IMPRISONMENT IN THE TEMPLE.
1792
Apprehension of poison.--The queen daily insulted.--An assassin in the
queen's chamber.--The allied army.--Parties in France.--The Royalists,
Girondists, and Jacobins.--Consternation in Paris.--The king's
dethronement.--Scene from the palace.--Gathering of the mob.--The
queen with her children.--Brutal remarks of the troops.--Rising of
the sun.--Disaffection of the troops.--Extremity of the royal
family.--Spirit of the queen.--The king's calmness.--The mother and
the queen.--The royal family take refuge in the Assembly.--The
king's speech.--The square box.--The king's serenity.--The mob at
the palace.--Brutal massacre of the king's friends.--The mob sack
the palace.--The dead bodies of the Royalists burned.--The king
dethroned.--The royal family removed to the Feuillants.--Bitter
sufferings of the royal family.--Taken back to the Assembly.--The royal
family consigned to the Temple.--Advance of the allies.--Inhuman
massacre.--Description of the Temple.--Tower of the Temple.--Apartments
of the royal family.--Obscene pictures.--Resources of the
prison.--Employments of the royal family.--Severe restrictions.--Manner
of obtaining news.--The Princess Lamballe.--Maria's letter to the
Princess de Lamballe.--She rejoins the queen.--The princess separated
from the queen.--She is thrown into prison.--Trial of the princess.--She
refuses to swear.--Assassination of the princess.--Brutality of the
mob.--Dreadful apprehensions.--Increased severities.--The queen grossly
insulted.--The king separated from his family.--Wretched state of the
king.--The queen's anguish at the separation.--The king sees his family
occasionally.--Condition of the captives.
Every day now added to the insults and anguish the royal family were
called to endure. They were under such apprehension of having their food
poisoned, that all the articles placed upon the table by the attendants,
provided by the Assembly, were removed untouched, and they ate and drank
nothing but what was secretly provided by one of the ladies of the
bed-chamber. One day the queen stood at her window, looking out sadly
into the garden of the Tuileries, when a soldier, standing under the
window, with his bayonet upon his gun, looked up to her and said, "I
wish, Austrian woman, that I had your head upon my bayonet here, that I
might pitch it over the wall to the dogs in the street." And this man
was placed under her window ostensibly for her protection! Whenever the
queen made her appearance in the garden, she encountered insults often
too outrageous to be related. An assassin, one night, with his sharpened
dagger, endeavored to penetrate her chamber. She was awoke by the noise
of the struggle with the guard at the door. The assassin was arrested.
"What a life!" exclaimed the queen. "Insults by day, and assassins by
night! But let him go. He came to murder me. Had he succeeded, the
Jacobins would have borne him to-morrow in triumph through the streets
of Paris."
The allied army, united with the emigrants, in a combined force of
nearly one hundred and fifty thousand men, now entered the frontiers of
France, to rescue, by military power, the royal family. They issued a
proclamation, in which it was stated that "the allied sovereigns had
taken up arms to stop the anarchy which prevailed in France--to give
liberty to the king, and restore him to the legitimate authority of
which he had been deprived." The proclamation assured the people of
Paris that, if they did not immediately liberate the king and return to
their allegiance, the city of Paris should be totally destroyed, and
that the enemies of the king should forfeit their heads. This
proclamation, with the invasion of the French territory by the allied
army, fanned to the intensest fury the flames of passion already raging
in all parts of the empire. Thousands of young men from all the
provinces thronged into the city, breathing vengeance against the royal
family. In vain did the king declare his disapproval of these violent
measures on the part of the allies. In vain did he assert his readiness
to head the armies of France to repel invasion.
There were now three important parties in France struggling for power.
The first was that of the king, and the nobles generally, wishing for
the re-establishment of the monarchy. The second was that of the
Girondists, wishing for the dethronement of the king and the
establishment of a republic, with the power in the hands of the most
influential citizens in intelligence and wealth. The third was that of
the ultra Democrats or Jacobins, who wished to raise the multitude from
degradation, penury, and infamy, into power, by the destruction of the
throne, and the subjection of the middling classes, and the entire
subversion of all the distinctions of wealth and rank. The approach of
the allies united both of these latter classes against the throne. A
motion was immediately introduced into the Assembly that the monarchy be
entirely abolished, and a mob rioting through Paris threatened the
deputies with death unless they dethroned the king. But an army of one
hundred and fifty thousand men were marching upon Paris, and the
deputies feared a terrible retribution if this new insult were heaped
upon their sovereign. No person can describe the confusion and
consternation with which the metropolis of France was filled. The mob
declared, on the 9th of August, that, unless the dethronement were that
day pronounced, they would that night sack the palace, and bear the
heads of the royal family through the streets upon their pikes. The
Assembly, undecided, and trembling between the two opposing perils,
separated without the adoption of any resolve. All knew that a night of
dreadful tumult and violence must ensue. Some hundreds of gentlemen
collected around the king and queen, resolved to perish with them.
