Maria Antoinette Part 7

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE TUILERIES.]

La Fayette was at the head of the National Guard. He was a strong advocate for the rights of the people. At the same time, he wished to respect the rights of the king, and to sustain a const.i.tutional monarchy. As soon as they had entered the palace, Maria Antoinette, with that indomitable spirit which ever characterized her, approached La Fayette, and offered to him the keys of her casket, as if he were her jailer. La Fayette, deeply wounded, refused to receive them. The queen indignantly, with her own hands, placed them in his hat. "Your majesty will have the goodness to take them back," said the marquis, "for I certainly shall not touch them."

The position of La Fayette at this time was about as embarra.s.sing as it could possibly have been; and he was virtually the jailer of the royal family, answerable with his life for their safe keeping. He had always been a firm friend of civil and religious liberty. He was very anxious to see France blessed with those free inst.i.tutions and that recognition of popular rights which are the glory of America, but he also wished to protect the king and queen from outrage and insult; and a storm of popular fury had now risen which he knew not how to control or to guide.

He, however, resolved to do all in his power to protect the royal family, and to watch the progress of events with the hope of establishing const.i.tutional liberty and a const.i.tutional throne over France.

The palace was now guarded, by command of the a.s.sembly, with a degree of rigor unknown before. The iron gates of the courts and garden of the Tuileries were kept locked. A list of the persons who were to be permitted to see the royal family was made out, and none others were allowed to enter. At every door sentinels were placed, and in every pa.s.sage, and in the corridor which connected the chambers of the king and queen, armed men were stationed. The doors of the sleeping apartments of the king and queen were kept open night and day, and a guard was placed there to keep his eye ever upon the victims. No respect was paid to female modesty, and the queen was compelled to retire to her bed under the watchful eye of an unfeeling soldier. It seems impossible that a civilized people could have been guilty of such barbarism. But all sentiments of humanity appear to have fled from France. One of the queen's women, at night, would draw her own bed between that of the queen and the open door, that she might thus partially shield the person of her royal mistress. The king was so utterly overwhelmed by the magnitude of the calamities in which he was now involved, that his mind, for a season, seemed to be prostrated and paralyzed by the blow. For ten days he did not exchange a single word with any member of his family, but moved sadly about in the apathy of despair, or sat in moody silence.

At last the queen threw herself upon her knees before him, and, presenting to him her children, besought him, for her sake and that of their little ones, to rouse his fort.i.tude. "We may all perish," she said, "but let us, at least, perish like sovereigns, and not wait to be strangled unresistingly upon the very floor of our apartments."

The long and dreary months of the autumn, the winter, and the spring thus pa.s.sed away, with occasional gleams of hope visiting their minds, but with the storm of revolution, on the whole, growing continually more black and terrific. General anarchy rioted throughout France. Murders were daily committed with impunity. There was no law. The mob had all power in their hands. Neither the king nor queen could make their appearance any where without exposure to insult. Violent harangues in the a.s.sembly and in the streets had at length roused the populace to a new act of outrage. The immediate cause was the refusal of the king to give his sanction to a bill for the persecution of the priests. It was the 20th of June, 1792. A tumultuous a.s.semblage of all the miserable, degraded, and vicious, who thronged the garrets and the cellars of Paris, and who had been gathered from all lands by the lawlessness with which crime could riot in the capital, were seen converging, as by a common instinct, toward the palace. They bore banners fearfully expressive of their ferocity, and filled the air with the most savage outcries. Upon the end of a pike there was affixed a bleeding heart, with the inscription, "The heart of the aristocracy." Another bore a doll, suspended to a frame by the neck, with this inscription, "To the gibbet with the Austrian." With the ferocity of wolves, they surrounded the palace in a ma.s.s impenetrable. The king and queen, as they looked from their windows upon the mult.i.tudinous gathering, swaying to and fro like the billows of the ocean in a storm, and with the clamor of human pa.s.sions, more awful than the voice of many waters, rending the skies, instinctively clung to one another and to their children in their powerlessness. Madame Elizabeth, with her saint-like spirit, and her heaven-directed thoughts, was ever unmindful of her own personal danger in her devotion to her beloved brother. The king hoped that the soldiers who were stationed as a guard within the inclosures of the palace would be able to protect them from violence. The gates leading to the Place du Carrousel were soon shattered beneath the blows of axes, and the human torrent poured in with the resistlessness of a flood. The soldiers very deliberately shook the priming from their guns, as the emphatic expression to the mob that they had nothing to fear from them, and the artillery men coolly directed their pieces against the palace. Axes and iron bars were immediately leveled at the doors, and they flew from their hinges; and the drunken and infuriated rabble, with clubs, and pistols, and daggers, poured, an interminable throng, through the halls and apartments where kings, for ages, had reigned in inapproachable pomp and power. The servants of the king, in terror, fled in every direction.

