TRIAL AND EXECUTION OF MARIA ANTOINETTE.
1793
Sufferings of the queen.--Announcement of her husband's death.--Cruel
decree.--Maria's defense of her boy.--The dauphin's cell.--The
queen summoned to the Conciergerie.--Painful partings.--The
Conciergerie.--Loathsome apartments of the queen.--The jailer's
wife.--The jailer's daughter.--The garter.--Dignity of the queen
during her trial.--She is condemned to death.--The queen dressed for
the guillotine.--Her hands bound.--Car of the condemned.--Indignities
heaped upon the queen.--Arrival at the guillotine.--The queen's
composure.--The queen's prayer.--Maternal love.--The last adieu.--End
of the tragedy.
While the king was suffering upon the guillotine, the queen, with Madame
Elizabeth and the children, remained in their prison, in the endurance
of anguish as severe as could be laid upon human hearts. The queen was
plunged into a continued succession of swoons, and when she heard the
booming of the artillery, which announced that the fatal ax had fallen
and that her husband was headless, her companions feared that her life
was also, at the same moment, to be extinguished. Soon the rumbling of
wheels, the rolling of heavy pieces of cannon, and the shouts of the
multitude penetrating through the bars of her cell, proclaimed the
return of the procession from the scene of death. The queen was
extremely anxious to be informed of all the details of the last moments
of the king, but her foes refused her even this consolation.
Days and nights now lingered slowly along while the captives were
perishing in monotonous misery. The severity of their imprisonment was
continually increased by new deprivations. No communications from the
world without were permitted to reach their ears. Shutters were so
arranged that even the sky was scarcely visible, and no employment
whatever was allowed them to beguile their hours of woe. About four
months after the death of the king, a loud noise was heard one night at
the door of their chamber, and a band of armed men came tumultuously in,
and read to the queen an order that her little son should be entirely
separated from her, and imprisoned by himself. The poor child, as he
heard this cruel decree, was frantic with terror, and, throwing himself
into his mother's arms, shrieked out, "O mother! mother! mother! do not
abandon me to those men. They will kill me as they did papa." The queen
was thrown into a perfect delirium of mental agony. She placed her child
upon the bed, and, stationing herself before him, with eyes glaring like
a tigress, and with almost superhuman energy, declared that they should
tear her in pieces before they should touch her poor boy. The officers
were subdued by this affecting exhibition of maternal love, and
forbore violence. For two hours she thus contended against all their
solicitations, until, entirely overcome by exhaustion, she fell in a
swoon upon the floor. The child was then hurried from the apartment, and
placed under the care of a brutal wretch, whose name, Simon, inhumanity
has immortalized. The unhappy child threw himself upon the floor of
his cell, and for two days remained without any nourishment. The queen
abandoned herself to utter despair. Madame Elizabeth and Maria Theresa
performed all the service of the chamber, making the beds, sweeping the
room, and attending upon the queen. No importunities on the part of
Maria Antoinette could obtain for her the favor of a single interview
with her child.
Three more months passed slowly away, when, early in August, the queen
was aroused from her sleep at midnight by armed men, with lanterns,
bursting into her room. With unfeeling barbarity, they ordered her to
accompany them to the prison of the Conciergerie, the most dismal prison
in Paris, where those doomed to die awaited their execution. The queen
listened, unmoved, to the order, for her heart had now become callous
even to woe. Her daughter and Madame Elizabeth threw themselves at the
feet of the officers, and most pathetically, but unavailingly, implored
them not to deprive them of their only remaining solace. The queen was
compelled to rise and dress in the presence of the wretches who exulted
over her abasement. She clasped her daughter for one frantic moment
convulsively to her heart, covered her with embraces and kisses, spoke a
few words of impassioned tenderness to her sister, and then, as if
striving by violence to throw herself from the room, she inadvertently
struck her forehead a severe blow against the low portal of the door.
"Did you hurt you?" inquired one of the men. "Oh no!" was the despairing
reply, "nothing now can further harm me."
A few lights glimmered dimly from the street lamps as the queen entered
the carriage, guarded by soldiers, and was conveyed through the somber
streets to her last earthly abode. The prison of the Conciergerie
consists of a series of subterranean dungeons beneath the floor of the
Palais de Justice. More damp, dark, gloomy dens of stone and iron the
imagination can not conceive. Down the dripping and slippery steps she
was led, groping her way by the feeble light of a tallow candle, until
she approached, through a labyrinth of corridors, an iron door.
