THE RETURN TO PARIS.
1791-1792
Despair of the king.--Lovely character of Madame Elizabeth.--Return to
Paris.--Insults of the mob.--Massacre of M. Dampierre.--Commissioners
from Paris.--Noble character of Barnave.--Brutality of Petion.--Approach
to Paris.--Appalling violence.--Sufferings of the royal family.--Arrival
at the Tuileries.--Exertions of La Fayette.--Roar of the
multitude.--Spirit of the queen.--Embarrassing position of La
Fayette.--The palace rigorously guarded.--The queen grossly
insulted.--Despair of the king.--Supremacy of the mob.--A brutal
assemblage.--Ferocious inscriptions.--Attack upon the palace.--The
mob force an entrance.--Fearlessness of the king.--The mob
awed.--Courage of Madame Elizabeth.--Cries of the mob.--The red
bonnet.--First glimpse of Napoleon.--The queen's apartments
invaded.--Insulted by abandoned women.--The queen's children.--The
young girl.--Meeting of the National Assembly.--The king's friends
derided.--The president of the Assembly.--The mob retires.--Deputies
visit the royal family.--Unfeeling remark.--Hopeless condition of the
royal family.--Breast-plate for the king.--Dagger-proof corset for the
queen.--Fete in the Champ de Mars.--The last appearance of the royal
family in public.
During all the long hours of the night, while the king was detained in
the grocer's shop at Varennes, he was, with anxiety indescribable,
looking every moment for soldiers to appear, sent by M. Bouille for his
rescue. But the National Guard, which was composed of those who were in
favor of the Revolution, were soon assembled in such numbers as to
render all idea of rescue hopeless. The sun rose upon Varennes but to
show the king the utter desperation of his condition, and he resigned
himself to despair. The streets were filled with an infuriated populace,
and from every direction the people were flocking toward the focus of
excitement. The children of the royal family, utterly exhausted, had
fallen asleep. Madame Elizabeth, one of the most lovely and gentle of
earthly beings, the sister of the king, who, through all these trials,
and, indeed, through her whole life, manifested peculiarly the spirit of
heaven, was, regardless of herself, earnestly praying for support for
her brother and sister.
Preparations were immediately made to forward the captives to Paris,
lest the troops of M. Bouille, informed of their arrest, should come
to their rescue. The king did every thing in his power to delay the
departure, and one of the women of the queen feigned sudden and alarming
illness at the moment all of the rest had been pressed into the
carriages. But the impatience of the populace could not thus be
restrained. With shouts and threats they compelled all into the
carriages, and the melancholy procession, escorted by three or four
thousand of the National Guard, and followed by a numerous and
ever-increasing concourse of the people, moved slowly toward Paris. Hour
after hour dragged heavily along as the fugitives, drinking the very
dregs of humiliation, were borne by their triumphant and exasperated
foes back to the horrors from which they had fled. The road was lined on
either side by countless thousands, insulting the agonized victims with
derision, menaces, and the most ferocious gestures. Varennes is distant
from Paris one hundred and eighty miles, and for this whole distance, by
night and by day, with hardly an hour's delay for food or repose, the
royal family were exposed to the keenest torture of which the spiritual
nature is in this world susceptible. Every revolution of the wheels but
brought them into contact with fresh vociferations of calumny. The fury
of the populace was so great that it was with difficulty that the guard
could protect their captives from the most merciless massacre. Again and
again there was a rush made at the carriages, and the mob was beaten
back by the arms of the soldiers. One old gentleman, M. Dampierre, ever
accustomed to venerate royalty, stood by the road side, affected by the
profoundest grief in view of the melancholy spectacle. Uncovering his
gray hairs, he bowed respectfully to his royal master, and ventured to
give utterance to accents of sympathy. The infuriated populace fell upon
him like tigers, and tore him to pieces before the eyes of the king and
queen. The wheels of the royal carriage came very near running over his
bleeding corpse.
