Marie Antoinette (45 page)

There was now an uneasy stand-off between the seething crowds in the courtyard of Versailles and the royal family and their bodyguards. The original objective of securing food had now been overtaken by the idea of transferring the King bodily to Paris. The idea of the royal family departing for Rambouillet, now revived, was found to be impossible since all the traces of the King’s carriages in the courtyard of Versailles had been cut. At the request of the National Assembly, the King—greatly upset—did sign their preliminary decrees to do with the Constitution in an attempt to alleviate the situation.

There were rumours that men in disguise had participated in the market-women’s march when its members had first been summoned by the tocsins in Paris. That was certainly not impossible. What was extremely unlikely was that the Duc d’Orléans himself had marched as a woman. Although contemporaries were generally convinced that he had encouraged the march, it was psychologically implausible for the Duc to adopt female dress when he was enjoying his popularity with the crowd.
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But there were now numbers of “armed brigands” present as well as women like one Louise Renée, who was reported in the
Journal de Paris
as having been straightforwardly excited at the idea of going to Versailles to ask for bread. Louise, incidentally, strongly denied having ever said that “she wanted to come back with the head of the Queen on her sword”; in proof of this, she ingenuously pointed out that she did not have a sword, “only a broomstick.”

If Louise Renée personally did not utter threats against the Queen, there were plenty who did. The royal bodyguards were quickly alarmed by the oaths they overheard—vows to cut off Marie Antoinette’s head and worse. There were, for example, the proud declarations of the market-women that they were wearing their traditional working aprons in order to help themselves to her entrails, out of which they intended to make cockades. The Queen’s role as scapegoat for the weaknesses and failures of the monarchy as a whole had never been more evident. In the uneasy calm that spread across the palace of Versailles after midnight, when La Fayette departed, it was the Queen who recognized her peculiar vulnerability. She refused to share the apartments of the King, where she would surely have been safer, in order not to put him—and her children—in danger, but at two o’clock went to lie sleepless on her own bed. Madame Auguié, sister of Madame Campan, was in attendance with Madame Thibault. The Queen told them to go to sleep but their “feelings of attachment” to her prevented them. The Marquise de Tourzel, as was her custom, shared the Dauphin’s bedroom and was instructed in a crisis to take the little boy to his father.
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The attack came at about four o’clock in the morning. Madame Auguié heard yells and shouts. Afterwards Marie Antoinette believed that it was inspired by the Duc d’Orléans who wanted to have her killed at the very least. It was a view she passed on to her daughter Marie Thérèse who recorded that “the principal project [of the attack] was to assassinate my mother, on whom the Duc d’Orléans wished to avenge himself because of offences he believed he had received from her.” There was another rumour that Orléans himself, dressed in a woman’s redingote and hat, had guided the surge of people, shouting, “We’re going to kill the Queen!” But although Orléans, as his mistress Grace Elliott admitted, was “very, very violent” against the Queen, there was no need of his active participation. The real work of destruction had been done long before by satire, libel and rumour; Marie Antoinette had become dehumanized. The actual assault by a body of people inspiring each other with their bloodthirsty frenzy was the culmination of the process, not the start of it.

When Madame Auguié went to the door of the antechamber leading to the guardroom, she was appalled to see a guard covered in blood who cried out to her: “Save the Queen, Madame, they are coming to assassinate her!” Now the ladies dressed their mistress with frantic haste in the exact obverse of the elaborate daily routine to which she was accustomed, in their panic leaving one ribbon of her petticoat untied. The decision was taken to flee to the safety of the King’s apartments and here the secret staircase played its part—that staircase that had been constructed years before in order that the King might make his nervous “conjugal visits” in more privacy. Scarcely had the Queen left than the howling mob, having put to death two of the bodyguards, broke in. According to several accounts, they pierced the Queen’s great bed with their pikes, either to make sure she was not hiding or as a symbolic act of defiance.

It can never be known for sure what they would have done if the bed had still had its royal occupant. After all, it took only one of the invaders to carry out the demonic threats that they were all making for the situation to ignite. The temperament of any crowd is uncertain and this one had just killed two people. Marie Antoinette’s absolute conviction that her assassination had been intended—which marked her for the rest of her life, becoming as formative an experience in its own way as the Diamond Necklace Affair—was therefore hardly unreasonable.
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Marie Thérèse paid tribute later to her mother’s extraordinary courage and sang-froid throughout her ordeal; Pauline de Tourzel also always remembered her calming gestures and her kind words: “Don’t be frightened, Pauline.” But her outwardly brave demeanour coexisted with an inward terror from which she never totally recovered.

