THE ROYAL FAMILY IMPRISONED.
Tumult and Dismay in the Assembly.--Storming the Tuileries.--Aspect
of the Royal Family.--The Decree of Suspension.--Night in the
Cloister.--The Second Day in the Assembly.--The Royal Family
Prisoners.--Third Day in the Assembly.--The Temple.--The Royal Family
Transferred to the Temple.
But few of the excited thousands who crowded all the approaches to the
Tuileries were conscious that the royal family had escaped from the
palace. The clamor rapidly increased to a scene of terrific uproar.
First a few gun-shots were heard, then volleys of musketry, then the
deep booming of artillery, while shouts of onset, cries of fury, and
the shrieks of the wounded and the dying filled the air. The hall of
the Assembly was already crowded to suffocation, and the deputies stood
powerless and appalled. A tumultuous mass pressed the door. Blows,
pistol-shots, and groans of death were heard beneath the windows, and
it was every moment apprehended that the assassins would break into
the hall, and that the royal family and all their defenders would
be cut down. Several bullets shattered the windows, and one or two
cannon-balls passed through the roof of the building. Every one was
exposed to fearful peril.
There was no longer any retreat for the king. By the side of the
president's chair there was a space inclosed by an iron railing,
appropriated to the reporters. Several of the members aided the king in
tearing down a portion of this railing, and all the royal family sought
refuge there. At this moment the door of the hall was attacked, and
tremendous blows seemed to shake the whole building. "We are stormed!"
shouted one of the deputies. There was, however, no escape for any one
in any direction, and for some moments there was witnessed a scene of
confusion and terror which no language can describe.
At the same time there was a frightful conflict raging in and around
the palace. Immediately upon the departure of the king, all the
Swiss troops, who were hated as foreign mercenaries hired to shoot
down the French, were drawn into the palace from the court-yard, and
were mingled in confusion through its apartments with the loyalist
gentlemen, the officers, and the domestics. Notwithstanding the vast
dimensions of the palace, it was so crowded that there was scarcely
space to move.
[Illustration: STORMING THE TUILERIES, AUGUST 10, 1792.]
The throng in the Carrousel attacked one of the gates, broke it
down, and rushed into the royal court, which was nearly vacated by
the retirement of the Swiss. The companies of the National Guard in
the Carrousel, instead of opposing, looked approvingly on, and were
evidently quite disposed to lend the assailants a helping hand. A large
piece of timber was placed at the foot of the staircase of the palace
in the form of a barrier, and behind this were intrenched in disorder,
crowding the steps, the Swiss and some of the National Guard who
adhered to the king.[355]
Just then the whole Faubourg St. Antoine came marching along in solid
column. They marched through the Carrousel, entered the court, and
placed six pieces of cannon in battery to open a fire upon the palace.
It was to avoid, if possible, a conflict, that the guards had been
withdrawn from the court into the palace. The shouts of a countless
multitude applauded this military movement of the mob. The Swiss had
received command from the king not to fire. The crowd cautiously
pressed nearer and nearer to the door, and at length, emboldened by the
forbearance of the defenders of the palace, seized, with long poles to
which hooks were attached, one after another of the sentinels, and,
with shouts, captured and disarmed them. Thus five of the Swiss troops
were taken prisoners.
[Illustration: MASSACRE OF THE ROYAL GUARD, AUGUST 10, 1792.]
At last a single shot was fired, no one can tell on which side. It was
the signal for blood. The Swiss, crowded upon the magnificent marble
stairs, rising one above another, occupied a very formidable position.
They instantly opened a deadly fire. Volley succeeded volley, and every
bullet told upon the dense mass crowding the court. At the same moment,
from every window of the palace, a storm of shot was showered down upon
the foe. In a moment the pavement was red with blood, and covered with
the dying and the dead. The artillerymen abandoned their pieces, and
the whole multitude rushed pell-mell, trampling the dead and wounded
beneath them in frantic endeavors to escape from the court into the
Carrousel. In a few moments the whole court was evacuated, and remained
strewed with pikes, muskets, grenadiers' caps, and gory bodies.
