To complete his descent into abject squalor, it would seem from the records that no sanitary facilities were provided. Louis-Charles had to urinate and defecate in his own room. He was too frightened and disorientated to complain or ask for help and became passive and withdrawn. As the weeks passed, he ceased to make any attempt to clean his room or to take proper care of himself. His bed was left unmade for months; bugs and fleas covered it, and latched onto his body, covering it in bloody sores. Little by little he succumbed to the misery and spent many hours just curled up on the bed. His energy waned and his resistance to infection began to fail.
The prince who had been brought up in the splendor of Versailles and who was due to inherit the greatness that was France now lived a life more wretched than a pauper’s. There was no family or friends to encourage him, no kindly contact, no chance even to breathe the fresh air of day. In time, his excrement accumulated on the floor and a foul smell filled the room. His dark cell became infested with rats and mice. “Everything is alive in the room,” Caron was to report later. According to Caron, the child sometimes left his meals out uneaten to distract the vermin so that he could try to sleep.
Gradually, his once indomitable spirit, so happy and full of joy, surrendered to the utter hopelessness of his existence. One witness who saw Louis-Charles around this time was shocked by “the face of the victim, formerly so smiling, which showed well the imprint of a deep melancholy; his fresh and rosy complexion had become mat and yellow; the pure lines of his features were altered and his back was beginning to stoop insensibly, as if bent under the heavy weight of the time.”
Marie-Thérèse heard reports of her brother and wrote, “He lay in a bed, which had not been made for more than six months, and he now had no strength to make it. Fleas and bugs covered him, his linen and person were full of them. His shirt and stockings had not been changed for more than a year. His excrements remained in the room; no one had removed them during all that time. His window, the bars of which were secured by a padlock, was never opened. It was impossible to stay in his chamber on account of the foul odor. It is true that my brother neglected himself. He might have taken rather more care of his person; he could at least have washed himself, because they gave him a pitcher of water. But the unhappy child was half dead from fear, so much had Simon and others terrorized him. He spent the day in doing nothing. They gave him no light; this condition did as much to harm him morally as it did physically. It is not surprising that he lapsed into a fearful marasmus.”
Certainly there were many in the revolutionary government who had always wanted to see the son of Capet disposed of, murdered if necessary, so as to prevent this former heir to the throne from ever restoring the monarchy
in France. His future continued to hang in the balance. The pale shadow of a child, clinging to life in the Temple cell, only survived at all since he remained a useful potential bargaining chip with France’s enemies. It was rumored that there were plans to smuggle him to southern France as a hostage should the enemy threaten Paris itself. For the time being, he was suspended in this shadowy twilight world, somewhere between life and death.
The appalling treatment of the boy mirrored the growing brutality in the rest of France as the Terror was increasing its grip. The Committee of Public Safety had unrestricted powers to search out and arrest enemies of the revolution; any traitors could be brought before special courts and might face the guillotine the next day. Police measures were also introduced by the Committee for General Security, which used vigilant local committees to ferret out suspects. Robespierre was a mesmerizing speaker in defense of these tactics. He easily persuaded his admirers that the Terror was right and necessary, even praiseworthy; only by ruthlessly crushing the enemy would the republic survive. Under Robespierre, the number of executions increased each month; there were 21 in September 1793, rising to 68 in December and over 120 by March the following year. The counterrevolutionary revolt in the Vendee was brutally crushed and tens of thousands were arrested. In Paris, Danton and Robespierre disagreed over the use of terror tactics to enforce control; Danton wanted to end the Terror, but for Robespierre it was a legitimate means of establishing the republic while it was under threat. Robespierre gained the upper hand over Danton and accused him of favoring a reactionary policy.
As the Terror swept through France, in a remarkable twist, Louis-Charles’s own jailors suddenly became caught up in the wholesale butchery. Hébert’s increasing control over the Commune through his supporters, the Hébertistes, seemed a threat to the power of Robespierre and provoked his hostility. Gradually Hébert found himself blackened by less extreme republicans. “Is there anything more disgusting and execrable than Le
Père Duchesne?”
mocked Camille Desmoulins in his journal, the
Vieux Cordelier,
launched in December 1793. Desmoulins ridiculed Hébert’s coarse ways and “language of the charnel house,” accusing him of merely posing as a revolutionary when in fact he had managed to acquire large sums of money for his journal from aristocratic contacts.