Several regiments of soldiers were placed in and around the palace to
drive back the mob, but it was well known that the troops would more
willingly fraternize with the multitude than oppose them. The sun went
down, and the street lamps feebly glimmered through the darkness of the
night. The palace was filled with armed men. The gentlemen surrounding
the king were all conscious of their utter inability to protect him.
They had come but to share the fate of their sovereign. The queen and
the Princess Elizabeth ascended to an upper part of the palace, and
stepped from a low window into the dark shadow of a balcony to look out
upon the tumultuous city. The sound, as of the gathering of a resistless
storm, swept through all the streets, and rose loud and threatening
above the usual roar of the vast metropolis. The solemn tones of the
alarm bells, pealing through the night air, summoned all the desperadoes
of France to their several places of rendezvous, to march upon the
palace. The rumbling of artillery wheels, and the frequent discharge of
musketry, proclaimed the determination and the desperation of the
intoxicated mob. In darkness and silence, the queen and her sister stood
listening to these fearful sounds, and their hearts throbbed violently
in view of the terrible scene through which they knew that they must
pass. The queen, pale but tearless, and nerved to the utmost by queenly
pride, descended to the rooms below. She walked into the chamber where
her beautiful son was sleeping, gazed earnestly upon him for a moment,
bent over him, and imprinted upon his cheek a mother's kiss--and yet
without a tear. She entered the apartment of her daughter--lovely,
surpassingly lovely in all the blooming beauty of fifteen. The
princess, comprehending the peril of the hour, could not sleep. Maria
pressed her child to her throbbing heart, and the pride of the queen was
soon vanquished by the tenderness of the mother, as with convulsive
energy she embraced her, and wept in anguish almost unendurable. Shouts
of unfeeling derision arose from the troops below, stationed for the
protection of the royal family, and their ears were assailed by remarks
of the most brutal barbarity. Hour after hour of the night lingered
along, the clamor without incessantly increasing, and the crowds
surrounding the palace augmenting. The excitement within the palace was
so awful that no words could give it utterance. The few hundred
gentlemen who had come so heroically to share the fate of their
sovereign were aware that no resistance could be made to the tens of
thousands who were thirsting for their blood.
Midnight came. It was fraught with horror. The queen, in utter
exhaustion, threw herself upon a sofa. At that moment a musket shot was
fired in the court-yard. "There is the first shot," said the queen, with
the calmness of despair, "but it will not be the last. Let us go and be
with the king." At length, from the windows of their apartment, a few
gleams of light began to redden the eastern sky. "Come," said the
Princess Elizabeth, "and see the rising sun." Maria went mournfully to
the window, gazed long and steadfastly upon the rising luminary, feeling
that, before that day's sun should go down, she and all whom she loved
would be in another world. It was an awful spectacle which the light of
day revealed. All the avenues to the palace were choked with intoxicated
thousands. The gardens, and the court-yard surrounding the palace, were
filled with troops, placed there for the protection of the sovereign,
but evidently sympathizing with the mob, with whom they exchanged badges
and friendly greetings. The queen, apprehensive that the children might
be massacred in their beds, had them dressed, and placed by the side of
herself and the king. It was recommended to the king that he should go
down into the court-yard, among the troops stationed there for his
defense; that his presence might possibly awaken sympathy and enthusiasm
in his behalf. The king and queen, with their son and daughter, and
Madame Elizabeth, went down with throbbing hearts to visit the ranks of
their defenders. They were received with derisive insults and hootings.
Some of the gunners left their posts, and thrust their fists into the
face of the king, insulting him with menaces the most brutal. They
instantly returned to the palace, pallid with indignation and despair.