The besiegers, however, soon rallied. Following the disciplined troops
from Marseilles, who were led by able officers, the multitude returned
with indescribable fury to the charge. Cannon-balls, bullets, and
grapeshot dashed in the doors and the windows. Most of the loyalist
gentlemen escaped by a secret passage through the long gallery of
the Louvre, as the victorious rabble, with pike, bayonet, and sabre,
poured resistlessly into the palace and rushed through all its
apartments. The Swiss threw down their arms and begged for quarter.
But the pitiless mob, exasperated by the slaughter of their friends,
knew no mercy. Indiscriminate massacre ensued, accompanied with every
conceivable act of brutality. For four hours the butchery continued, as
attics, closets, cellars, chimneys, and vaults were searched, and the
terrified victims were dragged out to die. Some leaped from the windows
and endeavored to escape through the Garden. They were pursued and
mercilessly cut down. Some climbed the marble monuments. The assassins,
unwilling to injure the statuary, pricked them down with their bayonets
and then slaughtered them at their feet. Seven hundred and fifty Swiss
were massacred in that day of blood.
The Assembly during these hours were powerless, and they awaited in
intense anxiety the issue of the combat. Nothing can more impressively
show the weak and frivolous mind of the king than that, in such an
hour, seeing the painter David in the hall, he inquired of him,
"How soon shall you probably have my portrait completed?"
David brutally replied, "I will never, for the future, paint
the portrait of a tyrant until his head lies before me on the
scaffold."[356]
The queen sat in haughty silence. Her compressed lip, burning eye, and
hectic cheek indicated the emotions of humiliation and of indignation
with which she was consumed. The young princess wept, and her fevered
face was stained with the dried current of her tears. The dauphin, too
young to appreciate the terrible significance of the scene, looked
around in bewildered curiosity.
At eleven o'clock reiterated shouts of victory, which rose from the
Garden, the palace, the Carrousel, and all the adjoining streets and
places, proclaimed that the triumph of the people was complete. The
Assembly, now overawed, unanimously passed a decree suspending the
king, dismissing the Royalist ministers, recalling the Girondist
ministry, and convoking a National Assembly for the trial of the king.
As Vergniaud read, in accents of grief, this decree to which the
Assembly had been forced, the king listened intently, and then said
satirically to M. Coustard, who was standing by his side,
"This is not a very _constitutional_ act."
"True," M. Coustard replied; "but it is the only means of saving your
majesty's life."
The Assembly immediately enacted the decrees, which the king had
vetoed, banishing the refractory priests and establishing a camp
near Paris. Danton,[357] whose tremendous energies had guided the
insurrection, was appointed Minister of Justice. Monge, the illustrious
mathematician, by the nomination of his equally illustrious friend
Condorcet, was placed at the head of the Marine. Lebrun, a man of
probity and untiring energy, was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs.
Thus was the whole government effectually revolutionized and
reorganized. During all the long hours of this day the royal family
sat in the crowded Assembly almost suffocated with heat, and enduring
anguish which no tongue can tell. The streets were filled with uproar,
and the waves of popular tumult dashed against the old monastery of the
Feuillans, even threatening to break in the doors. The regal victims
listened to the decrees which tore the crown from the brow of the king,
and which placed his sceptre in the hands of his most envenomed foes.
In the conflict with the defenders of the palace, between three and
four thousand of the populace had perished, in revenge for which nearly
eight hundred of the inmates of the Tuileries had been massacred. The
relatives of the slain citizens, exasperated beyond measure, were
clamorous for the blood of the king as the cause of the death of their
friends. There was no possible covert for the royal family but in the
Assembly. Fifty armed soldiers, with bayonets fixed, surrounded them in
their box, and yet it was every moment feared that the populace would
break in and satiate their rage with the blood of the monarch and his
family.
The king was ever famed for his ravenous appetite. Even in the midst of
these terrific scenes he was hungry and called for food. Bread, wine,
and cold viands were brought to him. He ate and drank voraciously to
the extreme mortification of the queen, who could not but perceive how
little respect the conduct of the king inspired. Neither she, Madame
Elizabeth, nor the children could taste of any food. They merely
occasionally moistened their fevered lips with iced water.
