luxury and display,

intended for fetes rather than for war, Philibert Delorme's

_chef-d'oeuvre_ has in its architecture none of those means of defence

by which the military and feudal sovereignties of old times fortified

their dwellings. On the side of the courtyards a multitude of little

{4} streets contain a hostile population ready to swell every riot.

Near the Pavilion of Marsan is the Palais Royal, that headquarters of

insurrection, with its cafes, its gambling-dens, its houses of

ill-fame, its wooden galleries which are known as the camp of the

Tartars. It is the Duke of Orleans who has democratized the Palais

Royal. In spite of the sarcasms of the aristocracy and the lawsuits of

neighboring proprietors, he has destroyed the fine gardens bounded by

the rue de Richelieu, the rue des Petit-Champs, and the rue des

Bons-Enfants. In the place it occupied he has caused the rue de

Valois, the rue de Beaujolais, and the rue de Montpensier to be opened,

all of them inhabited by a revolutionary population. The remaining

space he has surrounded on three sides with constructions pierced by

galleries, where he has built the shops that form the finest bazaar in

Europe. The fourth side of these new constructions was originally

intended to form part of the Prince's palace, and to be composed of an

open colonnade supporting suites of apartments. But this side has not

been erected. In place of it the Duke of Orleans has run up some

temporary wooden sheds, containing three rows of shops separated by two

large passage-ways, the ground of which has not even been made level.

The privileges pertaining to the Orleans family prevent the police from

entering the enclosure of the Palais Royal. Hence it becomes the

rendezvous of all conspirators. The taking of the Bastille was {5}

plotted there, and there the 20th of June and the 10th of August will

yet be organized.

A little further off is the National Assembly. Its sessions are held

in the riding-school built when the little Louis XV. was to be taught

horsemanship. It adjoins the terrace of the Feuillants. One of its

courtyards which looks towards the front of the edifice, is at the

upper end of the rue de Dauphin. The other extremity occupies the site

where the rue Castiglione will be opened later on. There, close beside

the Tuileries, sits the National Assembly, the rival and victorious

power that will overcome the monarchy.

The Assembly terrorizes the Tuileries. The Jacobin Club terrorizes the

Assembly. Close beside the Hall of the Manege, on the site to be

occupied afterward by the market of Saint-Honore, the revolutionary

club holds its tumultuous sessions in the former convent founded in

1611 by the Jacobin, or Dominican, friars. The club meets three times

a week, at seven in the evening. The hall is a long rectangle with a

vaulted roof. Four rows of stalls occupy the longer sides, while the

two ends serve as public galleries. Nearly in the middle of the hall,

the speaker's platform and the president's writing-table stand opposite

each other. Hither come all ambitious revolutionists who desire to

talk, to agitate, to make themselves conspicuous. Here Robespierre

lords it, not being a deputy in consequence of the law forbidding

members of the {6} Constituent Assembly to belong to the legislative

body. Those who love disorder come here to seek emotions. Some find

lucrative employment, applause being paid for, and the different

parties having each its _claque_ in the galleries. Since April, 1791,

the Jacobin Club has affiliations in two thousand French towns and

villages. At its orders and in its pay is an army of agents whose

business it is to make stump speeches, to sing in the streets, to make

propositions in cafes, to applaud or to hiss in the galleries of the

National Assembly. These hirelings usually receive about five francs a

day, but as the number of the chevaliers of the revolutionary lustrum

increases, the pay diminishes, until it is finally reduced to forty

sous. Deserters and soldiers dismissed from their regiments for

misconduct are admitted by preference.

For some days past, the Club of Moderate Revolutionists, friends of

Lafayette, who might have closed the old clubs after the sanguinary

repression of the riot in the Champ-de-Mars, and who contented

themselves with opening a new one, have been meeting in the convent of

the Feuillants, rue Saint-Honore. But this new club has not been a

great success; moderation is not the order of the day; the Jacobins

have regained their empire, and on December 26, 1791, seals are placed

on the door of the Club of the Feuillants.

At the other extremity of Paris there is a club still more inflammatory

than that of the Jacobins: {7} that of the Cordeliers. "The Jacobins,"

said Barbaroux, "have no common aim, although they act in concert. The

Cordeliers are bent on blood, gold, and offices." Speaking as a rule,

the Cordeliers belong to the Jacobin Club, while hardly a single

Jacobin is a Cordelier. The Cordeliers are the advance-guard of the

Revolution. They are, as Camille Desmoulins has said, Jacobins of the

Jacobins. The chiefs are Danton, Marat, Hebert, Chaumette. They take

their names from those religious democrats, the Minorite friars of

Saint Francis, who wear a girdle of rope over their coarse gray habit.

