Confessions of Marie Antoinette (34 page)

“We shall be back soon,” I call to the Chevalier de Jarjayes, one of the crown’s most trusted emissaries. Do I believe my own words?

As he passes the maréchal de Mailly, Louis says, “You are now
in charge, here. I will return the moment that order has been restored.” The maréchal, a cousin of the infamous Mailly sisters who, one after another, were royal mistresses to Louis’s grandfather, offers a courtly bow to his sovereign and vows to defend the palace to his last breath. The maréchal has enjoyed a long and distinguished military career. But what chance do we have, I wonder, with an eighty-four-year-old man leading the palace guards against the encroaching incursion? As we hurry through the Oeil de Boeuf, Louis informs the detachment of National Guards of his decision to retreat to the Assembly, and for some reason he exchanges hats with a nearby soldier. Does Louis wish to exit the Tuileries incognito? But the horrified guardsman snatches the king’s chapeau from his head and hides it under his arm. The guard’s eyes fill with panic, as if merely being seen with the king’s hat is a death sentence.

By the marble colonnade at the foot of the grand staircase, Louis clutches the comte de Roederer’s sleeve. “What will happen to those who have been left behind?” he asks urgently, his voice low.

The prefect presses his narrow lips together in an expression of grim acceptance. “
Mon Sire
, they are not in sufficient number to resist for very long.”

“In that case, I should tell the Swiss Guards to lay down their arms. I have never countenanced the shedding of French blood and I will not start now.” Louis may vacillate and equivocate, but he is nothing if not consistent. My husband still clings to the conviction that if he does the opposite of England’s Charles I, he can heal our nation’s wounds.

We can reach the Salle du Manège only by walking through the Tuileries Gardens. We are promenaded between two rows of soldiers as if we are making a funeral procession, enduring derisive jeers with every agonizing step. From the gardens we can hear the
riotous
fédérés
roaring the
Marseillaise
, with intermittent exhortations of
“Aux armes, citoyens!”
It is a great distance for a small child to cover in haste, and I worry about the dauphin keeping up with us. Too young to comprehend the terrible gravity of our circumstances, he amuses himself by kicking at little piles of dead leaves along the path as we are ushered along the
allées
toward the Assembly. “They are falling early this year,” Louis mutters to himself.

By the time we near the Salle du Manège, the crush of people around us is so terrifyingly close, despite our armed escorts, that a guardsman the size of a giant scoops my son into his arms and hoists him high above his shoulders. I shriek, fearing he is being abducted. But the giant turns to me and says thickly, “Do not be alarmed, madame, I have no intentions of harming him.” My eyes become moist with tears when I realize that the guardsman means to protect the dauphin from the encroaching mob.

Behind us, the assault on the palace has clearly begun. The air resounds with the rumbling of artillery wheels, with musket and cannon fire, and the piercing, desperate shrieks of the wounded and dying. I turn back to press my hands over Madame Royale’s ears.

The Assembly president, Pierre Victurnien Vergniaud, welcomes us with the assurance that Louis may rely upon the firmness of the National Assembly. My husband manages a weak smile, although I am certain he doubts Citoyen Vergniaud’s sincerity. Nonetheless, peering at Vergniaud through his double lorgnette, Louis replies, “I have come here to avoid a great crime and trust that my family and I cannot be safer than in your midst.”

But we are not permitted to remain in the vast barrel-vaulted hall because the Constitution prohibits the king’s presence during legislative debate. Instead, we are escorted to a shabby room tucked behind the public gallery, a few steps below the deputies’ banquettes. The chamber is usually reserved for journalists, who have
the opportunity to observe the proceedings through an iron grille; the room is barely ten feet square and the ceiling so low that a grown man cannot stand fully upright in it.

Fearful that the mob might dare to invade the Salle du Manège and attack the royal family, and that the deputies would be unable to protect us, several members of the legislature break down the grille that separates the tiny recorders’ box from the Assembly hall. Louis himself helps the men tear apart the bars. I tend to forget how strong he is. In happier days he would follow the stonemasons about Versailles, and after my desperate struggle to give birth to Madame Royale, I was told that when I lost consciousness he was the one who ripped the protective seals from my bedchamber windows and threw them open.

