THE PRINCESS ELIZABETH, THE DAUPHIN, AND THE PRINCESS ROYAL.
1793-1795
The dauphin and the princesses.--Painful uncertainty.--Sufferings
of the princesses.--Their dismal cell.--Painful thoughts.--Unwelcome
visitors.--The princesses separated.--Brutality of the
soldiers.--Elizabeth taken before the tribunal.--A group of noble
captives.--Trial of Madame Elizabeth.--Her condemnation.--Sad
reverses.--Character of Madame Elizabeth.--Madame Elizabeth at the
guillotine.--Execution of her companions.--Death of Madame
Elizabeth.--Her faith and piety.--Situation of the dauphin.--The
brute Simon.--Inhuman treatment of the dauphin.--He becomes
insane.--The reaction.--Change in the dauphin's treatment.--Death
of the dauphin.--Sympathy awakened by it.--Situation of the princess
royal.--Her deep sufferings.--Sympathy for the princess royal.--She
is released.--Arrival of the princess royal in Vienna.--Her
settled melancholy.--Love felt for Maria.--She recovers her
cheerfulness.--Maria's marriage.--Her present residence.--Advanced
age of Maria.--Still retains traces of her early sorrows.
When Maria Antoinette was taken from the Temple and consigned to the
dungeons of the Conciergerie, there to await her trial for her life,
the dauphin was imprisoned by himself, though but a child seven years
of age, in a gloomy cell, where he was entirely excluded from any
communication with his aunt and sister. The two latter princesses
remained in the room from which the queen had been taken. They were,
however, in the most painful uncertainty respecting her fate. Their
jailers were commanded to give them no information whatever respecting
the external world. Their prison was a living tomb, in which they were
allowed to breathe, and that was all. The Princess Elizabeth had
surmised, from various little incidents, what had been the fate of the
queen, but she tried to cheer the young, and affectionate, and still
beautiful child with the hope that her mother yet lived, and that they
might meet again. Eight months of the most dreary captivity rolled
slowly away. It was winter, and yet they were allowed no fire to dispel
the gloom and the chill of their cell. They were deprived of all books.
They were not allowed the use of pens or paper. The long winter nights
came. In their cell there was but a few hours during which the rays of
the sun struggled faintly through the barred windows. Night, long,
dismal, impenetrable, like that of Egypt, enveloped them for fifteen
hours. They counted the strokes of the clocks in the distant churches.
They listened to the hum of the vast and mighty metropolis, like the
roar of the surf upon the shore. Reflections full of horror crowded upon
them. The king was beheaded. The queen was, they knew not where, either
dead or in the endurance of the most fearful sufferings. The young
dauphin was imprisoned by himself, and they knew only that the gentle,
affectionate, idolized child was exposed to every cruelty which
barbarism could inflict upon him. What was to be their own fate? Were
they to linger out the remnant of their days in this wretched captivity?
Would their inhuman jailers envy them the consolation they found in each
other's arms, and separate them? Were they also to perish upon the
guillotine, where nearly all whom they had loved had already perished?
Were they ever to be released? If so, what joy could there remain on
earth for them after their awful sufferings and bereavements? Woes, such
as they had endured, were too deep ever to be effaced from the mind.
Nearly eight months thus lingered slowly along, in which they saw only
brutal and insulting jailers, ate the coarsest food, and were clothed in
the unwashed and tattered garb of the prison. Time seemed to have
stopped its flight, and to have changed into a weary, woeful eternity.
