The Memoirs of Marie Antoinette, v6
by
Madame Campan
This etext was produced by David Widger
[NOTE: There is a short list of bookmarks, or pointers, at the end of the
file for those who may wish to sample the author's ideas before making an
entire meal of them. D.W.]
MEMOIRS OF THE COURT OF MARIE ANTOINETTE, QUEEN OF FRANCE
Being the Historic Memoirs of Madam Campan,
First Lady in Waiting to the Queen
BOOK 6.
CHAPTER V.
In the beginning of the spring of 1791, the King, tired of remaining at
the Tuileries, wished to return to St. Cloud. His whole household had
already gone, and his dinner was prepared there. He got into his
carriage at one; the guard mutinied, shut the gates, and declared they
would not let him pass. This event certainly proceeded from some
suspicion of a plan to escape. Two persons who drew near the King's
carriage were very ill treated. My father-in-law was violently laid hold
of by the guards, who took his sword from him. The King and his family
were obliged to alight and return to their apartments.
They did not much regret this outrage in their hearts; they saw in it a
justification, even in the eyes of the people, of their intention to
leave Paris.
So early as the month of March in the same year, the Queen began to busy
herself in preparing for her departure. I spent that month with her,
and executed a great number of secret orders which she gave me respecting
the intended event. It was with uneasiness that I saw her occupied with
cares which seemed to me useless, and even dangerous, and I remarked to
her that the Queen of France would find linen and gowns everywhere.
My observations were made in vain; she determined to have a complete
wardrobe with her at Brussels, as well for her children as herself.
I went out alone and almost disguised to purchase the articles necessary
and have them made up.
I ordered six chemises at the shop of one seamstress, six at that of
another, gowns, combing cloths, etc. My sister had a complete set of
clothes made for Madame, by the measure of her eldest daughter, and I
ordered clothes for the Dauphin from those of my son. I filled a trunk
with these things, and addressed them, by the Queen's orders, to one of
her women, my aunt, Madame Cardon,--a widow living at Arras, by virtue of
an unlimited leave of absence,--in order that she might be ready to start
for Brussels, or any other place, as soon as she should be directed to do
so. This lady had landed property in Austrian Flanders, and could at any
time quit Arras unobserved.
The Queen was to take only her first woman in attendance with her from
Paris. She apprised me that if I should not be on duty at the moment of
departure, she would make arrangements for my joining her. She
determined also to take her travelling dressing-case. She consulted me
on her idea of sending it off, under pretence of making a present of it
to the Archduchess Christina, Gouvernante of the Netherlands. I ventured
to oppose this plan strongly, and observed that, amidst so many people
who watched her slightest actions, there would be found a sufficient
number sharp-sighted enough to discover that it was only a pretext for
sending away the property in question before her own departure;
she persisted in her intention, and all I could arrange was that the
dressing-case should not be removed from her apartment, and that M. de
charge d'afaires from the Court of Vienna during the absence of the Comte
de Mercy, should come and ask her, at her toilet, before all her people,
to order one exactly like her own for Madame the Gouvernante of the
Netherlands. The Queen, therefore, commanded me before the charge
d'affaires to order the article in question. This occasioned only an
expense of five hundred louis, and appeared calculated to lull suspicion
completely.
About the middle of May, 1791, a month after the Queen had ordered me to
bespeak the dressing-case, she asked me whether it would soon be
finished. I sent for the ivory-turner who had it in hand. He could not
complete it for six weeks. I informed the Queen of this, and she told me
she should not be able to wait for it, as she was to set out in the
course of June. She added that, as she had ordered her sister's
dressing-case in the presence of all her attendants, she had taken a
sufficient precaution, especially by saying that her sister was out of
patience at not receiving it, and that therefore her own must be emptied
and cleaned, and taken to the charge d'affaires, who would send it off.
I executed this order without any, appearance of mystery. I desired the
wardrobe woman to take out of the dressing-case all that it contained,
because that intended for the Archduchess could not be finished for some
time; and to take great care to leave no remains of the perfumes which
might not suit that Princess.
The woman in question executed her commission punctually; but, on the
evening of that very day, the 15th of May, 1791, she informed M. Bailly,
the Mayor of Paris, that preparations were making at the Queen's
residence for a departure; and that the dressing-case was already sent
off, under pretence of its being presented to the Archduchess Christina.
[After the return from Varennes M. Bailly put this woman's
deposition into the Queen's hands.--MADAME CAMPAN.]
It was necessary, likewise, to send off all the diamonds belonging to the
Queen. Her Majesty shut herself up with me in a closet in the entresol,
looking into the garden of the Tuileries, and we packed all the diamonds,
rubies, and pearls she possessed in a small chest. The cases containing
these ornaments, being altogether of considerable bulk, had been
deposited, ever since the 6th of October, 1789, with the valet de chambre
who had the care of the Queen's jewels. That faithful servant, himself
detecting the use that was to be made of the valuables, destroyed all the
boxes, which were, as usual, covered with red morocco, marked with the
cipher and arms of France. It would have been impossible for him to hide
them from the eyes of the popular inquisitors during the domiciliary
visits in January, 1793, and the discovery might have formed a ground of
accusation against the Queen.
I had but a few articles to place in the box when the Queen was compelled
to desist from packing it, being obliged to go down to cards, which began
at seven precisely. She therefore desired me to leave all the diamonds
upon the sofa, persuaded that, as she took the key of her closet herself,
and there was a sentinel under the window, no danger was to be
apprehended for that night, and she reckoned upon returning very early
next day to finish the work.
The same woman who had given information of the sending away of the
dressing-case was also deputed by the Queen to take care of her more
private rooms. No other servant was permitted to enter them; she renewed
the flowers, swept the carpets, etc. The Queen received back the key,
when the woman had finished putting them in order, from her own hands;
but, desirous of doing her duty well, and sometimes having the key in her
possession for a few minutes only, she had probably on that account
ordered one without the Queen's knowledge. It is impossible not to
believe this, since the despatch of the diamonds was the subject of a
second accusation which the Queen heard of after the return from
Varennes. She made a formal declaration that her Majesty, with the
assistance of Madame Campan, had packed up all her jewelry some time
before the departure; that she was certain of it, as she had found the
diamonds, and the cotton which served to wrap them, scattered upon the
sofa in the Queen's closet in the 'entresol'; and most assuredly she
could only have seen these preparations in the interval between seven in
the evening and seven in the morning. The Queen having met me next day
at the time appointed, the box was handed over to Leonard, her Majesty's
hairdresser,--[This unfortunate man, after having emigrated for some
time, returned to France, and perished upon the scaffold.--NOTE BY
EDITOR]--who left the country with the Duc de Choiseul. The box
remained a long time at Brussels, and at length got into the hands of
Madame la Duchesse d'Angouleme, being delivered to her by the Emperor on
her arrival at Vienna.
In order not to leave out any of the Queen's diamonds, I requested the
first tirewoman to give me the body of the full dress, and all the
assortment which served for the stomacher of the full dress on days of
state, articles which always remained at the wardrobe.
The superintendent and the dame d'honneur being absent, the first
tirewoman required me to sign a receipt, the terms of which she dictated,
and which acquitted her of all responsibility for these diamonds.
She had the prudence to burn this document on the 10th of August, 1792.
--[The date of the sack of the Tuileries and slaughter of the Swiss
Guard]--The Queen having determined, upon the arrest at Varennes, not to
have her diamonds brought back to France, was often anxious about them
during the year which elapsed between that period and the 10th of August,
and dreaded above all things that such a secret should be discovered.
In consequence of a decree of the Assembly, which deprived the King of
the custody of the Crown diamonds, the Queen had at this time already
given up those which she generally used.
She preferred the twelve brilliants called Hazarins, from the name of the
Cardinal who had enriched the treasury with them, a few rose-cut
diamonds, and the Sanci. She determined to deliver, with her own hands,
the box containing them to the commissioner nominated by the National
Assembly to place them with the Crown diamonds. After giving them to
him, she offered him a row of pearls of great beauty, saying to him that
it had been brought into France by Anne of Austria; that it was
invaluable, on account of its rarity; that, having been appropriated by
that Princess to the use of the Queens and Dauphinesses, Louis XV. had
placed it in her hands on her arrival in France; but that she considered
it national property. "That is an open question, Madame," said the
commissary. "Monsieur," replied the Queen, "it is one for me to decide,
and is now settled."
My father-in-law, who was dying of the grief he felt for the misfortunes
of his master and mistress, strongly interested and occupied the thoughts
of the Queen. He had been saved from the fury of the populace in the
courtyard of the Tuileries.
On the day on which the King was compelled by an insurrection to give up
a journey to St. Cloud, her Majesty looked upon this trusty servant as
inevitably lost, if, on going away, she should leave him in the apartment
he occupied in the Tuileries. Prompted by her apprehensions, she ordered
M. Vicq-d'Azyr, her physician, to recommend him the waters of Mont d'Or
in Auvergne, and to persuade him to set off at the latter end of May.
At the moment of my going away the Queen assured me that the grand
project would be executed between the 15th and the 20th of June; that as
it was not my month to be on duty, Madame Thibaut would take the journey;
but that she had many directions to give me before I went. She then
desired me to write to my aunt, Madame Cardon, who was by that time in
possession of the clothes which I had ordered, that as soon as she should
receive a letter from M. Augur, the date of which should be accompanied
with a B, an L, or an M, she was to proceed with her property to
Brussels, Luxembourg, or Montmedy. She desired me to explain the meaning
of these three letters clearly to my sister, and to leave them with her
in writing, in order that at the moment of my going away she might be
able to take my place in writing to Arras.
The Queen had a more delicate commission for me; it was to select from
among my acquaintance a prudent person of obscure rank, wholly devoted to
the interests of the Court, who would be willing to receive a portfolio
which she was to give up only to me, or some one furnished with a note
from the Queen. She added that she would not travel with this portfolio,
and that it was of the utmost importance that my opinion of the fidelity
of the person to whom it was to be entrusted should be well founded. I
proposed to her Madame Vallayer Coster, a painter of the Academy, and an
amiable and worthy artist, whom I had known from my infancy. She lived
in the galleries of the Louvre. The choice seemed a good one. The Queen
remembered that she had made her marriage possible by giving her a place
in the financial offices, and added that gratitude ought sometimes to be
reckoned on. She then pointed out to me the valet belonging to her
toilet, whom I was to take with me, to show him the residence of Madame
Coster, so that he might not mistake it when he should take the portfolio
to her. The day before her departure the Queen particularly recommended
me to proceed to Lyons and the frontiers as soon as she should have
started. She advised me to take with me a confidential person, fit to
remain with M. Campan when I should leave him, and assured me that she
would give orders to M. ------ to set off as soon as she should be known
to be at the frontiers in order to protect me in going out. She
condescended to add that, having a long journey to make in foreign
countries, she determined to give me three hundred louis.
I bathed the Queen's hands with tears at the moment of this sorrowful
separation; and, having money at my disposal, I declined accepting her
gold. I did not dread the road I had to travel in order to rejoin her;
all my apprehension was that by treachery or miscalculation a scheme, the
safety of which was not sufficiently clear to me, should fail. I could
answer for all those who belonged to the service immediately about the
Queen's person, and I was right; but her wardrobe woman gave me well-
founded reason for alarm. I mentioned to the Queen many revolutionary
remarks which this woman had made to me a few days before. Her office
was directly under the control of the first femme de chambre, yet she had
refused to obey the directions I gave her, talking insolently to me about
"hierarchy overturned, equality among men," of course more especially
among persons holding offices at Court; and this jargon, at that time in
the mouths of all the partisans of the Revolution, was terminated by an
observation which frightened me. "You know many important secrets,
madame," said this woman to me, "and I have guessed quite as many. I am
not a fool; I see all that is going forward here in consequence of the
bad advice given to the King and Queen; I could frustrate it all if I
chose." This argument, in which I had been promptly silenced, left me
pale and trembling. Unfortunately, as I began my narrative to the Queen
with particulars of this woman's refusal to obey me,--and sovereigns are
all their lives importuned with complaints upon the rights of places,--
she believed that my own dissatisfaction had much to do with the step
I was taking; and she did not sufficiently fear the woman. Her office,
although a very inferior one, brought her in nearly fifteen thousand
francs a year. Still young, tolerably handsome, with comfortable
apartments in the entresols of the Tuileries, she saw a great deal of
company, and in the evening had assemblies, consisting of deputies of the
revolutionary party. M. de Gouvion, major-general of the National Guard,
passed almost every day with her; and it is to be presumed that she had
long worked for the party in opposition to the Court. The Queen asked
her for the key of a door which led to the principal vestibule of the
Tuileries, telling her she wished to have a similar one, that she might
not be under the necessity of going out through the pavilion of Flora.
M. de Gouvion and M. de La Fayette would, of course, be apprised of this
circumstance, and well-informed persons have assured me that on the very
night of the Queen's departure this wretched woman had a spy with her,
who saw the royal family set off.
As soon as I had executed all the Queen's orders, on the 30th of May,
1791, I set out for Auvergne, and was settled in the gloomy narrow valley
of Mont d'Or, when, about four in the afternoon of the 25th of June,
I heard the beat of a drum to call the inhabitants of the hamlet
together. When it had ceased I heard a hairdresser from Bresse proclaim
in the provincial dialect of Auvergne: "The King and Queen were taking
flight in order to ruin France, but I come to tell you that they are
stopped, and are well guarded by a hundred thousand men under arms." I
still ventured to hope that he was repeating only a false report, but he
went on: "The Queen," with her well-known haughtiness, lifted up the veil
which covered her face, and said to the citizens who were upbraiding the
King, "Well, since you recognise your sovereign, respect him." Upon
hearing these expressions, which the Jacobin club of Clermont could not
have invented, I exclaimed, "The news is true!"
I immediately learnt that, a courier being come from Paris to Clermont,
the 'procureur' of the commune had sent off messengers to the chief
places of the canton; these again sent couriers to the districts, and the
districts in like manner informed the villages and hamlets which they
contained. It was through this ramification, arising from the
establishment of clubs, that the afflicting intelligence of the
misfortune of my sovereigns reached me in the wildest part of France,
and in the midst of the snows by which we were environed.
On the 28th I received a note written in a hand which I recognised as
that of M. Diet,--[This officer was slain in the Queen's chamber on the
10th of August]--usher of the Queen's chamber, but dictated by her
Majesty. It contained these words: "I am this moment arrived; I have
just got into my bath; I and my family exist, that is all. I have
suffered much. Do not return to Paris until I desire you. Take good
care of my poor Campan, soothe his sorrow. Look for happier times."
This note was for greater safety addressed to my father-in-law's valet-de
-chambre. What were my feelings on perceiving that after the most
distressing crisis we were among the first objects of the kindness of
that unfortunate Princess!
M. Campan having been unable to benefit by the waters of Mont d'Or, and
the first popular effervescence having subsided, I thought I might return
to Clermont. The committee of surveillance, or that of general safety,
had resolved to arrest me there; but the Abbe Louis, formerly a
parliamentary counsellor, and then a member of the Constituent Assembly,
was kind enough to affirm that I was in Auvergne solely for the purpose
of attending my father-in-law, who was extremely ill. The precautions
relative to my absence from Paris were limited to placing us under the
surveillance of the 'procureur' of the commune, who was at the same time
president of the Jacobin club; but he was also a physician of repute, and
without having any doubt that he had received secret orders relative to
me, I thought it would favour the chances of our safety if I selected him
to attend my patient. I paid him according to the rate given to the best
Paris physicians, and I requested him to visit us every morning and every
evening. I took the precaution to subscribe to no other newspaper than
the Moniteur. Doctor Monestier (for that was the physician's name)
frequently took upon himself to read it to us. Whenever he thought
proper to speak of the King and Queen in the insulting and brutal terms
at that time unfortunately adopted throughout France, I used to stop him
and say, coolly, "Monsieur, you are here in company with the servants of
Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette. Whatever may be the wrongs with which
the nation believes it has to reproach them, our principles forbid our
losing sight of the respect due to them from us." Notwithstanding that
he was an inveterate patriot, he felt the force of this remark, and even
procured the revocation of a second order for our arrest, becoming
responsible for us to the committee of the Assembly, and to the Jacobin
society.
