Read How to Ruin a Queen: Marie Antoinette and the Diamond Necklace Affair Online
Authors: Jonathan Beckman
In October, Jeanne was told that her brother had died aboard his vessel in the East Indies. She had not seen him for years – her thoughts had turned to him only when expropriating his royal pension – but his passing seemed to confirm her abandonment by the world. ‘I remained very pensive,’ she wrote, ‘combating a multitude of the most gloomy ideas that presented themselves in quick
and painful succession.’ That night she was seized by a delirium that was only calmed when an anodyne was forced down her gullet. Jeanne was not beyond simulating fits to attract attention, but her imprisonment had unquestionably riven her mental health – Cagliostro, too, suffered: when first admitted, he was placed
on suicide watch – and her friendships with the few Bastille employees
she encountered daily, such as her nurse and the prison chaplain, were poisoned by suspicions they were in the pay of Rohan (these were not, given attempts by Georgel to infiltrate other stages of the legal process, without grounds).
Rohan had an altogether comfier time: the king had authorised 120 livres – an enormous sum – to be spent on him
each day. He was billeted in the quarters of the lieutenant of the Bastille, with a single sentinel – more in honour of his status than to guard against escape – before his unlocked door. The governor’s garden was placed at his disposal, and he dispensed charity to the most wretched prisoners he encountered.
Visitors came so frequently that the Bastille’s drawbridges were barely raised (at his dinner parties the guests feasted on
oysters and champagne). On 29 August he was visited by the prince de Condé and the duc de Bourbon – two junior members of the royal family, allied by marriage to the House of Rohan – as well as a shining host of Rohan relatives: the comtesse de Brionne and her daughters, the princesse de Carignan, the prince and princesse de Vaudémont, his brothers the archbishop of Cambrai and the prince de Montbazon, the duke and duchesse de Montbazon, prince Camille de Rohan, prince Charles de Rohan, the comtesse de Marsan, the maréchal de Soubise, the duchesse de La Vauguyon and the vicomte de Pont. That was before Rohan met, on more practical business, with his squire the comte de La Tour, Carbonnières, Georgel and five other abbés, four lawyers, two accountants, two valets
and his doctor.
But mental strife begat bodily weakness which no amount of company could cure.
A severe attack of asthma at the onset of autumn prevented Rohan’s daily stroll, and within two months his muscles had atrophied to such an extent that he could not walk without support. Gallstones subjected him to exquisite pain. Despite his ailments, he maintained a vigorous interest in legal minutiae: letters that survive from his time in prison show him demanding to read relevant papers, chivvying Georgel for news from abroad and elucidating
contradictions in evidence. Displaying his analytical acuity was one way to recover his dignity.
Rohan also suffered from a
smothering depression at his loss of liberty. His relatives and Georgel struggled to buoy him up, but only
his furious wish for exoneration staved off complete despair: ‘I admit between ourselves’, he wrote, ‘that I begin to feel tired, but that only makes me redouble my efforts, especially as I don’t want my enemies to have any doubt of them. I want to be seen going down into the arena and wiping the
blood off the tracks.’
In normal circumstances a
decret de prise de corps
should have led to the transfer of the prisoners to the
parlement
’s own facilities, and the immediate interrogation of the suspects. But Louis insisted that everyone charged should remain in the Bastille – a royal palace – even the comtesse de Cagliostro against whom a much weaker
decret
had been passed. It took three weeks of wrangling before the
parlement
acceded, three weeks in which rumours festered that the government had no intention of letting the investigation continue and would simply leave the accused to die in prison.
Georgel had been caught unawares by the severity of the
decret
. Rohan was now forbidden from seeing anyone apart from the staff of the Bastille and the
parlement
until after the interrogations; Georgel worried that the solitude might lead to a breakdown. No further communication would be allowed with his lawyers, and Target was acutely aware that Rohan needed continuous coaching to survive Titon’s unforgiving scrutiny. Georgel, who had been entrusted with the running of Rohan’s diocese and estates, pleaded with Breteuil for permission to write to Rohan on business matters – naturally, the governor of the Bastille would unseal and read all the letters. The minister was unable to find a reason to refuse. In the twenty-four hours before the cut-off point, Rohan and Georgel recycled a cipher they had used in Vienna, so they might discuss the case while appearing to speak only of recalcitrant tenants and troublesome priests. More detailed instructions were sent in letters written with invisible ink, smuggled in by a physician permitted to examine the cardinal.