Still the crowd came rushing and roaring on, crashing the doors before them, till they approached the apartment in which the royal family was secluded. The king, who, though deficient in active energy, possessed pa.s.sive fearlessness in the most eminent degree, left his wife, children, and sister clinging together, and entered the adjoining room to meet his a.s.sailants. Just as he entered the room, the door, which was bolted, fell with a crash, and the mob was before him. For a moment the wretches were held at bay by the calm dignity of the monarch, as, without the tremor of a nerve, he gazed steadily upon them. The crowd in the rear pressed on upon those in the advance, and three friends of the king had just time to interpose themselves between him and the mob, when the whole dense throng rushed in and filled the room. A drunken a.s.sa.s.sin, with a sharp iron affixed to a long pole, aimed a thrust violently at the king's heart. One blow from an heroic citizen laid him prostrate on the floor, and he was trampled under the feet of the throng. Oaths and imprecations filled the room; knives and sabers gleamed, and yet the majesty of royalty, for a few brief moments, repelled the ferocity of the a.s.sa.s.sins. A few officers of the National Guard, roused by the peril of the king, succeeded in reaching him, and, crowding him into the embrasure of a window, placed themselves as a shield before him. The king seemed only anxious to withdraw the attention of the mob from the room in which his family were cl.u.s.tered, where he saw his sister, Madame Elizabeth, with extended arms and imploring looks, struggling to come and share his fate. "It is the queen!" was the cry, and a score of weapons were turned toward her. "No!

no!" exclaimed others, "it is Madame Elizabeth." Her gentle spirit, even in these degraded hearts, had won admiration, and not a blow fell upon her. "Ah!" exclaimed Madame Elizabeth, "why do you undeceive them?

Gladly would I die in her place, if I might thus save the queen." By the surging of the crowd she was swept into the embrasure of another window, where she was hemmed in without any possibility of extrication. By this time the crowds were like locusts, climbing up the balconies, and pouring in at the windows, and every foot of ground around the palace was filled with the excited throng. Shouts of derision filled the air, while the mob without were incessantly crying, "Have you killed them yet? Throw us out their heads."

Almost miraculously, the friends surrounding the king succeeded in warding off the blows which were aimed at him. One of the mob thrust out to the king, upon the end of a pike, a _red bonnet_, the badge of the Jacobins, and there was a general shout, "Let him put it on! let him put it on! It is a sign of patriotism. If he is a patriot he will wear it." The king, smiling, took the bonnet and put it upon his head.

Instantly there rose a shout from the fickle mult.i.tude, "_Vive le roi!_"

The mob had achieved its victory, and placed the badge of its power upon the brow of the humbled monarch.

There was at that time standing in the court-yard of the palace a young man, with the blood boiling with indignation in his veins, in view of the atrocities of the mob. The ignominious spectacle of the red bonnet upon the head of the king, as he stood in the recess of the window, seemed more than this young man could endure, and, turning upon his heel, he hastened away, exclaiming, "The wretches! the wretches! they ought to be mown down by grape-shot." This is the first glimpse the Revolution presents of Napoleon Bonaparte.