On the 9th of May, the Princess Elizabeth and her niece, who had
received the name of Maria Theresa in memory of her grandmother, were
retiring to bed. They were enveloped in midnight darkness. With their
arms around each other's necks, they were kneeling at the foot of the
bed in prayer. Suddenly a great noise was heard at the door, accompanied
with repeated and violent blows, almost heavy enough to shiver the door
from its hinges. Madame Elizabeth hastened to withdraw a bolt, which
constituted an inner fastening, when some soldiers rushed in with their
lanterns, and said to Madame Elizabeth, "You must immediately follow
us." "And my niece," replied the princess, ever forgetful of herself in
her thoughtfulness for others, "can she go too?" "We want you only now!"
was the answer; "we will take care of her by-and-by." The aunt foresaw
that the hour for the long-dreaded separation had come. She threw her
arms around the neck of the trembling maiden, and wept in uncontrollable
grief. The brutal soldiers, unmoved by these tears, loaded them both
with reproaches and insults, as belonging to the detested race of kings,
and imperiously commanded the Princess Elizabeth immediately to depart.
She endeavored to whisper a word of hope into the ear of her despairing
niece. "I shall probably soon return again, my dear Maria." "No,
citoyenne, you won't," rudely interrupted one of the jailers; "you will
never ascend these stairs again. So take your bonnet and come down."
Bathing the face of the young girl with her tears, invoking the blessing
of heaven upon her, turning again and again to enfold her in a last
embrace, she was led out by the soldiers, and conducted down the dark
and damp stairs to the gate. Here the soldiers rudely searched her
person anew, and then thrust her into a carriage. It was midnight. The
carriage was driven violently through the deserted streets to the
Conciergerie. The Tribunal was, even at that hour, in session, for in
those days of blood, when the slide of the guillotine had no repose from
morning till night, the day did not contain hours enough for the work of
condemnation. The princess was conducted immediately into the presence
of the Revolutionary Tribunal. A few questions were asked her, and then
she was led into a hall, and left to catch such repose as she could upon
the bench where Maria Antoinette but a few months before had awaited her
condemnation.
The morning had hardly dawned when she was again conducted to the
Tribunal, in company with twenty-four others, of every age and of both
sexes, whose crime was that they were nobles. Ladies were there,
illustrious in virtue and rank, who had formerly graced the brilliant
assemblies of the Tuileries and of Versailles. Young men, whose family
names had been renowned for ages, stood there to answer for the crime
of possessing a distinguished name. While looking upon this group of
nobles, gathered before that merciless tribunal, where judgment was
almost certain condemnation, the public accuser, with cruel irony
remarked, "Of what can Madame Elizabeth complain, when she sees herself
at the foot of the guillotine, surrounded by her faithful nobility? She
can now fancy herself back again in the gay festivities of Versailles."
The charges against Elizabeth were, that she was the sister of a tyrant,
and that she loved that royal family whom the nation had adjudged not
fit to live. "If my brother had been the tyrant you declare him to have
been," the princess remarked, "you would not be where you now are, nor I
before you." But it is vain for the lamb to plead with the wolf. She was
condemned to die. She listened to her sentence with the most perfect
composure, and almost with satisfaction. The only favor she asked was,
that she might see a priest, and receive the consolations of religion,
according to the faith she professed. Even this request was denied her.
The crime of loyalty was of too deep a dye to allow of any, the
slightest, mitigation of punishment. From the judgment hall she was led
down into one of the dungeons of the Conciergerie, where, with the rest
of her companions, she awaited the execution of their doom. It was,
indeed, a melancholy meeting. These illustrious captives had formerly
dwelt in the highest splendor which earth allows. They had met in regal
palaces, surrounded by all the pomp and grandeur of courts. Now, after
months of the most cruel imprisonment, after passing through scenes of
the most protracted woe, having been deprived of all their possessions,
of all their ancestral honors, having surrendered one after another of
those most dear to them to the guillotine, they were collected in a dark
and foul dungeon, cold and wet, hungry and exhausted, to be conveyed
in a few hours, in the cart of the condemned, to the scaffold. The
character of Elizabeth was such, her weanedness from the world, her mild
and heavenly spirit, as to have secured almost the idolatrous veneration
of those who knew her. The companions of her misfortunes now clustered
around her, as the one to whom they must look for support and strength
in this awful hour. The princess, more calm and peaceful even than when
surrounded by all the splendors of royalty, looked forward joyfully to
the guillotine as the couch of sweet and lasting repose. Faith enabled
her to leave the children, now the only tie which bound her to earth, in
the hands of God, and, conscious that she had done with all things
earthly, her thoughts were directed to those mansions of rest which,
she doubted not, were in reserve for her. She bowed her head with a
smile to the executioner as he cut off her long tresses in preparation
for the knife. The locks fell at her feet, and even the executioners
divided them among them as memorials of her loveliness and virtue.