It is only seven thirty in the morning and already it is oppressively hot. With nowhere else to go until we are told it is safe to leave, we have no choice but to overhear the deputies above us—the republican Jacobins and the more moderate Girondins debating the future of the monarchy. Their first order of business is to dispatch a delegation to halt the progress of the insurgents, explaining that there is no reason for them to storm the palace because the king and queen have already left it and have been granted sanctuary in the Assembly.

But it is too late. The delegation is forced to retrace its steps, driven back by the forces that have already begun their attack. Moments later, a half-dozen wounded Swiss Guards, covered in gunpowder and gore, burst into the Assembly, chased like rabbits by a ravenous pack of
fédérés
, who dare to enter the Salle du Manège wielding pikes and muskets. Peering up through the now grilleless opening into the Great Hall, we can read the terror in the deputies’ faces.

“They fired upon us first!” cry the rebels, continuing to threaten the Swiss with their weapons. Louis cannot believe it. The Swiss
Guards are loyal and true; they would never have countermanded his orders. Shouts of “treason!”
“Mort aux traîtres!”
and accusations of a royal counterrevolution fill the hall, as the
fédérés
insist that the Swiss Guards lured the citizens into the palace, only to ambush and massacre them. The petrified deputies, who only minutes ago were so willing to offer us sanctuary, are capitulating to the mob crying out for our blood.

“How many are dead?” president Vergniaud demands to know.

A guard shrugs helplessly, his battered face pale. “I dare not say. Could be hundreds by now. There were so many—thousands—we could not stop them. Butchered corpses litter the steps, both inside and outside the palace. The gravel of the Place du Carrousel and the grass in the Jardin des Tuileries are already dyed crimson with blood.”

Louis stands and demands that another order be sent to the Tuileries, telling the Swiss to lay down their arms. “This senseless massacre must end now. I will never countenance bloodshed.”

The frightened messenger is dispatched, while the Swiss Guards who were lucky to escape with their lives become immediate prisoners of the Nation, marched off to be incarcerated within l’Abbaye, one of the vilest penitentiaries in Paris. Meanwhile, as the morning drags on, and we remain inside the reporters’ box, utterly powerless and drenched in sweat, the deputies debate the fate of the monarchy. The day belongs to the most vitriolic voices of Revolution—the burly Danton, the brutish Santerre, pugnacious Marat, who denounces the royal family as “enemies of the people,” and the ascetic, raven-garbed Robespierre—demagogues all. They shout down and drown out the moderates’ desperate calls for reason and order.

Shortly after ten
A.M
., as the echo of the guns grows fainter, the doors of the Assembly are thrown wide once more, and a surge of rioters spews like vomit into the Great Hall. “What are they carrying?”
asks Madame Élisabeth, wondering why they come bearing heavy sacks.

The madmen’s pockets are turned inside out and the canvas bags are tugged open, their contents dumped noisily upon tables set out hastily in front of the president’s rostrum. My eyes water when I recognize these spoils of victory: priceless treasures looted from the palace—silver flatware and enamel snuffboxes set with precious gems, my own jewelry and fans, sheaves of
assignats
, and boxes of my personal correspondence. There are even letters that in our haste to quit the palace I had left upon my desk. A painted miniature clatters onto one of the tables and even from where we sit I can identify it. It is a portrait of my mother. Thank God she is no longer alive to learn of this day’s carnage and willful destruction of royal property! Her greatest diplomatic triumph, of many, was my marriage to Louis. What would she think to see us now?

Thoughts of how I had failed Maman are nearly enough to drive me to tears again, but I will never let these ruffians see me cry. They shall not know how painfully they have wounded me; they have ransacked the Tuileries, slaughtered God knows whom, but my tears are a victory I will not concede them.

We are reduced to further punishment to hear the deputies of the Assembly, many of them educated men of the Enlightenment, praise the good work of the looters for collecting these treasures. It is merely a smirking license of theft.

“Maman, I wish to take a walk.” The dauphin tugs at my sleeve. He has finally stopped crying. Madame Royale has kept her head lowered for hours, in a silent world of her own, as if to shut out the evil all around us.

