Marie Antoinette (61 page)

Marie Thérèse bore witness to their general bewilderment at this point: “We didn’t know what was happening.” Perhaps it was just as well. What was happening was a maniacal assault on the inhabitants of the Paris prisons, with some of the royal family’s most beloved attendants still incarcerated in the La Force. These included the Marquise de Tourzel and Pauline—and that hate figure featured so often in obscene popular publications, the lesbian paramour of the “Infamous Antoinette,” the Princesse de Lamballe.

It will never be known for sure how many prisoners died, and there were similar massacres at Versailles and Rheims. Recent estimates make the Paris figure about 1300, the rates of killing varying from prison to prison. Were these assassins all foreigners to the city imported specially for the task? “Greeks and Corsicans” with red caps and bare arms were mentioned, as well as southerners. Were they all drunk? Or was it, perhaps, the kind of wild blood-lust helped on by drink that can seize a whole mob, blotting out the sense of morality possessed by the individual? The ad hoc tribunals formed at the prisons certainly took pleasure in despatching most of those who were dragged before them to their deaths. The killings at the Bicêtre and the Salpêtrière prisons were especially frightful since these traditionally housed beggars and prostitutes, as well as boys and girls. Children as young as eight died, being found strangely hard to finish off: “At that age it is hard to let go of life.” These totally apolitical figures fell victim to murderers, most of whom were in a kind of bloodthirsty delirium throughout the whole horrible proceedings. John Moore wrote in his diary: “It is now past twelve at midnight and the bloody work goes on! Almighty God!”

Yet the Paris theatres and restaurants did not close. A curious indifference to the whole matter gripped the city. A bourgeois family passing the prison of the Carmes, from which the most piteous cries were heard, was merely told by the father to quicken its steps. It was distressing, of course; nevertheless there were “implacable enemies” of the nation who were being eliminated, in order that their own lives might be more secure. This indifference found a parallel in the reaction of the political leaders. Robespierre took the convenient line that the will of the people was being expressed. Danton, if he did not inspire the killings, shrugged his shoulders and dismissed the fate of the prisoners with a coarse expletive. At the end of the day, the Girondins, who would have been in prison if Robespierre and Marat had had their way, were still safe, but the Jacobins were now in control.

At ten o’clock Commissioner Manuel told the royal family that the Princesse de Lamballe had survived. He was wrong. It was the Marquise de Tourzel who was miraculously acquitted in front of the tribunal of revolutionaries, while Pauline was spirited away to safety by a mysterious English Good Samaritan. A different destiny was reserved for the Princesse. Brought before the tribunal, she refused to denounce the King and Queen. The Princesse, who had once been too sensitive to bear the tribulations of ordinary life, found in herself the strength to answer with awesome composure: “I have nothing to reply, dying a little earlier or a little later is a matter of indifference to me. I am prepared to make the sacrifice of my life.” So she was directed to the exit for the Abbaye prison—actually a code for execution. Once outside, in the courtyard of La Force, according to the testimony of a Madame Bault who worked there, “several blows of a hammer on the head laid her low and then they fell on her.”

Afterwards terrible stories were told of the fate of the Princesse de Lamballe; that she had been violated, alive or dead,
^*99
that her breasts and private parts had been hacked off or, in another variant of savagery, her heart had been cooked and eaten. These stories were heard by many people in Paris at the time, the frequent use of the words “fearful indignities . . . of a nature not to be related” and “private infamies” as well as “disembowelment” covering many possibilities.

Unquestionably the Princesse’s head was cut off and mounted on a pike. Her naked body was also ripped right open and her innards taken out, to be mounted on another pike. The corpse and the two grisly trophies were then paraded through Paris. The young Comte de Beaujolais, son of the Duc d’Orléans, who was doing his lessons at the Palais-Royal, was horrified to see the head of “Tante” pass by, accompanied by her lacerated body. Along the way the head was thrust into the lap of the apprentice wax modeller Marie Grosholz. She was obliged to make a cast with “the savage murderers” standing over her although, having been art teacher to Madame Elisabeth, Marie had known the Princesse and her hands trembled almost too much for her to work.