The procession was at length met by commissioners sent from the Assembly
to take charge of the king. Ashamed of the brutality of the people,
Barnave and Petion, the two commissioners, entered the royal carriage to
share the danger of its inmates. They shielded the prisoners from death,
but they could not shield them from insult and outrage. An
ecclesiastic, venerable in person and in character, approached the
carriages as they moved sadly along, and exhibited upon his features
some traces of respect and sorrow for fallen royalty. It was a mortal
offense. The brutal multitude would not endure a _look_ even of sympathy
for the descendant of a hundred kings. They rushed upon the defenseless
clergyman, and would have killed him instantly had not Barnave most
energetically interfered. "Frenchmen!" he shouted, from the carriage
windows, "will you, a nation of brave men, become a people of
murderers!" Barnave was a young man of much nobleness of character. His
polished manners, and his sympathy for the wrecked and ruined family of
the king, quite won their gratitude. Petion, on the contrary, was coarse
and brutal. He was a _Democrat_ in the worst sense of that abused word.
He affected rude and rough familiarity with the royal family, lounged
contemptuously upon the cushions, ate apples and melons, and threw the
rind out of the window, careless whether or not he hit the king in the
face. In all his remarks, he seemed to take a ferocious pleasure in
wounding the feelings of his victims.
As the cavalcade drew near to Paris, the crowds surrounding the
carriages became still more dense, and the fury of the populace more
unmeasured. The leaders of the National Assembly were very desirous of
protecting the royal family from the rage of the mob, and to shield the
nation from the disgrace of murdering the king, the queen, and their
children in the streets. It was feared that, when the prisoners should
enter the thronged city, where the mob had so long held undisputed sway,
it would be impossible to restrain the passions of the multitude, and
that the pavements would be defaced with the blood of the victims.
Placards were pasted upon the walls in every part of the city, "Whoever
applauds the king shall be beaten; whoever insults him shall be hung."
As the carriages approached the suburbs of the metropolis, the
multitudes which thronged them became still more numerous and
tumultuous, and the exhibitions of violence more appalling. All the dens
of infamy in the city vomited their denizens to meet and deride, and, if
possible, to destroy the captured monarch. It was a day of intense and
suffocating heat. Ten persons were crowded into the royal carriage. Not
a breath of air fanned the fevered cheeks of the sufferers. The heat,
reflected from the pavements and the bayonets, was almost insupportable.
Clouds of dust enveloped them, and the sufferings of the children were
so great that the queen was actually apprehensive that they would die.
The queen dropped the window of the carriage, and, in a voice of agony,
implored some one to give her a cup of water for her fainting child.
"See, gentlemen," she exclaimed, "in what a condition my poor children
are! one of them is choking." "We will yet choke them and you," was the
brutal reply, "in another fashion." Several times the mob broke through
the line which guarded the carriages, pushed aside the horses, and,
mounting the steps, stretched their clenched fists in at the windows.
The procession moved perseveringly along in the midst of the clashing of
sabers, the clamor of the blood-thirsty multitude, and the cries of men
trampled under the hoofs of the horses.
It was the 25th of June, 1791, at seven o'clock in the evening, when
this dreadful procession, passing through the Barrier de l'Etoile,
entered the city, and traversed the streets, through double files of
soldiers, to the Tuileries. At length they arrived, half dead with
exhaustion and despair, at the palace. The crowd was so immense that it
was with the utmost difficulty that an entrance could be effected. At
that moment, La Fayette, who had been adopting the most vigorous
measures for the protection of the persons of the royal family, came to
meet them. The moment Maria Antoinette saw him, forgetful of her own
danger, and trembling for the body-guard who had periled their lives for
her family, she exclaimed, "Monsieur La Fayette, save the body-guard."