The two chief women about the Dauphin, who had accompanied the Queen to
Varennes, Diet, her usher, and Camot, her garcon de toilette,--the women
on account of the journey, and the men in consequence of the denunciation
of the woman belonging to the wardrobe,--were sent to the prisons of the
Abbaye. After my departure the garcon de toilette whom I had taken to
Madame Vallayer Coster's was sent there with the portfolio she had agreed
to receive. This commission could not escape the detestable spy upon the
Queen. She gave information that a portfolio had been carried out on the
evening of the departure, adding that the King had placed it upon the
Queen's easy-chair, that the garcon de toilette wrapped it up in a napkin
and took it under his arm, and that she did not know where he had carried
it. The man, who was remarkable for his fidelity, underwent three
examinations without making the slightest disclosure. M. Diet, a man of
good family, a servant on whom the Queen placed particular reliance,
likewise experienced the severest treatment. At length, after a lapse of
three weeks, the Queen succeeded in obtaining the release of her
servants.
The Queen, about the 15th of August, had me informed by letter that I
might come back to Paris without being under any apprehension of arrest
there, and that she greatly desired my return. I brought my father-in-
law back in a dying state, and on the day preceding that of the
acceptation of the constitutional act, I informed the Queen that he was
no more. "The loss of Lassonne and Campan," said she, as she applied her
handkerchief to her streaming eyes, "has taught me how valuable such
subjects are to their masters. I shall never find their equals."
I resumed my functions about the Queen on the 1st of September, 1791.
She was unable then to converse with me on all the lamentable events
which had occurred since the time of my leaving her, having on guard near
her an officer whom she dreaded more than all the others. She merely
told me that I should have some secret services to perform for her, and
that she would not create uneasiness by long conversations with me, my
return being a subject of suspicion. But next day the Queen, well
knowing the discretion of the officer who was to be on guard that night,
had my bed placed very near hers, and having obtained the favour of
having the door shut, when I was in bed she began the narrative of the
journey, and the unfortunate arrest at Varennes. I asked her permission
to put on my gown, and kneeling by her bedside I remained until three
o'clock in the morning, listening with the liveliest and most sorrowful
interest to the account I am about to repeat, and of which I have seen
various details, of tolerable exactness, in papers of the time.
The King entrusted Count Fersen with all the preparations for departure.
The carriage was ordered by him; the passport, in the name of Madame de
Korf, was procured through his connection with that lady, who was a
foreigner. And lastly, he himself drove the royal family, as their
coachman, as far as Bondy, where the travellers got into their berlin.
Madame Brunier and Madame Neuville, the first women of Madame and the
Dauphin, there joined the principal carriage. They were in a cabriolet.
Monsieur and Madame set out from the Luxembourg and took another road.
They as well as the King were recognised by the master of the last post
in France, but this man, devoting himself to the fortunes of the Prince,
left the French territory, and drove them himself as postilion. Madame
Thibaut, the Queen's first woman, reached Brussels without the slightest
difficulty. Madame Cardon, from Arras, met with no hindrance; and
Leonard, the Queen's hairdresser, passed through Varennes a few hours
before the royal family. Fate had reserved all its obstacles for the
unfortunate monarch.
Nothing worthy of notice occurred in the beginning of the journey. The
travellers were detained a short time, about twelve leagues from Paris,
by some repairs which the carriage required. The King chose to walk up
one of the hills, and these two circumstances caused a delay of three
hours, precisely at the time when it was intended that the berlin should
have been met, just before reaching Varennes, by the detachment commanded
by M. de Goguelat. This detachment was punctually stationed upon the
spot fixed on, with orders to wait there for the arrival of certain
treasure, which it was to escort; but the peasantry of the neighbourhood,
alarmed at the sight of this body of troops, came armed with staves, and
asked several questions, which manifested their anxiety. M. de Goguelat,
fearful of causing a riot, and not finding the carriage arrive as he
expected, divided his men into two companies, and unfortunately made them
leave the highway in order to return to Varennes by two cross roads.
The King looked out of the carriage at Ste. Menehould, and asked several
questions concerning the road. Drouet, the post-master, struck by the
resemblance of Louis to the impression of his head upon the assignats,
drew near the carriage, felt convinced that he recognised the Queen also,
and that the remainder of the travellers consisted of the royal family
and their suite, mounted his horse, reached Varennes by cross roads
before the royal fugitives, and gave the alarm.--[Varennes lies between
Verdun and Montmedy, and not far from the French frontier.]
The Queen began to feel all the agonies of terror; they were augmented by
the voice of a person unknown, who, passing close to the carriage in full
gallop, cried out, bending towards the window without slackening his
speed, "You are recognised!" They arrived with beating hearts at the
gates of Varennes without meeting one of the horsemen by whom they were
to have been escorted into the place. They were ignorant where to find
their relays, and some minutes were lost in waiting, to no purpose. The
cabriolet had preceded them, and the two ladies in attendance found the
bridge already blocked up with old carts and lumber. The town guards
were all under arms. The King at last entered Varennes. M. de Goguelat
had arrived there with his detachment. He came up to the King and asked
him if he chose to effect a passage by force! What an unlucky question
to put to Louis XVI., who from the very beginning of the Revolution had
shown in every crisis the fear he entertained of giving the least order
which might cause an effusion of blood! "Would it be a brisk action?"
said the King. "It is impossible that it should be otherwise, Sire,"
replied the aide-decamp. Louis XVI. was unwilling to expose his family.
They therefore went to the house of a grocer, Mayor of Varennes. The
King began to speak, and gave a summary of his intentions in departing,
analogous to the declaration he had made at Paris. He spoke with warmth
and affability, and endeavoured to demonstrate to the people around him
that he had only put himself, by the step he had taken, into a fit
situation to treat with the Assembly, and to sanction with freedom the
constitution which he would maintain, though many of its articles were
incompatible with the dignity of the throne, and the force by which it
was necessary that the sovereign should be surrounded. Nothing could be
more affecting, added the Queen, than this moment, in which the King felt
bound to communicate to the very humblest class of his subjects his
principles, his wishes for the happiness of his people, and the motives
which had determined him to depart.
Whilst the King was speaking to this mayor, whose name was Sauce, the
Queen, seated at the farther end of the shop, among parcels of soap and
candles, endeavoured to make Madame Sauce understand that if she would
prevail upon her husband to make use of his municipal authority to cover
the flight of the King and his family, she would have the glory of having
contributed to restore tranquillity to France. This woman was moved;
she could not, without streaming eyes, see herself thus solicited by her
Queen; but she could not be got to say anything more than, "Bon Dieu,
Madame, it would be the destruction of M. Sauce; I love my King, but I
love my husband too, you must know, and he would be answerable, you see."
Whilst this strange scene was passing in the shop, the people, hearing
that the King was arrested, kept pouring in from all parts. M. de
Goguelat, making a last effort, demanded of the dragoons whether they
would protect the departure of the King; they replied only by murmurs,
dropping the points of their swords. Some person unknown fired a pistol
at M. de Goguelat; he was slightly wounded by the ball. M. Romeuf, aide-
de-camp to M. de La Fayette, arrived at that moment. He had been chosen,
after the 6th of October, 1789, by the commander of the Parisian guard to
be in constant attendance about the Queen. She reproached him bitterly
with the object of his mission. "If you wish to make your name
remarkable, monsieur," said the Queen to him, "you have chosen strange
and odious means, which will produce the most fatal consequences." This
officer wished to hasten their departure. The Queen, still cherishing
the hope of seeing M. de Bouille arrive with a sufficient force to
extricate the King from his critical situation, prolonged her stay at
Varennes by every means in her power.
The Dauphin's first woman pretended to be taken ill with a violent colic,
and threw herself upon a bed, in the hope of aiding the designs of her
superiors; she went and implored for assistance. The Queen understood
her perfectly well, and refused to leave one who had devoted herself to
follow them in such a state of suffering. But no delay in departing was
allowed. The three Body Guards (Valory, Du Moustier, and Malden) were
gagged and fastened upon the seat of the carriage. A horde of National
Guards, animated with fury and the barbarous joy with which their fatal
triumph inspired them, surrounded the carriage of the royal family.
The three commissioners sent by the Assembly to meet the King, MM. de
Latour-Maubourg, Barnave, and Potion, joined them in the environs of
Epernay. The two last mentioned got into the King's carriage. The Queen
astonished me by the favourable opinion she had formed of Barnave.
When I quitted Paris a great many persons spoke of him only with horror.
She told me he was much altered, that he was full of talent and noble
feeling. "A feeling of pride which I cannot much blame in a young man
belonging to the Tiers Etat," she said, "made him applaud everything
which smoothed the road to rank and fame for that class in which he was
born. And if we get the power in our own hands again, Barnave's pardon
is already written on our hearts." The Queen added, that she had not the
same feeling towards those nobles who had joined the revolutionary party,
who had always received marks of favour, often to the injury of those
beneath them in rank, and who, born to be the safeguard of the monarchy,
could never be pardoned for having deserted it. She then told me that
Barnave's conduct upon the road was perfectly correct, while Potion's
republican rudeness was disgusting; that the latter ate and drank in the
King's berlin in a slovenly manner, throwing the bones of the fowls out
through the window at the risk of sending them even into the King's face;
lifting up his glass, when Madame Elisabeth poured him out wine, to show
her that there was enough, without saying a word; that this offensive
behaviour must have been intentional, because the man was not without
education; and that Barnave was hurt at it. On being pressed by the
Queen to take something, "Madame," replied Barnave, "on so solemn an
occasion the deputies of the National Assembly ought to occupy your
Majesties solely about their mission, and by no means about their wants."
In short, his respectful delicacy, his considerate attentions, and all
that he said, gained the esteem not only of the Queen, but of Madame
Elisabeth also.
The King began to talk to Petion about the situation of France, and the
motives of his conduct, which were founded upon the necessity of giving
to the executive power a strength necessary for its action, for the good
even of the constitutional act, since France could not be a republic.
"Not yet, 'tis true," replied Petion, "because the French are not ripe
enough for that." This audacious and cruel answer silenced the King, who
said no more until his arrival at Paris. Potion held the little Dauphin
upon his knees, and amused himself with curling the beautiful light hair
of the interesting child round his fingers; and, as he spoke with much
gesticulation, he pulled his locks hard enough to make the Dauphin cry
out. "Give me my son," said the Queen to him; "he is accustomed to
tenderness and delicacy, which render him little fit for such
familiarity."
The Chevalier de Dampierre was killed near the King's carriage upon
leaving Varennes. A poor village cure, some leagues from the place where
the crime was committed, was imprudent enough to draw near to speak to
the King; the cannibals who surrounded the carriage rushed upon him.
"Tigers," exclaimed Barnave, "have you ceased to be Frenchmen? Nation of
brave men, are you become a set of assassins?" These words alone saved
the cure, who was already upon the ground, from certain death. Barnave,
as he spoke to them, threw himself almost out of the coach window, and
Madame Elisabeth, affected by this noble burst of feeling, held him by
the skirt of his coat. The Queen, while speaking of this event, said
that on the most momentous occasions whimsical contrasts always struck
her, and that even at such a moment the pious Elisabeth holding Barnave
by the flap of his coat was a ludicrous sight.
The deputy was astonished in another way. Madame Elisabeth's comments
upon the state of France, her mild and persuasive eloquence, and the,
ease and simplicity with which she talked to him, yet without sacrificing
her dignity in the slightest degree, appeared to him unique, and his
heart, which was doubtless inclined to right principles though he had
followed the wrong path, was overcome by admiration. The conduct of the
two deputies convinced the Queen of the total separation between the
republican and constitutional parties. At the inns where she alighted
she had some private conversation with Barnave. The latter said a great
deal about the errors committed by the royalists during the Revolution,
adding that he had found the interest of the Court so feebly and so badly
defended that he had been frequently tempted to go and offer it, in
himself, an aspiring champion, who knew the spirit of the age and nation.
The Queen asked him what was the weapon he would have recommended her to
use.
"Popularity, Madame."
"And how could I use that," replied her Majesty, "of which I have been
deprived?"
"Ah! Madame, it was much more easy for you to regain it, than for me to
acquire it."
The Queen mainly attributed the arrest at Varennes to M. de Goguelat; she
said he calculated the time that would be spent in the journey
erroneously. He performed that from Montmedy to Paris before taking the
King's last orders, alone in a post-chaise, and he founded all his
calculations upon the time he spent thus. The trial has been made since,
and it was found that a light carriage without any courier was nearly
three hours less in running the distance than a heavy carriage preceded
by a courier.
The Queen also blamed him for having quitted the high-road at Pont-de-
Sommevelle, where the carriage was to meet the forty hussars commanded by
him. She thought that he ought to have dispersed the very small number
of people at Varennes, and not have asked the hussars whether they were
for the King or the nation; that, particularly, he ought to have avoided
taking the King's orders, as he was previously aware of the reply
M. d'Inisdal had received when it was proposed to carry off the King.
After all that the Queen had said to me respecting the mistakes made by
M. de Goguelat, I thought him of course disgraced. What was my surprise
when, having been set at liberty after the amnesty which followed the
acceptance of the constitution, he presented himself to the Queen, and
was received with the greatest kindness! She said he had done what he
could, and that his zeal ought to form an excuse for all the rest.
[Full details of the preparations for the flight to Varennes will be
found in "Le Comte de Fersen et La Cour de France," Paris, Didot et
Cie, 1878 (a review of which was given in the Quarterly Review for
July, 1880), and in the "Memoirs of the Marquis de Bouille", London,
Cadell and Davis, 1797; Count Fersen being the person who planned
the actual escape, and De Bouille being in command of the army which
was to receive the King. The plan was excellent, and would
certainly have succeeded, if it had not been for the royal family
themselves. Marie Antoinette, it will have been seen by Madame
Campan's account, nearly wrecked the plan from inability to do
without a large dressing or travelling case. The King did a more
fatal thing. De Bouille had pointed out the necessity for having in
the King's carriage an officer knowing the route, and able to show
himself to give all directions, and a proper person had been
provided. The King, however, objected, as "he could not have the
Marquis d'Agoult in the same carriage with himself; the governess of
the royal children, who was to accompany them, having refused to
abandon her privilege of constantly remaining with her charge." See
"De Bouille," pp. 307 and 334. Thus, when Louis was recognised at
the window of the carriage by Drouet, he was lost by the very danger
that had been foreseen, and this wretched piece of etiquette led to
his death.]
When the royal family was brought back from Varennes to the Tuileries,
the Queen's attendants found the greatest difficulty in making their way
to her apartments; everything had been arranged so that the wardrobe
woman, who had acted as spy, should have the service; and she was to be
assisted in it only by her sister and her sister's daughter.
M. de Gouvion, M. de La Fayette's aide-de-camp, had this woman's portrait
placed at the foot of the staircase which led to the Queen's apartments,
in order that the sentinel should not permit any other women to make
their way in. As soon as the Queen was informed of this contemptible
precaution, she told the King of it, who sent to ascertain the fact.
His Majesty then called for M. de La Fayette, claimed freedom in his
household, and particularly in that of the Queen, and ordered him to send
a woman in, whom no one but himself could confide out of the palace.
M. de La Fayette was obliged to comply.
On the day when the return of the royal family was expected, there were
no carriages in motion in the streets of Paris. Five or six of the
Queen's women, after being refused admittance at all the other gates,
went with one of my sisters to that of the Feuillans, insisting that the
sentinel should admit them. The poissardes attacked them for their
boldness in resisting the order excluding them. One of them seized my
sister by the arm, calling her the slave of the Austrian. "Hear me,"
said my sister to her, "I have been attached to the Queen ever since I
was fifteen years of age; she gave me my marriage portion; I served her
when she was powerful and happy. She is now unfortunate. Ought I to
abandon her?"--"She is right," cried the poissardes; "she ought not to
abandon her mistress; let us make an entry for them." They instantly
surrounded the sentinel, forced the passage, and introduced the Queen's
women, accompanying them to the terrace of the Feuillans. One of these
furies, whom the slightest impulse would have driven to tear my sister to
pieces, taking her under her protection, gave her advice by which she
might reach the palace in safety. "But of all things, my dear friend,"
said she to her, "pull off that green ribbon sash; it is the color of
that D'Artois, whom we will never forgive."
The measures adopted for guarding the King were rigorous with respect to
the entrance into the palace, and insulting as to his private apartments.
The commandants of battalion, stationed in the salon called the grand
cabinet, and which led to the Queen's bedchamber, were ordered to keep
the door of it always open, in order that they might have their eyes
upon the royal family. The King shut this door one day; the officer of
the guard opened it, and told him such were his orders, and that he would
always open it; so that his Majesty in shutting it gave himself useless
trouble. It remained open even during the night, when the Queen was in
bed; and the officer placed himself in an armchair between the two doors,
with his head turned towards her Majesty. They only obtained permission
to have the inner door shut when the Queen was rising. The Queen had the
bed of her first femme de chambre placed very near her own; this bed,
which ran on casters, and was furnished with curtains, hid her from the
officer's sight.