They meet in the Place of the School of Medicine, in a monastery whose

church was built in the reign of Saint Louis, in 1259, with the fine

paid as indemnity for a murder. In 1590, it became the resort of the

most famous Leaguers. Chateaubriand says: "There are places which seem

to be the laboratory of seditions." How well this expression of the

author of the _Memoires d'Outre-tombe_ describes the club-room of the

Cordeliers! The pictures, the sculptured or painted images, the veils

and curtains of the convent, have been torn down. The basilica

displays nothing but its bare bones to the eyes of the spectator. At

the apse, where wind and rain enter through the unglazed rose-window,

joiners' work-benches serve as a desk for the president and as places

on which to deposit the red caps. Do you see the fallen beams, the

wooden benches, the dismantled stalls, the relics of saints pushed or

rolled against the walls {8} to serve as benches for "dirty, dusty,

drunken, sweaty spectators in torn jackets, pikes on their shoulders,

or with their bare arms crossed"? Do you hear the orators who "call

each other beggars, pickpockets, robbers, assassins, to the discordant

noise of hisses and those proper to their different groups of devils?

They find the material of their metaphors in murder, they borrow them

from the filthiest of sewers and dungheaps, and from places set apart

for the prostitution of men and women. Gestures render their figures

of speech more comprehensible; with the cynicism of dogs, they call

everything by its own name, in an impious and obscene parade of oaths

and curses. To destroy and to produce, death and generation, nothing

else can be disentangled from the savage jargon which deafens one's

ear." And what is it that interrupts the speakers? "The little black

owls of the cloister without monks and the steeple without bells,

making themselves merry in the broken windows in expectation of their

prey. At first they are called to order by the tinkling of an

ineffectual bell; but as their cries do not cease, they are shot at to

make them keep silence. They fall, palpitating, bleeding, and ominous,

into the midst of the pandemonium."

So, then, clubs take the place of convents. Since the Constituent

Assembly had decreed the abolition of monastic vows by its vote of

February 13, 1790, many persons, rudely detached from their usual way

of life and its duties, had abandoned their vocation. {9} The nun

became a working-woman; the shaved Capuchin read his journal in

suburban taverns; and grinning crowds visited the profaned and open

convents "as, in Grenada, travellers pass through the abandoned halls

of the Alhambra, or as they pause, at Tivoli, under the columns of the

Sibyl's temple."

The Jacobin Club and the Club of the Cordeliers will destroy the

monarchy. In the Memoirs of Lafayette it is remarked that "it is hard

to understand how the Jacobin minority and a handful of pretended

Marseillais made themselves masters of Paris when nearly all the forty

thousand citizens composing the National Guard desired the

Constitution; but the clubs had succeeded in scattering the true

patriots and in creating a dread of vigorous measures. Experience had

not yet taught what this feebleness and disorganization must needs

cost."

The dark side of the picture is plainly far more evident than it was in

1789. But how vivid it is still! Those who hunger after sensations

are in their element. When has there been more noise, more tumult,

more movement, more unexpected or more varied scenes? Listen once more

to Chateaubriand who, on his return from America, passed through Paris

at this epoch: "When I read the _Histoire des troubles publics ches

divers peuples_ before the Revolution, I could not conceive how it was

possible to live in those times. I was surprised that Montaigne wrote

so cheerfully in a castle which he could not walk around without risk

of being abducted by bands {10} of Leaguers or Protestants. The

Revolution has enabled me to comprehend this possibility of existence.

With us men, critical moments produce an increase of life. In a

society which is dissolving and forming itself anew, the strife between

the two tendencies, the collision of the past and the future, the

medley of ancient and modern manners, form a transitory combination

which does not admit a moment of ennui. Passions and characters, freed

from restraint, display themselves with an energy they do not possess

in well-regulated cities. The infraction of laws, the emancipation

from duties, usages, and the rules of decorum, even perils themselves,

increase the interest of this disorder."

