Marie Antoinette (64 page)

The poor health of the Queen gave an added impetus to the idea of mercy. This did not improve as the immediate shock of her husband’s death wore off. Kucharski, who had been responsible for the portrait begun in 1791, now produced a yet more haggard image of the Queen in her widow’s weeds; he may have made sketches in the Temple from life before reproducing the portrait in many versions. Tuberculosis was rife in her family; it had killed her eldest brother and her elder son, among other relations; she may have been in the early stages of it. But the Queen was also unquestionably suffering from haemorrhages, which had been part of the pattern of her troubled gynaecological history for many years and which now increased in frequency. There are various alternative explanations for this. She may have been experiencing the early onset of the menopause (Marie Antoinette was thirty-seven); she may have been suffering from fibroids; third, and most plausibly in view of her deteriorating physical condition, she may have been exhibiting the first signs of cancer of the womb. Marie Antoinette, whose health had for some years worried the ladies who were her intimates, was certainly by now an ill woman.

In May, Doctor Brunier had to be called to Marie Thérèse who was “at an age decisive for her sex.” (In her fifteenth year, Marie Thérèse was almost exactly the same age as Marie Antoinette had been when the latter reached puberty.) But the doctor also had to attend to the Queen, who was suffering from frequent “convulsions” and fainting fits. Whatever the cause, Marie Antoinette was not by now what would be termed a good life, let alone a threatening one.

Unfortunately, there were several elements that militated against the merciful release of Marie Antoinette. First and foremost must be listed the indifference of the young Emperor. Even the Emperor Joseph II—who really loved his sister—had made it clear as long ago as August 1789 that it was in his own interest “to be perfectly neutral in this business, no matter what may happen to the King and Queen.” For his part, Francis II was simply not concerned over the fate of the unhappy aunt he had never met and who, as an agent of Habtx1urg dynastic politics, it had to be said, had not fulfilled her function. It did not help the Queen’s cause, at home or abroad either, that the war now escalated. In the course of February crusading revolutionary France declared war on England, Spain and Holland. The tide, which had surged forward so strongly for the revolutionary armies under Dumouriez in the previous autumn, now turned in favour of the allies. The French had to evacuate Aix-la-Chapelle and abandon the siege of Maestricht, while the Austrians recovered Liège. It was inevitable that lethal political infighting in the Convention would, like the war itself, escalate. In such struggles between the Jacobins and the Girondins, Marie Antoinette was once again a miserable pawn.

Private plans of escape, irrespective of the Emperor’s intentions, were still afoot. One scheme involving the whole family was organized by “Fidèle” Toulan and Lep"tre inside and the Chevalier de Jarjayes outside. Contact with Jarjayes had never been entirely broken; there were letters in which, for example, “Roxane” stood for “la Reine,” “Lucius” for Jarjayes, “Fatime” probably for Madame Elisabeth and “the old friend Mercinus” rather more obviously for Mercy himself. The scheme planned for early March involved the smuggling in of padded military overcoats to disguise the women’s figures; wigs and battered and ragged trousers were intended for the children. The coasts of Normandy and England, once dismissed by the Queen, now promising salvation, were to be the target. The guardian Tisons, man and wife, were to be rendered insensible by narcotics mixed with their tobacco. Whether this latter-day “Varennes-type” scheme had any feasibility at all was never tested; first Lep"tre lost his nerve and muddled the process of obtaining false passports. Then agitation due to the bad news of the war and food riots in Paris caused the city’s barriers to be closed.

The conspirators were left trying to persuade the Queen to escape alone, on the grounds that the rest of the family was not in danger. This Marie Antoinette resolutely refused to do, as she had always refused. “We had a beautiful dream and that was all,” Marie Antoinette told Jarjayes. “The interests of my son are the only guide I have, and whatever happiness I could achieve by being free of this place, I cannot consent to separate myself from him . . . I could not have any pleasure in the world if I abandoned my children,” she wrote, adding, “I do not even have any regrets.”

Instead of attempting to flee herself, Marie Antoinette made a noble gesture of renunciation in favour of her two brothers-in-law. She despatched secretly via Jarjayes the silver seal with the lockets of hair to “Monsieur, Comte de Provence” (no mention here of “Regent”) with a note signed M.A. This had a touching postscript from the two children “M.T.” and “Louis” (the simple name by which a monarch would sign himself). The girl wrote it “on behalf of my brother and myself.” Both embraced their uncle “with all their hearts,” Madame Elisabeth adding her own initials at the end. Comte d’Artois got the engraved wedding ring; he was asked by Marie Antoinette to receive it as a symbol of their most tender friendship, Madame Elisabeth adding to her brother: “How I have suffered for you.”

Jarjayes had a second clandestine mission: to take an impression of the Queen’s seal to “the person you know came to see me last winter from Brussels” and to tell him at the same time that “the device has never been more true.” This was Count Fersen who had spent that single night at the Tuileries in February 1792. The motto was “Tutto a te mi guida”—All things lead me towards you. The device was a pigeon in flight, which, Fersen noted in his
Journal intime
, was a mistake for his own arms which actually showed a flying fish. It took Jarjayes many months to get the impression to Fersen, and when he did receive it, it was, by coincidence, on the first anniversary of the execution of Louis XVI, a tragic memory that for Fersen would “never be effaced.” However, the text of the message, surviving in two virtually identical versions—the Queen’s letter to Jarjayes, and Fersen’s notification of it in his
Journal intime
—make it clear that the bond between them, dependent and romantic on her side, romantic and chivalrous on his, had not been broken. This was the language of Julie to Saint-Preux in
La Nouvelle Héloïse
: “Our souls touch at all points . . . Fate may indeed separate us but not disunite us.”

