Marie Antoinette (57 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

VIOLENCE AND RAGE

“It was a case of violence and rage on one side, feebleness and inertia on the other.”

M
ARIE
A
NTOINETTE TO
C
OUNT
M
ERCY D
’A
RGENTEAU CONCERNING
20 J
UNE
1792

On 20 April 1792, Louis XVI declared war upon what Marie Antoinette significantly described as “the House of Austria.” The Marquise de Tourzel remembered how the King left the Tuileries for the Legislative Assembly with sadness painted on his face. Less compassionately, Madame de Staël described how Louis XVI looked left and right with the vacant curiosity of the short-sighted, and proposed war in the same flat voice as he would have proposed the least important measure in the world. For the time being, Prussia was not mentioned although there were many denunciations of the Austro-Prussian defensive treaty of February. The Declaration of War followed an ultimatum of 5 April, calling for the removal of the émigré forces from their bases along the Rhine, which was ignored by Austria. The Feuillants, unwilling war-makers, gave way to a ministry of Girondins who had been pressing for a cleansing war since October.

Above all, Austria must avoid the appearance of meddling in the internal affairs of France, wrote Marie Antoinette to Mercy on 30 April. In another letter she emphasized the point again: “The French will always repulse all political intervention by foreigners in their affairs.” In fact Marie Antoinette understood Austria to be embarking on a mission to rescue the French royal family, not as a war of aggression to add territory to the Austrian Empire at France’s expense. The latter project was unacceptable: she told the Dauphin’s valet Hüe firmly, for her “the interests of France” came first—“before everything.”

Unfortunately there was a new Emperor in Austria. Leopold II died at the beginning of March, and was succeeded by his son, a man of a far more zealous and militaristic turn of mind. Francis II, Leopold’s son, that boy whose birth had been greeted with such enthusiasm by Maria Teresa with her public announcement at the theatre, was now twenty-four. If his young wife, Maria Carolina’s daughter, was said to resemble Marie Antoinette, more positive signs of family closeness hardly existed. Whatever the lack of an emotional bond between Marie Antoinette and Leopold, they had at least grown up in the same environment and shared the same august parentage. Francis II had never even met his aunt.

The Queen needed to bear in mind the trenchant warnings of Count Mercy. In February, Mercy had written in sharp terms to the French Queen about “the lack of consideration by which in the Tuileries they allowed themselves to believe that all the conveniences of the Austrian monarchy should yield to those of France.” The previous summer there had even been a suggestion that the French King should be prepared to cede the border fortresses, such as Cambrai’s Donai and Valenciennes, in exchange for imperial support as a kind of advance on expenses.

If the Queen was hoping for rescue as a result of military action, the King’s new Girondin ministry under General Dumouriez had a very different agenda. This was to be a national campaign in support of revolutionary ideals, or rather—a double negative—in opposition to counter-revolutionary ones. Hostility to “the Austrian woman” was inevitably intensified by the war; she was now, in crude modern terms, an enemy alien. The Queen’s anger at the idea of Austrian territorial claims on France would have been scarcely credible to those who demonized her. Instead, the Girondin orator Pierre Vergniaud pointed dramatically to the Tuileries itself: “From here I can see the windows of a palace where counter-revolution is being plotted, where they are working out ways to plunge us once more into the horrors of slavery.” These were sentiments that found a more vulgar expression in the behaviour of the guards at the Tuileries, who, not content with insults, indulged with roars of laughter in a practice now called mooning.

The beginning of a war that he had himself reluctantly declared provoked in Louis XVI one of those fits of silent gloom that were his customary reaction to an intolerable situation. Ten days in May passed without his speaking at all to his family, except for the terse words necessary to play backgammon with Madame Elisabeth. Marie Antoinette for her part saw it as her duty to provide Count Mercy and also Fersen, both in Brussels, with any details that she could glean about the conduct of the war. (However, the assassination of Gustav III and the coming to power of his brother as Regent, a man of very different political sympathies, meant that a Swedish rescue was no longer an option; as Fersen told the Queen, “this loss is a cruel one.”)

The Queen’s new obsession was to avoid the dismemberment of France at the hands of Austria, particularly in the German-speaking east, that she imagined might take place if Austria lost Belgium in the west. This theme of distrust of Austria—the country that she nevertheless hoped would save them—was hammered home in her correspondence throughout the summer.

It is a nice point as to whether the Queen was a traitor for writing in her letters to Mercy such things as “the plan is to attack by the Savoy and Liège”—even before the declaration of war. A coded letter of 5 June to Fersen reported that the army of General Luckner had been ordered by the Girondin ministry to attack without cease, although Luckner was against it and the troops were both ill supplied and disordered. Eighteen days later the Queen reported, also to Fersen, that Dumouriez was leaving for the army of Luckner the next day, with the intention of causing an insurrection in Brabant. “The Austrian woman” was, of course, ritually accused of treachery—by those who did not know of this correspondence—simply on the grounds of her birth. By her own lights, however, she was certainly not.

As she told Fersen on 23 June in an elliptical communication concerning the King: “Your friend is in the greatest danger. His illness is making terrible progress . . . Tell his relations about his unfortunate situation.” Threatened as she believed with being “put away” by the Jacobins; her son, now seven years old, being a target for schemes to take over his education; herself subject to daily menaces in the Tuileries, she still was convinced that she put “the interests of France” first. In her view these interests were best served by the re-establishment of a proper unfettered monarchy. The present situation had, after all, been brought about by duress—to which in law no loyalty need be given. It was now clear to her that this re-establishment would not take place without some rescue at the hands of a foreign power and to this end she had no wish for the Girondins to win their war. But the army of her dreams was certainly not to be an army of occupation.

