Marie Antoinette and the Downfall of Royalty Part 6

The Const.i.tutional Guard, which according to regulation should have numbered eighteen hundred men, really amounted, says Dumouriez, to six thousand fit for duty. The royalist element predominated in it. But a certain number of "false {141} brethren" had found their way into the ranks, who managed by the aid of bribery to spy upon their officers, and made reports to the committee of public safety. Undoubtedly the King's guards did not approve of all that was going on. But how could devoted royalists and men accustomed to discipline be expected to approve the fete of the Swiss of Chateauvieux, for example? How could they help being indignant when, while on duty at the Tuileries, they heard the populace insult the royal family under the very windows of the palace?

When they returned to their barracks at the Military School, they expressed this indignation too forcibly, and their words, hawked about in all quarters by ill-will, were represented as the preliminary symptoms of a reactionary plot. A guard commanded by a Duke de Brissac was intolerable to the Jacobins. Their sole idea was to drive it from the Tuileries, where its presence appeared to insure order,--a thing they held in utmost horror. A 20th of June would not have been possible with a const.i.tutional guard, and ever since May, the 20th of June had been in course of preparation. Its organizers had their plan completely laid already. An adroit rumor was started of a so-called plot, some Saint-Bartholomew or other, which they pretended was on foot against the patriots, and of which the ecole Militaire was the centre.

The white flag, which was to be the signal for the a.s.sa.s.sins to a.s.semble, was said to be hidden there. Petion, the mayor of Paris, {142} under pretext of preventing troubles, sent munic.i.p.al officers to make a search. They could not lay their hands on the white flag which was the pretended object of their visit, but they did find monarchical hymns and ballads, and counter-revolutionary writings.

An unlucky incident still further increased suspicion. The famous Countess de La Motte had just published in London some new particulars concerning the affair of the necklace. In order to avert scandal, the Queen had caused Laporte, intendant of the civil list, to buy up the whole edition, and he had burned every copy of it at the manufactory of Sevres. That very evening the committee of surveillance were in possession of the fact that Laporte had gone to Sevres with three unknown persons, and that thirty bales of paper had been put into the fire in his presence. There was at this time a great deal of talk concerning a pretended Austrian committee, in which a complete plan of restoration by foreign aid was being elaborated. It was claimed that the papers burned at the manufactory were the archives of this committee, with which popular imagination was extremely busy.

Denunciations fell in showers. Laporte and several others were summoned before the committee of surveillance. Petion declared that the people were surrounded by conspiracies. Bazire demanded the disbanding of the King's guard, which, according to him, was made up of servants of the _emigres_, and refractory priests. It was claimed {143} that the soldiers, to whom the Duke de Brissac had given sabres with hilts representing a c.o.c.k surmounted by a royal crown, used insulting language concerning the a.s.sembly and the nation in their barracks. They were said to rejoice in the reverses which the French troops had just sustained on the northern frontier, and it was added that they meant to march twenty leagues under a white flag to meet the Austrians. The ma.s.ses, always so easily deceived, were convinced that the conspiracy was on the brink of discovery.

The National a.s.sembly took up the question, and a stormy debate on it occupied the evening session of May 29. "What will become of the individual liberty of citizens," cried M. Daverhoute, "if the dominant party, merely by alleging suspicions, can decree the impeachment of all who displease it, and if the different parties, coming successively into power, overthrow, by means of this unchecked right of impeachment, both ministers and all functionaries by the torrent of their intrigues?

In that case you would see proscriptions like those of Marius and Sylla." In fact, this was what the near future was about to show.

Vergniaud responded by evoking a souvenir of the praetorian guards of Caligula and Nero. At the close of his speech the a.s.sembly pa.s.sed the following decree:--

"ARTICLE 1. The existing hired guard of the King is disbanded, and will be replaced immediately in conformity with the laws.

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"ART. 2. Until the formation of the new guard, the National Guard of Paris will be on duty near the King's person, in the same manner as before the establishment of the King's guard."

A discussion ensued on the subject of Brissac's impeachment. The struggle between the two opposing parties was of unheard-of vivacity.