But while the king was enduring their tortures in one apartment, the queen was suffering indignities and outrages equally atrocious in another. Maria Antoinette was, in the eyes of the populace, the personification of every thing to be hated. They believed her to be _infamous_ as a wife; proud, tyrannical, and treacherous; that, as an Austrian, she hated France; that she was doing all in her power to induce foreign armies to invade the French empire with fire and sword; and that she had instigated the king to attempt escape, that he might head the armies. Maria, conscious of this hatred, was aware that her presence would only augment the tide of indignation swelling against the king, and she therefore remained in the bed-chamber with her children.

But her sanctuary was instantly invaded. The door of her apartment had been, by some friend, closed and bolted. Its stout oaken panels were soon dashed in, and the door driven from its hinges. A crowd of miserable women, abandoned to the lowest depths of degradation and vulgarity, rushed into the apartment, a.s.sailing her ears with the most obscene and loathsome epithets the language could afford. The queen stood in the recess of a window, with queenly pride curbing her mortal apprehension. A few friends had gathered around her, and placed a table before her as a partial protection. Her daughter, an exceedingly beautiful girl of fourteen years of age, with her light brown hair floating in ringlets over her fair brow and shoulders, clung to her mother's bosom as if she thought not of herself, but would only, with her own body, shield her mother's heart from the dagger of the a.s.sa.s.sin.

Her son, but seven years old, clung to his mother's hand, gazing with a bewildered look of terror upon the hideous spectacle. The vociferations of the mob were almost deafening. But the aspect of the group, so lovely and so helpless, seemed to disarm the hand of violence. Now and then, in the endless crowd defiling through the room, those in the advance pressed resistlessly on by those in the rear, some one more tender hearted would speak a word of sympathy. A young girl came crowded along, neatly dressed, and with a pleasing countenance. She, however, immediately began to revile the queen in the coa.r.s.est language of vituperation.

"Why do you hate me so, my friend?" said the queen, kindly; "have I ever done any thing to injure or to offend you?"

"No! you have never injured me," was the reply, "but it is you who cause the misery of the nation."

"Poor child!" rejoined the queen, "you have been told so, and have been deceived. Why should I make the people miserable? I am the wife of the king--the mother of the dauphin; and by all the feelings of my heart, as a wife and mother, I am a Frenchwoman. I shall never see my own country again. I can only be happy or unhappy in France. I was happy when you loved me."

The heart of the girl was touched. She burst into tears, and exclaimed, "Pardon me, good queen, I did not know you; but now I see that I have indeed been deceived, and you are truly good."

Hour after hour of humiliation and agony thus rolled away. The National a.s.sembly met, and in vain the friends of the king urged its action to rescue the royal family from the insults and perils to which they were exposed. But these efforts were met by the majority only with derision.

They hoped that the terrors of the mob would compel the king hereafter to give his a.s.sent to any law whatever which they might frame. At last the shades of night began to add their gloom to this awful scene, and even the most bitter enemies of the king did not think it safe to leave forty thousand men, inflamed with intoxication and rage, to riot, through the hours of the night, in the parlors, halls, and chambers of the Tuileries. The president of the a.s.sembly, at that late hour, crowded his way into the apartment where, for several hours, the king had been exposed to every conceivable indignity. The mysterious authority of law opened the way through the throng.

"I have only just learned," said the president, "the situation of your majesty."

"That is very astonishing," replied the king, indignantly, "for it is a long time that it has lasted."

The president, mounted upon the shoulders of four grenadiers, addressed the mob and urged them to retire, and they, weary with the long hours of outrages, slowly sauntered through the halls and apartments of the palace, and at eight o'clock silence reigned, with the gloom of night, throughout the Tuileries. The moment the mob became perceptibly less, the king received his sister into his arms, and they hastened to the apartment of the queen. During all the horrors of this awful day, her heroic soul had never quailed; but, now that the peril was over, she threw herself upon the bosom of her husband, and wept in all the bitterness of inconsolable grief. As the family were locked in each other's arms in silent grat.i.tude for their preservation, the king accidentally beheld in a mirror the red bonnet, which he had forgotten to remove from his head. He turned red with mortification, and, casting upon the floor the badge of his degradation, turned to the queen, with his eyes filled with tears, and exclaimed, "Ah, madame, why did I take you from your country, to a.s.sociate you with the ignominy of such a day as this!"