The ill-prepared French campaign against Austria in the Netherlands did not prosper. At the same time the Girondins continued to present Louis XVI with challenges that were predestined to provoke his veto. These included proposals for the deportation of non-juror priests and the establishment of a large body of provincial armed troops known as Confederates (
fédérés
) in a camp outside Paris. As the Girondin ministry foundered, slanderous rumours envenomed the King’s new constitutional relationship with the country. The use of the King’s veto became the subject of much popular indignation, Marie Antoinette receiving a new abusive nickname of “Madame Veto.” The genesis of the next demonstration of people power, on 20 June, lay in the excited belief that the King intended to regain full power by force. The dismissal of the Girondins seemed positive proof of that, as Necker’s dismissal had aroused rage four years earlier.

As 20 June was the anniversary of the flight to Varennes (to say nothing of the Tennis Court Oath in 1789), its approach was regarded with dread by the King, Queen and the much curtailed court. All felt unprotected. The King’s new personal bodyguard under the Duc de Brissac, which had recently been granted him as part of the package of the Constitution, was removed again by the Girondins at the end of May. The National Guards, so much less assured in their loyalties, returned. The Feast of Corpus Christi fell on 10 June this year; the gorgeous processions and radiant royal appearances were things of the past. The King made a brief showing alone in the chapel of the Tuileries. He was not in court dress. His air of stupor, the product of desperation, led to stories that he had been drunk.

On 20 June itself, a mob of terrifying aspect was allowed into the Tuileries gardens by the National Guards. Sweating with the heat, they wore clothes so filthy that they could be smelt from the windows beneath which they demonstrated. These people carried pikes, hatchets and other sharp implements, which did not seem the less threatening because they were decorated with cheerful tricoloured ribbons. When they broke into the palace they were found to be also bearing some grisly symbols such as a gibbet from which a stained doll dangled, labelled “Marie Antoinette à la lanterne.” (The traditional practical way in which Parisian crowds disposed of their enemies was to hang them from the nearest lamp-post.) A bullock’s heart was labelled “The heart of Louis XVI”; the horns of an ox bore an obscene reference to the King’s cuckoldry.

As members of the mob broke into the King’s apartments, cries were heard of “Where is he, the
bougre
?” Then placards were thrust into Louis XVI’s face with messages like “Tremble, Tyrant!” When Sieur Joly, a dancer at the Opéra as well as a cannoneer in the National Guard, found the King, he saw the aged Duc de Mouchy, Marshal of France, sitting firmly in front of him, determined to protect his sovereign to the last with his own body.

Louis XVI behaved admirably. It was a situation where impassivity had its uses. He did not tremble. He adopted the small
bonnet rouge
proffered on the end of a butcher’s pike with equanimity, being only surprised that such a low-class individual should address him simply as “Monsieur” instead of “Majesté.” The cap, despite the King’s efforts to enlarge it, perched uneasily on his big head. But the King happily drank a toast to the health of the people. In a famous anecdote—probably true—he asked a grenadier to feel his heart and test whether it was beating any faster. It was not. Madame Elisabeth also behaved with great nobility. When she heard the death-threats to her sister-in-law, she tried to act as a decoy so that the hated Marie Antoinette could escape: “Don’t undeceive them, let them think that I am the Queen . . .”

Marie Antoinette, who must have expected a rerun of 6 October 1789, was helped to safety by her entourage. She had originally wished to take her place at the King’s side, telling those who tried to stop her that they were trying to damage her reputation. However, the Queen was reminded by her servants that her presence might pose an additional danger to the King, who would certainly try to defend her if she was threatened and thus be killed himself. Furthermore the Queen must remember that she was “also a mother” as well as a wife.

Marie Antoinette took the point. Afterwards, having cowered with her children listening to the blows of hatchets on the panelling of the Dauphin’s doors before getting away through a secret exit, the Queen was asked if she had been “much afraid.” “No,” she replied. “But I suffered from being separated from Louis XVI at a moment when his life was in danger.” Instead, she had the consolation of staying with the children, which was also “one of my duties.” When it was all over, the King sent for his family. There was a touching scene as Marie Antoinette rushed into his arms, the children fell at his knees and Madame Elisabeth, not to be left out, embraced her brother from behind.

The effects on the two children, whose world had once again been turned upside down, may be imagined. Afterwards one of the deputies of the Legislative Assembly, investigating how such an undisciplined attack could possibly have taken place, asked how old Madame Royale was—he called her “Mademoiselle.” The answer was thirteen and a half but the Queen merely replied that her daughter was old enough to feel the horror of such scenes all too keenly. It was no wonder, as Pauline de Tourzel pointed out, that Marie Thérèse became increasingly serious and withdrawn, losing “all the joy of childhood.” The Dauphin, who had been half extinguished by the vast
bonnet rouge
presented to him, could not speak at all. He simply hugged both his parents. The next morning, however, he came up with one of his poignant questions to the valet Hüe, of the sort that were beginning to punctuate his family’s ordeals. “Is it still yesterday?” he asked, just as he had interrogated Hüe about the turnaround at Varennes, and the Marquise de Tourzel on the morning after 6 October 1789.

Despite the dozen deputies, including Pétion, who belatedly came from the Legislative Assembly to the King’s assistance and the presence of the National Guards, proper order was not restored until the evening. By this time all the doors of the royal apartments were broken. As the Queen told Mercy afterwards, it was a case of “violence and rage” on one side, “feebleness and inertia” on the other—the side of the people who were supposed to protect them. All the same, she emphasized to Hüe the need for discretion when he gave evidence at the ensuing investigation. “No impression must be given,” she told him, “that either the King or I retain the slightest resentment for what has happened.”