Madame de Jarjaye, my companion, who continued her functions during the
whole period of my absence, told me that one night the commandant of
battalion, who slept between the two doors, seeing that she was sleeping
soundly, and that the Queen was awake, quitted his post and went close to
her Majesty, to advise her as to the line of conduct she should pursue.
Although she had the kindness to desire him to speak lower in order that
he might not disturb Madame de Jarjaye's rest, the latter awoke, and
nearly died with fright at seeing a man in the uniform of the Parisian
guard so near the Queen's bed. Her Majesty comforted her, and told her
not to rise; that the person she saw was a good Frenchman, who was
deceived respecting the intentions and situation of his sovereign and
herself, but whose conversation showed sincere attachment to the King.
There was a sentinel in the corridor which runs behind the apartments in
question, where there is a staircase, which was at that time an inner
one, and enabled the King and Queen to communicate freely. This post,
which was very onerous, because it was to be kept four and twenty hours,
was often claimed by Saint Prig, an actor belonging to the Theatre
Francais. He took it upon himself sometimes to contrive brief interviews
between the King and Queen in this corridor. He left them at a distance,
and gave them warning if he heard the slightest noise. M. Collot,
commandant of battalion of the National Guard, who was charged with the
military duty of the Queen's household, in like manner softened down,
so far as he could with prudence, all, the revolting orders he received;
for instance, one to follow the Queen to the very door of her wardrobe
was never executed. An officer of the Parisian guard dared to speak
insolently of the Queen in her own apartment. M. Collot wished to make a
complaint to M. de La Fayette against him, and have him dismissed. The
Queen opposed it, and condescended to say a few words of explanation and
kindness to the man; he instantly became one of her most devoted
partisans.
The first time I saw her Majesty after the unfortunate catastrophe of the
Varennes journey, I found her getting out of bed; her features were not
very much altered; but after the first kind words she uttered to me she
took off her cap and desired me to observe the effect which grief had
produced upon her hair. It had become, in one single night, as white as
that of a woman of seventy. Her Majesty showed me a ring she had just
had mounted for the Princesse de Lamballe; it contained a lock of her
whitened hair, with the inscription, "Blanched by sorrow." At the period
of the acceptance of the constitution the Princess wished to return to
France. The Queen, who had no expectation that tranquillity would be
restored, opposed this; but the attachment of Madame de Lamballe to the
royal family impelled her to come and seek death.
When I returned to Paris most of the harsh precautions were abandoned;
the doors were not kept open; greater respect was paid to the sovereign;
it was known that the constitution soon to be completed would be
accepted, and a better order of things was hoped for.
CHAPTER VI.
On my arrival at Paris on the 25th of August I found the state of feeling
there much more temperate than I had dared to hope. The conversation
generally ran upon the acceptance of the constitution, and the fetes
which would be given in consequence. The struggle between the Jacobins
and the constitutionals on the 17th of July, 1791, nevertheless had
thrown the Queen into great terror for some moments; and the firing of
the cannon from the Champ de Mars upon a party which called for a trial
of the King, and the leaders of which were in the very bosom of the
Assembly, left the most gloomy impressions upon her mind.
The constitutionals, the Queen's connection with whom was not slackened
by the intervention of the three members already mentioned, had
faithfully served the royal family during their detention.
"We still hold the wire by which this popular mass is moved," said
Barnave to M. de J----- one day, at the same time showing him a large
volume, in which the names of all those who were influenced with the
power of gold alone were registered. It was at that time proposed to
hire a considerable number of persons in order to secure loud
acclamations when the King and his family should make their appearance at
the play upon the acceptance of the constitution. That day, which
afforded a glimmering hope of tranquillity, was the 14th of September;
the fetes were brilliant; but already fresh anxieties forbade the royal
family to encourage much hope.
The Legislative Assembly, which had just succeeded the Constituent
Assembly (October, 1791), founded its conduct upon the wildest republican
principles; created from the midst of popular assemblies, it was wholly
inspired by the spirit which animated them. The constitution, as I have
said, was presented to the King on the 3d of September, 1791. The
ministers, with the exception of M. de Montmorin, insisted upon the
necessity of accepting the constitutional act in its entirety. The
Prince de Kaunitz--[Minister of Austria]-- was of the same opinion.
Malouet wished the King to express himself candidly respecting any errors
or dangers that he might observe in the constitution. But Duport and
Barnave, alarmed at the spirit prevailing in the Jacobin Club,
[The extreme revolutionary party, so called from the club,
originally "Breton," then "Amis de la Constitution," sitting at the
convent of the Dominicans (called in France Jacobins) of the Rue
Saint Honore.]
and even in the Assembly, where Robespierre had already denounced them as
traitors to the country, and dreading still greater evils, added their
opinions to those of the majority of the ministers and M. de Kaunitz;
those who really desired that the constitution should be maintained
advised that it should not be accepted thus literally. The King seemed
inclined to this advice; and this is one of the strongest proofs of his
sincerity.
Alexandre Lameth, Duport, and Barnave, still relying on the resources of
their party, hoped to have credit for directing the King through the
influence they believed they had acquired over the mind of the Queen.
They also consulted people of acknowledged talent, but belonging to no
council nor to any assembly. Among these was M. Dubucq, formerly
intendant of the marine and of the colonies. He answered laconically in
one phrase: "Prevent disorder from organising itself."
The letter written by the King to the Assembly, claiming to accept the
constitution in the very place where it had been created, and where he
announced he would be on the 14th September at mid-day, was received with
transport, and the reading was repeatedly interrupted by plaudits. The
sitting terminated amidst the greatest enthusiasm, and M. de La Fayette
obtained the release of all those who were detained on account of the
King's journey [to Varennes], the abandonment of all proceedings relative
to the events of the Revolution, and the discontinuance of the use of
passports and of temporary restraints upon free travelling, as well in
the interior as without. The whole was conceded by acclamation. Sixty
members were deputed to go to the King and express to him fully the
satisfaction his Majesty's letter had given. The Keeper of the Seals
quitted the chamber, in the midst of applause, to precede the deputation
to the King.
The King answered the speech addressed to him, and concluded by saying to
the Assembly that a decree of that morning, which had abolished the order
of the Holy Ghost, had left him and his son alone permission to be
decorated with it; but that an order having no value in his eyes, save
for the power of conferring it, he would not use it.
The Queen, her son, and Madame, were at the door of the chamber into
which the deputation was admitted. The King said to the deputies, "You
see there my wife and children, who participate in my sentiments;" and
the Queen herself confirmed the King's assurance. These apparent marks
of confidence were very inconsistent with the agitated state of her mind.
"These people want no sovereigns," said she. "We shall fall before their
treacherous though well-planned tactics; they are demolishing the
monarchy stone by stone."
Next day the particulars of the reception of the deputies by the King
were reported to the Assembly, and excited warm approbation. But the
President having put the question whether the Assembly ought not to
remain seated while the King took the oath "Certainly," was repeated by
many voices; "and the King, standing, uncovered." M. Malouet observed
that there was no occasion on which the nation, assembled in the presence
of the King, did not acknowledge him as its head; that the omission to
treat the head of the State with the respect due to him would be an
offence to the nation, as well as to the monarch. He moved that the King
should take the oath standing, and that the Assembly should also stand
while he was doing so. M. Malouet's observations would have carried the
decree, but a deputy from Brittany exclaimed, with a shrill voice, that
he had an amendment to propose which would render all unanimous. "Let us
decree," said he, "that M. Malouet, and whoever else shall so please, may
have leave to receive the King upon their knees; but let us stick to the
decree."
The King repaired to the chamber at mid-day. His speech was followed by
plaudits which lasted several minutes. After the signing of the
constitutional act all sat down. The President rose to deliver his
speech; but after he had begun, perceiving that the King did not rise to
hear him, he sat down again. His speech made a powerful impression; the
sentence with which it concluded excited fresh acclamations, cries of
"Bravo!" and "Vive le Roi!"--"Sire, "said he, "how important in our
eyes, and how dear to our hearts--how sublime a feature in our history--
must be the epoch of that regeneration which gives citizens to France,
and a country to Frenchmen,--to you, as a king, a new title of greatness
and glory, and, as a man, a source of new enjoyment." The whole Assembly
accompanied the King on his return, amidst the people's cries of
happiness, military music, and salvoes of artillery.
At length I hoped to see a return of that tranquillity which had so long
vanished from the countenances of my august master and mistress. Their
suite left them in the salon; the Queen hastily saluted the ladies, and
returned much affected; the King followed her, and, throwing himself into
an armchair, put his handkerchief to his eyes. "Ah! Madame," cried he,
his voice choked by tears, "why were you present at this sitting? to
witness--" these words were interrupted by sobs. The Queen threw herself
upon her knees before him, and pressed him in her arms. I remained with
them, not from any blamable curiosity, but from a stupefaction which
rendered me incapable of determining what I ought to do. The Queen said
to me, "Oh! go, go!" with an accent which expressed, "Do not remain to
see the dejection and despair of your sovereign!" I withdrew, struck
with the contrast between the shouts of joy without the palace and the
profound grief which oppressed the sovereigns within. Half an hour
afterwards the Queen sent for me. She desired to see M. de Goguelat, to
announce to him his departure on that very night for Vienna. The renewed
attacks upon the dignity of the throne which had been made during the
sitting; the spirit of an Assembly worse than the former; the monarch put
upon a level with the President, without any deference to the throne,--
all this proclaimed but too loudly that the sovereignty itself was aimed
at. The Queen no longer saw any ground for hope from the Provinces.
The King wrote to the Emperor; she told me that she would herself,
at midnight, bring the letter which M. de Goguelat was to bear to the
Emperor, to my room.
During all the remainder of the day the Chateau and the Tuileries were
crowded; the illuminations were magnificent. The King and Queen were
requested to take an airing in their carriage in the Champs-Elysees,
escorted by the aides-decamp, and leaders of the Parisian army, the
Constitutional Guard not being at the time organised. Many shouts of
"Vive le Roi!" were heard; but as often as they ceased, one of the mob,
who never quitted the door of the King's carriage for a single instant,
exclaimed with a stentorian voice, "No, don't believe them! Vive la
Nation!" This ill-omened cry struck terror into the Queen.
A few days afterwards M. de Montmorin sent to say he wanted to speak to
me; that he would come to me, if he were not apprehensive his doing so
would attract observation; and that he thought it would appear less
conspicuous if he should see me in the Queen's great closet at a time
which he specified, and when nobody would be there. I went. After
having made some polite observations upon the services I had already
performed, and those I might yet perform, for my master and mistress, he
spoke to me of the King's imminent danger, of the plots which were
hatching, and of the lamentable composition of the Legislative Assembly;
and he particularly dwelt upon the necessity of appearing, by prudent
remarks, determined as much as possible to abide by the act the King had
just recognised. I told him that could not be done without committing
ourselves in the eyes of the royalist party, with which moderation was a
crime; that it was painful to hear ourselves taxed with being
constitutionalists, at the same time that it was our opinion that the
only constitution which was consistent with the King's honour, and the
happiness and tranquillity of his people, was the absolute power of the
sovereign; that this was my creed, and it would pain me to give any room
for suspicion that I was wavering in it.
"Could you ever believe," said he, "that I should desire any other order
of things? Have you any doubt of my attachment to the King's person, and
the maintenance of his rights?"
"I know it, Count," replied I; "but you are not ignorant that you lie
under the imputation of having adopted revolutionary ideas."
"Well, madame, have resolution enough to dissemble and to conceal your
real sentiments; dissimulation was never more necessary. Endeavours are
being made to paralyse the evil intentions of the factious as much as
possible; but we must not be counteracted here by certain dangerous
expressions which are circulated in Paris as coming from the King and
Queen."
I told him that I had been already struck with apprehension of the evil
which might be done by the intemperate observations of persons who had no
power to act; and that I had felt ill consequences from having repeatedly
enjoined silence on those in the Queen's service.
"I know that," said the Count; "the Queen informed me of it, and that
determined me to come and request you to increase and keep alive, as much
as you can, that spirit of discretion which is so necessary."
While the household of the King and Queen were a prey to all these fears,
the festivities in celebration of the acceptance of the constitution
proceeded. Their Majesties went to the Opera; the audience consisted
entirely of persons who sided with the King, and on that day the
happiness of seeing him for a short time surrounded by faithful subjects
might be enjoyed. The acclamations were then sincere.
"La Coquette Corrigee" had been selected for representation at the
Theatre Francais solely because it was the piece in which Mademoiselle
Contat shone most. Yet the notions propagated by the Queen's enemies
coinciding in my mind with the name of the play, I thought the choice
very ill-judged. I was at a loss, however, how to tell her Majesty so;
but sincere attachment gives courage. I explained myself; she was
obliged to me, and desired that another play might be performed. They
accordingly selected "La Gouvernante," almost equally unfortunate in
title.
The Queen, Madame the King's daughter, and Madame Elisabeth were all well
received on this occasion. It is true that the opinions and feelings of
the spectators in the boxes could not be otherwise than favourable, and
great pains had been taken, previously to these two performances, to fill
the pit with proper persons. But, on the other hand, the Jacobins took
the same precautions on their side at the Theatre Italien, and the tumult
was excessive there. The play was Gretry's "Les Evenements Imprevus."
Unfortunately, Madame Dugazon thought proper to bow to the Queen as she
sang the words, "Ah, how I love my mistress!" in a duet. Above twenty
voices immediately exclaimed from the pit, "No mistress! no master!
liberty!" A few replied from the boxes and slips, "Vive le Roi! vive la
Reine!" Those in the pit answered, "No master! no Queen!" The quarrel
increased; the pit formed into parties; they began fighting, and the
Jacobins were beaten; tufts of their black hair flew about the theatre.--
[At this time none but the Jacobins had discontinued the use of
hairpowder.--MADAME CAMPAN.]-- A military guard arrived. The Faubourg
St. Antoine, hearing of what was going on at the Theatre Italien, flocked
together, and began to talk of marching towards the scene of action. The
Queen preserved the calmest demeanour; the commandants of the guard
surrounded and encouraged her; they conducted themselves promptly and
discreetly. No accident happened. The Queen was highly applauded as she
quitted the theatre; it was the last time she was ever in one!
While couriers were bearing confidential letters from the King to the
Princes, his brothers, and to the foreign sovereigns, the Assembly
invited him to write to the Princes in order to induce them to return to
France. The King desired the Abbe de Montesquiou to write the letter he
was to send; this letter, which was admirably composed in a simple and
affecting style, suited to the character of Louis XVI., and filled with
very powerful arguments in favour of the advantages to be derived from
adopting the principles of the constitution, was confided to me by the
King, who desired me to make him a copy of it.
At this period M. M-----, one of the intendants of Monsieur's household,
obtained a passport from the Assembly to join that Prince on business
relative to his domestic concerns. The Queen selected him to be the
bearer of this letter. She determined to give it to him herself, and to
inform him of its object. I was astonished at her choice of this
courier. The Queen assured me he was exactly the man for her purpose,
that she relied even upon his indiscretion, and that it was merely
necessary that the letter from the King to his brothers should be known
to exist. The Princes were doubtless informed beforehand on the subject
by the private correspondence. Monsieur nevertheless manifested some
degree of surprise, and the messenger returned more grieved than pleased
at this mark of confidence, which nearly cost him his life during the
Reign of Terror.
Among the causes of uneasiness to the Queen there was one which was but
too well founded, the thoughtlessness of the French whom she sent to
foreign Courts. She used to say that they had no sooner passed the
frontiers than they disclosed the most secret matters relative to the
King's private sentiments, and that the leaders of the Revolution were
informed of them through their agents, many of whom were Frenchmen who
passed themselves off as emigrants in the cause of their King.
After the acceptance of the constitution, the formation of the King's
household, as well military as civil, formed a subject of attention.
The Duc de Brissac had the command of the Constitutional Guard, which was
composed of officers and men selected from the regiments, and of several
officers drawn from the National Guard of Paris. The King was satisfied
with the feelings and conduct of this band, which, as is well known,
existed but a very short time.