Once the royal family were gathered together in the King’s apartments, he too behaving with commendable resolution, there were hasty conferences as to what to do. With the coming of day, a mass of people had assembled in the courtyard outside the balcony that led from the King’s apartments, and they demanded a royal appearance. Such had been the confusion of the night past that various members of the crowd may have believed that the Queen had been killed or wounded, or even the King; they wanted to check, as it were, the casualty list. But when the King duly appeared, accompanied by his wife and children, that was not what was desired. Marie Antoinette was not to be allowed to make the point that she was still the Mother of the Nation . . . The image was sharply rejected with cries from down below: “No children! No children!” Louis Charles and Marie Thérèse, already terrified by the night-time ordeal, in which they found themselves quickly dressed and removed from their familiar apartments, were duly taken away. Marie Antoinette, very pale and uncertain whether she was supposed to appear alone in order to be shot down by an assassin, nevertheless continued to stand there.

Soon the loudest cries drowned out all the rest. “To Paris! To Paris!” they were demanding. In view of what had happened and what was happening—the gross insults and threats to the Queen proceeding unabated from an anonymous and perhaps murderous crowd, to say nothing of his children’s security and his own—it was hard for the King to feel he had any alternative. The mob might want to separate the King from his power base at Versailles but on the other hand the National Guard promised more control in Paris than they had been able to exercise at Versailles.

At twelve-thirty an extraordinary procession set out on the road from Versailles to Paris. It would take nearly seven hours to reach the capital. The raucous crowd cried out in joy the words of a popular song, that they were taking “the Baker, the Baker’s wife, and the Baker’s boy” to Paris, with the implication that bread would now be freely available. Yet this procession—“What a cortège! Great God!” exclaimed the King, as though in sheer disbelief—contained in its midst not only his immediate family still in France, but also the decapitated heads of the bodyguards who had been their familiar companions. The sixteen-year-old Duc de Chartres watched them go, these cousins who had been brought so low, from a balcony at Passy. He raised his eyeglass in order to make out some odd objects carried by the crowd—and found himself staring at the bloody heads.

In the King’s carriage, where the occupants were in a state of slumped horror, a significant exchange took place between Louis XVI and Madame Elisabeth. He saw her gazing out of the window as they passed her beloved Montreuil. “Are you admiring your lime avenue?” he asked in his kindly way. “No, I am saying goodbye to Montreuil,” replied his sister.

Back at Versailles, the coiffeur Léonard, left behind in a situation that for once did not require his ministrations, found that nothing had changed in the Queen’s apartments. There were the slippers Marie Antoinette had not put on, lying there; there was a fichu, and half-turned silk stockings ready for the royal foot. The gilt panels were, however, desecrated and the wind of this blustery day blew through the splintered door. Some members of the diplomatic corps actually travelled to Versailles from Paris on that day because it was a Tuesday, the usual day of their reception; they found complete disorder and they also encountered bands of marauders who offered them some bloody relics. Being diplomats, they indicated cautious approval before departing.

Henceforward Versailles, the château out of whose windows eager spectators had watched the arrival of the young Dauphine nearly twenty years ago, would have the desolate air of a place fallen under a spell.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

HER MAJESTY THE PRISONER

“Your Majesty is a prisoner . . . Yes, it’s true. Since Her Majesty no longer has her Guard of Honour, she is a prisoner.”

S
ECRETARY
A
UGEARD TO
M
ARIE
A
NTOINETTE
, 7 O
CTOBER
1789

“I’m fine; don’t worry.” With this note Marie Antoinette attempted to allay the fears of Count Mercy the day after her arrival in Paris. (The ambassador himself had only been preserved from attack by the fact that he was wearing an overcoat over his ambassadorial silks due to the heavy rains.) If the Queen was bravely reassuring, the King was phlegmatic. In his
Journal
he summed up the extraordinary day of 6 October 1789 following the devastating night as follows: “Departure for Paris 12.30, visit to the Hôtel de Ville, dine and sleep at the Tuileries.”

These economical words hardly covered the ordeal suffered by the King of France, the Queen, their two young children, his sister Madame Elisabeth, his brother and sister-in-law the Comte and Comtesse de Provence—and the reputation and authority of the French monarchy. When the cortège arrived at the gates of Paris, it was met by the Mayor, Bailly, who managed an aphoristic reference to history, about the King’s ancestor Henri IV having conquered the city, and now the city had conquered Louis XVI. Matters went better at the Hôtel de Ville. Madame Elisabeth who was present noted how affably the King spoke: “It is always with pleasure and confidence that I find myself amid the worthy inhabitants of my good city of Paris.” When Bailly repeated the royal words, he left out “confidence” but the King made him put it back. As for Marie Antoinette, outwardly she was her usual serene self as though nothing untoward had happened in the last twenty-four hours.