Soon an officer came in and informed the king that all resistance was
hopeless; that six pieces of artillery were already pointed against the
main door of the palace; that a mob of countless thousands, well armed,
and dragging with them twelve heavy cannon, were rapidly approaching the
scene of conflict; that the whole populace of Paris were up in arms
against the king, and that no reliance whatever could be placed in the
soldiers stationed for his defense. "There is not," said he, "a single
moment to lose. You will all inevitably and immediately perish, unless
you hasten to the hall where the Assembly is in session, and place
yourself under the protection of that body." The pride of the queen was
intensely aroused in view of appealing to the Assembly, their bitterest
enemy, for succor, and she indignantly replied, "I would rather be
nailed to the walls of the palace than leave it to take refuge in the
Assembly." And the heroism of Maria Theresa instinctively inspiring her
bosom, she seized, from the belt of an officer, two pistols, and,
presenting them to the king, exclaimed, "Now, sire, is the time to show
yourself, and if we must perish, let us perish with glory." The king
calmly received the pistols, and silently handed them back to the
officer.
"Madame," said the messenger, "are you prepared to take upon yourself
the responsibility of the death of the king, of yourself, of your
children, and of all who are here to defend you? All Paris is on the
march. Time presses. In a few moments it will be too late." The queen
cast a glance upon her daughter, and a mother's fears prevailed. The
crimson blood mounted to her temples. Then, again, she was pale as a
corpse. Then, rising from her seat, she said, "Let us go." It was seven
o'clock in the morning.
The king and queen, with their two children, Madame Elizabeth, and a few
personal friends, descended the great stair-case of the Tuileries, to
pass out through the bands of soldiers and the tumultuous mob to the
hall of the Assembly. At the stair-case there was a large concourse of
men and women, gesticulating with fury, who refused to permit the royal
family to depart. The tumult was such that the members of the royal
family were separated from each other, and thus they stood for a moment
mingled with the crowd, listening to language of menace and insult, when
a deputy assured the mob that an order of the Assembly had summoned the
royal family to them. The rioters then gave way, and the mournful group
passed out of the door into the garden. They forced their way along,
surrounded by a few friends, through imprecations, insults, gleaming
daggers, and dangers innumerable, until they arrived at the hall of the
Assembly, which the king was with difficulty enabled to enter, in
consequence of the immense concourse which crowded him, thirsting for
his blood, and yet held back by an unseen hand. As the king entered the
hall, he said, with dignity, to the president, "I have come here to save
the nation from the commission of a great crime. I shall always consider
myself, with my family, safe in your hands." The royal family sat down
upon a bench. Mournful silence pervaded the hall. A more sorrowful,
heart-rending sight mortal eyes have seldom seen. The father, the
mother, the saint-like sister, the innocent and helpless children, had
found but a momentary refuge from cannibals, who were roaring like
wolves around the hall, and battering at the doors to break in and
slake their vengeance with blood. It was seriously apprehended that the
mob would make a rush, and sprinkle the blood of the royal family upon
the very floor of the sanctuary where they had sought a refuge.
Behind the seat of the president there was a box about ten feet square,
constituting a seat reserved for reporters, guarded by an iron railing.
Into this box the royal family were crowded for safety. A few friends of
the king gathered around the box. The heat of the day was almost
insupportable. Not a breath of air could penetrate the closely-packed
apartment; and the heat, as of a furnace, glowed in the room. Scarcely
had the royal family got into this frail retreat, when the noise without
informed them that their friends were falling before the daggers of
assassins, and the greatest alarm was felt lest the doors should be
driven in by the merciless mob. In this awful hour, the king appeared as
calm, serene, and unconcerned as if he were the spectator of a scene in
which he had no interest. The countenance of the queen exhibited all the
unvanquished firmness of her soul, as with flushed cheek and indignant
eye she looked upon the drama of terror and confusion which was
passing. The young princess wept, and her cheeks were marked with the
furrows which her tears, dried by the heat, had left. The young dauphin
appeared as cool and self-possessed as his father. The rattling fire of
artillery, and the report of musketry at the palace, proclaimed to the
royal family and the affrighted deputies the horrid conflict, or,
rather, massacre which was raging there. Immediately after the king and
queen had left the Tuileries, the mob broke in at every avenue. A few
hundred Swiss soldiers left there remained faithful to the king. The
conflict was short--the massacre awful. The infuriated multitude rushed
through the halls and the apartments of the spacious palace, murdering,
without mercy and without distinction of age or sex, all the friends of
the king whom they encountered. The mutilated bodies were thrown out of
the windows to the mob which filled the garden and the court. The
wretched inmates of the palace fled, pursued in every direction. But
concealment and escape were alike hopeless. Some poor creatures leaped
from the windows and clambered up the marble monuments. The wretches
refrained from firing at them, lest they should injure the statuary, but
pricked them with their bayonets till they compelled them to drop down,
and then murdered them at their feet. A pack of wolves could not have
been more merciless. The populace, now rioting in their resistless
power, with no law and no authority to restrain them, gave loose rein to
vengeance, and, having glutted themselves with blood, proceeded to sack
the palace. Its magnificent furniture, and splendid mirrors, and costly
paintings, were dashed to pieces and thrown from the windows, when the
fragments were eagerly caught by those below and piled up for bonfires.