The new constitution abolished what were called honours, and the
prerogatives belonging to them. The Duchesse de Duras resigned her place
of lady of the bedchamber, not choosing to lose her right to the tabouret
at Court. This step hurt the Queen, who saw herself forsaken through the
loss of a petty privilege at a time when her own rights and even life
were so hotly attacked. Many ladies of rank left the Court for the same
reason. However, the King and Queen did not dare to form the civil part
of their household, lest by giving the new names of the posts they should
acknowledge the abolition of the old ones, and also lest they should
admit into the highest positions persons not calculated to fill them
well. Some time was spent in discussing the question, whether the
household should be formed without chevaliers and without ladies of
honour. The Queen's constitutional advisers were of opinion that the
Assembly, having decreed a civil list adequate to uphold the splendour of
the throne, would be dissatisfied at seeing the King adopting only a
military household, and not forming his civil household upon the new
constitutional plan. "How is it, Madame," wrote Barnave to the Queen,
"that you will persist in giving these people even the smallest doubt as
to your sentiments? When they decree you a civil and a military
household, you, like young Achilles among the daughters of Lycomedes,
eagerly seize the sword and scorn the mere ornaments." The Queen
persisted in her determination to have no civil household. "If," said
she, "this constitutional household be formed, not a single person of
rank will remain with us, and upon a change of affairs we should be
obliged to discharge the persons received into their place."
"Perhaps," added she, "perhaps I might find one day that I had saved the
nobility, if I now had resolution enough to afflict them for a time; I
have it not. When any measure which injures them is wrested from us they
sulk with me; nobody comes to my card party; the King goes unattended to
bed. No allowance is made for political necessity; we are punished for
our very misfortunes."
The Queen wrote almost all day, and spent part of the night in reading:
her courage supported her physical strength; her disposition was not at
all soured by misfortunes, and she was never seen in an ill-humour for a
moment. She was, however, held up to the people as a woman absolutely
furious and mad whenever the rights of the Crown were in any way
attacked.
I was with her one day at one of her windows. We saw a man plainly
dressed, like an ecclesiastic, surrounded by an immense crowd. The Queen
imagined it was some abbe whom they were about to throw into the basin of
the Tuileries; she hastily opened her window and sent a valet de chambre
to know what was going forward in the garden. It was Abbe Gregoire, whom
the men and women of the tribunes were bringing back in triumph, on
account of a motion he had just made in the National Assembly against the
royal authority. On the following day the democratic journalists
described the Queen as witnessing this triumph, and showing, by
expressive gestures at her window, how highly she was exasperated by the
honours conferred upon the patriot.
The correspondence between the Queen and the foreign powers was carried
on in cipher. That to which she gave the preference can never be
detected; but the greatest patience is requisite for its use. Each
correspondent must have a copy of the same edition of some work. She
selected "Paul and Virginia." The page and line in which the letters
required, and occasionally a monosyllable, are to be found are pointed
out in ciphers agreed upon. I assisted her in finding the letters, and
frequently I made an exact copy for her of all that she had ciphered,
without knowing a single word of its meaning.
There were always several secret committees in Paris occupied in
collecting information for the King respecting the measures of the
factions, and in influencing some of the committees of the Assembly.
M. Bertrand de Molleville was in close correspondence with the Queen.
The King employed M. Talon and others; much money was expended through
the latter channel for the secret measures. The Queen had no confidence
in them. M. de Laporte, minister of the civil list and of the household,
also attempted to give a bias to public opinion by means of hireling
publications; but these papers influenced none but the royalist party,
which did not need influencing. M. de Laporte had a private police which
gave him some useful information.
I determined to sacrifice myself to my duty, but by no means to any
intrigue, and I thought that, circumstanced as I was, I ought to confine
myself to obeying the Queen's orders. I frequently sent off couriers to
foreign countries, and they were never discovered, so many precautions
did I take. I am indebted for the preservation of my own existence to
the care I took never to admit any deputy to my abode, and to refuse all
interviews which even people of the highest importance often requested of
me; but this line of conduct exposed me to every species of ill-will,
and on the same day I saw myself denounced by Prud'homme, in his 'Gazette
Revolutionnaire', as capable of making an aristocrat of the mother of the
Gracchi, if a person so dangerous as myself could have got into her
household; and by Gauthier's Gazette Royaliste, as a monarchist, a
constitutionalist, more dangerous to the Queen's interests than a
Jacobin.
At this period an event with which I had nothing to do placed me in a
still more critical situation. My brother, M. Genet, began his
diplomatic career successfully. At eighteen he was attached to the
embassy to Vienna; at twenty he was appointed chief secretary of Legation
in England, on occasion of the peace of 1783. A memorial which he
presented to M. de Vergennes upon the dangers of the treaty of commerce
then entered into with England gave offence to M. de Calonne, a patron of
that treaty, and particularly to M. Gerard de Rayneval, chief clerk for
foreign affairs. So long as M. de Vergennes lived, having upon my
father's death declared himself the protector of my brother, he supported
him against the enemies his views had created. But on his death M. de
Montmorin, being much in need of the long experience in business which he
found in M. de Rayneval, was guided solely by the latter. The office of
which my brother was the head was suppressed. He then went to St.
Petersburg, strongly recommended to the Comte de Segur, minister from
France to that Court, who appointed him secretary of Legation. Some time
afterwards the Comte de Segur left him at St. Petersburg, charged with
the affairs of France. After his return from Russia, M. Genet was
appointed ambassador to the United States by the party called Girondists,
the deputies who headed it being from the department of the Gironde. He
was recalled by the Robespierre party, which overthrew the former
faction, on the 31st of May, 1793, and condemned to appear before the
Convention. Vice-President Clinton, at that time Governor of New York,
offered him an asylum in his house and the hand of his daughter, and M.
Genet established himself prosperously in America.
When my brother quitted Versailles he was much hurt at being deprived of
a considerable income for having penned a memorial which his zeal alone
had dictated, and the importance of which was afterwards but too well
understood. I perceived from his correspondence that he inclined to some
of the new notions. He told me it was right he should no longer conceal
from me that he sided with the constitutional party; that the King had in
fact commanded it, having himself accepted the constitution; that he
would proceed firmly in that course, because in this case
disingenuousness would be fatal, and that he took that side of the
question because he had had it proved to him that the foreign powers
would not serve the King's cause without advancing pretensions prompted
by long-standing interests, which always would influence their councils;
that he saw no salvation for the King and Queen but from within France,
and that he would serve the constitutional King as he served him before
the Revolution. And lastly, he requested me to impart to the Queen the
real sentiments of one of his Majesty's agents at a foreign Court. I
immediately went to the Queen and gave her my brother's letter; she read
it attentively, and said, "This is the letter of a young man led astray
by discontent and ambition; I know you do not think as he does; do not
fear that you will lose the confidence of the King and myself." I
offered to discontinue all correspondence with my brother; she opposed
that, saying it would be dangerous. I then entreated she would permit me
in future to show her my own and my brother's letters, to which she
consented. I wrote warmly to my brother against the course he had
adopted. I sent my letters by sure channels; he answered me by the post,
and no longer touched upon anything but family affairs. Once only he
informed me that if I should write to him respecting the affairs of the
day he would give me no answer. "Serve your august mistress with the
unbounded devotion which is due from you," said he, "and let us each do
our duty. I will only observe to you that at Paris the fogs of the Seine
often prevent people from seeing that immense capital, even from the
Pavilion of Flora, and I see it more clearly from St. Petersburg."
The Queen said, as she read this letter, "Perhaps he speaks but too
truly; who can decide upon so disastrous a position as ours has become?"
The day on which I gave the Queen my brother's first letter to read she
had several audiences to give to ladies and other persons belonging to
the Court, who came on purpose to inform her that my brother was an
avowed constitutionalist and revolutionist. The Queen replied, "I know
it; Madame Campan has told me so." Persons jealous of my situation
having subjected me to mortifications, and these unpleasant circumstances
recurring daily, I requested the Queen's permission to withdraw from
Court. She exclaimed against the very idea, represented it to me as
extremely dangerous for my own reputation, and had the kindness to add
that, for my sake as well as for her own, she never would consent to it.
After this conversation I retired to my apartment. A few minutes later a
footman brought me this note from the Queen: "I have never ceased to give
you and yours proofs of my attachment; I wish to tell you in writing that
I have full faith in your honour and fidelity, as well as in your other
good qualities; and that I ever rely on the zeal and address you exert to
serve me."
[I had just received this letter from the Queen when M. de la
Chapelle, commissary-general of the King's household, and head of
the offices of M. de Laporte, minister of the civil list, came to
see me. The palace having been already sacked by the brigands on
the 20th of June, 1792, he proposed that I should entrust the paper
to him, that he might place it in a safer situation than the
apartments of the Queen. When he returned into his offices he
placed the letter she had condescended to write to me behind a large
picture in his closet; but on the loth of August M. de la Chapelle
was thrown into the prisons of the Abbaye, and the committee of
public safety established themselves in his offices, whence they
issued all their decrees of death. There it was that a villainous
servant belonging to M. de Laporte went to declare that in the
minister's apartments, under a board in the floor, a number of
papers would be found. They were brought forth, and M. de Laporte
was sent to the scaffold, where he suffered for having betrayed the
State by serving his master and sovereign. M. de la Chapelle was
saved, as if by a miracle, from the massacres of the 2d of
September. The committee of public safety having removed to the
King's apartments at the Tuileries, M. de la Chapelle had permission
to return to his closet to take away some property belonging to him.
Turning round the picture, behind which he had hidden the Queen's
letter, he found it in the place into which he had slipped it, and,
delighted to see that I was safe from the ill consequences the
discovery of this paper might have brought upon me, he burnt it
instantly. In times of danger a mere nothing may save life or
destroy it.--MADAME CAMPAN]
At the moment that I was going to express my gratitude to the Queen I
heard a tapping at the door of my room, which opened upon the Queen's
inner corridor. I opened it; it was the King. I was confused; he
perceived it, and said to me, kindly: "I alarm you, Madame Campan; I
come, however, to comfort you; the Queen has told me how much she is hurt
at the injustice of several persons towards you. But how is it that you
complain of injustice and calumny when you see that we are victims of
them? In some of your companions it is jealousy; in the people belonging
to the Court it is anxiety. Our situation is so disastrous, and we have
met with so much ingratitude and treachery, that the apprehensions of
those who love us are excusable! I could quiet them by telling them all
the secret services you perform for us daily; but I will not do it. Out
of good-will to you they would repeat all I should say, and you would be
lost with the Assembly. It is much better, both for you and for us, that
you should be thought a constitutionalist. It has been mentioned to me a
hundred times already; I have never contradicted it; but I come to give
you my word that if we are fortunate enough to see an end of all this, I
will, at the Queen's residence, and in the presence of my brothers,
relate the important services you have rendered us, and I will recompense
you and your son for them." I threw myself at the King's feet and kissed
his hand. He raised me up, saying, "Come, come, do not grieve; the
Queen, who loves you, confides in you as I do."
Down to the day of the acceptance it was impossible to introduce Barnave
into the interior of the palace; but when the Queen was free from the
inner guard she said she would see him. The very great precautions which
it was necessary for the deputy to take in order to conceal his
connection with the King and Queen compelled them to spend two hours
waiting for him in one of the corridors of the Tuileries, and all in
vain. The first day that he was to be admitted, a man whom Barnave knew
to be dangerous having met him in the courtyard of the palace, he
determined to cross it without stopping, and walked in the gardens in
order to lull suspicion. I was desired to wait for Barnave at a little
door belonging to the entresols of the palace, with my hand upon the open
lock. I was in that position for an hour. The King came to me
frequently, and always to speak to me of the uneasiness which a servant
belonging to the Chateau, who was a patriot, gave him. He came again to
ask me whether I had heard the door called de Decret opened. I assured
him nobody had been in the corridor, and he became easy. He was
dreadfully apprehensive that his connection with Barnave would be
discovered. "It would," said the King, "be a ground for grave
accusations, and the unfortunate man would be lost." I then ventured to
remind his Majesty that as Barnave was not the only one in the secret of
the business which brought him in contact with their Majesties, one of
his colleagues might be induced to speak of the association with which
they were honoured, and that in letting them know by my presence that I
also was informed of it, a risk was incurred of removing from those
gentlemen part of the responsibility of the secret. Upon this
observation the King quitted me hastily and returned a moment afterwards
with the Queen. "Give me your place," said she; "I will wait for him in
my turn. You have convinced the King. We must not increase in their
eyes the number of persons informed of their communications with us."
The police of M. de Laporte, intendant of the civil list, apprised him,
as early as the latter end of 1791, that a man belonging to the King's
offices who had set up as a pastrycook at the Palais Royal was about to
resume the duties of his situation, which had devolved upon him again on
the death of one who held it for life; that he was so furious a Jacobin
that he had dared to say it would be a good thing for France if the
King's days were shortened. His duty was confined to making the pastry;
he was closely watched by the head officers of the kitchen, who were
devoted to his Majesty; but it is so easy to introduce a subtle poison
into made dishes that it was determined the King and Queen should eat
only plain roast meat in future; that their bread should be brought to
them by M. Thierry de Ville-d'Avray, intendant of the smaller apartments,
and that he should likewise take upon himself to supply the wine. The
King was fond of pastry; I was directed to order some, as if for myself,
sometimes of one pastry-cook, and sometimes of another. The pounded
sugar, too, was kept in my room. The King, the Queen, and Madame
Elisabeth ate together, and nobody remained to wait on them. Each had a
dumb waiter and a little bell to call the servants when they were wanted.
M. Thierry used himself to bring me their Majesties' bread and wine, and
I locked them up in a private cupboard in the King's closet on the ground
floor. As soon as the King sat down to table I took in the pastry and
bread. All was hidden under the table lest it might be necessary to have
the servants in. The King thought it dangerous as well as distressing to
show any apprehension of attempts against his person, or any mistrust of
his officers of the kitchen. As he never drank a whole bottle of wine at
his meals (the Princesses drank nothing but water), he filled up that out
of which he had drunk about half from the bottle served up by the
officers of his butlery. I took it away after dinner. Although he never
ate any other pastry than that which I brought, he took care in the same
manner that it should seem that he had eaten of that served at table.
The lady who succeeded me found this duty all regulated, and she executed
it in the same manner; the public never was in possession of these
particulars, nor of the apprehensions which gave rise to them. At the
end of three or four months the police of M. de Laporte gave notice that
nothing more was to be dreaded from that sort of plot against the King's
life; that the plan was entirely changed; and that all the blows now to
be struck would be directed as much against the throne as against the
person of the sovereign.
There are others besides myself who know that at this time one of the
things about which the Queen most desired to be satisfied was the opinion
of the famous Pitt. She would sometimes say to me, "I never pronounce
the name of Pitt without feeling a chill like that of death." (I repeat
here her very expressions.) "That man is the mortal enemy of France; and
he takes a dreadful revenge for the impolitic support given by the
Cabinet of Versailles to the American insurgents. He wishes by our
destruction to guarantee the maritime power of his country forever
against the efforts made by the King to improve his marine power and
their happy results during the last war. He knows that it is not only
the King's policy but his private inclination to be solicitous about his
fleets, and that the most active step he has taken during his whole reign
was to visit the port of Cherbourg. Pitt had served the cause of the
French Revolution from the first disturbances; he will perhaps serve it
until its annihilation. I will endeavour to learn to what point he
intends to lead us, and I am sending M.----- to London for that purpose.
He has been intimately connected with Pitt, and they have often had
political conversations respecting the French Government. I will get him
to make him speak out, at least so far as such a man can speak out."
Some time afterwards the Queen told me that her secret envoy was returned
from London, and that all he had been able to wring from Pitt, whom he
found alarmingly reserved, was that he would not suffer the French
monarchy to perish; that to suffer the revolutionary spirit to erect an
organised republic in France would be a great error, affecting the
tranquillity of Europe. "Whenever," said she, "Pitt expressed himself
upon the necessity of supporting monarchy in France, he maintained the
most profound silence upon what concerns the monarch. The result of
these conversations is anything but encouraging; but, even as to that
monarchy which he wishes to save, will he have means and strength to save
it if he suffers us to fall?"
The death of the Emperor Leopold took place on the 1st of March, 1792.
When the news of this event reached the Tuileries, the Queen was gone
out. Upon her return I put the letter containing it into her hands. She
exclaimed that the Emperor had been poisoned; that she had remarked and
preserved a newspaper, in which, in an article upon the sitting of the
Jacobins, at the time when the Emperor Leopold declared for the
coalition, it was said, speaking of him, that a pie-crust would settle
that matter. At this period Barnave obtained the Queen's consent that he
should read all the letters she should write. He was fearful of private
correspondences that might hamper the plan marked out for her; he
mistrusted her Majesty's sincerity on this point; and the diversity of
counsels, and the necessity of yielding, on the one hand, to some of the
views of the constitutionalists, and on the other, to those of the French
Princes, and even of foreign Courts, were unfortunately the circumstances
which most rapidly impelled the Court towards its ruin.