Yes, people complain, grow angry, suffer, but they are not bored. How

many incidents, episodes, emotions, there are in this strange

tragi-comedy! Everywhere there is something to be seen; in the

Assembly, the clubs, the public places, the promenades, streets, cafes,

and theatres. Brawls and discussions are heard on every side. If by

chance a salon is still open, disputes go on there as they would at a

club. What quarrels take place in the cafes! Men stand on chairs and

tables to spout. And what dissensions in the theatres! The actors

meddle with politics as well as the spectators. In the greenroom of

the _Comedie-Francaise_ there is a right side, whose chief is the

royalist Naudet, and a left side led by the republican Talma. Neither

actor goes out except well armed. There are pistols {11} underneath

their togas. The kings of tragedy, threatened by their political

adversaries, have real poniards wherewith to defend themselves. _Les

Horaces, Brutus, La Mort de Cesar, Barnevelt, Guillaume Tell, Charles

IX._, are plays containing in each tirade allusions which inflame the

boxes and the pit. The theatre is a tilting-ground. If the royalists

are there in force, they cause the orchestra to play their favorite

airs: _Charmante Gabrielle, Vive Henri Quatre! O! Richard, O! mon

roi!_ The revolutionists protest, and sing their own chosen melody,

the _Ca ira_. Sometimes they come to blows, swords are drawn, and, the

play over, elegant women are dragged through the gutters. There is a

general outbreak of insults and violence. The journals play the chief

part in this universal madness. Sometimes the press is eloquent, but

it is oftener ribald or atrocious. To borrow an expression from

Montaigne, "it lowers itself even to the worthless esteem of extreme

inferiority." The beautiful French tongue, once so correct and pure,

is no longer recognizable. Vulgar words fall thick as hail. To the

language of the Academy has succeeded the jargon of the markets.

What a swarm! what a swirl! How noisy, how restless, is this

revolutionary Paris! What excited crowds fill the clubs, the Assembly,

the Palais Royal, the gambling-houses, and the tumultuous faubourgs!

Riotous gatherings, popular deputations, detachments of cavalry,

companies of {12} foot-soldiers; gentlemen in French coats, powdered

hair, swords at their sides, hats under their arms, silk stockings and

low shoes; democrats close-cropped and unpowdered, with English frock

coats and American cravats; ragged _sans-culottes_ in red caps, weave

in and out in ceaseless motion.

Do you know what was the chief distraction of this crowd in April,

1792? The debut of that new and fashionable machine, the guillotine.

It was used for the first time on the 25th, for a criminal guilty of

rape. Sensitive people congratulated each other on the mitigated

torment, which they were pleased to consider a humanitarian

improvement. The excellent philanthropist, Doctor Guillotin, was

lauded to the skies. His machine was named guillotine in his honor,

just as the stage-coaches established by Turgot had been called

turgotines.

What enthusiasm, what infatuation, for this guillotine, already so

famous and destined to be so much more so! The editors of the

_Moniteur_ declare in a lyric outburst that it is worthy of the

approaching century. The truth is that it accelerates and makes less

difficult the executioner's task. In the end the crowd would become

disgusted with massacres. The delays of the gibbet would weary their

patience. The _sans-culottes_, who doubtless have a presentiment of

all that is going to happen, welcome the guillotine, then, with

acclamations. At the _Ambigu_ theatre a ballet-pantomime, called _Les

Quatre Fils Aymon_, is given, and all Paris runs to {13} see the heads

of all four fall at once, in the midst of loud applause, under the

blade of the good doctor's machine. People amuse themselves with their

future instrument of torture as if it were a toy. In a Girondin salon

they play at guillotine with a moveable screen that is lifted and let

fall again. At elegant dinners a little guillotine is brought in with

the dessert and takes the place of a sweet dish. A pretty woman places

a doll representing some political adversary under the knife; it is

decapitated in the neatest possible style, and out of it runs something

red that smells good, a liqueur perfumed with ambergris, into which

every lady hastens to dip her lace handkerchief. French gaiety would

make a vaudeville out of the day of judgment. Poor society, which

passes so quick from gay to grave, from lively to severe, and which,

like the Figaro of Beaumarchais, laughs at everything so that it may

not weep!

{14}

II.

COUNT DE FERSEN'S LAST JOURNEY TO PARIS.

It has been supposed until lately that after the day when he bade

farewell to the royal family at the beginning of the Varennes journey,

Count de Fersen never again saw Marie Antoinette. A new publication of

very great importance proves that this is an error, and that the

Swedish nobleman came to Paris for the last time in 1792, and had

several interviews with the King and Queen. This publication is

entitled: _Extraits des papiers du grand marechal de Suede, Comte Jean

Axel de Fersen_, and is published by his great-nephew, Baron de

Kinckowstrom, a Swedish colonel. There is something romantic in this

episode of the mysterious journey made by Marie Antoinette's loyal

chevalier, which merits to leave a trace in history.