Drunken wretches staggered through all the most private apartments,
threw themselves, with blood-soaked boots, upon the bed of the queen,
ransacked her drawers, made themselves merry over her notes, and
letters, and the various articles of her toilet, and polluted the very
air of the palace by their vulgar and obscene ribaldry. As night
approached, huge fires were built, upon which the dead bodies of the
massacred Royalists were thrown, and all were consumed.
During all the long hours of that dreadful day, and until two o'clock
the ensuing night, the royal family remained, almost without a change of
posture, in the narrow seat which had served them for an asylum. Who can
measure the amount of their endurance during these fifteen hours of
woe? An act was passed, during this time, in obedience to the demands of
the mob, dethroning the king. The hour of midnight had now come and
gone, and still the royal sufferers were in their comfortless
imprisonment, half dead with excitement and exhaustion. The young
dauphin had fallen asleep in his mother's arms. Madame Elizabeth and the
princess, entirely unnerved, were sobbing with uncontrollable grief. The
royal family were then transferred, for the remainder of the night, to
some deserted and unfurnished rooms in the old monastery of the
Feuillants. Some beds and mattresses were hastily collected, and a few
coarse chairs for their accommodation. As soon as they had entered these
cheerless rooms, and were alone, the king prostrated himself upon his
knees, with his family clinging around him, and gave utterance to the
prayer, "Thy trials, O God! are dreadful. Give us courage to bear them.
We adore the hand which chastens, as that which has so often blessed us.
Have mercy on those who have died fighting in our defense."
Utter exhaustion enabled the unhappy family to find a few hours of
agitated sleep. The sun arose the ensuing morning with burning rays,
and, as they fell upon the eyelids of the queen, she looked wildly
around her for a moment upon the cheerless scene, and then, with a
shudder, exclaiming, "Oh! I hoped it was all a dream," buried her face
again in her pillow. The attendants around her burst into tears. "You
see, my unhappy friends," said Maria, "a woman even more unhappy than
yourselves, for she has caused all your misfortunes." The queen wept
bitterly as she was informed of the massacre of her friends the
preceding day. Already the royal family felt the pressure of poverty.
They were penniless, and had to borrow some garments for the children.
The king and queen could make no change in their disordered dress.
At ten o'clock in the morning, a guard came and conducted the royal
family again to the Assembly. Immediately the hall was surrounded by a
riotous mob, clamoring for their blood. At one moment the outer doors
were burst open, and the blood-thirsty wretches made a rush for the
interior. The king, believing that their final hour had come, begged his
friends to seek their own safety, and abandon him and his family to
their fate. The day of agitation and terror, however, passed away, and,
as the gloom of night again darkened the city, the illustrious
sufferers were reconveyed to the Feuillants. All their friends were
driven from them, and guards were placed over them, who, by rudeness and
insults, did what they could to add bitterness to their captivity.
It was decided by the Assembly that they should all be removed to the
prison of the Temple. At three o'clock the next day two carriages were
brought to the door, and the royal family were conveyed through the
thronged streets and by the most popular thoroughfares to the prison.
The enemies of royalty appeared to court the ostentatious display of its
degradation. As the carriages were slowly dragged along, an immense
concourse of spectators lined the way, and insults and derision were
heaped upon them at every step. At last, after two hours, in which they
were constrained to drain the cup of ignominy to its dregs, the
carriages rolled under the gloomy arches of the Temple, and their prison
doors were closed against them.
