was alone near the Queen's bed, when she heard some one walking softly
in the adjoining corridor, which was ordinarily locked at both ends.
Madame Campan summoned the valet-de-chambre, who went into the
corridor; presently the noise of two men fighting reached the ears of
Marie Antoinette. "What a position!" cried the unfortunate Queen.
"Insults by day and assassins by night!" The valet cried: "Madame, it
is a scoundrel whom I know; I am holding him."--"Let him go," said the
Queen. "Open the door for him; he came to assassinate me; he will be
carried in triumph by the Jacobins to-morrow."
People were constantly saying that the Faubourg Saint-Antoine was
getting ready to march against the palace. Marie Antoinette was so
badly guarded, and it was so easy to force an entrance to her apartment
on the ground-floor, opposite the garden, that Madame de Tourzel, her
children's governess, begged her to sleep in the Dauphin's room on the
first floor. The Queen was averse to this step, as she was {260}
unwilling to have any one suspect her uneasiness. But Madame de
Tourzel having shown her that it would be easy to keep the secret of
this change by using the Dauphin's private staircase, she ended by
accepting the proposal so long as the trouble should last. She was so
thoughtful of all those in her service that it cost her much to
incommode them in the least. Finally, she consented to use the bed of
the governess, and a pallet was laid for the latter every evening.
Mademoiselle Pauline de Tourzel slept on a sofa in an adjoining closet.
As no one in the house suspected that the Queen might have changed her
apartment for the night, Madame de Tourzel and her daughter took
precautionary measures. When the Queen had gone to bed, they rose, and
after making sure that the doors were locked, they shot the inside
bolts. "The closet I occupied served as a passage for the royal family
when they went to supper," says Mademoiselle de Tourzel, afterwards
Madame de Bearn, in her _Souvenirs de Quarante Ans_; "I went to bed
early; sometimes I pretended to be asleep when the Princes were passing
through, and I saw them approach my sofa, one after another; I heard
their expressions of kindness and good will toward me, and noticed what
care they took not to disturb my slumber."
Poor Marie Antoinette! Could one believe that a Queen of France would
be reduced to keeping a little dog in her bedroom to warn her of the
least noise in her apartment? The Dauphin, delighted to {261} have his
mother sleep so near him, used to run to her as soon as he awoke, and
clasping her in his little arms would say the most affectionate things.
This was the only moment of the day that brought her any consolation.
By the end of July, both the Queen and her children were obliged to
give up walking in the garden. She had gone out to take the air with
her daughter in the Dauphin's small parterre at the extreme end of the
Tuileries, close to the Place Louis XV. Some federates grossly
insulted her. Four Swiss officers made their way through the crowd,
and placing the Queen and the young Princess between them, brought them
back to the palace. When she reached her apartments, Marie Antoinette
thanked her defenders in the most affecting terms, but she never went
out again.
After June 20, the garden, excepting the terrace of the Feuillants,
which, by a decree of the Assembly, had become a part of its precincts,
had been forbidden to the populace. Posters warned the people to
remain on the terrace and not go down into the garden. The terrace was
called National Ground, and the garden the Land of Coblentz.
Inscriptions apprised passers-by of this novel topography. Tri-colored
ribbons had been tied to the banisters of the staircases by way of
barriers. Placards were fastened at intervals to the trees bordering
the terrace, whereon could be read: "Citizens, respect yourselves; give
the force of bayonets to this feeble barrier. Citizens, do {262} not
go into this foreign land, this Coblentz, abode of corruption." The
leaders had such an empire over the crowd that no one disobeyed. And
yet it was the height of summer, the trees offered their verdant shade,
and the King had withdrawn all his guards and opened every gate.
Nobody dared infringe the revolutionary mandate. One young man, paying
no attention, went down into the garden. Furious clamors broke out on
all sides. "To the lamp-post with him!" cried some one on the terrace.
Thereupon the young man, taking off his shoes, drew out his
handkerchief and began to wipe the dust from their soles. People cried
bravo, and he was carried in triumph.