One of the most courageous members of the right, M. Calvet, gave free vent to his indignation. "The informer," said he, "is a scoundrel who makes a thrust with a poniard and hides himself; he was unknown at Rome until the times of Seja.n.u.s and Tiberius; times, gentlemen, of which you remind me often." "To the Abbey! to the Abbey!" retorted the left, with fury. Said Guadet: "I demand that M. Calvet should be sent to the Abbey for three days, for having dared to say that the representatives of the French people remind him of the Roman Tiberius and Seja.n.u.s."

The motion was adopted, and the a.s.sembly decided that M. Calvet should pa.s.s three days in prison. M. de Jaucourt threatened to cudgel Chabot, and the ex-friar, ascending the tribune, said: "I think it was very cowardly on the part of a colonel to offer to cane a Capuchin." The a.s.sembly, having pa.s.sed an order of the day concerning this incident, decreed that "there was reason for an accusation against M. Cosse, styled Brissac, and that his papers should be sealed up at once."

The King and Queen, awakened in the middle of the night by these tidings, besought Brissac to make {145} his escape, and provided him with the means. The Duke refused, and instead of trying to a.s.sure his safety, sat down to write a long letter to Madame du Barry. At first Louis XVI. wished to veto this decree, as was his duty, but his ministers dissuaded him. They reminded him of the October Days, and the weak monarch, alarmed on account of his family, if not on his own, sacrificed his Const.i.tutional Guard and also the brave servitor who commanded it. Speaking to M. d'Aubier, one of the ordinary gentlemen of the King's bedchamber, the Queen said: "I tremble lest the King's guard should think the honor of the corps compromised by their disarmament."--"Doubtless, Madame, that corps would have preferred to die at the feet of Your Majesties."--"Yes," replied the Queen, "but the few partisans who still adhere to the King in the a.s.sembly counsel him to sanction the decree disbanding them, and to disregard their advice is to run the risk of losing them." While the Queen was yet speaking, a man approached under pretence of asking alms. "You see," said she to M. d'Aubier, "there is no place and no time when I am free from spies."

The Const.i.tutional Guard were sent as prisoners to the ecole Militaire between a double file of National Guards, and forced to surrender their weapons. By a sort of fatality Louis XVI. was led to disarm himself, to spike his cannons, tear down his flags, and dismantle his fortresses. By dint of approaching too near the fatal declivity of concessions, {146} he ended by losing even his dignity as man and King.

He was paralyzed, annihilated by the a.s.sembly, which treated him like a hostage, a conquered man, and which struck down, one after another, the last defenders of the monarchy and of public order. The fate of the Const.i.tutional Guard might well discourage honest men who only sought to devote themselves. How was it possible to remain faithful to a chief who was false to himself, who was more like a victim than a king?

Finding themselves unsupported by the Tuileries, the royalists began to look across the frontier, and many men who would have flocked around an energetic monarch, fled from a feeble king and sorrowfully went to swell the ranks of the emigration.

In spite of the advice of Dumouriez, Louis XVI. would not make use of his right to form another guard. He preferred to put himself in the hands of the National Guard, who were his jailors rather than his servants. As to the Duke de Brissac, even the formality of an interrogatory was dispensed with, and he was sent before the Superior Court of Orleans. When he bade adieu to Louis XVI., the King said to him: "You are going to prison; I should be much more afflicted if you were not leaving me there myself." What was to be the fate of the loyal and devoted servant, thus sacrificed to his master's inexcusable weakness? He left the dungeons of Orleans only to be transferred to Versailles by the Ma.r.s.eillais, and there, on September 9, 1792, was a.s.saulted by a {147} furious throng surrounding the carriages containing the prisoners. The brave old man struggled long against the a.s.sa.s.sins, but, after losing two fingers and receiving several other wounds, he was killed by a sabre-thrust which broke his jaw, and his head was set on one of the spikes of the palace gate.

[1] The magnificent mansion built for Madame du Barry by Louis XV., and restored to her after her banishment to Meaux by Marie Antoinette.

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XIV.

THE SUFFERINGS OF LOUIS XVI.