*
Du Barry, now in retirement after the death of her lover, Louis XV, had once received a petition from Jeanne.
A Picaresque
W
HERE WAS
N
ICOLAS
de La Motte? One rumour placed
him in Scotland. Another whispered that he had turned Turk in Istanbul and signed up
with Barbary pirates. No one knew for sure whether he was dead or alive. At the end of August, the Paris Police sent a man to smoke him out
in the Low Countries. Two months later, the foreign ministry heard that he was in Italy, set to
embark for India. He was everywhere and nowhere.
Nicolas’s travails were as strange and eventful as the rest of the Diamond Necklace Affair. He had not been arrested at the same time as Jeanne and, later, partisans of Rohan wondered whether the baron de Breteuil had deliberately allowed a crucial suspect to escape in order to undermine
the cardinal’s defence. But it is more likely that no warrant was issued for Nicolas simply because Rohan had not mentioned him in his slapdash confession to the king.
After Jeanne’s apprehension, Nicolas wandered around Bar as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened.
With his usual disdain for consistency, he told some people that Jeanne was in the country, others that she was at Versailles. He confided to Beugnot that Jeanne had been arrested, though insisted it was only a minor misunderstanding:
‘Madame de la Motte has only left for three or four days at most; she is going to give the minister the explanations that are needed. I’ve worked out that she will be back on Wednesday or Thursday and we must meet her and return her in triumph to her house.’
Was Nicolas, Beugnot wondered, even more beef-headed than he had realised? He urged the comte to flee to England.
‘What has Jeanne told you?’ asked Nicolas suspiciously.
‘Nothing, even more reason for a quick escape,’ replied Beugnot, who could only imagine the outrages Nicolas was implicated in.
Nicolas shrugged nonchalantly as he left Beugnot’s house, but as soon as he arrived home he prepared to leave.
He made over his house to his sister and brother-in-law; he buried some of the diamonds, and left other valuables in the uncertain care of relatives, who were all too eager to look after them.
Having told his servants he was taking advantage of his wife’s absence to holiday in Europe, Nicolas departed for the Channel coast accompanied by his valet, 100 louis in cash, two packets of loose pearls and a satchel full of diamonds.
They reached Boulogne on 20 August and spent two nervy days in town – the wind was sitting unhelpfully – before setting sail. On arriving in London, the first thing Nicolas did was to retrieve the jewellery he had left with Gray during his visit in May, before settling in among the French expatriate community.
One evening, while leaving the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, Nicolas caught a cab to avoid the rain. It had barely moved off when he was thumped over the head. Groggy, he wondered whether the carriage had overturned, but as his vision regained focus, he noticed the back window had been smashed. Peering out, Nicolas saw someone hanging off a stanchion, holding what appeared to be a cane. With remarkable generosity of spirit for someone who had just been brained, Nicolas presumed that the man was simply trying to catch a free lift and had accidentally knocked out the glass – but no sooner had Nicolas settled down again in a corner than another thrust from the rear of the cab brushed his chest. The lamplight caught the sword’s steel. Ringing the bell in a frenzy, Nicolas jumped out of the coach, windmilling his own stick, as the unknown assailant disappeared down the murky streets.
This story is retailed in Jeanne’s
Mémoires Justificatifs
, published three years later, and Nicolas’s own memoirs, compiled in old age. Nicolas speculated that the would-be assassin was commissioned by either the queen or the cardinal – but it is clear from surviving documents that neither camp knew his whereabouts. Both were more interested in repatriating him alive – to stand trial – than in a coffin. If Nicolas was actually attacked, it was probably an opportunistic attempted robbery of a showy foreigner.
Nicolas left London in mid-September, conscious that word of his arrival would soon snake into the ears of the French ambassador. His instincts were acute – only a few days after his departure, Barthélemy, the minister in the French embassy, discovered the hostel where he had been staying and applied to a magistrate for
an arrest warrant.
Wearing chain mail under his clothes, armed with two pistols, a swordstick and a concealed dagger, his pockets filled with ash to blind any assailants, Nicolas travelled northwards to meet Macdermott, his fixer on his previous visit to England, in Manchester. Once appraised of events in France – or at least Nicolas’s self-serving version of them – Macdermott advised him to adopt a false name and lie low in Ireland. Accompanied by his attentive if bibulous manservant, Nicolas set off for Holyhead.