Marie Antoinette could not become resigned to this hatred. Often she
frightened her women by wishing to go out of the palace and address the
people. "Yes," she would cry, her voice trembling, as she walked
quickly to and fro in her chamber, "yes, I will say to them: Frenchmen,
they have had the cruelty to persuade you that I do not love France, I,
the wife of its King and the mother of a Dauphin!" Then, this brief
moment of generous exaltation over, the illusion of being able to move
a nation of insulters quickly vanished. Her life was a daily, hourly
struggle. The wife, the mother, the queen, never ceased to contend
against destiny. She hardly slept or ate; but from the very excess of
danger she drew additional energy, and moral and material force. As
she awoke at daybreak, she required that the {263} shutters should not
be closed, so that her sleepless nights might be sooner consoled by the
light of morning. The most widely diverse sentiments occupied her
soul. A captive in her palace, she sometimes believed herself
irrevocably condemned by fate, and sometimes hoped for deliverance.
Toward the middle of one of the last nights preceding the 10th of
August, the moon shone into her bedchamber. "In a month," she said to
Madame Campan, "I shall not see that moon unless I am freed from my
chains." But she was not free from anxiety concerning all that might
happen before that. "The King is not a poltroon," she added; "he has
very great passive courage, but he is crushed by a false shame, a doubt
of himself, which arises from his education quite as much as from his
character. He is afraid of commanding; he dreads above everything to
speak to assemblages of men. He lived uneasily and like a child, under
the eyes of Louis XV. until he was twenty, and this constraint has had
an effect on his timidity. In our circumstances, a few clearly spoken
words addressed to the Parisians who are devoted to us would immensely
strengthen our party, but he will not say them." Then Marie Antoinette
explained why she did not put herself forward more: "For my part," said
she, "I could act, and mount a horse if need were; but, if I acted, it
would put weapons into the hands of King's enemies; a general outcry
would be raised in France against the Austrian woman, against female
domination; moreover, {264} I should reduce the King to nothingness by
showing myself. A queen who is not regent must in such circumstances
remain inactive and prepare to die."
The danger constantly increased. At four in the morning of one of the
last days of July, warning was given at the palace that the faubourgs
were threatening, and would doubtless march against the Tuileries.
Madame Campan went very softly into the Queen's room. For a wonder,
Marie Antoinette was sleeping peacefully and profoundly. Madame Campan
did not rouse her. "You were right," said Louis XVI.; "it is good to
see her take a little rest. Oh! her griefs redouble mine!" At her
waking the Queen, on being informed of what had passed, began to weep,
and said: "Why was I not called?" Madame Campan excused herself by
saying: "It was only a false alarm. Your Majesty needed to repair your
prostrate strength."--"It is not prostrate," quickly replied the
courageous sovereign; "misfortune makes it all the greater. Elisabeth
was with the King, and I was sleeping! I, who wish to perish beside
him! I am his wife; I am not willing that he should incur the least
danger without me!"
On Sunday, August 5,--the last Sunday the royal family were to spend at
the Tuileries,--as they were going to the chapel to hear Mass, half the
National Guards on duty cried: "Long live the King!" The others said:
"No, no; no King, down with the veto!" The same day, at Vespers, the
chanters had agreed to swell their tones greatly, and in a {265}
menacing way, when reciting this versicle of the _Magnificat: Deposuit
potentes de sede_--"He hath put down the mighty from their seat." In
their turn the royalists, after the _Dominum salvum fac regem_, cried
thrice, turning as they did so toward the Queen: _Et reginam_. There
was a continual murmuring all through the divine office. Five days
later, the same chapel was to be a pool of blood.
And yet Madame Elisabeth, always calm and always angelic, still had
illusions. One morning of this terrible month of August, while in her
room in the Pavilion of Flora, she thought she heard some one humming
her favorite air, _Pauvre Jacques_, beneath her windows. Attracted by
this refrain, which in the midst of sorrow renewed the souvenir of
happier times, she half opened her window and listened attentively.
The words sung were not those of the ballad she loved, yet they were
royalist in sentiment and adapted to the same air. The poor people had
been substituted for poor Jack--the poor people who were pitied for
having a king no longer and for knowing nothing but wretchedness. Such
marks of attachment consoled the virtuous Princess, and made her hope
against all hope. She wrote, August 8, to her friend Madame de
Raigecourt: "They say that the King is going to be turned out of here
somewhat forcibly, and made to lodge in the Hotel-de-Ville. They say
that there will be a very strong movement to that effect in Paris. Do
you believe it? For my part, I do not. I believe in rumors, but not
in their {266} resulting in anything. That is my profession of faith.