Dissatisfied with men and things, dissatisfied with others and himself, the mind and heart of Louis XVI. were the prey of moral tortures which left him no repose. He began to be ashamed of his concessions, and to repent of having accepted pusillanimous advice. Why had he not succeeded in being a king? Why had he garrisoned Paris insufficiently ever since the outbreak of the Revolution? Why had he suffered the Bastille to be taken, encouraged the emigration, and disbanded his bodyguards? Why had he not opposed the first persecutions aimed at the Church? Why had he pretended to approve acts and ideas which horrified him? Why, by resorting to deplorable equivocations which cast a shadow over his policy and his character, had he reduced his most devoted followers to doubt and despair? Such thoughts as these a.s.sailed him like so many stings of conscience. The sentiments of monarchy and of military honor awoke in him once more, and he sounded with bitterness the whole depth of the abyss into which his irresolution had plunged him. In seeing what he was, he recalled sorrowfully {149} what he had been, and comprehended by cruel experience what feebleness could make of a Most Christian King and eldest son of the Church, an heir of Louis XIV. He thought of the many brave men, victims of his political errors, who on his account had suffered exile and ruin; of the faithful royalists menaced, because of him, with prison and death. He thought of the incessantly repeated crimes, the ma.s.sacres of the Glaciere, the impunity of the brigands of "headsman" Jourdan, of Brissac's incarceration. This is what it is, he said within himself, to have suffered religion to be persecuted and to have believed that, were the altar once overthrown, the throne might rest secure. He reproached himself bitterly for having sanctioned the civil organization of the clergy at the close of 1790, and thus drawn upon himself the censure of the Sovereign Pontiff. He wanted to be done with concessions, but he understood perfectly that it was too late now to resist, and that he was irrevocably lost in consequence of events undesired and unforeseen.

What was to be done? How could he sail against the stream? Where find a point of vantage? Ought he to take violent measures? If the unhappy King had been alone, perhaps he might have tried to do so. But he feared to endanger his wife and children by thus acting.

As if to push the wretched monarch to extremities, the National a.s.sembly pa.s.sed two decrees which struck him to the heart. According to the first of {150} these, voted May 19, any ecclesiastic having refused the oath to the civil const.i.tution of the clergy, could be transported at the simple request of twenty citizens of the canton in which he resided. According to the second, voted June 8, a camp of twenty thousand federates, recruited from every canton of the realm, were to be a.s.sembled before Paris, in order, as was said in one of the preambles, "to take every hope from the enemies of the common weal who are scheming in the interior."

They had counted too much on the King's patience. He could not resolve to sanction the two decrees, and banish the ecclesiastics whose behavior he honored. Dumouriez afflicted him still further, when, in entreating him to yield, he asked why he had sanctioned, at the close of 1790, the decree obliging the clergy to take oath to the civil const.i.tution of the clergy. "Sire," said he, "you sanctioned the decree for the priests' oath, and it is to that your veto must be applied. If I had been one of your counsellors at the time, I would, at the risk of my life, have advised you to refuse your sanction. Now my opinion is that having, as I dare to say, committed the fault of approving this decree, which has produced enormous evils, your veto, if you apply it to the second decree, which may arrest the deluge of blood ready to flow, will burden your conscience with all the crimes to which the people are tending." Never had a sovereign's conscience been a prey to similar perplexities. Louis XVI. seemed crushed beneath an irresistible {151} fatality. The Tuileries, haunted night and day by the spectre of Charles I., a.s.sumed a dismal air. At this period a sort of stupor characterized the countenance, the gait, and even the silence of the future victim of January 21. He no longer spoke; one might say he no longer thought. He seemed prostrated, petrified.

A rumor got about that he had become almost imbecile through care and trouble, so much so that he did not recognize his son, but on seeing him approach, had asked: "What child is that?" It was added that while out walking he caught sight of the steeple of Saint Denis from the top of the hill, and cried out: "That is where I shall be on my birthday."

He had been so calumniated, so misunderstood, so outraged, that not merely his crown but his existence had become an intolerable burden to him. His throne and his life alike disgusted him. He was no longer a King, but only the ghost of one.

Madame Campan thus describes him: "At this period the King fell into a discouragement amounting to physical prostration. For ten days together he never uttered a word, even in the bosom of his family, except when the game of backgammon, which he played with Madame Elisabeth after dinner, obliged him to p.r.o.nounce some indispensable words. The Queen drew him out of this condition, so fatal at a critical time when every minute may necessitate action, by throwing herself at his feet and addressing him sometimes in words intended only to frighten him, {152} and at others expressing her affection for him.