Her hands were bound behind her, and she was placed in the cart with
twenty-two companions of noble birth, and she was doomed to wait at the
foot of the scaffold till all those heads had fallen, before her turn
could come. The youth, the beauty, the innocence, the spotless life of
the princess seemed to disarm the populace of their rage, and they gazed
upon her in silence and almost with admiration. Her name had ever been
connected with every thing that was pure and kind. And even a feeling of
remorse seemed to pervade the concourse surrounding the scaffold in view
of the sacrifice of so blameless a victim.
One by one, as the condemned ascended the steps of the guillotine to
submit to the dreadful execution, they approached Elizabeth and
encircled her in an affectionate embrace. At last every head had fallen
beneath the ax but that of Elizabeth. The mutilated bodies were before
her. The gory heads of those she loved were in a pile by her side. It
was a sight to shock the stoutest nerves. But the princess, sustained
by that Christian faith which had supported her through her almost
unparalleled woes, apparently without a tremor ascended the steps,
looked calmly and benignantly around upon the vast multitude, as if in
her heart she was imploring God's blessing upon them, and surrendered
herself to the executioner. Probably not a purer spirit nor one more
attuned for heaven existed in France than the one which then ascended
from the scaffold, we trust, to the bosom of God. Maria Antoinette died
with the pride and the firmness of the invincible queen. Elizabeth
yielded herself to the spirit of submissive piety, and fell asleep upon
the bosom of her Savior. Our thoughts would more willingly follow her to
those mansions of rest, where faith instructs us that she winged her
flight, than turn again to the prison where the orphan children lingered
in solitude and woe.
Young Louis was left in one of the apartments of the Temple, under the
care of the brutal Simon, whose commission it was to _get quit of him_.
To send a child of seven years of age to the guillotine because his
father was a king, was a step which the Revolutionary Tribunal _then_
was hardly willing to take, out of regard to the opinions of the world.
It would be hardly consistent with the character of the great nation to
_poison_ the child; and yet, while he lived, there was a rallying point
around which the sympathies of royalty could congregate. _Louis must
die!_ Simon must not _kill_ him; he must not _poison_ him; he must _get
quit of him_. The public safety demands it. Patriotism demands it. In
the accomplishment of this undertaking, the young prince was shut up
alone, entirely alone, like a caged beast, in one of the upper rooms of
a tower of the Temple. There he was left, day and night, week after
week, and month after month, with no companion, with no employment, with
no food for thought, with no opportunity for exercise or to breathe the
fresh air. A flagon of water, seldom replenished, was placed at his
bedside. The door was occasionally half opened, and some coarse food
thrown in to the poor child. He never washed himself. For more than a
year, his clothes, his shirt, and his shoes had never been changed. For
six months his bed was not made, and the unhappy child, consigned to
this living burial, remained silent and immovable upon the impure
pallet, breathing his own infection. By long inactivity his limbs
became rigid. His mind, by the dead inaction which succeeded terror,
lost its energy, and became, not only brutalized, but depraved. The
noble child of warm affections, polished manners, and active intellect,
was thus degraded far below the ordinary condition of the brute.
Thus eighteen months rolled away, and the poor boy became insane through
mental exhaustion and debility. But even then he retained a lively sense
of gratitude for every word or act of kindness. At one time, the inhuman
wretch who was endeavoring by slow torture to conduct this child to the
grave, seized him by the hair, and threatened to dash out his brains
against the wall. A surgeon, M. Naulin, who chanced to be near by,
interfered in behalf of the unhappy victim, and rescued him from the
rage of the tyrant. Two pears that evening were given to the
half-famished child for his supper. He hid them under his pillow, and
went supperless to sleep. The next day he presented the two pears to his
benefactor, very politely expressing his regret that he had no other
means of manifesting his gratitude.