However, the emigrants showed great apprehensions of the consequences
which might follow in the interior from a connection with the
constitutionalists, whom they described as a party existing only in idea,
and totally without means of repairing their errors. The Jacobins were
preferred to them, because, said they, there would be no treaty to be
made with any one at the moment of extricating the King and his family
from the abyss in which they were plunged.
CHAPTER VII.
In the beginning of the year 1792, a worthy priest requested a private
interview with me. He had learned the existence of a new libel by Madame
de Lamotte. He told me that the people who came from London to get it
printed in Paris only desired gain, and that they were ready to deliver
the manuscript to him for a thousand louis, if he could find any friend
of the Queen disposed to make that sacrifice for her peace; that he had
thought of me, and if her Majesty would give him the twenty-four thousand
francs, he would hand the manuscript to me.
I communicated this proposal to the Queen, who rejected it, and desired
me to answer that at the time when she had power to punish the hawkers of
these libels she deemed them so atrocious and incredible that she
despised them too much to stop them; that if she were imprudent and weak
enough to buy a single one of them, the Jacobins might possibly discover
the circumstance through their espionage; that were this libel brought
up, it would be printed nevertheless, and would be much more dangerous
when they apprised the public of the means she had used to suppress it.
Baron d'Aubier, gentleman-in-ordinary to the King, and my particular
friend, had a good memory and a clear way of communicating the substance
of the debates and decrees of the National Assembly. I went daily to the
Queen's apartments to repeat all this to the King, who used to say, on
seeing me, "Ah! here's the Postillon par Calais,"--a newspaper of the
time.
M. d'Aubier one day said to me: "The Assembly has been much occupied with
an information laid by the workmen of the Sevres manufactory. They
brought to the President's office a bundle of pamphlets which they said
were the life of Marie Antoinette. The director of the manufactory was
ordered up to the bar, and declared he had received orders to burn the
printed sheets in question in the furnaces used for baking his china."
While I was relating this business to the Queen the King coloured and
held his head down over his plate. The Queen said to him, "Do you know
anything about this, Sire?" The King made no answer. Madame Elisabeth
requested him to explain what it meant. Louis was still silent. I
withdrew hastily. A few minutes afterwards the Queen came to my room and
informed me that the King, out of regard for her, had purchased the whole
edition struck off from the manuscript which I had mentioned to her, and
that M. de Laporte had not been able to devise any more secret way of
destroying the work than that of having it burnt at Sevres, among two
hundred workmen, one hundred and eighty of whom must, in all probability,
be Jacobins! She told me she had concealed her vexation from the King;
that he was in consternation, and that she could say nothing, since his
good intentions and his affection for her had been the cause of the
mistake.
[M. de Laporte had by order of the King bought up the whole edition
of the "Memoirs" of the notorious Madame de Lamotte against the
Queen. Instead of destroying them immediately, he shut them up in
one of the closets in his house, The alarming and rapid growth of
the rebellion, the arrogance of the crowd of brigands, who in great
measure composed the populace of Paris, and the fresh excesses daily
resulting from it, rendered the intendant of the civil list
apprehensive that some mob might break into his house, carry off
these "Memoirs," and spread them among the public. In order to
prevent this he gave orders to have the "Memoirs" burnt with every
necessary precaution; and the clerk who received the order entrusted
the execution of it to a man named Riston, a dangerous Intriguer,
formerly an advocate of Nancy, who had a twelve-month before escaped
the gallows by favour of the new principles and the patriotism of
the new tribunals, although convicted of forging the great seal, and
fabricating decrees of the council. This Riston, finding himself
entrusted with a commission which concerned her Majesty, and the
mystery attending which bespoke something of importance, was less
anxious to execute it faithfully than to make a parade of this mark
of confidence. On the 30th of May, at ten in the morning, he had
the sheets carried to the porcelain manufactory at Sevres, in a cart
which he himself accompanied, and made a large fire of them before
all the workmen, who were expressly forbidden to approach it. All
these precautions, and the suspicions to which they gave rise, under
such critical circumstances, gave so much publicity to this affair
that it was denounced to the Assembly that very night. Brissot, and
the whole Jacobin party, with equal effrontery and vehemence,
insisted that the papers thus secretly burnt could be no other than
the registers and documents of the correspondence of the Austrian
committee. M. de Laporte was ordered to the bar, and there gave the
most precise account of the circumstances. Riston was also called
up, and confirmed M. de Laporte's deposition. But these
explanations, however satisfactory, did not calm the violent ferment
raised in the Assembly by this affair.--"Memoirs of Bertrand de
Molleville."]
Some time afterwards the Assembly received a denunciation against M. de
Montmorin. The ex-minister was accused of having neglected forty
despatches from M. Genet, the charge d'affaires from France in Russia,
not having even unsealed them, because M. Genet acted on constitutional
principles. M. de Montmorin appeared at the bar to answer this
accusation. Whatever distress I might feel in obeying the order I had
received from the King to go and give him an account of the sitting, I
thought I ought not to fail in doing so. But instead of giving my
brother his family name, I merely said "your Majesty's charge d'affaires
at St. Petersburg."
The King did me the favour to say that he noticed a reserve in my
account, of which he approved. The Queen condescended to add a few
obliging remarks to those of the King. However, my office of journalist
gave me in this instance so much pain that I took an opportunity, when
the King was expressing his satisfaction to me at the manner in which I
gave him this daily account, to tell him that its merits belonged wholly
to M. d'Aubier; and I ventured to request the King to suffer that
excellent man to give him an account of the sittings himself. I assured
the King that if he would permit it, that gentleman might proceed to the
Queen's apartments through mine unseen; the King consented to the
arrangement. Thenceforward M. d'Aubier gave the King repeated proofs of
zeal and attachment.
The Cure of St. Eustache ceased to be the Queen's confessor when he took
the constitutional oath. I do not remember the name of the ecclesiastic
who succeeded him; I only know that he was conducted into her apartments
with the greatest mystery. Their Majesties did not perform their Easter
devotions in public, because they could neither declare for the
constitutional clergy, nor act so as to show that they were against them.
The Queen did perform her Easter devotions in 1792; but she went to the
chapel attended only by myself. She desired me beforehand to request one
of my relations, who was her chaplain, to celebrate a mass for her at
five o'clock in the morning. It was still dark; she gave me her arm,
and I lighted her with a taper. I left her alone at the chapel door.
She did not return to her room until the dawn of day.
Dangers increased daily. The Assembly were strengthened in the eyes of
the people by the hostilities of the foreign armies and the army of the
Princes. The communication with the latter party became more active;
the Queen wrote almost every day. M. de Goguelat possessed her
confidence for all correspondence with the foreign parties, and I was
obliged to have him in my apartments; the Queen asked for him very
frequently, and at times which she could not previously appoint.
All parties were exerting themselves either to ruin or to save the King.
One day I found the Queen extremely agitated; she told me she no longer
knew where she was; that the leaders of the Jacobins offered themselves
to her through the medium of Dumouriez; or that Dumouriez, abandoning the
Jacobins, had come and offered himself to her; that she had granted him
an audience; that when alone with her, he had thrown himself at her feet,
and told her that he had drawn the 'bonnet rouge' over his head to the
very ears; but that he neither was nor could be a Jacobin; that the
Revolution had been suffered to extend even to that rabble of destroyers
who, thinking of nothing but pillage, were ripe for anything, and might
furnish the Assembly with a formidable army, ready to undermine the
remains of a throne already but too much shaken. Whilst speaking with
the utmost ardour he seized the Queen's hand and kissed it with
transport, exclaiming, "Suffer yourself to be saved!" The Queen told me
that the protestations of a traitor were not to be relied on; that the
whole of his conduct was so well known that undoubtedly the wisest course
was not to trust to it;
[The sincerity of General Dumouriez cannot be doubted in this
instance. The second volume of his Memoirs shows how unjust the
mistrust and reproaches of the Queen were. By rejecting his
services, Marie Antoinette deprived herself of her only remaining
support. He who saved France in the defiles of Argonne would
perhaps have saved France before the 20th of June, had he obtained
the full confidence of Louis XVI. and the Queen.--NOTE BY THE
EDITOR.]
that, moreover, the Princes particularly recommended that no confidence
should be placed in any proposition emanating from within the kingdom;
that the force without became imposing; and that it was better to rely
upon their success, and upon the protection due from Heaven to a
sovereign so virtuous as Louis XVI. and to so just a cause.
The constitutionalists, on their part, saw that there had been nothing
more than a pretence of listening to them. Barnave's last advice was as
to the means of continuing, a few weeks longer, the Constitutional Guard,
which had been denounced to the Assembly, and was to be disbanded. The
denunciation against the Constitutional Guard affected only its staff,
and the Duc de Brissac. Barnave wrote to the Queen that the staff of the
guard was already attacked; that the Assembly was about to pass a decree
to reduce it; and he entreated her to prevail on the King, the very
instant the decree should appear, to form the staff afresh of persons
whose names he sent her. Barnave said that all who were set down in it
passed for decided Jacobins, but were not so in fact; that they, as well
as himself, were in despair at seeing the monarchical government
attacked; that they had learnt to dissemble their sentiments, and that it
would be at least a fortnight before the Assembly could know them well,
and certainly before it could succeed in making them unpopular; that it
would be necessary to take advantage of that short space of time to get
away from Paris, immediately after their nomination. The Queen was of
opinion that she ought not to yield to this advice. The Duc de Brissac
was sent to Orleans, and the guard was disbanded.
Barnave, seeing that the Queen did not follow his counsel in anything,
and convinced that she placed all her reliance on assistance from abroad,
determined to quit Paris. He obtained a last audience. "Your
misfortunes, Madame," said he, "and those which I anticipate for France,.
determined me to sacrifice myself to serve you. I see, however, that my
advice does not agree with the views of your Majesties. I augur but
little advantage from the plan you are induced to pursue,--you are too
remote from your succours; you will be lost before they reach you. Most
ardently do I wish I may be mistaken in so lamentable a prediction; but I
am sure to pay with my head for the interest your misfortunes have raised
in me, and the services I have sought to render you. I request, for my
sole reward, the honour of kissing your hand." The Queen, her eyes
suffused with tears, granted him that favour, and remained impressed with
a favourable idea of his sentiments. Madame Elisabeth participated in
this opinion, and the two Princesses frequently spoke of Barnave. The
Queen also received M. Duport several times, but with less mystery. Her
connection with the constitutional deputies transpired. Alexandre de
Lameth was the only one of the three who survived the vengeance of the
Jacobins.
[Barnave was arrested at Grenoble. He remained in prison in that
town fifteen months, and his friends began to hope that he would be
forgotten, when an order arrived that he should be removed to Paris.
At first he was imprisoned in the Abbaye, but transferred to the
Conciergerie, and almost immediately taken before the revolutionary
tribunal. He appeared there with wonderful firmness, summed up the
services he had rendered to the cause of liberty with his usual
eloquence, and made such an impression upon the numerous auditors
that, although accustomed to behold only conspirators worthy of
death in all those who appeared before the tribunal, they themselves
considered his acquittal certain. The decree of death was read
amidst the deepest silence; but Barnave'a firmness was immovable.
When he left the court, he cast upon the judges, the jurors, and the
public looks expressive of contempt and indignation. He was led to
his fate with the respected Duport du Tertre, one of the last
ministers of Louis XVI. when he had ascended the scaffold, Barnave
stamped, raised his eyes to heaven, and said: "This, then, is the
reward of all that I have done for liberty!" He fell on the 29th of
October, 1793, in the thirty-second year of his age; his bust was
placed in the Grenoble Museum. The Consular Government placed his
statue next to that of Vergniaud, on the great staircase of the
palace of the Senate.--"Biographie de Bruxelles."]
The National Guard, which succeeded the King's Guard, having occupied the
gates of the Tuileries, all who came to see the Queen were insulted with
impunity. Menacing cries were uttered aloud even in the Tuileries; they
called for the destruction of the throne, and the murder of the
sovereign; the grossest insults were offered by the very lowest of the
mob.
About this time the King fell into a despondent state, which amounted
almost to physical helplessness. He passed ten successive days without
uttering a single word, even in the bosom of his family; except, indeed,
when playing at backgammon after dinner with Madame Elisabeth. The Queen
roused him from this state, so fatal at a critical period, by throwing
herself at his feet, urging every alarming idea, and employing every
affectionate expression. She represented also what he owed to his
family; and told him that if they were doomed to fall they ought to fall
honourably, and not wait to be smothered upon the floor of their
apartment.
About the 15th of June, 1792, the King refused his sanction to the two
decrees ordaining the deportation of priests and the formation of a camp
of twenty thousand men under the walls of Paris. He himself wished to
sanction them, and said that the general insurrection only waited for a
pretence to burst forth. The Queen insisted upon the veto, and
reproached herself bitterly when this last act of the constitutional
authority had occasioned the day of the 20th of June.
A few days previously about twenty thousand men had gone to the Commune
to announce that, on the 20th, they would plant the tree of liberty at
the door of the National Assembly, and present a petition to the King
respecting the veto which he had placed upon the decree for the
deportation of the priests. This dreadful army crossed the garden of the
Tuileries, and marched under the Queen's windows; it consisted of people
who called themselves the citizens of the Faubourgs St. Antoine and St.
Marceau. Clothed in filthy rags, they bore a most terrifying appearance,
and even infected the air. People asked each other where such an army
could come from; nothing so disgusting had ever before appeared in Paris.
On the 20th of June this mob thronged about the Tuileries in still
greater numbers, armed with pikes, hatchets, and murderous instruments of
all kinds, decorated with ribbons of the national colours, Shouting, "The
nation for ever! Down with the veto!" The King was without guards.
Some of these desperadoes rushed up to his apartment; the door was about
to be forced in, when the King commanded that it should be opened.
Messieurs de Bougainville, d'Hervilly, de Parois, d'Aubier, Acloque,
Gentil, and other courageous men who were in the apartment of M. de
Septeuil, the King's first valet de chambre, instantly ran to his
Majesty's apartment. M. de Bougainville, seeing the torrent furiously
advancing, cried out, "Put the King in the recess of the window, and
place benches before him." Six royalist grenadiers of the battalion of
the Filles Saint Thomas made their way by an inner staircase, and ranged
themselves before the benches. The order given by M. de Bougainville
saved the King from the blades of the assassins, among whom was a Pole
named Lazousky, who was to strike the first blow. The King's brave
defenders said, "Sire, fear nothing." The King's reply is well known:
"Put your hand upon my heart, and you will perceive whether I am afraid."
M. Vanot, commandant of battalion, warded off a blow aimed by a wretch
against the King; a grenadier of the Filles Saint Thomas parried a sword-
thrust made in the same direction. Madame Elisabeth ran to her brother's
apartments; when she reached the door she heard loud threats of death
against the Queen: they called for the head of the Austrian. "Ah! let
them think I am the Queen," she said to those around her, "that she may
have time to escape."
The Queen could not join the King; she was in the council chamber, where
she had been placed behind the great table to protect her, as much as
possible, against the approach of the barbarians. Preserving a noble and
becoming demeanour in this dreadful situation, she held the Dauphin
before her, seated upon the table. Madame was at her side; the Princesse
de Lamballe, the Princesse de Tarente, Madame de la Roche-Aymon, Madame
de Tourzel, and Madame de Mackau surrounded her. She had fixed a
tricoloured cockade, which one of the National Guard had given her, upon
her head. The poor little Dauphin was, like the King, shrouded in an
enormous red cap. The horde passed in files before the table;
[One of the circumstances of the 20th of June which most vexed the
King's friends being that of his wearing the bonnet rouge nearly
three hours, I ventured to ask him for some explanation of a fact so
strikingly in contrast with the extraordinary intrepidity shown by
his Majesty during that horrible day. This was his answer: "The
cries of 'The nation for ever!' violently increasing around me, and
seeming to be addressed to me, I replied that the nation had not a
warmer friend than myself. Upon this an ill-looking man, making his
way through the crowd, came up to me and said, rather roughly,
'Well, if you speak the truth, prove it by putting on this red cap.'
'I consent,' replied I. One or two of them immediately came forward
and placed the cap upon my hair, for it was too small for my head.