She demanded, also, what he owed to his family, and went so far as to say that if they must perish, it ought to be with honor, and without waiting to be strangled one after another on the floor of their apartment."

While Louis XVI. a.s.sisted unmoved, not merely like Charles V. at his own obsequies, but at those of royalty, the blood of Maria Theresa was boiling in the veins of Marie Antoinette. The scenes she had witnessed sometimes extorted sobs and cries of anguish from her. Her pride revolted at seeing the royal mantle, crown, and sceptre dragged through the mire. She wanted to struggle to the last, to hope against all hope, to cling to the last chances of safety like a shipwrecked sailor to the fragments of his ship. Who could say? She might find defenders where she least expected them. It was for this reason that she wished to meet Dumouriez, as she had met Mirabeau and Barnave. Dumouriez has preserved the details of this interview in his Memoirs.

How times had changed! Secrecy was almost necessary if one sought the honor of speaking with the Queen of France. Even to salute her was to expose one's self to the suspicion of belonging to the pretended Austrian committee which was the perpetual object of popular invective.

When Louis XVI. told Dumouriez that the Queen desired a private interview with him, the minister was not at all well pleased. He thought it a useless step which might be misinterpreted by all parties.

However, {153} he must needs obey. He had received an order to go down to the Queen an hour before the meeting of the Council. That it might be the sooner over, he took the precaution of going half an hour late to this perilous rendezvous. He had been presented to Marie Antoinette on the day of his nomination as minister. She had then addressed him several words, asking him to serve the King well, and he had replied with a respectful phrase. Since then he had not seen her. When he entered her room, he found the Queen alone, very much flushed, and pacing to and fro in an agitation which promised a lively interview.

She approached him with an air of majestic irritation: "Sir!" she exclaimed, "you are all-powerful at this moment, but it is by the favor of the people, who soon break their idols. Your existence depends upon your conduct." Dumouriez insisted on the necessity of scrupulously respecting the Const.i.tution, which Marie Antoinette was unwilling to do. "It will not last," she said, raising her voice; "take care of yourself!"--"Madame," replied the minister, "I am past fifty; I have encountered many perils during my life, and in entering the ministry, I thoroughly understood that responsibility was not the greatest of my dangers."--"Nothing was wanting but to calumniate me," cried the Queen, tears flowing from her eyes; "you seem to think me capable of having you a.s.sa.s.sinated." Agitated as greatly as the sovereign, "G.o.d preserve me," said Dumouriez, "from offering you so {154} grievous an offence!

Your Majesty's character is great and n.o.ble. You have given proofs of it which I admire and which have attached me to you." Marie Antoinette grew calmer. "Believe me, Madame," went on the minister; "I have no interest in deceiving you, and I abhor anarchy and crime as much as you do.... This is not, as you seem to think, a popular and transitory movement. It is the almost unanimous insurrection of a great nation against inveterate abuses. The conflagration is stirred up by great parties, and there are scoundrels and fools in all of them. I behold nothing in the Revolution but the King and the nation as a whole; all that tends to separate them leads to their mutual ruin; I am doing all I can to reunite them, and it is your part to aid me. If I am an obstacle to your designs, say so, and I will at once offer my resignation to the King, and go into a corner to bewail the fate of my country and your own." The interview ended amicably. The Queen and the minister talked over the different factions. Dumouriez spoke to Marie Antoinette of the faults and crimes of each; he tried to convince her that she was misled by those who surrounded her, and the Queen appeared to be convinced. When he was obliged to call her attention to the clock, as the hour for the Council had arrived, she dismissed him most affably.

If we may credit Madame Campan, who has also given an account of this interview, the impression Marie Antoinette received from it was scarcely a {155} good one. "One day," says Madame Campan, "I found the Queen extremely troubled. She said she no longer knew where she stood; whether the Jacobin chiefs were making overtures to her through Dumouriez, or Dumouriez, abandoning the Jacobins, was acting on his own account; that she had given him an audience; that, when alone with her, he had fallen at her feet and said that although he had pulled the red bonnet down to his ears, yet he was not and could not be a Jacobin; that the Revolution had been allowed to fall into the hands of a rabble of disorganizers who, seeking only for pillage, were capable of everything, and could furnish the a.s.sembly with a formidable army, ready to undermine the support of a throne already too much shaken.