It was now ten o'clock in the evening. The night was calm and
beautiful. The tumult of the day was over, but the terrific excitement
of the scene had brought the whole population of Paris out into
the promenades. Fires were still blazing beneath the trees of the
Tuileries, consuming the furniture which had been thrown from the
windows of the chateau. Lurid flames flashed from the barracks of the
Swiss in the court-yard, which had been set on fire, streaming over the
roof of the palace, and illuminated both banks of the Seine.
The whole number slain during the day, Royalists and Revolutionists,
amounted to over four thousand. Many of the dead had been removed by
relatives, but the ground was still covered with the bodies of the
slain, who were entirely naked, having been stripped of their clothing
by those wretches who ever swarm in the streets of a great city, and
who find their carnival in deeds of violence and blood. By order of the
insurrectional committee at the Hôtel de Ville, who had deposed the
municipal government and usurped its authority, these dead bodies were
collected and piled in vast heaps in the court-yards, in the Garden,
in the Place Louis XV., and in the Elysian Fields. Immense quantities
of wood were thrown upon them, and the whole city was illuminated by
the glare of these funeral fires. The Swiss and the Marsellais, the
Royalists and the Jacobins, were consumed together, and the ashes were
swept clean from the pavement into the Seine.
As these scenes at midnight were transpiring in the streets, the
Assembly sent a summary of its decrees to be read by torch-light to the
groups of the people. It was hoped that these decrees would satisfy
them, and put a stop to any farther acts of violence on the morrow.
It was two o'clock in the morning before the Assembly suspended its
sitting. For seventeen hours the royal family had sat in the reporters'
box, enduring all of humiliation and agony which human hearts can feel.
In the upper part of the old monastery, above the committee-rooms
of the Assembly, there was a spacious corridor, from which opened
several cells formerly used by the monks. These cells, with walls of
stone and floors of brick, and entirely destitute of furniture, were
as gloomy as the dungeons of a prison. Here only could the king and
his family find safety for the night. Some articles of furniture were
hastily collected from different parts of the building, and four of
these rooms were prepared for the royal party. Five nobles, who had
heroically adhered to the king in these hours of peril, occupied one,
where, wrapped in their cloaks and stretched out upon the floor, they
could still watch through the night over the monarch. The king took
the next. It was furnished with a table, and a plain wooden bedstead.
He bound a napkin around his head for a night-cap, and threw himself,
but partially undressed, upon his uncurtained bed. The queen, with her
two children, took the next cell. Madame Elizabeth, with the governess
of the children, Madame de Tourzel, and the Princess Lamballe, who had
joined the royal family in the evening, took the fourth. Thus, after
thirty-six hours of sleeplessness and terror, the royal family were
left to such repose as their agitated minds could attain.
The sun had long arisen when the queen awoke from her fevered slumber.
She looked around her for a moment with an expression of anguish, and
then, covering her eyes with her hands, exclaimed,
"Oh, I hoped that it had all been a dream!"
The whole party soon met in the apartment of the king. As Madame
Tourzel led in the two royal children, Marie Antoinette looked at them
sadly, and said,
"Poor children! how heart-rending it is, instead of handing down to
them so fine an inheritance, to say, it ends with us!"
"I still see, in imagination," writes Madame Campan, "and shall always
see, that narrow cell of the Feuillans, hung with green paper; that
wretched couch where the dethroned queen stretched out her arms to us,
saying that our misfortunes, of which she was the cause, aggravated
her own. There, for the last time, I saw the tears, I heard the sobs
of her whom her high birth, the endowments of nature, and, above all,
the goodness of her heart, had seemed to destine for the ornament of a
throne and for the happiness of her people."