After the withdrawal of the mob, several of the deputies of the National a.s.sembly were in the apartment with the royal family, and, as the queen recounted the horrors of the last five hours, one of them, though bitterly hostile to the royal family, could not refrain from tears. "You weep," 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," unfeelingly replied the deputy, "I weep for the misfortunes of a beautiful and sensitive 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 the only feeling they inspire me with. It is my religion."

But time stops not. The hours of a dark and gloomy night, succeeding this terrible day, lingered slowly along, but no sleep visited the eyelids of the inmates of the Tuileries. Scowling guards still eyed them malignantly, and the royal family could not unbosom to one another their sorrows but in the presence of those who were hostile spies upon every word and action. Escape was now apparently hopeless. The events of the past day had taught them that they had no protection against popular fury. And they were filled with the most gloomy forebodings of woes yet to come.

These scenes occurred on the 20th of June, 1792. On the 14th of July of the same year there was to be a magnificent fete in the Champ de Mars, as the anniversary of the independence of the nation. The king and queen were compelled to be present to grace the triumph of the people, and to give the royal oath. It was antic.i.p.ated that there would be many attempts on that day to a.s.sa.s.sinate the king and queen. Some of the friends of the royal family urged that they should each wear a breast-plate which would guard against the first stroke of a dagger, and thus give the king's friends time to defend him. A breast-plate was secretly made for the king. It consisted of fifteen folds of Italian taffeta, and was formed into an under waistcoat and a wide belt. Its impenetrability was tried, and it resisted all thrusts of the dagger, and several b.a.l.l.s were turned aside by it. Madame Campan wore it for three days as an under petticoat before an opportunity could be found for the king to try it on unperceived. At length, one morning, in the queen's chamber, a moment's opportunity occurred, and he slipped it on, saying, at the same time, to Madame Campan, "It is to satisfy the queen that I submit to this inconvenience. They will not a.s.sa.s.sinate me. Their scheme is changed. They will put me to death in another way."

A dagger-proof corset had also been prepared for the queen without her knowledge. She, however, could not be persuaded to wear it. "If they a.s.sa.s.sinate _me_," she said, "it will be a most happy event. It will release me from the most sorrowful existence, and may save from a cruel death the rest of the family." The 14th of July arrived. The king, queen, and dauphin were marched, like captives gracing an Oriental triumph, at the head of the procession, from the palace to the Champ de Mars. With pensive features and saddened hearts they pa.s.sed along through the single file of soldiers, who were barely able to keep at bay the raging mob, furious for their blood, and maledictions fell heavily upon their ears from a thousand tongues. The fountain of tears was dry, and despair had nerved them with stoicism. They returned to the palace in the deepest dejection, and never again appeared in the streets of Paris till they were borne to their execution.

CHAPTER IX.

IMPRISONMENT IN THE TEMPLE.