While speaking with extreme warmth, he had seized the Queen's hand, and, kissing it with transport, cried, 'Permit yourself to be saved!'

The Queen said to me that the protestations of a traitor could not be believed, and that his entire conduct was so well known that undoubtedly the wisest thing would be not to trust him."

Meantime, the danger constantly increased. Even the gates of the Tuileries were no longer fastened. Hawkers of vile pamphlets and sanguinary satires on the Queen cried their infamous wares under the very windows of the palace; and the National a.s.sembly, sitting close beside, and hearing them--the National a.s.sembly, terrorized by Jacobins and pikemen--dared not even censure such baseness. On June 4, {156} a deputy named Ribes, till then unknown, cited from the tribune the t.i.tles of the following articles in Freron's journal, _l'Orateur du Peuple_: "The crowned porcupine, a const.i.tutional animal who behaves unconst.i.tutionally."--"Crimes of M. Capet since the Revolution."--"Decree to be pa.s.sed forbidding the Queen to sleep with the King."--"The royal tigress, separated from her worthy spouse, to serve as a hostage." "Rouse up!" cried the indignant deputy. "There is still time. Join with me in proclaiming war on traitors and justice for the seditious, and the country is safe!" Ribes preached in the desert. The a.s.sembly shrugged their shoulders and treated him as a fool.

June 11, another deputy, M. Delsaux, said from the tribune: "Last evening, at half-past seven, pa.s.sing through the Tuileries, I saw an orator standing on a chair and speaking with great vehemence. Mixing with the crowd, I heard him read a libel strongly inciting to the King's a.s.sa.s.sination. This libel is called, 'The Fall of the Idol of the French,' and these sentences occur in it: 'This monster employs his power and his treasures to hinder our regeneration. A new Charles IX., he wishes to bring desolation and death to France. Go, cruel wretch; thy crimes shall have an end. Damiens was less guilty. He was punished by most horrible tortures for having desired to deliver France from a monster. And thou, whose offences are twenty-five million times greater, art left unpunished! But tremble, tyrant; there is a Scaevola amongst us.'"

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The a.s.sembly listened, but took no measures. No further restraint was placed either on moral or material disorder. Anarchy showed a nameless epileptic ferocity. Never had the press been more furious or licentious. It was a torrent of mud and gall and blood. The limits of invective and insult were driven further back. "You see that I am annoyed," said the Queen to Dumouriez in Louis XVI.'s presence; "I dare not go to the window looking into the garden. Last evening, needing a breath of air, I showed myself at the window facing the courtyard. A gunner belonging to the guard apostrophized me in an insulting way, and added: 'What pleasure it would give me to have your head on the end of my bayonet!' In that frightful garden a man standing on a chair reads out horrors against us on one side, and on the other may be seen a soldier or a priest whom they are dragging through a pond, and crushing with blows and insults. Meantime, others are flying balloons or quietly strolling about. Ah! what a place! what a people!"

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XV.

ROLAND'S DISMISSAL FROM OFFICE.

In the ministry, as elsewhere, discord reigned. At first, the ministers had seemed to be of one mind. They dined at each other's houses four times a week, on the days when there was a meeting of the Council. Friday was Roland's day for receiving his colleagues at his table, where his wife presided and perorated. "These dinners," says Etienne Dumont, "were often remarkable for their gaiety, of which no situation can deprive Frenchmen when they meet in society, and which was natural to men contented with themselves and flattered by their elevation. The future was hidden from them by the present. The cares of the ministry were forgotten. They seated themselves in their dwellings as if they were to abide there forever." This sort of political honeymoon could not last very long. Things presently began to change for the worse. Dumouriez tired very soon of Madame Roland's pretensions; she wanted to know, see, and direct everything, and he persisted in refusing to transform himself into a puppet whose strings were to be pulled by this woman and the Girondins. Madame Roland, who {159} posed as a puritan, caused remonstrances to be addressed to Dumouriez on the subject of some more or less suspicious affairs, said to have been negotiated by Bonne-Carrere, the director at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, by which Madame de Beauvert was supposed to have gained large sums. The wife of the Minister of the Interior had a grudge against the favorite of the Minister of Foreign Affairs. "She is Dumouriez's mistress," said she; "she lives in his house and does the honors at his table, to the great scandal of sensible men, who are friendly to good morals and liberty. For this license on the part of a public man charged with State affairs marks too plainly his contempt for decorum; and Madame de Beauvert, Rivarol's sister, very well and very unfavorably known, is surrounded by the tools of aristocracy, unworthy in all respects." One evening, after dinner, Roland, "with the gravity belonging to his age and character," as his wife says, gave a lecture on morality to the Minister of Foreign Affairs apropos of this matter. At first Dumouriez made jesting replies, but afterwards showed temper and appeared displeased with his entertainers.