“I’m sorry,
mon chou d’amour
. It is too dangerous right now,” I murmur, taking him onto my lap.

“J’ai faim,”
he complains.

“I’m sure your papa is hungry, too. I shall see if they will give us something to eat.”

But we have been utterly neglected by the deputies. No one comes to offer food; it is all I can do to get a cup of cool water for my son. We are all thirsty and perspiring profusely. None of us had time to bathe and the stench of sweat, from fear and the stifling heat in the overcrowded chamber, makes the atmosphere even less tolerable.

“When can we go home, Maman?” the dauphin asks, hours later.

Each discharge of a cannon, every
rat-a-tat
of musket fire, makes him tremble. “I don’t know,
mon petit
. Soon, I hope. Soon.” I try to reassure the child, but from the debate raging in the Assembly, the deputies are not inclined to see us return to the Tuileries. For one thing, word has come that the residence is by now completely uninhabitable. The destruction is too massive. Every door and window has been shattered, every mirror smashed or thrown from the windows, along with our furnishings: chairs and tables, chests, bedposts and bibelots, irreplaceable paintings, and other works of art.

All through the sweltering afternoon we remain in the cramped reporters’ box like penned sheep awaiting slaughter. In answer to the cynical leers of a few of the deputies, I plead, “
S’il vous plaît, messieurs
, at least provide the children with something to eat.” After hours of neglect, an elderly doorkeeper takes pity upon us and brings us bottles of wine and a plate of dry biscuits. They are nearly inedible and I fear the children will crack their teeth upon them, but the dauphin is so famished that he scarcely minds. I counsel him to suck on the cookies as if they were sticks of arrowroot candy, for that will not only soften them but will make the meager repast last longer.

Yet the porter had risked his own life to purchase these goods on our account. I reach for my purse to repay him and realize, in a moment of panic, that I have lost it. Not only did I have coins inside it, but the reticule contained a locket with a miniature of my children. And still I cannot let them see me weep. I will my face to remain impassive, burying any sign of emotion. In some measure the revolutionaries have already assassinated me; I am dead inside.

Above us, as three banners are raised proclaiming the nation’s new motto—P
ATRIE
, L
IBERTÉ
, É
GALITÉ
—and the events of this “Second Revolution” are discussed, we remain powerless to refute the deputies’ litany of distorted facts and scurrilous lies. The Swiss Guards no more instigated this revolt than I am Catherine de Medici. And suddenly, the
monarch
—the man who insisted,
in spite of
such carnage, that the blood of his subjects not be shed—has been transformed by the deputies into the aggressor of this second revolution, and his immediate deposition is demanded.

In the afternoon, the debate turns to the future of France’s monarchy. Speaking from the rostrum, after sanctioning the enforced exile of some four thousand nonjuring priests, Vergniaud calls for the immediate adoption of two measures. “The head of the Executive Power is hereby provisionally suspended and deprived of his functions, including the power of the veto, which is to be permanently rescinded. From this moment on, the National Assembly is the sole and supreme legislative power.” He goes on to request with the same eloquence that ensured his success as a lawyer that the royal family be placed
“sous la sauvegarde de la Nation,”
under the “protection” of the citizens of France. He speaks euphemistically. Even when he calls for our removal to the Palais du Luxembourg and, as a sop to any royalist in the hall, agrees that the Nation should provide the dauphin with a tutor, I know that we are not going to be “safeguarded.” We must face the grim reality of
our circumstances. From this day on, no matter where we are sent by the Assembly, we will be imprisoned.

By early evening, we are permitted to welcome a handful of survivors into the recorders’ box, and the tiny room grows even more suffocating. The comte de la Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, son of Louis’s master of the wardrobe, is still trembling with fright an hour after his arrival. Yet he gallantly offers me the loan of his handkerchief to mop the perspiration from my face and throat. I notice him rooting through the pockets of his embroidered coat for the square of linen. “Isn’t that it?” I ask, seeing the corner of a handkerchief poking from his sleeve. The duc pulls it out, then hastily tries to hide it. It is caked with blood.