Lep"tre, Toulan and others were interrogated for over-indulgence of the royal prisoners at the end of March on the word of the Tisons; Toulan was dismissed from the Tower. In other ways, the regime tightened. There were sudden night-time searches, intended to take the family by surprise but actually causing great fear and inconvenience. Not much was discovered beyond religious objects—pictures of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and a prayer for France. The man who led the searches was Jacques Hébert, founder of the newspaper
Le Père Duchesne
, which was the leading organ of the extremist Cordeliers. He, however, was a formidable adversary, and not someone to whom the Queen’s plight or that of her children was likely to appeal.

On 18 March the Austrian army, under the Prince of Saxe-Coburg, inflicted a terrible defeat upon the French at Neerwinden, north-west of Liège. As a result the Austrians were able to retake Brussels and drive the French back out of the Austrian Netherlands. At the same time the Spanish crossed the French borders in the south. And in the Vendée the recent royalist rising was spreading rapidly. Nine days after Neerwinden, Robespierre in the Convention focused once more on Marie Antoinette’s continued presence in the Temple—and the unresolved question of her punishment. It was manifestly intolerable that one “no less guilty” than the late Louis Capet, “no less accused by the Nation,” should be left in peace to enjoy the fruit of her crimes out of some residue of superstitious respect for royalty. Robespierre suggested to the Convention that the former Queen should be brought before the new Revolutionary Tribunal, which had been set up on 10 March, for her crimes against the state. Such notional crimes of “the Austrian woman” were given further prominence when General Dumouriez, no longer the victorious revolutionary leader but the defeated general, absconded to the Austrians. Antoinette in the Tower was smeared by association.

On 6 April a new Committee of Public Safety was set up. Limited at first to nine members (including Danton) and meeting in secret, it would with time take over the conduct of the war. The next day Philippe Égalité and his third son, the
ci-devant
Comte de Beaujolais, were arrested. With other aristocrats, Orléans’ sister—“Citizeness Bourbon”—the Prince de Conti and Orléans’ second son, Montpensier, they were sent to prison in Marseilles. It was as well for his own sake that Orléans’ father-in-law, the Duc de Penthièvre, whose “noble bearing” and “loftiest virtues” had made him the last living link with “the glory” that was his ancestors, did not live to see this day. This surviving grandson of Louis XIV had had his heart broken by the death of his beloved daughter-in-law the Princesse de Lamballe. It was a fate that he was said to have offered in vain a fortune to avert. But the shameful vote of his son-in-law for the death of the King was the ultimate blow and he never recovered, dying on 4 March.

The events of the end of May, which led to the overthrow of the Girondins as a party and the arrest of their leaders, had their impact on the Temple in the shape of yet greater security. Bars were put on the windows and shutters that were not always opened; the searches were increased. In spite of this, there was a pitiful if valiant attempt at rescue in June. It was instigated by the eccentric Baron de Batz, a man brave or foolhardy enough to try a last-minute rescue of the King on the scaffold, with the help of one of the police administrators of the prison, named Michonis. It failed when Simon was tipped off to the possibility of Michonis’ treachery and paid an unscheduled late-night visit. Michonis talked his way out of trouble, suggesting that the whole incident had been a joke played on Simon.

Attempts at exchanging Marie Antoinette for some of the French prisoners—four commissioners of the Convention—who had been brought over to Austria by Dumouriez when he fled to the allied side were no more successful. The imperial heart was not in it and by the beginning of August no progress had been made. Although the first-hand evidence vanished later for political reasons, it seems that Danton, a member of the Committee for Public Safety, also tried to negotiate some kind of deal with Francis II. But the latter was not prepared to make any concessions in return. In the meantime Marie Antoinette herself refused to consider a release that did not include her son. Maternal anxiety was interpreted by Danton as dynastic ambition and so that plan—insofar as it ever existed—collapsed.

In mid-June the Pope announced the late King of France to be a royal martyr, killed purely for his religion: “O triumphal day for Louis! . . . We are sure that he has exchanged the fragile royal crown and the ephemeral lilies for an eternal crown decorated with the immortal lilies of the angels.” Two weeks later the real-life martyrdom of Marie Antoinette commenced. On the night of 3 July, commissioners arrived at the Tower and brusquely informed the Queen that her son was to be separated from her. They read the decree that the Convention had issued to this effect the day before, which had been spurred on by reports—without substance—that there was a plot to abduct the “young King.” He was now to be removed to “the most secure apartment of the Tower.”

Louis Charles flung himself into his mother’s arms, giving loud cries, and for her part Marie Antoinette behaved like a tigress whose cub was being taken away. For the next hour she absolutely refused to release her son. Threats to kill her left the Queen unmoved; only threats to kill Marie Thérèse produced some kind of reaction. In the end there was no way she could resist such an array of force any longer. Marie Antoinette no longer had the strength to dress her son—that was done by Marie Thérèse and her aunt—but had to be content with wiping his tears away.