Marie Antoinette (62 page)

The Prussian forces had captured Verdun on 3 September, news that was broken to the prisoners in the Tower by a woman in a house opposite who scrawled it on a big placard and held it up to her window just long enough for them to read it. The Duke of Brunswick predicted that he would be in Paris on 10 October. At rumours that the Prussians were about to invade Paris, the jailer Rocher drew his sabre in the presence of the King and vowed: “If the Prussians come, I will personally kill you.” Instead, an encounter at Valmy on 23 September was inconclusive. Shortly afterwards Brunswick ordered a retreat on that particular front. Louis kept his cool when presented with the reverses of people who were presumed to be his allies and came up with these emollient words: “I have prayed for the French to find that happiness which I have always wanted to procure for them.” Nevertheless, the inauguration of the Republic and the Valmy check marked the beginning of those increased tribulations that many already believed must end with Louis Capet’s trial.

The King was separated from his family at the beginning of October and taken alone to the Great Tower. This was a more serious step than the removal of the Cordon Rouge from his breast by Manuel, although that too was intended to signify humiliation. The cries and protests of the Queen and the children at the separation resulted in a dispensation that they were still allowed to eat together, provided everyone spoke in “loud and clear French.” However, pen, ink, paper and pencils were removed (although the royal ladies managed to conceal some potential hiding-places being found in hollowed-out peaches and pockets cut in macaroons). The soap essence for shaving the erstwhile King was suspected of being a poison. Scissors were taken away. Louis watched Madame Elisabeth biting off a thread as she embroidered and observed sadly: “At your lovely house at Montreuil, you had everything you needed. What a contrast!” How could she have any regrets, replied Madame Elisabeth in her ardent way, so long as she was sharing her brother’s misfortunes.

Cléry and Turgy continued to be their mainstays, for although Cléry was briefly taken away for interrogation he was allowed to return. The news gathered on Turgy’s shopping expeditions would sometimes be passed on by him to Cléry by dint of the men dressing each other’s hair—yet another demonstration of the uses of coiffure. As for Turgy, notes by Madame Elisabeth are still in existence with elaborate instructions for the signs that the serving-men should give: “If the Austrians are successful on the Belgian frontier, place the second finger of the right hand on the right eye . . . Be sure to keep the finger stationary for a longer or shorter time according to the importance of the battle.”

At the end of October, Marie Antoinette, Madame Elisabeth and the children were moved into the new apartments in the Grand Tower. Although the windows here were disagreeably barred, the accommodation itself had been freshly decorated and there were lavatories
à l’anglaise
, which flushed with water. The room that Marie Antoinette shared with her daughter (Louis Charles was now to share his father’s room) had a striped blue and green wallpaper; there was a green damask bed for Madame Elisabeth, white cotton curtains and valances, and a chest of drawers with a marble top.
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There were some luxuries. One of the municipal officers, Goret, recalled being shown lockets of the blond hair of her children by Marie Antoinette, after which the erstwhile Queen rubbed her hands with one of the flower-essences she had always loved, passing them in front of Goret’s face so he could share the sweet perfume.
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The food continued to be magnificent and to be served on silver; anything that was not eaten was distributed to the servants. There was always wine, which only the King drank.

When all the family in turn fell ill with colds and rheumatic fever, due to the fact that the Tower remained very damp, they were allowed after some argument to call the old royal doctor Le Mounier who was in his mid-seventies. Louis XVI was the sickest of them all, and there was, put crudely, an obvious danger of letting him die while in the custody of the Commune. Who would believe such a death was natural?

In the meantime the discussions over Louis Capet’s trial raged in the Convention itself, while the French armies continued to be victorious. By the end of October, General de Custine had occupied the Rhineland, including Frankfurt and Mainz; in the south, Savoy and Nice had been captured. There was a further victory on 6 November at Jemappes, just west of Mons, for the troops under General Dumouriez, who had led the French at Valmy. Among those who now had to flee were the Archduchess Marie Christine, Count Mercy—and Fersen, who went to Düsseldorf. On 13 November the French pressed forward and entered Brussels. As a result, on 19 November the National Convention felt empowered to offer fraternal aid “to any nation wishing to recover its liberty.” The ideological war was spreading, summed up by a decree of 15 December: “War on the châteaux, peace for the cottages.”

The favourable progress of the war from the French point of view was not the immediate catalyst of the former King’s trial. This was provided by a coincidental and highly damaging discovery: the so-called iron chest (
armoire de fer
) in which Louis stored a number of his papers. It was the locksmith employed to install it, Gameau, who gave the game away. The revelations were actually more embarrassing than criminal. Here was the King’s correspondence with Mirabeau, La Fayette and Dumouriez uncovered, rather than any proof of contacts with the Austrians. Barnave, however, was compromised and subsequently arrested. One draft in the King’s handwriting reflected on the Varennes adventure, and insisted that his motives had been honourable: “I had to escape any captivity.” But a climate had been created in which the deceitful, manipulative Louis Capet could be portrayed as worthy of the nation’s punishment.

This was a time when a translation of the trial of Charles I, in the English State Trials series, became a bestseller on the Paris bookstalls. One Frenchman told Doctor John Moore proudly that the behaviour of the English in the past—he cited the Wars of the Roses, the massacre of Glencoe and seventeenth-century Ireland—justified their own barbarities in the cause of freedom. At the theatre kings had to be tyrannical and rapacious if portrayed at all; the age of Grétry’s noble Richard I had definitely passed.

The sound of drums on 11 December announced the arrival of Pétion, accompanied by soldiers. The decree of the Convention was read to “Louis Capet”; he was to be brought to its bar and interrogated. The former King merely commented that “Capet” was inaccurate. At the Convention, he faced a massive denunciation for treason, ending with the events leading to Varennes: “Louis left France as a fugitive in order to return as a conqueror.”