Fersen was one of those men whose sentiments are all the more profound

because they know how to veil them under an apparently imperturbable

calm. A soul of fire under an exterior of ice, as the Baroness de

Korff describes him, courageous to temerity, devoted to heroism, he had

conceived for Marie Antoinette one of those disinterested and ardent

{15} friendships which lie midway between love and religion. Almost as

much a Frenchman as he was a Swede, he did not forget that he had

fought in America under the standard of the Most Christian King, and

had been colonel of a regiment in the service of France. Having been

the courtier of the happy and brilliant Queen, he remained the courtier

of the Queen overcome by anguish. He had enkindled in the soul of his

sovereign, Gustavus III., the same chivalrous sentiment which animated

his own, and was impatiently awaiting the time when he could hasten to

the aid of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette under the Swedish flag. His

dearest ambition was to draw his sword in the Queen's defence. From

the Varennes journey up to the day of Marie Antoinette's execution, he

had but one thought: to rescue the woman for whom he would willingly

have shed the last drop of his blood. This fixed idea has left its

trace on every line of his journal. The sad and melancholy countenance

of Fersen, the courtier of misfortune, the friend of unhappy days, is

assuredly one of the celebrated types in the drama of Versailles and

the Tuileries. This man, who would have made no mark in history but

for the martyr Queen, is certain, thanks to her, not to be forgotten by

posterity. Marie Antoinette was to return him in glory what he gave

her in devotion.

On her return to the Tuileries after the disastrous journey to

Varennes, the Queen wrote to {16} Fersen, June 27, 1791: "Be at ease

about us; we are living," and Fersen replied: "I am well, and live only

to serve you." June 29, she wrote him another letter in which she

said: "Do not write to me; it would endanger us; and, above all, do not

return here under any pretext; all would be lost if you should make

your appearance. They never lose sight of us by night or day; which is

a matter of indifference to me. Be tranquil; nothing will happen to

me. The Assembly desires to treat us with gentleness. Adieu. I shall

not be able to write to you again."

Marie Antoinette was in error when she supposed she would not write

again. She was in error, likewise, when she imagined that Fersen, in

spite of all dangers and difficulties, would not find means to see her

again. Their correspondence was not interrupted. After the acceptance

of the Constitution, Marie Antoinette wrote to him: "Can you understand

my position and the part I am continually obliged to play? Sometimes I

do not understand myself, and am obliged to consider whether it is

really I who am speaking; but what is to be done? It is all necessary,

and be sure our position would be still worse than it is if I had not

at once assumed this attitude; we at least gain time by it, and that is

all that is required. I keep up better than could be expected, seeing

that I go out so little and endure constantly such immense fatigue of

mind. What with the persons whom I must see, my {17} writing, and the

time I spend with my children, I have not a moment to myself. The last

occupation, which is not the least, gives me my sole happiness. When I

am very sad, I take my little boy in my arms, embrace him with my whole

heart, and for a moment am consoled."

Fersen, touched and pitying, was constantly thinking of that fatal

palace of the Tuileries where the Queen was so much to be

compassionated. An invincible attraction drew him thither. There, he

thought, was the post of devotion and of honor. November 26, he wrote:

"Tell me whether there is any possibility of going to see you entirely

alone, without a servant, in case I receive the order to do so from the

King (Gustavus III.); he has already spoken to me of his desire to

bring this about." Of all the sovereigns who interested themselves in

the fate of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette, Gustavus was the most

active, brave, and resolute; he was also the only one in whom Marie

Antoinette placed absolute confidence. She expected less from her own

brother, the Emperor Leopold, and it was to Stockholm above all that

she turned her eyes. Gustavus ordered Fersen to go secretly to Paris,

and on December 22, 1791, he sent him a memoir and certain letters,

commissioning him to deliver them to Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette.

He recommended, as forcibly as he could, a new attempt at flight, but

with precautions suggested by the lesson of Varennes. He thought the

members of the royal {18} family should depart separately and in

disguise, and that, once outside of his kingdom, Louis XVI. should call

for the intervention of a congress. The following passage occurs in

the letter of the Swedish King to Marie Antoinette: "I beg Your Majesty

to consider seriously that violent disorders can only be cured by

violent remedies, and that if moderation is a virtue in the course of

ordinary life, it often becomes a vice when there is question of public

matters. The King of France can re-establish his dominion only by

resuming his former rights; every other remedy is illusory; anything

except this would merely open the way to endless discussions which

would augment the confusion instead of ending it. The King's rights

were torn from him by the sword; it is by the sword that they must be

reconquered. But I refrain; I should remember that I am addressing a

princess who, in the most terrible moments of her life, has shown the

most intrepid courage."