1792

Apprehension of poison.--The queen daily insulted.--An a.s.sa.s.sin in the queen's chamber.--The allied army.--Parties in France.--The Royalists, Girondists, and Jacobins.--Consternation in Paris.--The king's dethronement.--Scene from the palace.--Gathering of the mob.--The queen with her children.--Brutal remarks of the troops.--Rising of the sun.--Disaffection of the troops.--Extremity of the royal family.--Spirit of the queen.--The king's calmness.--The mother and the queen.--The royal family take refuge in the a.s.sembly.--The king's speech.--The square box.--The king's serenity.--The mob at the palace.--Brutal ma.s.sacre of the king's friends.--The mob sack the palace.--The dead bodies of the Royalists burned.--The king dethroned.--The royal family removed to the Feuillants.--Bitter sufferings of the royal family.--Taken back to the a.s.sembly.--The royal family consigned to the Temple.--Advance of the allies.--Inhuman ma.s.sacre.--Description of the Temple.--Tower of the Temple.--Apartments of the royal family.--Obscene pictures.--Resources of the prison.--Employments of the royal family.--Severe restrictions.--Manner of obtaining news.--The Princess Lamballe.--Maria's letter to the Princess de Lamballe.--She rejoins the queen.--The princess separated from the queen.--She is thrown into prison.--Trial of the princess.--She refuses to swear.--a.s.sa.s.sination of the princess.--Brutality of the mob.--Dreadful apprehensions.--Increased severities.--The queen grossly insulted.--The king separated from his family.--Wretched state of the king.--The queen's anguish at the separation.--The king sees his family occasionally.--Condition of the captives.

Every day now added to the insults and anguish the royal family were called to endure. They were under such apprehension of having their food poisoned, that all the articles placed upon the table by the attendants, provided by the a.s.sembly, were removed untouched, and they ate and drank nothing but what was secretly provided by one of the ladies of the bed-chamber. One day the queen stood at her window, looking out sadly into the garden of the Tuileries, when a soldier, standing under the window, with his bayonet upon his gun, looked up to her and said, "I wish, Austrian woman, that I had your head upon my bayonet here, that I might pitch it over the wall to the dogs in the street." And this man was placed under her window ostensibly for her protection! Whenever the queen made her appearance in the garden, she encountered insults often too outrageous to be related. An a.s.sa.s.sin, one night, with his sharpened dagger, endeavored to penetrate her chamber. She was awoke by the noise of the struggle with the guard at the door. The a.s.sa.s.sin was arrested.

"What a life!" exclaimed the queen. "Insults by day, and a.s.sa.s.sins by night! But let him go. He came to murder me. Had he succeeded, the Jacobins would have borne him to-morrow in triumph through the streets of Paris."

The allied army, united with the emigrants, in a combined force of nearly one hundred and fifty thousand men, now entered the frontiers of France, to rescue, by military power, the royal family. They issued a proclamation, in which it was stated that "the allied sovereigns had taken up arms to stop the anarchy which prevailed in France--to give liberty to the king, and restore him to the legitimate authority of which he had been deprived." The proclamation a.s.sured the people of Paris that, if they did not immediately liberate the king and return to their allegiance, the city of Paris should be totally destroyed, and that the enemies of the king should forfeit their heads. This proclamation, with the invasion of the French territory by the allied army, fanned to the intensest fury the flames of pa.s.sion already raging in all parts of the empire. Thousands of young men from all the provinces thronged into the city, breathing vengeance against the royal family. In vain did the king declare his disapproval of these violent measures on the part of the allies. In vain did he a.s.sert his readiness to head the armies of France to repel invasion.

There were now three important parties in France struggling for power.

The first was that of the king, and the n.o.bles generally, wishing for the re-establishment of the monarchy. The second was that of the Girondists, wishing for the dethronement of the king and the establishment of a republic, with the power in the hands of the most influential citizens in intelligence and wealth. The third was that of the ultra Democrats or Jacobins, who wished to raise the mult.i.tude from degradation, penury, and infamy, into power, by the destruction of the throne, and the subjection of the middling cla.s.ses, and the entire subversion of all the distinctions of wealth and rank. The approach of the allies united both of these latter cla.s.ses against the throne. A motion was immediately introduced into the a.s.sembly that the monarchy be entirely abolished, and a mob rioting through Paris threatened the deputies with death unless they dethroned the king. But an army of one hundred and fifty thousand men were marching upon Paris, and the deputies feared a terrible retribution if this new insult were heaped upon their sovereign. No person can describe the confusion and consternation with which the metropolis of France was filled. The mob declared, on the 9th of August, that, unless the dethronement were that day p.r.o.nounced, they would that night sack the palace, and bear the heads of the royal family through the streets upon their pikes. The a.s.sembly, undecided, and trembling between the two opposing perils, separated without the adoption of any resolve. All knew that a night of dreadful tumult and violence must ensue. Some hundreds of gentlemen collected around the king and queen, resolved to perish with them.