The tumult of the streets still penetrated their cells, and warned them
that they had entered upon another day of peril. The excited populace
were still hunting out the aristocrats, and killing them pitilessly
wherever they could be found. At ten o'clock the royal family were
conducted again to the Assembly, probably as the safest place they
could occupy, and there they remained all day. Several of the Swiss
had been taken prisoners on the previous day, and by humane people had
been taken to the Assembly that their lives might be saved. The mob now
clamored loudly at the door of the hall, and endeavored to break in,
demanding the lives of the Swiss and of the escort of the king, calling
them murderers of the people. Vergniaud, the president, was so shocked
by their ferocity that he exclaimed, "Great God, what cannibals!"
At one time the doors were so nearly forced that the royal family
were hurried into one of the passages, to conceal them from the
mob. The king, fully convinced that the hour of his death had now
come, entreated his friends to provide for their safety by flight.
Heroically, every one persisted in sharing the fate of the king. Danton
hastened to the Assembly, and exerted all his rough and rude energy to
appease the mob. They were at length pacified by the assurance that the
Swiss, and all others who had abetted in the slaughter of the people
on the preceding day, should be tried by a court-martial and punished.
With great difficulty the Assembly succeeded in removing the Swiss and
the escort of the king to the prison of the Abbaye.
At the close of this day the king and his family were again conducted
to their cells, but they were placed under a strict guard, and their
personal friends were no longer permitted to accompany them. This last
deprivation was a severe blow to them all, and the king said bitterly,
"I am, then, a prisoner, gentlemen. Charles I. was more fortunate than
myself. His friends were permitted to accompany him to the scaffold."
Another morning dawned upon this unhappy family, and again they were
led to the hall of the Assembly, where they passed the weary hours of
another day in the endurance of all the pangs of martyrdom.
It was at length decided that the royal family, for safe keeping,
should be imprisoned in the tower of the Temple. This massive, sombre
building, in whose gloomy architecture were united the palace, the
cloister, the fortress, and the prison, was erected and inhabited by
the Knights Templar of the Middle Ages. Having been long abandoned it
was now crumbling to decay. It was an enormous pile which centuries
had reared near the site of the Bastille, and with its palace, donjon,
towers, and garden, which was choked with weeds and the débris of
crumbling walls, covered a space of many acres.
[Illustration: THE TEMPLE.]
The main tower was one hundred and fifty feet high, nine feet thick
at the base, surrounded by a wide, deep ditch, and inclosed by an
immensely high wall. This tower was ascended by a very narrow flight
of circular stairs, and was divided into four stories, each containing
a bare, dismal room about thirty feet square. The iron doors to these
rooms were so low and narrow that it was necessary to stoop almost
double to enter them. The windows, which were but slits in the thick
wall, were darkened by slanting screens placed over them, and were also
secured by stout iron bars.
Such were the apartments which were now assigned to the former
occupants of the Tuileries, Versailles, and Fontainebleau. It was a
weary ride for the royal captives through the Place Vendôme and along
the Boulevards to the Temple. An immense crowd lined the road. All the
royal family, with Pétion, the mayor, occupied one carriage, and the
procession moved so slowly that for two hours the victims were exposed
to the gaze of the populace before the carriages rolled under the
arches of the Temple. It was late in the afternoon when they left the
Assembly, and the shades of night darkened the streets ere they reached
the Temple.
The Assembly had surrendered the safe-keeping of the king to the
Commune of Paris, and appropriated one hundred thousand dollars to
meet the expenses of the royal family until the king should be brought
to trial. Conscious that an army of nearly two hundred thousand men
was within a few days' march of Paris, hastening to rescue the king,
and that there were thousands of Royalists in the city, and tens of
thousands in France, who were ready at any moment to lay down their
lives to secure the escape of the monarch, and conscious that the
escape of the king would not only re-enslave France, but consign every
friend of the Revolution to the dungeon or the scaffold, they found
it necessary to adopt the most effectual measures to hold the king
securely. They, therefore, would no longer allow the friends of the
king to hold free communication with him.