In the mean time the allied army was advancing with rapid strides toward
the city. The most dreadful consternation reigned in the metropolis. The
populace rose in its rage to massacre all suspected of being in favor of
royalty. The prisons were crowded with the victims of suspicion. The
rage of the mob would not wait for trial. The prison doors were burst
open, and a general and awful massacre ensued. There was no mercy shown
to the innocence of youth or to female helplessness. The streets of
Paris were red with the blood of its purest citizens, and the spirit of
murder, with unrestrained license, glutted its vengeance. In one awful
day and night many thousands perished. The walls of rock and iron of the
Temple alone protected the royal family from a similar fate.
The Temple was a dismal fortress which stood in the heart of Paris, a
gloomy memorial of past ages of violence and crime. It was situated not
far from the Bastile, and inclosed within its dilapidated yet massive
walls a vast space of silence and desolation. In former ages cowled
monks had moved with noiseless tread through its spacious corridors, and
their matins and vespers had vibrated along the stone arches of this
melancholy pile. But now weeds choked its court-yard, and no sounds were
heard in its deserted apartments but the shrieking of the wind as it
rushed through the grated windows and whistled around the angles of the
towers. The shades of night were adding to the gloom of this wretched
abode as the captives were led into its deserted and unfurnished cells.
It was after midnight before the rooms for their imprisonment were
assigned to them. It was a night of Egyptian darkness. Soldiers with
drawn swords guarded them, as, by the light of a lantern, they picked
their way through the rank weeds of the castle garden, and over piles of
rubbish, to a stone tower, some thirty feet square and sixty feet high,
to whose damp, cheerless, and dismal apartments they were consigned.
"Where are you conducting us?" inquired a faithful servant who had
followed the fortunes of his royal master. The officer replied, "Thy
master has been used to gilded roofs, but now he will see how the
assassins of the people are lodged."
[Illustration: THE TOWER OF THE TEMPLE.]
Madame Elizabeth was placed in a kind of kitchen, or wash-room, with a
truckle bed in it, on the ground floor. The second floor of the Tower
was assigned to the attendants of the household. One common wooden
bedstead and a few old chairs were the only furniture of the room. The
third floor was assigned to the king, and queen, and the two children.
A footman had formerly slept in the room, and had left suspended
upon the walls some coarse and vulgar prints. The king, immediately
glancing at them, took them down and turned their faces to the wall,
exclaiming, "I would not have my daughter see such things." The king
and the children soon fell soundly asleep; but no repose came to the
agitated mind of Maria Antoinette. Her lofty and unbending spirit felt
these indignities and atrocities too keenly. She spent the night in
silent tears, and indulging in the most gloomy forebodings of the fate
which yet awaited them.
The morning sun arose, but to show still more clearly the dismal
aspect of the prison. But few rays could penetrate the narrow windows
of the tower, and blinds of oaken plank were so constructed that the
inmates could only look out upon the sky. A very humble breakfast was
provided for them, and then they began to look about to see what
resources their prison afforded to beguile the weary hours. A few
books were found, such as an odd volume of Horace, and a few volumes
of devotional treatises, which had long been slumbering, moth-eaten,
in these deserted cells, where, in ages that were past, monks had
performed their severe devotions. The king immediately systematized
the hours, and sat down to the regular employment of teaching his
children. The son and the daughter, with minds prematurely developed
by the agitations and excitements in the midst of which they had been
cradled, clung to their parents with the most tender affection, and
mitigated the horrors of their captivity by manifesting the most
engaging sweetness of disposition, and by prosecuting their studies
with untiring vigor. The queen and Madame Elizabeth employed
themselves with their needles. They breakfasted at nine o'clock, and
then devoted the forenoon to reading and study. At one o'clock they
were permitted to walk for an hour, for exercise, in the court-yard of
the prison, which had long been consigned to the dominion of rubbish
and weeds. But in these walks they were daily exposed to the most
cruel insults from the guards that were stationed over them. At two
o'clock they dined. During the long hours of the evening the king
read aloud. At night, the queen prepared the children for bed, and
heard them repeat their prayers. Every day, however, more severe
restrictions were imposed upon the captives. They were soon deprived
of pens and paper; and then scissors, knives, and even needles were
taken away, under the pretense that they might be the instruments of
suicide. They were allowed no communication of any kind with their
friends without, and were debarred from all acquaintance with any
thing transpiring in the world. In that gloomy tower of stone and
iron they were buried. A faithful servant, however, adroitly opened
communication with a news boy, who, under the pretense of selling the
daily papers, recounted under their prison windows, in as loud a voice
as he could, the leading articles of the journals he had for sale.