I was convinced, I knew not why, that his intention was merely to
place the cap upon my head for a moment, and then to take it off
again; and I was so completely taken up with what was passing before
me that I did not feel whether the cap did or did not remain upon my
hair. I was so little aware of it that when I returned to my room I
knew only from being told so that it was still there. I was very
much surprised to find it upon my head, and was the more vexed at it
because I might have taken it off immediately without the smallest
difficulty. But I am satisfied that if I had hesitated to consent
to its being placed upon my head the drunken fellow who offered it
to me would have thrust his pike into my stomach."--"Memoirs of
Bertrand de Molleville."]
the sort of standards which they carried were symbols of the most
atrocious barbarity. There was one representing a gibbet, to which a
dirty doll was suspended; the words "Marie Antoinette a la lanterne" were
written beneath it. Another was a board, to which a bullock's heart was
fastened, with "Heart of Louis XVI." written round it. And a third
showed the horn of an ox, with an obscene inscription.
One of the most furious Jacobin women who marched with these wretches
stopped to give vent to a thousand imprecations against the Queen. Her
Majesty asked whether she had ever seen her. She replied that she had
not. Whether she had done her any, personal wrong? Her answer was the
same; but she added:
"It is you who have caused the misery of the nation."
"You have been told so," answered the Queen; "you are deceived. As the
wife of the King of France, and mother of the Dauphin, I am a French-
woman; I shall never see my own country again, I can be happy or unhappy
only in France; I was happy when you loved me."
The fury began to weep, asked her pardon, and said, "It was because I did
not know you; I see that you are good."
Santerre, the monarch of the faubourgs, made his subjects file off as
quickly as he could; and it was thought at the time that he was ignorant
of the object of this insurrection, which was the murder of the royal
family. However, it was eight o'clock in the evening before the palace
was completely cleared. Twelve deputies, impelled by attachment to the
King's person, ranged themselves near him at the commencement of the
insurrection; but the deputation from the Assembly did not reach the
Tuileries until six in the evening; all the doors of the apartments were
broken. The Queen pointed out to the deputies the state of the King's
palace, and the disgraceful manner in which his asylum had been violated
under the very eyes of the Assembly; she saw that Merlin de Thionville
was so much affected as to shed tears while she spoke.
"You weep, M. Merlin," said she to him, "at seeing the King and his
family so cruelly treated by a people whom he always wished to make
happy."
"True, Madame," replied Merlin; "I weep for the misfortunes of a
beautiful and feeling woman, the mother of a family; but do not mistake,
not one of my tears falls for either King or Queen; I hate kings and
queens,--it is my religion."
The Queen could not appreciate this madness, and saw all that was to be
apprehended by persons who evinced it.
All hope was gone, and nothing was thought of but succour from abroad.
The Queen appealed to her family and the King's brothers; her letters
probably became more pressing, and expressed apprehensions upon the
tardiness of relief. Her Majesty read me one to herself from the
Archduchess Christina, Gouvernante of the Low Countries: she reproached
the Queen for some of her expressions, and told her that those out of
France were at least as much alarmed as herself at the King's situation
and her own; but that the manner of attempting to assist her might either
save her or endanger her safety; and that the members of the coalition
were bound to act prudently, entrusted as they were with interests so
dear to them.
The 14th of July, 1792, fixed by the constitution as the anniversary of
the independence of the nation drew near. The King and Queen were
compelled to make their appearance on the occasion; aware that the plot
of the 20th of June had their assassination for its object, they had no
doubt but that their death was determined on for the day of this national
festival. The Queen was recommended, in order to give the King's friends
time to defend him if the attack should be made, to guard him against the
first stroke of a dagger by making him wear a breastplate. I was
directed to get one made in my apartments: it was composed of fifteen
folds of Italian taffety, and formed into an under-waistcoat and a wide
belt. This breastplate was tried; it resisted all thrusts of the dagger,
and several balls were turned aside by it. When it was completed the
difficulty was to let the King try it on without running the risk of
being surprised. I wore the immense heavy waistcoat as an under-
petticoat for three days without being able to find a favourable moment.
At length the King found an opportunity one morning to pull off his coat
in the Queen's chamber and try on the breastplate.
The Queen was in bed; the King pulled me gently by the gown, and drew me
as far as he could from the Queen's bed, and said to me, in a very low
tone of voice: "It is to satisfy her that I submit to this inconvenience:
they will not assassinate me; their scheme is changed; they will put me
to death another way." The Queen heard the King whispering to me, and
when he was gone out she asked me what he had said. I hesitated to
answer; she insisted that I should, saying that nothing must be concealed
from her, and that she was resigned upon every point.
When she was informed of the King's remark she told me she had guessed
it, that he had long since observed to her that all which was going
forward in France was an imitation of the revolution in England in the
time of Charles I., and that he was incessantly reading the history of
that unfortunate monarch in order that he might act better than Charles
had done at a similar crisis. "I begin to be fearful of the King's being
brought to trial," continued the Queen; "as to me, I am a foreigner; they
will assassinate me. What will become of my poor children?"
These sad ejaculations were followed by a torrent of tears. I wished to
give her an antispasmodic; she refused it, saying that only happy women
could feel nervous; that the cruel situation to which she was reduced
rendered these remedies useless. In fact, the Queen, who during her
happier days was frequently attacked by hysterical disorders, enjoyed
more uniform health when all the faculties of her soul were called forth
to support her physical strength.
I had prepared a corset for her, for the same purpose as the King's
under-waistcoat, without her knowledge; but she would not make use of it;
all my entreaties, all my tears, were in vain. "If the factions
assassinate me," she replied, "it will be a fortunate event for me; they
will deliver me from a most painful existence." A few days after the
King had tried on his breastplate I met him on a back staircase. I drew
back to let him pass. He stopped and took my hand; I wished to kiss his;
he would not suffer it, but drew me towards him by the hand, and kissed
both my cheeks without saying a single word.
The fear of another attack upon the Tuileries occasioned scrupulous
search among the King's papers
I burnt almost all those belonging to the Queen. She put her family
letters, a great deal of correspondence which she thought it necessary to
preserve for the history of the era of the Revolution, and particularly
Barnave's letters and her answers, of which she had copies, into a
portfolio, which she entrusted to M. de J----. That gentleman was unable
to save this deposit, and it was burnt. The Queen left a few papers in
her secretaire. Among them were instructions to Madame de Tourzel,
respecting the dispositions of her children and the characters and
abilities of the sub-governesses under that lady's orders. This paper,
which the Queen drew up at the time of Madame de Tourzel's appointment,
with several letters from Maria Theresa, filled with the best advice and
instructions, was printed after the 10th of August by order of the
Assembly in the collection of papers found in the secretaires of the King
and Queen.
Her Majesty had still, without reckoning the income of the month, one
hundred and forty thousand francs in gold. She was desirous of
depositing the whole of it with me; but I advised her to retain fifteen
hundred louis, as a sum of rather considerable amount might be suddenly
necessary for her. The King had an immense quantity of papers, and
unfortunately conceived the idea of privately making, with the assistance
of a locksmith who had worked with him above ten years, a place of
concealment in an inner corridor of his apartments. The place of
concealment, but for the man's information, would have been long
undiscovered? The wall in which it was made was painted to imitate large
stones, and the opening was entirely concealed among the brown grooves
which formed the shaded part of these painted stones. But even before
this locksmith had denounced what was afterwards called the iron closet
to the Assembly, the Queen was aware that he had talked of it to some of
his friends; and that this man, in whom the King from long habit placed
too much confidence, was a Jacobin. She warned the King of it, and
prevailed on him to fill a very large portfolio with all the papers he
was most interested in preserving, and entrust it to me. She entreated
him in my presence to leave nothing in this closet; and the King, in
order to quiet her, told her that he had left nothing there. I would
have taken the portfolio and carried it to my apartment, but it was too
heavy for me to lift. The King said he would carry it himself; I went
before to open the doors for him. When he placed the portfolio in my
inner closet he merely said, "The Queen will tell you what it contains."
Upon my return to the Queen I put the question to her, deeming, from what
the King had said, that it was necessary I should know. "They are," the
Queen answered me, "such documents as would be most dangerous to the King
should they go so far as to proceed to a trial against him. But what he
wishes me to tell you is, that the portfolio contains a 'proces-verbal'
of a cabinet council, in which the King gave his opinion against the war.
He had it signed by all the ministers, and, in case of a trial, he trusts
that this document will be very useful to him." I asked the Queen to
whom she thought I ought to commit the portfolio. "To whom you please,"
answered she; "you alone are answerable for it. Do not quit the palace
even during your vacation months: there may be circumstances under which
it would be very desirable that we should be able to have it instantly."
At this period M. de La Fayette, who had probably given up the idea of
establishing a republic in France similar to that of the United States,
and was desirous to support the first constitution which he had sworn to
defend, quitted his army and came to the Assembly for the purpose of
supporting by his presence and by an energetic speech a petition signed
by twenty thousand citizens against the late violation of the residence
of the King and his family. The General found the constitutional party
powerless, and saw that he himself had lost his popularity. The Assembly
disapproved of the step he had taken; the King, for whom it, was taken,
showed no satisfaction at it, and he saw himself compelled to return to
his army as quickly as he could. He thought he could rely on the
National Guard; but on the day of his arrival those officers who were in
the King's interest inquired of his Majesty whether they were to forward
the views of Gendral de La Fayette by joining him in such measures as he
should pursue during his stay at Paris. The King enjoined them not to do
so. From this answer M. de La Fayette perceived that he was abandoned by
the remainder of his party in the Paris guard.
On his arrival a plan was presented to the Queen, in which it was
proposed by a junction between La Fayette's army and the King's party to
rescue the royal family and convey them to Rouen. I did not learn the
particulars of this plan; the Queen only said to me upon the subject that
M. de La Fayette was offered to them as a resource; but that it would be
better for them to perish than to owe their safety to the man who had
done them the most mischief, or to place themselves under the necessity
of treating with him.
I passed the whole month of July without going to bed; I was fearful of
some attack by night. There was one plot against the Queen's life which
has never been made known. I was alone by her bedside at one o'clock in
the morning; we heard somebody walking softly down the corridor, which
passes along the whole line of her apartments, and which was then locked
at each end. I went out to fetch the valet de chambre; he entered the
corridor, and the Queen and myself soon heard the noise of two men
fighting. The unfortunate Princess held me locked in her arms, and
said to me, "What a situation! insults by day and assassins by night!"
The valet de chambre cried out to her from the corridor, "Madame, it is a
wretch that I know; I have him!"--"Let him go," said the Queen; "open the
door to him; he came to murder me; the Jacobins would carry him about in
triumph to-morrow." The man was a servant of the King's toilet, who had
taken the key of the corridor out of his Majesty's pocket after he was in
bed, no doubt with the intention of committing the crime suspected. The
valet de chambre, who was a very strong man, held him by the wrists, and
thrust him out at the door. The wretch did not speak a word. The valet
de chambre said, in answer to the Queen, who spoke to him gratefully of
the danger to which he had exposed himself, that he feared nothing, and
that he had always a pair of excellent pistols about him for no other
purpose than to defend her Majesty. The next day M. de Septeuil had all
the locks of the King's inner apartments changed. I did the same by
those of the Queen.
We were every moment told that the Faubourg St. Antoine was preparing to
march against the palace. At four o'clock one morning towards the latter
end of July a person came to give me information to that effect. I
instantly sent off two men, on whom I could rely, with orders to proceed
to the usual places for assembling, and to come back speedily and give me
an account of the state of the city. We knew that at least an hour must
elapse before the populace or the faubourgs assembled on the site of the
Bastille could reach the Tuileries. It seemed to me sufficient for the
Queen's safety that all about her should be awakened. I went softly into
her room; she was asleep; I did not awaken her. I found General de W----
in the great closet; he told me the meeting was, for this once,
dispersing. The General had endeavoured to please the populace by the
same means as M. de La Fayette had employed. He saluted the lowest
poissarde, and lowered his hat down to his very stirrup. But the
populace, who had been flattered for three years, required far different
homage to its power, and the poor man was unnoticed. The King had been
awakened, and so had Madame Elisabeth, who had gone to him. The Queen,
yielding to the weight of her griefs, slept till nine o'clock on that
day, which was very unusual with her. The King had already been to know
whether she was awake; I told him what I had done, and the care I had
taken not to disturb her. He thanked me, and said, "I was awake, and so
was the whole palace; she ran no risk. I am very glad to see her take a
little rest. Alas! her griefs double mine!" What was my chagrin when,
upon awaking and learning what had passed, the Queen burst into tears
from regret at not having been called, and began to upbraid me, on whose
friendship she ought to have been able to rely, for having served her so
ill under such circumstances! In vain did I reiterate that it had been
only a false alarm, and that she required to have her strength recruited.
"It is not diminished," said she; "misfortune gives us additional
strength. Elisabeth was with the King, and I was asleep,--I who am
determined to perish by his side! I am his wife; I will not suffer him
to incur the smallest risk without my sharing it."
CHAPTER VIII.
During July the correspondence of M. Bertrand de Molleville with the King
and Queen was most active. M. de Marsilly, formerly a lieutenant of the
Cent-Suisses of the Guard, was the bearer of the letters.
[I received by night only the King's answer, written with his own
hand, in the margin of my letter. I always sent him back with the
day's letter that to which he had replied the day before, so that my
letters and his answers, of which I contented myself with taking
notes only, never remained with me twenty-four hours. I proposed
this arrangement to his Majesty to remove all uneasiness from his
mind; my letters were generally delivered to the King or the Queen
by M. de Marsilly, captain of the King's Guard, whose attachment and
fidelity were known to their Majesties. I also sometimes employed
M. Bernard de Marigny, who had left Brest for the purpose of sharing
with his Majesty's faithful servants the dangers which threatened
the King.--"Memoirs of Bertrand de Molleville," vol. ii., p. 12.]
He came to me the first time with a note from the Queen directed to M.
Bertrand himself. In this note the Queen said: "Address yourself with
full confidence to Madame Campan; the conduct of her brother in Russia
has not at all influenced her sentiments; she is wholly devoted to us;
and if, hereafter, you should have anything to say to us verbally, you
may rely entirely upon her devotion and discretion."
The mobs which gathered almost nightly in the faubourgs alarmed the
Queen's friends; they entreated her not to sleep in her room on the
ground floor of the Tuileries. She removed to the first floor, to a room
which was between the King's apartments and those of the Dauphin. Being
awake always from daybreak, she ordered that neither the shutters nor the
window-blinds should be closed, that her long sleepless nights might be
the less weary. About the middle of one of these nights, when the moon
was shining into her bedchamber, she gazed at it, and told me that in a
month she should not see that moon unless freed from her chains, and
beholding the King at liberty. She then imparted to me all that was
concurring to deliver them; but said that the opinions of their intimate
advisers were alarmingly at variance; that some vouched for complete
success, while others pointed out insurmountable dangers. She added that
she possessed the itinerary of the march of the Princes and the King of
Prussia: that on such a day they would be at Verdun, on another day at
such a place, that Lille was about to be besieged, but that M. de J-----,
whose prudence and intelligence the King, as well as herself, highly
valued, alarmed them much respecting the success of that siege, and made
them apprehensive that, even were the commandant devoted to them, the
civil authority, which by the constitution gave great power to the mayors
of towns, would overrule the military commandant. She was also very
uneasy as to what would take place at Paris during the interval, and
spoke to me of the King's want of energy, but always in terms expressive
of her veneration for his virtues and her attachment to himself.--
"The King," said she, "is not a coward; he possesses abundance of passive
courage, but he is overwhelmed by an awkward shyness, a mistrust of
himself, which proceeds from his education as much as from his
disposition. He is afraid to command, and, above all things, dreads
speaking to assembled numbers. He lived like a child, and always ill at
ease under the eyes of Louis XV., until the age of twenty-one. This
constraint confirmed his timidity.
"Circumstanced as we are, a few well-delivered words addressed to the
Parisians, who are devoted to him, would multiply the strength of our
party a hundredfold: he will not utter them. What can we expect from
those addresses to the people which he has been advised to post up?
Nothing but fresh outrages. As for myself, I could do anything, and
would appear on horseback if necessary. But if I were really to begin to
act, that would be furnishing arms to the King's enemies; the cry against
the Austrian, and against the sway of a woman, would become general in
France; and, moreover, by showing myself, I should render the King a mere
nothing. A queen who is not regent ought, under these circumstances, to
remain passive and prepare to die."
The garden of the Tuileries was full of maddened men, who insulted all
who seemed to side with the Court. "The Life of Marie Antoinette" was
cried under the Queen's windows, infamous plates were annexed to the
book, the hawkers showed them to the passersby. On all sides were heard
the jubilant outcries of a people in a state of delirium almost as
frightful as the explosion of their rage. The Queen and her children
were unable to breathe the open air any longer. It was determined that
the garden of the Tuileries should be closed: as soon as this step was
taken the Assembly decreed that the whole length of the Terrace des
Feuillans belonged to it, and fixed the boundary between what was called
the national ground and the Coblentz ground by a tricoloured ribbon
stretched from one end of the terrace to the other. All good citizens
were ordered, by notices affixed to it, not to go down into the garden,
under pain of being treated in the same manner as Foulon and Berthier.