It grated upon its hinges, and she was thrust in, two soldiers
accompanying her, and the door was closed. It was midnight. The lantern
gave just light enough to show her the horrors of her cell. The floor
was covered with mud and water, while little streams trickled down the
stone walls. A miserable pallet in one corner, an old pine table and one
chair, were all the comforts the kingdom of France could afford its
queen.
[Illustration: MARIA ANTOINETTE IN THE CONCIERGERIE.]
The heart of the wife of the jailer was touched with compassion in
view of this unmitigated misery. She did not dare to speak words of
kindness, for they would be reported by the guard. She, however,
prepared for her some food, ventured to loan her some needles, and a
ball of worsted, and communicated intelligence of her daughter and
son. The Committee of Public Safety heard of these acts of mercy, and
the jailer and his wife were immediately arrested, and plunged into
those dungeons into which they would have allowed the spirit of
humanity to enter. The shoes of the queen, saturated with water, soon
fell from her feet. Her stockings and her dress, from the humidity
of the air, were in tatters. Two soldiers, with drawn swords, were
stationed by her side night and day, with the command never, even
for one moment, to turn their eyes from her. The daughter of the new
jailer, touched with compassion, and regardless of the fate of the
predecessors of her parents, entered her cell every morning to dress
her whitened locks, which sorrow had bleached. The queen ventured one
day to solicit an additional counterpane for her bed. "How dare you
make such a request?" replied the solicitor general of the commune;
"you deserve to be sent to the guillotine!" The queen succeeded
secretly, by means of a tooth-pick, which she converted into a
tapestry needle, in plaiting a garter from thread which she plucked
from an old woollen coverlet. This memorial of a mother's love she
contrived, by stratagem, to transmit to her daughter. This was the
richest legacy the daughter of Maria Theresa and the Queen of France
could bequeath to her child. That garter is still preserved as a
sacred relic by those who revere the memory and commiserate the
misfortunes of Maria Antoinette.
Two months of this all but insupportable imprisonment passed away, when,
early in October, she was brought from her dungeon below to the
court-room above for her trial. Her accusation was that she abhorred
the revolution which had beheaded her husband, and plunged her and her
whole family into woes, the remembrance of which it would seem that even
eternity could hardly efface. The queen condescended to no defense. She
appeared before her accusers in the calm dignity of despair, and yet
with a spirit as unbroken and queenly as when she moved in the gilded
saloons of Versailles. The queen was called to hear her sentence. It was
death within twenty-four hours. Not the tremor of a muscle showed the
slightest agitation as the mob, with clappings and shoutings, manifested
their hatred for their victim, and their exultation at her doom. Insults
and execrations followed her to the stair-case as she descended again to
her dungeon. It was four o'clock in the morning. A few rays of the
dawning day struggled through the bars of her prison window, and she
seemed to smile with a faint expression of pleasure at the thought that
her last day of earthly woe had dawned. She called for pen and ink,
and wrote a very affecting letter to her sister and children. Having
finished the letter, she repeatedly and passionately kissed it, as if
it were the last link which bound her to the loved ones from whom she
was so soon to be separated by death. She then, as if done with earth,
kneeled down and prayed, and with a tranquillized spirit, threw herself
upon her bed, and fell into a profound slumber.
An hour or two passed away, when the kind daughter of the jailer came,
with weeping eyes and a throbbing heart, into the cell to dress the
queen for the guillotine. It was the 14th of October, 1793. Maria
Antoinette arose with alacrity, and, laying aside her prison-worn
garments of mourning, put on her only remaining dress, a white robe,
emblematic of the joy with which she bade adieu to earth. A white
handkerchief was spread over her shoulders, and a white cap, bound to
her head by a black ribbon, covered her hair. It was a cold and foggy
morning, and the moaning wind drove clouds of mist through the streets.
But the day had hardly dawned before crowds of people thronged the
prison, and all Paris seemed in motion to enjoy the spectacle of the
sufferings of their queen. At eleven o'clock the executioners entered
her cell, bound her hands behind her, and led her out from the prison.