It was now the firm intention of the crowd, fired up with wine and more wine, to take the head of the Princesse de Lamballe to the Temple so that the “Infamous Antoinette” could bestow a last kiss on those sweet lips she had loved. This makes another story plausible: that a visit was paid to a barber along the way for the Princesse’s hair to be dressed. For the Princesse’s original coiffure could hardly have survived the assault of the hammers outside La Force, even if she had managed to preserve it during her fortnight inside. By the time the head on its pike appeared bobbing up and down outside the windows of the dining room of the Tower, the famous blonde curls were floating prettily as they had done in life, even if the face was waxen white. As a result the head was instantly recognizable.

The King and Queen were upstairs, playing backgammon, when the head appeared outside the dining room, but Cléry saw it and so did Madame Tison who gave a loud cry; then they heard the frenzied laughter of “those savages” outside. Upstairs the municipal officers had had the decency to close the shutters and the commissioners kept them away from the windows. But it was one of these officers who told the King, when he asked what all the commotion was about: “If you must know, Monsieur, they are trying to show you the head of Madame de Lamballe.” Cléry too rushed in and confirmed what was happening.

Marie Antoinette, wrote her daughter, was “frozen with horror”; it was the only time Marie Thérèse ever saw her mother’s firmness abandon her. Mercifully, the Queen then fainted away. But the crisis was not yet over. The “savages,” by climbing up some of the rubble of the destroyed houses, managed to get their pikes and their burdens higher up. They were still determined to secure the kiss of Marie Antoinette on the Lamballe’s lips, or better still, her own head to join that of her favourite.

It was Commissioner Daujon who saved the day. His narrative confirms the fact that apart from the head, there was a huge blacksmith holding a pike with something—probably the heart—on it; another pike held a scrap of the dead woman’s chemise, stained with mud and blood. But Daujon would not permit the head to be brought inside. Instead the crowd was allowed to parade round the Tower with their pikes, and so the Queen never actually saw it, leaving the image, for better or for worse, to the eye of her appalled imagination. And Daujon prevented the entry into the Tower itself by the use of the tricolour ribbon on the door. “The head of Antoinette does not belong to you,” he said with an authority that might have a sinister impact for the future. The rioting went on until about five o’clock. Later Marie Thérèse listened to the noise of her mother’s weeping all through the night.

The head of the Princesse was subsequently rescued by a compassionate citizen, Jacques Pointel, who asked for it to be given burial in the cemetery for foundling children. But in the end the old Duc de Penthièvre managed to have body and head buried together in his family plot—where he expected to lie himself before long. It was Louis XVI who spoke the epitaph for the Princesse when he said that her conduct “in the course of our misfortunes”—and he might have added, “her own”—amply justified the Queen’s original choice of her as a friend.

If the killings stopped, the chaos in Paris continued. During this period a band of enterprising professional robbers managed to lift a great many of the Crown Jewels from their storehouse, the Garde-Meuble in the Place Louis XV, because no one was guarding it. These jewels, said to be the finest royal collection in Europe, had been inventoried in June 1791 by the National Assembly at 23 million livres; the collection had been enhanced by the rich gifts of oriental sovereigns, especially Tippoo Sahib in the last years of the former regime. As Crown Jewels, they could not be disposed of by the King, unlike the gems conveyed abroad by Léonard on behalf of the Queen which, being “mounted in Germany at a much earlier date,” had been brought with her on her marriage and were thus her personal property. Over six nights, using a first-floor window, the thieves easily helped themselves to 7 million livres’ worth, much of which was never seen again, including the fabulous pearls of Anne of Austria, which she had bequeathed to the Queens of France.
^*100

In the general disorder, everyone accused everyone else of the crime. The Girondins, for example, believed that Danton intended to use the proceeds to bribe the Duke of Brunswick to retreat. Of course Marie Antoinette was blamed. The execration in best-selling pamphlets and obscene engravings did not cease, many people expecting the Queen to take Jeanne de Lamotte Valois’s former place in the Bicêtre prison. Any evil, including a daring jewel robbery brilliantly organized from a closed prison, could be attributed to her.