A young man who did not observe this written order went down into the
garden; furious outcries, threats of la lanterne, and the crowd of people
which collected upon the terrace warned him of his imprudence, and the
danger which he ran. He immediately pulled off his shoes, took out his
handkerchief, and wiped the dust from their soles. The people cried out,
"Bravo! the good citizen for ever!" He was carried off in triumph. The
shutting up of the Tuileries did not enable the Queen and her children to
walk in the garden. The people on the terrace sent forth dreadful
shouts, and she was twice compelled to return to her apartments.
In the early part of August many zealous persons offered the King money;
he refused considerable sums, being unwilling to injure the fortunes of
individuals. M. de la Ferte, intendant of the 'menus plaisirs', brought
me a thousand louis, requesting me to lay them at the feet of the Queen.
He thought she could not have too much money at so perilous a time, and
that every good Frenchman should hasten to place all his ready money in
her hands. She refused this sum, and others of much greater amount which
were offered to her.
[M. Auguie, my brother-in-law, receiver-general of the finances,
offered her, through his wife, a portfolio containing one hundred
thousand crowns in paper money. On this occasion the Queen said the
most affecting things to my sister, expressive of her happiness at
having contributed to the fortunes of such faithful subjects as
herself and her husband, but declined her offer.--MADAME CAMPAN.]
However, a few days afterwards, she told me she would accept M. de la
Ferte's twenty-four thousand francs, because they would make up a sum
which the King had to expend. She therefore directed, me to go and
receive those twenty-four thousand francs, to add them to the one hundred
thousand francs she had placed in my hands, and to change the whole into
assignats to increase their amount. Her orders were executed, and the
assignats were delivered to the King. The Queen informed me that Madame
Elisabeth had found a well-meaning man who had engaged to gain over
Petion by the bribe of a large sum of money, and that deputy would, by a
preconcerted signal, inform the King of the success of the project. His
Majesty soon had an opportunity of seeing Petion, and on the Queen asking
him before me if he was satisfied with him, the King replied, "Neither
more nor less satisfied than usual; he did not make the concerted signal,
and I believe I have been cheated." The Queen then condescended to
explain the whole of the enigma to me. "Petion," said she, "was, while
talking to the King, to have kept his finger fixed upon his right eye for
at least two seconds."--"He did not even put his hand up to his chin,"
said the King; "after all, it is but so much money stolen: the thief will
not boast of it, and the affair will remain a secret. Let us talk of
something else." He turned to me and said, "Your father was an intimate
friend of Mandat, who now commands the National Guard; describe him to
me; what ought I to expect from him?" I answered that he was one of his
Majesty's most faithful subjects, but that with a great deal of loyalty
he possessed very little sense, and that he was involved in the
constitutional vortex. "I understand," said the King; "he is a man who
would defend my palace and my person, because that is enjoined by the
constitution which he has sworn to support, but who would fight against
the party in favour of sovereign authority; it is well to know this with
certainty."
On the next day the Princesse de Lamballe sent for me very early in the
morning. I found her on a sofa facing a window that looked upon the Pont
Royal. She then occupied that apartment of the Pavilion of Flora which
was on a level with that of the Queen. She desired me to sit down by
her. Her Highness had a writing-desk upon her knees. "You have had many
enemies," said she; "attempts have been made to deprive you of the
Queen's favour; they have been far from successful. Do you know that
even I myself, not being so well acquainted with you as the Queen, was
rendered suspicious of you; and that upon the arrival of the Court at the
Tuileries I gave you a companion to be a spy upon you; and that I had
another belonging to the police placed at your door! I was assured that
you received five or six of the most virulent deputies of the Tiers Etat;
but it was that wardrobe woman whose rooms were above you.
"In short," said the Princess, "persons of integrity have nothing to fear
from the evil-disposed when they belong to so upright a prince as the
King. As to the Queen, she knows you, and has loved you ever since
she came into France. You shall judge of the King's opinion of you: it
was yesterday evening decided in the family circle that, at a time when
the Tuileries is likely to be attacked, it was necessary to have the most
faithful account of the opinions and conduct of all the individuals
composing the Queen's service. The King takes the same precaution on his
part respecting all who are about him. He said there was with him a
person of great integrity, to whom he would commit this inquiry; and
that, with regard to the Queen's household, you must be spoken to, that
he had long studied your character, and that he esteemed your veracity."
The Princess had a list of the names of all who belonged to the Queen's
chamber on her desk. She asked me for information respecting each
individual. I was fortunate in having none but the most favourable
information to give. I had to speak of my avowed enemy in the Queen's
chamber; of her who most wished that I should be responsible for my
brother's political opinions. The Princess, as the head of the chamber,
could not be ignorant of this circumstance; but as the person in
question, who idolised the King and Queen, would not have hesitated to
sacrifice her life in order to save theirs, and as possibly her
attachment to them, united to considerable narrowness of intellect and a
limited education, contributed to her jealousy of me, I spoke of her in
the highest terms.
The Princess wrote as I dictated, and occasionally looked at me with
astonishment. When I had done I entreated her to write in the margin
that the lady alluded to was my declared enemy. She embraced me, saying,
"Ah! do not write it! we should not record an unhappy circumstance which
ought to be forgotten." We came to a man of genius who was much attached
to the Queen, and I described him as a man born solely to contradict,
showing himself an aristocrat with democrats, and a democrat among
aristocrats; but still a man of probity, and well disposed to his
sovereign. The Princess said she knew many persons of that disposition,
and that she was delighted I had nothing to say against this man, because
she herself had placed him about the Queen.
The whole of her Majesty's chamber, which consisted entirely of persons
of fidelity, gave throughout all the dreadful convulsions of the
Revolution proofs of the greatest prudence and self-devotion. The same
cannot be said of the antechambers. With the exception of three or four,
all the servants of that class were outrageous Jacobins; and I saw on
those occasions the necessity of composing the private household of
princes of persons completely separated from the class of the people.
The situation of the royal family was so unbearable during the months
which immediately preceded the 10th of August that the Queen longed for
the crisis, whatever might be its issue. She frequently said that a long
confinement in a tower by the seaside would seem to her less intolerable
than those feuds in which the weakness of her party daily threatened an
inevitable catastrophe.
[A few days before the 10th of August the squabbles between the
royalists and the Jacobins, and between the Jacobins and the
constitutionalists, increased in warmth; among the latter those men
who defended the principles they professed with the greatest talent,
courage, and constancy were at the same time the most exposed to
danger. Montjoie says: "The question of dethronement was discussed
with a degree of frenzy in the Assembly. Such of the deputies as
voted against it were abused, ill treated, and surrounded by
assassins. They had a battle to fight at every step they took; and
at length they did not dare to sleep in their own houses. Of this
number were Regnault de Beaucaron, Froudiere, Girardin, and
Vaublanc. Girardin complained of having been struck in one of the
lobbies of the Assembly. A voice cried out to him, 'Say where were
you struck.' 'Where?' replied Girardin, 'what a question! Behind.
Do assassins ever strike otherwise?"]
Not only were their Majesties prevented from breathing the open air, but
they were also insulted at the very foot of the altar. The Sunday before
the last day of the monarchy, while the royal family went through the
gallery to the chapel, half the soldiers of the National Guard exclaimed,
"Long live the King!" and the other half, "No; no King! Down with the
veto!" and on that day at vespers the choristers preconcerted to use loud
and threatening emphasis when chanting the words, "Deposuit potentes de
sede," in the "Magnificat." Incensed at such an irreverent proceeding,
the royalists in their turn thrice exclaimed, "Et reginam," after the
"Domine salvum fac regem." The tumult during the whole time of divine
service was excessive.
At length the terrible night of the 10th of August, 1792, arrived. On
the preceding evening Potion went to the Assembly and informed it that
preparations were making for an insurrection on the following day; that
the tocsin would sound at midnight; and that he feared he had not
sufficient means for resisting the attack which was about to take place.
Upon this information the Assembly passed to the order of the day.
Petion, however, gave an order for repelling force by force.
[Petion was the Mayor of Paris, and Mandat on this day was
commandant of the National Guard. Mandat was assassinated that
night.--"Thiers," vol. i., p. 260.]
M. Mandat was armed with this order; and, finding his fidelity to the
King's person supported by what he considered the law of the State, he
conducted himself in all his operations with the greatest energy. On the
evening of the 9th I was present at the King's supper. While his Majesty
was giving me various orders we heard a great noise at the door of the
apartment. I went to see what was the cause of it, and found the two
sentinels fighting. One said, speaking of the King, that he was hearty
in the cause of the constitution, and would defend it at the peril of his
life; the other maintained that he was an encumbrance to the only
constitution suitable to a free people. They were almost ready to cut
one another's throats. I returned with a countenance which betrayed my
emotion. The King desired to know what was going forward at his door; I
could not conceal it from him. The Queen said she was not at all
surprised at it, and that more than half the guard belonged to the
Jacobin party.
The tocsin sounded at midnight. The Swiss were drawn up like walls; and
in the midst of their soldierlike silence, which formed a striking
contrast with the perpetual din of the town guard, the King informed
M. de J-----, an officer of the staff, of the plan of defence laid down
by General Viomenil. M. de J----- said to me, after this private
conference, "Put your jewels and money into your pockets; our dangers are
unavoidable; the means of defence are nil; safety might be obtained by
some degree of energy in the King, but that is the only virtue in which
he is deficient."
An hour after midnight the Queen and Madame Elisabeth said they would lie
down on a sofa in a room in the entresols, the windows of which commanded
the courtyard of the Tuileries.
The Queen told me the King had just refused to put on his quilted under-
waistcoat; that he had consented to wear it on the 14th of July because
he was merely going to a ceremony where the blade of an assassin was to
be apprehended, but that on a day on which his party might fight against
the revolutionists he thought there was something cowardly in preserving
his life by such means.
During this time Madame Elisabeth disengaged herself from some of her
clothing which encumbered her in order to lie down on the sofa: she took
a cornelian pin out of her cape, and before she laid it down on the table
she showed it to me, and desired me to read a motto engraved upon it
round a stalk of lilies. The words were, "Oblivion of injuries; pardon
for offences."--"I much fear," added that virtuous Princess, "this maxim
has but little influence among our enemies; but it ought not to be less
dear to us on that account."
[The exalted piety of Madame Elisabeth gave to all she said and did
a noble character, descriptive of that of her soul. On the day on
which this worthy descendant of Saint Louis was sacrificed, the
executioner, in tying her hands behind her, raised up one of the
ends of her handkerchief. Madame Elisabeth, with calmness, and in a
voice which seemed not to belong to earth, said to him, "In the name
of modesty, cover my bosom." I learned this from Madame de Serilly,
who was condemned the same day as the Princess, but who obtained a
respite at the moment of the execution, Madame de Montmorin, her
relation, declaring that her cousin was enceinte.-MADAME CAMPAN.]
The Queen desired me to sit down by her; the two Princesses could not
sleep; they were conversing mournfully upon their situation when a musket
was discharged in the courtyard. They both quitted the sofa, saying,
"There is the first shot, unfortunately it will not be the last; let us
go up to the King." The Queen desired me to follow her; several of her
women went with me.
At four o'clock the Queen came out of the King's chamber and told us she
had no longer any hope; that M. Mandat, who had gone to the Hotel de
Ville to receive further orders, had just been assassinated, and that the
people were at that time carrying his head about the streets. Day came.
The King, the Queen, Madame Elisabeth, Madame, and the Dauphin went down
to pass through the ranks of the sections of the National Guard; the cry
of "Vive le Roi!" was heard from a few places. I was at a window on the
garden side; I saw some of the gunners quit their posts, go up to the
King, and thrust their fists in his face, insulting him by the most
brutal language. Messieurs de Salvert and de Bridges drove them off in a
spirited manner. The King was as pale as a corpse. The royal family
came in again. The Queen told me that all was lost; that the King had
shown no energy; and that this sort of review had done more harm than
good.
I was in the billiard-room with my companions; we placed ourselves upon
some high benches. I then saw M. d'Hervilly with a drawn sword in his
hand, ordering the usher to open the door to the French noblesse. Two
hundred persons entered the room nearest to that in which the family
were; others drew up in two lines in the preceding rooms. I saw a few
people belonging to the Court, many others whose features were unknown to
me, and a few who figured technically without right among what was called
the noblesse, but whose self-devotion ennobled them at once. They were
all so badly armed that even in that situation the indomitable French
liveliness indulged in jests. M. de Saint-Souplet, one of the King's
equerries, and a page, carried on their shoulders instead of muskets the
tongs belonging to the King's antechamber, which they had broken and
divided between them. Another page, who had a pocket-pistol in his hand,
stuck the end of it against the back of the person who stood before him,
and who begged he would be good enough to rest it elsewhere. A sword and
a pair of pistols were the only arms of those who had had the precaution
to provide themselves with arms at all. Meanwhile, the numerous bands
from the faubourgs, armed with pikes and cutlasses, filled the Carrousel
and the streets adjacent to the Tuileries. The sanguinary Marseillais
were at their head, with cannon pointed against the Chateau. In this
emergency the King's Council sent M. Dejoly, the Minister of Justice, to
the Assembly to request they would send the King a deputation which might
serve as a safeguard to the executive power. His ruin was resolved on;
they passed to the order of the day. At eight o'clock the department
repaired to the Chateau. The procureur-syndic, seeing that the guard
within was ready to join the assailants, went into the King's closet and
requested to speak to him in private. The King received him in his
chamber; the Queen was with him. There M. Roederer told him that the
King, all his family, and the people about them would inevitably perish
unless his Majesty immediately determined to go to the National Assembly.
The Queen at first opposed this advice, but the procureur-syndic told her
that she rendered herself responsible for the deaths of the King, her
children, and all who were in the palace. She no longer objected. The
King then consented to go to the Assembly. As he set out, he said to the
minister and persons who surrounded him, "Come, gentlemen, there is
nothing more to be done here."
["The King hesitated, the Queen manifested the highest
dissatisfaction. 'What!' said she,' are we alone; is there nobody
who can act?'--'Yes, Madame, alone; action is useless--resistance is
impossible.' One of the members of the department, M. Gerdrot,
insisted on the prompt execution of the proposed measure. 'Silence,
monsieur,' said the Queen to him; 'silence; you are the only person
who ought to be silent here; when the mischief is done, those who
did it should not pretend to wish to remedy it.' . . .
"The King remained mute; nobody spoke. It was reserved for me to
give the last piece of advice. I had the firmness to say, 'Let us
go, and not deliberate; honour commands it, the good of the State
requires it. Let us go to the National Assembly; this step ought to
have been taken long ago: 'Let us go,' said the King, raising his
right hand; 'let us start; let us give this last mark of self-
devotion, since it is necessary.' The Queen was persuaded. Her
first anxiety was for the King, the second for her son; the King had
none. 'M. Roederer--gentlemen,' said the Queen, 'you answer for the
person of the King; you answer for that of my son.'--'Madame,'
replied M. Roederer, 'we pledge ourselves to die at your side; that
is all we can engage for.'"--MONTJOIE, "History of Marie
Antoinette."]
The Queen said to me as she left the King's chamber, "Wait in my
apartments; I will come to you, or I will send for you to go I know not
whither." She took with her only the Princesse de Lamballe and Madame de
Tourzel. The Princesse de Tarente and Madame de la Roche-Aymon were
inconsolable at being left at the Tuileries; they, and all who belonged
to the chamber, went down into the Queen's apartments.
We saw the royal family pass between two lines formed by the Swiss
grenadiers and those of the battalions of the Petits-Peres and the Filles
Saint Thomas. They were so pressed upon by the crowd that during that
short passage the Queen was robbed of her watch and purse. A man of
great height and horrible appearance, one of such as were to be seen at
the head of all the insurrections, drew near the Dauphin, whom the Queen
was leading by the hand, and took him up in his arms. The Queen uttered
a scream of terror, and was ready to faint. The man said to her, "Don't
be frightened, I will do him no harm;" and he gave him back to her at
the entrance of the chamber.
I leave to history all the details of that too memorable day, confining
myself to recalling a few of the frightful scenes acted in the interior
of the Tuileries after the King had quitted the palace.