Torrents of blood were daily flowing from the guillotine. Illustrious
wealth, or rank, or virtue, condemned the possessor to the scaffold.
Terror held its reign in every bosom. No one was safe. The public became
weary of these scenes of horror. A reaction commenced. Many of the
firmest Republicans, overawed by the tyranny of the mob, began secretly
to long for the repose which kingly power had given the nation. Sympathy
was excited for the woes of the imprisoned prince. It is difficult to
record, without pleasure, that one of the first acts of this returning
sense of humanity consisted in leading the barbarous Simon to the
guillotine. History does not inform us whether he shuddered in view of
his crimes under the ax. But his crimes were almost too great for
humanity to forgive. Louis was placed under the care of more merciful
keepers. His wasted frame and delirious mind, generous and affectionate
even in its delirium, moved their sympathy and their tears. They washed
and dressed their little prisoner; spoke to him in tones of kindness;
soothed and comforted him. Louis gazed upon them with a vacant air,
hardly knowing, after more than two years of hatred, execration, and
abuse, what to make of expressions of gentleness and mercy. But it was
too late. Simon had faithfully executed his task. The constitution of
the young prince was hopelessly undermined. He was seized with a fever.
The Convention, ashamed of the past, sent the celebrated physician
Dessault to visit him. The patient, inured to suffering, with blighted
hopes and a crushed heart, lingered in silence and patience for a few
days upon his bed, and died on the 9th of June, 1795, in the tenth year
of his age.
The change which had commenced in the public mind, preparing the way for
Napoleon to quell these revolutionary horrors, was so great, that a very
general feeling of sympathy was awakened by the death of the young
prince, and a feeling of remorse pervaded the conscience of the nation.
History contains few stories more sorrowful than the death of this
child. To the limited vision of mortals, it is indeed inexplicable why
he should have been left by that God, who rules in infinite wisdom and
love, to so dreadful a fate. For the solution of this and all other
inexplicable mysteries of the divine government, we must look forward to
our immortality.
But we must return to Maria Theresa. We left her at midnight, delirious
with grief and terror, upon the pallet of her cell, her aunt having
just been torn from her embrace. Even the ravages of captivity had not
destroyed the exceeding beauty of the princess, now sixteen years of
age. The slow hours of that night of anguish lingered away, and the
morning, cheerless and companionless, dawned through the grated window
of her prison upon her woe. Thus days and nights went and came. She knew
not what had been the fate of her mother. She knew not what doom awaited
her aunt. She could have no intercourse with her brother, who she only
knew was suffering every conceivable outrage in another part of the
prison. Her food was brought to her by those who loved to show their
brutal power over the daughter of a long line of kings. Weeks and months
thus rolled on without any alleviation--without the slightest gleam of
joy or hope penetrating the midnight gloom of her cell. It is impossible
for the imagination to paint the anguish endured by this beautiful,
intellectual, affectionate, and highly-accomplished princess during
these weary months of solitude and captivity. Every indulgence was
withheld from her, and conscious existence became the most weighty woe.
Thus a year and a half lingered slowly away, while the reign of terror
was holding its high carnival in the streets of blood-deluged Paris,
and every friend of royalty, of whatever sex or age, all over the
empire, was hunted down without mercy.
When the reaction awakened by these horrors commenced in the public
mind, the rigor of her captivity was somewhat abated. The death of her
brother roused in her behalf, as the only remaining child of the wrecked
and ruined family, such a feeling of sympathy, that the Assembly
consented to regard her as a prisoner of war, and to exchange her with
the Austrian government for four French officers whom they held as
prisoners. Maria Theresa was led, pale, pensive, heart-broken, hopeless,
from her cell, and placed in the hands of the relatives of her mother.