Fersen obtained permission from Louis XVI. to accomplish the mission

confided to him by Gustavus III. He left Stockholm under an assumed

name and with the passport of a Swedish courier, and reached Paris

without accident, February 13, 1792. He was so adroit and prudent that

no one suspected his presence. On the very evening of his arrival he

wrote in his journal: "Went to the Queen by my usual road; very few

National Guards; did not see the King." Fersen, therefore, only

reappeared at the Tuileries in the darkness, like a fugitive or {19} an

outlaw. He found the Queen pale with grief and with hair whitened by

sorrow and emotion. It was a solemn moment. The storm was raging

within France and beyond it. Terrible omens, snares, and dangers lay

on every side. One might have said that the Tuileries were about to be

swallowed up in a gulf of fire and blood.

The next day Fersen saw the King. He wrote in his journal: "Tuesday,

14. Saw the King at six in the evening. He will not go and can not,

on account of the extreme vigilance. In fact, he scruples at it,

having so often promised to remain, for he is an honest man.... He

sees that force is the only resource; but, being weak, he thinks it

impossible to resume all his authority.... Unless he were constantly

encouraged, I am not sure he would not be tempted to negotiate with the

rebels. He said to me afterwards: 'That's all very well! We are by

ourselves and we can talk; but nobody ever found himself in my

position. I know I missed the right moment; it was the 14th of July;

we ought to have gone then, and I wanted to, but how could I when

Monsieur himself begged me to stay, and Marshal de Broglie, who was in

command, said to me: "Yes, we can go to Metz. But what shall we do

when we get there?" I lost the opportunity and never found it again.

I have been abandoned by everybody.'" Louis XVI. desired Fersen to

warn the Powers that they must not be surprised at anything he might be

forced to do; that he was {20} obliged, that it was the effect of

constraint. "They must put me out of the question," he added, "and let

me do what I can."

Fersen had a long talk with Marie Antoinette the same day. She entered

into full details about the present and especially about the past. She

explained why the flight to Varennes, in which Fersen had taken such a

prominent part, and which had succeeded so well so long as he directed

it, had ended in failure. The Queen described the anguish of the

arrest and the return. To the project of a new effort to escape, she

replied by pointing out the implacable surveillance of which she was

the object, and the effervescence of popular passions, which this time

would overleap all restraint if the fugitives were taken. It would be

better for the royal family to suffer together than to expose

themselves to die separately. It would be better to die like princes,

who abdicate majesty only with life, than as vagabonds, under a vulgar

disguise. "The Queen," adds Fersen, "told me that she saw Alexander

Lameth and Duport; that they always tell her that there is no remedy

but foreign troops; failing that, all is lost, that this cannot last,

that they have gone farther than they wished to. In spite of all this,

she thinks them malicious, does not trust them, but uses them as best

she can. All the ministers are traitors who betray the King." Fersen

had a final interview with Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette on February

21, 1792. By February 24, {21} he had returned to Brussels. He was

profoundly moved on quitting the Tuileries, but, dismal and lugubrious

as his forebodings may have been, how much more sombre was the reality

to prove!

What a terrible fate was reserved for the chief actors in this drama!

Yet a few days, and the chivalrous Gustavus was to be assassinated.

The hour of execution was approaching for Louis XVI. and Marie

Antoinette. Fersen, likewise, was to have a most tragic end. From the

moment when he bade his last adieu to the unhappy Queen, his life was

but one long torment. His disposition, already inclined to melancholy,

became incurably sad. His loyal and devoted soul could not accustom

itself to the thought of the calamities weighing so cruelly upon that

good and beautiful sovereign of whom he said in 1778: "The Queen is the

prettiest and most amiable princess that I know." On October 14, 1793,

he will still be endeavoring, with the aid of Baron de Breteuil, to

bring to completion a thousandth plot to extricate the august captive

from her fate. He will learn the fatal tidings on the 20th. "I can

think of nothing but my loss," he will write in his journal. "It is

frightful to have no positive details. It is horrible that she should

have been alone in her last moments, with no one to speak to, or to

receive her last wishes. No; without vengeance, my heart will never be

content." Covered with honors under the reign of Gustavus IV.,

senator, chancellor of the Academy of {22} Upsal, member of the

Seraphim Order, grand marshal of the kingdom of Sweden, there will

remain in the depths of his heart a wound which nothing can heal. An

inveterate fatality will pursue him as it had done the unfortunate

sovereign of whom he had been the chevalier. He will perish in a riot

at Stockholm, June 20, 1810, at the time of the obsequies of the Prince

Royal. Struck down by fists and walking-sticks, his hair pulled out,

his clothes torn to rags, he will be dragged about half-naked, rolled

underfoot, assassinated by a maddened populace. Before rendering his

last sigh, he will succeed in rising to his knees, and, joining his

hands, he will utter these words from the stoning of Saint Stephen: "O

my God, who callest me to Thee, I implore Thee for my tormentors, whom

I pardon." If not the same words, they are at least the same thoughts

as those of Marie Antoinette on the platform of the scaffold.