Before his father’s departure, Louis Charles was taken away to join his mother. An act of gratuitous cruelty followed. It was decreed that Louis XVI could either continue to see his children, or agree to leave them with their mother during the coming proceedings against him; but Marie Thérèse and Louis Charles could not be in contact with both their parents. Nobly, Louis XVI decided to put his wife’s passionate feelings for her children first. In this manner, Marie Antoinette, Madame Elisabeth and the children embarked on a yet sadder way of life. They were never allowed to visit “Louis Capet” nor have any official communication with him whatsoever. This included 19 December, Marie Thérèse’s fourteenth birthday, when Cléry brought her a little present from her father, an almanac for 1793—but she was not permitted to see him.

It is true that the inventive Cléry started to conceal little crumpled notes in balls of string, once Louis was allowed paper to prepare his defence. The royal ladies responded by letting down their own missives on threads. But in principle, as Marie Thérèse wrote: “He knew nothing of us, nor we of him but through the municipal officers.” The royal women became increasingly dependent either on the kindness of those officers who brought them newspapers (despite the frequently depressing contents) or on the criers outside. One loyal supporter, Dame Launoy, put a magic lantern in the third-floor window of a house near the Tower, and projected letters to give them news.

Commissioner Jacques Lep"tre who took up his position in mid-December was one of those kindly disposed. He realized that the harpsichord in the Tower was in too bad a state for Marie Antoinette to continue her daughter’s lessons and agreed to replace it. Marie Antoinette gave him the name of the man she had generally used and a harpsichord, according to the accounts, duly arrived. A scrap of music was found there. It was Haydn’s
La Reine de France
, one of his symphonies of the mid-1780s, which had been the Queen’s favourite. “How times have changed,” said Marie Antoinette. “And we could not stop our tears,” wrote Lep"tre.

Even with Cléry’s scraps of paper, and the criers, a kind of unreality descended on the women. They were unaware of the long hours spent by the King with the gallant men who had agreed to act as his counsels. Chrétien de Malesherbes behaved with great style, addressing his master as “Sire” and “Majesté.” When asked at the Convention what made him so brave, he replied: “Contempt for you and contempt for death.” Although Louis told Malesherbes that they should concern themselves with his trial “as though I could win,” two weeks after it started he spent Christmas Day preparing his last will and testament. This was no time for “Capets”; he wrote it as Louis XVI King of France and he gave the correct date in the Christian calendar, having no truck with “Nivôse,” as the month that began in late December had become. In every way it was the document of a committed son of the Catholic Church, and it also preached the Christian doctrine of forgiveness, especially to his son. If Louis Charles should be “so unfortunate” as ever to become King, he should dedicate his whole life to his people’s happiness; on no account was he to seek vengeance on his father’s behalf. Louis remembered his other relations, including his brothers, his faithful servants such as Hüe and Cléry, and he thanked his lawyers.

The King wrote with special loving kindness of his wife, commending his children to her: “I have never doubted her maternal tenderness.” He also begged Marie Antoinette to forgive him “all the ills she has suffered for my sake and for any grief that I may have caused her in the course of our marriage as she may be certain that I hold nothing against her.”
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The next day the trial began and the case was made for the defence. It was certainly not without merit in purely legal terms. Louis had been granted inviolability by the National Assembly; the veto had actually been awarded to him by the Constituent Assembly and was already in place at the Legislative Assembly before the bloodshed of 10 August began. As to the charges of treason, Gouverneur Morris commented drily to Thomas Jefferson on 21 December: “To a person less intimately acquainted than you are with the History of human affairs, it would seem strange that the mildest monarch who ever filled the French throne . . . should be prosecuted as one of the most nefarious Tyrants that ever disgraced the Annals of human nature.”

But of course none of this was relevant to that extremist party nicknamed “the Mountain” after their high position on the seats of the Convention. Many of these argued that a trial in itself was totally unnecessary. Unlike the Girondins who saw the value of keeping the King alive as a hostage, Robespierre took the line that Louis Capet had already condemned himself to death by his actions.
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The young revolutionary orator Saint-Just in his maiden speech thundered: “Louis cannot be judged, he is already judged . . . He is condemned, or if he is not, the sovereignty of the Republic is not absolute.” He should be killed not for what he had done, but for what he was. This was, in fact, the best if the most ruthless answer to the fact that Louis Capet’s trial flagrantly ignored the New Criminal Code of 1791; this decreed that an indictment by a special jury of accusation composed of several participants had to take place before there could be a trial.

When voting began, the guilt of Louis was easily established. In total, 691 voted that he had conspired against the state, a few abstained but no one voted against. The question of the penalty that the former King should pay was far more complicated. There were arguments for confinement until the end of the war, followed by banishment. Thomas Paine, who had been elected to the Convention as a revolutionary hero, made a plea for Louis and his family to be sent to America at the end of the war. There, like the exiled Stuarts, they would sink into obscurity. Referring to the King’s military support for independence, he besought the French not to let the tyrannical English have the satisfaction of seeing Louis die on the scaffold, “the man who helped my much loved America to burst her fetters.”

This was a move supported by Gouverneur Morris and the new ambassador to the United States, Edmund Genet, brother of Madame Campan. At one point the Girondin leaders even thought that Genet would be the man “to take Capet and his family with him” to the United States. The beguiling vision—of Louis happy as a country gentleman in Virginia, with Marie Antoinette in a gracious porticoed antebellum house recreating the life of the Petit Trianon,
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the children growing up as good American citizens—was not, however, destined to be fulfilled. Marat denounced Paine for his Quaker softness—the Quakers, among whom Paine had been brought up, being well-known opponents of capital punishment. Danton put it more pithily: revolutions could not be made with rosewater.