The Temple itself, by outworks, had been promptly converted into a
fortress, and was strongly garrisoned by the National Guard. Twelve
commissioners were without interruption to keep watch of the king's
person. No one was allowed to enter the tower of the Temple without
permission of the municipality. Four hundred dollars were placed in
the hands of the royal family for their petty expenses. They were
not intrusted with more, lest it might aid them to escape. A single
attendant, the king's faithful valet Clery,[358] was permitted to
accompany the captives. It does not appear that the authorities
wished to add unnecessary rigor to the imprisonment. Thirteen cooks
were provided for the kitchen, that their table might be abundantly
supplied. One of these only was allowed to enter the prison and aid
Clery in serving at the table, the expenses of which for two months
amounted to nearly six thousand dollars.[359]
It was an hour after midnight when the royal family were led from the
apartments of the Temple to which they had first been conducted to
their prison in the tower. The night was intensely dark. Dragoons with
drawn sabres marched by the side of the king, while municipal officers
with lanterns guided their steps. Through gloomy and dilapidated
halls, beneath massive turrets, and along the abandoned paths of the
garden, encumbered with weeds and stones, they groped their way until
they arrived at the portals of the tower, whose summit was lost in
the obscurity of night. As in perfect silence the sad procession was
passing through the garden, a valet-de-chambre of the king inquired in
a low tone of voice whither the king was to be conducted.
"Thy master," was the reply, "has been used to gilded roofs. Now he
will see how the assassins of the people are lodged."
The three lower rooms of the tower were assigned to the captives. They
had been accompanied by several of their friends who adhered to them
in these hours of adversity. All were oppressed with gloom, and many
shed bitter tears. Still they were not in _despair_. Powerful armies
were marching for their rescue, and they thought it not possible that
the French people, all unprepared for war, could resist such formidable
assailants. A week thus passed away, when on the 19th the municipal
officers entered and ordered the immediate expulsion of all not of the
royal family. This harsh measure was deemed necessary in consequence
of the conspiracies which were formed by the Royalists for the rescue
of the king. Unfeeling jailers were now placed over them, and, totally
uninformed of all that was passing in the world without, they sank into
the extreme of woe.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 355: "Napoleon se trouvait au 10ième Août à Paris; il avait
été présent à l'action. Il m'écrevit une lettre très détaillée, que je
lus à mes collègues du directoire du département; voici les deux traits
principaux. 'Si Louis XVI. se fût montré à cheval la victoire lui fût
restée; c'est ce qui m'a paru, à l'esprit qui animait les groupes le
matin.
"'Après la victoire des Marseillais, j'en vis un sur le point de tuer
un garde du corps; je lui dis,
"'Homme du midi, sauvons ce malheureux!
"'Es tu du midi?
"'Oui!
"'Eh, bien! sauvons le!'"--_Mémoires du Roi Joseph_, t. i., p. 47.]
[Footnote 356: History of the Girondists, by Lamartine, vol. ii., p.
77.]
[Footnote 357: Danton was one of the fiercest of the Jacobins. Madame
Roland, a political opponent, thus describes him: "I never saw any
countenance that so strongly expressed the violence of brutal passions,
and the most astonishing audacity, half disguised by a jovial air,
an affectation of frankness, and a sort of simplicity, as Danton's.
In 1778 he was a needy lawyer, more burdened with debts than causes.
He went to Belgium to augment his resources, and, after the 10th of
August, had the hardihood to avow a fortune of £158,333 ($791,665),
and to wallow in luxury while preaching sans culottism and sleeping
on heaps of slaughtered men." "Danton," says Mignet, "was a gigantic
revolutionist. He deemed no means censurable so they were useful. He
has been termed the Mirabeau of the populace. Mirabeau's vices were
those of a patrician. Danton's those of a democrat. He was an absolute
exterminator without being personally ferocious; inexorable toward
masses, humane, generous even, toward individuals."--_Mignet_, p. 158.]
[Footnote 358: "Clery we have seen and known, and the form and manners
of that model of pristine faith and loyalty ran never be forgotten.
Gentlemanlike and complaisant in his manners, his deep gravity
and melancholy features announced that the sad scenes in which he
had acted a part so honorable were never for a moment out of his
memory."--_Scott's Life of Napoleon._]
[Footnote 359: Thiers's Hist. French Revolution, vol. ii., p. 26.]