{23}

III.

THE DEATH OF THE EMPEROR LEOPOLD.

One after another, Marie Antoinette lost her last chances of safety;

blows as unforeseen as terrible beat down the combinations on which she

had built her hopes. Within a fortnight she was to see the two

sovereigns disappear from whom she had expected succor: her brother,

the Emperor Leopold, and Gustavus III., the King of Sweden. Leopold

had not been equal to all the illusions which his sister had cherished

with regard to him, but, nevertheless, he showed great interest in

French affairs, and a lively desire to be useful to Louis XVI. Pacific

by disposition, he had temporized at first, and adopted a conciliatory

policy. He desired a reconciliation with the new principles, and,

moreover, he was not blind to the inexperience and levity of the

_emigres_. But the obligation, to which he was bound by treaties, to

defend the rights of princes holding property in Alsace, his fear of

the propaganda of sedition, the aggressive language of the National

Assembly and the Parisian press, had ended by determining him to take a

more resolute attitude, and it was at the moment when he was {24}

seriously intending to come to his sister's aid that he was carried off

by sudden death. Though she did not desire a war between Austria and

France, the Queen had persisted in wishing for an armed congress, which

would have been a compromise between peace and war, but which the

National Assembly would have regarded as an intolerable humiliation.

It must not be denied, the situation was a false one. Between the true

sentiments of Louis XVI. and his new role as a constitutional

sovereign, there was a real incompatibility. As to the Queen, she was

on good terms neither with the _emigres_ nor with the Assembly.

In order to get a just idea of the sentiments shown by the _emigres_,

it is necessary to read a letter written from Treves, October 16, 1791,

by Madame de Raigecourt, the friend of Madame Elisabeth, to another

friend of the Princess, the Marquise de Bombelles: "I see with pain

that Paris and Coblentz are not on good terms. The Emperor treats the

Princes like children.... The Princes cannot avoid suspecting that it

is the influence of the Queen and her agents which thwarts their plans

and causes the Emperor to behave so strangely.... Some trickery on the

part of the Tuileries is still suspected in this country. They ought

to explain themselves to each other once for all. Is the Queen afraid

lest the Count d'Artois should arrogate an authority in the realm which

would diminish her own? Let her be at ease on that score; she will

{25} always be the King's wife and always dominant. What is she afraid

of, then? She complains that she is not sufficiently respected. But

you know the good heart and the uprightness of our Prince; he is

incapable of the remarks attributed to him, and which have certainly

been reported to the Queen with the intention of estranging them

entirely." Madame de Raigecourt ends her letter with this complaint

against Louis XVI.: "Our wretched King lowers himself more and more

every day; for he is doing too much, even if he still intends to

escape.... The emigration, meanwhile, increases daily, and presently

there will be more Frenchmen than Germans in this region." At this

very time, the Queen was having recourse to her brother Leopold as to a

saviour. She wrote to him, October 4, 1791: "My only consolation is in

writing to you, my dear brother; I am surrounded by so many atrocities

that I need all your friendship to tranquillize my mind.... A point of

primary importance is to regulate the conduct of the _emigres_. If

they re-enter France in arms, all is lost, and it will be impossible to

make it believed that we are not in connivance with them. Even the

existence of an army of _emigres_ on the frontier would be enough to

keep up the irritation and afford ground for accusations against us; it

appears to me that a congress would make the task of restraining them

less difficult.... This idea of a congress pleases me greatly; it

would second the efforts we are {26} making to maintain confidence. In

the first place, I repeat, it would put a check on the _emigres_, and,

moreover, it would make an impression here from which I hope much. I

submit that to your better judgment.... Adieu, my dear brother; we

love you, and my daughter has particularly charged me to embrace her

good uncle."

While Marie Antoinette was thus turning towards Austria for assistance,

the National Assembly at Paris repelled with energy all thought of any

intervention whatsoever on the part of foreign powers. January 1,

1792, it issued a decree of impeachment against the King's brothers,

the Prince de Conde, and Calonne. The confiscation of the property of

the _emigres_ and the taxation of their revenues for the benefit of the

State had been prescribed by another decree to which Louis XVI. had

offered no opposition. January 14, Guadet said in the tribune, while

speaking of the congress: "If it is true that by delays and

discouragement they wish to bring us to accept this shameful mediation,

ought the National Assembly to close its eyes to such a danger? Let us

all swear to die here rather than--" He was not allowed to finish.