The king and queen alighted from the carriage. Some of the soldiers took
the children, and carried them through the crowd into the palace. A
member of the Assembly, who had been inimical to the King, came forward,
and offered his arm to the queen for her protection. She looked him a
moment in the face, and indignantly rejected the proffered aid of an
enemy. Then, seeing a deputy who had been their friend, she eagerly
accepted his arm, and ascended the steps of the palace. A prolonged
roar, as of thunder, ascended from the multitudinous throng which
surrounded the palace when the king and queen had entered, and the doors
of their prison were again closed against them.
[Illustration: THE TUILERIES.]
La Fayette was at the head of the National Guard. He was a strong
advocate for the rights of the people. At the same time, he wished
to respect the rights of the king, and to sustain a constitutional
monarchy. As soon as they had entered the palace, Maria Antoinette,
with that indomitable spirit which ever characterized her, approached
La Fayette, and offered to him the keys of her casket, as if he were
her jailer. La Fayette, deeply wounded, refused to receive them. The
queen indignantly, with her own hands, placed them in his hat. "Your
majesty will have the goodness to take them back," said the marquis,
"for I certainly shall not touch them."
The position of La Fayette at this time was about as embarrassing as it
could possibly have been; and he was virtually the jailer of the royal
family, answerable with his life for their safe keeping. He had always
been a firm friend of civil and religious liberty. He was very anxious
to see France blessed with those free institutions and that recognition
of popular rights which are the glory of America, but he also wished to
protect the king and queen from outrage and insult; and a storm of
popular fury had now risen which he knew not how to control or to guide.
He, however, resolved to do all in his power to protect the royal
family, and to watch the progress of events with the hope of
establishing constitutional liberty and a constitutional throne over
France.
The palace was now guarded, by command of the Assembly, with a degree of
rigor unknown before. The iron gates of the courts and garden of the
Tuileries were kept locked. A list of the persons who were to be
permitted to see the royal family was made out, and none others were
allowed to enter. At every door sentinels were placed, and in every
passage, and in the corridor which connected the chambers of the king
and queen, armed men were stationed. The doors of the sleeping
apartments of the king and queen were kept open night and day, and a
guard was placed there to keep his eye ever upon the victims. No respect
was paid to female modesty, and the queen was compelled to retire to her
bed under the watchful eye of an unfeeling soldier. It seems impossible
that a civilized people could have been guilty of such barbarism. But
all sentiments of humanity appear to have fled from France. One of the
queen's women, at night, would draw her own bed between that of the
queen and the open door, that she might thus partially shield the person
of her royal mistress. The king was so utterly overwhelmed by the
magnitude of the calamities in which he was now involved, that his mind,
for a season, seemed to be prostrated and paralyzed by the blow. For ten
days he did not exchange a single word with any member of his family,
but moved sadly about in the apathy of despair, or sat in moody silence.
At last the queen threw herself upon her knees before him, and,
presenting to him her children, besought him, for her sake and that of
their little ones, to rouse his fortitude. "We may all perish," she
said, "but let us, at least, perish like sovereigns, and not wait to be
strangled unresistingly upon the very floor of our apartments."
