Indignities to which the Royal Family are subjected.--They are removed to
the Temple.--Divisions in the Assembly.--Flight of La Fayette.--Advance of
the Prussians.--Lady Sutherland supplies the Dauphin with Clothes.--Mode
of Life in the Temple.--The Massacres of September.--The Death of the
Princess de Lamballe.--Insults are heaped on the King and Queen.--The
Trial of the King.--His Last Interview with his Family.--His Death.
From the 11th of August the life of Marie Antoinette is almost a blank to
us. We may be even thankful that it is so, and that we are spared the
details, in all their accumulated miseries, of a series of events which
are a disgrace to human nature. For month after month the gentle,
benevolent king, whom no sovereign ever exceeded in love for his people,
or in the exercise of every private virtue; the equally pure-minded,
charitable, and patriotic queen, who, to the somewhat passive excellences
of her husband added fascinating graces and lofty energies of which he was
unhappily destitute, were subjected to the most disgusting indignities, to
the tyranny of the vilest monsters who ever usurped authority over a
nation, and to the daily insults of the meanest of their former subjects,
who thought to make a merit with their new masters of their brutality to
those whose birthright had been the submission and reverence of all around
them.
Vergniaud's motion had only extended to the suspension of the king from
his functions till the meeting of the Convention; but no one could doubt
that that suspension would never be taken off, and that Louis was in fact
dethroned. Marie Antoinette never deceived herself on the point, and,
retaining the opinion as to the fate of deposed monarchs which she had
expressed three years before, pronounced that all was over with them. "My
poor children," said she, apostrophizing the little dauphin and his
sister, "it is cruel to give up the hope of transmitting to you so noble
an inheritance, and to have to say that all is at an end with ourselves;"
and, lest any one else should have any doubt on the subject, the Assembly
no longer headed its decrees with any royal title, but published them in
the name of the nation. In one point the resolutions of the 10th were
slightly departed from. The municipal authorities reported that the
Luxembourg had so many outlets and subterranean passages, that it would be
difficult to prevent the escape of a prisoner from that palace; and
accordingly the destination of the royal family was changed to the Temple.
Thither, after having been compelled to spend two more days in the
Assembly, listening to the denunciations and threats of their enemies,
whom even the knowledge that they were wholly in their power failed to
pacify, they were conveyed on the 13th; and they never quit it till they
were dragged forth to die.
The Temple had been, as its name imported, the fortress and palace of the
Knights Templars, and, having been erected by them in the palmy days of
their wealth and magnificence, contained spacious apartments, and
extensive gardens protected from intrusion by a lofty wall, which
surrounded the whole. It was not, unfit for, nor unaccustomed to, the
reception of princes; for the Count d'Artois had fitted up a portion of it
for himself whenever he visited the capital. And to his apartments those
who had the custody of the king and queen at first conducted them. But the
new Municipal Council, whom the recent events had made the real masters of
Paris, considered those rooms too comfortable or too honorable a lodging
for any prisoners, however royal; and the same night, before they could
retire to rest, and while Louis was still occupying himself in
distributing the different apartments among the members of his family and
the few attendants who were allowed to share his captivity, an order was
sent down to remove them all into a small dilapidated tower which had been
used as a lodging for some of the count's footmen, but whose bad walls and
broken windows rendered it unfit for even the servants of a prince.
Besides their meanness and ruinous condition, the number of the rooms it
contained was so scanty, that for the first few days the only room that
could be found for the Princess Elizabeth was an old, disused kitchen; and
even after that was remedied, she was forced to share her new chamber,
though it was both small and dark, with her niece, Madame Royale; while
the dauphin's bed was placed by the side of the queen's, in one which was
but little large.[1] And the dungeon-like appearance of the entire place
impressed the whole family with the idea that it was not intended that
they should remain there long, but that an early death was preparing for
them.
Even this distress was speedily aggravated by a fresh severity. Four days
afterward an order was sent down which commanded the removal of all their
attendants, with the exception of one or two menial servants. Madame de
Tourzel, the governess of the royal children, was driven away with the
coarsest insults. The Princess de Lamballe, that most faithful and
affectionate friend of the queen, was rudely torn from her embrace by the
municipal officers; and, though no offense was even imputed to her, was
dragged off to a prison, where she was soon to pay the forfeit of her
loyalty with her blood.