Several regiments of soldiers were placed in and around the palace to drive back the mob, but it was well known that the troops would more willingly fraternize with the mult.i.tude than oppose them. The sun went down, and the street lamps feebly glimmered through the darkness of the night. The palace was filled with armed men. The gentlemen surrounding the king were all conscious of their utter inability to protect him.

They had come but to share the fate of their sovereign. The queen and the Princess Elizabeth ascended to an upper part of the palace, and stepped from a low window into the dark shadow of a balcony to look out upon the tumultuous city. The sound, as of the gathering of a resistless storm, swept through all the streets, and rose loud and threatening above the usual roar of the vast metropolis. The solemn tones of the alarm bells, pealing through the night air, summoned all the desperadoes of France to their several places of rendezvous, to march upon the palace. The rumbling of artillery wheels, and the frequent discharge of musketry, proclaimed the determination and the desperation of the intoxicated mob. In darkness and silence, the queen and her sister stood listening to these fearful sounds, and their hearts throbbed violently in view of the terrible scene through which they knew that they must pa.s.s. The queen, pale but tearless, and nerved to the utmost by queenly pride, descended to the rooms below. She walked into the chamber where her beautiful son was sleeping, gazed earnestly upon him for a moment, bent over him, and imprinted upon his cheek a mother's kiss--and yet without a tear. She entered the apartment of her daughter--lovely, surpa.s.singly lovely in all the blooming beauty of fifteen. The princess, comprehending the peril of the hour, could not sleep. Maria pressed her child to her throbbing heart, and the pride of the queen was soon vanquished by the tenderness of the mother, as with convulsive energy she embraced her, and wept in anguish almost unendurable. Shouts of unfeeling derision arose from the troops below, stationed for the protection of the royal family, and their ears were a.s.sailed by remarks of the most brutal barbarity. Hour after hour of the night lingered along, the clamor without incessantly increasing, and the crowds surrounding the palace augmenting. The excitement within the palace was so awful that no words could give it utterance. The few hundred gentlemen who had come so heroically to share the fate of their sovereign were aware that no resistance could be made to the tens of thousands who were thirsting for their blood.

Midnight came. It was fraught with horror. The queen, in utter exhaustion, threw herself upon a sofa. At that moment a musket shot was fired in the court-yard. "There is the first shot," said the queen, with the calmness of despair, "but it will not be the last. Let us go and be with the king." At length, from the windows of their apartment, a few gleams of light began to redden the eastern sky. "Come," said the Princess Elizabeth, "and see the rising sun." Maria went mournfully to the window, gazed long and steadfastly upon the rising luminary, feeling that, before that day's sun should go down, she and all whom she loved would be in another world. It was an awful spectacle which the light of day revealed. All the avenues to the palace were choked with intoxicated thousands. The gardens, and the court-yard surrounding the palace, were filled with troops, placed there for the protection of the sovereign, but evidently sympathizing with the mob, with whom they exchanged badges and friendly greetings. The queen, apprehensive that the children might be ma.s.sacred in their beds, had them dressed, and placed by the side of herself and the king. It was recommended to the king that he should go down into the court-yard, among the troops stationed there for his defense; that his presence might possibly awaken sympathy and enthusiasm in his behalf. The king and queen, with their son and daughter, and Madame Elizabeth, went down with throbbing hearts to visit the ranks of their defenders. They were received with derisive insults and hootings.

Some of the gunners left their posts, and thrust their fists into the face of the king, insulting him with menaces the most brutal. They instantly returned to the palace, pallid with indignation and despair.