The long and dreary months of the autumn, the winter, and the spring
thus passed away, with occasional gleams of hope visiting their minds,
but with the storm of revolution, on the whole, growing continually more
black and terrific. General anarchy rioted throughout France. Murders
were daily committed with impunity. There was no law. The mob had all
power in their hands. Neither the king nor queen could make their
appearance any where without exposure to insult. Violent harangues in
the Assembly and in the streets had at length roused the populace to a
new act of outrage. The immediate cause was the refusal of the king to
give his sanction to a bill for the persecution of the priests. It was
the 20th of June, 1792. A tumultuous assemblage of all the miserable,
degraded, and vicious, who thronged the garrets and the cellars of
Paris, and who had been gathered from all lands by the lawlessness with
which crime could riot in the capital, were seen converging, as by a
common instinct, toward the palace. They bore banners fearfully
expressive of their ferocity, and filled the air with the most savage
outcries. Upon the end of a pike there was affixed a bleeding heart,
with the inscription, "The heart of the aristocracy." Another bore a
doll, suspended to a frame by the neck, with this inscription, "To the
gibbet with the Austrian." With the ferocity of wolves, they surrounded
the palace in a mass impenetrable. The king and queen, as they looked
from their windows upon the multitudinous gathering, swaying to and fro
like the billows of the ocean in a storm, and with the clamor of human
passions, more awful than the voice of many waters, rending the skies,
instinctively clung to one another and to their children in their
powerlessness. Madame Elizabeth, with her saint-like spirit, and her
heaven-directed thoughts, was ever unmindful of her own personal danger
in her devotion to her beloved brother. The king hoped that the soldiers
who were stationed as a guard within the inclosures of the palace would
be able to protect them from violence. The gates leading to the Place du
Carrousel were soon shattered beneath the blows of axes, and the human
torrent poured in with the resistlessness of a flood. The soldiers very
deliberately shook the priming from their guns, as the emphatic
expression to the mob that they had nothing to fear from them, and the
artillery men coolly directed their pieces against the palace. Axes and
iron bars were immediately leveled at the doors, and they flew from
their hinges; and the drunken and infuriated rabble, with clubs, and
pistols, and daggers, poured, an interminable throng, through the halls
and apartments where kings, for ages, had reigned in inapproachable pomp
and power. The servants of the king, in terror, fled in every direction.
Still the crowd came rushing and roaring on, crashing the doors before
them, till they approached the apartment in which the royal family was
secluded. The king, who, though deficient in active energy, possessed
passive fearlessness in the most eminent degree, left his wife,
children, and sister clinging together, and entered the adjoining room
to meet his assailants. Just as he entered the room, the door, which was
bolted, fell with a crash, and the mob was before him. For a moment the
wretches were held at bay by the calm dignity of the monarch, as,
without the tremor of a nerve, he gazed steadily upon them. The crowd in
the rear pressed on upon those in the advance, and three friends of the
king had just time to interpose themselves between him and the mob, when
the whole dense throng rushed in and filled the room. A drunken
assassin, with a sharp iron affixed to a long pole, aimed a thrust
violently at the king's heart. One blow from an heroic citizen laid him
prostrate on the floor, and he was trampled under the feet of the
throng. Oaths and imprecations filled the room; knives and sabers
gleamed, and yet the majesty of royalty, for a few brief moments,
repelled the ferocity of the assassins. A few officers of the National
Guard, roused by the peril of the king, succeeded in reaching him, and,
crowding him into the embrasure of a window, placed themselves as a
shield before him. The king seemed only anxious to withdraw the
attention of the mob from the room in which his family were clustered,
where he saw his sister, Madame Elizabeth, with extended arms and
imploring looks, struggling to come and share his fate. "It is the
queen!" was the cry, and a score of weapons were turned toward her. "No!
no!" exclaimed others, "it is Madame Elizabeth." Her gentle spirit, even
in these degraded hearts, had won admiration, and not a blow fell upon
her. "Ah!" exclaimed Madame Elizabeth, "why do you undeceive them?
Gladly would I die in her place, if I might thus save the queen." By the
surging of the crowd she was swept into the embrasure of another window,
where she was hemmed in without any possibility of extrication. By this
time the crowds were like locusts, climbing up the balconies, and
pouring in at the windows, and every foot of ground around the palace
was filled with the excited throng. Shouts of derision filled the air,
while the mob without were incessantly crying, "Have you killed them
yet? Throw us out their heads."
Almost miraculously, the friends surrounding the king succeeded in
warding off the blows which were aimed at him. One of the mob thrust out
to the king, upon the end of a pike, a _red bonnet_, the badge of the
Jacobins, and there was a general shout, "Let him put it on! let him
put it on! It is a sign of patriotism. If he is a patriot he will wear
it." The king, smiling, took the bonnet and put it upon his head.
Instantly there rose a shout from the fickle multitude, "_Vive le roi!_"
The mob had achieved its victory, and placed the badge of its power upon
the brow of the humbled monarch.