From this time forth the king and queen were completely cut off from the
outer world. They were treated with a rigor which in happier countries is
not even experienced by convicted criminals. They were forbidden to
receive letters or newspapers; and presently they were deprived of pens,
ink, and paper; though they would neither have desired to write nor
receive letters which would have been read by their jailers, and could
only have exposed their correspondents to danger. After a few days they
were even deprived of the attendance of all their servants but two[2]--a
faithful valet named Cléry (fidelity such as his may well immortalize his
name), to whom we are indebted for the greater part of the scanty
knowledge which we possess of the fate of the captive princes as long as
Louis himself was permitted to live; and Turgy, a cook, who, by an act of
faithful boldness, had obtained a surreptitious entrance into the Temple,
and whose services seemed to have escaped notice, though at a later period
they proved of no trivial importance.
Had they but known what was passing in the Assembly, Marie Antoinette
would in all probability have still found matter for some comfort and hope
in the fierce mutual strife of the Jacobins and Girondins, which for some
weeks kept the Assembly in a constant state of agitation; and she would
have found even greater encouragement in the dissatisfaction which in many
departments the people expressed at the late events; and in the conduct of
La Fayette's army, which at first cordially approved of and supported the
town-council and magistrates of Sedan, who arrested and threw into prison
the commissioners whom the Assembly had sent to announce the suspension of
the royal authority. But the intelligence of that demonstration in their
favor never reached them, nor that of its suppression a few days later;
when La Fayette, who, as on a former occasion, had committed himself to
measures beyond his strength to carry out, was forced to fly from the
country, and by a strange violation of military law was thrown into an
Austrian prison. Nor again, when for a moment the Duke of Brunswick
appeared likely to realize the hopes on which Marie Antoinette had built
so confidently, and by the capture of Longwy seemed to have opened to
himself the road to Paris, did any tidings of his achievement come to the
ears of those who had felt such deep interest in his operations. After a
time the ingenuity of Cléry found a mode of obtaining for them some little
knowledge of what was passing outside, by contriving that some of his
friends should send criers to cry an abstract of the news contained in the
daily journals under his windows, which he in his turn faithfully reported
to them while employed in such menial offices about their persons as took
off the attention of their guards, who day and night maintained an
unceasing espial on all their actions and even words.
From the very first they had to endure strange privations for princes.
They had not a sufficient supply of clothes; the little dauphin, in
particular, would have been wholly unprovided, had not the English
embassadress, Lady Sutherland, whose son was of a similar age and size,
sent in a stock of such as she thought might be wanted. But as the
garments thus received wore out, and as all means of replacing them were
refused, the queen and princess were reduced to ply their own needles
diligently to mend the clothes of the whole family, that they might not
appear to their jailers, or to the occupants of the surrounding houses,
who from their windows could command a view of the garden in which they
took their daily walks, absolutely ragged.
Such enforced occupation must indeed in some degree have been welcome as a
relief from thought, which their unbroken solitude left them but too much
leisure to indulge. Cléry has given us an account of the manner in which
their day was parceled out.[3] The king rose at six, and Cléry, after
dressing his hair, descended to the queen's chamber, which was on the
story below, to perform the same service for her and for the rest of the
family. And the hour so spent brought with it some slight comfort, as he
could avail himself of that opportunity to mention any thing that he might
have learned of what was passing out-of-doors, or to receive any
instructions which they might desire to give him. At nine they breakfasted
in the king's room. At ten they came down-stairs again to the queen's
apartments, where Louis occupied himself in giving the dauphin lessons in
geography, while Marie Antoinette busied herself in a corresponding manner
with Madame Royale. But, in whatever room they were, their guards were
always present; and when, at one o'clock, they went down-stairs to walk in
the garden, they were still accompanied by soldiers: the only member of
the family who was not exposed to their ceaseless vigilance being the
little dauphin, who was allowed to run up and down and play at ball with
Cléry, without a soldier thinking it necessary to watch all his movements
or listen to all his childish exclamations. At two dinner was served, and
regularly at that hour the odious Santerre, with two other ruffians of the
same stamp, whom he called his aids-de-camp, visited them to make sure of
their presence and to inspect their rooms; and Cléry remarked that the
queen never broke her disdainful silence to him, though Louis often spoke
to him, generally to receive some answer of brutal insult. After dinner,
Louis and Marie Antoinette would play piquet or backgammon; as, while they
were thus engaged, the vigilance of their keepers relaxed, and the noise
of shuffling the cards or rattling the dice afforded them opportunities of
saying a few words in whispers to one another, which at other times would
have been overheard. In the evening the queen and the Princess Elizabeth
read aloud, the books chosen being chiefly works of history, or the
masterpieces of Corneille and Racine, as being most suitable to form the
minds and tastes of the children; and sometimes Louis himself would seek
to divert them from their sorrows by asking the children riddles, and
finding some amusement in their attempts to solve them. At bed-time the
queen herself made the dauphin say his prayers, teaching him especially
the duty of praying for others, for the Princess de Lamballe, and for
Madame de Tourzel, his governess; though even those petitions the poor boy
was compelled to utter in whispers, lest, if they were repeated to the
Municipal Council, he should bring ruin on those whom he regarded as
friends. At ten the family separated for the night, a sentinel making his
bed across the door of each of their chambers, to prevent the possibility
of any escape.
