“I cannot give my consent,” the guard replied. “I have orders to keep an eye on all your movements.” The queen sighed and tried to change “with all possible precaution and modesty,” said Rosalie. She concealed her linens in a chink between the old canvas wall covering and the wall.
A little later, at around ten o’clock, the executioner, Charles Henri Sanson, entered her cell. He tied her hands behind her back and roughly cropped her hair short, exposing her neck. An hour later, she was led across the dark hall, passed cells of other prisoners, to the door of the
Conciergerie
and into the daylight of the
Cour du Mai
, the courtyard where tumbrels waited to take the condemned to their death. Marie-Antoinette’s own strength momentarily deserted her when she saw she was to be taken to the guillotine in an open rubbish cart. She asked for the guards to undo her handcuffs and had to face the indignity of relieving herself in the public gaze against the prison wall.
She returned to the cart, which moved slowly through the dense crowd of people that had assembled to see her go to the scaffold. Although it was only a short distance to the Place de la Révolution, now the Place de la Concorde, at the bottom of the Champs-Élysées, it took over an hour for her to reach her final destination. Triumphant crowds had gathered along the route, eager for her death, some hissing or jeering as the she passed. Others were already relishing the latest outrageous
libelles
against her, such as
The Queen’s farewells to her Sweethearts, Male and Female.
In the Place de la Revolution, the stark, angular contours of the guillotine stood out sharply against the sea of faces, all impatient for her death, pressing close to the soldiers for a better view. Marie-Antoinette climbed down from the cart and mounted the steps to the scaffold. Trembling and exhausted, she urged the executioner to hurry, but long minutes had to be endured while Sanson went through the procedure. He tied her to the plank, which
then swung forward. The crowd, concentrating on that frail figure, had their reward a few minutes later; the queen of France was dead.
As people rushed forward to soak anything at hand in the blood of the she-devil, Sanson picked up the bleeding head and displayed it for all to see. Elation surged through the crowd and a great cry went up, “Long live the Republic! Long live Liberty! The devil is no more!”
“Frenchmen, Republicans, you have purged the earth of a monster who was its abomination!” wrote one militant journalist in The Testament of
Marie-Antoinette, the Widow Capet.
“That loathsome woman, whom the odious House of Austria sent among us to gratify its hatred and to plunge us into an abyss of calamity, that infernal Fury who only asked to bathe in French blood … you have just sent her hurtling into the night of death.” For Hébert it was a moment to savor. He would not concede her courage but told his readers that she was “audacious and insolent right to the very end … . It was the greatest of all the joys of
Père Duchesne,
having with his own eyes seen the head of the female veto separated from her fucking tart’s neck!”
While the queen’s body was being carted away and buried without ceremony in an unmarked grave, in her cell at the
Conciergerie
Rosalie gathered together her few remaining possessions, the mirror and the cardboard box, and wrapped them in a cloth. There was also the letter that the queen had left for Élisabeth. Her last words were for her children: “Oh my God, have pity on me. My eyes have no tears left to weep for you, my poor children. Farewell. Farewell.” Her note was never allowed to reach Élisabeth.
A mile away at the Temple prison, Louis-Charles was unaware of his mother’s death. It is likely that he still imagined that she was in the room above him, where he had last seen her on the night of their separation. The only person who could possibly have saved Louis-Charles from the enveloping abuse and neglect was now dead.
THE ORPHAN OF THE TEMPLE
Let this little serpent and his sister be cast on a desert island.
I do not know of any reasonable means of getting rid of
them; and yet we must rid ourselves of them at any price.
—JACQUES-RENÉ HÉBERT
The unhappy child had long been accustomed to none but the worst treatment—for I believe that no research can show such barbarity to any other child.
—MARIE-THÉRÈSE, ON HER BROTHER’S TREATMENT
“
A
lthough we heard the hawkers crying my mother’s condemnation in the streets,” wrote Marie-Thérèse, “hope, so natural to the unhappy, made us think she had been saved.” She steadfastly “refused to believe” that they had been entirely abandoned by Marie-Antoinette’s Austrian relatives or other royalists who could have helped them, and remained in ignorance of her death. Among those who guarded them, there was no silent sympathizer who could give her or Élisabeth fragments of news; Cléry had been moved out of the Temple months before. The guards, who were often drunk and rude, says Marie-Thérèse, refused even basic comforts such as an ointment to treat an ulcer on Élisabeth’s arm. They searched the small, airless apartment that held the two princesses three times every day. “One search lasted from four in the afternoon until half past eight at night,”
protested Marie-Thérèse. With fanatical zeal “they carried away mere trifles, such as our hats, cards with kings on them and books in which there were coats of arms.” Far from fulfilling Marie-Antoinette’s wish, Marie-Thérèse found there was no hope of reuniting with her brother. Even questions about him were greeted with silence, hostility or “insults and oaths.” On the floor below, Simon continued to terrorize Louis-Charles. After the death of the queen, he realized he could continue to use his position as “tutor” to his advantage if he was able to elicit more damaging royal secrets. He bullied “Charles Capet” into revealing details about the royal family’s life in the Tower before the execution of his father. On October 26, 1793, ten days after the death of his mother, the minutes of the Commune at a meeting at eight o’clock in the evening record that “Citizen Simon came to the Temple council in order to report a conversation he had had with little Capet, by which it appeared that a certain member of the Commune had held some correspondence with his mother.”