In early 1794, schisms opened between the Hébertistes and the Dantonistes, each accusing the other of ever more outrageous plots and counterplots. Incredible as it may seem, given Hébert’s role in savoring the destruction and torment of the royal family, he and his supporters were charged with forming a royalist conspiracy. It was claimed that he had accepted funds from royalists to arrange the escape of the royal prisoners. Speakers railed against him and other Hébertistes at the Convention: “They have attempted to deliver to the Temple, to the children of Capet, a letter, a package of fifty golden Louis; the aim of this delivery is to facilitate the escape of the son of Capet. Because the conspirators have formed the aim of establishing a Regency Council, the presence of the child was necessary to install a Regent. I hope they are trembling, these villains who wanted to give the French a master. Their hour is approaching. They must
die
!” stormed one of Robespierre’s men, Couthon. As the threat to Hébert grew, even Chaumette denounced him as he struggled to distance himself from his former ally.
On March 24, 1794, barely five months after forcing Louis-Charles to testify against his mother, Hébert and eighteen of his supporters were led to the Place de la Révolution. A huge crowd had gathered to watch their downfall. “They died liked cowards without balls,” reported one jeering witness. Hébert, the great brutalizer, whose ugly journal
Le Père Duchesne
had done so much to incite violence, found his courage failed him as the wheel turned full circle and it was his turn to feel that sharp steel on his neck. Three weeks later, Chaumette, too, “went to hold the hot hand,” convicted, like Hébert, of royal conspiracy. It was alleged that he wanted to “place the young Capet on the throne.” Georges Danton and his allies also found themselves facing trumped-up charges of conspiracy and were sent to the scaffold.
However, even as the revolution devoured its own creators, this did nothing to ease the plight of the victims in the Tower. “On May 9, just as
we were going to bed, the bolts were withdrawn and someone knocked at our door,” wrote Marie-Thérèse. Élisabeth insisted on dressing before they entered, but “they rapped so hard that we thought the door would burst in.” When the guards entered, they turned to Élisabeth. “Citoyenne, will you please come down,” they demanded brusquely. Élisabeth tried to reassure her worried niece that she would return, only to be sharply corrected. “No, citoyenne, you will not return,” they announced. “Take your cap and come down.” According to Marie-Thérèse, they “loaded her with insults and coarse speeches.” Élisabeth, for her part, was concerned about leaving her niece when she had been expressly charged to act as her second mother by Marie-Antoinette. She embraced her and told her “to have courage, to practise the good principles of religion given me by my parents, and to hope in God.”
Marie-Thérèse was devastated. “I remained in greatest desolation when I was parted from my aunt. I did not know what had become of her, and no one would tell me. I passed a very cruel night.” Alone for the first time in the Tower, she was terrified.
In the pouring rain, Élisabeth was led across the garden and courtyard of the Temple and taken in a coach to the
Conciergerie.
Later that same evening, she was led before the Revolutionary Tribunal and examined by the prosecutor, Fouquier-Tinville, and two others. Afterward she was returned to her cell. Élisabeth was under no illusion about what lay ahead; this would be a trial with no defense and no appeal. She was deeply religious but she knew any request to seek the help of a Catholic priest would be refused. Kneeling in her cell she “offered direct to God the sacrifice of her life.”
The next day she was tried, along with twenty-four other prisoners. The public prosecutor read out the names of those that had been denounced to the Tribunal: “First, Marie Élisabeth Capet, sister of Louis Capet, the last tyrant of the French, aged thirty and born at Versailles … . It is to the family of the Capets that the French people owe all the evils under the weight of which they have groaned for so many centuries … . The crimes of all kinds, the guilty deeds of Capet, of the Messalina Antoinette, of the two brothers
Capet, and of Élisabeth are too well known to make it necessary here to repaint the horrible picture.” The prosecutor proceeded to outline how this “detestable family” had subjugated the great nation “to the despotism and fury of a few individuals” and that Élisabeth “had cooperated in all the plots, and conspiracies.”