In this way they passed a fortnight, when the monotony of their lives was
fearfully disturbed. The Jacobins had established their ascendency. They
had created a Revolutionary Tribunal, which at once began its course of
wholesale condemnation, sending almost every one who was brought before it
to the scaffold with merely a form of trial; the guillotine being erected,
as it was said, _en permanence_, that the deaths of the victims might
never be delayed for want of means to execute them; while, that a
succession of victims might never be wanting, Danton, in his new character
of Minister of Justice, instituted a search of every house for arms or
papers, or any thing which might afford evidence or even suggest a
suspicion that the owners disliked or feared the new authorities.
But it was not enough to strike terror into all the peaceful citizens. The
Girondins had always been objects of jealous rivalry to the Jacobins.
Fanatical and relentless as they were in their cruelty, they had recently
given proofs that they disapproved of the furious blood-thirstiness that
was beginning to decimate the city, and they had carried the Assembly with
them in a vote for the dissolution of the new Municipal Council. At the
same time, intelligence of the Prussian successes readied the capital,
intelligence which, it seemed possible, might animate the Royalists to
some fresh effort; and, lest they should find means of reconciling
themselves to Vergniaud and his party, the Jacobins and Cordeliers
resolved to give both a lesson by a deed of blood which should strike
terror into them. We may spare ourselves the pain of relating the horrors
of the September massacre, when, for more than four days, gangs of men
worse than devils, and of women unsexed by profligacy and cruelty till
they had become worse even than the men, gave themselves up to the work of
indiscriminate slaughter, deluging the streets with blood, and where they
could spare time, aggravating the pangs of death by superfluous tortures.
It will be sufficient for our purpose to record the fate of one of the
most innocent of all the victims, who owed her death to the fact that she
had long been the queen's most chosen friend, and whose murder was gloated
over with special ferocity by the monsters who perpetrated it, as enabling
them to inflict an additional pang on her wretched friend and mistress.
Madame de Lamballe, as we have seen, had accompanied the queen to the
Temple on the first day of her captivity, and had subsequently been
removed to one of the city prisons known as La Force. It was on the
prisoners in the different places of confinement that the work of death
was to be done: and she had been specially marked out for slaughter, not
solely because she was beloved by Marie Antoinette, but also, it was
understood, because, as she was very rich, and sister-in-law to the Duc
d'Orléans, that detestable prince desired to add her inheritance to his
OWD already vast riches. She was dragged before Hébert, one of the foulest
of the Jacobin crew, who had taken his seat at the gate of the prison to
preside over the trials, as they were called, of the prisoners in La
Force. "Swear," said he, "devotion to liberty and to the nation, and
hatred to the king and queen, and you shall live." "I will take the first
oath," she replied, "but the second never; it is not in my heart. The king
and queen I have ever loved and honored." Almost before she had finished
speaking she was pushed into the gate-way. One ruffian struck her from
behind with his sabre. She fell. They tore her into pieces. A letter of
the queen's fell from her hair, in which she had hidden it. The sight of
it redoubled the assassins' fury. They stuck her head on a pike, and
carried it in triumph to the Palais Royal to display it to D'Orléans, who
was feasting with some of the companions of his daily orgies, and then
proceeded to the Temple to brandish it before the eyes of the queen.