For the rest, everything is perfectly quiet to-day. Yesterday passed
in the same way, and I think this one will be like it." On August 9,
the eve of the fatal day, Madame Elisabeth again addressed a reassuring
letter to one of her friends, Madame de Bombelles. Curiously enough
she dated this letter August 10, no doubt by accident, and when Madame
de Bombelles received it, she read these lines, which seem like the
irony of fate: "This day of the 10th, which was to have been so
exciting, so terrible, is as calm as possible; the Assembly has decreed
neither deposition nor suspension."
{267}
XXVI.
THE PROLOGUE TO THE TENTH OF AUGUST.
The first rumblings of the storm began. People quarrelled and fought
in the Palais Royal, the cafes, and the theatres. Half of the National
Guard sided with the court, and the other half with the people. To
seditious speeches were added songs full of insults to the King and
Queen. These songs, sold on every corner, applauded in every tavern,
and repeated by the wives and children of the people, propagated
revolutionary fury. There was a constant succession of gatherings,
brawls, and riots. The Assembly had declared the country in danger.
Rumors of every sort excited popular imagination. It was said that
priests who refused the oath were in hiding at the Tuileries, which
was, moreover, full of arms and munitions. The Duke of Brunswick's
manifesto exasperated national sentiment. It was read aloud in every
street. The leaders neglected nothing likely to excite the populace,
and prepared their last attack on the throne, their afterpiece of June
20, with as much audacity as skill.
In order to subdue the court, it was necessary to destroy its only
remaining means of defence. To {268} leave plenty of elbow-room for
the riot, the Assembly, on July 15, ordered the troops of the line to
be sent some thirty-five miles beyond Paris and kept there. A singular
means was devised for breaking up the choice troops of the National
Guard, who were royalists. They were told that it was contrary to
equality for certain citizens to be more brilliantly equipped than
others; that a bearskin cap humiliated those who were entitled only to
a felt one; and that there was a something aristocratic about the name
of grenadier which was really intolerable to a simple foot-soldier.
The choice troops were dissolved in consequence, and the grenadiers
came to the Assembly like good patriots to lay down their epaulettes
and bearskin caps and assume the red cap. On July 30, the National
Guard was reconstructed, by taking in all the vagabonds and bandits
that the clubs could muster.
The famous federates of Marseilles, who were to take such an active
part in the coming insurrection, arrived in Paris the same day. The
Girondins, having failed to obtain their camp of twenty thousand men
before Paris, had devised instead of it a reunion of federate
volunteers, summoned from every part of France. The roads were at once
thronged by future rioters whom the Assembly allowed thirty cents a day.
The Jacobins of Brest and Marseilles distinguished themselves. Instead
of a handful of volunteers they sent two battalions. That of
Marseilles, recruited by {269} Barbaroux, comprised five hundred men
and two pieces of artillery. Starting July 5, it entered Paris July
30. Excited to fanaticism by the sun and the declamations of the
southern clubs, it had run over France, been received under triumphal
arches, and chanted in a sort of frenzy the terrible stanzas of Rouget
de l'Isle's new hymn, the _Marseillaise_. It was at this time that
Blanc Gilli, deputy from the Bouches du Rhone department to the
Legislative Assembly, wrote: "These pretended Marseillais are the scum
of the jails of Genoa, Piedmont, Sicily, and of all Italy, Spain, the
Archipelago, and Barbary. I run across them every day." Rouget de
l'Isle received from his old mother, a royalist and Catholic at heart,
a letter in which she said: "What is this revolutionary hymn which a
horde of brigands are singing as they pass through France, and in which
your name is mixed up?" At Paris the accents of that terrible melody
sounded like strokes of the tocsin. The men who sang it filled the
conservatives with terror. They wore woollen cockades and insulted as
aristocrats those who wore silk ones.