Soon an officer came in and informed the king that all resistance was hopeless; that six pieces of artillery were already pointed against the main door of the palace; that a mob of countless thousands, well armed, and dragging with them twelve heavy cannon, were rapidly approaching the scene of conflict; that the whole populace of Paris were up in arms against the king, and that no reliance whatever could be placed in the soldiers stationed for his defense. "There is not," said he, "a single moment to lose. You will all inevitably and immediately perish, unless you hasten to the hall where the a.s.sembly is in session, and place yourself under the protection of that body." The pride of the queen was intensely aroused in view of appealing to the a.s.sembly, their bitterest enemy, for succor, and she indignantly replied, "I would rather be nailed to the walls of the palace than leave it to take refuge in the a.s.sembly." And the heroism of Maria Theresa instinctively inspiring her bosom, she seized, from the belt of an officer, two pistols, and, presenting them to the king, exclaimed, "Now, sire, is the time to show yourself, and if we must perish, let us perish with glory." The king calmly received the pistols, and silently handed them back to the officer.

"Madame," said the messenger, "are you prepared to take upon yourself the responsibility of the death of the king, of yourself, of your children, and of all who are here to defend you? All Paris is on the march. Time presses. In a few moments it will be too late." The queen cast a glance upon her daughter, and a mother's fears prevailed. The crimson blood mounted to her temples. Then, again, she was pale as a corpse. Then, rising from her seat, she said, "Let us go." It was seven o'clock in the morning.

The king and queen, with their two children, Madame Elizabeth, and a few personal friends, descended the great stair-case of the Tuileries, to pa.s.s out through the bands of soldiers and the tumultuous mob to the hall of the a.s.sembly. At the stair-case there was a large concourse of men and women, gesticulating with fury, who refused to permit the royal family to depart. The tumult was such that the members of the royal family were separated from each other, and thus they stood for a moment mingled with the crowd, listening to language of menace and insult, when a deputy a.s.sured the mob that an order of the a.s.sembly had summoned the royal family to them. The rioters then gave way, and the mournful group pa.s.sed out of the door into the garden. They forced their way along, surrounded by a few friends, through imprecations, insults, gleaming daggers, and dangers innumerable, until they arrived at the hall of the a.s.sembly, which the king was with difficulty enabled to enter, in consequence of the immense concourse which crowded him, thirsting for his blood, and yet held back by an unseen hand. As the king entered the hall, he said, with dignity, to the president, "I have come here to save the nation from the commission of a great crime. I shall always consider myself, with my family, safe in your hands." The royal family sat down upon a bench. Mournful silence pervaded the hall. A more sorrowful, heart-rending sight mortal eyes have seldom seen. The father, the mother, the saint-like sister, the innocent and helpless children, had found but a momentary refuge from cannibals, who were roaring like wolves around the hall, and battering at the doors to break in and slake their vengeance with blood. It was seriously apprehended that the mob would make a rush, and sprinkle the blood of the royal family upon the very floor of the sanctuary where they had sought a refuge.

Behind the seat of the president there was a box about ten feet square, const.i.tuting a seat reserved for reporters, guarded by an iron railing.