Thereafter he seldom visited the Ministry of the Interior. Reflecting on this, Madame Roland said to her husband: "Though not a good judge of intrigue, I think worldly wisdom would dictate that the hour has come for getting rid of Dumouriez, if we wish to avoid being ruined by him.

I know very well that you would be unwilling to lower yourself to such an {160} action; and yet it is plain that Dumouriez must be seeking to disembarra.s.s himself of those whose censure has offended him. When one undertakes to preach, and does so in vain, he must either punish or expect to be molested."

Thenceforward, Madame Roland formed a distinct group within the ministry, composed of her husband, Claviere, and Servan, who had just replaced De Grave as Minister of War. While Dumouriez, Lacoste, and Duranton (whom Louis XVI. called "the good Duranton") allowed themselves to be affected by the King's goodness, and sincerely wished to save him, their three colleagues, inspired by the spiteful Madame Roland, had but one idea: to destroy him. "Roland, Claviere, and Servan," says Dumouriez in his Memoirs, "no longer observed any moderation, not merely with their colleagues, but with the King himself. At every meeting of the Council they abused the mildness of this prince, in order to mortify and kill him with pin-p.r.i.c.ks."

It was Servan who proposed forming a camp of twenty thousand federates around Paris. He thought it would be a sort of central revolutionary army, a.n.a.logous to that English parliamentary army under command of Cromwell, which had brought Charles I. to the scaffold. "Servan, a very wicked man and most inimical to the King," says Dumouriez again, "took the notion to write to the President of the a.s.sembly, without consulting his colleagues, and propose a decree for a.s.sembling an army of twenty {161} thousand men around Paris. This was at the time when the Girondin faction was at the height of its power, having the Jacobins at their command, and governing Paris through Petion. They wanted to destroy the Feuillants, perhaps at the sword's point, to put down the court, and probably to begin putting their republican projects into execution. Thus it was this faction which brought to Paris the federates who ended by causing every one of them to perish on the scaffold after making Louis XVI. ascend it." Dumouriez was indignant that the Minister of War should have taken it on himself to propose such a decree without even mentioning it to the sovereign. The dispute on this matter was so violent that, but for the presence of the King, the meeting of the Council might have come to a b.l.o.o.d.y close. Louis XVI., deeply grieved by such scandals, resolved to dismiss the three ministers, who, instead of supporting him, were merely conspirators who had sworn his ruin.

The anguish of the unhappy monarch had reached its height. Four councils were held without his returning the decrees submitted to him for consideration. The National a.s.sembly grew impatient. The Jacobins were in a rage. At last the King concluded to take up in the Council the decree relative to the camp of twenty thousand federates. "I think," said Dumouriez, "that the decree is dangerous to the nation, the King, the National a.s.sembly, and above all to its authors, whose chastis.e.m.e.nt it {162} will turn out to be; and yet, Sire, it is my opinion that you cannot refuse it. It was proposed by profound malice, debated with fury, and decreed with enthusiasm; everybody is blinded.

If you veto it, it will none the less be pa.s.sed." The hesitation of Louis XVI. redoubled. As to the decree concerning the clergy, he declared that he would never sanction it. This was the only time that Dumouriez ever saw "the character of this gentle soul somewhat changed for the worse."

Meanwhile, Madame Roland, more impatient and vindictive than ever, wrote the famous letter supposed to issue from her husband, which was to echo in the ears of royalty like a funeral knell. She says of it:--