The servant listened at the window with the utmost care, and then
privately communicated the information to the king and queen.
[Illustration: THE ROYAL FAMILY IN THE TEMPLE.]
The fate of the Princess Lamballe, who perished at this time, is highly
illustrative of the horrors in the midst of which all the Royalists
lived. This lovely woman, left a widow at eighteen, was attracted to
the queen by her misfortunes, and became her most intimate and devoted
friend. She lodged in an apartment adjoining to the queen's, that she
might share all her perils. Occasionally the princess was absent to
watch over and cheer an aged friend, the Duke de Penthievre, her
father-in-law, who resided at the Chateau de Vernon. She had gone a
short time before the 20th of June to visit the aged duke, and Maria
Antoinette, who foresaw the terrible storm about to burst upon them,
wrote the following touching letter to her friend, urging her not to
return to the sufferings and dangers of the Tuileries. The letter was
found in the hair of the Princess de Lamballe after her assassination.
"Do not leave Vernon, my dear Lamballe, before you are
perfectly recovered. The good Duke de Penthievre would be
sorry and distressed, and we must all take care of his
advanced age and respect his virtues. I have so often told
you to take heed of yourself, that, if you love me, you
must think of yourself; we shall require all of our strength
in the times in which we live. Oh! do not return, or return
as late as possible. Your heart would be too deeply
wounded; you would have too many tears to shed over my
misfortunes--you, who loved me so tenderly. This race of
tigers which infests the kingdom would cruelly enjoy itself
if it knew all the sufferings we undergo. Adieu, my dear
Lamballe; I am always thinking of you, and you know I never
change."
The princess, notwithstanding this advice, hastened to join her friend
and to share her fate. She stood by the side of the queen during the
sleeplessness of the night preceding the 20th of June, and clung to her
during all those long and terrific hours in which the mob filled her
apartment with language of obscenity, menace, and rage. She accompanied
the royal family to the Assembly, shared with them the cheerless night
in the old monastery of the Feuillants, and followed them to the gloomy
prison of the Temple. The stern decree of the Assembly, depriving the
royal family of the presence of any of their friends, excluded the
princess from the prison. She still, however, lived but to weep over the
sorrows of those whom she so tenderly loved.
She was soon arrested as a Loyalist, and plunged, like the vilest
criminal, into the prison of La Force. For the crime of loving the king
and queen she was summoned to appear before the Revolutionary tribunal.
The officers found her lying upon her pallet in the prison, surrounded
by other wretched victims of lawless violence, scarcely able to raise
her head from her pillow. She entreated them to leave her to die where
she was. One of the officers leaned over her bed, and whispered to her
that they were her friends, and that her life depended upon her entire
compliance with their directions. She immediately arose and accompanied
the guard down the prison stairs to the door. There two brutal-looking
wretches, covered with blood, stood waiting to receive her. As they
grasped her arms, she fainted. It was long before she recovered. As soon
as she revived she was led before the judges. "Swear," said one of them,
"that you love liberty and equality; and swear that you hate all kings
and queens." "I am willing to swear the first," she replied, "but as to
hatred of kings and queens, I can not swear it, for it is not in my
heart." Another judge, moved with pity by her youth and innocence, bent
over her and whispered, "Swear any thing, or you are lost." She still
remained silent. "Well," said one, "you may go, but when you get into
the street, shout _Vive la nation!_" The court-yard was filled with
assassins, who cut down, with pikes and bludgeons, the condemned as they
were led out from the court, and the mutilated and gory bodies of the
slain were strewn over the pavement. Two soldiers took her by the arm to
lead her out. As she passed from the door, the dreadful sight froze her
heart with terror, and she exclaimed, forgetful of the peril, "O God!
how horrible!" One of the soldiers, by a friendly impulse, immediately
covered her mouth, with his hand, that her exclamations might not be
heard. She was led into the street, filled with assassins thirsting for
the blood of the Royalists, and had advanced but a few steps, when a
journeyman barber, staggering with intoxication and infuriated with
carnage, endeavored, in a kind of brutal jesting, to strike her cap from
her head with his long pike. The blow fell upon her forehead, cutting a
deep gash, and the blood gushed out over her face. The assassins around,
deeming this the signal for their onset, fell upon her. A blow from a
bludgeon laid her dead upon the pavement. One, seizing her by the hair,
with a saber cut off her head. Others tore her garments from her
graceful limbs, and, cutting her body into fragments, paraded the
mutilated remains upon their pikes through the streets. The dissevered
head they bore into an ale house, and drank and danced around the
ghastly trophy in horrid carousal. The rioting multitude then, in the
phrensy of intoxication, swarmed through the streets to the Temple,
to torture the king and queen with the dreadful spectacle. The king,
hearing the shoutings and tumultuous laughter of the mob, went to the
window, and recognized, in the gory head thrust up to him upon the point
of a pike, the features of his much-loved friend. He immediately led the
queen to another part of the room, that she might be shielded from the
dreadful spectacle.