The whole assembly rose to their feet, crying: "Yes, yes; we swear it!"

And in a burst of enthusiasm, every Frenchman who would take part in a

congress having for its object the modification of the Constitution,

was declared an infamous traitor. January 17, it was decreed that the

King should require the {27} Emperor Leopold to explain himself

definitely before March 1.

By a curious coincidence, this date of March 1 was precisely that on

which the Emperor Leopold was to die of a dreadful malady. He was in

perfect health on February 27, when he gave audience to the Turkish

envoy; he was in his agony, February 28, and on March 1, he died. His

usual physician asserted that he had been poisoned. The idea that a

crime had been committed spread among the people. Vague rumors got

about concerning a woman who had caused remark at the last masked ball

at court. This unknown person, under shelter of her disguise, might

have presented the sovereign with poisoned bonbons. The Jacobins, who

might have desired to get rid of the armed chief of the empire, and the

_emigres_, who might have reproached him as too luke-warm in his

opposition to the principles of the French Revolution, were alternately

suspected. The last hypothesis was hardly probable, nor does anything

prove that the Jacobins had any hand in the possibly natural death of

the Emperor Leopold. But minds were so overexcited at the time that

the parties mutually accused each other, on all occasions, of the most

execrable crimes. For that matter, there were Jacobins who, out of

mere bravado, would willingly have gloried in crimes of which they were

not guilty, provided that these crimes had been committed against kings.

What is certain is, that Marie Antoinette believed {28} in poison.

"The death of the Emperor Leopold," says Madame Campan, "occurred on

March 1, 1792. The Queen was out when the news arrived at the

Tuileries. On her return, I gave her the letter announcing it. She

cried out that the Emperor had been poisoned; that she had remarked and

preserved a gazette in which, in an article on the session of the

Jacobin Club at the time when Leopold had declared for the Coalition,

it was said, in speaking of him, that a bit of piecrust could settle

that affair. From that moment the Queen had regarded this phrase as an

inadvertence of the propagandists."

On the very day when Marie Antoinette's brother died, Louis XVI.'s

Minister of Foreign Affairs, De Lessart, had enraged the National

Assembly by reading them extracts from his diplomatic correspondence,

which they found not sufficiently firm. They were indignant at a

despatch in which Prince de Kaunitz said: "The latest events give us

hopes; it appears that the majority of the French nation, impressed

with the evils they have prepared, are returning to more moderate

principles, and incline to render to the throne the dignity and

authority which are the essence of monarchical government." When De

Lessart came down from the tribune, the whispering changed into cries

of rage and threats against the minister and the court, which, it was

said, was planning a counter-revolution at the Tuileries, and dictating

to the cabinet of Vienna the language by which it hoped to intimidate

France. {29} At the evening session of the same day, Rouyer, a deputy,

proposed to impeach the Minister of Foreign Affairs. "Is it possible,"

cried he, "that a perfidious minister should come here to make a parade

of his work and lay the responsibility of it on a foreign power? Will

the time never arrive when ministers shall cease to betray us? Were my

head to be the price of the denunciation I am making, I would none the

less go on with it." At the session of March 6, Guadet said: "It is

time to know whether the ministers wish to make Louis XVI. King of the

French, or the King of Coblentz."

On the 10th the storm broke. The day before, Narbonne had received his

dismission. Brissot accused De Lessart of having compromised the

safety of France, withheld from the Assembly the documents establishing

the alliance between the Emperor and the King of Prussia, discredited

the assignats, depreciated the credit, lowered the rate of exchange,

and encouraged interior disorder. Vergniaud followed him, exclaiming:

"From the tribune where I am speaking may be seen the palace where

perverse counsellors lead astray and deceive the King given to you by

the Constitution; where they forge chains for the nation, and arrange

the manoeuvres which are to deliver us up to Austria, after having

caused us to pass through the horrors of civil war. Terror and dismay

have often issued from that famous palace. Let them re-enter it to-day

in the name of the law, let them penetrate all hearts, and {30} teach

all who dwell there, that our Constitution accords inviolability to the

King alone. Let them know that the law will overtake all the guilty

without exception, and that there will not be a single head convicted

of crime which can escape its sword." The decree of impeachment

against the ministers was voted by a very large majority. De Lessart

was advised to take flight, but he refused. "I owe it to my country,"

said he, "I owe it to my King and to myself to make my innocence and

the regularity of my conduct plain before the tribunal of the high

court, and I have decided to give myself up at Orleans." He was

conducted by gendarmes to that city, where he was imprisoned. Louis

XVI. dared not do anything to save his favorite minister. On March 11,

Petion, the mayor of Paris, came to the bar of the Assembly, and read,

in the name of the Commune, an address in which it was said: "When the

atmosphere surrounding us is heavy with noisome vapors, Nature can

relieve herself only by a thunder-storm. So, too, society can purge

itself from the abuses which disturb it only by a formidable

explosion.... It is true, then, that responsibility is not an idle

word; that all men, whatever may be their stations, are equal before

the law; that the sword of justice is poised over all heads without

distinction." Was not this language like a prognostic of the 21st of

January and the 16th of October? Encompassed by a thousand snares,

hated by each of the extreme parties, by the {31} _emigres_ as well as

by the Jacobins, Marie Antoinette no longer beheld anything but aspects

of sorrow. Abroad, as in France, her gaze fell on dismal spectacles

only. Her imagination was affected. She hardly dared taste the dishes

served at her table. All had conspired to betray her. She had

experienced so many deceptions and so much anguish; fate had pursued

her with so much bitterness, that her heart, exhausted with emotions,

and overwhelmed with sadness, was weary of all things, even of hope.

{32}

IV.

THE DEATH OF GUSTAVUS III.

The drama of the Revolution is not French alone; it is European. It

has its afterclap in every empire, in every kingdom, even to the most

distant lands. It excites minds in Stockholm almost as much as in

Paris. Among the Swedes there are people whose greatest desire would

be to parody the October Days, and to carry about on pikes the bleeding

heads of their adversaries. The new ideas take fire and spread like a

train of gunpowder. It is the fashion to go to extremes; a nameless

frenzy and fatality seem let loose upon this epoch of agitations and

catastrophes. All those who, at one time or another, have been guests

at the palace of Versailles, are condemned, as by a mysterious

sentence, either to exile or to death.

How will terminate the career of that brilliant King of Sweden, who had

received from Versailles and from Paris, from the court and from the

city, such an enthusiastic reception? Gustavus, the idol of the great

lords, the philosophers, and the fashionable beauties, who, after being

the hero of the encyclopaedists, came to hold his court at {33}

Aix-la-Chapelle amid the French _emigres_, and who, on his return to

Stockholm, prepared there the great crusade for authority, announcing

himself as the avenger of divine right, the saviour of all thrones?

The last days of his life, his presentiments, which recall those of

Caesar, his superstitions, his belief in prophecies, his magic

incantations, that warning which he scorns, as the Duke de Guise did at

the castle of Blois, that masked ball where the costumes, the music,

the flowers, the lights, offer a painfully strange contrast to the

horror of the attack; all is sinister, lugubrious, in these fantastic

and fatal scenes which have already tempted more than one dramatist,

more than one musician, and whose phases a Shakespeare only could

retrace. The crime of Stockholm is linked closely to the

death-struggle of French royalty. The funeral knell which tolled at

this extremity of the North had echoes in Paris. The Swedish regicides

set the example to the regicides of France.

M. Geffroy has remarked very justly in his work, _Gustave III. et la

cour de France_, that the bloody deed which put an end to the reign and

the life of Gustavus is not an isolated fact: "The faults committed by

this Prince would not have sufficed to arm his assassins. The true

source whence Ankarstroem and his accomplices drew their first

inspiration was that vertigo caused during the last years of the

century by the annihilation of all religious and even all philosophical

faith.... No moment of {34} modern history has presented an

intellectual and moral anarchy comparable to that which accompanied the

revolutionary period in Europe."

The eighteenth century was punished for incredulity by superstition.

Having refused to believe the most holy truths, it lent credence to the

most fantastic chimeras. For priests it substituted sorcerers; for

Christian ceremonies, the rites of freemasonry. The time was coming

when, because it had rejected the Sacred Heart of Jesus, it was going

to bow before the sacred heart of Marat. The adepts of Mesmer and of

De Puysegur, the seekers after the philosopher's stone, the Nicolaites

of Berlin, the illuminati of Bavaria, enlarged the boundaries of human

credulity, and the men who succumbed in the most naive and foolish

manner to these wretched weaknesses of mind, were precisely the

haughtiest philosophers, those who had prided themselves the most on

their distinction as free-thinkers. Such a one was Gustavus III.