It was about three o'clock.[4] Dinner had just been removed, and the king
and queen were sitting down to play backgammon, when horrid shouts were
heard in the street. One of the soldiers on guard in the room, who had not
yet laid aside every feeling of humanity, closed the window and even drew
the curtain. Another of different temper insisted that Louis should come
to the window and show himself. As the uproar increased, the queen rose
from her seat, and the king asked what was the matter. "Well," said the
man, "since you wish to know, they want to show you the head of Madame de
Lamballe." No event that had yet occurred had struck the queen with such
anguish. The uproar increased. Those who bore the head had wished even to
force the doors, and bring their trophy, still bleeding, into the very
room where the royal family were, and were only prevented by a compromise
which permitted them to parade it round their tower in triumph. As the
shouts died away, Pétion's secretary arrived with a small sum of money
which had been issued for the king's use. He noticed that the queen stood
all the time that he was in the room, and fancied she assumed that
attitude out of respect to the mayor. She had never stirred since she had
heard of the princess's death, but had stood rooted, as it were, to the
ground, stupefied and speechless with horror and anguish. It was long
before she could be restored; and all through the night the rest of the
princesses, if at least they could have slept, was broken by her sobs,
which never ceased.
As time passed on, the prospects of the unhappy prisoners became still
more gloomy. On the 21st of September the Convention met, and its first
act was to abolish royalty and declare the government a republic, and an
officer was instantly sent to make proclamation of the event under the
Temple walls; and, as if the establishment of a republic authorized an
increase of insolence on the part of the guards of the prisoners, the
insults to which they were subjected grew more frequent and more gross.
Sentences both menacing and indecent were written on the walls where they
must catch their eye: the soldiers puffed their tobacco-smoke in the
queen's face as she passed, or placed their seats in the passages so much
in her way that she could hardly avoid stumbling over their legs as she
went down to the garden. Sometimes they even assailed her with direct
abuse, calling her the assassin of the people, who in their turn would
assassinate her. More than once the whole family had to submit to a
personal search, and to empty their pockets, when the officers who made
the search carried off whatever they chose to term suspicious, especially
their knives and scissors, so that, when at work, the queen and princess
were forced to bite off the threads with their teeth. And amidst all this
misery no one ever heard Marie Antoinette utter a word to lament her own
fate, or to ask pity for herself. She mourned over her husband's fall; she
pitied Elizabeth, to whom malice itself could not impute a share in the
wrongs of which Danton and Vergniaud had taught the people to complain.
Most of all did she bewail the ruined prospects of her son; and more than
once she brought tears into Cléry's eyes by the earnest tenderness with
which she implored him to provide for the safety of the noble child after
his parents should have been destroyed.
The insults increased, each being an additional omen of the future. The
most painful injuries were reserved for the queen. Toward the end of
October the dauphin was removed from her apartment to that of the king,
that she might thus be deprived of the comfort of ministering to his daily
wants. But Louis himself was not spared. One day an order came down to
deprive him of his sword; on another he was stripped of his different
decorations and orders of knighthood. The system of espial, too, was
carried out with increased severity. Their linen, when it came hack from
the washer-woman, and even their washing-bills, were held to the fire to
see if any invisible ink had been employed to communicate with them. Their
loaves and biscuits were cut asunder lest they should contain notes. The
end was approaching. A week or two later the king was removed to another
tower, and was only permitted to see his family during a certain portion
of the day. At last it was determined to bring him to trial. On the 11th
of December he was suddenly informed that he was to be brought before the
Convention; and from that day forth he was cut off from all intercourse
with his family, even his wife being forbidden to see or hear from him.
The barbarous restriction afforded him one more opportunity of showing his
amiable unselfishness and fortitude. The regulation had been made by the
Municipal Council, not by the Assembly; and its inhuman and unprecedented
severity, coupled with a jealousy of the Council, as seeking to usurp the
whole authority of the State, induced the Assembly to rescind it, and to
grant permission, for Louis to have the dauphin and his sister with him.
Yet, lest these innocent children should prove messengers of conspiracy
between him and the queen and Elizabeth, it was ordered at the same time
that, so long as they were allowed to visit him, they should be separated
from their mother and their aunt; and Louis, though never in greater need
of comfort, thought it so much better for the children themselves that
they should be with the queen, that for their sakes he renounced their
society, and allowed the decree of the Council to be carried out in all
its pitiless cruelty.
And, again, we may spare ourselves from dwelling on the details of what,
in hideous mockery, was called the king's trial, though it was in fact a
mere ceremonious prelude to his murder, which had been determined on
before it began. Deep as is the disgrace with which it has forever covered
the nation which tolerated such an abomination, it was relieved by some
incidents which did honor to the country and to human nature. The
murderers of Louis, in their ignoble pedantry, wearied the ear with
appeals to the examples of the ancient Romans, of Decius[5] and of Brutus.