There was at that time standing in the court-yard of the palace a young
man, with the blood boiling with indignation in his veins, in view of
the atrocities of the mob. The ignominious spectacle of the red bonnet
upon the head of the king, as he stood in the recess of the window,
seemed more than this young man could endure, and, turning upon his
heel, he hastened away, exclaiming, "The wretches! the wretches! they
ought to be mown down by grape-shot." This is the first glimpse the
Revolution presents of Napoleon Bonaparte.
But while the king was enduring their tortures in one apartment, the
queen was suffering indignities and outrages equally atrocious in
another. Maria Antoinette was, in the eyes of the populace, the
personification of every thing to be hated. They believed her to be
_infamous_ as a wife; proud, tyrannical, and treacherous; that, as an
Austrian, she hated France; that she was doing all in her power to
induce foreign armies to invade the French empire with fire and sword;
and that she had instigated the king to attempt escape, that he might
head the armies. Maria, conscious of this hatred, was aware that her
presence would only augment the tide of indignation swelling against the
king, and she therefore remained in the bed-chamber with her children.
But her sanctuary was instantly invaded. The door of her apartment had
been, by some friend, closed and bolted. Its stout oaken panels were
soon dashed in, and the door driven from its hinges. A crowd of
miserable women, abandoned to the lowest depths of degradation and
vulgarity, rushed into the apartment, assailing her ears with the most
obscene and loathsome epithets the language could afford. The queen
stood in the recess of a window, with queenly pride curbing her mortal
apprehension. A few friends had gathered around her, and placed a table
before her as a partial protection. Her daughter, an exceedingly
beautiful girl of fourteen years of age, with her light brown hair
floating in ringlets over her fair brow and shoulders, clung to her
mother's bosom as if she thought not of herself, but would only, with
her own body, shield her mother's heart from the dagger of the assassin.
Her son, but seven years old, clung to his mother's hand, gazing with a
bewildered look of terror upon the hideous spectacle. The vociferations
of the mob were almost deafening. But the aspect of the group, so lovely
and so helpless, seemed to disarm the hand of violence. Now and then, in
the endless crowd defiling through the room, those in the advance
pressed resistlessly on by those in the rear, some one more tender
hearted would speak a word of sympathy. A young girl came crowded along,
neatly dressed, and with a pleasing countenance. She, however,
immediately began to revile the queen in the coarsest language of
vituperation.
"Why do you hate me so, my friend?" said the queen, kindly; "have I ever
done any thing to injure or to offend you?"
"No! you have never injured me," was the reply, "but it is you who cause
the misery of the nation."
"Poor child!" rejoined the queen, "you have been told so, and have been
deceived. Why should I make the people miserable? I am the wife of the
king--the mother of the dauphin; and by all the feelings of my heart, as
a wife and mother, I am a Frenchwoman. I shall never see my own country
again. I can only be happy or unhappy in France. I was happy when you
loved me."
The heart of the girl was touched. She burst into tears, and exclaimed,
"Pardon me, good queen, I did not know you; but now I see that I have
indeed been deceived, and you are truly good."
Hour after hour of humiliation and agony thus rolled away. The National
Assembly met, and in vain the friends of the king urged its action to
rescue the royal family from the insults and perils to which they were
exposed. But these efforts were met by the majority only with derision.
They hoped that the terrors of the mob would compel the king hereafter
to give his assent to any law whatever which they might frame. At last
the shades of night began to add their gloom to this awful scene, and
even the most bitter enemies of the king did not think it safe to leave
forty thousand men, inflamed with intoxication and rage, to riot,
through the hours of the night, in the parlors, halls, and chambers of
the Tuileries. The president of the Assembly, at that late hour, crowded
his way into the apartment where, for several hours, the king had been
exposed to every conceivable indignity. The mysterious authority of law
opened the way through the throng.
"I have only just learned," said the president, "the situation of your
majesty."
"That is very astonishing," replied the king, indignantly, "for it is a
long time that it has lasted."