But her griefs had been so deep, her bereavements so utter and
heart-rending, that this change seemed to her only a mitigation of
misery, and not an accession of joy. She was informed of the death of
her mother and her aunt, and, weeping over her desolation, she emerged
from her prison cell and entered the carriage to return to the palaces
of Austria, where her unhappy mother had passed the hours of her
childhood. As she rode along through the green fields and looked out
upon the blue sky, through which the summer's sun was shedding its
beams--as she felt the pure air, from which she had so long been
excluded, fanning her cheeks, and realized that she was safe from
insults and once more free, anguish gave place to a calm and settled
melancholy. She arrived in Vienna. Love and admiration encircled her.
Every heart vied in endeavors to lavish soothing words and delicate
attentions upon this stricken child of grief. She buried her face in the
bosoms of those thus soliciting her love, her eyes were flooded with
tears, and she sobbed with almost a bursting heart. After her arrival in
Vienna, one full year passed away before a smile could ever be won to
visit her cheek. Woes such as she had endured pass not away like the
mists of the morning. The hideous dream haunted her by day and by night.
The headless trunks of her father, her mother, and her aunt were ever
before her eyes. Her beloved brother, suffering and dying upon a
beggar's bed, was ever present in her dreams while reposing under the
imperial canopy of the Austrian kings. The past had been so long and so
awful that it seemed an ever-living reality. The sudden change she could
hardly credit but as the delirium of a dream.
Time, however, will diminish the poignancy of every sorrow save those of
remorse. Maria was now again in a regal palace, surrounded with every
luxury which earth could confer. She was young and beautiful. She was
beloved, and almost adored. Every monarch, every prince, every
embassador from a foreign court, delighted to pay her especial honor. No
heart throbbed near her but with the desire to render her some
compensation for the wrongs and the woes which had fallen upon her
youthful and guileless heart. Wherever she appeared, she was greeted
with love and homage. Those who had never seen her would willingly peril
their lives in any way to serve her. Thus was she raised to
consideration, and enshrined in the affections of every soul retaining
one spark of noble feeling. The past receded farther and farther from
her view, the present arose more and more vividly before the eye. Joy
gradually returned to that bosom from which it had so long been a
stranger. The flowers bloomed beautifully before her eyes, the birds
sung melodiously in her ears. The fair face of creation, with mountain,
vale, and river, beguiled her thoughts, and introduced images of peace
and beauty to dispel the hideous phantoms of dungeons and misery. The
morning drive around the beautiful metropolis; the evening serenade; the
moonlight sail; and, above all, the voice of _love_, reanimated her
heart, and roused her affections from the tomb in which they so long had
slumbered. The smile of youth, though still pensive and melancholy,
began to illumine her saddened features. Hope of future joy rose to
cheer her. The Duc d'Angouleme, son of Charles X., sought her as his
bride, and she was led in tranquil happiness to the altar, feeling as
few can feel the luxury of being tenderly beloved.
Upon the fall of Napoleon she returned to France with the Bourbon
family, and again moved, with smiles of sadness, among the brilliant
throng crowding the palaces of her ancestors. The Revolution of 1830,
which drove the Bourbons again from the throne of France, drove Maria
Theresa, now Duchesse d'Angouleme, again into exile. She resided for a
time with her husband in the Castle of Holyrood, in Scotland, under the
name of the Count and Countess of Main; but the climate being too severe
for her constitution, she left that region for Vienna. There she was
received with every possible demonstration of respect and affection. She
now resides in the imperial castle of Prague, a venerated widow, having
passed through three-score years and ten of a more varied life than is
often experienced by mortals. Even to the present hour, her furrowed
cheeks retain the traces, in their pensive expression, of the sorrow
which darkened her early years.
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Transcriber's note:
1. Minor changes have been made to correct typesetters' errors and to
ensure consistent spelling and punctuation in this e-text; otherwise,
every effort has been made to remain true to the original book.
2. The chapter summaries in this text were originally published as
banners in the page headers, and have been moved to beginning of the
chapter for the reader's convenience.
3. The page reference in the Table of Contents for Chapter III has
been corrected to show the chapter as beginning on page 78.