The scene that greeted them at the Tuileries was, however, hardly likely to inspire the confidence of which the King spoke. Furthermore their familiar royal bodyguards were now removed in favour of the National Guards under La Fayette. It was undoubtedly a prudent move from the point of view of the former’s safety; Marie Antoinette never ceased to mourn those “brave and faithful” men who had died in her defence. But the change increased the feeling of alienation for royalties who had been accustomed to a special kind of security since childhood.

The trouble was that the palace of the Tuileries was both decayed and populated. Begun by Catherine de’ Medici in the sixteenth century, the sprawling structure, overlooking the Seine on the south side, had three pavilions and nearly four hundred rooms; a long gallery built by Henri IV linked it to the Louvre. But by the 1770s there was duckweed growing in the ornamental waters of the gardens, once thought to be the most beautiful in Europe, while prostitutes preferred to ply their trade in the grounds there because they were quieter than those of the Palais-Royal. Most of the interior was dark and depressing, with ancient, faded tapestries and workmen’s ladders everywhere. The King’s grandfather had ignored the Tuileries after a brief visit over forty years ago. Although Marie Antoinette maintained a small pied-à-terre in the royal apartments for late-lasting visits to Paris, the real inhabitants were the royal servants and their relations, about 120 of them, who had seized the opportunity to move in. There was also the Théâtre de Monsieur (the Comte de Provence), which had recently been installed in the Salle des Machines; still more people slept in the actors’ dressing rooms there. All of these human barnacles now had to be summarily ejected.

So ramshackle were the arrangements, so great the lack of preparation, that the Dauphin was obliged to spend the night in a room barricaded with furniture because the doors did not shut, with his faithful Governess the Marquise de Tourzel sitting on his bed, sleepless with anxiety. It was understandable that the little boy should wake up the next morning and ask in dismay: “Is today going to be like yesterday?” Nevertheless when he told the Queen, “Everything is very ugly here, Maman,” she replied firmly: “My son, Louis XIV lodged here comfortably enough; we must not be more particular than him.”

At least the Queen herself was able to occupy the ground-floor apartments of the south wing, which had been recently decorated by the Comtesse de La Marck, a seventy-year-old member of the Noailles family, for her own use. However, the King, at the insistence of the Queen, had to buy out the Comtesse’s furnishings of marbles,
boiseries
and mirrors at an estimated cost of 117,000 livres. The royal children slept on the first floor, above the Queen. The King had three rooms on the ground floor, a cabinet for study on the mezzanine and his bedchamber on the first floor. (Once again the Queen thought it right that she, as the target of popular wrath—something amply confirmed by the shouts and insults throughout their journey—should not put the King in danger by her presence.) Madame Elisabeth was also on the ground floor, which she found so repugnant when the market-women pressed their faces to her windows that she asked to be rehoused in the Pavillon de Flore. Mesdames Tantes occupied the so-called Pavillon de Marsan, named for Louis XVI’s Governess. The Comte and Comtesse de Provence went to their own handsome palace of the Luxembourg.

Saint-Priest and Fersen greeted the King and Queen on their arrival from the Hôtel de Ville. The latter had travelled as part of the cortège in one of the King’s carriages and as he told his father: “I was a witness to everything.” Although Saint-Priest subsequently expressed himself shocked at Fersen’s presence, it merely underlined the fact that Fersen was one of the surviving members of the Queen’s Private Society, even if his precise status might defy definition. Fersen now sold the house and horses that he had acquired in Versailles and took up residence in Paris. Here he would soon be able to visit “Elle”—the Queen—while at the same time acting as the unofficial observer for the King of Sweden, Gustav being increasingly worried about the effects of French revolutionary violence on the rest of Europe. Other supporters of the Queen also rushed to greet her, including the Princesse de Lamballe, who had been absent for some time due to ill health. Madame Campan was also summoned; she found her mistress very flushed, although still exercising her charm and kindness towards those around her, winning them over by personal contact in a way that would have been incomprehensible to the mob at Versailles.