But no Roman ever gave a nobler proof of contempt of danger, and devotion
to duty, than was afforded by the intrepid lawyers, Malesherbes, De Séze,
and Tronchet, who voluntarily undertook the king's defense, though Louis
himself warned them that their utmost efforts would be fruitless, and
would only bring destruction on themselves without saving him. One member,
too, of the Convention, Lanjuinais, though originally he had been a member
of the Breton Club, and had latterly been generally regarded as connected
with the Girondins, made more than one eloquent effort in the king's
behalf, provoking the Jacobins and Girondins to their very wildest fury by
his contemptuous defiance of their menaces. And even when the verdict was
being given; when Jacobins, Girondins, and Cordeliers, Robespierre,
Vergniaud, Danton, and the infamous Duc d'Orléans were vying with one
another in the eagerness with which they pushed forward to record their
votes of condemnation; and when a mob of hired ruffians, who thronged the
hall, were cheering every vote for death, and holding daggers to the
throat of every one from whom they apprehended a contrary judgment; one
noble of frail body, but of a spirit worthy of his birth and rank, the
Marquis de Villette, laughed in the faces of his threateners, looked the
assassins in the face, and told them that he would not obey their orders,
and that they dared not kill him; and with a loud voice pronounced a vote
of acquittal.
But no courage or devotion of a few honest men could save Louis. One vote
by an immense majority pronounced him guilty; a second refused all appeal
to the people; a third, by a majority of fifty voices, condemned him to
death. And on the morning of the 20th of January, 1793, Louis was roused
from his bed to hear his sentence, and to learn that it was to be carried
out the next day.
While the trial lasted, the queen and those with her had been kept in
almost absolute ignorance of what was taking place. They never, however,
doubted what the result would be,[6] so that it was scarcely a shock to
them when they heard the news-men crying the sentence under their windows
--the only mercy that was shown to either the prisoner who was to die, or
to those who were to survive him, being that they were allowed once more
to meet on earth. At eight in the evening the queen, his children, and his
sister were to be allowed to visit him. He prepared for the interview with
astonishing calmness, making the arrangements so deliberately that, when
he noticed that Cléry had placed a bottle of iced water on the table, he
bid him change it, lest, if the queen should require any, the chill should
prove injurious to her health. Even that last interview was not allowed to
pass wholly without witnesses, since the Municipal Council refused, even
on such an occasion, to relax their regulation that their guards were
never to lose sight-of the king; and all that was permitted was that he
might retire with his family into an inner room which had a glass door, so
that, though what passed must be seen, their last words might not be
overheard. His daughter, Madame Royale, now a girl of fourteen, and old
enough, as her mother had said a few months before, to realize the misery
of the scenes which she daily saw around her, has left us an account of
the interview, necessarily a brief one, for the queen and princess were
too wretched to say much. Louis wept when he announced to them how short
was the time which he had to live, but his tears were those of pity for
the desolation of those he loved, and not of fear for himself. He was
even, in some sense, a willing victim, for, as he told them, it had been
proposed to save him by appealing to the primary Assemblies of the nation;
but he had refused his consent to a step which must throw the whole
country into confusion, and might be the cause of civil war. He would
rather die than risk the bringing of such calamities on his people. He
even sought to comfort the queen by making some excuses for the monsters
who had condemned him; and his last words to his family were an entreaty
to forgive them; to his son, an injunction never to seek to revenge his
death, even, if some change of fortune should enable him to do so.
The queen said nothing, but sat clinging to him in speechless agony. At
last he begged them to retire, that he might seek rest to prepare himself
for the morrow; and then she spoke, to beg that at least they might meet
again the next morning. "Yes," said he, "at eight o'clock." "Why not at
seven?" asked she. "Well, then, at seven." But, after she had left him he
determined to avoid this second meeting, not so much because he feared its
unnerving himself, but because he felt that the second parting must be too
terrible for her.
When she returned to her own chamber she had scarcely strength left to
place the dauphin in his bed. She threw herself, dressed as she was, on
her own bed, where her sister-in-law and daughter heard her, as the little
princess describes her state, "shivering with cold and grief the whole
night long.[7]"
Even if she could have slept, her rest would soon have been disturbed by
the movement of troops, the beating of the drums, and the heavy roll of
the cannon passing through the street. For the miscreants who bore sway in
the city knew well that the crime which they were about to commit was
viewed with horror by the great majority of the nation, and even of the
Parisians, and to the last moment were afraid of a rescue. But no one
could interpose between Louis and his doom; and the next intelligence of
him that reached his wife, who was waiting the whole morning in painful
anxiety for the summons to see him once more, was that he had perished
beneath the fatal guillotine, and that she was a widow.