There was no longer any dike to the torrent. August 1, Louis XVI.
nominated a cabinet composed of loyal men: Joly was Minister of
Justice; Champion de Villeneuve, of the Interior; Bigot de
Sainte-Croix, of Foreign Affairs; Du Bouchage, of the Marine; Leroux de
la Ville, of Public Taxes; and D'Abancourt, of War. But this ministry
was to last only ten days. Certain petitioners at the bar of the {270}
Assembly asked for the deposition of the King in most violent language.
"This measure," says Barbaroux in his Memoirs, "would have carried
Philippe of Orleans to the regency, and therefore his party violently
clamored for it. His creditors, his hirelings, and boon-companions,
Marat and his Cordeliers, all manner of swindlers and insolvent
debtors, thronged public places and incited to this deposition because
they were hungry for money and positions under a regent who was their
tool and their accomplice."
In vain did Louis XVI. display those sentiments of paternal kindness
which had hitherto availed him so little. August 3, he sent a message
to the Assembly, in which he said: "I will uphold national independence
to my latest breath. Personal dangers are nothing compared to public
ones. Oh! what are personal dangers to a King whom men are seeking to
deprive of his people's love? This is the real plague-spot in my
heart. Perhaps the people will some day know how dear their welfare is
to me. How many of my sorrows could be obliterated by the least
evidence of a return to right feeling!"
How did they respond to this conciliatory language? After it had been
read, Petion, the mayor of Paris, presented himself at the bar, and
read an address from the Council General of the Commune, in which these
words occur: "The chief of the executive power is the first link of the
counter-revolutionary chain.... Through a lingering forbearance, we
would have desired the power to ask you for the {271} suspension of
Louis XVI., but to this the Constitution is opposed. Louis XVI.
incessantly invokes the Constitution; we invoke it in our turn, and ask
you for his deposition." The next day the municipality distributed
five thousand ball cartridges to the Marseillais, while refusing any to
the National Guards.
Nevertheless, the Girondins still hesitated. Guadet, Vergniaud, and
Gensonne would have declared themselves satisfied if the three
ministers belonging to their party had been reinstated, and on July 29
they secretly despatched a letter to the sovereign, by Thierry, his
valet-de-chambre, in which they said that, "attached to the interests
of the nation, they would never separate them from those of the King
except in so far as he separated them himself." As to Barbaroux, like
a true visionary, he dreamed of I know not what rose-water
insurrection. "They should not have entered the apartments of the
palace," he has said, "but merely blockaded them. Had this plan been
followed, the blood of Frenchmen and Swiss, ignorant victims of court
perfidy, would not have been shed on the 10th of August, the republic
would have been founded without convulsions or massacres, and we,
corroded by popular gangrene, should not have become the horror of all
nations." The demagogues were not at all certain of success.
Robespierre was to spend the 10th of August in the discreet darkness of
a cellar. Danton was prudently to await the end of the combat before
arming himself with a big sabre and marching at the head of the
Marseilles {272} battalion as the hero of the day. Barbaroux says in
his Memoirs that on the 1st, 3d, and 7th of August, Marat implored him
to take him to Marseilles, and that on the evening of the 9th he
renewed this prayer more urgently than ever, adding that he would
disguise himself as a jockey in order to get away.
In spite of their many weaknesses, the majority of the Assembly were
royalists and constitutionalists still. The proof is that on August 8,
in spite of the violent menaces of the galleries, they decided by 406
against 244 votes, that there was no occasion to impeach Lafayette, so
abhorred by the Jacobins. This vote excited the wrath of the
revolutionists to fury. The conservative deputies were insulted,
pursued, and struck. Several of them barely escaped assassination.
The sessions became stormier from day to day. Not only were the large
galleries of the Assembly overthronged by violent crowds, but the
courtyards, the approaches, and the corridors were obstructed. Many
sat or stood on the exterior entablatures of the high windows. The
upper part of the hall, where the Jacobins sat, received many
strangers, in spite of the often-reiterated opposition of the right.
Below this Mountain sat the members of the centre, the _Ventrus_.