“Kings who become prisoners are not far from death,” murmured Marie Antoinette to Madame Campan. But were they prisoners? It remained an interesting and for the time being unresolved question, since the events of recent days meant that no one in the royal family was going to test the limits of their freedom. The Queen poured out her thoughts on her future to Mercy; her emphasis was on the waiting game she now needed to play. She might personally need time to recover from the tragic deaths of her guards, but she also realized that the people needed time to rid themselves of their “horrible mistrust.” The only method of getting the royal family out of its present situation was “patience, time and inspiring [in the French] a great confidence.”

With this in mind, the Queen would make a memorable comment to one deputation from the Commune of Paris on the subject of the events of 6 October: “I’ve seen everything, known everything and forgotten everything.” To Mercy in private her tune was very different. She worried about the effects of the recent risings in Alsace; if something went wrong there, the people would be persuaded it was the fault of “the Germans” and that would rebound on her. With this in mind, she intended to lead a secluded life and play no part in public appointments.

There was more to the Queen’s fears than identification with “the Germans.” For the first time she was appreciating that the actions of those in the royal family who had emigrated would inevitably be attributed to her, the Austrian woman, however much she disagreed with them, however much they acted against her own husband’s interests. “Prudence, patience are my lot,” the Queen repeated in conclusion. “Above all, courage. And I can tell you that I need much more of it to support the everyday afflictions than the dangers of the night of the fifth of October.” It remained to be seen whether prudence and patience, let alone courage, would be enough to deal with the double challenge of royalty confined at home and royalties rampant abroad.

Once the desolation of the arrival was over—we must try to forget how we got here, Marie Antoinette told Mercy, in a show of oblivion belied by her memories—life at the Tuileries approached a kind of weird normality. Besides the royal apartments, there were several antechambers and more formal rooms including a salon, and a billiard room in the Galerie de Diane. A large convoy of vehicles brought furniture from Versailles. The Queen had her favourite mechanical dressing-table imported. Further furniture was commissioned from Riesener and others to brighten up those rooms that the Dauphin found so ugly. Léonard arrived and paid his visits, becoming ever more of a confidant. Mademoiselle Rose Bertin continued to be in attendance, although the Queen’s bills were down by a third from the peak in 1788 and her accounts showed more evidence of alterations and adaptation of existing garments.

On 8 October, when the psychological wounds of what had happened were still raw, there was a traditional diplomatic reception at the Tuileries of the sort that some diplomats had actually expected at Versailles on the day of the ignominious royal departure. Lord Robert Fitzgerald, the English Minister, deputy to the Ambassador, commented on the extreme melancholy of the occasion; how the Queen looked very pale, and her eyes were full of tears. Nevertheless the reception took place. As time passed, the Princesse de Lamballe even attempted to give some soirées in her apartments, one of her duties as Superintendent of the Household. Marie Antoinette attended for a while until, according to Madame Campan, the sight of an English lord playing with a ring that contained a lock of the regicide Cromwell’s hair upset her. Ladies present sported more royalist tokens—white ribbons and white lilies at the breast—although in the streets they put up with the tricolour to avoid embarrassment.

The Comte and Comtesse de Provence continued to arrive from the Luxembourg for the family supper that they had been enjoying together for so many years. In the circumstances the cheerful company of the Comtesse, reading characters from faces in a way that made Pauline de Tourzel giggle, was most welcome, even if the girl felt stupid on being subjected to Provence’s carefully polished discourses. As for Madame Elisabeth, she might have said goodbye to Montreuil but she was nevertheless able to have her own milk and cream sent in from her country estate, and to receive happy news of the pregnancies of both her maidservants and of her cows.

The financial allowance given by the National Assembly to the King for his living expenses—25 million livres—was not ungenerous and there were still the revenues of his estates. The National Guards who attended the King were not monsters but sensible and well-educated members of the bourgeoisie, under the immediate command of a member of the Noailles family. Presentations were still made, and in a gesture of accommodation to the new order Mayor Bailly was granted the Rights of Entry. Public dinners were still given twice weekly; the King had his
lever
and his
coucher
. Routine bulletins about the King’s health continued to be given as though no serious threat to that health had ever existed.

There were still over 150 people attached to the court and nearly 700 people at the Tuileries altogether, without counting troops. Even the Duc d’Orléans, making an appearance in a somewhat shamefaced manner, was there, for he was, after all, the first Prince of the Blood. Marie Antoinette, despite her hardening conviction of his implication in her ordeal, had learnt diplomacy since the distant days when she would not speak to the Comtesse Du Barry. Calmly, the Queen addressed a few words to her “cousin.” Orléans then departed for the more salubrious atmosphere of the English court, although even here Queen Charlotte was careful to note in her diary that he was received “not in a public capacity.”