Commissaries were eagerly dispatched once more to interrogate the eight-year-old. As before, unwittingly, the child became drawn in, revealing guards who had been sympathetic, the means by which secret messages were slipped in and out of the prison and more significantly—since she was still alive—information against his aunt Élisabeth. The Commune heard how she had once managed to post notes to the king by tying them to a piece of string, which she passed through a small gap in the blind at her window and down to his rooms on the floor below. Under interrogation, Louis-Charles was made to reveal “that his mother was afraid of his aunt, and that his aunt was the person who carried out the plots best.” Simon pushed him for more information. What other acts of conspiracy were there? What had the former king and queen done to resist the people’s revolution? What plans had there been to escape? The propaganda war against the royal family was vital to bolstering the standing of the revolution in the public’s eye. Yet Louis-Charles seems to have had little more to say. His signature confirming this latest declaration on his aunt’s plots was made in a sprawling, unsteady hand, unlike his former writing from his lessons with his father, in which the letters were well composed.
On November 25, 1793, Chaumette and others in the Commune made recommendations once more to the Convention proposing how to dispose of the “odious remnants of power” that still remained, the royal prisoners in the Temple. For Chaumette, their confinement was “too aristocratic” and exceptional. He argued that Élisabeth should be tried without delay by the Revolutionary Tribunal and the two orphans should be transferred to a state prison and treated like common prisoners. As usual, Hébert went even further. “Let this little serpent and his sister be cast on a desert island. I do not know of any reasonable means of getting rid of them; and yet we must rid ourselves of them at any price.” However, the Convention took no action. Ever fearful that the royal children could escape, they balked at the idea of moving them out of the Tower.
The interrogations continued. A week later, on December 3, another report was fabricated with the help of “Charles Capet.”
On this day, 13 Frimaire, second year of the Republic, one and indivisible, we commissaries of the Commune on duty at the Temple, on being informed by citizen Simon that Charles Capet had some facts to state which were of importance to the safely of the Republic, repaired at four o’clock in the afternoon to the apartment of the said Charles Capet, who made a declaration as follows: “That for a fortnight or three weeks past, he has heard the prisoners [his sister and aunt} knocking every day consecutively between six and nine o’clock.” The moving of the furniture “gives reason for supposing that they are in the habit of hiding something.” … He thinks it might be false
assignats
, but is not sure of this, and that they might be passing them through the window to someone … . Citizen Simon, asked if he knew of the above-mentioned noise, replied that being a little hard of hearing he had perceived nothing of the kind; but his wife confirmed the statement of Charles Capet respecting the noise.
However, the Commune could do little with the trumped-up charge against the princesses of counterfeiting money. In fact, there was an entirely
innocent explanation for the noise each evening, as Marie-Thérèse explained. “It was that of our backgammon, which my aunt, wishing to amuse me a little, had been kind enough to teach me. We played it each evening.” She was under no illusion that her “poor little brother” had been “forced to sign the declaration” by Simon. Yet despite their best efforts, for the time being, the leaders of the Commune could elicit nothing else to pin on Aunt Élisabeth.
Since it was becoming harder to advance his own position by feeding his superiors with more “secrets,” Simon began to feel that his work in the Tower was leading nowhere. With increasing security, he was also concerned to find he was forbidden to leave the Temple. Toward the end of December, Simon asked for permission to go to a fair but this was refused. To his alarm, he found he had to be escorted by two guards just to collect some possessions from his home. In the suspicious, conspiratorial atmosphere that prevailed, he realized he was not entirely trusted. It is plausible that Chaumette feared that Simon would help royalists free the boy king for money and kept him on a tight rein. Simon resented being treated as a virtual prisoner. The position that had once been so flattering to his pride was fast becoming oppressive.
It is possible that he took out his growing frustrations on his prisoner. Early in January 1794, according to a report from one of the guards, Simon found the boy had woken up one night and, still in a dreamlike state, was kneeling by his bedside, repeating the prayers that his mother had taught him. Simon was so exasperated he took a pitcher of water and poured it on the child’s head. Louis-Charles, shivering, stretched out on his soaking bed, not daring to say a word. His tutor, however, had not finished. He “flew into a violent passion … and armed with his hobnailed shoe, struck him in the face.”