There were not seats enough for them, and they were crowded up in a
ridiculous manner. At the bottom of the hall, almost entirely
deserted, were the forty-four members of the right. They were easily
marked and counted by their future executioners, who threatened them by
voice and gesture. Every {273} day the petitioners who were admitted
to the honors of the session avoided the empty benches of the right and
seated themselves with the Mountain or the centre, where they crowded
still more the already overcrowded deputies. The discussions were like
formidable tempests. "The effect produced by such a spectacle," says
Count de Vaublanc in his Memoirs, "was still greater on those who
entered the hall during one of those terrible moments. I received this
impression several times myself, and it will never be effaced from my
mind; I seek vainly for expressions by which to describe it. Long
afterwards, M. de Caux, then Minister of War, said to me: 'You made the
profoundest impression on me which I ever received in my life. I was
young at the time. I entered the galleries just as you were standing
out against the furious shouts of a part of the deputies and the people
in the galleries.'"
Meanwhile the end was approaching. Faithful royalists still proposed
schemes of flight to Louis XVI. Bertrand de Molleville, who is so ill
disposed toward Madame de Stael, says concerning this: "There was
nobody, even to Madame de Stael, who, either in the hope of being
pardoned the injury her intrigues had done the King, or else through
her continual need of intrigue, had not invented some plan of escape
for His Majesty." Louis XVI. declined them all. He would owe nothing
to Lafayette. He relied on the money he had given to Danton and other
demagogues, and hoped that the {274} insurrectionary bands would be
repulsed by the royalists of the National Guard and the Swiss regiment.
August 8th, in the evening, this fine regiment left its Courbevoie
barracks and arrived at the Tuileries at daybreak next morning. Under
various idle pretexts it had been deprived of its twelve pieces of
artillery, and also of three hundred men who had been given the
commission, true or false as may be, to watch over the transportation
of corn in Normandy. Only seven hundred and fifty, officers and
soldiers, remained; but all of them had said: "We will let ourselves be
killed to the last man rather than fail in honor or betray the sanctity
of our oaths." In company with a handful of noblemen, these were to be
the last defenders of the throne. The fatal hour was approaching. The
section of the Cordeliers had decided that if the Assembly had not
pronounced the King's deposition by the evening of August 9th, the
drums should beat the general alarm at the stroke of midnight, and the
insurrection march against the Tuileries. The revolutionists were to
carry out their plan, and the Swiss to keep their word.
{275}
XXVII.
THE NIGHT OF AUGUST NINTH TO TENTH.
The night was serene, the sky clear and sown with stars. The calmness
of nature contrasted with the revolutionary passions that had been
unchained. On account of the heat, all the windows of the Tuileries
had been left open, and from a distance the palace could be seen
illuminated as if for a fete. It had just struck midnight. The
Revolution was executing the programme of the Cordeliers' section. The
tocsin was sounding all over the city. Everybody named the church
whose bell he thought he recognized. The people of the faubourgs were
out of bed in their houses. The drums mingled with the tocsin. The
revolutionists beat the general alarm, and the royalists the call to
arms.
No one was asleep at the Tuileries. There was no further question of
etiquette. The night reception in the royal bedchamber was omitted for
the first time. Certain old servitors, faithful guardians of
tradition, in vain recalled that it was not permissible to sit down in
the sovereign's apartments. The courtiers of the last hour seated
themselves in armchairs, on tables and consoles. Louis XVI. stayed
sometimes {276} in his chamber and sometimes in his Great Cabinet, also
called the Council Hall, where the assembled ministers received
constant tidings of what was happening without. The pious monarch had
summoned his confessor, Abbe Hebert, and shutting himself up with this
venerable priest, he besought from Heaven the resignation and courage
he needed to pass through the final crisis. Madame Elisabeth showed
the faithful Madame Campan the carnelian pin which fastened her fichu.
These words, surrounding the stalk of a lily, were engraved on it:
"Forget offences, pardon injuries."--"I fear much," said the virtuous
Princess, "that this maxim has little influence over our enemies, but
it must be none the less dear to us." Louis XVI. did not wear his
padded vest. "I consented to do so on the 14th of July," said he,
"because on that day I was merely going to a ceremony where an
assassin's dagger might be apprehended. But on a day when my party may
be forced to fight with the revolutionists, I should think it cowardly
to preserve my life by such means."