In Wales, Nicolas, according to his memoirs, met a perky eighteen-year-old girl with whom he fell in love. He stayed with Miss Stuart and her aunt for two weeks, during which time she ‘offered herself to [his] desires . . . with an innocence, a confidence, a candour that
was most touching’. The aunt seemed eager the pair should marry; Nicolas did nothing to disillusion her, convincing himself, hardheartedly, that Jeanne would commit suicide before the trial concluded – nothing shameful, then, in courting a young lady. Having promised to return once his ‘business’ in Ireland was complete, Nicolas sailed to Dublin.
By Christmas, he was well established there. He claimed, thanks to Macdermott’s letters of introduction, to have mingled in the highest society, even discussing the arrest of the cardinal with the viceroy, the duke of Rutland – not the sort of behaviour you would expect of a mysterious Frenchman who wished to evade the attentions of the British authorities.
At the turn of the year, Nicolas lost all his appetite and fell ill, a condition he put down to excessive partying and his worry that the bloodhounds of Vergennes were catching up. His servant suggested they move to Scotland, where he could convalesce in the mountains, spend less money and hear no talk of Rohan. Telling his acquaintances that he was visiting Kilkenny and Cork, Nicolas headed in the opposite direction towards Drogheda, riding all the way on horseback in the hope that the exercise would do him good. It just
made him feel worse – by the time he arrived at the coast, he could only keep down tea and eggs. When he reached Glasgow, Nicolas was in constipated agony, having spent eighteen successive days without moving his bowels. Two friendly doctors he had met on the voyage administered enemas without success, and they suggested he consult a distinguished doctor in Edinburgh. At first, this physician appeared confused by Nicolas’s condition and changed his treatment daily, but soon the doctor’s questions led Nicolas to surmise his suffering was not accidental. Poison was at work. Had he left matters a week longer, he would have been a dead man.
11 January 1786
A
FREEZING ROOM
in the Bastille. On one side of the table, Titon, still snivelling and tetchy from the cold that had
delayed the interrogations. On the other, Rohan, outwardly defiant, inwardly a wormery of nerves. Frémin, the clerk, hunched over a pile of blank sheets of paper, was poised for dictation.
‘What is your name, surname, age, rank and address?’ asked the magistrate.
‘I am Louis-Réné-Edouard, cardinal de Rohan, prince-bishop of Strasbourg, grand almoner of France, aged fifty-two, living in Paris, vieille rue du Temple, the Hôtel de Strasbourg.’
‘On 24 January 1785, were you not at the house of Boehmer and Bassenge?’
Rohan did not answer the question. Instead, he raised objections to being tried by the
parlement
. As a priest, as a prince of the Holy Roman Emperor, as grand almoner and as a cardinal, he deserved a court of his peers. The choice presented to him by the king had been nothing but coercion, since he had already been deprived of his liberty and was unable to claim the rights of his offices. Having registered his objections, Rohan then began a lengthy disquisition, detailing his relationship with Jeanne from their introduction by Madame de Boulainvilliers. The strategy of reciting a statement had been devised by Target to prevent Rohan confusing facts. Throughout the rest of the interrogation, he would frequently refer back to his opening remarks rather than answering questions directly.
Titon may have suspected that Rohan would try such an improper manoeuvre: he had previously forbidden him from bringing a written
chronology to crib off
during the interrogation. Now, he evidently thought the smoothest way of securing Rohan’s cooperation was to let him expound. Rohan’s narrative was comprehensive – it lasted two full days – only omitting any reference to his written correspondence with the queen. He spoke of his charity to Jeanne – he could not believe that ‘a person to whom I had only done good would
want to trick me’ – and her reciprocal kindness in earning for him Marie Antoinette’s forgiveness; of the time he had seen ‘a person whom I believed to
be the queen in Versailles’; and of the acquisition of the necklace. Vulnerabilities were pre-emptively reinforced and explained: Rohan denied ever having seen the queen’s handwriting, or ‘if by chance some signature had passed beneath my eyes, I paid little attention to
the shape of the letters’; forging the signature would have been an unnecessary jeopardy had he perpetrated the fraud, as the jewellers never requested an autographed bill of sale. Rohan himself had insisted on the signing, since ‘the more the Boehmers put their confidence in me, the more I needed to show them that I was occupied
in their interests’.