Such were the flashes of terror which were ever gleaming through the
bars of their windows. The horrors of each passing moment were magnified
by the apprehension of still more dreadful evils to come. There was,
however, one consolation yet left them. They were permitted to cling
together. Locked in each other's arms, they could bow in prayer, and by
sympathy and love sustain their fainting hearts. It was soon, however,
thought that these indulgences were too great for dethroned royalty to
enjoy. But a few days of their captivity had passed away, when, at
midnight, they were aroused by an unusual uproar, and a band of brutal
soldiers came clattering into their room with lanterns, and, in the most
harsh and insulting manner, commanded the immediate expulsion of all the
servants and attendants of the royal family. Expostulation and entreaty
were alike unavailing. The captives were stripped of all their friends,
and passed the remainder of the night in sleeplessness and in despair.
With the light of the morning they endeavored to nerve themselves to
bear with patience this new trial. The king performed the part of a
nurse in aiding to wash and dress the children. For the health of the
children, they went into the court-yard of the prison before dinner for
exercise and the fresh air. A soldier, stationed there to guard them,
came up deliberately to the queen, and amused his companions by puffing
tobacco smoke from his pipe into her face. The parents read upon the
walls the names of their children, described as "whelps who ought to be
strangled."
Six weeks of this almost unendurable agony passed away, when, one night,
as the unhappy captives were clustered together, finding in their mutual
and increasing affection a solace for all their woes, six municipal
officers entered the tower, and read a decree ordering the entire
separation of the king from the rest of his family. No language can
express the consternation of the sufferers in view of this cruel
measure. Without mercy, the officers immediately executed the barbarous
command, by tearing the king from the embraces of his agonized wife and
his grief-distracted children. The king, overwhelmed with anguish in
view of the sufferings which his wife and children must endure, most
earnestly implored them not to separate him from his family. They were
inflexible and, hardly allowing the royal family one moment for their
parting adieus, hurried the king away. It was the dark hour of a gloomy
night. The few rays of light from the lanterns guided them through
narrow passages, and over piles of rubbish to a distant angle of the
huge and dilapidated fortress, where they thrust the king into an
unfurnished cell, and, locking the door upon him, they left him with one
tallow candle to make visible the gloom and the solitude. There was, in
one corner, a miserable pallet, and heaps of moldering bricks and mortar
were scattered over the damp floor. The king threw himself, in utter
despair, upon this wretched bed, and counted, till the morning dawned,
the steps of the sentinel pacing to and fro before his door. At length a
small piece of bread and a bottle of water were brought him for his
breakfast.
The anguish of the queen in the endurance of this most cruel separation
was apparently as deep as human nature could experience. Her woe
amounted to delirium. Pale and haggard, she walked to and fro,
beseeching her jailers that they would restore to her and to her
children the husband and the father. Her pathetic entreaties touched
even their hearts of stone. "I do believe," said one of them, "that
these infernal women will make even me weep." After some time, they
consented that the king should occasionally be permitted to partake his
meals with his family, a guard being always present to hear what they
should say. Immediately after the meal, he was to be taken back to his
solitary imprisonment.
Such was the condition of the royal family during a period of about four
months, varied by the capricious mercy or cruelty of the different
persons who were placed as guards over them. Their clothes became
soiled, threadbare, and tattered; and they were deprived of all means of
repairing their garments, lest they should convert needles and scissors
into instruments of suicide. The king was not allowed the use of a razor
to remove his beard; and the luxury of a barber to perform that
essential part of his toilet was an expense which his foes could not
incur. It was the studied endeavor of those who now rode upon the
crested yet perilous billows of power, to degrade royalty to the lowest
depths of debasement and contempt--that the beheading of the king and
the queen might be regarded as merely the execution of a male and a
female felon dragged from the loathsome dungeons of crime.