The jury took only a few minutes to decide that she was guilty as an accomplice in these plots, and she was condemned to death. At the
Conciergerie,
she asked to be taken to the common cell to join the others who would die with her tomorrow, who were “in different stages of agony and fear.” According to two witnesses who were in the room that night, but were not condemned, she tried to inspire them with her own courage: “She seemed to regard them all as friends about to accompany her to heaven … . Soon the serenity of her look, the tranquillity of her mind subdued their anguish.” One woman, Madame de Montmorin, who had lost nearly all her family, was inconsolable, not because of her own death, but because of her son, who was doomed to die with her. “I am willing to die,” she cried, “but I cannot see him die.” Madame Élisabeth replied, “You love your son, and yet you do not wish him to accompany you; you are going yourself to all the joys of heaven and you want him to stay on earth, where all is now torture and sorrow.” Inspired by these words, Madame de Montmorin “rose to a species of ecstasy.” Weeping, she embraced her son. “Yes, yes,” she cried, “we will go together.”
The next day, on May 10, 1794, Élisabeth was taken by cart to the Place de la Révolution. “At the foot of the scaffold was a long bench on which the victims were told to sit. By a refinement of cruelty, Madame Élisabeth was placed nearest the steps to the scaffold, but she was the last of the twenty-five called to ascend them; she was to see and hear the killing of all of them before her turn should come. According to one witness, during that time she never ceased saying the
De profundis.
Each of the women, when called, turned and kissed the princess before they ascended the scaffold; each of the men bowed low.” However, in another report, it would appear that even Élisabeth could not cope with the ordeal and fainted. Whatever the reality, after her execution, there were no cries of
“Vive la Révolution.”
The
crowd scattered silently. The bodies were flung onto one cart, the heads were flung in a basket. The clothes of the victims were taken, “because they were a prerequisite of the State.”
Unknown to the two captives in the Tower, they had now lost their second mother. “When I asked the municipals where she was, they said she had gone to take the air,” Marie-Thérèse was told, contemptuously. “I renewed my request to be taken to my mother, as I was parted from my aunt; they replied that they would speak of it.” She repeated her requests frequently but was told that she needed no one, and she heard no news of her relatives. The guards, she wrote, “redoubled their severity.” Searches were frequent; knives, which had been returned to them, were again removed and on another occasion, her tinderbox, which had enabled her to warm the stove. Silently, the teenage girl endured the terrifying uncertainties that surrounded her.
“My brother was still wallowing in filth,” she wrote. “No one entered his room except at mealtimes; no one had pity on that unfortunate child. There was but one guard whose manners were civil enough to induce me to commend my poor brother to him. He dared to speak of the harshness shown to the child, and he was dismissed the next day.” Marie-Thérèse, who had learned from the endurance of her family, now found new reserves of courage to keep her sanity and her will to live, unlike her brother. She carried out simple routines in her room with great dedication, as though her life depended on it. “At least I could keep myself clean,” she wrote. “I had soap and water. I swept the room every day … . I had no light, but when the days were long I suffered less from that privation. They would no longer give me books. I had none but those of piety and travels, which I had read a hundred times.”
The children were never taken out into the gardens or up on the battlements. There was an empty, eerie atmosphere in the Tower that now held only a sick young boy and his desperate sister, both of whom were kept out of sight of most of the prison staff. Apart from the guards responsible for checking the presence of the prisoners or taking up food, few of the staff at
work in the Temple even saw the children. Some were reported later to say that they wondered what they were keeping watch on, “precious stones or something?” Without any sighting of the children, staff began to wonder whether the prison was in fact empty and the royal children had escaped or been secretly moved. This helped to feed the many rumors. It was widely believed that a switch had taken place and that the boy now held in the Tower was not the son of the former king at all. Many Parisians thought he had secretly escaped and was being protected by royalist sympathizers either in England, Prussia or Austria. No sooner was this denied than the rumors started up again.