The president, mounted upon the shoulders of four grenadiers, addressed
the mob and urged them to retire, and they, weary with the long hours of
outrages, slowly sauntered through the halls and apartments of the
palace, and at eight o'clock silence reigned, with the gloom of night,
throughout the Tuileries. The moment the mob became perceptibly less,
the king received his sister into his arms, and they hastened to the
apartment of the queen. During all the horrors of this awful day, her
heroic soul had never quailed; but, now that the peril was over, she
threw herself upon the bosom of her husband, and wept in all the
bitterness of inconsolable grief. As the family were locked in each
other's arms in silent gratitude for their preservation, the king
accidentally beheld in a mirror the red bonnet, which he had forgotten
to remove from his head. He turned red with mortification, and, casting
upon the floor the badge of his degradation, turned to the queen, with
his eyes filled with tears, and exclaimed, "Ah, madame, why did I take
you from your country, to associate you with the ignominy of such a day
as this!"
After the withdrawal of the mob, several of the deputies of the National
Assembly were in the apartment with the royal family, and, as the queen
recounted the horrors of the last five hours, one of them, though
bitterly hostile to the royal family, could not refrain from tears. "You
weep," said she to him, "at seeing the king and his family so cruelly
treated by a people whom he always wished to make happy."
"True, madame," unfeelingly replied the deputy, "I weep for the
misfortunes of a beautiful and sensitive woman, the mother of a family.
But do not mistake; not one of my tears falls for either king or queen.
I hate kings and queens. It is the only feeling they inspire me with. It
is my religion."
But time stops not. The hours of a dark and gloomy night, succeeding
this terrible day, lingered slowly along, but no sleep visited the
eyelids of the inmates of the Tuileries. Scowling guards still eyed them
malignantly, and the royal family could not unbosom to one another
their sorrows but in the presence of those who were hostile spies upon
every word and action. Escape was now apparently hopeless. The events of
the past day had taught them that they had no protection against popular
fury. And they were filled with the most gloomy forebodings of woes yet
to come.
These scenes occurred on the 20th of June, 1792. On the 14th of July of
the same year there was to be a magnificent fete in the Champ de Mars,
as the anniversary of the independence of the nation. The king and queen
were compelled to be present to grace the triumph of the people, and to
give the royal oath. It was anticipated that there would be many
attempts on that day to assassinate the king and queen. Some of the
friends of the royal family urged that they should each wear a
breast-plate which would guard against the first stroke of a dagger, and
thus give the king's friends time to defend him. A breast-plate was
secretly made for the king. It consisted of fifteen folds of Italian
taffeta, and was formed into an under waistcoat and a wide belt. Its
impenetrability was tried, and it resisted all thrusts of the dagger,
and several balls were turned aside by it. Madame Campan wore it for
three days as an under petticoat before an opportunity could be found
for the king to try it on unperceived. At length, one morning, in the
queen's chamber, a moment's opportunity occurred, and he slipped it on,
saying, at the same time, to Madame Campan, "It is to satisfy the queen
that I submit to this inconvenience. They will not assassinate me. Their
scheme is changed. They will put me to death in another way."
A dagger-proof corset had also been prepared for the queen without her
knowledge. She, however, could not be persuaded to wear it. "If they
assassinate _me_," she said, "it will be a most happy event. It will
release me from the most sorrowful existence, and may save from a cruel
death the rest of the family." The 14th of July arrived. The king,
queen, and dauphin were marched, like captives gracing an Oriental
triumph, at the head of the procession, from the palace to the Champ de
Mars. With pensive features and saddened hearts they passed along
through the single file of soldiers, who were barely able to keep at bay
the raging mob, furious for their blood, and maledictions fell heavily
upon their ears from a thousand tongues. The fountain of tears was dry,
and despair had nerved them with stoicism. They returned to the palace
in the deepest dejection, and never again appeared in the streets of
Paris till they were borne to their execution.