A new pamphlet,
Le Ménage royal en déroute
, whose subtitle was “Open war between Louis XVI and his wife,” had the drunken King beating up his wife, that “sacrée” bitch. The truth of Temple life was very different. “The way our family passed their days,” as Marie Thérèse put it, had an odd Rousseau-esque quality, if one forgot the circumstances. It was Rousseau—once admired by the Queen, now blamed by the King for France’s ills—who pronounced that “the real nurse is the mother and the real teacher is the father.” These roles the royal couple now proceeded to fulfil in harmony. This was a very different kind of routine from that so cheerfully described by the young Dauphine Marie Antoinette in her letter home to her mother twenty-two years earlier: “I put on my rouge and wash my hands in front of the whole world.” The Queen did not open her door until Cléry arrived. By this time the valet had already woken the King, dressed his hair and readied him to pray and read until breakfast—all with the door open so that the municipal officers could check him. Cléry then helped with the
toilette
of the women, doing their hair and teaching Marie Thérèse how to do her own on the Queen’s instructions. A special sign was used when he had a bit of information to impart.

Breakfast was at nine o’clock. After this, Cléry prepared the rooms, helped by Madame Tison, and the King gave Louis Charles his lessons. These included instruction in the works of Corneille and Racine, as well as writing; some of the seven-year-old Louis Charles’s exercise books still survive.
^*101
The phrases he copied are poignant enough: “Nationalement aimé,” for example, emerging rather shakily first as “Nrationnodement ainmé” and then as “Nationnalement aiméen.” The signatures he practised had something of the former regime about them: “Louis” and “Louis Dauphin.” (Nevertheless, Cléry noted how tactful the boy was, never talking about the glories of Versailles and Saint Cloud or even life at the Tuileries.) Marie Antoinette taught her daughter, with Madame Elisabeth responsible for mathematics. It was then time for exercise in the garden, something that was obligatory whatever the weather, so that their rooms could be searched. However, Louis Charles enjoyed ball games with Cléry and noisy play, like hairdressing, also covered up incriminating conversation.

Dinner was at two o’clock, followed by a board or card game, which offered another good opportunity for private or coded talk. After that Louis XVI, watched by the women, fell into a heavy sleep, lost to the world as he snored. Then there were more lessons and play for Louis Charles before bedtime and prayers, which were taken by his mother. The King might read aloud, generally from history books although that often proved a rather depressing experience. Madame Elisabeth concentrated on her prayer book, sometimes reciting the Mass of the day at the Queen’s request. At supper the ladies took it in turn to sit by the Dauphin or to stay with the King. Bedtime was about eleven o’clock.

This account, however, omits one important feature of the royal day: the criers who appeared outside the Temple at seven o’clock in the evening. They were a principal source of news, since the gazettes were only provided when the war was going well for the French. It was from the criers, on 21 September, that they learnt that the French monarchy, having been suspended since mid-August, had officially come to an end. The National Convention, elected by manhood suffrage, now ruled France.

The next day the trumpets sounded. It was announced that there had been a revolution in the calendar as well as in the Constitution. In short, 22 September 1792 had been transformed into Day I of the month of Vendémiaire in Year I of the new era. Furthermore the last five days of September were designated “les jours sanscullotides.” Names underwent their own revolution. Titles were, of course, abolished and the Duc d’Orléans found himself offered a choice of two politically correct names; he chose Philippe Égalité over Publicola, the Roman consul who helped oust Tarquin Superbus. In the Temple, the new Elisabeth Capet unpicked the crowns from the linen of her brother, who was now Louis Capet (owing to the shortage of supplies, she had to wait until he was in bed). This was the surname of the dynasty that had ruled France until 1328; but Louis XVI, not only as a Bourbon but as a lover of history, disliked it; it was the name of his ancestors, not his own.