The queen had nerved her heart to die in the spirit of defiance to her
foes. She thought, perhaps, too much of man, too little of God. Queenly
pride rather than Christian resignation inspired her soul. Expecting to
be conducted to the scaffold, as the king had been, in a close carriage,
she, for a moment, recoiled with horror when she was led to the
ignominious car of the condemned, and was commanded to enter it. This
car was much like a common hay cart, entirely open, and guarded by a
rude but strong railing. The female furies who surrounded her shouted
with laughter, and cried out incessantly, "Down with the Austrian!"
"Down with the Austrian!" The queen was alone in the cart. Her hands
were tied behind her. She could not sit down. She could not support
herself against the jolting of the cart upon the rough pavement. The car
started. The queen was thrown from her equilibrium. She fell this way
and that way. Her bonnet was crowded over her eyes. Her gray locks
floated in the damp morning air. Her coarse dress, disarranged, excited
derision. As she was violently pitched to and fro, notwithstanding her
desperate endeavors to retain the dignity of her appearance, the
wretches shouted, "These are not your cushions of Trianon." It was a
long ride, through the infuriated mob, to the scaffold, which was reared
directly in front of the garden of the Tuileries. As the car arrived at
the entrance of the gardens of the palace where Maria had passed through
so many vicissitudes of joy and woe, it stopped for a moment, apparently
that the queen might experience a few more emotions of torture as she
contemplated the abode of her past grandeur. Maria leaned back upon the
railing, utterly regardless of the clamor around her, and fixed her eyes
long and steadfastly upon the theater of all her former happiness. The
thought of her husband, her children, her home, for a moment overcame
her, and a few tears trickled down her cheeks and fell upon the floor of
the cart. But, instantly regaining her composure, she looked around
again upon the multitude, waving like an ocean over the whole
amphitheater, with an air of majesty expressive of her superiority over
all earthly ills. A few turns more of the wheels brought her to the foot
of the guillotine. It was upon the same spot where her husband had
fallen. She calmly, firmly looked at the dreadful instrument of death,
scrutinizing all its arrangements, and contemplating, almost with an air
of satisfaction, the sharp and glittering knife, which was so soon to
terminate all her earthly sufferings. Two of the executioners assisted
her by the elbows as she endeavored to descend from the cart. She
waited for no directions, but with a firm and yet not hurried tread,
ascended the steps of the scaffold. By accident, she trod upon the foot
of one of the executioners. "Pardon me!" she exclaimed, with all the
affability and grace with which she would have apologized to a courtier
in the midst of the social festivities of the Little Trianon. She
kneeled down, raised her eyes to heaven, and in a low but heart-rending
prayer, all forgetful of herself, implored God to protect her sister and
her helpless children. She was deaf to the clamor of the infuriate mob
around her. She was insensible to the dishonor of her own appearance,
with disheveled locks blinding her eyes, and with her faded garments
crumpled and disarranged by the rough jostling of the cart. She forgot
the scaffold on which she stood, the cords which bound her hands, the
blood-thirsty executioners by her side, the fatal knife gleaming above
her head. Her thoughts, true to the irrepressible instincts of maternal
love, wandered back to the dungeons from whence she had emerged, and
lingered with anguish around the pallets where her orphan, friendless,
persecuted children were entombed. Her last prayer was the prayer of
agony. She rose from her knees, and, turning her eyes toward the tower
of the Temple, and speaking in tones which would have pierced any hearts
but those which surrounded her, exclaimed, "Adieu! adieu! once again, my
dear children. I go to rejoin your father."
She was bound to the plank. Slowly it descended till the neck of the
queen was brought under the groove down which the fatal ax was to glide.
The executioner, hardened by deeds of daily butchery, could not look
upon this spectacle of the misery of the Queen of France unmoved. His
hand trembled as he endeavored to disengage the ax, and there was a
moment's delay. The ax fell. The dissevered head dropped into the basket
placed to receive it. The executioner seized it by the hair, gushing
with blood, raised it high above his head, and walked around the
elevated platform of the guillotine, exhibiting the bloody trophy to the
assembled multitude. One long shout of "Vive la Republique!" rent the
air, and the long and dreadful tragedy of the life of Maria Antoinette
was closed.
The remains of the queen were thrown into a pine coffin and hurried to
an obscure burial. Upon the records of the Church of La Madeleine we now
read the charge, "_For the coffin of the Widow Capet, seven francs._"