By now, Chaumette and others in the Commune were putting pressure on Simon to quit his job at the Temple prison. Chaumette warned members of the Commune of a recent law by which they were not allowed to hold more than one post at any time; he was irritated by the numerous absences
from meetings by those who were “occupied in other administrations.” Simon found himself having to choose between his membership in the Commune and his post as tutor to Louis-Charles. Chaumette may have had other reasons for wanting to move Simon out of the Tower prison at this point. Some historians have argued that Chaumette and Hébert were themselves plotting to seize Louis-Charles so as to enhance their own political position, either by allying with the monarchists against the revolutionary government, or by ransoming the boy to France’s enemies. It would have been easier to do this with Simon out of the way. Whatever their motives, Simon had served his purpose and helped to deliver the queen’s head with her son’s evidence. Now they put pressure on Simon to leave, and he seems to have had little difficulty making up his mind.
“On January 19, 1794, we heard a great noise in my brother’s room, which made us conjecture that they were taking him from the Temple,” wrote Marie-Thérèse. “We were convinced of it when, looking through the keyhole, we saw them carrying away packages. The following days as we heard his door open and persons walking in his room we were more than ever convinced that he was gone.”
The disturbance was, however, Simon leaving the Tower with his wife. The register of the Temple Council for that day confirms that “Simon and his wife, formerly entrusted with the custody of Charles Capet … were released from the guard today.” Before they left, the four commissaries on duty made a cursory inspection, confirmed that the boy was “in good health,” and duly signed the ledger.
The child, who had for so long suffered at the hands of Chaumette and Hébert, had now fallen totally into their power. No new tutor was appointed; the “reeducation” of the boy, for so long a sham, finally lapsed altogether. With the “son of a tyrant” directly under their control, their overwhelming priority was to ensure that he was securely incarcerated and had absolutely no opportunity to escape. Consequently, although Simon’s treatment of the boy had been shameful, what was to follow was even more shocking and cruel. Louis-Charles was to have all semblance of humanity
stripped from him and had to face the most nightmarish treatment possible for a young child. As security was greatly increased around him, the child was effectively entombed alive.
The day after Simon’s departure, on 1 Pluviôse of the second year in the Republican calendar, Louis-Charles was moved into solitary confinement. He was barricaded in one of the rooms on the second floor of the Great Tower that had been specially converted to detain him—probably the dining room, where he had last seen his father. Surrounded by the phantoms of his previous existence, in a room that held such frightening memories for him, he was confined to a space of about thirteen by eleven feet. Over the next few days, the Temple records show that a number of alterations were made to his room. The door opening onto the antechamber, where he used to play with Cléry, was double-locked and strengthened from top to bottom with iron bars. To further secure him, a stove was installed against the partition between this room and antechamber. Above the height of the stove, an opening was made, barred with a heavy grille. This was to serve as a wicket through which to shove meals to the child, or to provide an opening to allow in a little heat from the stove.
The room was cold and damp and had virtually no natural light. The window, which was inset into walls that were ten feet thick, was almost completely boarded up, save for a lower part of three latticed panes. Even if he were able to get close to this window, he would see nothing outside because of a hood over it. A gloomy half-light that could penetrate the grille or the gap in the shutter, or an occasional weak lantern was all the light in his cell during the day. No lantern was allowed after dusk and Louis-Charles spent his nights in complete darkness, which at first terrified him. In this cell, with little ventilation or daylight, he was effectively walled up.
There was no question of any amusements or diversions; he had no books or playthings of any kind. No one was even permitted to enter the cell to provide Louis-Charles with basic support, such as clean clothes, or to sweep or ventilate the room. His food was minimal, a frugal diet consisting of two bowls of soup each day with a hunk of bread and perhaps a portion of
boiled meat. This meager fare was slid into his room through the small wicket; he did not see the face, even the hand of his captors. Guards would peer in through the grille to ensure he was still there. There was nothing to break the loneliness or the monotony of his day except the arrival of meals or the inspection of a commissioner.
The brief human contact that served to punctuate his existence only added to his wretchedness. Apart from putting food through the wicket twice a day, late in the evening the commissaries on duty would peer into the boy’s room through the grille and shout out, “Capet, where are you? Are you asleep? Get up!” The child, pale and anxious, would have to show himself at the aperture so that he could be seen. This done, he was sent smartly back to bed accompanied by a tirade of insults: “viper’s race” or “son of a tyrant.” The commissary would then sign a ledger to confirm that Louis-Charles was secure. Sometimes this procedure could be repeated several times a night if the guards coming on duty did not arrive at the same time.
Marie-Thérèse managed to find out about her brother through some of the prison staff, such as Caron, who sometimes delivered his meals, and Gagnié, the cook. She was outraged. “They had the cruelty to leave my brother alone; unheard of barbarity which has surely no other example! That of abandoning a poor child, only eight years old, already ill, and keeping him locked and bolted in, with no succor but a bell, which he did not ring, so afraid was he of the persons it would call; he preferred to want for all, rather than ask anything of his persecutors.”