The assailants did not know that the King and his family had betaken
themselves to the Assembly; and those who defended the palace from the
aide of the courts were equally ignorant of it. It is supposed that if
they had been aware of the fact the siege would never have taken place.
[In reading of the events of the 10th of August, 1792, the reader
must remember that there was hardly any armed force to resist the
mob. The regiments that had shown signs of being loyal to the King
had been removed from Paris by the Assembly. The Swiss had been
deprived of their own artillery, and the Court had sent one of their
battalions into Normandy at a time when there was an idea of taking
refuge there. The National Guard were either disloyal or
disheartened, and the gunners, especially of that force at the
Tuileries, sympathised with the mob. Thus the King had about 800 or
900 Swiss and little more than one battalion of the National Guard.
Mandat, one of the six heads of the legions of the National Guard,
to whose turn the command fell on that day, was true to his duty,
but was sent for to the Hotel de Ville and assassinated. Still the
small force, even after the departure of the King, would have
probably beaten off the mob had not the King given the fatal order
to the Swiss to cease firing. (See Thiers's "Revolution Francaise,"
vol. i., chap. xi.) Bonaparte's opinion of the mob may be judged
by his remarks on the 20th June, 1792, when, disgusted at seeing the
King appear with the red cap on his head, he exclaimed, "Che
coglione! Why have they let in all that rabble? Why don't they
sweep off 400 or 500 of them with the cannon? The rest would then
set off." ("Bourrienne," vol. i., p.13, Bentley, London, 1836.)
Bonaparte carried out his own plan against a far stronger force of
assailants on the Jour des Sections, 4th October, 1795.]
The Marseillais began by driving from their posts several Swiss, who
yielded without resistance; a few of the assailants fired upon them; some
of the Swiss officers, seeing their men fall, and perhaps thinking the
King was still at the Tuileries, gave the word to a whole battalion to
fire. The aggressors were thrown into disorder, and the Carrousel was
cleared in a moment; but they soon returned, spurred on by rage and
revenge. The Swiss were but eight hundred strong; they fell back into
the interior of the Chateau; some of the doors were battered in by the
guns, others broken through with hatchets; the populace rushed from all
quarters into the interior of the palace; almost all the Swiss were
massacred; the nobles, flying through the gallery which leads to the
Louvre, were either stabbed or shot, and the bodies thrown out of the
windows.
M. Pallas and M. de Marchais, ushers of the King's chamber, were killed
in defending the door of the council chamber; many others of the King's
servants fell victims to their fidelity. I mention these two persons in
particular because, with their hats pulled over their brows and their
swords in their hands, they exclaimed, as they defended themselves with
unavailing courage, "We will not survive!--this is our post; our duty is
to die at it." M. Diet behaved in the same manner at the door of the
Queen's bedchamber; he experienced the same fate. The Princesse de
Tarente had fortunately opened the door of the apartments; otherwise, the
dreadful band seeing several women collected in the Queen's salon would
have fancied she was among us, and would have immediately massacred us
had we resisted them. We were, indeed, all about to perish, when a man
with a long beard came up, exclaiming, in the name of Potion, "Spare the
women; don't dishonour the nation!" A particular circumstance placed me
in greater danger than the others. In my confusion I imagined, a moment
before the assailants entered the Queen's apartments, that my sister was
not among the group of women collected there; and I went up into an
'entresol', where I supposed she had taken refuge, to induce her to come
down, fancying it safer that we should not be separated. I did not find
her in the room in question; I saw there only our two femmes de chambre
and one of the Queen's two heyducs, a man of great height and military
aspect. I saw that he was pale, and sitting on a bed. I cried out to
him, "Fly! the footmen and our people are already safe."--"I cannot,"
said the man to me; "I am dying of fear." As he spoke I heard a number
of men rushing hastily up the staircase; they threw themselves upon him,
and I saw him assassinated.
I ran towards the staircase, followed by our women. The murderers left
the heyduc to come to me. The women threw themselves at their feet, and
held their sabres. The narrowness of the staircase impeded the
assassins; but I had already felt a horrid hand thrust into my back to
seize me by my clothes, when some one called out from the bottom of the
staircase, "What are you doing above there? We don't kill women." I was
on my knees; my executioner quitted his hold of me, and said, "Get up,
you jade; the nation pardons you."
The brutality of these words did not prevent my suddenly experiencing an
indescribable feeling which partook almost equally of the love of life
and the idea that I was going to see my son, and all that was dear to me,
again. A moment before I had thought less of death than of the pain
which the steel, suspended over my head, would occasion me. Death is
seldom seen so close without striking his blow. I heard every syllable
uttered by the assassins, just as if I had been calm.
Five or six men seized me and my companions, and, having made us get up
on benches placed before the windows, ordered us to call out, "The nation
for ever!"
I passed over several corpses; I recognised that of the old Vicomte de
Broves, to whom the Queen had sent me at the beginning of the night to
desire him and another old man in her name to go home. These brave men
desired I would tell her Majesty that they had but too strictly obeyed
the King's orders in all circumstances under which they ought to have
exposed their own lives in order to preserve his; and that for this once
they would not obey, though they would cherish the recollection of the
Queen's goodness.
Near the grille, on the side next the bridge, the men who conducted me
asked whither I wished to go. Upon my inquiring, in my turn, whether
they were at liberty to take me wherever I might wish to go, one of them,
a Marseillais, asked me, giving me at the same time a push with the butt
end of his musket, whether I still doubted the power of the people? I
answered "No," and I mentioned the number of my brother-in-law's house.
I saw my sister ascending the steps of the parapet of the bridge,
surrounded by members of the National Guard. I called to her, and she
turned round. "Would you have her go with you?" said my guardian to me.
I told him I did wish it. They called the people who were leading my
sister to prison; she joined me.
Madame de la Roche-Aymon and her daughter, Mademoiselle Pauline de
Tourzel, Madame de Ginestoux, lady to the Princesse de Lamballe, the
other women of the Queen, and the old Comte d'Affry, were led off
together to the Abbaye.
Our progress from the Tuileries to my sister's house was most
distressing. We saw several Swiss pursued and killed, and musket-shots
were crossing each other in all directions. We passed under the walls of
the Louvre; they were firing from the parapet into the windows of the
gallery, to hit the knights of the dagger; for thus did the populace
designate those faithful subjects who had assembled at the Tuileries to
defend the King.
The brigands broke some vessels of water in the Queen's first
antechamber; the mixture of blood and water stained the skirts of our
white gowns. The poissardes screamed after us in the streets that we
were attached to the Austrian. Our protectors then showed some
consideration for us, and made us go up a gateway to pull off our gowns;
but our petticoats being too short, and making us look like persons in
disguise, other poissardes began to bawl out that we were young Swiss
dressed up like women. We then saw a tribe of female cannibals enter the
street, carrying the head of poor Mandat. Our guards made us hastily
enter a little public-house, called for wine, and desired us to drink
with them. They assured the landlady that we were their sisters, and
good patriots. Happily the Marseillais had quitted us to return to the
Tuileries. One of the men who remained with us said to me in a low
voice: "I am a gauze-worker in the faubourg. I was forced to march; I am
not for all this; I have not killed anybody, and have rescued you. You
ran a great risk when we met the mad women who are carrying Mandat's
head. These horrible women said yesterday at midnight, upon the site of
the Bastille, that they must have their revenge for the 6th of October,
at Versailles, and that they had sworn to kill the Queen and all the
women attached to her; the danger of the action saved you all."
As I crossed the Carrousel, I saw my house in flames; but as soon as the
first moment of affright was over, I thought no more of my personal
misfortunes. My ideas turned solely upon the dreadful situation of the
Queen.
On reaching my sister's we found all our family in despair, believing
they should never see us again. I could not remain in her house; some of
the mob, collected round the door, exclaimed that Marie Antoinette's
confidante was in the house, and that they must have her head. I
disguised myself, and was concealed in the house of M. Morel, secretary
for the lotteries. On the morrow I was inquired for there, in the name
of the Queen. A deputy, whose sentiments were known to her, took upon
himself to find me out.
I borrowed clothes, and went with my sister to the Feuillans--[A former
monastery near the Tuileries, so called from the Bernardines, one of the
Cistercian orders; later a revolutionary club.]--We got there at the
same time with M. Thierry de Ville d'Avray, the King's first valet de
chambre. We were taken into an office, where we wrote down our names and
places of abode, and we received tickets for admission into the rooms
belonging to Camus, the keeper of the Archives, where the King was with
his family.
As we entered the first room, a person who was there said to me, "Ah!
you are a brave woman; but where is that Thierry,
[M. Thierry, who never ceased to give his sovereign proofs of
unalterable attachment, was one of the victims of the 2d of
September.--MADAME CAMPAN.]
that man loaded with his master's bounties?"--"He is here," said I; "he
is following me. I perceive that even scenes of death do not banish
jealousy from among you."
Having belonged to the Court from my earliest youth, I was known to many
persons whom I did not know. As I traversed a corridor above the
cloisters which led to the cells inhabited by the unfortunate Louis XVI.
and his family, several of the grenadiers called me by name. One of them
said to me, "Well, the poor King is lost! The Comte d'Artois would have
managed it better."--"Not at all," said another.
The royal family occupied a small suite of apartments consisting of four
cells, formerly belonging to the ancient monastery of the Feuillans. In
the first were the men who had accompanied the King: the Prince de Poix,
the Baron d'Aubier, M. de Saint-Pardou, equerry to Madame Elisabeth, MM.
de Goguelat, de Chamilly, and de Hue. In the second we found the King;
he was having his hair dressed; he took two locks of it, and gave one to
my sister and one to me. We offered to kiss his hand; he opposed it, and
embraced us without saying anything. In the third was the Queen, in bed,
and in indescribable affliction. We found her accompanied only by a
stout woman, who appeared tolerably civil; she was the keeper of the
apartments. She waited upon the Queen, who as yet had none of her own
people about her. Her Majesty stretched out her arms to us, saying,
"Come, unfortunate women; come, and see one still more unhappy than
yourselves, since she has been the cause of all your misfortunes. We are
ruined," continued she; "we have arrived at that point to which they have
been leading us for three years, through all possible outrages; we shall
fall in this dreadful revolution, and many others will perish after us.
All have contributed to our downfall; the reformers have urged it like
mad people, and others through ambition, for the wildest Jacobin seeks
wealth and office, and the mob is eager for plunder. There is not one
real patriot among all this infamous horde. The emigrant party have
their intrigues and schemes; foreigners seek to profit by the dissensions
of France; every one has a share in our misfortunes."
The Dauphin came in with Madame and the Marquise de Tourzel. On seeing
them the Queen said to me, "Poor children! how heartrending it is,
instead of handing down to them so fine an inheritance, to say it ends
with us!" She afterwards conversed with me about the Tuileries and the
persons who had fallen; she condescended also to mention the burning of
my house. I looked upon that loss as a mischance which ought not to
dwell upon her mind, and I told her so. She spoke of the Princesse de
Tarente, whom she greatly loved and valued, of Madame de la Roche-Aymon
and her daughter, of the other persons whom she had left at the palace,
and of the Duchesse de Luynes, who was to have passed the night at the
Tuileries. Respecting her she said, "Hers was one of the first heads
turned by the rage for that mischievous philosophy; but her heart brought
her back, and I again found a friend in her."
[During the Reign of Terror I withdrew to the Chateau de Coubertin,
near that of Dampierre. The Duchesse de Luynes frequently came to
ask me to tell her what the Queen had said about her at the
Feuillans. She would say as she went away, "I have often need to
request you to repeat those words of the Queen."--MADAME CAMPAN.]
I asked the Queen what the ambassadors from foreign powers had done under
existing circumstances. She told me that they could do nothing; and that
the wife of the English ambassador had just given her a proof of the
personal interest she took in her welfare by sending her linen for her
son.
I informed her that, in the pillaging of my house, all my accounts with
her had been thrown into the Carrousel, and that every sheet of my
month's expenditure was signed by her, sometimes leaving four or five
inches of blank paper above her signature, a circumstance which rendered
me very uneasy, from an apprehension that an improper use might be made
of those signatures. She desired me to demand admission to the committee
of general safety, and to make this declaration there. I repaired
thither instantly and found a deputy, with whose name I have never become
acquainted. After hearing me he said that he would not receive my
deposition; that Marie Antoinette was now nothing more than any other
Frenchwoman; and that if any of those detached papers bearing her
signature should be misapplied, she would have, at a future period, a
right to lodge a complaint, and to support her declaration by the facts
which I had just related. The Queen then regretted having sent me, and
feared that she had, by her very caution, pointed out a method of
fabricating forgeries which might be dangerous to her; then again she
exclaimed, "My apprehensions are as absurd as the step I made you take.
They need nothing more for our ruin; all has been told."
She gave us details of what had taken place subsequently to the King's
arrival at the Assembly. They are all well known, and I have no occasion
to record them; I will merely mention that she told us, though with much
delicacy, that she was not a little hurt at the King's conduct since he
had quitted the Tuileries; that his habit of laying no restraint upon his
great appetite had prompted him to eat as if he had been at his palace;
that those who did not know him as she did, did not feel the piety and
the magnanimity of his resignation, all which produced so bad an effect
that deputies who were devoted to him had warned him of it; but no change
could be effected.
I still see in imagination, and shall always see, that narrow cell at the
Feuillans, hung with green paper, that wretched couch whence the
dethroned, Queen stretched out her arms to us, saying that our
misfortunes, of which she was the cause, increased her own. There, for
the last time, I saw the tears, I heard the sobs of her whom high birth,
natural endowments, and, above all, goodness of heart, had seemed to
destine to adorn any throne, and be the happiness of any people! It is
impossible for those who lived with Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette not
to be fully convinced, while doing full justice to the King's virtues,
that if the Queen had been from the moment of her arrival in France the
object of the care and affection of a prince of decision and authority,
she would have only added to the glory of his reign.
What affecting things I have heard the Queen say in the affliction caused
her by the belief of part of the Court and the whole of the people that
she did not love France! How did that opinion shock those who knew her
heart and her sentiments! Twice did I see her on the point of going from
her apartments in the Tuileries into the gardens, to address the immense
throng constantly assembled there to insult her. "Yes," exclaimed she,
as she paced her chamber with hurried steps, "I will say to them
Frenchmen, they have had the cruelty to persuade you that I do not love
France!--I! the mother of a Dauphin who will reign over this noble
country!--I! whom Providence has seated upon the most powerful throne of
Europe! Of all the daughters of Maria Theresa am I not that one whom
fortune has most highly favoured? And ought I not to feel all these
advantages? What should I find at Vienna? Nothing but sepulchres! What
should I lose in France? Everything which can confer glory!"
I protest I only repeat her own words; the soundness of her judgment soon
pointed out to her the dangers of such a proceeding. "I should descend
from the throne," said she, "merely, perhaps, to excite a momentary
sympathy, which the factious would soon render more injurious than
beneficial to me."
Yes, not only did Marie Antoinette love France, but few women took
greater pride in the courage of Frenchmen. I could adduce a multitude of
proofs of this; I will relate two traits which demonstrate the noblest
enthusiasm: The Queen was telling me that, at the coronation of the
Emperor Francis II., that Prince, bespeaking the admiration of a French
general officer, who was then an emigrant, for the fine appearance of his
troops, said to him, "There are the men to beat your sans culottes!"
"That remains to be seen, Sire," instantly replied the officer. The
Queen added, "I don't know the name of that brave Frenchman, but I will
learn it; the King ought to be in possession of it." As she was reading
the public papers a few days before the 10th of August, she observed that
mention was made of the courage of a young man who died in defending the
flag he carried, and shouting, "Vive la Nation!"--"Ah! the fine lad!"
said the Queen; "what a happiness it would have been for us if such men
had never left off crying, 'Vive de Roi!'"
In all that I have hitherto said of this most unfortunate of women and of
queens, those who did not live with her, those who knew her but
partially, and especially the majority of foreigners, prejudiced by
infamous libels, may imagine I have thought it my duty to sacrifice truth
on the altar of gratitude. Fortunately I can invoke unexceptionable
witnesses; they will declare whether what I assert that I have seen and
heard appears to them either untrue or improbable.
ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
A man born solely to contradict
Alas! her griefs double mine!
He is afraid to command
His ruin was resolved on; they passed to the order of the day
King (gave) the fatal order to the Swiss to cease firing
La Fayette to rescue the royal family and convey them to Rouen
Prevent disorder from organising itself
The emigrant party have their intrigues and schemes
There is not one real patriot among all this infamous horde
Those who did it should not pretend to wish to remedy it
Back to Full Books
|