Into this box the royal family were crowded for safety. A few friends of the king gathered around the box. The heat of the day was almost insupportable. Not a breath of air could penetrate the closely-packed apartment; and the heat, as of a furnace, glowed in the room. Scarcely had the royal family got into this frail retreat, when the noise without informed them that their friends were falling before the daggers of a.s.sa.s.sins, and the greatest alarm was felt lest the doors should be driven in by the merciless mob. In this awful hour, the king appeared as calm, serene, and unconcerned as if he were the spectator of a scene in which he had no interest. The countenance of the queen exhibited all the unvanquished firmness of her soul, as with flushed cheek and indignant eye she looked upon the drama of terror and confusion which was pa.s.sing. The young princess wept, and her cheeks were marked with the furrows which her tears, dried by the heat, had left. The young dauphin appeared as cool and self-possessed as his father. The rattling fire of artillery, and the report of musketry at the palace, proclaimed to the royal family and the affrighted deputies the horrid conflict, or, rather, ma.s.sacre which was raging there. Immediately after the king and queen had left the Tuileries, the mob broke in at every avenue. A few hundred Swiss soldiers left there remained faithful to the king. The conflict was short--the ma.s.sacre awful. The infuriated mult.i.tude rushed through the halls and the apartments of the s.p.a.cious palace, murdering, without mercy and without distinction of age or s.e.x, all the friends of the king whom they encountered. The mutilated bodies were thrown out of the windows to the mob which filled the garden and the court. The wretched inmates of the palace fled, pursued in every direction. But concealment and escape were alike hopeless. Some poor creatures leaped from the windows and clambered up the marble monuments. The wretches refrained from firing at them, lest they should injure the statuary, but p.r.i.c.ked them with their bayonets till they compelled them to drop down, and then murdered them at their feet. A pack of wolves could not have been more merciless. The populace, now rioting in their resistless power, with no law and no authority to restrain them, gave loose rein to vengeance, and, having glutted themselves with blood, proceeded to sack the palace. Its magnificent furniture, and splendid mirrors, and costly paintings, were dashed to pieces and thrown from the windows, when the fragments were eagerly caught by those below and piled up for bonfires.

Drunken wretches staggered through all the most private apartments, threw themselves, with blood-soaked boots, upon the bed of the queen, ransacked her drawers, made themselves merry over her notes, and letters, and the various articles of her toilet, and polluted the very air of the palace by their vulgar and obscene ribaldry. As night approached, huge fires were built, upon which the dead bodies of the ma.s.sacred Royalists were thrown, and all were consumed.

During all the long hours of that dreadful day, and until two o'clock the ensuing night, the royal family remained, almost without a change of posture, in the narrow seat which had served them for an asylum. Who can measure the amount of their endurance during these fifteen hours of woe? An act was pa.s.sed, during this time, in obedience to the demands of the mob, dethroning the king. The hour of midnight had now come and gone, and still the royal sufferers were in their comfortless imprisonment, half dead with excitement and exhaustion. The young dauphin had fallen asleep in his mother's arms. Madame Elizabeth and the princess, entirely unnerved, were sobbing with uncontrollable grief. The royal family were then transferred, for the remainder of the night, to some deserted and unfurnished rooms in the old monastery of the Feuillants. Some beds and mattresses were hastily collected, and a few coa.r.s.e chairs for their accommodation. As soon as they had entered these cheerless rooms, and were alone, the king prostrated himself upon his knees, with his family clinging around him, and gave utterance to the prayer, "Thy trials, O G.o.d! are dreadful. Give us courage to bear them.

We adore the hand which chastens, as that which has so often blessed us.

Have mercy on those who have died fighting in our defense."

Utter exhaustion enabled the unhappy family to find a few hours of agitated sleep. The sun arose the ensuing morning with burning rays, and, as they fell upon the eyelids of the queen, she looked wildly around her for a moment upon the cheerless scene, and then, with a shudder, exclaiming, "Oh! I hoped it was all a dream," buried her face again in her pillow. The attendants around her burst into tears. "You see, my unhappy friends," said Maria, "a woman even more unhappy than yourselves, for she has caused all your misfortunes." The queen wept bitterly as she was informed of the ma.s.sacre of her friends the preceding day. Already the royal family felt the pressure of poverty.

They were penniless, and had to borrow some garments for the children.

The king and queen could make no change in their disordered dress.

At ten o'clock in the morning, a guard came and conducted the royal family again to the a.s.sembly. Immediately the hall was surrounded by a riotous mob, clamoring for their blood. At one moment the outer doors were burst open, and the blood-thirsty wretches made a rush for the interior. The king, believing that their final hour had come, begged his friends to seek their own safety, and abandon him and his family to their fate. The day of agitation and terror, however, pa.s.sed away, and, as the gloom of night again darkened the city, the ill.u.s.trious sufferers were reconveyed to the Feuillants. All their friends were driven from them, and guards were placed over them, who, by rudeness and insults, did what they could to add bitterness to their captivity.